Full text of "Capital; a critique of political economy"

See other formats

CAPITAL

A CEITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

BY KARL MAEX

VOLUME I

THE PROCESS OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION

TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION, B7
SAMUEL MOORE AND EDWARD AVELINO

AND EDITED BY

FREDERICK ENGELS

REVISED AND AMPLIFIED ACCORDING TO THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION
BY ERNEST UNTEBMANN

CHICAGO

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPAJSTY

1926

HB-

So/

. /

CONTENTS.

FAGX

EDITOR'S Nors TO TH* FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, ......... ?

AUTHOR'S PREFACES — I. To the First Edition ........... 11

II. To the Second Edition ........... 10

EDITOR'S PREFACE— To the First English Translation, ........ 27

EDITOR'S PREFACE — To the Fourth German Edition, ......... 32

PART I.

COMMODITIES AND MONEY.

CHAPTER I. — Commodities .................. 41

Section 1. — The two Factors of a Commodity; Use Value and Value (the

Substance of Value and the Magnitude of Value) ........ 41

Section 2. — The Twofold Character of the Labour embodied in Commodities, 48

Section 3. — The Form of Value, or Exchange Value, ........ 54

A. Elementary or Accidental Form o." Value, ......... 56

1. The two Poles of the Expression of Value: Relative Form and

Equivalent Form, ............... 56

The Relative Form of Value, ............ 57

(o.) The Nature and Import of this Form, ....... 67

(&.) Quantitative Determination of Relative Value ...... 61

3. The Equivalent Form of Value, ........... 64

4. The Elementary Form of Value considered as a Whole, ... 69

B. Total or Expanded Form of Value, ........... 72

1. The Expanded Relative Form of Value, ........ 72

2. The Particular Equivalent Form, .......... 73

3. Defects of the Total or Expanded Form of Value ...... 74

C. The General Form of Value, ............. 75

1. The altered Character of the Form of Valu .......... 75

1. The interdependent Development of the Relative Form of Value,

and of the Equivalent Form ............. 78

3. Transition from the General Form to the Money Form, .... 79

D. The Money Form .................. 80

Section 4.— The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof ...... 81

/ CHAPTER II.— Exchange ................. 96

CHAPTER 111.— Money, or the Circulation of Commodities ...... . . 106

Section 1.— The Measure of Value ............... 106

Section 2.— The Medium of Circulation ............. 116

a. The Metamorphosis of Commodities ......... 116

i. The Currency of Money ............. 128

t. Coin, and Symbols of Value, ........... 140

Section 8.— Money, ................... 146

a. Hoarding ................. 146

*. Means of Payment, .... ........... 151

€, Universal Money ............... 159

PART II.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL.

CHAPTER IV.— The General Formula for Capital ........... j/W

CHAPTER V.— Contradictions in the General Formula of Capital,
C« AFTER VI.— The Buying and Selling of LabourrPower

4 Contents.

PART III.

THB PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPLUS-VALUE.

PAG»

/CHAPTER VII. — The Labour Process and the Process of producing Surplus-
Value,

Section 1. — The Labour Process or the Production of Use- Value, 197

< Section 2. — The Production of Surplus- Value, 207

CHAPTER VIII.— Constant Capital and Variable Capital 221

CHAPTER IX.— The Rate of Surplus- Value, ..235

Section 1. — The Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power, 235

Section 2. — The Representation of the Components of the Value of the Pro
duct by corresponding proportional Parts of the Product itself, . . . ,2_44_

Section 3. — Senior's " Last Hour," 248

Section 4.— Surplus-Produce 254

CHAPTER X.— The Working-Day, 255

Section 1.— The Limits of the Working-Day, 255

Section 2. — The Greed for Surplus-Labour. Manufacturer and Boyard, .. . 259
Section 3. — Branches of English Industry without Legal Limits to Exploitation, 268

Section 4.— Day and Night Work. The Relay System 282

Section 5. — The Struggle for a Normal Working- Day. Compulsory Laws for
the Extension of the Working-Day from the Middle of the 14th to the

End of the 17th Century 290

Section 6. — The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Compulsory Limitation

by Law of the Working-Time. The English Factory Acts, 1833 to 1864, 304
Section 7. — The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Re-action of the Eng
lish Factory Acts on Other Countries, 326

CHAPTER XI. — Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value, . , _331

PART IV.

PRODUCTION OF RELATIVE SURPLUS- VALU*.

CHAPTER XII. — The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value 842

CHAPTER XIII.-— Co-Operation, 358

CHAPTER XIV. — Division of Labour and Manufacture, 368

Section 1. — Twofold Origin of Manufacture, 368

Section 2. — The Detail Labourer and his Implements 372

Section 3. — The two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture: Heterogeneous

Manufacture, Serial Manufacture, 375

Section 4. — Division of Labour in Manufacture, and Division of Labour in

Society 385

Section 5.— The Capitalistic Character of Manufacture, 895

CHAPTER XV. — Machinery and Modern Industry, 405

Section 1.— The Development of Machinery 405

Section 2. — The Value transferred by Machinery to the Product 422

Section 3. — The Proximate Effects of Machinery on the Workman, . . . . 430
a. Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-Power by Capital. The

Employment of Women and Children, 481

&. Prolongation of the Working-Day, 440

c. Intensification of Labour, 447

Section 4. — The Factory, 457

Section 5. — The Strife between Workman and Machinery, 466

Section 6. — The Theory of Compensation as regards thr Workpeople displaced

by Machinery „ . ... ~. 478

Section 7. — RejraJsiou and Attraction of Workpeople by the Factory

Crises of the Cotton Trade

Contents. 5

PACK

Section 8. — Revolution effected in Manufacture, Handicrafts, and Domestic

Industry by Modern Industry 502

a. Overthrow of Co-Operation based on Handicraft and on Divi

sion of Labour, 502

b. Re-action of the Factory System on Manufacture and Domes

tic Industries, 504

e. Modern Manufacture, 506

d. Modern Domestic Industry, 509

e. Passage of Modern Manufacture and Domestic Industry into

Modern Mechanical Industry. The Hastening of this Revo
lution by the Application of the Factory Acts to those In
dustries, 514

Section 9. — The Factory Acts. Sanitary and Educational Clauses of the same.
> Their general Extension in England, 526

Section 10. — Modern Industry and Agriculture 653

PART V.

THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE.

CHAPTER XVI.— Absolute and Relative Surplus- Value, 657

CHAPTER XVII. — Changes of Magnitude in the Price of Labour-Power and in

Surplus-Value 668

L Length of the Working Day and Intensity of Labour constant. Pro
ductiveness of Labour variable 56«

II. Working Day constant. Productiveness of Labour constant. Intensity

of Labor variable, 574

III. Productiveness and Intensity of Labour constant. Length of the Work
ing Day variable, 576

IV. Simultaneous Variations in the Duration, Productiveness and In
tensity of Labour, 678

(1.) Diminishing Productiveness of Labour with a simultaneous Length
ening of the Working Day 578

(2.) Increasing Intensity and Productiveness of Labour with simul
taneous Shortening of the Working Day, 680

CHAPTER XVIIL— Various Formlae for the Rate of Surplus- Value 682

PART VI.

WAGES.

CHAPTER XIX.— The Transformation of the Value (and respectively the Price)

of Labour-Power into Wages, 686

CHAPTER XX. — Time-wages, 594

CHAPTER XXL— Piece-Wages, 602

CHAPTER XXII. — National Differences of Wages, 611

PART VII.

THE ACCUMULATION O? CAPITAL,

CHAPTER XXIII. — Simple Reproduction 619

CHAPTER XXIV. — Conversion of Surplus- Value into Capital 634

Section 1. — Capitalist Production on a progressively increasing Scale. Transi
tion of the Laws of Property that characterise Production of Com
modities into Laws of Capitalist Appropriation, 634

Section 2. — Erroneous Conception, by Political Economy, of Reproduction on

a progressively increasing Scale 044

5 Contents.

V*4X

Section 3.— Separation of Surplus-Value into Capital and Revenue. The Ab
stinence Theory •

Section 4.— Circumstances that, independently of the proportional Division of
Surplus-Value into Capital and Revenue, determine the Amount of Ac
cumulation. Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power. Productivity of
Labour. Growing Difference in Amount between Capital employed and
Capital consumed. Magnitude of Capital advanced 656

Section 5. — The so-called Labour Fund, • 667

CHAPTER XXV. — The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation 671

Section 1. — The increased Demand for Labour-Power that accompanies Accumu
lation, the Composition of Capital remaining the same 671

Section 2.— Relative Diminution of the Variable Part of Capital simultaneously
with the Progress of Accumulation and of the Concentration that ac
companies it, 681

Section 3. — Progressive Production of a Relative Surplus-Population, or Indus
trial Reserve Army ,. 689

Section 4.— Different Forms of the Relative Surplus-Population. 'The General

Law of Capitalistic Accumulation, 70S

Section 6. — Illustrations of the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, . .711

a. England from 1846 to 1866, 711

b. The badly paid Strata of the British Industrial Class, . . .718

c. The Nomad Population 728

d. Effect of Crises on the best paid Part of the Working Class, . 733

*. The British Agricultural Proletariat, 739

f. Ireland 767

PART VIII.

TUB SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION.

CHAPTER XXVI. — The Secret of Primitive Accumulation 784

CHAPTER XXVII. — Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land, .J-IST
CHAPTER XXVIII. — Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated from the End

of the 15th Century. Forcing down of Wages by Acts of Parliament, . 805

CHAPTER XXIX.— Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer, 814

CHAPTER XXX. — Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. Creal

tion of the Home Market for Industrial Capital, 817

CHAPTER XXXI. — Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist, 8i&

CHAPTER XXXIL— Historical Tendency of Capitalistic Accumulation, . . .834)^,
CHAPTER XXXIII.— The Modern Theory of Colonization 838 \

Works and Authors quoted in " Capital," 850

Index . 866

EDITOR'S NOTE TO THE FIRST AMERICAN
EDITION.

The original plan of Marx, as outlined in his preface to
the first German edition of Capital, in 1867, was to divide
his work into three volumes. Volume I was to contain Book
I, The Process of 'Capitalist Production. Volume II was
scheduled to comprise both Book II, The Process of Capi
talist Circulation, and Book III, The Process of Capitalist
Production as a Whole. The work was to close with volume
III, containing Book IV, A History of Theories of Surplus-
Value.

When Marx proceeded to elaborate his work for publica
tion, he had the essential portions of all three volumes, with
a few exceptions, worked out in their main analyses and con
clusions, but in a very loose and unfinished form. Owing to
ill health, he completed only volume I. He died on March
14, 1883, just when a third German edition of this volume
was being prepared for the printer.

Frederick Engels, the intimate friend and co-operator of
Marx, stepped into the place of his dead comrade and pro
ceeded to complete the work. In the course of the elabora
tion of volume II it was found that it would be wholly taken
up with Book II, The Process of Capitalist Circulation. Its
first German edition did not appear until May, 1885, almost
18 years after the first volume.

The publication of the third volume was delayed still
longer. When the second German edition of volume II ap
peared, in July, 1893, Engels was still working on volume

8 'American Editor's Note.

III. It was not until October, 1894, that the first German
edition of volume III was published, in two separate parts,
containing the subject matter of what had been originally
planned as Book III of volume II, and treating of The Capi
talist Process of Production as a whole.

The reasons for the delay in the publication of volumes II
and III, and the difficulties encountered in solving the
problem of elaborating the copious notes of Marx into a fin
ished and connected presentation of his theories, have been
fully explained by Engels in his various prefaces to these two
volumes. His great modesty led him td belittle his own
share in this fundamental work. As a matter of fact, a large
portion of the contents of Capital is as much a creation of
Engels as though he had written it independently of Marx.

Engels intended to issue the contents of the manuscripts
for Book IV, originally planned as volume III, in the form
of a fourth volume of Capital. But on the 6th of August,
1895, less than one year after the publication of volume III,
he followed his co-worker into the grave, still leaving this
work incompleted.

However, some years previous to his demise, and in antici
pation of such an eventuality, he had appointed Karl Kautsky,
the editor of Die Neue Zeii, the scientific organ of the German
Socialist Party, as his successor and familiarized him per
sonally with the subject matter intended for volume IY of
this work. The material proved to be so voluminous, that
Kautsky, instead of making a fourth volume of Capital out
of it, abandoned the original plan and issued his elaboration
as a separate work in three volumes under the title Theories of
Surplus-value.

The first English translation of the first volume of Capital
was edited by Engels and published in 1886. Marx had in
the meantime made some changes in the text of the second

American Editor's Note. 9

German edition and of the French translation, both of which
appeared in 1873, and he had intended to superintend per
sonally the edition of an English version. But the state of
his health interfered with this plan. Engels utilised his
notes and the text of the French edition of 1873 in the prep
aration of a third German edition, and this served as a basis
for the first edition of the English translation.

Owing to the fact that the title page of this English trans
lation (published by Swan Sonnenschein & 'Co.) did not dis
tinctly specify that this was but volume I? it has often been
mistaken for the complete work, in spite of the fact that the
prefaces of Marx and Engels clearly pointed to the actual
condition of the matter.

In 1890, four years after the publication of the first Eng
lish edition, Engels edited the proofs for a fourth German
edition of volume I and enlarged it still more after a re
peated comparison with the French edition and with manu
script notes of Marx. But the Swan Sonnenschein edition
did not adopt this new version in its subsequent English
issues.

This first American edition will be the first complete Eng
lish edition of the entire Marxian theories of Capitalist Pro
duction. It will contain all three volumes of Capital in full.
The present volume, I, deals with The Process of Capitalist
Production in the strict meaning of the term " production."
Volume II will treat of The Process of Capitalist Circulation
in the strict meaning of the term " circulation." Volume
III will contain the final analysis of The Process of Capitalist
Production as a Whole, that is of Production and Circulation
in their mutual interrelations.

The Theories of Surplus-Value, Kautsky's elaboration of
the posthumous notes of Marx and Engels, will in due time
be published in an English translation as a separate work.

1O American Editor's Note.

This first American edition of volume I is based on the
revised fourth German edition. The text of the English
version of the Swan Sonnenschein edition has been compared
page for page with this improved German edition, and about
ten pages of new text hitherto not rendered in English are
thus presented to American readers. All the footnotes have
likewise been revised and brought up to date.

For all further information concerning the technical par
ticulars of this work I refer the reader to the prefaces of Marx
and Engels.

EENEST UNTEEMANN.

Orlando, Fla., July 18, 1906.

AUTHOR'S PREFACES.

I. TO THE FIRST EDITION.

THE work, the first volume of which I now submit to the
public, forms the continuation of my "Zur Kritik der
Politischen Oekonomie" (A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy) published in 1859. The long pause be
tween the first part and the continuation is due to an illness
of many years' duration that again and again interrupted my
work.

The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the
first three chapters of this volume. This is done not merely
for the sake of connection and completeness. The presentation
of the subject-matter is improved. As far as circumstances in
any way permit, many points only hinted at in the earlier
book are here worked out more fully, whilst, conversely, points
worked out fully there are only touched upon in this volume.
The sections on the history of the theories of value and of
money are now, of course, left out altogether The reader
of the earlier work will find, however, in the notes to the first
chapter additional sources of reference relative to the history
of those theories.

Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To
understand the first chapter, especially the section that con
tains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the
greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the
analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of valno,

12 Author's Prefaces.

I have, as much as it was possible, popularised.1 The value-
form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very
elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has
for more than 2000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom
of it, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of
much more composite and complex forms, there has been at
least an approximation. Why ? Because the body, as an or-
ganic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that
body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither
microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of
abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society the
commodity-form of the product of labor — or the value-form
of the commodity — is the economic cell-form. To the super
ficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon
minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of
the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.

With the exception of the section on value-form, therefor^
this volume cannot stand accused on the score of difficulty. I
pre-suppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn somo-
thing new and therefore to think for, himself.

The physicist either observes physical phenomena where
they occur in their most typical form and most free from
disturbing influence, or, wherever possible, he makes experi
ments under conditions that assure the occurrence of the phe-

i This is the more necessary, as even the section of Feidinand Lassalle't
work against Schulze-Delitzsch, in which he professed to give "the intel
lectual quintessence" of my explanations on these subjects, contains im
portant mistakes. If Ferdinand Lassalle has borrowed almost literally
from my writings, and without any acknowledgment, all the general
theoretical propositions in his economic works, e.g,, those on the his
torical character of capital, on the connection between the conditions of
production and the mode of production, &c., Ac., even to the terminology
created by me, this may perhaps be due to purposes of propaganda. I
am here, of course, not speaking of his detailed working out and applica
tion of these propositions, with which I have nothing to do.

Autlwr's Prefaces. 13

nomenon in its normality. In this work I have to examine
the capitalist mode of production, and the conditions of pro
duction and exchange corresponding to that mode. Up to the
present time, their classic ground is England. That is the
reason why England is used as the chief illustration in the
development of my theoretical ideas. If, however, the Ger
man reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the Eng
lish industrial and agricultural laborers, or in optimist fash
ion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany things
are not nearly so bad, I must plainly tell him, "De te fabvla
narratur! "

Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower
degree of development of the social antagonisms that result
from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a ques
tion of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with
iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that
is more developed industrially only shows, to the less de
veloped, the image of its own future.

But apart from this. Where capitalist production is fully
naturalised among the Germans (for instance, in the factories
proper) the condition of things is much worse than in England,
because the counterpoise of the Factory Acts is wanting. In
all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental Western
Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist
production, but also from the incompleteness of that develop
ment Alongside of modern evils, a whole series of inherited
evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of anti
quated modes of production, with their inevitable train of
social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the
living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif!

The social statistics of Germany and the rest of Continental
Western Europe are, in comparison with those of England,
wretchedly compiled. But they raise the veil just enough

14 Author's Prefaces.

to let us catch a glimpse of the Medusa head behind it. We
should be appalled at the state of things at home, if, as in
England, our governments and parliaments appointed period
ically commissions of enquiry into economic conditions; if
these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers
to get at the truth ; if it was possible to find for this purpose
men as competent, as free from partisanship and respect of
persons as are the English factory-inspectors, her medical re
porters on public health, her commissioners of enquiry into
the exploitation of women and children, into housing and
food. Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted
down might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over
eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.
LeTus not deceive ourselves on this. As in the 18th century,
the American war of independence sounded the tocsin for the
European middle-class, so in the 19th century, the American
civil war sounded it for the European working-class. In Eng
land the progress of social disintegration is palpable. When
it has reached a certain point, it must re-act on the continent.
There it will take a form more brutal or more humane, accord
ing to the degree of development of the working-class itself.
Apart from higher motives, therefore, their own most impor
tant interests dictate to the classes that are for the nonce the
ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable hindrances
to the free development of the working-class. For this reason,
as well as others, I have given so large a space in this volume
to the history, the details, and the results of English factory
legislation. One nation can and should learn from others.
And even when a society has got upon the right track for the
discovery of the natural laws of its movement— and it is the
ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of
motion of modern society — it can neither clear by bold leaps,
nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the

Author's Prefaces. 15

successive phases of its normal development But it can
shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.

To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the
capitalist and the landlord in no sense covleiur de rose. But
here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the
personifications of economic categories, embodiments of par
ticular class-relations and class-interests. My stand-point,
from which the evolution of the economic formation of society
is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any
other make the individual responsible for relations whose crea
ture he socially remains, however much he may subjectively
raise himself above them.

In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific enquiry
meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains.
The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as
foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malig
nant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private in
terest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more
readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on fa
of its income. Now-a-days atheism itself is culpa levis, as
compared with criticism of existing property relations. Never
theless, there is an unmistakable advance. I refer, e.g., to the
bluvbook published within the last few weeks : " Correspond
ence with Her Majesty's Missions Abroad, regarding Indus
trial Questions and Trades' Unions." The representatives of
the English Crown in foreign countries' there declare in so
many words that in Germany, in France, to be brief, in all
the civilised states of the European continent, a radical change
in the existing relations between capital and labor is as
evident and inevitable as in England. At the same time, on
the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade, vice-president
of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after
the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations ol

1 6 Author's Prefaces.

capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the
day. These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple
mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that to-morrow
a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling-
classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present
society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change,
and is constantly changing.

The second volume of this work will treat of the process of
the circulation of capital1 (Book II.), and of the varied forms
assumed by capital in the course of its development (Book
III.), the third and last volume (Book IV.), the history of
the theory.

Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As
to the prejudices of so-called public opinion, to which I have
never made concessions, now as aforetime the maxim of the
great Florentine is mine:

"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti."

KARL MARX.
LONDON, July 25, 1867.

II. TO THE SECOND EDITION.

To the present moment Political Economy, in Germany, is
a foreign science. Gustav von Giilich in his "Historical de
scription of Commerce, Industry," &c.,2 especially in the two
first volumes published in 1830, has examined at length the
historical circumstances that prevented, in Germany, the de
velopment of the capitalist mode of production, and conse
quently the development, in that country, of modern bourgeois
society. Thus the soil whence Political Economy springs was

*On p. 618 the author explains what he comprise* under this head.
2 Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Acker-
baus, &c., von Gustav von Gtilich. 5 vols., Jena, 1830-45.

Author's Prefaces. 17

wanting. This "science" had to be imported from England
and France as a ready-made article; its German professors
remained schoolboys. The theoretical expression of a foreign
reality was turned, in their hands, into a collection of dogmas,
interpreted by them in terms of the petty trading world around
them, and therefore misinterpreted. The feeling of scientific
impotence, a feeling *iot wholly to be repressed, and the uneasy
consciousness of haviag to touch a subject in reality foreign to
them, was but imperfectly concealed, either under a parade
of literary and historical erudition, or by an admixture of
extraneous material, borrowed from the so-called "Kameral"
sciences, a medley of smatterings, through whose purgatory
the hopeless candidate for the German bureaucracy has to pass.

Since 1848 capitalist production has developed rapidly in
Germany, and at the present time it is in the full bloom of
speculation find swindling. But fate is still unpropitious to
our professional economists. At the time when they were
able to deal with Political Economy in a straightforward
fashion, modern economic conditions did not actually exist
in Germany. And as soon as these conditions did come into
existence, they did so under circumstances that no longer al
lowed of their being really and impartially investigated within
the bounds of the bourgeois horizon. In so far as Political
Economy remains within that horizon, in so far, i.e., as the
capitalist regime is looked upon as the absolutely^ final form
of social production, instead of^asj^ passing historical phase
of its evolution, Political Economy can remain a science only
so long as the class-stniggle is latent or manifests itself only
in isolated and sporadic phenomena.

Let us take England. Its political economy belongs to the
period in which the class-struggle was as yet undeveloped.
Its last great representative, Ricardo, in the end, consciously
makes the antagonism of class-interests, of wages and profits,

i8 Author's Prefaces.

<af profits and rent, the starting-point of his investigations,
naively taking this antagonism for a social law of nature.
But by this start the science of bourgeois economy had reached
the limits beyond which it could not pass. Already in the life
time of Ricardo, and in opposition to him, it was met by criti
cism, in the person of Sismondi.1

The succeeding period, from 1820 to 1830, was notable in
England for scientific activity in the domain of Political
Economy. It was the time as well of the vulgarising and
extending of Ricardo's theory, as of the contest of that theory
with the old school. Splendid tournaments were held. What
was done then, is little known to the Continent generally, be
cause the polemic is for the most part scattered through articles
in reviews, occasional literature and pamphlets. The un
prejudiced character of this polemic — although the theory of
Ricardo already serves, in exceptional cases, as a weapon of
attack upon bourgeois economy — is explained by the circum
stances of the time. On the one hand, modern industry itself
was only just emerging from the age of childhood, as is shown
by the fact that with the crisis of 1825 it for the first time
opens the periodic cycle of its modern life. On the other
hand, the class-struggle between capital and labor is forced
into the background, politically by the discord between the
governments and the feudal aristocracy gathered around the
Holy Alliance on the one hand, and the popular masses, led
by the bourgeoisie on the other; economically by the quarrel
between industrial capital and aristocratic landed property — a
quarrel that in France was concealed by the opposition between
small and large landed property, and that in England broke
out openly after the Corn Laws. The literature of Political
Economy in England at this time calls to mind the stormy
forward movement in France after Dr. Quesnay's death, but
i See my work "Critique, &c.," p. 70.

Author's Prefaces. 19

only as a Saint Martin's summer reminds us of spring. With
the year 1830 came the decisive crisis.

In France and in England the bourgeoisie had conquered
political power. Thenceforth, the class-struggle, practically
as well as theoretically, took on more and more outspoken and
threatening forms. It sounded the knell of scientific bour
geois economy. It was thenceforth no longer a question,
whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was
useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, polit
ically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested enquirers,
there were hired prize-fighters; in place of genuine scientific
research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic.
Still, even the obtrusive pamphlets with which the Anti-Corn
Law League, led by the manufacturers Cobden and Bright,
deluged the world, have a historic interest, if no scientific one,
on account of their polemic against the landed aristocracy.
But since then the Free Trade legislation, inaugurated by
Sir Robert Peel, has deprived vulgar economy of this its last
sting.

The Continental revolution of 1848-9 also had its reaction
in England. Men who still claimed some scientific standing
and aspired to be something more than mere sophists and syco
phants of the ruling-classes, tried to harmonise the Political
Economy of capital with the claims, no longer to be ignored,
of the proletariat Hence a shallow syncretism, of which
John Stuart Mill is the best representative. It is a declaration
of bankruptcy by bourgeois economy, an event on which the
great Russian scholar and critic, N. Tschernyschewsky, has
thrown the light of a master mind in his "Outlines of Political
Economy according to Mill."

In Germany, therefore, the capitalist mode of production
came to a head, after its antagonistic character had already,
in France and England, shown itself in a fierce strife of

2O Author's Prefaces.

classes. And meanwhile, moreover, the German proletariat
had attained a much more clear class-consciousness than the
German bourgeoisie. Thus, at the very moment when a bour
geois science of political economy seemed at last possible in
Germany, it had in reality again become impossible.

Under these circumstances its professors fell into two groups.
The one set> prudent, practical business folk, flocked to the
banner of Bastiat, the most superficial and therefore the most
adequate representative of the apologetic of vulgar economy;
the other, proud of the professorial dignity of their science,
followed John Stuart Mill in his attempt to reconcile irrecon-
eilables. Just as in the classical time of bourgeois economy,
so also in the time of its decline, the Germans remained mere
schoolboys, imitators and followers, petty retailers and hawk
ers in the service of the great foreign wholesale concern.

The peculiar historic development of German society there
fore forbids, in that country, all original work in bourgeois
economy; but not the criticism of that economy. So far as
such criticism represents a class, it can only represent the class
whose vocation in history is the overthrow of the capitalist
mode of production and the final abolition of all classes — the
proletariat.

The learned and unlearned spokesmen of the German bour
geoisie tried at first to kill "Das Kapital" by silence, as they
had managed to do with my earlier writings. As soon as they
found that these tactics no longer fitted in with the conditions
of the time, they wrote, under pretence of criticising my book,
prescriptions "for the tranquillisation of the bourgeois mind."
But they found in the workers' press — see, e.g., Joseph Dietz-
gen's articles in the "Volksstaat" — antagonists stronger than
themselves, to whom (down to this very day) they owe a
reply.1
iThe mealy-mouthed babblers of German vulgar economy fell /oul of

Author's Prefaces. 21

An excellent Russian translation of "Das Kapital" appeared
in the spring of 1872. The edition of 3000 copies is already
nearly exhausted. As early as 1871, A. Sieber, Professor of
Political Economy in the University of Kiev, in his work
"David Ricardo's Theory of Value and of Capital," referred
to my theory of value, of money and of capital, as in its
fundamentals a necessary sequel to the teaching of Smith and
Ricardo. That which astonishes the Western European in
the reading of this excellent work, is the author's consistent
and firm grasp of the purely theoretical position.

That the method employed in "Das Kapital" has been little
understood, is shown by the various conceptions, contradictory
one to another, that have been formed of it.

Thus the Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that, on
the one hand, I treat economics metaphysically, and on the
other hand — imagine! — confine myself to the mere critical
analysis of actual facts, instead of writing recipes (Comtist
ones ?) for the cook-shops of the future. In answer to the
reproach in re metaphysics, Professor Sieber has it: "In so
far as it deals with actual theory, the method of Marx is the
deductive method of the whole English school, a school whose
failings and virtues are common to the best theoretic econ-

the style of my book. No one can feel the literary shortcomings in "Das
Kapital" more strongly than I myself. Yet I will for the benefit and
the enjoyment of these gentlemen and their public quote in this connec
tion one English and one Russian notice. The "Saturday Review," al
ways hostile to my views, said in its notice of the first edition: "The
presentation of the subject invests the driest economic questions with a
certain peculiar charm/' The "St. Petersburg Journal" ( Sankt-Peter-
burgskie Viedomosti ) , in its issue of April 20, 1872, says : "The presen
tation of the subject, with the exception of one or two exceptionally spe
cial parts, is distinguished by its comprehensibility by the general reader,
its clearness, and in spite of the scientific intricacy of the subject, by an
unusual liveliness. In this respect the author in no way resembles
. . . the majority of German scholars who . . . write their books
in a language so dry and obscure that the heads of ordinary mortals are
cocked tjy it."

22 Author's Prefaces.

omists." M. Block — "Les theoriciens du socialisme en Alle-
magne, Extrait du Journal des Economistes, Juillet et Aout
1872" — makes the discovery that my method is analytic and
says: "Par cet ouvrage M. Marx se classe panni les esprits
analytiques les plus eminents." German reviews, of course,
shriek out at "Hegelian sophistics." The European Messenger
of St. Petersburg, in an article dealing exclusively with the
method of "Das Kapital" (May number, 1872, pp. 427-436),
finds my method of inquiry severely realistic, but my method
of presentation, unfortunately, German-dialectical. It says:
"At first sight, if the judgment is based on the external form
of the presentation of the subject, Marx is the most ideal of
ideal philosophers, always in the German, i.e., the bad sense
of the word. But in point of fact he is infinitely more realis
tic than all his fore-runners in the work of economic criticism.
He can in no sense be called an idealist" I cannot answer
the writer better than by aid of a few extracts from his own
criticism, which may interest some of my readers to whom
the Russian original is inaccessible.

After a quotation from the preface to my "Critique of
Political Economy," Berlin, 1859, pp. 11-13, where I discuss
the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:
"The one thing which is of moment to Marx is to find the law
of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned;
and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs
these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and
mutual connection within a given historical period. Of still
greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their
development, i.e., of their transition from one form into
another, from one series of connections into a different one.
This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects
in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx
only troubles himself about one thing ; to show, by rigid

Author's Prefaces. 23

tific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate
orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as
possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting
points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same
time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and
the necessity of another order into which the first must
jneyjtably pass overj__and JhJ8jdl_thj9 . saj

believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or un
conscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process
of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of
human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the
contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence.
... If in the history of civilisation the conscious element
plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical
inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than
anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of,
consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the
material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point.
Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and
the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another
fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both
facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they
actually form, each with respect to the other, different mo
menta of an evolution ; but most important of all is the rigid
analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and
concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolu
tion present themselves. But it will be sajd^ jthe^eneral laws
of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether
they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly
denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist.
On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has
laws of its own. ... As soon as society has outlived a given
period of development, and is passing over from one given

24 Author's Prefaces.

stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws.
In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous
to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The
old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws
when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry.
A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social
organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants
or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under
quite different laws in consequence of the different structure
of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their
individual organs, of the different conditions in which those
organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of
population is the same at all times and in all places. He
asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has
its own law of population. . . . With the varying degree of
development of productive power, social conditions and the
laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the
task of following and explaining from this point of view the
economic system established by the sway of capital, he is
only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that
every accurate investigation into economic life must have.
The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing
of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, develop
ment, and death a given social organism and its replacement
by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point
of fact, Marx's book has."

Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my
method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own
application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but
the dialectic method?

Of course the method of presentation must differ in form
from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the ma
terial in detail, to analyse its different forms of development,

Author's Prefaces. 2$

to trace out their inner connection. Only after this work is
done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If
this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is
ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had
before us a mere a priori construction.

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegel
ian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of
the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under
the name of "the Idea," he even transforms into an inde
pendent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the
real world is only the external, phenomenal form of "the
Idea." With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else
than the material world reflected by the human mind, and
translated into forms of thought

The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly
thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But
just as I was working at the first volume of "Das Kapital,"
it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre
Eirtyovoiwho now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat
Hegel in the same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in
Lessing's time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a "dead dog." I there
fore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker,
and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value,
coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The
mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by no
means prevents him from being the first to present its general
form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner.
With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right
side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within
the mystical shell.

In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Ger
many, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the
existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal

26 Author's Prefaces.

and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire pro
fessors, because it includes in its comprehension and af
firmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the
same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state,
of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every his
torically developed social form as in fluid movement, and
therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than
its momentary existence ; because it lets nothing impose upon
it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.

The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist
society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most
strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which
modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the uni
versal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although
as yet but in its preliminary stage ; and by the universality of
its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics
even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy
Prusso-German empire.

KARL MARX.

LONDON, January 24, 1873.

EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH
TRANSLATION.

publication of an English version of "Das Kapital"
needs no apology. On the contrary, an explanation
might be expected why this English version has been delayed
until now, seeing that for some years past the theories advo
cated in this book have been constantly referred to, attacked
and defended, interpreted and mis-interpreted, in the period
ical press and the current literature of both England and
America.

When, soon after the author's death in 1883, it became
evident that an English edition of the work was really re
quired, Mr. Samuel Moore, for many years a friend of Marx
and of the present writer, and than whom, perhaps, no one
is more conversant with the book itself, consented to undertake
the translation which the literary executors of Marx were
anxious to lay before the public. It was understood that I
should compare the MS. with the original work, and suggest
such alterations as I might deem advisable. When, by and
by, it was found that Mr. Moore's professional occupations
prevented him from finishing the translation as quickly as
we all desired, we gladly accepted Dr. Aveling's offer to
undertake a portion of the work; at the same time Mrs.
Aveling, Marx's youngest daughter, offered to check the
quotations and to restore the original text of the numerous
passages taken from English authors and Bluebooks and trans
lated by Marx into German. This has been done throughout,
with but a few unavoidable exceptions.

28 Editor's Preface.

The following portions of the book have been translated by
Dr. Aveling: (1) Chapters X. (The Working Day), and
XL (Rate and Mass of Surplus- Value ); (2) Part VI.
(Wages, comprising Chapters XIX. to XXII.) ; (3) from
Chapter XXI V, Section 4 (Circumstances that £c.) to the
end of the book, comprising the latter part of Chapter XXIV.,
Chapter XXV.; and the whole of Part VIII. (Chapters
XXVI. to XXXIII.); (4) the two Author's prefaces. All
the rest of the book has been done by Mr. Moore. While,
thus, each of the translators is responsible for his share of the
work only, I bear a joint responsibility for the whole.

The third German edition, which has been made the basis
of our work throughout, was prepared by me, in 1883, with
the assistance of notes left by the author, indicating the
passages of the second edition to be replaced by designated
passages, from the French text published in 1873.1 The alter
ations thus effected in the text of the second edition generally
coincided with changes prescribed by Marx in a set of MS.
instructions for an English translation that was planned,
about ten years ago, in America, but abandoned chiefly for
want of a fit and proper translator. This MS. was placed
at our disposal by our old friend Mr. F. A. Sorge of Hoboken
N.J. It designates some further interpolations from the
French edition ; but> being so many years older than the final
instructions for the third edition, I did not consider myself
at liberty to make use of it otherwise than sparingly, and
chiefly in cases where it helped us over difficulties. In the
same way, the French text has been referred to in most of
the difficult passages, as an indicator of what the author him
self was prepared to sacrifice wherever something of the full

i'"Le Capital," par Karl Marx. Traduction de M. J. Roy, entiere-
ment revisee par 1'auteur. Paris. Lachatre." This translation, especially
in the latter part of the book, contains considerable alterations in and
additions to the text of the second German edition.

Editor's Preface. 29

import of the original had to be sacrificed in the rendering.
There is, however, one difficulty we could not spare the
reader : the use of certain terms in a sense different from what
they have, not only in common life, but in ordinary political
economy. But this was unavoidable. Every new aspect of
a science involves a revolution in the technical terms of that
science. This is best shown by chemistry, where the whole
of the terminology is radically changed about once in twenty
years, and where you will hardly find a single organic com
pound that has not gone through a whole series of different
names. Political Economy has generally been content to take,
just as they were, the terms of commercial and industrial life,
and to operate with them, entirely failing to see that by so
doing, it confined itself within the narrow circle of ideas ex
pressed by those terms. Thus, though perfectly aware that
both profits and rent are but sub-divisions, fragments of that
unpaid part of the product which the laborer has to supply
to his employer (its first appropriator, though not its ultimate
exclusive owner), yet even classical Political Economy never
went beyond the received notions of profits and rent, never ex
amined this unpaid part of the product (called by Marx sur
plus-product) 1m its integrity as a whole, and -therefore never
arrived at a clear comprehension, either of it: origin and
nature, or of the laws that regulate the subsequent distribution
of its value. Similarly all industry, not agricultural or
handicraft, is indiscriminately comprised in the term of manu
facture, and thereby the distinction is obliterated between
two great and essentially different periods of economic history:
the period of manufacture proper, based on the division of
manual labor, and the period of modern industry based or,
machinery. It is, however, self-evident that a theory which
views modern capitalist production as a mere passing stage in
the economic lastoty of mankind, must make use of terms

3o Editor's Preface.

different from those habitual to writers who look upon that
form of production as* imperishable and final.

A word respecting the author's method of quoting may not
be out of place. In the majority of cases, the quotations serve,
in the usual way, as documentary evidence in support of
assertions made in the text. But in many instances, passages
from economic writers are quoted in order to indicate when,
where, and by whom a certain proposition was for the first
time clearly enunciated. This is done in cases where the
proposition quoted is of importance as being a more or less
adequate expression of the conditions of social production
and exchange prevalent at the time, and quite irrespective
of Marx's recognition, or otherwise, of its general validity.
These quotations, therefore, supplement the text by a running
commentary taken from the history of the science.

Our translation comprises the first book of the work only.
But this first book is in a great measure a whole in itself,
and has for twenty years ranked as an independent work.
The second book, edited in German by me, in 1885, is de
cidedly incomplete without the third, which cannot be pub
lished before the end of 1887. When Book III. has been
brought out in the original German, it will then be soon
enough to think about preparing an English edition of both.

"Das Kapital" is often called, on the Continent^ "the Bible
of the working class." That the conclusions arrived at in
this work are ddly more and more becoming the fundamental
principles of the great working class movement, not only in
Germany and Switzerland, but in ITrnnce, in Holland and
Belgium, in America, and even in Italy and Spain ; that every
where the working class more and more recognises, in these
conclusions, the most adequate expression of its condition and
of its aspirations, nobody acquainted with that movement will
deny. And in England, too, the theories of Marx, even at this

Editor's Preface. 31

moment, exercise a powerful influence upon the socialist move
ment which is spreading in the ranks of "cultured" people
no less than in those of the working class. But that is not
all. The time is rapidly approaching when a thorough ex
amination of England's economic position will impose itself
as an irresistible national necessity. The working of the in
dustrial system of this country, impossible without a constant
and rapid extension of production, and therefore of markets,
is coming to n dead stop. Free trade has exhausted its re
sources; even Manchester doubts this its quondam economic
gospel.1 Foreign industry, rapidly developing, stares Eng
lish production in the face everywhere, not only in protected,
but also in neutral markets, and even on this side of the
Channel. While the productive power increases in a geomet
ric, the extension of markets proceeds at best ifi an arithmetic
ratio. The decennial cycle of stagnation, prosperity, over
production and crisis, ever recurrent from 1825 to 1867,
seems indeed to have run its course ; but only to land us in the
slough of despond of a permanent and chronic depression.
The sighed-for period of prosperity will not come; as often
as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms, so often do
they again vanish into air. Meanwhile, each succeeding winter
brings up afresh the great question, "what to do with the
unemployed ;" but while the number of the unemployed keeps
swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that
question ; and we can almost calculate the moment when the \
unemployed, losing patience, will take their own fate into

i At the quarterly meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce,
held this afternoon, a warm discussion took place on the subject of Free
Trade. A resolution was moved to the effect that "having waited in vain
40 years for other nations to follow the Free Trade example of England,
this Chamber thinks the time has now arrived to reconsider that posi
tion/' TTie resolution was rejected by a majority of one only, the
figures being 21 for, and 22 against. — Evening Standard, Nov. 1, 1886.

32 Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition.

their own hands. Surely, at such a moment, the .jyoic_e ought
to be heard of a man whose whole theory is the result, of '_ a
life-long study of the economic history and condition of Eng
land, and whom that study led to the conclusion that, at least
in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable
social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and
legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly
expected the English ruling classes to submit, without a "pro-
slavery rebellion," to this peaceful and legal revolution.

FREDEKICK ENGELS.
November 5, 1886.

EDITOR'S PREFACE TO THB FOURTH GERMAN EDITION.

The fourth edition of this work required of me a revision,
which should give to the text and foot notes their final form,
so far as possible. The following brief hints will indicate
the way in which I performed this task.

After referring once more to the French edition and to the
manuscript notes of Marx, I transferred a few additional pass
ages from the French to the German text.1

I have also placed the long foot note concerning the Miine
workers, on pages 461-67, into the text, just as had already
been done in the French and English editions. Other small
changes are merely of a technical nature.

Furthermore I added a few explanatory notes, especially
in places where changed historical conditions seemed to require
it. All these additional notes are placed between brackets
and marked with my initials.2

1 These were inserted by me in the English text of the Swan Sonnen-
schein edition, and will be found on pages 539, 640-644, 687-689, and
692 of this American edition. — E. U.

2 These were ten new notes, which I inserted in the respective place? of
the Swan Sonnenschein edition. — E. U.

Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. 33

A complete revision of the numerous quotations had become
necessary, because the English edition had been published in
the mean time. Marx's youngest daughter, Eleanor, had un
dertaken the tedious task of comparing, for this edition, all
the quotations with the original works, so that the quotations
from English authors, which are the overwhelming majority,
are not retranslated from the German, but taken from the
original texts. I had to consult the English edition for this
fourth German edition. In so doing I found many small
inaccuracies. There were references to wrong pages, due
either to mistakes in copying, or to accumulated typographical
errors of three editions. There were quotation marks, or
periods indicating omissions, in wrong places, such as would
easily occur in making copious quotations from notes. Now
and then I came across a somewhat inappropriate choice of
terms made in translating. Some passages were taken from
Marx's old manuscripts written in Paris, 1843-45, when he
did not yet understand English and read the works of English
economists in French translations. This twofold translation
carried with it a slight change of expression, for instance in
the case of Steuart, Ure, and others. Now I used the English
text. Such and' similar little inaccuracies and inadvertences
were corrected. And if this fourth edition is now compared
with former editions, it will be found tha4-4hi3 whole tedious
process of verification did not change in the least any essential
statement of this work. There is but one single quotation
which could not be located, namely that from Richard Jones,
in section 3 of chapter XXIV. Marx probably made a mis
take in the title of the book. All other quotations retain their
corroborative power, or even increase it in their present exact
form.

In this connection I must revert to an old story.

X have heard of only one case, in which the genuineness of

34? Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition.

a quotation by Marx was questioned. Since this case was
continued beyond Marx's death, I cannot well afford to ignore
it.

The Berlin Concordia, the organ of the German Manufac-.
turer's Association, published on March 7, 1872, an anony
mous article, entitled : "How Marx Quotes." In it the writer
asserted with a superabundant display of moral indignation
and unparliamentarian expressions that the quotation from
Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863, (cited in the
Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen's Asso
ciation, 1864, and republished in Capital, volume I, chapter
XXV, section 5 a) was a falsification. It was denied that the
statement: "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power . . . entirely confined to classes of property," was
contained in the stenographical report of Hansard, which was
as good as an official report. "This statement is not found
anywhere in Gladstone's speech. It says just the reverse.
Marx has formally and materially lied in adding that sen
tence."

Marx, who received this issue of the Concordia in May of
the same year, replied to the anonymous writer in the Volks-
staat of June 1. As he did not remember the particular
newspaper from which he had clipped this report, he con
tented himself with pointing out that the same quotation was
contained in two English papers. Then he quoted the report
of the Times, according to which Gladstone had said : "That
is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country.
I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension
and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth
and power, if it were my belief that it was confined to classes
who are in easy circumstances. This takes no cognizance at
all of the condition of the labouring population. The aug
mentation I have described and which is founded, I think,

Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition 35

apon accurate terms, is an augmentation entirely confined to
classes of property."

In other words, Gladstone says here that he would be sorry
if things were that way, but they are. This intoxicating aug
mentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes
of property. And so far as the quasi official Hansard is con
cerned, Marx continues : "In the subsequent manipulation of
his speech for publication Mr. Gladstone was wise enough to
eliminate a passage, which was so compromising in the mouth
of an English Lord of the Exchequer as that one. By the
way, this is an established custom in English parliament, and
not by any means a discovery made by Lasker to cheat Bebel."

The anonymous writer then became still madder. Pushing
aside his second-hand sources in his reply in the Concordia,
July 4, he modestly hints, that it is the "custom" to quote
parliamentarian speeches from the official reports; that the
report of the Times (which contained the added lie) "was
materially identical" with that of Hansard (which did not
contain it) ; that the report of the Times even said "just the
reverse of what that notorious passage of the Inaugural Ad
dress implied." Of course, our anonymous friend keeps still
about the fact that the report of the Times does not only con
tain "just the reverse," but also "that notorious passage"!
Nevertheless he feels that he has been nailed down, and that
only a new trick can save him. Hence he decorates his article,
full of "insolent mendacity," until it bristles with pretty
epithets, such as "bad faith," "dishonesty," "mendacious as
sertion," "that lying quotation," "insolent mendacity," "a
completely spurious quotation," "this falsification," "simply
infamous," etc., and he finds himself compelled to shift the
discussion to another ground, promising "to explain in a sec
ond article, what interpretation we [the "veracious" anony
mous] place upon the meaning of Gladstone's words." As

36 Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition.

though his individual opinion had anything to do with the
matter! This second article is published in the Concordia
of July 11.

Marx replied once more in the Volksstaat of August 7,
quoting also the reports of this passage in the Morning Star
and Morning Advertiser of April 17, 1863. Both of them
agree in quoting Gladstone to the effect that he would look
with apprehension, etc., upon this intoxicating augmentation
of wealth and power, if it were confined to classes in easy cir
cumstances. But this augmentation was entirely confined to
classes possessed of property. Both of these papers also con
tain the "added lie" word for word. Marx furthermore
showed, by comparing these three independent, yet identical
reports of newspapers, all of them containing the actually
spoken worr3s of Gladstone, with Hansard's report, that Glad
stone, in keeping with the "established custom," had "sub
sequently eliminated" this sentence, as Marx had said. And
Marx closes with the statement, that he has no time for further
controversy with the anonymous writer. It seems that this
worthy had gotten all he wanted, for Marx received no more
issues of the Concordia.

Thus the matter seemed to be settled. It is true, people
who were in touch with the university at Cambridge once or
twice dropped hints as to mysterious rumors about some un
speakable literary crime, which Marx was supposed to have
committed in Capital. But nothing definite could be ascer
tained in spite of all inquiries. Suddenly, on November 29,
1883, eight months after the death of Marx, a letter appeared
in the Times, dated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and signed
by Sedley Taylor, in which this mannikin, a dabbler in the
tamest of cooperative enterprises, at last took occasion to give
us some light, not only on the gossip of Cambridge, but also
on the anonymous of the Concordia.

Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. 37

"What seems very queer," says the mannikin of Trinity
College, "is that it remained for professor Brenta-no (then in
Breslau, now in Strasburg) ... to lay bare the bad
faith, which had apparently dictated that quotation from
Gladstone's speech in the Inaugural Address. Mr. Karl Marx,
who . . . tried to justify his quotation, had the temerity,
in the deadly shifts to which Brentano's masterly attacks
quickly reduced him, to claim that Mr. Gladstone tampered
with the report of his speech in the Times of April 17, 1863,
before it was published in Hansard, in order to eliminate a
passage which was, indeed, compromising for the British
Chancellor of the Exchequer. When Brentano demonstrated
by a detailed comparison of the texts, that the reports of the
Times and of Hansard agreed to the absolute exclusion of the
meaning, impugned to Gladstone's words by a craftily isolated
quotation, Marx retreated under the excuse of having no time."

This, then^ was the_JEernel of the walnut! And such was
the glorious reflex of Brentano's anonymous campaign, in the
Concordia, in the cooperative imagination of Cambridge!
Thus he lay, and thus he handled his blade in his "masterly
attack," this Saint George of the German Manufacturers' As
sociation, while the fiery dragon Marx quickly expired under
his feet "in deadly shifts !"

However, this Ariostian description of the struggle serves
only to cover up the shifts of our Saint George. There is no
longer any mention of "added lies," of "falsification," but
merely of "a craftily isolated quotation." The whole question
had been shifted, and Saint George and his Cambridge Knight
knew very well the reason.

Eleanor Marx replied in the monthly magazine To-Day,
February, 1884, because the Times refused to print her state
ments. She reduced the discussion to the only point, which
was in question, namely: Was that sentence a lie added by

38 Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition.

Marx, or not ? Whereupon Mr. Sedley Taylor retorted : "The
question whether a certain sentence had occurred in Mr. Glad
stone's speech or not" was, in his opinion, "of a very inferior
importance" in the controversy between Marx and Brentano,
"compared with the question, whether the quotation had been
made with the intention of reproducing the meaning of Mr.
Gladstone or distorting it" And then he admits that the
report of the Times "contains indeed a contradiction in
words"; but, but, interpreting the context correctly, that is,
in a liberal Gladstonian sense, it is evident what Mr. Gladstone
intended to say. (To-Day, March, 1884.) The comic thing
about this retort is that our mannikin of Cambridge now in
sists on not quoting this speech from Hansard, as is the
"custom" according to the anonymous Mr. Brentano, but from
the report of the Times, which the same Brentano had desig
nated as "necessarily bungling." Of course, Hansard does
not contain that fatal sentence !

It was easy for Eleanor Marx to dissolve this argumentation
into thin air in the same number of To-Day. Either Mr.
Taylor had read the controversy of 1872. In that case he had
now "lied," not only "adding," but also "subtracting." Or,
he had not read it. Then it was his business to keep his
mouth shut. At any rate, it was evident that he did not dare
for a moment to maintain the charge of his friend Brentano
to the effect that Marx had "added a lie." On he contrary,
it was now claimed, that Marx, instead of adding a lie, had
suppressed an important sentence. But this same sentence is
quoted on page 5 of the Inaugural Address, a few lines before
the alleged "added lie." And as for the "contradiction" in
Gladstone's speech, isn't it precisely Marx who speaks in
another foot note of that chapter in Capital of the "continual
crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches of 1868
and 1864" ? Of course, he does not undertake TO reconcile

Editor's Preface to the Fourth German Edition. 39

them by liberal hot air, like Sedley Taylor. And the final
summing up in Eleanor Marx's reply is this: "On the con
trary, Marx has neither suppressed anything essential nor
added any lies. He rather has restored and rescued from
oblivion a certain sentence of a Gladstonian speech, which had
undoubtedly been pronounced, but which somehow found its
way out of Hansard."

This was enough for Mr. Sedley Taylor. The result of
this whole professorial gossip during ten years and in two
great countries was that no one dared henceforth to question
Marx's literary conscientiousness. In the future Mr. Sedley
Taylor will probably have as little confidence in the literary
fighting bulletins of Mr. Brentano, as Mr. Brentano in thf
papal infallibility of Hansard.

FREDEKICK ENGELS.

LONDON, June 25, 1890.

(Translated by Ernest Untermann.)

BOOK I.

CAPITALIST PRODUCTION

PAfiTI.
COMMODITIES AND MONEY.

CHAPTER I.

COMMODITIES.
BBOTION 1. THE TWO FACTORS OF A COMMODITY: USErVALUE

AND VALUE (THE SUBSTANCE OF VALUE AND THE
MAGNITUDE OF VALUE).

THE wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode
of production prevails, presents itself as " an immense
accumulation of commodities," * its unit being a single com
modity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the
analysis of a commodity.

A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a
thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort
or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance,
they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no differ-

* Karl Marx " A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," 1859,
London, p. 19.

42 Capitalist Production.

ence.1 Neither are we here concerned to know how the object
satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence,
or indirectly as means of production.

Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., may be looked at
from the two points of view of quality and quantity. It is
an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be of
use in various ways. To discover the various use of things is
the work of history.2 So also is the establishment of socially-
recognised standards of measure for the quantities of these
useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its origin
partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured,
partly in convention.

The utility of a thing makes it a use-value.8 But this
utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical
properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from
that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a
diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use-
value, something useful. This property of a commodity is
independent of the amount 01 labour required to appropriate
its useful qualities. When treating of use-value, we always
assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens
j of watches, yards of linen, or "tons of iron. The use-values of
commodities furnish the material for a special study, that
of the commercial knowledge of commodities.4 Use-values
become a reality only by use or consumption : they also con-

1 " Desire implhs want; 't ?» the appetite of the mind, and as natural as hunger
to the bod> . . . The -Teate.. number (of things) have their value from supply-
Ing the wants of the mind." Nicolas Barbon: "A Discourse on coining the new
money lighter, in answer to Mr. Locke's Considerations," &c. London, 1696. p.
2, 3.

* "Things have an intrinsick virtue" (this is Barbon's special term for value in
use) "which in all places ' ive the same virtue; as the loadstone to attract iron"
(1. c., p. 6). The property -'hich the magnet possesses of attracting iron, became
of use only after by means of that property the polarity of the magnet had been
discovered.

' "The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities,
or serve the conveniences of human life." (John Locke, "Some considerations on
the consequences of the lowering of interest, 1691," in Works Edit London, 1777,
Vol. II., p. 28.) In English writers of the 17th century we frequently find "worth"
in the sense of value in use, and "value" in the sense of exchange value. This
is quite in accordance with the spirit of a language that likes to use a Teutonic
word for the actual thing, and a Romance word for its reflexion.

4 in oourgeois societies tne economical hctao *"«•»• prevails, that every one, as a
buyer, possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of commodities.

Commodities. 43

stitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social •
form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to )
consider, they are, in addition^ the material depositories of '
exchange value.

Exchange value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative
relation, as the proportion in which values in use of one sort
are exchanged for those of another sort,1 a relation constantly
changing with time and place. Hence exchange value appears
to be something accidental and purely relative, and conse
quently an intrinsic value, i. e., an exchange value that is
inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a
contradiction in terms.2 Let us consider the matter a little
more closely.

A given commodity, e. g.t a quarter of wheat is exchanged
for x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c. — in short, for other com
modities in the most different proportions. Instead of one
exchange value, the wheat has, therefore, a great many. But
since x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c., each represent the
exchange value of one quarter of wheat, x blacking, y silk,
z gold, &c., must as exchange values be replaceable by each
other, or equal to each other. Therefore, first: the valid
exchange values of a given commodity express something
equal; secondly, exchange value, generally, is only the mode
of expression, the phenomenal form, of something contained
in it, yet distinguishable from it.

Let us take two commodities, e. g.t corn and iron. The pro
portions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those pro
portions may be, can always be represented by an equation in
which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of
iron : e. g., 1 quarter corn=x cwt iron. What does this equa
tion tell us ? It tells us that in two different things — in 1
quarter of corn and x cwL of iron, there exists in equal quan
tities jomething common to both. The two things must there-

1 "La valeur consiste dans le rapport d'£change qui BC trouve entre telle chose et
telle autre, entre telle mesure d'une production, et telle mesure d'une autre." (Le
Trosne: De 1' Inte>et Social. Physiocrates, Ed. Daire, Paris, 1845. P. 889.)

1 "Nothing can have an intrinsick value." (N. Barbon, 1. c., p. 6) ; or as But
ler says —

" The value of a thing
Is just as much at it will bring,"

44 Capitalist Production.

fore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one noi
the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must
therefore be reducible to this third.

A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear. In
order to calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures,
we decompose them into triangles. But the area of the tri
angle itself is expressed by something totally different from its
visible figure, namely, by half the product of the base into
the altitude. In the same way the exchange values of com
modities must be capable of being expressed in terms of some
thing common to them all, of which thing they represent a
greater or less quantity.

This common "something" cannot be either a geometrical,
a chemical, or any other natural property of commodities.
Such properties claim our attention only in so far as they
affect the utility of those commodities, make them use-values.
But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act character
ised by a total abstraction from use-value. Then one use-
value is just as good as another, provided only it be present in
sufficient quantity. Or, as old Barbon says, "one sort of
wares are as good as another, if the values be equal. There is
no difference or distinction in things of equal value . . . .
An hundred pounds' worth of lead or iron, is of as great value
as one hundred pounds' worth of silver or gold." l As use-
values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as
exchange values they are merely different quantities, and con
sequently do not contain an atom of use-value.

If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of com
modities, they have only one common property left, that of
being products of labour. But even the product of labour
itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make
abstraction from its use-value, we make abstraction at the
same time from the material elements and shapes that make
the product a use-value ; we see in it no longer a table, a house,
yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material
thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be re
garded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason,

»N. Barbon, 1. c. p. 53 tad 7.

Commodities. 45

the Spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive
labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products them
selves, we put out of eight both the useful character of the
various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete
forms of that labour ; there is nothing left but what is common
to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of
labour, human labour in the abstract.

Let us now consider the residue of each of these products;
it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, ji mere
congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour-power ex-
pended without re.qrard to the mode of its expenditure. All
that these things now tell us is, that human labour-power has
been expended in their production, that human labor is em
bodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social
substance, common to them all, they are — Values.

We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their
exchange value manifests itself as something totally independ
ent of their use-value. But if we abstract from their use-value,
there remains their Value as defined above. Therefore, the
common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value
of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value.
The progress of our investigation will show that exchange
value is the only form in ^hich the value of commodities can
manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we
have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its
form.

A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only be
cause human labour in the abstract has been embodied or ma
terialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to
be measured ? Plainly, by the quantity ofjhe value-creating
substance, the labour, contained in the article. The quantity
of labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour-
time in its turn finds its standarcMnjwe^^jiaysT anfl ^our8-

Some people" migEtftEink that if the value of a commodity
is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more
idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his
commodity be, because more time would be required in its
production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of

46 Capitalist Production.

value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uni
form labour-power. The total labour-power of society, which
is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities
produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass
of human labour-power, composed though it be of innumerable
individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other,
so far as it has the character of the average labour-power of
society, and takes effect as such ; that is, so far as it requires for
producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an
average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour-time
socially necessary is that^quire^^^o3uce an article under
the normal conditions of production, and with the average
degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The intro
duction of power looms into England probably reduced by one
half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into
• cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued
'• to require the same time as before; but for all that, the pro-
| duct of one hour of their labour represented after the change
only half an hour's social labour, and consequently fell to one-
half its former value.

We see then that that which determines the magnitude of
the value of any article is the amount of labour socially neces
sary, or the labour- time socially necessary for its production.1
Each individual commodity, in this connexion, is to be con
sidered as an average sample of its class.2 Commodities, there
fore, in which equal quantities of labour are embodied, or
which can be produced in the same time, have the same value.
The value of one commodity is to the value of any other, as the
labour-time necessary for the production of the one is to that
necessary for the production of the other. "As values, all com
modities are only definite masses of congealed labour-time." 8

1 The value of them (the necessaries of life), when they are exchanged the
one for another, is regulated by the quantity of labour necessarily required, and
commonly taken in producing them." (Some Thoughts on the Interest of Money
in general, and particularly in the Publick Funds, &c., Lond., p. 86.) This re
markable anonymous work, written in the last century, bears no date. It is
U clear, however, from internal evidence, that it appeared in the reign of George
II. about 1789 or 1740.

• " Toutes les productions d'un meme genre ne forment proprement qu'une masse,
dont le prix se determine en general et sans egard aux circonstances particulieres."
(Lt Trosne, 1. c. p. 898.) »K. Marx, 1. c. p. 24.

Commodities. 47

The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant,
if the labour-time required for its production also remained
constant. But the latter changes with every variation in the
productiveness of labour. This productiveness is determined
by various circumstances, amongst others, by the average
amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the
degree of its practical application, the social organisation of
production, the extent and capabilities of the means of pro
duction, and by physical conditions. For example, the
same amount of labour in favourable seasons is embodied
in 8 bushels of corn, and in unfavourable, only in four.
The same labour extracts from rich mines more metal than
from poor mines. Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on
the earth's surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an aver
age, a great deal of labour-time. Consequently much labour
is represented in a small compass. Jacob doubts whether gold
has ever been paid for at its full value. This applies still
more to diamonds. According to Eschwege, the total produce
of the Brazilian diamond mines for the eighty years, ending
in 1823, had not realised the price of one-and-a-half years'
average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of the
same country, although the diamonds cost much more labour,
and therefore represented more value. With richer mines, the
same quantity of labour would embody itself in more diamonds
and their value would fall. If we could succeed at a small
expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds,
their value might fall below that of bricks. In general, the
greater the productiveness of labour, the less is the labour-time
required for the production of an article, the less is the amount
of labour crystallised in that article, and the less is its value ;
and vise versa, the less the productiveness of labour, the greater
is the labour-time required for the production of an article,
and the greater is its value. The value of a commodity, there
fore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the
productiveness, of the labour incorporated in it.

A thing can be a use-value, without having value. This is
the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour.
Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can

48 Capitalist Production.

be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a
commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the
produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use-values, but not
commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only
produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values.
Lastly, nothing can have value, without being an object of
utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in
it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates
no value.

SECTION 2. THE TWOFOLD CHARACTER OF THE LABOUB EM
BODIED IN COMMODITIES.

At first sight a commodity presented itself to us as a complex
of two things — use-value and exchange-value. Later on, we
saw also that labour, too, possesses the same two-fold nature;
for, so far as it finds expression in value, it does not possess the
same characteristics that belong to it as a creator of use-values.
I was the first to point out and to examine critically this two
fold nature of the labour contained in commodities. As this
point is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political
economy turns, we must go more into detail.

Let us take two commodities such as a coat and 10 yards of
linen, and let the former be double the value of the latter, so
that, if 10 yards of linen=W, the coatF=2W.

The coat is a use-value that satisfies a particular want. Its
existence is the result of a special sort of productive activity,
the nature of which is determined by its aim, mode of opera
tion, subject, means, and result. The labour, whose utility is
thus represented by the value in use of its product, or which
manifests itself by making its product a use-value, we call
useful labour. In this connexion we consider only its useful
effect.

As the coat and the linen are two qualitatively different use-
values, so also are the two forms of labour that produce them,
tailoring and weaving. Were these two objects not quali«
tatively different, not produced respectively by labour of
different quality, they could not stand to each other in the

Commodities. 49

relation of commodities. Coats are not exchanged for coats,
one use-value is not exchanged for another of the same kind.

To all the different varieties of values in use there correspond
as many different kinds of useful labour, classified according tc
the order, genus, species, and variety to which they belong in
the social division of labour. This division of labour is a neces
sary condition for the production of commodities, but it does
not follow conversely, that the production of commodities is a
necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive
Indian community there is social division of labour, without
production of commodities. Or, to take an example nearer
home, in every factory the labour is divided according to a
system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives
mutually exchanging their individual products. Only such
products can become commodities with regard to each other, as
result from different kinds of labour, each kind being carried
on independently and for the account of private individuals.

To resume, then : In the use-value of each commodity there
is contained useful labour, i. e.f productive activity of a definite
kind and exercised with a definite aim. Use-values cannot
confront each other as commodities, unless the useful labour
embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them.
In a community, the produce of which in general takes the
form of commodities, i. e., in a community of commodity pro
ducers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of
labour that are carried on independently by individual pro
ducers, each on their own account, develops into a complex
system, a social division of labour.

Anyhow, whether the coat be worn by the tailor or by his
customer, in either case it operates as a use-value. Kor is the
relation between the coat and the labour that produced it
altered by the circumstance that tailoring may have become a
special trade, an independent branch of the social division of
labour. Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the
human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a
single man becoming a tailor. But coats and linen, like every
other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous
produce of nature, must invariably owe their existence to a

cjO Capitalist Production.

special productive activity, exercised with a definite aim, an
activity that appropriates particular nature-given materials to
particular human wants. So far therefore as labour is a
creator of use-value, is useful labour, it is a necessary con
dition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of
the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity,
without which there can be no material exchanges between
man and Nature, and therefore no life.

The use-values, coat, linen, &c., i. e.f the bodies of commodi
ties, are combinations of two elements — matter and labour.
If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a
material substratum is always left, which is furnished by
Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as
Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter.1 Nay
more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped
by natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only
source of material wealth, of use-values produced by labour.
As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its
mother.

Let us now pass from the commodity considered as a use*
value to the value of commodities.

By our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the
linen. But this is a mere quantitative difference, which for the
present does not concern us. We bear in mind, however, that
if the value of the coat is double that of 10 yds. of linen, 20
yds. of linen must have the same value as one coat. So far
as they are values, the coat and the linen are things of a like
substance, objective expressions of essentially identical labour.
But tailoring and weaving are, qualitatively, different kinds of
labour. There are, however, states of society in which one and

1 Tutti i fenomeni dell' universe, sieno essi prodotti della mano, dell' uomo, ovvero
delle universali leggi della fisica, non ci danno idea dl attuale creazione, ma
unlcamente di una modificazione della materia. Accostare e separare sono gli unici
elementi che 1'ingegno umano ritrova analizzando 1'idea della riproduzione: e Unto 4
riproduzione di valore (value in use, although Verri in this passage of his contro
versy with the Physiocrats is not himself quite certain of the kind of value he is
speaking of) e di ricchezze se la terra 1'aria c 1'acqua ne' campi si trasmutino in
grano, come se colla mano dell* uomo il glutine di un insetto si trasmuti in velluto
owero alcuni pezzetti di metallo si organizzino a formare una ripetizione." —
Pietro Verri. "Meditazioni sulla Economia Politica" [first printed in 1778]
in Custodi's edition of the Italian Economists, Parte Moderna, t. xv. p. 82.

Commodities. 51

the same man does tailoring and weaving alternately, in which
case these two forms of labour are mere modifications of the
labour of the same individual, and not special and fixed func
tions of different persons; just as the coat which our tailor
makes one day, and the trousers which he makes another day,
imply only a variation in the labour of one and the same indi
vidual. Moreover, we see at a glance that, in our capitalist
society, a given portion of human labour is, in accordance with
the varying demand, at one time supplied in the form of tailor
ing, at another in the form of weaving. This change may
possibly not take place without friction, but take place it must.
Productive activity, if we leave out of sight its special form,
viz., the useful character of the labour, is nothing but the ex
penditure of human labour-power. Tailoring and weaving,
though qualitatively different pfbcfuctive activities, are each a
productive expenditure of human brains, nerves, and muscles,
and in this sense are human labour. They are but two
different modes of expending human labour-power. Of course,
this labour-power, which remains the same under all its modi
fications, must have attained a certain pitch of development
before it can be expended in a multiplicity of modes. But the
value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract,
the expenditure of human labour in general. And just as in
society, a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere
man, on the other hand, a very shabby part,1 so here with
mere human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour-
power, i.e., of the labour-power which, on an average, apart
from any special development, exists in the organism of every
ordinary individual. Simple average labour, it is true, varies
in character in different countries and at different times, but ,
in a particular society it is given. Skilled labour counts only •
as simple labour intensified, or ratherTTs" 'multiplied simple
labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a ^
greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this /
reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the '
product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating
it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a

JComp. Hegel, Philosophic des Rcchts. Berlin, 1840, p. 250 $ 190.

52 Capitalist Production.

definite quantity of the latter labour alone.1 The different
proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to
unskilled labour as their standard, are established by a social
process that goes on behind the backs of the producers, and,
consequently, appear to be fixed by custom. For simplicity's
sake we sfeall henceforth account every kind of labour to be
unskilled, simple labour; by this we do no more than save
ourselves the trouble of making the reduction.

Just as, therefore, in viewing the coat and linen as values,
we abstract from their different use-values, so it is with the
labour represented by those values : we disregard the difference
between its useful forms, weaving and tailoring. As the use-
values, coat and linen, are combinations of special productive
activities with cloth and yarn, while the values, coat and linen,
are, on the other hand, mere homogeneous congelations of
indifferentiated labour, so the labour embodied in these latter
values does not count by virtue of its productive relation to
cloth and yarn, but only as being expenditure of human
labour-power. Tailoring and weaving are necessary factors in
the creation of the use-values, coat and linen, precisely because
these two kinds of labour are of different qualities; but only
in so far as abstraction is made from their special qualities,
only in so far as both possess the same quality of being human
labour, do tailoring and weaving form the substance of the
values of the same articles.

Coats and linen, however, are not merely values, but values
of definite magnitude, and according to our assumption, the
coat is worth twice as much as the ten yards of linen. Whence
this difference in their values? It is owing to the fact that
the linen contains only half as much labour as the coat,
and consequently, that in the production of the latter, labour-
power must have been expended during twice the time neces
sary for the production of the former.

While, therefore, with reference to use-value, the labour con
tained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with refer-

1 The reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value
that the labourer gets for a given labour time, but of the value of the com*
modity in which that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as
jr«t, has no existence at the present stage of our investigation.

Commodities. 53

ence to value it counts only quantitatively, and must first be
reduced to human labour pure and simple. In the former
case, it is a question of How and What, in the latter of How
much ? How long a time ? Since the magnitude of the value of
a commodity represents only the quantity of labour embodied
in it, it follows that all commodities, when taken in certain
proportions, must be equal in value.

If the productive power of all the different sorts of useful
labour required for the production of a coat remains unchanged,
the sum of the values of the coat produced increases with
their number. If one coat represents x days' labour, two
coats represent 2x days' labour, and so on. But assume that
the duration of the labour necessary for the production of a
coat becomes doubled or halved. In the first case, one coat is
worth as much as two coats were before ; in the second case,
two coats are only worth as much as one was before, although
in both cases one coat renders the same service as before, and
the useful labour embodied in it remains of the same quality.
But the quantity of labour spent on its production has altered.

An increase in the quantity of use-values is an increase of
material wealth. With two coats two men can be clothed,
with one coat only one man. Nevertheless, an increased quan- '
tity of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous j
fall in the magnitude of its value. This antagonistic move- j
ment has its origin in the two-fold character of labour.
Productive powertHB-TefeTenee, of course, only to labour of
some useful concrete form ; the efficacy of any special produc
tive activity during a given time being dependent on its
productiveness. Useful labour becomes, therefore, a more or
less abundant source of products, in proportion to the rise or
fall of its productiveness. On the other hand, no change in this
productiveness affects the labour represented by value. Since
productive power is an attribute of the concrete useful forms
of labour, of course it can no longer have any bearing on that
labour, so soon as we make abstraction from those concrete
useful forms. However then productive power may vary, the

same labour, exercised during equal periods of time, always
yields equal amounts of value. But it will yield, during equal

54 Capitalist Production.

periods of time, different quantities of values in use ; more, if
the productive power rise, fewer, if it fall. The same change
in productive power, which increases the fruitfulness of labour,
and, in consequence, the quantity of use-values produced by
that labour, will diminish the total value of this increased
quantity of use-values, provided such change shorten the total
labour-time necessary for their production; and vice vers<i.

On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an
expenditure of human labour-power, and in its character of
identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value
of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is the expendi
ture of human labour-power in a special form and with a
definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour,
it produces use-values.1

SECTION 3. THE FOBM OF VALUE OR EXCHANGE VALUE.

Commodities come into the world in the shape of use-values,
articles, or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &c. This is their
plain, homely, bodily form. They are, however, commodities,

1 In order to prove that labour alone is that all-sufficient and real measure,
by which at all times the value of all commodities can be estimated and com
pared, Adam Smith says, " Equal quantities of labour must at all times and in all
places have the same value for the labourer. In his normal state of health, strength
and activity, and with the average degree of skill that he may possess, he must
always give up the same portion of his rest, his freedom, and his happiness."
(Wealth of Nations, b. I. ch. v.) On the one hand, Adam Smith here (but not
everywhere) confuses the determination of value by means of the quantity of
labour expended in the production of commodities, with the determination of the
values of commodities by means of the value of labour, and seeks in consequence
to prove that equal quantities of labour have always the same value. On the
other hand, he has a presentiment, that labour, so far as it manifests itself in
the value of commodities, counts only as expenditure of labour power, but he
treats this expenditure as the mere sacrifice of rest, freedom, and happiness, not as
the same time the normal activity of living beings. But then, he has the mod
ern wage-labourer in his eye. Much more aptly, the anonymous predecessor of
Adam Smith, quoted above in Note *, p. 6, says, " one man has employed him
self a week in providing this necessary of life . . . and he that gives him
some other in exchange, cannot make a better estimate of what is a proper
equivalent, than by computing what cost him just as much labour and time;
which in effect is no more than exchanging one man's labour in one thing for
a time certain, for another man's labour in another thing for the same time."
(1. c. p. 39.) [The English language has the advantage of possessing different
words for the two aspects of labour here considered. The labour which create*
Use-Value, and counts qualitatively, is Work, as distinguished from Labour; thai
which creates Value and counts quantitatively, is Labour as distingiushed from
Work. — ED.]

Commodities. 55

only because they are something twofold, both objects of utility,
and, at the same time, depositories of value. They manifest
themselves therefore as commodities, or have the form of com
modities, only in so far as they have two forms, a physical
or natural form, and a value form.

The reality of the value of commodities differs in this respect
from Dame Quickly, that we don't know "where to have it."
The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse ma
teriality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its
composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself,
as we will. Yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it
seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind
that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and
that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expres
sions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., hu
man labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only
manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to com
modity. In fact we started from exchange value, or the
exchange relation of commodities, in order to get at the value
that lies hidden behind it. We must now return to this form
under which value first appeared to us.

Every one knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities
have a value form common to them all, and presenting a
marked contrast with the varied bodily forms of their use-
values. I mean their money form. Here, however, a task is
set us, the performance of which has never yet even been at
tempted by bourgeois economy, the task of tracing the genesis
of this money form, of developing the expression of value im
plied in the value relation of commodities, from its- simplest,
almost imperceptible outline, to the dazzling money form. By
doing this we shall, at the same time, solve the riddle presented
by money.

The simplest value relation is evidently that of one com
modity to some one other commodity of a different kind.
Hence the relation between the values of two commodities sup
plies us with the simplest expression of the value of a single
commodity.

56 Capitalist Production.

A. Elementary or Accidental Form of Value.
x commodity A=y commodity B, or
x commodity A is worth y commodity R
20 yards of linen=l coat, or
20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat.

1. The two poles of the expression of value : Relative form and
Equivalent form.

The whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in
this elementary form. Its analysis, therefore, is our real
difficulty.

Here two different kinds of commodities (in our example
the linen and the coat), evidently play two different parts.
The linen expresses its value in the coat ; the coat serves as the
material in which that value is expressed. The former play*;
an active, the latter a passive, part. The value of the linen is
represented as relative value, or appears in relative form.
The coat officiates as equivalent, or appears in equivalent
form.

The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimate
ly connected, mutually dependent and inseparable elements of
the expression of value; but, at the same time, are mutually
exclusive, antagonistic extremes — i.e., poles of the same ex
pression. They are allotted respectively to the two different
commodities brought into relation by that expression. It is
not possible to express the value of linen in linen. 20 yards
of linen=20 yards of linen is no expression of value. On the
contrary, such an equation merely says that 20 yards of linen
are nothing else than 20 yards of linen, a definite quantity of
the use-value linen. The value of the linen can therefore be
expressed only relatively — i.e., in some other commodity. The
relative form of the value of the linen pre-supposes, therefore,
the presence of some other commodity — here the coat — under
the form of an equivalent. On the other hand, the commodity
that figures as the equivalent cannot at the same time assume
the relative form. That second commodity is not the one
whose value is expressed. Its function is merely to serve as

Commodities. 57

the material in which the value of the first commodity is ex
pressed.

No doubt, the expression 20 yards of linen=l coat, or 20
yards of linen are worth 1 coat, implies the opposite relation : 1
coatF=20 yards of linen, or 1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen.
But, in that case, I must reverse the equation, in order to ex
press the value of the coat relatively; and, so soon as I do
that the linen becomes the equivalent instead of the coat.
A single commodity cannot, therefore, simultaneously assume,
in the same expression of value, both forms. The very
polarity of these forms makes them mutually exclusive.

Whether, then, a commodity assumes the relative form, or
the opposite equivalent form, depends entirely upon its acci
dental position in the expression of value — that is, upon
whether it is the commodity whose value is being expressed or
the commodity in which value is being expressed.

2. The Relative form of value.
(a.) The nature and import of this form.

In order to discover how the elementary expression of the
value of a commodity lies hidden in the value relation of two
commodities, we must, in the first place, consider the latter
entirely apart from its quantitative aspect. The usual mode of
procedure is generally the reverse, and in the value relation
nothing is seen but the proportion between definite quantities
of two different sorts of commodities that are considered equal
to each other. It is apt to be forgotten that the magnitudes
of different things can be compared quantitatively, only when
those magnitudes are expressed in terms of the same unit. It
is only as expressions of such a unit that they are of the same
denomination, and therefore commensurable.1

Whether 20 yards of linen=l coat or=20 coats or— x

1 The few economists, amongst whom is S. Bailey, who have occupied themselves
with the analysis of the form of value, have been unable to arrive at any result,
first, because they confuse the form of value with value itself; and second, be
cause, under the coarse influence of the practical bourgeois, they exclusively give
their attention to the quantitative aspect of the question. "The command of quan-
ity . . . constitute! value." ("Money and its Vicissitudes." London, 1837, p.
11. By S. Bailey.

58 Capitalist Production.

coats — that is, whether a given quantity of linen is worth few
or many coats, every such statement implies that the linen and
coats, as magnitudes of value, are expressions of the same unit,
things of the same kind. Linen==coat is the basis of the
equation.

But the two commodities whose identity of quality is thus
assumed, do not play the same part. It is only the value of
the linen that is expressed. And how ? By its reference to
the coat as its equivalent, as something that can be exchanged
for it In this relation the coat is the mode of existence of
value, is value embodied, for only as such is it the same as the
linen. On the other hand, the linen's own value comes to the
front, receives independent expression, for it is only as being
value that it is comparable with the coat as a thing of equal
value, or exchangeable with the coat To borrow an illustra
tion from chemistry, butyric acid is a different substance from
propyl formate. Yet both are made up of the same chemical
substances, carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (0), and
that, too, in like proportions — namely, C4H8O2. If now we
equate butyric acid to propyl formate, then, in the first place,
propyl formate would be, in this relation, merely a form oi
existence of C4H8O2 ; and in the second place, we should be
stating that butyric acid also consists of C4H8O2. Therefore,
by thus equating the two substances, expression would be given
to their chemical composition, while their different physical
forms would be neglected.

If we say that, as values, commodities are mere congelations
of human labour, we reduce them by our analysis, it is true, to
the abstraction, value; but we ascribe to this value no form
apart from their bodily form. It is otherwise in the value
relation of one commodity to another. Here, the one stands
forth in its character of value by reason of its relation to the
other.

By making the coat the equivalent of the linen, we equate
the labour embodied in the former to that in the latter. Now,
it is true that the tailoring, which makes the coat, is concrete
labour of a different sort from the weaving which makes the
linen. But the act of equating it to the weaving, reduces the

Commodities. 59

tailoring to that which is really equal in the two kinds of
labour, to their common character of human labour. In this
roundabout way, then, the fact is expressed, that weaving also,
in so far as it weaves value, has nothing to distinguish it from
tailoring, and, consequently, is abstract human labour. It is
the expression of equivalence between different sorts of com
modities that alone brings into relief the specific character of
value-creating labour, and this it does by actually reducing
the different varieties of labour embodied in the different
kinds of commodities to their common quality of human labour
in the abstract.1

There is, however, something else required beyond the ex
pression of the specific character of the labour of which the
value of the linen consists. Human labour-power in motion,
or human labour, creates value, but is not itself value. It
becomes value only in its congealed state, when embodied in
the form of some object. In order to express the value of the
linen as a congelation of human labour, that value must be
expressed as having objective existence, as being a something
materially different from the linen itself, and yet a something
common to the linen and all other commodities. The problem
is already solved.

When occupying the position of equivalent in the equation
of value, the coat ranks qualitatively as the equal of the linen,
as something of the same kind, because it is value. In this posi
tion it is a thing in which we see nothing but value, or whose
palpable bodily form represents value. Yet the coat itself, the
body of the commodity, coat, is a mere use-value. A coat as
such no more tells us it is value, than does the first piece of
linen we take hold of. This shows that when placed in value

1 The celebrated Franklin, one of the first economists, after Wm. Petty, who
saw through the nature of value, says : " Trade in general being nothing else but
the exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is ... most justly
measured by labour." (The works of B. Franklin, 4c., edited by Sparks,
Boston, 1836, Vol. II., p. 267.) Franklin is unconscious that by estimating the
value of everything in labour, he makes abstraction from any difference in the
sorts of labour exchanged, and thus reduces them all to equal human labour.
But although ignorant of this, yet he says it. He speaks first of "the one labour,"
then of " the other labour," and finally of " labour," without further qualifica
tion, as the substance of the value of everything.

60 Capitalist Production.

relation to the linen, the coat signifies more than when out of
that relation, just as many a man strutting about in a gorgeous
uniform counts for more than when in mufti.

In the production of the coat, human labour-power, in the
shape of tailoring, must have been actually expended. Human
labour is therefore accumulated in it. In this aspect the coat
is a depository of value, but though worn to a thread, it does
not let this fact show through. And as equivalent of the linen
in the value equation, it exists under this aspect alone, counts
therefore as embodied value, as a body that is value. A, for
instance, cannot be "your majesty" to B, unless at the same
time majesty in B's eyes assumes the bodily form of A, and,
what is more, with every new father of the people, changes its
features, hair, and many other things besides.

Hence, in the value equation, in which the coat is the equiva
lent of the linen, the coat officiates as the form of value. The
value of the commodity linen is expressed by the bodily form of
the commodity coat, the value of one by the use-value of the
other. As a use-value, the linen is something palpably dif
ferent from the coat ; as value, it is the same as the coat, and
now has the appearance of a coat. Thus the linen acquires
a value form different from its physical form. The fact that
it is value, is made manifest by its equality with the coat, just
as the sheep's nature of a Christian is shown in his resemblance
to the Lamb of God.

We see, then, all that our analysis of the value of commo
dities has already told us, is told us by the linen itself, so soon
as it comes into communication with another commodity, the
coat. Only it betrays its thoughts in that language with
which alone it is familiar, the language of commodities. In
order to tell us that its own value is created by labour in its
abstract character of human labour, it says that the coat, in so
far as it is worth as much as the linen, and therefore is value,
consists of the same labour as the linen. In order to inform
us that its sublime reality as value is not the same as its buck
ram body, it says that value has the appearance of a coat, and
consequently that so far as the linen is value, it and the coat
are as like as two peas. We may here remark, that the Ian-

Commodities. . ^oAr 61

guage of commodities has, besides Hebrew, many other more or
less correct dialects. The German "werthsein," to be worth,
for instance, expresses in a less striking manner than the
Komance verbs "valere," "valer," "valoir," that the equating of
commodity B to commodity A, is commodity A's own mode of
expressing its value. Paris vaut bien une messe.

By means, therefore, of the value relation expressed in our
equation, the bodily form of commodity B becomes the value
form of commodity A, or the body of commodity B acts as a
mirror to the value of commodity A. 1 By putting itself in re
lation with commodity B, as value in propria persona, as the
matter of which human labour is made up, the commodity A
converts the value in use, B, into the substance in which to
express its, A's, own value. The value of A, thus expressed in
the use-value of B, has taken the form of relative value.

(b.) Quantitative determination of Relative value.

Every commodity, whose value it is intended to express, is a
useful object of given quantity, as 15 bushels of corn, or 100
Ibs. of coffee. And a given quantity of any commodity con
tains a definite quantity of human labor. The value-form
must therefore not only express value generally, but also value
in definite quantity. Therefore, in the value relation of com
modity A to commodity B, of the linen to the coat, not only is
the latter, as value in general, made the equal in quality of the
linen, but a definite quantity of coat (1 coat) is made the
equivalent of a definite quantity (20 yards) of linen.

The equation, 20 yards of linen=l coat, or 20 yards of linen
are worth one coat, implies that the same quantity of value-
substance (congealed labour) is embodied in both; that the
two commodities have each cost the same amount of labour or
the same quantity of labour time. But the labour time
necessary for the production of 20 yards of linen or 1 coat

1 In a sort of way, it is with man as with commodities. Since he comes into
the world neither with a looking glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtian philosopher,
to whom "I am I " is sufficient, man first sees and recognises himself in other
men. Peter only establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing him-
»«4f with Paul M being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he stands in hi»
Patjliue personality, become* to Peter the type of th« genus homo.

62 Capitalist Production.

varies with every change in the productiveness of weaving or
tailoring. We have now to consider the influence of such
changes on the quantitative aspect of the relative expression of
value.

I. Let the value of the linen vary,1 that of the coat remain
ing constant. If, say in consequence of the exhaustion of flax-
growing soil, the labour time necessary for the production of
the linen be doubled, the value of the linen will also be doubled.
Instead of the equation, 20 yards of linen=l coat, we should
have 20 yards of linen=2 coats, since 1 coat would now con
tain only half the labour time embodied in 20 yards of liners.
If, on the other hand, in consequence, say, of improved loon™,
this labour time be reduced by one half, the value of the line:a
would fall by one half. Consequently, we should have 20
yards of linen=£ coat. The relative value of commodity A.,
i.e., its value expressed in commodity B, rises and falls directly
as the value of A, the value of B being supposed constant.

II. Let the value of the linen remain constant, while the
value of the coat varies. If, under these circumstances, in
consequence, for instance, of a poor crop of wool, the labou'*
time necessary for the production of a coat becomes doubled,
we have instead of 20 yards of linen =1 coat, 20 yards of linen
=| coat If, on the other hand, the value of the coat sinkn
by one half, then 20 yards of linen=2 coats. Hence, if thn
value of commodity A remain constant, its relative value ex
pressed in commodity B rises and falls inversely as the value
of B.

If we compare the different cases in I. and II., we see tha1;
the same change of magnitude in relative value may arise fron
totally opposite causes. Thus, the equation, 20 yards of liner
=1 coat, becomes 20 yards of linen=2 coats, either, because
the value of the linen has doubled, or because the value of the;
coat has fallen by one half ; and it becomes 20 yards of liner
=-J coat, either, because the value of the linen has fallen by
one half, or because the value of the coat has doubled.

III. Let the quantities of labour time respectively neces-

1 Value is here, as occasionally in the preceding pages, used in the sense CM
value determined as to quantity, or of magnitude of value.

Commodities. 63

sary for the production of the linen and the coat vary sim
ultaneously in the same direction and in the same proportion.
In this case 20 yards of linen continue equal to 1 coat, however
much their values may have altered. Their change of value is
seen as soon as they are compared with a third commodity,
whose value has remained constant If the values of all com
modities rose or fell simultaneously, and in the same propor
tion, their relative values would remain unaltered. Their real
change of value would appear from the diminished or increased
quantity of commodities produced in a given time.

IV. The labour time respectively necessary for the produc
tion of the linen and the coat, and therefore the value of these
commodities may simultaneously vary in the same direction,
but at unequal rates, or in opposite directions, or in other
ways. The effect of all these possible different variations, on
the relative value of a commodity, may be deduced from the
results of I., II., and III.

Thus real changes in the magnitude of value are neither
unequivocally nor exhaustively reflected in their relative
expression, that is, in the equation expressing the magnitude
of relative value. The relative value of a commodity may
vary, although its value remains constant. Its relative value
may remain constant, although its value varies; and finally,
simultaneous variations in the magnitude of value and in that
of its relative expression by no means necessarily correspond
in amount.1

1 Thi* incongruity between the magnitude of value and its relative expression
has, with customary ingenuity, been exploited by vulgar economists. For example
— "Once admit that A falls, because B, with which it is exchanged, rises, while
no less labour is bestowed in the meantime or A, and your general principle of
value falls to the ground. . . . If he [Ricardo] allowed that when A rises in
value relatively to B, B falls in value relatively to A, he cut away the ground on
which he rested his grand proposition, that the value of a commodity is ever de
termined by the labour embodied in it; for if a change in the cost of A alters not
only its own value in relation to B, for which it is exchanged, but also the value
of B relatively to that of A, though no change has taken place in the quantity
of labour to produce B, then not only the doctrine falls to the ground whiclr-

asserts that the quantity of labour bestowed on an article regulates its value,
but also that which affirms the cost of an article to regulate its value." (J.
Broadhurst: Political Economy, London, 1849, p. 11 and 14.

Mr. Broadhurst might just as well say: consider .the fractions £$, £$, ^J^, Sue.,
the number 10 remains unchanged, and yet its proportional magnitude, its magni-

64 Capitalist Production.

3. The Equivalent form of value.

We have seen that commodity A (the linen), by expressing
its value in the use-value of a commodity differing in kind
(the coat), at the same time impresses upon the latter a specific
form of value, namely that of the equivalent The commodity
linen manifests its quality of having a value by the fact that
the coat, without having assumed a value form different from
its bodily form, is equated to the linen. The fact that tho
latter therefore has a value is expressed by saying that tho
coat is directly exchangeable with it Therefore, when we say
that a commodity is in the equivalent form, we express tho
fact that it is directly exchangeable with other commodities.

When one commodity, such as a coat, serves as the equivalent
of another, such as linen, and coats consequently acquire tho
characteristic property of being directly exchangeable with
linen, we are far from knowing in what proportion the two am
exchangeable. The value of the linen being given in magni
tude, that proportion depends on the value of the coat.
Whether the coat serves as the equivalent and the linen a?
relative value, or the linen as the equivalent and the coat a.i
relative value, the magnitude of the coat's value is determined,
independently of its value form, by the labour time necessary
for its production. But whenever the coat assumes in thn
equation of value, the position of equivalent, its value acquirer
no quantitative expression ; on the contrary, the commodity
coat now figures only as a definite quantity of some article.

For instance, 40 yards of linen are worth — what? 2 coats.
Because the commodity coat here plays the part of equivalent,
because the use-value coat, as opposed to the linen, figures as
an embodiment of value, therefore a definite number of coatu
suffices to express the definite quantity of value in the linen.
Two coats may therefore express the quantity of value of 40
yards of linen, but they can never express the quantity of their
own value. A superficial observation of this fact, namely, tha -

tude relatively to the numbers 20, 50, 100, &c., continually diminishes. There
fore the great principle that the magnitude of a whole number, such as 10, i«
"regulated" by the number of times unity is contained in it, falls to the ground
— [The author explains in section 4 of this chapter, p. 99, note 1, wh»t he under
stands by " Vulgar Economy." — Ed.J

Commodities. 65

in the equation of value, the equivalent figures exclusively as
a simple quantity of some article, of some use-value, has misled
Bailey, as also many others, both before and after him, into
seeing, in the expression of value, merely a quantitative rela
tion. The truth being, that when a commodity acts as equiva
lent, no quantitative determination of its value is expressed.

The first peculiarity that strikes us, in considering the form
of the equivalent, is this : use-value becomes the form of mani
festation, the phenomenal form of its opposite, value.

The bodily form of the commodity becomes its value form.
But, mark well, that this quid pro quo exists in the case of any
commodity B, only when some other commodity A enters into
a value relation with it, and then only within the limits of this
relation. Since no commodity can stand in the relation of
equivalent to itself, and thus turn its own bodily shape into the
expression of its own value, every commodity is compelled
to choose some other commodity for its equivalent, and to ac
cept the use-value, that is to say, the bodily shape of that other
commodity as the form of its own value.

One of the measures that we apply to commodities as ma
terial substances, as use-values, will serve to illustrate this point.
A sugar-loaf being a body, is heavy, and therefore has weight :
but we can neither see nor touch this weight. We then take
various pieces of iron, whose weight has been determined
beforehand. The iron, as iron, is no more the form of manifes
tation of weight, than is the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order
to express the sugar-loaf as so much weight, we put it into a
weight-relation with the iron. In this relation, the iron
officiates as a body representing nothing but weight. A certain
quantity of iron therefore serves as the measure of the weight
of the sugar, and represents, in relation to the sugar-loaf,
weight embodied, the form of manifestation of weight. This
part is played by the iron only within this relation, into which
the sugar or any other body, whose weight has to be determined,
enters with the iron. Were they not both heavy, they could
not enter into this relation, and the one could therefore not
serve as the expression of the weight of the other. When we

throw both into the scales, we see in reality, that as weight

66 Capitalist Production.

they are both the same, and that, therefore, when taken in
proper proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the
substance iron, as a measure of weight, represents in relation
to the sugar-loaf weight alone, so, in our expression of value,
the material object, coat, in relation to the linen, represents
value alone.

Here, however, the analogy ceases. The iron, in the expres
sion of the weight of the sugar-loaf, represents a natural pro
perty common to both bodies, namely their weight; but the coal,
in the expression of value of the linen, represents a non-natural
property of both, something purely social, namely, their value.

Since the relative form of value of a commodity — the linen,
for example — expresses the value of that commodity, as being-
something wholly different from its substance and properties,
as being, for instance, coat-like, we see that this expression
itself indicates that some social relation lies at the bottom of
it. With the equivalent form it is just the contrary. The verj
essence of this form is that the material commodity itself — the
coat — just as it is, expresses value, and is endowed with the
form of value by Nature itself. Of course this holds good onlj
so long as the value relation exists, in which the coat stands in
the position of equivalent to the linen.1 Since, however, the
properties of a thing are not the result of its relations to other
things, but only manifest themselves in such relations, the
coat seems to be endowed with its equivalent form, its property
of being directly exchangeable, just as much by Nature as it is
endowed with the property of being heavy, or the capacity to
keep us warm. Hence the enigmatical character of the equiva
lent form which escapes the notice of the bourgeois political
economist, until this form, completely developed, confronts him
in the shape of money. He then seeks to explain away the
mystical character of gold and silver, by substituting for them
less dazzling commodities, and by reciting, with ever renewed
satisfaction, the catalogue of all possible commodities which at
one time or another have played the part of equivalent He

1 Such expressions of relations in genertl, called by Hegel reflex-categories, form
ft very curious class. For instance, one man is king only because other men stand
ix the relation of subject* to him. They, oa the contrary, imagine that they are
•abject* beoat»e h. ia kia»

Commodities. 67

has not the least suspicion that the most simple expression of
value, such as 20 yds. of linen =1 coat, already propounds the
riddle of the equivalent form for our solution.

The body of the commodity that serves as the equivalent,
figures as the materialism of human labour in the abstract
and is at the same time the product of some specifically useful
concrete labour. This concrete labour becomes, therefore, the
medium for expressing abstract human labour. If on the
one hand the coat ranks as nothing but the embodiment of
abstract human labour, so, on the other hand, the tailoring
which is actually embodied in it, counts as nothing but the
form under which that abstract labour is realised. In the ex
pression of value of the linen, the utility of the tailoring con
sists, not in making clothes, but in making an object, which we
at once recognise to be Value, and therefore to be a congelation
of labour, but of labour indistinguishable from that realised in
the value of the linen. In order to act as such a mirror of
value, the labour of tailoring must reflect nothing besides its
own abstract quality of being human labour generally.

In tailoring, as well as in weaving, human labour-power is
expended. Both, therefore, possess the general property of
being human labour, and may, therefore, in certain cases, such
as in the production of value, have to be considered under
this aspect alone. There is nothing mysterious in this. But
in the expression of value there is a complete turn of the
tables. For instance, how is the fact to be expressed that
weaving creates the value of the linen, not by virtue of being
weaving, as such, but by reason of its general property of being
human labour ? Simply by opposing to weaving that other
particular form of concrete labour (in this instance tailoring),
which produces the equivalent of the product of weaving.
Just as the coat in its bodily form became a direct expression
of value, so now does tailoring, a concrete form of labour,
appear as the direct and palpable embodiment of human labour
generally.

Hence, the second peculiarity of the equivalent form is, that
concrete labour becomes the form under which its opposite,
abstract human labour, manifests itself.

68 Capitalist Production.

But because this concrete labour, tailoring in our case, ranks
as, and is directly indentified with, undifferentiated human
labour, it also ranks as identical with any other sort of labor,
and therefore with that embodied in linen. Consequently,
although, like all other commodity-producing labour, it is the
labour of private individuals, yet, at the same time, it ranks as
labour directly social in its character. This is the reason why
it results in a product directly exchangeable with other com
modities. We have then a third peculiarity of the Equivalent
form, namely, that the labour of private individuals takes the
form of its opposite, labour directly social in its form.

The two latter peculiarities of the Equivalent form will
become more intelligible if we go back to the great thinker
who was the first to analyse so many forms, whether of
thought, society, or nature, and amongst them also the form of
value. I mean Aristotle.

In the first place, he clearly enunciates that the money form
of commodities is only the further development of the simple
form of value — i. e., of the expression of the value of one com
modity in some other commodity taken at random ; for he says

5 beds=l house (K\LVOI TTCVTI avrl OIKMXS) is not to \Q

distinguished from
5 beds— so much money.

(K\LVOJL irevrt. avrl . . . oaov at irwrt *Awu)

He further sees that the value relation which gives rise to
this expression makes it necessary that the house should quali
tatively be made the equal of the bed, and that, without such
an equalization, these two clearly different things could not
be compared with each other as commensurable quantities
"Exchange," he says, "cannot take place without equality, and
equality not without commensurability" ( ovr la-orrj^ py ovcn^s
crv/A/xcrpuxs ) . Here, however, he comes to a stop, and gives
up the further analysis of the form of value. "It is,
however, in reality, impossible (fg ptv ovv aX-rjOtia abwarov^ thst
such unlike things can be commensurable" — i. e., qualita
tively equal. Such an equalisation can only be something
foreign to their real nature, consequently only "a make-shift;
for practical purposes."

Commodities. 69

Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us, what barred the way to
his further analysis'; it was the absence of any concept of
value. What is that equal something, that common substance,
which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a
house ? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle.
And why not ? Compared with the beds, the house does re
present something equal to them, in so far as it represents what
is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is —
human labour.

There was, however, an important fact which prevented
Aristotle from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is
merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour,
and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society
was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural
basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers. The
secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of
labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they
are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the
notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a
popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society
,in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form
of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation
between man and man, is that of owners of commodities. The
brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he
discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a
relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in
which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what,
"in truth," was at the bottom of this equality.

4:. The Elementary form of value considered as a

The elementary form of value of a commodity is contained
in the equation, expressing its value relation to another com
modity of a different kind, or in its exchange relation to the
same. The value of commodity A is qualitatively expressed
by the fact that commodity B is directly exchangeable with it.
Its value is quantitively expressed by the fact, that a definite
quantity of B is exchangeable with a definite quantity of A.
In other words, the value of a commodity obtains independent

70 Capitalist Production.

and definite expression, by taking the form of exchange value.
When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common
parlance, that a commodity is both a use-value and an ex
change value, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. A com
modity is a use-value or object of utility, and a value. It
manifests itself as this two-fold thing, that it is, as soon as its
value assumes an independent form — viz., the form exchange
value. It never assumes this form when isolated, but only
when placed in a value or exchange relation with another
commodity of a different kind. When once we know this,
such a mode of expression does no harm ; it simply serves as an
abbreviation.

Our analysis has shown, that the form or expression of the
value of a commodity originates in the nature of value, and
not that value and its magnitude originate in the mode of
their expression as exchange value. This, however, is the
delusion as well of the mercantilists and their recent revivois,
Ferrier, Ganilh,1 and others, as also of their antipodes, the
modern bagmen of Free Trade, such as Bastiat The mercan
tilists lay special stress on the qualitative aspect of the
expression of value, and consequently on the equivalent for n
of commodities, which attains its full perfection in money.
The modern hawkers of Free Trade, who must get rid of their
article at any price, on the other hand, lay most stress on tLe
quantitative aspect of the relative form of value. For them
there consequently exists neither value, nor magnitude of
value, anywhere except in its expression by means of tie
exchange relation of commodities, that is, in the daily list of
prices current. MacLeod, who has taken upon himself 1x>
dress up the confused ideas of Lombard Street in the racxit
learned finery, is a successful cross between the superstitious
mercantilists, and the enlightened Free Trade bagmen.

A close scrutiny of the expression of the value of A in terms
of B, contained in the equation expressing the value relation of
A to B, has shown us that, within that relation, the bodily form

1 F. L, Ferrier, sous-inspecteur des douanes, "Du gouverneraent considere
dan» ses rapports av«c le commerce," Paris, 1805; and Charles Ganilh, " D-s-
Sjrstemes d'Economie politique," 2nd ed., Paris, 1821.

Commodities. 71

of A figures only as a use-value, the bodily form of B only as
the form or aspect of value. The opposition or contrast
existing internally in each commodity between use-value and
value, is, therefore, made evident externally by two com
modities being placed in such relation to each other, that the
commodity whose value it is sought to express, figures directly
as a mere use-value, while the commodity in which that value
is to be expressed, figures directly as mere exchange value.
Hence the elementary form of value of a commodity is the
elementary form in which the contrast contained in that
commodity, between use-value and value, becomes apparent.

Every product of labour is, in all states of society, a use-
value ; but it is only at a definite historical epoch in a society's
development that such product becomes a commodity, viz.,
at the epoch when the labour spent on the production of a
useful article becomes expressed as one of the objective
qualities of that article, i.e., as its value. It therefore follows
that the elementary value-form is also the primitive form
under which a product of labour appears historically as a
commodity, and that the gradual transformation of such
products into commodities, proceeds part passu with the
development of the value-form.

We perceive, at first sight, the deficiencies of the elementary
form of value : it is a mere germ, which must undergo a series
of metamorphoses before it can ripen into the Price-form.

The expression of the value of commodity A in terms of any
other commodity B, merely distinguishes the value from the
use-value of A, and therefore places A merely in a relation of
exchange with a single different commodity, B; but it is still
far from expressing A's qualitative equality, and quantitative
proportionality, to all commodities. To the elementary rela
tive value-form of a commodity, there corresponds the single
equivalent form of one other commodity. Thus, in the rela
tive expression of value of the linen, the coat assumes the form
of equivalent, or of being directly exchangeable, only in re
lation to a single commodity, the linen.

Nevertheless, the elementary form of value passes by an easy
transition into a more complete form. It is true that by means

72 Capitalist Production.

of the elementary form, the value of a commodity A, becomes
expressed in terms of one, and only one, other commodity.
But that one may be a commodity of any kind, coat, iron, corn,
or anything else. Therefore, according as A is placed in rela
tion with one or the other, we get for one and the same com
modity, different elementary expressions of value.1 The num
ber of such possible expressions is limited only by the number
of the different kinds of commodities distinct from it. The
isolated expression of A's value, is therefore convertible into a
series, prolonged to any length, of the different elementary ex
pressions of that value.

B. Total or Expanded form of value.

z Com. A=u Com. B or=v Com. C or— w Com. D or=x Com.

E or— &c.

(20 yards of linen^l coat or=10 Ib tea or = 40 lb coffee or=
1 quarter corn or=2 ounces gold oT=y2 ton iron or=&c.)

1. The Expanded Eelative form of value.

The value of a single commodity, the linen, for example, is
now expressed in terms of numberless other elements of the
world of commodities. Every other commodity now becomes
a mirror of the linen's value.2 It is thus, that for the first time

1 In Homer, for instance, the value of an article is expressed in a series of dif
ferent things. II. VII., 472-475.

* For this reason, we can speak of the coat-value of the linen when its value is
expressed in coats, or of its corn-value when expressed in corn, and so on.
Every such expression tells us, that what appears in the use-values, coat, corn,
&c., is the value of the linen. " The value of any commodity denoting its relation
in exchange, we may speak of it as ... corn-value, cloth-value, according to the
commodity with which it is compared; and hence there are a thousand different kinds of
value, as many kinds of value as there are commodities in existence, and all are
equally real and equally nominal." (A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Meas
ure and Causes of Value; chiefly in reference to the writings of Mr. Ricardo
and his followers. By the author of " Essays on the Formation, &c., of Opin
ions." London, 1825, p. 39.) S. Bailey, the author of this anonymous work,
a work which in its day created much stir in England, fancied that, by thus
pointing out the various relative expressions of one and the same value, he \^.
proved the impossibility of any determination of the concept of value. How
ever narrow his own views may have been, yet, that he laid his finger on some
serious defects in the Ricardian Theory, is proved by the animosity with which
he was attacked by Ricardo's followers. See the Westminster Review for example.

Commodities. 73

this value shows itself in its true light as a congelation of un-
differentiated human labour. For the labour -that creates it,
now stands expressly revealed, as labour that ranks equally
with every other sort of human labour, no matter what its
form, whether tailoring, ploughing, mining, &c. and no matter,
therefore, whether it is realised in coats, corn, iron, or gold.
The linen, by virtue of the form of its value, now stands in a
social relation, no longer with only one other kind of com
modity, but with the whole world of commodities. As a
commodity, it is a citizen of that world. At the same time,
the interminable series of value equations implies, that as re
gards the value of a commodity, it is a matter of in
difference under what particular form, or kind, of use-value it
appears.

In the first form, 20 yds. of linen =1 coat, it might for ought
that otherwise appears be pure accident, that these two com
modities are exchangeable in definite quantities. In the second
form, on the contrary, we perceive at once the background that
determines, and is essentially different from, this accidental
appearance. The value of the linen remains unaltered in mag
nitude, whether expressed in coats, coffee, or iron, or in num
berless different commodities, the property of as many
different owners. The accidental relation between two in
dividual commodity-owners disappears. It becomes plain, that
it is not the exchange of commodities which regulates the
magnitude of their value; but, on the contrary, that it is the
magnitude of their value which controls their exchange
proportions.

2. The particular Equivalent form.

Each commodity, such as coat, tea, corn, iron, &c., figures in
the expression of value of the linen, as an equivalent, and con
sequently as a thing that is value. The bodily form of each
of these commodities figures now as a particular equivalent
form, one out of many. In the same way the manifold concrete
form, raia nyit of many, In the same way

crete useful kinds of labour, embodied in these different com-

74 Capitalist Production.

modities, rank now as so many different forms of the realisa
tion, or manifestation, of undifferentiated human labour.

3. Defects of the Total or Expanded form of value.

In the first place, the relative expression of value is incom
plete because lie series representing it is interminable. The
chain of which each equation of value is a link, is liable at any
moment to be lengthened by each new kind of commodity that
comes into existence and furnishes the material for a fresh
expression of value. In the second place, it is a many-
coloured mosaic of disparate and independent expressions
of value. And lastly, if, as must be the case, the relative value
of each commodity in turn, becomes expressed in this ex
panded form, we get for each of them a relative value-form,
different in every case, and consisting of an interminable
series of expressions of value. The defects of the expanded
relative-value form are reflected in the corresponding equiva
lent form. Since the bodily form of each single commodity is
one particular equivalent form amongst numberless others, we
have, on the whole, nothing but fragmentary equivalent forms,
each excluding the others. In the same way, also, the special,
concrete, useful kind of labour embodied in each particular
equivalent, is presented only as a particular kind of labour,
and therefore not as an exhaustive representative of human
labour generally. The latter, indeed, gains adequate manifes
tation in the totality of its manifold, particular, concrete forms.
But, in that case, its expression in an infinite series is ever
incomplete and deficient in unity.

The expanded relative value form is, however, nothing but
the sum of the elementary relative expressions or equations of
the first kind, such as

20 yards of linen=l coat

20 yards of linen=10 Ibs. of tea, etc.

Each of these implies the corresponding inverted equation,

1 coat=20 yards of linen
10 Ibs. of tea=20 yards of linen, etc.

In fact, when a person exchanges his linen for many other
commodities, and thus expresses its value in a series of other

Commodities. 75

commodities, it necessarily follows, that the various owners of
the latter exchange them for the linen, and consequently express
the value of their various commodities in one and the same
third commodity, the linen. If then, we reverse the series, 20
yards of linen=i coat or=10 Ibs. of tea, etc., that is to say,
if we give expression to the converse relation already implied
in the series, we get,

C. The General form of value.
1 coat

10 Ibs. of tea
40 Ibs. of coffee
1 quarter of corn

=20 yards of linen

2 ounces of gold
\ a ton of iron
x com. A., etc.

1. The altered character of the form of value.

All commodities now express their value (1) in an element
ary form, because in a single commodity; (2) with unity, be
cause in one and the same commodity. This form of value
is elementary and the same for all, therefore general.

The forms A and B were fit only to express the value of a
commodity as something distinct from its use-value or material
form.

The first form, A, furnishes such equations as the follow
ing: — 1 coat=20 yards of linen, 10 Ibs. of tea=£ ton of iron.
The value of the coat is equated to linen, that of the tea to
iron. But to be equated to linen, and again to iron, is to be as
different as are linen and iron. This form, it is plain, occurs
practically only in the first beginning, when the products of
labour are converted into commodities by accidental and
occasional exchanges.

The second form, B, distinguishes, in a more adequate man
ner than the first, the value of a commodity from its use-value ;
for the value of the coat is there placed in contrast under all
possible shapes with the bodily form of the coat ; it is equated

76 Capitalist Production.

to linen, to iron, to tea, in short, to everything else, only not to
itself, the coat. On the other hand, any general expression of
value common to all is directly excluded ; for, in the equation
of value of each commodity, all other commodities now appear
only under the form of equivalents. The expanded form of
value comes into actual existence for the first time so soon as
a particular product of labour, such as cattle, is no longer
exceptionally, but habitually, exchanged for various other
commodities.

The third and lastly developed form expresses the values of
the whole world of commodities in terms of a single commodity
set apart for the purpose, namely, the linen, and thus represents
to us their values by means of their equality with linen. The
value of every commodity is now, by being equated to linen,
not only differentiated from its own use-value, but from all
other use-values generally, and is, by that very fact, expressed
as that which is common to all commodities. By this form,
commodities are, for the first time, effectively brought into
relation with one another as values, or made to appear *s
exchange values.

The two earlier forms either express the value of each com
modity in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or
in a series of many such commodities. In both cases, it is, SD
to say, the special business of each single commodity to find a:i
expression for its value, and this it does without the help of
the others. These others, with respect to the former, play th3
passive parts of equivalents. The general form of value C,
results from the joint action of the whole world of commodities,
and from that alone. A commodity can acquire a general ex
pression of its value only by all other commodities, simulta
neously with it, expressing their values in the same equivalent ;
and every new commodity must follow suit. It thus becomes
evident that, since the existence of commodities as values is
purely social, this social existence can be expressed by the.
totality of their social relations alone, and consequently
that the form of their value must be a socially recognised
form.

All commodities being equated to linen now appear not only

Commodities. 77

as qualitatively equal as values generally, but also as values
whose magnitudes are capable of comparison. By expressing
the magnitudes of their values in one and the same material,
the linen, those magnitudes are also compared with each other.
For instance, 10 Ibs. of tea =20 yards of linen, and 40 Ibs. of
coffee— 20 yards of linen. Therefore, 10 Ibs. of tea =40 Ibs.
of coffee. In other words, there is contained in 1 Ib. of coffee
only one-fourth as much substance of value — labour — as is con
tained in 1 Ib. of tea.

The general form of relative value, embracing the whole
world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is
excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent
— here the linen — into the universal equivalent. The bodily
form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the
value of all commodities ; it therefore becomes directly
exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance
linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state
of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour
of certain private individuals producing a particular article,
linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character
of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable
equations of which the general form of value is composed,
equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that em
bodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert
weaving into the general form of manifestation of undiffer-
entiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in
the values of commodities is presented not only under its
negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every
concrete form and useful property of actual work, but
its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly.
The general value-form is the reduction of all kinds of
actual labour to their common character of being human
labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour
power.

The general value form, which represents all products of
labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour,
shows by its very structure that it is the social resume of the
world of commodities. That form consequently makes it

78 Capitalist Production.

indisputably evident that in the world of
character possessed ly all labour of being

- ' ' - . ' T '..- : :-:.-. • . v."-:

2. JTi* interdependent development of ike Relative form of
value, and of ike Equivalent form.

The degree of development of the relatirc form of r^loe
corresponds to that of the equivalent form. But we must bear
in mind that the development of the latter is only the expres
sion and result of the development of the former.

Tbe primary or isolated relative form of value of one
commodity converts some other commodity into an isolated
equivalent The expended form of relative value, which is
the expression of the value of one commodity in terms of all
other commodities, endows those other commodities with the
character of particular equivalents differing in kind. And
lastly, a part icula r kind of commodity acquires the character of
universal equivalent, because all other commodities make it the
material in which they uniformly » M|MM« their value.

Hie antagonism LeUiuen the relative form of value and thtf
equivalent form, the two poles of the value form, is developed
concurrently with that form itself.

: m: _ yds ::' ..--:I=:L-? : i:. :".:-;- .;

this antagonism, without as yet fixing it According as we
read this equation forwards or backwards, the parts played by
the linen and the coat are different In the one case the

relative value of the linen is expressed in the coat, in the
other case the relative value of the coat is expressed in the
linen. In this first form of value, therefore, it is difficult to
grasp the polar contrast

Form B shows that only one single commodity at a time can
completely expand its relative value, and that it acquires this
expanded form only because, and in so far as, all other com
modities are, with respect to it, equivalents. Here we cannot
reverse the equation, as we can the equation 20 yds, of linen=
1 coat, without altering its general character, end converting
it from the expanded form of value into the general font of
rsne

: r.

- ::-

i . - ~

-• -

:: —

: ., :•

» « n>

; -r -

• 1

Capitalist Production.

other hand, if a commodity be found to have assumed the
universal equivalent form (form C), this is only because and
in so far as it has been excluded from the rest of all other
commodities as their equivalent, and that by their own act.
And from the moment that this exclusion becomes finally
restricted to one particular commodity, from that moment only,
the general form of relative value of the world of commodities
obtains real consistence and general social validity.

The particular commodity, with whose bodily form the
equivalent form is thus socially identified, now becomes the
money commodity, or serves as money. It becomes the special
social function of that commodity, and consequently its social
monopoly, to play within the world of commodities the part of
the universal equivalent. Amongst the commodities which, in
form B, figure as particular equivalents of the linen, and in
form C, express in common their relative values in linen, this
foremost place has been attained by one in particular — namely,
gold. If, then, in form C we replace the linen by gold, we
get,

D. The Money form.

20 yards of linen =
1 coat =

10 ft of tea

40 lb of coffee ~

1 qr. of corn =

•J a ton of iron =

x commodity A =

In passing from form A to form B, and from the latter to

form C, the changes are fundamental. On the other hand,

there is no difference between forms C and D, except that, in

the latter, gold has assumed the equivalent form in the place

of linen. Gold is in form D, what linen was in form C — the

universal equivalent. The progress consists in this alone, that

the character of direct and universal exchangeability — in other

words, that the universal equivalent form — has now, by social

custom, become finally identified with the substance, gold.

2 ouncee of gold.

Commodities. 81

Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities
only because it was previously, with reference to them, a
simple commodity. Like all other commodities, it was also
capable of serving as an equivalent, either as simple equivalent
in isolated exchanges, or as particular equivalent by the side
of others. Gradually it began to serve, within varying limits,
as universal equivalent. So soon as it monopolises this posi
tion in the expression of value for the world of commodities,
it becomes the money commodity, and then, and not till then,
does form D become distinct from form C, and the general
form of value become changed into the money form.

The elementary expression of the relative value of a single
commodity, such as linen, in terms of the commodity, such as
gold, that plays the part of money, is the price form of that
commodity. The price form of the linen is therefore
20 yards of linen=2 ounces of gold, or, if 2 ounces of gold
when coined are £2, 20 yards of linen=£2.

The difficulty in forming a concept of the money form, con
sists in clearly comprehending the universal equivalent form,
and as a necessary corollary, the general form of value, form C.
The latter is deducible from form B, the expanded form of
value, the essential component element of which, we saw, is
form A, 20 yards of linen— 1 coat or x commodity A— y com
modity B. The simple commodity form is therefore the germ
of the money form.

SECTION 4. — THE FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES AND THE
SECRET THEREOF.

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and
easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a
very qiieer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and
theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there js..,
nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the
point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying
human wants, or from the point that those properties are the
product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day, that man,
by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished

by nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The

82 Capitalist Production.

form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out
ofjt. Yet, for all that the table continues to be that common,
every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a
commodity, it is changed into something transcendent: It not
only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all
other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its
wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than "table-
turning" ever was.

The mystical character of commodities does not originate,
therefore, in their use-value. Just as little does it proceed
from the nature of the determining factors of value. For, in
the first place, however varied the useful kinds of labour, or
productive activities, may be, it is a physiological fact, that
they are functions of the human organism, and that each su<;h
function, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the
expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, &c. Secondly,
with regard to that which forms the ground-work for the quan
titative determination of value, namely, the duration of th:it
expenditure, or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear that
there is a palpable difference between its quantity and quality.
In all states of society, the labour-time that it costs to produc e
the means of subsistence must necessarily be an object of inter
est to mankind, though not of equal interest in different stages
of development.1 And lastly, from the moment that men io.
any way work for one another, their labour assumes a social
form.

Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product
of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities ?
Clearly from this form itself. The equality of all sorts of
human labour is expressed objectively by their products all
being equally values ; the measure of the expenditure of labour-
power by the duration of that expenditure, takes the form o:'
the quantity of value of the products of labour; and finally,
the mutual relations of the producers, within which the social

1 Among the ancient Germans the unit for measuring land was what could b«
harvested in a day, and was called Tagwerk, Tagwanne (jurnale, or terra jurnalis,
or diornalis), Mannsraaad, &c. (See G. L. von Maurer Einleitung zur Ge*chichte
der Mark—, &c. Verfanung, MOnchen, 1859, p. 189-59.)

Commodities. 83

character of their labour affirms itself, take the form of a
social relation between the products.

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because
in it the social character of men's labour appears to them as an
objective character stamped upon the product of that labour;
because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their
own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing
not between themselves, but between the products of their j
labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become /
commodities, social things, whose qualities are at the same time
perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way
the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective
excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of
something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing,
there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing
to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a
physical relation between physical things. But it is different
with commodities. There, the existence of the things qua
commodities, and the value relation between the products of
labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no
connection with their physical properties and with the material
relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social rela
tion between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic
form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find
an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped re
gions of the religious world. In that world the productions of
the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with
life, and entering into relation both with one another and the
human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the
products of men's hands. This I call the Fetishism which at
taches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are pro
duced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from
the production of commodities.

This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the fore
going analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social
character of the labour that produces them.

As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities,
only because they are products of the labour of private individ-

Capitalist Production.

uals or groups of individuals who carry on their work inde
pendently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all
these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society.
Since the producers do not come into social contact with each
/'other until they exchange their products, the specific social
I character of each producer's labour does not show itself except
l^in the act of exchange. In other words, the labour of the in
dividual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society, only
by means of the relations which the act of exchange establishes
directly between the products, and indirectly, through them,
between the producers. To the latter, therefore, the relations
connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest ap
pear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work,
but as what they really are, material relations between persons
and social relations between things. It is only by being ex
changed that the products of labour acquire, as values, one uni
form social status, distinct from their varied forms of existence
fas objects of utility. This division of a product into a useful
thing and a value becomes practically important, only when ex
change has acquired such an extension that useful articles are
produced for the purpose of being exchanged, and their char
acter as values has therefore to be taken into account, before
hand, during production. From this moment the labour of the
individual producer acquires socially a two-fold character.
On the one hand, it must, as a definite useful kind of labour,
satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold its place as part
and parcel of the collective labour of all, as a branch of a social
division of labour that has sprung up spontaneously. On the
other hand, it can satisfy the manifold wants of the individual
producer himself, only in so far as the mutual exchangeability
of all kinds of useful private labour is an established social
fact, and therefore the private useful labour of each producer
ranks on an equality with that of all others. The equalization
of the most different kinds of labour can be the result only of
an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to
their common denominator, viz., expenditure of human labour
power or human labour in the abstract. The two-fold social
character of the labour of the individual appears to him, whep

Commodities. 85

reflected in his brain, only under those forms which are im
pressed upon that labour in everyday practice by the exchange
of products. In this way, the character that his own labour
possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the condi
tion, that the product must be not only useful, but useful for
others, and the social character that his particular labour has of
being the equal of all other particular kinds of labour, takes the
form that all the physically different articles that are the pro
ducts of labour, have one common quality, viz, that of having
value.

Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into rela
tion with each other as values, it is not because we see in these
articles the material receptacles of homogeneous human labour.
Quite the contrary ; whenever, by an exchange^ jwe ; jefjuate as
values our different proTTucfs, by that very act, we also equate,
astiuman labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon
them. AVe are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it,1
Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing
what it is. It is jvalue, rather, that convertsjBvery_product
into a social hieroglyphic^ Later on, we try to decipher the
hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social pro
ducts; :cor to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as
much a social product as language. The recent scientific dis
covery, that the products of labour, so far as they are values,
are but material expressions of the human labour spent in
their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in the history of the
development of the human race, but, by no means^ dissipates
the mist through which the social character of labour appears
to us to be an objective character of the products themselves.
The fact, that in the particular form of production with which
we are dealing, viz., the production of commodities, the specific
social character of private labour carried on independently,
consists in the equality of every kind of that labour, by virtue
of its being human labour, which character, therefore, assumes

1When, therefore, Galiani says: Value is a relation between persons — "La
Ricchezza e una ragione tra due persone," — he ought to have added: a relation be
tween persons expressed as a relation between things. (Galiani: Delia Moneta, p.
221, V. III. of Custodi's collection of "Scrittori Classici Italian! di Economia
Politicia." Parte Moderna, Milano, 1803.)

86 Capitalist Production.

in the product the form of value — this fact appears to the
producers, notwithstanding the discovery above referred to,
to be just as real and final, as the fact, that, after the discovery
by science of the component gases of air, the atmosphere itself
remained unaltered.

What, first of all, practically concerns producers when they
make an exchange, is the question, how much of some other
product tkey get for their own ? in what proportions the pro
ducts are exchangeable ? When these proportions have, by
custom, attained a certain stability, they appear to result from
the nature of the products, so that, for instance, one ton of iron
and two ounces of gold appear as naturally to be of equal value
as a pound of gold and a pound of iron in spite of their
different physical and chemical qualities appear to be of equal
weight. The character of having value, when once impressed
'upon products, obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and
ire-acting upon each other as quantities of value. These
quantities vary continually, independently of the will, fore
sight and action of the producers. To them, their own social
action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the
producers instead of being ruled by them. It requires a fully
developed production of commodities before, from accumulated
experience alone, the scientific conviction springs up, that all
the different kinds of private labour, which arc carried on in
dependently of each other, and yet as spontaneously developed
branches of the social division of labour, are continually being
reduced to the quantitive proportions in which society re
quires them. And why? Because, in the midst of all the
accidental and ever fluctuating exchange-relations between
the products, the labour-time socially necessary for their pro
duction forcibly asserts itself like an over-riding law of nature.
The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about
/6ur ears.1 The determination of the magnitude of value by
labour-time is therefore a secret, hidden under the apparent

1 " What are we to think of a law that asserts itself only by periodical revolu
tions? It is just nothing but a law of Nature, founded on the want of knowledge of
those whose action is the subject of it." (Friedrich Engels: Umrisse xu einer
Kritik der Nationa lokonomie," in the "Deutsch-franzdsische Jahrbucher," edited by
Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx. Paris, 1844.

Commodities. 87

fluctuations in the relative values of commodities. Its dis
covery, while removing all appearance of mere tcddentality
from the determination of the magnitude of die values of
products, jet in no way alien die mode in which that
determination takes place.

tm* th* forma nf •neial

also, his yi?«t*fo analysis of those forms, tike a course directi y
opposite to that of their actual historical development He
begins, poet faefr"", with the results of die process of develop
ment ready to hand before him. The characters that stamp
products as commodities,and whose establishment is a IJUIBSIIJ
preliminary to the circulation of commodities, hare already
acquired the stability of natural, self -understood forms of social
life, before man seeks to decipher, not their historical character,
for in his eyee they are immutable, but their meaning. Con
sequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities
that alone led to die determination of die magnitude of value,
and it was the common expression of all commodities in money
that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values.
however, just this nlimate money form of the world of
commodities that actually conceals, imd^i of disclosing, die
social character of private labour, and the social relations
-lieipeou the individual producers. When I state that coats or_
hoots stand in a relation to linen, heeanse it is the universal
incarnation of abstract human labour, die absurdity of the
^d:cz:ei- - ; '_• -- ...-- - _ -. . - ; . : - :

coats and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is
•Jir 5i~e :i:ir ~::i c:".i :: =:>f:. :s :':.i :i.-.:iil ~. _ i'.fz:.
they express die relation betPiieu their own private labour and
the collective labour of society in die same absurd form.

The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like
forms. They are forms of thought expressing with social
~- :.:...:.:- _ :...:. :..- :: .. !:-i:..v

:: yr:iu::::i. -;- . :':.- jr:i_;:::z ::

modities. The wfible myslery of commodhieB, aD the magic

and necromancy that surrounds die products of labour aa long
as they take die form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so
soon aa we come to other forms of

88 Capitalist Production.

Since Robinson Crusoe's experiences are a favorite theme
with political economists,1 let us take a look at him on his
island. Moderate though he be, yet some few wants he has to
satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of various
sorts, such as making tools and furniture, taming goats, fish
ing and hunting. Of his prayers and the like we take no ac
count, since they are a source of pleasure to him, and he looks
upon them as so much recreation. In spite of the variety of
his work, he knows that his labour, whatever its form, is but
the activity of one and the same Robinson, and consequently,
that it consists of nothing but different modes of human
labour. Necessity itself compels him to apportion his tiire
accurately betwreen his different kinds of work. Whether one
kind occupies a greater space in his general activity than an
other, depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the case
may be, to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimel
at. This our friend Robinson soon learns by experience, and
having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from tha
wreck, commences, like a true-born Briton, to keep a set of
books. His stock-book contains a list of the objects of utility
that belong to him, of the operations necessary for their pro
duction ; and lastly, of the labour time that definite quantities
of those objects have, on an average, cost him. All the rela
tions between Robinson arid the objects that form this wealth
of his own creation, are here so simple and clear as to be in
telligible without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. Anc
yet those relations contain all that is essential to the deter
mination of value.

. Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson's island
'"bathed in light to the European middle ages shrouded in dark
ness. Here, instead of the independent man, we find every-

1 Even Ricardo has his stories a la Robinson. "He makes the primitive hunter
and the primitive fisher straightway, as owners of commodities, exchange fish and
game in the proportion in which labour-time is incorporated in these exchange
values. On this occasion he commits the anachronism of making these men apply to
the calculation, so far as their implements have to be taken into account, the
annuity tables in current use on the London Exchange in the year 1847. 'The par
allelograms of Mr. Owen' appear to be the only form of society, besides the bour
geois form, with which he was acquainted." (Karl Marx: "Critique," &c.,
p. «0-70.)

Commodities. 89

one dependent, serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, lay
men and clergy. Personal dependence here characterises the
social relations of production just as much as it does the other
spheres of life organized on the basis of that production. But
for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground
work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its prod
ucts to assume a fantastic form different from their reality.
They take the shape, in the transactions of society, of services
in kind and payments in kind. Here the particular and natu
ral form of labour, and not, as in a society based on production
of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate
social form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly
measured by time, as commodity-producing labour ; but every
serf knows that what he expends in the service of his lord, is
a definite quantity of his own personal labour-power. The
tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than
his blessing. No matter, then, what we may think of the
parts played by the different classes of people themselves in
this society, the social relations between individuals in the
performance of their labour, appear at all events as their
own mutual personal relations, and are not disguised under
the shape of social relations between the products of labour.

For an example of labour in common or directly associated
labour, we have no occasion to go back to that spontaneously
developed form which we find on the threshold of the history
of all civilized races.1 We have one close at hand in the
patriarchal industries of a peasant family, that produces corn,
cattle, yarn, linen, and clothing for home use. These differ-,
ent articles are, as regards the family, so many products of its
labour, but as between themselves, they are not commodities.
The different kinds of labour, such as tillage, cattle tending,

1 "A ridiculous presumption has latterly got abroad that common property in
its primitive form is specifically a Slavonian, or even exclusively Russian
form. It is the primitive form that we can prove to have existed amongst
Romans, Teutons, and Celts, and even to this day we find numerous examples,
ruins though they be, in India. A more exhaustive study of Asiatic, and
especially of Indian forms of common property, would show how from the different
forms of primitive common property, different forms of its dissolution have been
developed. Thus, for instance, the various original types of Roman and Teutonic
private property are deducible from different forms of Indian common property,"
(Karl Marx. "Critique," &c., p. 29, footnote.)

90 Capitalist Production.

spinning, weaving and making clothes, which result in the
various products, are in themselves, and such as they are,
direct social functions, because functions of the family, which
just as much as a society based on the production of commod
ities, possesses a spontaneously developed system of division
of labour. The distribution of the work within the family,
and the regulation of the labour-time of the several members,
depend as well upon differences of age and sex as upon nat
ural conditions varying with the seasons. The labour-power
of each individual, by its very nature, operates in this case
merely as a definite portion of the whole labour-power of the
family, and therefore, the measure of the expenditure of ir •
dividual labour-power by its duration, appears here by its
very nature as a social character of their labour.

Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a com
munity of free individuals, carrying on their work with tha
means of production in common, in which the labour-power of
all the different individuals is consciously applied as tho
combined labour-power of the community. All the charac
teristics of Robinson's labour are here repeated, but with this
difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Every
thing produced by him was exclusively the result, of his OWE
personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use foi
himself. The total product of our community is a social
product One portion serves as fresh means of production
and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the
members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this
portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode
of this distribution will vary with the productive organization
of the community, and the degree of historical development
attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for
the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that
the share of each individual producer in the means of subsis
tence is determined by his labour-time. Labour-time would,
in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accord
ance with a definite social plan maintains the proper propor
tion between the different kinds of work to be done and the
various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also

Commodities. 91

genres as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne
by each individual and of his share in the part of the total
product destined for individual consumption. The social re
lations of the individual producers, with regard both to their
labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple
and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production
but also to distribution.

The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And
for a society based upon the production of commodities, in
which the producers in general enter into social relations with
one another by treating their products as commodities and
values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour
the standard of homogeneous human labour — for such a soci
ety, Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more espec
ially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism, Deism, &c.,
is the most fitting form of religion. In the ancient Asiatic
and other ancient modes of production, we find that the con
version of products into commodities, and therefore the con
version of men into producers of commodities, holds a subor
dinate place, which, however, increases in importance as the
primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to their
dissolution. Trading nations, properly so called, exist in the
ancient world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus
in the Intermundia, or like Jews in the pores of Polish soci
ety. Those ancient social organisms of production are, aa
compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and trans
parent But they are founded either on the immature devel
opment of man individually, who has not yet severed the um
bilical cord that unites him with his fellow men in a primi
tive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjec
tion. They can arise and exist only when the development of
the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low
stage, and when, therefore, the social relations within the
sphere of material life, between man and man, and between
man and Nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrow
ness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the
other elements of the popular religions. The religious reflex
of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish,

92 Capitalist Production.

when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none
but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with re
gard to his fellowmen and to nature.

The life-process of society, which is based on the process of
material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it
is treated as production by freely associated men, and is con
sciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.
This, however, demands for society a certain material ground
work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are
the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of
development.

Political economy has indeed analysed, however incom
pletely,1 value and its magnitude, and has discovered what
lies beneath these forms. But it has never once asked the
question why labour is represented by the value of its product

1 The insufficiency of Ricardo's analysis of the magnitude of value, and his an
alysis is by far the best, will appear from the 3rd and 4th book of this work. As
regards values in general, it is the weak point of the classical school of political
economy that it nowhere, expressly and with full consciousness, distinguishes be
tween labour, as it appears in the value of a product and the same labour, as it ap
pears in the use-value of that product. Of course the distinction is practically made
since this school treats labour, at one time under its quantitative aspect, at another
under its qualitative aspect. But it has not the least idea, that when the
difference between various kinds of labour is treated as purely quantitative,
their qualitative unity or equality, and therefore their reduction to abstract human
labour, is implied. For instance, Ricardo declares that he agrees with Destutt
de Tracy in this proposition: "As it is certain that our physical and moral
faculties are alone our original riches, the employment of those faculties, labour
of some kind, is our only original treasure, and it is always from this employment
that all those things are created, which we call riches. . . . It is certain, too,
that all those things only represent the labour which has created them, and if they
have a value, or even two distinct values, they can only derive them from that
(the value) of the labour from which they emanate." (Ricardo, The Principles
of Pol. Econ. 3 Ed. Lond. 1821, p. 334.) We would here only point out that
Ricardo puts his own more profound interpretation upon the words of Destutt.
What the latter really says is, that on the one hand all things which constitute
wealth represent the labour that creates them, but that on the other hand, they
acquire their "two different values" (use-value and exchange-value) from "the
value of labour." He thus falls into the commonplace error of the vulgar econo
mists, who assume the value of one commodity (in this case labour) in order to deter
mine the values of the rest. But Ricardo reads him as if he had said, that labour
(not the value of labour) is embodied both in use-value and exchange-value.
Nevertheless, Ricardo himself pays so little attention to the two-fold character
of the labour which has a two-fold embodiment, that he devotes the whole of his
chapter on " Value and Riches, Their Distinctive Properties," to a laborious ex
amination of the trivialities of a J. B. Say. And at the finish he is quite
astonished to find that Destutt on the one hand agrees with him as to labour being
the source of value, and on the other hand with J. B. Say as to the notion of
value.

Commodities. 93

and labour time by the magnitude of that value.1 These for-^
muke, which bear stamped upon them in unmistakeable let
ters, that they belong to a state of society, in which the process
of production has the mastery over man, instead of being con
trolled by him, such formulae appear to the bourgeois intellect
to be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by nature as
productive labour itself. Hence forms of social production
that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated by the bour
geoisie in m'ut- -the same way as the Fathers of the Church
treated pre-Christian religions.2

1 It is one of tUe o/iicf failings of classical economy that it has never succeeded,
by means of ira <n**fvsis of commodities, and, in particular, of their value, in dis
covering that foru under which value becomes exchange-value. Even Adam
Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives of the school, treat the form of value
as a thing of no importance, as having no connection with the inherent nature
of commodities. The reason for this is not solely because their attention is en
tirely absorbed in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The
value form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is also the
most universal form, taken by the product in bourgeois production, and stamps
that production as a particular species of social production, and thereby gives
it its special historical character. If then we treat this mode of production as one
eternally fixed by nature for every state of society, we necessarily overlook that
which is the differentia specifica of the value-form, and consequently of the
commodity-form, and of its further developments, money-form, capital-form, &c.
We consequently find that economists, who are thoroughly agreed as to labour time
being the measure of the magnitude of value, have the most strange and con
tradictory ideas of money, the perfected form of the general equivalent. This
is seen in a striking manner when they treat of banking, where the common
place definitions of money will no longer hold water. This led to the rise of
a restored mercantile system (Ganilh, &c.), which sees in value nothing but a
social form, or rather the unsubstantial ghost of that form. Once for all I may
here state, that by classical political economy, I understand that economy which,
since the time of W. Petty, has investigated the real relations of production in
bourgeois society, in contradistinction to vulgar economy, which deals with appear
ances only, ruminates without ceasing on the materials long since provided by
scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanations of the most obtrusive
phenomena, for bourgeois daily use, but for the rest, confines itself to systema
tizing in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the trite ideas
held by the self-complacent bourgeoisie with regard to their own world, to them
the best of all possible worlds.

2 "The economists have a singular manner of proceeding. There are for them
only two kinds of institutions, those of art and those of nature. Feudal institu
tions are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions.
In this they resemble the theologians, who also establish two kinds of religion
Every religion but their own is an invention of men, while their own religion is
an emanation from God. . . . Thus there has been history, but there is no
longer any." Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, A Reply to 'La Philosophic
de la Misere' by Mr. Proudhon. 1847, p. 100. Truly comical is M. Bastiat, who
imagines that the ancient Greeks and Romans lived by plunder alone. But when
people plunder for centuries, there must always be something at hand for them to
seize; the objects of plunder must be continually reproduced. It would thus appear

94 Capitalist Production.

To what extent some economists are misled by the Fetishism
inherent in commodities, or by the objective appearance of
; the social characteristics of labour, is shown, amongst other
ways, by the dull and tedious quarrel over the part played by
Mature in the formation of exchange value. Since exchange
value is a definite social manner of expressing the amount of
labour bestowed upon an object, Nature has no more to do
with it, than it has in fixing the course of exchange.

The mode of production in which the product takes the
form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is
the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois pro
duction. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date
in history, though not in the same predominating and charac
teristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is
comparatively easy to be seen through. But when we come
to more concrete forms, even this appearance of simplicity
vanishes. Whence arose the illusions of the monetary sys
tem ? To it gold and silver, when serving as money, did not
represent a social relation between producers, but were nat-

tbat even Greeks and Romans had some process of production, consequently, an
economy, which just as much constituted the material basis of their world, as bour-
geois economy constitutes that of our modern world. Or perhaps Bastiat means,
that a mode of production based on slavery is based on a system of plunder. In
that case he treads on dangerous ground. If a giant thinker like Aristotle erred in
his appreciation of slave labour, why should a dwarf economist like Bastiat be right
{n his appreciation of wage labour? — I seize this opportunity of shortly answering
an objection taken by a German paper in America, to my work, "Critique of
Political Economy, 1859." In the estimation of that paper, my view that each
special mode of production and the social relations corresponding to it, in short,
that the economic structure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical
and political superstructure is raised, and to which definite social forms of
thought correspond; that the mode of production determines the character of the
social, political, and intellectual life generally, all this is very true for our own
times, in which material interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in
which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics, reigned supreme,
In the first place it strikes one as an odd thing for any one to suppose that these
well-worn phrases about the middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to
anyone else. This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live
on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the
mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and
there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requires but a slight
acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for example, to be
aware that its secret history is the history of its landed property. On the other
hand, DOB Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight
erramtry was compatible with aU economical forms of society.

Commodities. 95

ural objects with strange social properties. And modern
economy, which looks down with such disdain on the monetary
system, does not its superstition come out as clear as noon-day,
whenever it treats of capital ? How long is it since economy ||
discarded the physiocratic illusion, that rents grow out of the I
soil and not out of society ?

But not to anticipate, we will content ourselves with yet
another example relating to the commodity form. Could com
modities themselves speak, they would say : Our use-value may
be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as objects.
What, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value. Our
natural intercourse as commodities proves it. In the eyes of
each other we are nothing but exchange values. Now listen
how those commodities speak through the mouth of the econo
mist "Value" — (i.e., exchange value) "is a property of things,
riches" — (i.e., use-value) "of man. Value, in this sense, neces
sarily implies exchanges, richea do not." * "Riches" (use-
value) "are the attribute of men, value is the attribute of com
modities. A man or a community is rich, a pearl or a dia
mond is valuable. . . A pearl or a diamond is valuable" as a
pearl or diamond.2 So far no chemist has ever discovered ex
change value either in a pearl or a diamond. The economical
discoverers of this chemical element, who by-the-by0 lay special
claim to critical acumen, find however that the use-value of
objects belongs to them independently of their material pro
perties, while their value, on the other hand, forms a part of
them as objects. What confirms them in this view, is the
peculiar circumstances that the use-value of objects is realised
without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the

1 Observations on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ., particularly relating to
value and to demand and supply. Lond., 1821, p. 16.

•S. Bailey, 1. c-, p. 166.

• The author of " Observations " and S, Bailey accuse Ricardo of converting ex
change value from something relative into something absolute. The opposite is the
fact. He has explained the apparent relation between objects, such as diamonds
and pearls, in which relation they appear as exchange values, and disclosed the
trut relation bidden behind the appearances, namely, their relation to each other
as mere expressions of human labour. If the followers of Ricardo answer Bailey
somewkat rudely, and by no means convincingly, the reason is to be sought in
this, that they were unable to find in Ricardo's own works any key to the hidden
relations awistiag between value amd it* form, exchange v*lu«.

g6 Capitalist Production.

objects and man, while, on the other hand, their value is real
ised only by exchange, that is, by means of a social process.
Who fails here to call to mind our good friend, Dogberry, who
informs neighbour Seacoal, that, "To be a well-favoured man
is the gift of fortune; but reading and writing comes by

nature."

CHAPTER II.

EXCHANGE.

IT is plain that commodities cannot go to market and make
exchanges of their own account. We must, therefore, have
recourse to their guardians, who are also their owners. Com
modities are things, and therefore without power of resistance
against man. If they are wanting in docility he can use force ;
in other words, he can take possession of them.1 In order thst
these objects may enter into relation with -each other as com
modities, their guardians must place themselves in relatio i
to one another, as persons whose will resides in those object' ,
and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriata
the commodity of the other, and part with his own, except bv
means of an act done by mutual consent. They must, there
fore, mutually recognise in each other the right of private
proprietors. This juridical relation, which thus expresses it
self in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed
legal system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but
the reflex of the real economical relation between the two. It
is this economical relation that determines the subject matter
comprised in each such juridical act.2 The persons exist for

1 In the 12th century, so renowned for its piety, they included amongst com
modities some very delicate things. Thus a French poet of the period enumerate?
amongst the goods to be fund in the market of Landit, not only clothing, shoes,
leather, agricultural implements, &c., but also " femmes folles de leur corps."

* Proudhon begins by taking his ideal of justice, of "justice eternelle," from th«
juridical relations that correspond to the production of commodities: thereby,
it may be noted, he proves, to the consolation of all good citizens, that the
production of commodities is a form of production as everlasting as justice.
Then he turns round and seeks to reform the actual production of commodities,
and the actual legal system corresponding thereto, in accordance with this ideal.

Exchange. 97

one another merely as representatives of, and, therefore, as
owners of, commodities. In the course of our investigation we
shall find, in general, that the characters who appear on the
economic stage are but the personifications of the economical
relations that exist between them.

What chiefly distinguishes a commodity from its owner is
the fact, that it looks upon every other commodity as but the
form of appearance of its own value. A born leveller and a
cynic, it is always ready to exchange not only soul, but body,
with any and every other commodity, be the same more repul
sive than Maritornes herself. The owner makes up for this
lack in the commodity of a sense of the concrete, by his own
five and more senses. His commodity possesses for himself no
immediate use-value. Otherwise, he would not bring it to the
market. It has use-value for others; but for himself its only
direct use-value is that of being a depository of exchange
value, and consequently, a means of exchange.1 Therefore,
he makes up his mind to part with it for commodities whose
value in use is of service to him. All commodities are non-use-
values for their owners, and use-values for their non-owners.
Consequently, they must all (.-liMiip- li;m<U But ihi< chungf
of hands is what constitutes their exchange, and the latter
puts them in relation with each other as values, and realises
them as values. Hence commodities must be realised as values
before they can be realised as use-values.

On the other hand, they must show that they are use-
values before they can be realised as values. For the labour
spent upon them counts effectively, only in so far as it is spent

What opinion should we have of a chemist, who, instead of studying the actual
laws of the molecular changes in the composition and decomposition of matter, and
on that foundation solving definite problems, claimed to regulate the composition
and decomposition of matter by means of the "eternal ideas," of "naturalite"
and "affinitd?" Do we really know any more about "usury," when we say it
contradicts "justice eternelle," "dquite eternelle," "mutualite" eternellc," and other
'Veritec e'ternelles" than the fathers of the church did when they said it was incom
patible with "grace eternelle," "foi eternelle," and "la volonte eternelle de Dieu?"

1 " For two-fold is the use of every object. . . . The one is peculiar to the
object as such, the other is not, as a sandal which may be worn, and is also ex
changeable. Both are uses of the sandal, for even he who exchanges the sandal for
the money or food he Is in want of, makes use of the sandal as a sandal. But not
in its natural way. For it has not been made for the sake of being exchanged."
(Aristoteles, de Rep., 1. i. c. 9.)

98 Capitalist Production.

in a form that is useful for others. Whether that labour is use
ful for others and its product consequently capable of satisfying
the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange.

Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in ex
change only for those commodities whose use-value satisfies
some want of his. Looked at in this way, exchange is for
him simply a private transaction. On the other hand, he de
sires to realise the value of his commodity, to convert it into
any other suitable commodity of equal value, irrespective of
whether his own commodity has or has not any use-value for
the owner of the other. From this point of view, exchange is
for him a social transaction of a general character. But one
and the same set of transactions cannot be simultaneously for
all owners of commodities both exclusively private and ex
clusively social and general.

Let us look at the matter a little closer. To the owner of a
commodity, every other commodity is, in regard to his own, a
particular equivalent, and consequently his own commodity is
the universal equivalent for all the others. But since this
applies to every owner, there is, in fact, no commodity acting
as universal equivalent, and the relative value of commodities
possesses no general form under which they can be equated as
values and have the magnitude of their values compared. So
far, therefore, they do not confront each other as commodities,
but only as products or use-values. In their difficulties our
commodity-owners think like Faust: "Im Anfang war die
That" They therefore acted and transacted before they
thought. Instinctively they conform to the laws imposed by
the nature of commodities. They cannot bring their com
modities into relation as values, and therefore as commodities,
except by comparing them with some one other commodity
as the universal equivalent. That we saw from the analysis
of a commodity. But a particular commodity cannot become
the universal equivalent except by a social act The social
action therefore of all other commodities, sets apart the par
ticular commodity in which they all represent their values.
Thereby the bodily form of this commodity becomes the form
of the socially recognised universal equivalent. To be the

Exchange. 99

universal equivalent, becomes, by this social process, the
specific function of the commodity thus excluded by the rest.
Thus it becomes — money. "Illi unurn consilium habent et
virtutem et potestatem suam bestise tradunt. Et ne quia
possit emere aut vendere, nisi qui habet characterem aut
nomen bestise, aut numerum nominis ejus." (Apocalypse.)

Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the
exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically
equated to one another and thus by practice converted into
commodities. The historical progress and extension of ex
changes develops the contrast, latent in commodities, between
use-value and value. The necessity for giving an external
expression to this contrast for the purposes of commercial in
tercourse, urges on the establishment of an independent form
of value, and finds no rest until it is once for all satisfied by
the differentiation of commodities into commodities and money.
At the same rate, then, as the conversion of products into
commodities is being accomplished, so also is the conversion of
one special commodity into money.1

The direct barter of products attains the elementary form
of the relative expression of value in one respect, but not in
another. That form is x Commodity A=y Commodity B.
The form of direct barter is x use-value A=y use-value B.2
The articles A and B in this case are not as yet commodities,
but become so only by the act of barter. The first step made
by an object of utility towards acquiring exchange-value
is when it forms a non-use-value for its owner, and that hap
pens when it forms a superfluous portion of some article
required for his immediate wants. Objects in themselves are
external to man, and consequently alienable by him. In order
that this alienation may be reciprocal, it is only necessary for

1 From this we may form an estimate of the shrewdness of the petit-bourgeois
socialism, which, while perpetuating the production of commodities, aims at
abolishing the " antagonism " between money and commodities, and consequently,
since money exists only by virtue of this antagonism, at abolishing money itself.
We might just as well try to retain Catholicism without the Pope. For more
on this point see my work, "Critique of Political Economy," p. 73, ff.

9 So long as, instead of two distinct use-values being exchanged, a chaotic mass
of articles are offered as the equivalent of a single article, which is often the case
with savages, even the direct barter of products is in its first infancy.

ioo Capitalist Production.

men, by a tacit understanding, to treat each other as private
owners of those alienable objects, and by implication as inde
pendent individuals. But such a state of reciprocal indepen
dence has no existence in a primitive society based on pro
perty in common, whether such a society takes the form of a
patriarchal family, an ancient Indian community, or a Peru
vian Inca State. The exchange of commodities, therefore, first
begins on the boundaries of such communities, at their points
of contact with other similar communities, or with members of
the latter. So soon, however, as products once become com
modities in the external relations of a community, they aho,
by reaction, become so in its internal intercourse. The pro
portions in which they are exchangeable are at first quite a
matter of chance. What makes them exchangeable is the
mutual desire of their owners to alienate them. Meantime the
need for foreign objects of utility gradually establishes itself.
The constant repetition of exchange makes it a normal social
act. In the course of time, therefore, some portion at least of
the products of labour must be produced with a special vi.yw
to exchange. From that moment the distinction becones
firmly established between the utility of an object for the pur
poses of consumption, and its utility for the purposes of ex
change. Its use-value becomes distinguished from its ( ex
change value. On the other hand, the quantitative proportion
in which the articles are exchangeable, becomes dependent m
their production itself. Custom stamps them as values with
definite magnitudes.

In the direct barter of products, each commodity is directly
a means of exchange to its owner, and to all other persons in
equivalent, but that only in so far as it has use-value for then.
At this stage, therefore, the articles exchanged do not acquire
a value-form independent of their own use-value, or of the
individual needs of the exchangers. The necessity for a value-
form grows with the increasing number and variety of the-
commodities exchanged. The problem and the means of solu
tion arise simultaneously. Commodity-owners never equate
their own commodities to those of others, and exchange thrm
on a large scale, without different kinds of commodities belor g-

Exchange. 101

ing to different owners being exchangeable for, and equated as
values to, one and the same special article. Such last-men
tioned article, by becoming the equivalent of various other
commodities, acquires at once, though within narrow limits,
the character of a general social equivalent. This character
comes and goes with the momentary social acts that called it
into life. In turns and transiently it attaches itself first to this
and then to that commodity. But with the development of
exchange it fixes itself firmly and exclusively to particular
sorts of commodities, and becomes crystallised by assuming the
money-form. The particular kind of commodity to which it
sticks is at first a matter of accident, Nevertheless there are
two circumstances whose influence is decisive. The money-
form attaches itself either to the most important articles of ex
change from outside, and these in fact are primitive and nat
ural forms in which the exchange-value of home products finds
expression; or else it attaches itself to the object of utility
that forms, like cattle, the. chief portion of indigenous alienable
wealth. Nomad races are the first to develop the money-form,
because all their worldly goods consist of movable objects
and are therefore directly alienable ; and because their mode of
life, by continually bringing them into contact with foreign
communities, solicits the exchange of products. Man has often
made man himself, under the form of slaves, serve as the prim
itive material of money, but has never used land for that
purpose. Such an idea could only spring up in a bourgeois
society already well developed. It dates from the last third of
the 17th century, and the first attempt to put it in practice on a
national scale was made a century afterwards, during the
French bourgeois revolution.

In proportion as exchange bursts its local bonds, and the
value of commodities more and more expands into an embodi
ment of human labour in the abstract, in the same proportion
the character of money attaches itself to commodities that are
by nature fitted to perform the social function of a universal
equivalent. Those commodities are the precious metals.

The truth of the proposition that, "although gold and silver
are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and

IO2 Capitalist Production.

silver/' 1 is shown by the fitness of the physical properties of
these metals for the functions of money.2 Up to this point,
however, we are acquainted only with one function of money,
namely, to serve as the form of manifestation of the value of
commodities, or as the material in which the magnitudes of
their values are socially expressed. An adequate form of
manifestation of value, a fit embodiment of abstract, undiffer-
entiated, and therefore equal human labour, that material
alone can be whose every sample exhibits the same uniform
qualities. On the other hand, since the difference between the
magnitudes of value is purely quantitative, the money con-
modity must be susceptible of merely quantitative differences,
must therefore be divisible at will, and equally capable of beirg
re-united. Gold and silver possess these properties by nature.

The use-value of the money commodity becomes twofold.
In addition to its special use-value as a commodity (gold,
for instance, serving to stop teeth, to form the raw material of
articles of luxury, &c.), it acquires a formal use-value, origina
ting in its specific social function.

Since all commodities are merely particular equivalents of
money, the latter being their universal equivalent, they, with
regard to the latter as the universal commodity, play the par s
of particular commodities.8

We have seen that the money-form is but the reflex, throw a
upon one single commodity, of the value relations between all
the rest. That money is a commodity 4 is therefore a new dh-

1 Karl Marx, L c. p. 212. "I metalli. . . naturalmcnte moneta," (Galiar i.
"Delia moneta" in Custodi's Collection: Parte Moderna t. iii.).

8 For further details on this subject see in my work cited above, the chapter en
" The precious metals."

'"II danaro e la merce universale (Verri, 1. c., p. 16).

* "Silver and gold themselves (which we may call by the general name of
bullion), are . . . commodities . . . rising and falling in ... value. . . Bullio i,
then, may be reckoned to be of higher value where the smaller weight will purcha^
the greatest quantity of the product or manufacture of the countrey," &c. ("A
Discourse of the General Notions of Money, Trade, and Exchange, as they stard
in relations to each other." By a Merchant. Lond., 1695, p. 7.) "Silver ard
gold, coined or uncoined, though they are used for a measure of all other things,
are no less a commodity than wine, oyl, tobacco, cloth, or stuffs." (" A Discourse
concerning Trade, and that in particular of the East Indies," &c. London, 168 J, .
p. 2.) "The stock and riches of the kingdom cannot properly be confined :o
money, nor ought gold and silver to be excluded from being merchandize." ("A

Exchange. 103

covery only for those who, when they analyse it, start from its
fully developed shape. The act of exchange gives to the com
modity converted into money, not its value, but its specific
value-form. By confounding these two distinct things some
writers have been led to hold that the value of gold and silver
is imaginary.1 The fact that money can, in certain functions,
be replaced by mere symbols of itself, gave rise to that other
mistaken notion, that it is itself a mere symbol. Nevertheless
under this error lurked a presentiment that the money-form of
an object is not an inseparable part of that object, but is simply
the form under which certain social relations manifest them
selves. In this sense every commodity is a symbol, since, in so
far as it is value, it is only the material envelope of the human
labour spent upon it.2 But if it be declared that the social
characters assumed by objects, or the material forms assumed
by the social qualities of labour under the regime of a definite
mode of production, are mere symbols, it is in the same breath
also declared that these characteristics are arbitrary fictions
sanctioned by the so-called universal consent of mankind. This

Treatise concerning the East India Trade being a most profitable Trade." Lon
don, 1680, Reprint 1696, p. 4.)

1 "L'oro c 1'argento hanno valore come metalli anteriore all' esser moneta."
(Galiani, I.e.). Locke says, " The universal consent of mankind gave to silver, on
account of its qualities which made it suitable for money, an. imaginary value."
Law, on the other hand, " How could different nations give an imaginary value
to any single thing ... or how could this imaginary value have maintained itself?"
But the following shows how little he himself understood about the matter: " Sil
ver was exchanged in proportion to the value in use it possessed, consequently in
proportion to its real value. By its adoption as money it received an additional
value (une valeur additionelle)" (Jean Law: "Considerations sur le numeraire
et le commerce" in E. Daire's Edit, of "Economistes Financiers du XVIII. siecle.,"
p. 470).

* L' Argent en (des denrees) est le signe." (V. de Forbonnais: "Elements du
Commerce, Nouv. Edit. Leyde, 1776," t. II., p. 143.) "Comme signe il est attire
par les denrees." (I.e., p. 155). " L'argent est un signe d'une chose et la
represente." (Montesquieu: "Esprit des Lois," Oeuvres, Lond. 1767, t. II., p. 2.)
"L'argent n'est pas simple signe, car il est lui-meme richesse; il ne represente
pas les valeurs, il les e"quivaut." (Le Trosne, I.e., p. 910.) "The notion of value
contemplates the valuable article as a mere symbol; the article counts not for what
it is, but for what it is worth." (Hegel, I.e., p. 100.) Lawyers started long
before economists the idea that money is a mere symbol, and that the value of the
precious metals is purely imaginary. This they did in the sycophantic service of
the crowned heads, supporting the right of the latter to debase the coinage, during
the whole of the middle ages, by the traditions of the Roman Empire and the
conceptions of money to be found in the Pandects. "Qu' aucun puisse ni doive
faire doute," says an apt scholar of theirs, Philip of Valois, in a decree of
1346, " que 4 nous et a notre majeste royale n' appartiennent seulement. . . le

IO4 Capitalist Production.

suited the mode of explanation in favour during the 18th
century. Unable to account for the origin of the puzzling
forms assumed by social relations between man and man, peo
ple sought to denude them of their strange appearance by
ascribing to them a conventional origin.

It has already been remarked above that the equivalent form
of a commodity does not imply the determination of the magni
tude of its value. Therefore, although we may be aware that
gold is money, and consequently directly exchangeable for all
other commodities, yet that fact by no means tells how much
10 Ibs., for instance, of gold is worth. Money, like every other
commodity, cannot express the magnitude of its value except
relatively in other commodities. This value is determined by
the labour-time required for its production, and is expressed by
the quantity of any other commodity that costs the same
amount of labour-time,1 Such quantitative determination of
its relative value takes place at the source of its production by
means of barter. When it steps into circulation as money, its
value is already given. In the last decades of the 17th cen
tury it had already been shown that money is a commodity,
but this step marks only the infancy of the analysis. The
difficulty lies, not in comprehending that money is a commo
dity, but in discovering how, why and by what means a com
modity becomes money.2

meatier, Ic fait, l'e"tat, la provision et toute 1'ordonnancc des monnaies, de dormer
tel cours, et pour tel prix comme il nous plait et bon nous semble." It waf
a maxim of the Roman Law that the value of money was fixed by decree of the
emperor. It was expressly forbidden to treat money as a commodity. " Pecunias
vero nulli emere fas erit, nam in usu publico constitutas oportet non esse
ntercem." Some good work on this question has been done by G. F. Pagnini:
"Saggio sopra il giusto pregio delle cose, 1751"; Custodi "Parte Moderna," t.
II. In the second part of his work Pagnini directs his polemics especially against
the lawyers.

1 " If a man can bring to London an ounce of Silver out of the Earth in
Peru, in the same time that he can produce a bushel of Corn, then the one is the
natural price of the other; now, if by reason of new or more easie mines a man
can procure two ounces of silver as easily as he formerly did one, the corn will
be as cheap at ten shillings the bushel as it was before at five shillings, caeteria
paribus." William Petty: "A Treatise on Taxes and Contributions." Lond., 1662,
p. 32.

* The learned Professor Roscher, after first informing us that " the false defini
tions of money may be divided into two main groups: those which make it more,
and those which make it less, than a commodity," gives us a long and very mixed
catalogue of works on the nature of money, from which it appears that he has

Exchange. 105

We have already seen, from the most elementary expres
sion of value, x commodity A— y commodity B, that the object
in which the magnitude of the value of another object is repre
sented, appears to have the equivalent form independently of
this relation, as a social property given to it by Nature. W v
followed up this false appearance to its final establishment,
which is complete so soon as the universal equivalent form
becomes identified with the bodily form of a particular com
modity, and thus crystallised into the money-form. What
appears to happen is, not that gold becomes money, in conse
quence of all other commodities expressing their values in it,
but, on the contrary, that all other commodities universally
express their values in gold, because it is money. The inter
mediate steps of the process vanish in the result and leave no
trace behind. Commodities find their own value already com
pletely represented, without any initiative on their part, in
another commodity existing in company with them. These
objects, gold and silver, just as they come out of the bowels of
the earth, are forthwith the direct incarnation of all human
labour. Hence the magic of money. In the form of society
now under consideration, the behaviour of men in the social
process of production is purely atomic. Hence their relations
to each other in production assume a material character inde
pendent of their control and conscious individual action.
These facts manifest themselves at first by products as a gen
eral rule taking the form of commodities. We have seen how
the progressive development of a society of commodity-pro
ducers stamps one privileged commodity with the character of
money. Hence the riddle presented by money is but the riddle

not the remotest idea of the real history of the theory; and then he moralises
thus: " For the rest, it is not to be denied that most of the later economists do not
bear sufficiently in mind the peculiarities that distinguish money from other com
modities" (it is then, after all, either more or less than a commodity!) . . . "So
far, the semi-mercantilist reaction of Ganilh is not altogether without foundation."
(Wilhelm Roscher: " Die Grundlagen der Nationaloekonomie," 3rd Edn., 1858, pp.
277-210) Morel less! not sufficiently 1 so far! not altogether! What clearness and
precision of ideas and language I And such eclectic professorial twaddle is mod
estly baptised by Mr. Roscher, " the anatomico-physiological method " of political
economy! One discovery however, he must have credit for, namely, that money is
"a pleasant commodity."

106 Capitalist Production.

presented by commodities; only it now strikes us in its most
glaring form.

CHAPTEK III.

MONEY, OR THE CIRCULATION OF COMMODITIES.
SECTION 1. THE MEASURE OF VALUES.

THROUGHOUT this work, I assume, for the sake of simplicity,
gold as the money-commodity.

The first chief function -of money is to supply commodities
with the material for the expression of their values, or to re
present their values as magnitudes of the same denomination,
qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable. It thus
serves as a universal measure of value. And only by virtue of
this function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excel
lence, become money.

It is not money that renders commodities commensurable.
Just the contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are
realised human labour, and therefore commensurable, that
their values can be measured by one and the same special com
modity, and the latter be converted into the common measure
of their values, i.e., into money. Money as a measure of
value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be as
sumed by that measure of value which is immanent in com
modities, labour-time.1

The expression of the value of a commodity in gold — x

1 The question — Why docs not money directly represent labour-time, so that a
piece of paper may represent, for instance, x hour's labour, is at bottom the same
as the question why, given the production of commodities, must products take the
form of commodities? This is evident, since their taking the form of commodities
implies their differentiation into commodities and money. Or, why cannot pri
vate labour — labour for the account of private individuals — be treated as its oppo
site, immediate social labour? I have elsewhere examined thoroughly the Utopian
idea of "labour-money" in a society founded on the production of commodities
(1. c., p. 61, seq.). On this point I will only say further, that Owen's " labour-
money," for instance, is no more "money" than a ticket for the theatre. Owen
presupposes directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely in
consistent with the production of commodities. The certificate of labour is merely
evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his
right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption. But
it never enters into Owen's head to presuppose the production of commodities,
and at the same time, by juggling with money, to try to evade the necessary con
ditions of that production.

'Money f or the Circulation of Commodities. 107

commodity A=y money-commodity — is its money-form or
price. A single equation, such as 1 ton of iron=2 ounces of
gold, now suffices to express the value of the iron in a socially
valid manner. There is no longer any need for this equation
to figure as a link in the chain of equations that express the
values of all other commodities, because the equivalent com
modity, gold, now has the character of money. The general
form of relative value has resumed its original shape of simple
or isolated relative value. On the other hand, the expanded
expression of relative value, the endless series of equations, has
now hecome the form peculiar to the relative value of the
money-commodity. The series itself, too, is now given, and
has social recognition in the prices of actual commodities. We
have only to read the quotations of a price-list backwards, to
find the magnitude of the value of money expressed in all sorts
of commodities. But money itself has no price. In order to
put it on an equal footing with all other commodities in this
respect, we should be obliged to equate it to itself as its own
equivalent.

The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form
of value generally, a form quite distinct from their palpable
bodily form; it is, therefore, a purely ideal or mental form.
Although invisible, the value of iron, linen and corn has actual
existence in these very articles : it is ideally made perceptible
by their equality with gold, a relation that, so to say, exists
only in their own heads. Their owner must, therefore, lend
them his tongue, or hang a ticket on them, before their prices
can be communicated to the outside world.1 Since the ex
pression of the value of commodities in gold is a merely ideal

1 Savages and half -civilised races use the tong differently. Captain Parry says
of the inhabitants on the west coast of Baffin's Bay: "In this case (he refers to
barter) they licked it (the thing represented to them) twice to their tongues, after
which they seemed to consider the bargain satisfactorily concluded." In the same
way, the Eastern Esquimaux licked the articles they received in exchange. If the
tongue is thus used in the North as the organ of appropriation, no wonder that, in
the South, the stomach serves as the organ of accumulated property, and that a
Kaffir estimates the wealth of a man by the size of his belly. That the Kaffirs
know what they are about is shown by the following: at the same time that the
official British Health Report of 1864 disclosed the deficiency of fat-forming food
among a large part of the working class, a certain Dr. Harvey (not, however, the
celebrated discoverer of the circulation of the blood), made a good thing by adver
tising recipes for reducing the superfluous fat of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy.

io8 Capitalist Production.

act, we may use for this purpose imaginary or ideal money.
Every trader knows, that he is far from having turned his
goods into money, when he has expressed their value in a price
or in, imaginary money, and that it does not require the least
bit of real gold, to estimate in that metal millions of pounds*
worth of goods. When, therefore, money serves as a measure
of value, it is employed only as imaginary or ideal money.
This circumstance has given rise to the wildest theories.1 But,
although the money that performs the functions of a measure
of value is only ideal money, price depends entirely upon the
actual substance that is money. The value, or in other word»,
the quantity of human labour contained in a ton of iron, is
expressed in imagination by such a quantity of the money-
commodity as contains the same amount of labour as the iror .
According, therefore, as the measure of value is gold, silver, or
copper, the value of the ton of iron will be expressed by very
different prices, or will be represented by very different quan
tities of those metals respectively.

If, therefore, two different commodities, such as gold and
silver, are simultaneously measures of value, all commodities
have two prices — one a gold-price, the other a silver-price.
These exist quietly side by side, so long as the ratio of tEs
value of silver to that of gold remains unchanged, say, at 15 : 1.
Every change in their ratio disturbs the ratio which exists
between the gold-prices and the silver-prices of commodities,
and thus proves, by facts, that a double standard of value h
inconsistent with the functions of a standard.2

1See Karl Marx: "Critique, etc., chapter II. B., Theories of the Unit of Meas
ure of Money," p. 01, ff.

'"Wherever gold and silver have by law been made to perform the function of
money or of a measure of value side by side, it has always been tried, but in
vain, to treat them as one and the same material. To assume that there is a:i
invariable ratio between the quantities of gold and silver in which a given quantity
of labour-time is incorporated, is to assume, in fact, that gold and silver are o"
one and the same material, and that a given mass of the less valuable metal,
silver, is a constant fraction of a given mass of gold. From the reign of Edward
III. to the time of George II., the history of money in England consists of on«-
long series of perturbations caused by the clashing of the legally fixed ratio be
tween the values of gold and silver, with the fluctuations in their real values. A:
one time gold was too high, at another, silver. The metal that for the time beinfc
was estimated below its value, was withdrawn from circulation, melted and ex
ported. The ratio between the two metals was then again altered by law, but
the new nominal ratio soon came into conflict again with the real one. In our owi

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 109

Commodities with definite prices present themselves under
the form : a commodity A=x gold ; b commodity B=z gold ;
c commodity C=y gold, &c., where a, b, c, represent definite
quantities of the commodities A, B, C and x, z, y, definite
quantities of gold. The values of these commodities are,
therefore, changed in imagination into so many different quan
tities of gold. Hence, in spite of the confusing variety of
the commodities themselves, their values become magnitudes
of the same denomination, gold-magnitudes. They are now
capable of being compared with each other and measured, and
the want becomes technically felt of comparing them with
some fixed quantity of gold as a unit measure. This unit, by
subsequent division into aliquot parts, becomes itself the
standard or scale. Before they become money, gold, silver,
and copper already possess such standard measures in their
standards of weight, so that, for example, a pound weight,
while serving as the unit, is, on the one hand, divisible into
ounces, and, on the other, may be combined to make up
hundredweights.1 It is owing to this that, in all metallic
currencies, the names given to the standards of money or of
price were originally taken from the pre-existing names of the
standards of weight.

As measure of value and as standard of price, money has two

times, the slight and transient fall in the value of gold compared with silver, which
was a consequence of the Indo-Chinese demand for silver, produced on a far
more extended scale in France the same phenomena, export of silver, and its ex
pulsion from circulation by gold. During the years 1855, 1856 and 1867, the excess
in France of gold-imports over gold exports amounted to £41,580,000, while the
excess of silver-exports over silver-imports was £14,704,000. In fact, in those
countries in which both metals are legally measures of value, and therefore both
legal tender, so that everyone has the option of paying in either metal, the metal
that rises in value is at a premium, and, like every other commodity, measures its
price in the over-estimated metal which alone serves in reality as the standard
of value. The result of all experience and history with regard to this question is
simply that, where two commodities perform by law the functions of a measure of
value, in practice one alone maintains that position." (Karl Marx, 1. c. pp. 90-91.)
1 The peculiar circumstance, that while the ounce of gold serves in England as
the unit of the standard of money, the pound sterling does not form an aliquot
part of it, has been explained as follows: "Our coinage was originally adapted
to the employment of silver only, hence, an ounce of silver can always be divided
into a certain adequate number of pieces of coin; but as gold was introduced
at a later period into a coinage adapted only to silver, an ounce of gold cannot be
coined into an aliquot number of pieces." Maclaren, "A Sketch of the History
of the Currency." London, 1858, p. 16.

no Capitalist Production.

entirely distinct functions to perform. It is the measure
of value inasmuch as it is the socially recognised incarnation
of human labour; it is the standard of price inasmuch as it is
a fixed weight of metal. As the measure of value Jjb^serves to
convert the values of all the manifold commodities into prices,
into imaginary quantities of gold ; as the standard of price it
measures those quantities of gold. The measure of values
measures commodities considered as values; the standard of
price measures, on the contrary, quantities of gold by a unit
quantity of gold, not the value of one quantity of gold by the
weight of another. In order to make gold a standard of price,
a certain weight must be fixed upon as the unit. In this case,
as in all cases of measuring quantities of the same denomina
tion, the establishment of an unvarying unit of measure is all-
important. Hence, the less the unit is subject to variation, so
much the better does the standard of price fulfill its office. But
only in so far as it is itself a product of labour, and, therefore),
potentially variable in value, can gold serve as a measure of
value.1,

It is, in the first place, quite clear that a change in the valua
of gold does not, in any way, affect its function as a standard
of price. No matter how this value varies, the proportions
between the values of different quantities of the metal remain
constant. However great the fall in its value, 12 ounces of
gold still have 12 times the value of 1 ounce; and in prices,
the only thing considered is the relation between different
quantities of gold. Since, on the other hand, no rise or fall in
the value of an ounce of gold can alter its weight, no alteration
can take place in the weight of its aliquot parts. Thus gold
always renders the same service as an invariable standard of
price, however much its value may vary.

In the second place, a change in the vajue of gold does no!;
interfere with its functions as a measure of value. Thu
change affects all commodities simultaneously, and, therefore,
cceterip paribus, leaves their relative values inter sef unaltered.

1 With English writers the confusion between measure of value and standard of
price (standard of value) is indescribable. Their functions, as well as tb«»ir names
are constantly interchanged.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. in

although those values are now expressed in higher or lower
gold-prices.

Just as when we estimate the value of any commodity by
a definite quantity of the use-value of some other commodity,
so in estimating the value of the former in gold, we assume
nothing more than that the production of a given quantity of
gold costs, at the given period, a given amount of labour. As
regards the fluctuations of prices generally, they are subject to
the laws of elementary relative value investigated in a former
chapter.

A general rise in the prices of commodities can result only,
either from a rise in their values — the value of money remain
ing constant — or from a fall in the value of money, the values
of commodities remaining constant On the other hand, a
general fall in prices can result only, either from a fall in the
values of commodities — the value of money remaining con
stant — or from a rise in the value of money, the values of
commodities remaining constant. It therefore by no means
follows, that a rise in the value of money necessarily implies a
proportional fall in the prices of commodities ; or that a fall in
the value of money implies a proportional rise in prices.
Such change of price holds good only in the case of com
modities whose value remains constant. With those, for ex
ample whose value rises, simultaneously with, and propor
tionally to, that of money, there is no alteration in price.
And if their value rise either slower or faster than that of
money, the fall or rise in their prices will be determined by
the difference between the change in their value and that of
money ; and so on.

Let us now go back to the consideration of the price-form.

By degrees there arises a discrepancy between the current
money names of the various weights of the precious metal
figuring as money, and the actual weights which those names
originally represented. This discrepancy is the result of his
torical causes, among which the chief are: — (1) The im
portation of foreign money into an imperfectly developed
community. This happened in Rome in its early days, where
gold and silver coins circulated at first as foreign commodities.

112 Capitalist Production.

The names of these foreign coins never coincide with those of
the indigenous weights. (2) As wealth increases, the less
precious metal is thrust out by the more precious from its place
as a measure of value, copper by silver, silver by gold, however
much this order of sequence may be in contradiction with
poetical chronology.1 The word pound, for instance, was the
money-name given to an actual pound weight of silver. When
gold replaced silver as a measure of value, the same name was
applied according to the ratio between the values of silver and
gold, to perhaps 1-1 5th of a pound of gold. The word pound,
as a money-name, thus becomes differentiated from the same
word as a weight-name.2 (3) The debasing of money carried
on for centuries by kings and princes to such an extent that, of
the original weights of the coins, nothing in fact remained but
the names.

These historical causes convert the separation of the money-
name from the weight-name into an established habit with the
community.3 Since the standard of money is on the one hand
purely conventional, and must on the other hand find general
acceptance, it is in the end regulated by law. A given weight
of one of the precious metals, an ounce of gold, for instance,
becomes officially divided into aliquot parts, with legally be
stowed names, such as pound, dollar, &c. These aliquot parts,
which henceforth serve as units of money, are then sub
divided into other aliquot parts with legal names, such as
shilling, penny, &c.4 But, both before and after these
divisions are made, a definite weight of metal is the standard
of metallic money. The sole alteration consists in the sub
division and denomination.

1 Moreover, it has not general historical validity.

3 It is thus that the pound sterling in English denotes less than one-third of its
original weight; the pound Scot, before the union, only l-36th; the French livre,
l-74th; the Spanish maravedi, less than l-1000th; and the Portuguese rei a still
smaller fraction.

* "Le monete le quali oggi sono ideali sono le piu antiche d'ogni nazione, e tutte
furono un tempo reali, e perche erano reali con esse si contava." (Galiam:
Delia moneta, 1. c., p. 153.)

* David Urquhart remarks in his "Familiar Words" on the monstrosity (I)
that now-a-days a pound (sterling), which is the unit of the English standard
of money, is equal to about a quarter of an ounce of gold. "This is falsify
ing a measure, not establishing a standard." He sees in this " false denomination "
of the weight of gold, as in everything else, the falsifying hand of civilisation.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 113

The prices, or quantities of gold, into which the values of
commodities are ideally changed, are therefore now expressed
in the names of coins, or in the legally valid names of the sub
divisions of the gold standard. Hence, instead of saying: A
quarter of wheat is worth an ounce of gold ; we say, it is worth
£3 17s. lOJd. In this way commodities express by their prices
how much they are worth, and money serves as money of
account whenever it is a question of fixing the value of an
article in its money-form.1

The name of a thing is something distinct from the qualities
of that thing. I know nothing of a man, by knowing that his
name is Jacob. In the same way with regard to money, every
trace of a value-relation disappears in the names pound, dollar,
franc, ducat, &c. The confusion caused by attributing a hidden
meaning to these cabalistic signs is all the greater, because
these money-names express both the values of commodities,
and, at the same time, aliquot parts of the weight of the metal
that is the standard of money.2 On the other hand, it is
absolutely necessary that value, in order that it may be distin
guished from the varied bodily forms of commodities, should
assume this material and unmeaning, but, at the same time,
purely social form.3

1 When Anacharsis was asked for what purposes the Greeks used money, he re
plied, " For reckoning." (Athen. Deipn. 1. "iv. 49 v. 2. ed Schweighauser, 1802.)

* " Owing to the fact that money, when serving as the standard of price, appears
under the same reckoning names as do the prices of commodities, and that
therefore the sum of £3 17s. 10 l/2d. may signify on the one hand an ounce weight
of gold, and on the other, the value of a ton of iron, this reckoning name of money
has been called its mint-price. Hence there sprang up the extraordinary notion,
that the value of gold is estimated in its own material, and that, in contra-distinc-
tion to all other commodities, its price is fixed by the State. It was erroneously
thought that the giving of reckoning names to definite weights of gold, is the
same thing as fixing the value of those weights." (Karl Marx. 1. c., p. 89.)

3 See "Theories of the Unit of Measure of Money" in "Critique of Political
Economy," p. 91, ff. The fantastic notions about raising or lowering the mint-
price of money by transferring to greater or smaller weights of gold or silver
the names already legally appropriated to fixed weights of those metals; such no
tions, at least in those cases in which they aim, not at clumsy financial operations
against creditors, both public and private, but at economical quack remedies have
been so exhaustively treated by Wm. Petty in his " Quantulumcunque concerning
money: To the Lord Marquis of Halifax, 1682," that even his immediate followers,
Sir Dudley North and John Locke, not to mention later ones, could only dilute
him. " If the wealth of a nation," he remarks, " could be decupled by a proclama
tion, it were strange that such proclamations have not long since been made by our
Governors." (1. c., p. 86.)

H4 Capitalist Production.

Price is the money-name of the labour realised in a commo
dity. Hence the expression of the equivalence of a commodity
with the sum of money constituting its price, is a tautology,1
just as in general the expression of the relative value of a
commodity is a statement of the equivalence of two commod
ities. But although price, being the exponent of the magni
tude of a commodity's value, is the exponent of its exchange-
ratio with money, it does not follow that the exponent of this
exchange-ratio is necessarily the exponent of the magnitude of
the commodity's value. Suppose two equal quantities of social
ly necessary labour to be respectively represented by 1 quarte:*
of wheat and £2 (nearly \ oz. of gold), £2 is the expression in
money of the magnitude of the value of the quarter of wheat,
or is its price. If now circumstances allow of this price bein^;
raised to £3, or compel it to be reduced to £1, then although
£1 and £3 may be too small or too great properly to express
the magnitude of the wheat's value, nevertheless they are iU
prices, for they are, in the first place, the form under which its
value appears, i.e., money; and in the second place, the ex
ponents of its exchange-ratio with money. If the conditions
of production, in other words, if the productive power oi
labour remain constant, the same amount of social labour-time
must, both before and after the change in price, be expended in
the reproduction of a quarter of wheat. This circumstance de
pends, neither on the will of the wheat producer, nor on that
of the owners of other commodities.

Magnitude of value expresses a relation of social production,
it expresses the connection that necessarily exists between a
certain article and the portion of the total labour-time of society
required to produce it. As soon as magnitude of value is con
verted into price, the above necessary relation takes the shape
of a more or less accidental exchange-ratio between a single
commodity and another, the money-commodity. But this ex
change-ratio may express either the real magnitude of that
commodity's value, or the quantity of gold deviating from that
value, for which, according to circumstances, it may be parted

1 " Ou bien, il faut consentir a dire qu'une valeur d'un million en argent vaut
plus qu'une valeur egale en marchandises." (Le Trosne 1. c. p. 919), which
amounts to saying, "qu'une valeur vaut plus qu'une valeur egale."

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 115

with. The possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity
between price and magnitude of value, or the deviation of the
former from the latter; is inherent in the price-form itself.
This is no defect, but, on the contrary, admirably adapts the
price-form to a mode of production whose inherent laws impose
themselves only as the mean of apparently lawless irregulari
ties that compensate one another.

The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the
possibility of a quantitative incongruity between magnitude
of value and price, i.e., between the former and its expression
in money, but it may also conceal a qualitative inconsistency, so
much so, that, although money is nothing but the value-form of
commodities, price ceases altogether to express value. Objects
that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience,
honour, &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their hold
ers, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of com
modities. Hence an object may have a price without having
value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quan
tifies in mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary price-
form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real
value-relation ; for instance, the price of uncultivated land,
which is without value, because no human labour has been in
corporated in it.

Price, like relative value in general, expresses the value of
a commodity (e.g., a ton of iron), by stating that a given quan
tity of the equivalent (e.g., an ounce of gold), is directly ex
changeable for iron. But it by no means states the converse,
that iron is directly exchangeable for gold. In order, there
fore, that a commodity may in practice act effectively as ex
change value, it must quit its bodily shape, must transform it
self from mere imaginary into real gold, although to the com
modity such transubstantiation may be more difficult than to
the Hegelian "concept," the transition from "necessity" to
"freedom," or to a lobster the casting of his shell, or to Saint
Jerome the putting off of the old Adam.1 Though a commod-

1 Jerome had to wrestle hard, not only in his youth with the bodilj flesh, as is
shown by his fight in the desert with the handsome women of his imagination, but
also in his old age with the spiritual flesh. " I thought," he says, " I was in the
Spirit before the Judge of the Universe." "Who art thou?" asked a voice. "I am

n6 Capitalist Production.

ity may, side by side with its actual form (iron, for in
stance), take in our imagination the form of gold, yet it cannot
at one and the same time actually be both iron and gold. To
fix its price, it suffices to equate it to gold in imagination. But
to enable it to render to its owner the service of a universal
equivalent, it must be actually replaced by gold. If the owner
of the iron were to go to the owner of some other commodity
offered for exchange, and were to refer him to the price of the
iron as proof that it was already money, he would get the same
answer as St. Peter gave in heaven to Dante, when the latter

recited the creed —

" Assai bene £ trascorsa
D'esta moneta gia la lega e'l peso,
Ma dimmi se tu Thai nella tua borsa."

A price therefore implies both that a commodity is exchange
able for money, and also that it must be so exchanged. On
the other hand, gold serves as an ideal measure of value, only
because it has already, in the process of exchange, established
itself as the money-commodity. Under the ideal measure of
values there lurks the hard cash,

SECTION 2. THE MEDIUM OF CIRCULATION.

a. The Meiamorphosis of Commodities.

We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of commodi
ties implies contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions.
The differentiation of commodities into commodities and
money does not sweep away these inconsistencies, but develops
a modus vivendi, a form in which they can exist side by side.
This is generally the way in which real contradictions are
reconciled. For instance, it is a contradiction to depict one
body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the
same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a
form of motion which, while allowing this contradiction to go
on, at the same time reconciles it.

In so far as exchange is a process, by which commodities are
transferred from hands in which they are non-use-values, to

a Christian." "Thou liest," thundered back the great Judge, "thou art nought but
a Ciceronian."

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 117

hands in which they become use-values, it is a social circula
tion of matter. The product of one form of useful labour
replaces that of another. When once a commodity has found
a resting-place, where it can serve as a use-value, it falls out
of the sphere of exchange into that of consumption. But the
former sphere alone interests us at present. We have, there
fore, now to consider exchange from a formal point of view ; to
investigate the change of form or metamorphosis of commodi
ties which effectuates the social circulation of matter.

The comprehension of this change of form is, as a rule, very
imperfect. The cause of this imperfection is, apart from indis
tinct notions of value itself, that every change of form in a
commodity results from the exchange of two commodities, an
ordinary one and the money-commodity. If we keep in view the
material fact alone that a commodity has been exchanged for gold
we overlook the very thing that we ought to observe — namely,
what has happened to the form of the commodity. We overlook
the facts that gold, when a mere commodity, is not money, and
that when other commodities express their prices in gold, this
gold is but the money-form of those commodities themselves.

Commodities, first of all, enter into the process of exchange
just as they are. The process then differentiates them into
commodities and money, and thus produces an external oppo
sition corresponding to the internal opposition inherent in
them, as being at once use-values and values. Commodities as
use-values now stand opposed to money as exchange value.
On the other hand, both opposing sides are commodities,
unities of use-value and value. But this unity of differences
manifests itself at two opposite poles, and at each pole in an
opposite way. Being poles they are as necessarily opposite as
they are connected. On the one side of the equation we have
an ordinary commodity, which is in reality a use-value. Its
value is expressed only ideally in its price, by which it is
equated to its opponent, the gold, as to the real embodiment
of its value. On the other hand, the gold, in its metallic
reality ranks as the embodiment of value, as money. Gold,
as gold, is exchange value itself. As to its use-value, that has
only an ideal existence, represented by the series of expres-

n8 Capitalist Production.

sions of relative value in which it stands face to face with all
other commodities, the sum of whose uses makes up the sum
of the various uses of gold. These antagonistic forms of com
modities are the real forms in which the process of their
exchange moves and takes place.

Let us now accompany the owner of some commodity — say,
our old friend the weaver of linen — to the scene of action, the
market. His 20 yards of linen has a definite price, £2. He
exchanges it for the £2, and then, like a man of the good old
stamp that he is; he parts with the £2 for a family Bible of the
same price. The linen, which in his eyes is a mere commodity,
a depository of value, he alienates in exchange for gold, which
is the linen's value-form, and this form he again parts with for
another commodity, the Bible; which is destined to enter his
house as an object of utility and of edification to its inmates.
The exchange becomes an accomplished fact by two metamor
phoses of opposite yet supplementary character — the conversion
of the commodity into money, and the re-conversion of the
money into a commodity.1 The two phases of this metamor
phosis are both of them distinct transactions of the weaver —
selling, or the exchange of the commodity for money ; buying,
or the exchange of the money for a commodity ; and, the unity
of the two acts, selling in order to buy.

The result of the whole transaction, as regards the weaver,
is this, that instead of being in possession of the linen, he now
has the Bible; instead of his original commodity, he now
possesses another of the same value but of different utility.
In like manner he procures his other means of subsistence and
means of production. From his point of view, the whole pro
cess effectuates nothing more than the exchange of the product
of his labour for the product of some one else's, nothing more
than an exchange of products.

The exchange of commodities is therefore accompanied by
the following changes in their form.

141 IK 8t TOV irvpbs dvra/Jielpeffdai irdvra, (f>r}fflv,6 'H/x£/eXeiTO$, Kal trvp

far&vTuv, tiffirep xPvff°v XP^IJ-aTa-Ka^-XP'niJi^r<^v XpV*k»M (F. Lassalle: Die Philosophic
Herakleitos des Dunkeln. Berlin, 1845. Vol. I, p. 222.) Lassalle, in his note on
this passage, p. 224, n. 3, erroneously makes gold a mere symbol of value.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 119

Commodity — Money — Commodity.

C M C.

The result of the whole process is; so far as concerns the
objects themselves, C — C, the exchange of one commodity for
another, the circulation of materialised social labour. When
this result is attained, the process is at an end.

C — M. First metamorphosis, or sale.

The leap taken by value from the body of the commodity,
into the body of the gold, is, as I have elsewhere called it, the
salto mortale of the commodity. If it falls short, then, al
though the commodity itself is not harmed, its owner decidedly
is. The social division of labour cajis_es_bis_Jabau,rJoJ)e as one
sided as his wants are many-sided. This is precisely the reason
why the product of his labour serves him solely as exchange
value. But it cannot acquire the properties of a socially recog
nised universal equivalent, except by being converted into
money. That money, however, is in some one else's pocket. In
order to entice the money out of that pocket, our friend's com
modity must, above all things, be a use-value to the owner of the
money. For this, it is necessary that the labour expended upon
it, be of a kind that is socially useful, of a kind that constitutes
a branch of the social division of labour. But division of labour
is a system of production which has grown up spontaneously
and continues to grow behind the backs of the producers. The
commodity to be exchanged may possibly be the product of
some new kind of labour, that pretends to satisfy newly arisen
requirements, or even to give rise itself to new requirements. A
particular operation, though yesterday, perhaps, forming one
out of the many operations conducted by one producer in creat
ing a given commodity, may to-day separate itself from this
connection, may establish itself as an independent branch of
labour and send its incomplete product to market as an inde
pendent commodity. The circumstances may or may not be ripe
for such a separation. To-day the product satisfies a social
want. To-morrow the article may, either altogether or partial
ly, be superseded by some other appropriate product. Moreover,
although our weaver's labour may be a recognised branch of

I2O Capitalist Pr&duttien.

the social division of labour, yet that fact is by no meand suffi
cient to guarantee the utility of his 20 yardc, of linen. If the
community's want of linen, and such a want has a limit like
every other want, should already be saturated by the products
of rival weavers, our friend's product is superfluous, redundant,
and consequently useless. Although people do not look a gift-
horse in the mouth, our friend does not frequent the market for
the purpose of making presents. But suppose his product turn
out a real use-value, and thereby attracts money ? The question
arises, how much will it attract ? No doubt the answer is al
ready anticipated in the price of the article, in the exponent cf
the magnitude of its value. We leave out of consideration heie
any accidental miscalculation of value by our friend, a mistake
that is soon rectified in the market. We suppose him to have
spent on his product only that amount of labour-time that is on
an average socially necessary The price then, is merely the
money-name of the quantity of social labour realised in his
commodity. But without the leave, and behind the back, of our
weaver, the old fashioned mode of weaving undergoes a change.
The labour-time that yesterday was without doubt socially nec
essary to the production of a yard of linen, ceases to be so tc-
day, a fact which the owner of the money is only too eager t)
prove from the prices quoted by our friend's competitors. Un
luckily for him, weavers are not few and far between. Lastly,
suppose that every piece of linen in the market contains no
more labour-time than is socially necessary. In spite of this,
all these pieces taken as a whole, may have had superfluous
labour-time spent upon them. If the market cannot stomach
the whole quantity at the normal price of 2 shillings a yard,
this proves that too great a portion of the total labour of the
community has been expended in the form of weaving. The
effect is the same as if each individual weaver had expendec
more labour-time upon his particular product than is socially
necessary. Here we may say, with the German proverb:
caught together, hung together. All the linen in the market
counts but as one article of commerce, of which each piece is
only an aliquot part. And as a matter of fact, the value also of
each single yard is but the materialised form of the same def-

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 121

inite and socially fixed quantity of homogeneous human labour.

We see then, commodities are in love with money, but "the
course of true love never did run smooth." The quantitative
division of labour is brought about in exactly the same spon
taneous and accidental manner as its qualitative division. The
owners of commodities therefore find out, that the same divi
sion of labour that turns them into independent private pro
ducers, also frees the social process of production and the
relations of the individual producers to each other within that
process, from all dependence on the will of those producers,
and that the seeming mutual independence of the individuals
is supplemented by a system of general and mutual dependence
through or by means of the products.

The division of labour converts the product of labour into a
commodity, and thereby makes necessary its further conversion
into money. At the same time it also makes the accomplish
ment of this trans-substantiation quite accidental. Here, how
ever, we are only concerned with the phenomenon in its
integrity, and we therefore assume its progress to be normal.
Moreover, if the conversion take place at all, that is, if the
commodity be not absolutely unsaleable, its metamorphosis
does take place although the price realised may be abnormally
above or below the value.

The seller has his commodity replaced by gold, the buyer
has his gold replaced by a commodity. The fact which here
stares us in the face is, that a commodity and gold, 20 yards
of linen and £2, have changed hands and places, in other words,
that they have been exchanged. But for what is the com
modity exchanged ? For the shape assumed by its own value,
for the universal equivalent. And for what is the gold
exchanged? For a particular form of its own use-value.
Why does gold take the form of money face to face with the
linen ? Because the linen's price of £2, its denomination in
money, has already equated the linen to gold in its character
of money. A commodity strips off its original commodity-form
on being alienated, i.e., on the instant its use-value actually
attracts the gold, that before existed only ideally in its price.
The realisation of a commodity's price, or of its ideal value-

122 Capitalist Production.

form, is therefore at the same time the realisation of the ideal
use-value of money; the conversion of a commodity into
money, is the simultaneous conversion of money into a com
modity. The apparently single process is in reality a double
one. From the pole of the commodity owner it is a sale, from
the opposite pole of the money owner, it is a purchase. In
other words, a sale is a purchase, C — M is also M — C.1

Up to this point we have considered men in only one econom
ical capacity, that of owners of commodities, a capacity in
which they appropriate the produce of the labour of others, by
alienating that of their own labour. Hence, for one commodity
owner to meet with another who has money, it is .necessary,
either, that the product of the labour of the latter person, the
buyer, should be in itself money, should be gold, the material
of which money consists, or that his product should already
have changed its skin and have stripped off its original form
of a useful object In order that it may play the part of
money, gold must of course enter the market at some point or
other. This point is to be found at the source of production
of the metal, at which place gold is bartered, as the immediate
product of labour, for some other product of equal value.
Prom. that moment it always represents the realised price of
some commodity.2 Apart from its exchange for other com
modities at the source of its production, gold, in whose-so-ever
hands it may be, is the transformed shape of some commodity
alienated by its owner ; it is the product of a sale or of the first
metamorphosis C — M.3 Gold, as we saw, became ideal money,
or a measure of values, in consequence of all commodities
measuring their values by it, and thus contrasting it ideally
with their natural shape as useful objects, and making it the
shape of their value. It became real money, by the general
alienation of commodities, by actually changing places with
their natural forms as useful objects, and thus becoming in

1 " Toute vente est achat." (Dr. Quesnay: "Dialogues sur le Commerce et les
Travaux des Artisans." Physiocrates ed. Daire I. Partie, Paris, 1846, p. 170), or
as Quesnay in his "Maximes gdndrales" puts it, "Vendre est acheter."

* "Le prix d'une marchandise ne pouvant etre paye que par le prix d'une autre
marchandise." (Mercier de la Riviere: "L'Ordre natural et essentiel des societes
politiques." Physiocrates, ed. Daire II. Partie, p. 554.)

1 "Pour avoir cet argent, il faut avoir vendu," 1. c., p. 543.

;

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 123

reality the embodiment of their values. When they assume this
money-shape, commodities strip off every trace of their natural
use-value, and of the particular kind of labour to which they
owe their creation, in order to transform themselves into the
uniform, socially recognised incarnation of homogeneous hu
man labour. We cannot tell from the mere look of a piece of
money, for what particular commodity it has been exchanged.
Under their money-form all commodities look alike. Hence,
money may be dirt, although dirt is not money. We will
assume that the two gold pieces, in consideration of which our
weaver has parted with his linen, are the metamorphosed shape
of a quarter of wheat The sale of the linen, C — M, is at the
same time its purchase, M — C. But the sale is the first act of
a process that ends with a transaction of an opposite nature,
namely, the purchase of a Bible ; the purchase of the linen, on
the other hand, ends a movement that began with a transac
tion of an opposite nature, namely, with the sale of the wheat,
O — M (linen — money), which is the first phase of C — M — C
(linen — money — Bible), is also M — C (money — linen), the
last phase of another movement C — M — C (wheat — money —
linen). The first metamorphosis of one commodity, its trans
formation from a commodity into money, is therefore also in
variably the second metamorphosis of some other commodity,
the retransformation of the latter from money into a com
modity.1

M — G , or purchase. The second and concluding metamor
phosis of a commodity.

Because money is the metamorphosed shape of all other
commodities, the result of their general alienation, for this
reason it is alienable itself without restriction or condition.
It reads all prices backwards, and thus, so to say, depicts itself
in the bodies of all other commodities, which offer to it the
material for the realisation of its own use-value. At the same
time the prices, wooing glances cast at money by commodities,

1 As before remarked, the actual producer of gold or silver forms an exception.
He exchanges his product directly for another commodity, without having first sold
it.

124 Capitalist Production.

define tLe limits of its convertibility, by pointing to its quan
tity. Since every commodity, on becoming money, disappears
as a commodity, it is impossible to tell from the money itself,
how it got into the hands of its possessor, or what article has
been changed into it. Non olet, from whatever source it may
come. Representing on the other hand a sold commodity, it
represents on the other hand a commodity to be bought.1

M — C, a purchase, is, at the same time, C — M, a sale ; the
concluding metamorphosis of one commodity is the first meta
morphosis of another. With regard to our weaver, the life of
his commodity ends with the Bible, into which he has recon
verted his £2. But suppose the seller of the Bible turns the £2
set free by the weaver into brandy. M — C, the concluding
phase of C — M — C (linen, money, Bible), is also C — M, the
first phase of C — M — C (Bible, money, brandy). The pro
ducer of a particular commodity has that one article alone to
offer ; this he sells very often in large quantities, but his many
and various wants compel him to split up the price realised, the
sum of money set free, into numerous purchases. Hence a sale
leads to many purchases of various articles. The concluding
metamorphosis of a commodity thus constitutes an aggregation
of first metamorphoses of various other commodities.

If we now consider the completed metamorphosis of a com
modity, as a whole, it appears in the first place, that it is made
up of two opposite and complementary movements, C — M and
M — C. These two antithetical transmutations of a commodity
are brought about by two antithetical social acts on the part
of the owner, and these acts in their turn stamp the character
of the economical parts played by him. As the person who
makes a sale, he is a seller; as the person who makes a pur
chase, he is a buyer. But just as, upon every such transmu
tation of a commodity, its two forms, commodity-form and
money-form, exist simultaneously but at opposite poles, so
every seller has a buyer opposed to him, and every buyer a
seller. While one particular commodity is going through its

" Si 1'argent represente, dans nos mains, les choses quc nous pouvons desirer
d'acheter, il y represente aussi les choses que nous avons vendues pour cet argent."
(Mercier de la Riviere I. c.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 125

two transmutations in succession, from a commodity into
money and from money into another commodity, the owner of
the commodity changes in succession his part from that of
seller to that of buyer. These characters of seller and buyer
are therefore not permanent, but attach themselves in turns to
the various persons engaged in the circulation of commodities.

The complete metamorphosis of a commodity, in its simplest
form, implies four extremes, and three dramatis personse.
First, a commodity comes face to face with money ; the latter
is the form taken by the value of the former, and exists in all
its hard reality, in the pocket of the buyer. A commodity-
owner is thus brought into contact with a possessor of money.
So soon, now, as the commodity has been changed into
money, the money becomes its transient equivalent-form, the
use-value of which equivalent-form is to be found in the
bodies of other commodities. Money, the final term of the
first transmutation, is at the same time the starting point for
the second. The person who is a seller in the first transac
tion thus becomes a buyer in the second, in which a third
commodity-owner appears on the scene as a seller.1

The two phases, each inverse to the other, that make up the
metamorphosis of a commodity constitute together a circular
movement, a circuit: commodity-form, stripping off of this
form, and return to the commodity-form. No doubt, the com
modity appears here under two different aspects. At the start
ing point it is not a use-value to its owner; at the finishing
point it is. So, too, the money appears in the first phase as a
solid crystal of value, a crystal into which the commodity
eagerly solidifies, and in the second, dissolves into the mere
transient equivalent-form destined to be replaced by a use-
value.

The two metamorphoses constituting the circuit are at the
same time two inverse partial metamorphoses of two other
commodities. One and the same commodity, the linen, opens
the series of its own metamorphoses, and completes the meta
morphosis of another (the wheat). In the first phase or sale,

1"I1 y a done . . . quatre termes «t trols contractanta, dont Tun Intervicnt deux
fois." (Le Trowie 1. c. p. 900.)

126 Capitalist Production.

the linen plays these two parts in its own person. But, then,
changed into gold, it completes its own second and final meta
morphosis, and helps at the same time to accomplish the first
metamorphosis of a third commodity. Hence the circuit made
Dy one commodity in the course of its metamorphoses is inextri
cably mixed up with the circuits of other commodities. The
total of all the different circuits constitutes the circulation of
commodities.

The circulation of commodities differs from the direct ex
change of products (barter), not only in form, but in substance.
Only consider the course of events. The weaver has, as a
matter of fact, exchanged his linen for a Bible, his own com
modity for that of some one else. But this is true only so far
as he himself is concerned. The seller of the Bible, who pre
fers something to warm his inside, no more thought of exchang
ing his Bible for linen than our weaver knew that wheat had
been exchanged for his linen. B's commodity replaces that of
A, but A and B do not mutually exchange those commodities.
It may, of course, happen that A and B make simultaneous
purchases, the one from the other ; but such exceptional trans
actions are by no means the necessary result of the general con
ditions of the circulation of commodities. We see here, on
the one hand, how the exchange of commodities breaks through
all local and personal bounds inseparable from direct barter,
and develops the circulation of the products of social labor;
and on the other hand, how it develops a whole network of so
cial relations spontaneous in their growth and entirely beyond
the control of the actors. It is only because the farmer has
sold his wheat that the weaver is enabled to sell his linen, only
because the weaver has sold his- linen that our Hotspur is
enabled to sell his Bible, and only because the latter has sold
the water of everlasting life that the distiller is enabled to sell
his eau-de-me, and so on.

The process of circulation, therefore, does not, like direct
barter of products, become extinguished upon the use values
changing places and hands. The money does not vanish on
dropping out of the circuit of the metamorphosis of a given
commodity. It is constantly being precipitated into new

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 127

places in the arena of circulation vacated by other commodities.
In the complete metamorphosis of the linen, for example, linen
— money — Bible, the linen first falls out of circulation, and
money steps into its place. Then the Bible falls out of circula
tion, and again money takes its place. When one commodity
replaces another, the money commodity always sticks to the
hands of some third person.1 Circulation sweats money from
every pore.

Nothing can be more childish than the dogma, that because
every sale is a purchase, and every purchase a sale, therefore
the circulation of commodities necessarily implies an equili
brium of sales and purchases. If this means that the number
of actual sales is equal to the number of purchases, it is mere
tautology. But its real purport is to prove that every seller
brings his buyer to market with him. Nothing of the kind.
The sale and the purchase constitute one identical act, an
exchange between a commodity-owned and an owner of money,
between two persons as .opposed to each other as the two poles
of a magnet. They form two distinct acts, of polar and oppo
site characters, when performed by one single person. Hence
the identity of sale and purchase implies that the commodity
is useless, if, on being thrown into the alchemistical retort of
circulation, it does not come out again in the shape of money ;
if, in other words, it cannot be sold by its owner, and there
fore be bought by the owner of the money That identity fur
ther implies that the exchange, if it does take place, constitutes
a period of rest, an interval, long or short, in the life of the
commodity. Since the first metamorphosis of a commodity is
at once a sale and a purchase, it is also an independent process
in itself. The purchaser has the commodity, the seller has the
money, i.e., a commodity ready to go into circulation at any
time. No one can sell unless some one else purchases. But
no one is forthwith bound to purchase, because he has just sold.
Circulation bursts through all restrictions as to time, place,
and individuals, imposed by direct barter, and this it effects by
splitting up, into the antithesis of a sale and a purchase, the

1 Self-evident as this may be, it is nevertheless for the most part unobserved by
political economists, and especially by the " Freetrader Vulgaris."

128 Capitalist Production.

direct identity that in barter does exist between the alienation
of one's own and the acquisition of some other man's product.
To say that these two independent and antithetical acts have
an intrinsic unity, are essentially one, is the same as to say
that this intrinsic oneness expresses itself in an external
antithesis. If the interval in time between the two comple
mentary phases of the complete metamorphosis of a commodity
becomes too great, if the split between the sale and the purchase
becomes too pronounced, the intimate connexion between them,
their oneness, asserts itself by producing — a crisis. The
antithesis, use-value and value ; the contradictions that priva ;e
labour is bound to manifest itself as direct social labour, that a
particularized concrete kind of labour has to pass for abstract
human labour; the contradiction between the personification
of objects and the representation of persons by things ; all the»e
antitheses and contradictions, which are immanent in com
modities, assert themselves, and develop their modes of motion,
in the antithetical phases of the metamorphosis of a commod
ity. These modes therefore imply the possibility, and no more
than the possibility, of crisis. The conversion of this mere
possibility into a reality is the result of a long series of rela
tions, that, from our present standpoint of simple circulation,
have as yet no existence.1

b. Tlie currency 2 of m-oney.

The change of form, C — M — C, by which the circulation c f
the material products of labour is brought about, requires th^t

1 Sec my observations on James Mill in "Critique, &c.," p. 123-125. With regard
to this subject, we may notice two methods characteristic of apologetic economy.
The first is the identification of the circulation of commodities with the direct bar
ter of products, by simple abstraction from their points of difference; the second h,
the attempt to explain away the contradictions of capitalist production, by reducirg
the relations between the persons engaged in that mode of production, to the simp'e
relations arising out of the circulation of commodities. The production and circula
tion of commodities are, however, phenomena that occur to a greater or less exter t
in modes of production the most diverse. If we are acquain*ed with nothing bv t
the abstract categories of circulation, which are common to all these modes of pro
duction, we cannot possibly know anything of the specific points of difference cf
those modes, nor pronounce any judgment upon them. In no science Is such a b;g
fuss made with commonplace truisms as in political economy. For instance, J. K
Say sets himself up as a Judge of crises, because, forsooth, he knows that a con - "
modity is a product.

• Translator's note. — This word is here used in its original signification of tbt

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 129

a given value in the shape of a commodity shall begin the pro
cess, and shall, also in the shape of a commodity, end it. The
movement of the commodity is therefore a circuit. On the
other hand, the form of this movement precludes a circuit from
being made by the money. The result is not the return of the
money, but its continued removal further and further away
from its starting-point. So long as the seller sticks fast to his
money, which is the transformed shape of his commodity, that
commodity is still in the first phase of its metamorphosis, and
has completed only half its course. But so soon as he com
pletes the process, so soon as he supplements his sale by a pur
chase, the money again leaves the hands of its possessor. It
is true that if the weaver, after buying the Bible, sells more
linen, money comes back into his hands. But this return is not
owing to the circulation of the first 20 yards of linen ; that cir
culation resulted in the money getting into the hands of the
seller of the Bible. The return of money into the hands of the
weaver is brought about only by the renewal or repetition of
the process of circulation with a fresh commodity, which
renewed process ends with the same result as its predecessor
did. Hence the movement directly imparted to money by the
circulation of commodities takes the form of a constant motion
away from its starting point, of course from the hands of one
commodity owner into those of another. This course consti
tutes its currency (cours de la monnaie).

The currency of money is the constant and monotonous re
petition of the same process. The commodity is always in the
hands of the seller ; the money, as a means of purchase, always
in the hands of the buyer. And money serves as a means of
purchase by realising the price of the commodity. This reali
sation transfers the commodity from the seller to the buyer,
and removes the money from the hands of the buyer into those
of the seller, where it again goes through the same process with
another commodity That this one-sided character of the
moneys motion arises out of the two-sided character of the
commodity's motion, is a circumstance that is veiled over.

course or track pursued by money as it changes from hand to hand, a cours* which
essentially differs from circulation.

130 Capitalist Production.

•

The very nature of the circulation of commodities begets the op
posite appearance. The first metamorphosis of a commodity is
visibly, not only the money's movement, but also that of the
commodity itself; in the second metamorphosis, on the con
trary, the movement appears to us as the movement of the
money alone. In the first phase of its circulation the com
modity changes place with the money. Thereupon the com
modity, under its aspect of a useful object, falls out of
circulation into consumption.1 In its stead we have its value-
shape — the money. It then goes through the second phase of
its circulation, not under its own natural shape, but under the
shape of money. The continuity of the movement is therefore
kept up by the money alone, and the same movement that as
regards the commodity consists of two processes of an anti
thetical character, is, when considered as the movement of
the money, always one and the same process, a continued
change of places with ever fresh commodities. Hence the
result brought about by the circulation of commodities, namely,
the replacing of one commodity by another, takes the appear
ance of having been effected not by means of the change of
form of the commodities, but rather by the money acting as a
medium of circulation, by an action that circulates commodi
ties, to all appearance motionless in themselves, and transfers
them from hands in which they are non-use-values, to hands in
which they are use-values; and that in a direction constantly
opposed to the direction of the money. The latter is con
tinually withdrawing commodities from circulation and step
ping into their places, and in this way continually moving
further and further from its starting-point. Hence, although
the movement of the money is merely the expression of
the circulation of commodities, yet the contrary appears to be
the actual fact, and the circulation of commodities seems to be
the result of the movement of the money.2

1 Even when the commodity is sold over mnd over again, a phenomenon that a*
present has no existence for us, it falls, when definitely sold for the last time, out
of the sphere of circulation into that of consumption, where it serves either at
means of subsistence or means of production.

' " II (1'argent) n'a d'autre mouvement que celui qui lui est iraprimi per !«• pro-
(faction*," (La Troane Lc.p. 8860

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities.

Again, money functions as a means of circulation, only
because in it the values of commodities have independent
reality. Hence its movement, as the medium of circulation, is,
in fact, merely the movement of commodities while changing
their forms. This fact must therefore make itself plainly vis
ible in the currency of money. The twofold change of form in
a commodity is reflected in the twice repeated change of place
of the same piece of money during the complete metamorphosis
of a commodity, and in its constantly repeated change of place,
as metamorphosis follows metamorphosis, and each becomes
interlaced with the others.

The linen, for instance, first of all exchanges its commodity-
form for its money-form. The last term of its first metamor
phosis (C — M), or the money-form, is the first term of its final
metamorphosis (M — C), of its re-conversion into a useful
commodity, the Bible. But each of these changes of form is
accomplished by an exchange between commodity and money,
by their reciprocal displacement. The same pieces of coin, in
the first act, changed places with the linen, in the second, with
the Bible. They are displaced twice. The first metamorpho
sis puts them into the weaver's pocket, the second draws them
out of it The two inverse changes undergone by the same
commodity are reflected in the displacement, twice repeated,
but in opposite directions, of the same pieces of coin.

If, on the contrary, only one phase of the metamorphosis is
gone through, if there are only sales or only purchases, then a
given piece of money changes its place only once. Its second
change corresponds to and expresses the second metamorphosis
of the commodity, its re-conversion from money into another
commodity intended for use. It is a matter of course, that all
this is applicable to the simple circulation of commodities
alone, the only form that we are now considering.

Every commodity, when it first steps into circulation, and
undergoes its first change of form, does so only to fall out of
circulation again and to be replaced by other commodities.
Money, on the contrary, as the medium of circulation, keeps
continually within the sphere of circulation, and moves about

132 Capitalist Production.

in it. The ijuostion therefore arises,, how much money this
sphere constantly absorbs ?

In a given country there take place every day at the same
time, but in different localities, numerous one-sided metamor
phoses of commodities, or, in other words, numerous sales and
numerous purchases. The commodities are equated before-
hand in imagination, by their prices, to definite quantities of
money. And since, in the form of circulation now under con
sideration, money and commodities always come bodily face to
face, one at the positive pole of purchase, the other at the
negative pole of sale, it is clear that the amount of the means
of circulation required, is determined beforehand by the sum of
the prices of all these commodities. As a matter 'of fact, the
money in reality represents the quantity or sum of gold ideally-
expressed beforehand by the sum of the prices of the com
modities. The equality of these two sums is therefore self-
evident. We know, however, that, the values of commodities
remaining constant, their prices vary with the value of gold
(the material of money), rising in proportion as it falls, anl
falling in proportion as it rises. Now if, in consequence of
such a rise or fall in the value of gold, the sum of the prices of
commodities fall or rise, the quantity of money in currency
must fall or rise to the same extent. The change in the
quantity of the circulating medium is, in this case, it is true,
caused by money itself, yet not in virtue of its functioi
as a medium of circulation, but of its function as a measure of
value. First, the price of the commodities varies inversely
as the value of the money, and then the quantity of the
medium of circulation varies directly as the price of the
commodities. Exactly the same thing would happen if, for
instance, instead of the value of gold falling, gold were re
placed by silver as the measure of value, or if, instead of the
value of silver rising, gold were to thrust silver out from bein*
the measure of value. In the one case, more silver would be
current than gold was before; in the other case, less gold
would be current than silver was before. In each case the
Talue of the material of money, i.e., the value of the com-.
Jbodity that serves as the measure of value, would have undei-

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 133

gone a change, and therefore, so, too, would the prices of com
modities which express their values in money, and so, too,
would the quantity of money current whose function it is to
realise those prices. We have already seen, that the sphere of
circulation has an opening through which gold (or the material
of money generally) enters into it as a commodity with a given
value. Hence, when money enters on its functions as a
measure of value, when it expresses prices, its value is already
determined. If now its value fall, this fact is first evidenced
by a change in the prices of those commodities that are
directly bartered for the precious metals at the sources of
their production. The greater part of all other commodities,
especially in the imperfectly developed stages of civil society,
will continue for a long time to be estimated by the former
antiquated and illusory value of the measure of value.
Nevertheless, one commodity infects another through their
common value-relation, so that their prices, expressed in gold
or in silver, gradually settle down into the proportions deter
mined by their comparative values, until finally the values of
all commodities are estimated in terms of the new value of the
metal that constitutes money. This process is accompanied by
the continued increase in the quantity of the precious metals,
an increase caused by their streaming in to replace the articles
directly bartered for them at their sources of production. In
proportion therefore as commodities in general acquire their
true prices, in proportion as their values become estimated
according to the fallen value of the precious metal, in the
same proportion the quantity of that metal necessary for realis
ing those new prices is provided beforehand. A one-sided
observation of the results that followed upon the discovery of
fresh supplies of gold and silver, led some economists in the
17th, and particularly in the 18th century, to the false con
clusion, that the prices of commodities had gone up in conse
quence of the increased quantity of gold and silver serving as
means of circulation. Henceforth we shall consider the value
of gold to be given, as, in fact, it is momentarily whenever we
estimate the price of a commodity.

On this supposition then, the quantity of the medium of

134 Capitalist Production.

circulation is determined by the sum of the prices that have to
be realised. *. If now we further suppose the price of each com
modity to be given, the sum of the prices clearly depends on
the mass of commodities in circulation. It requires but little
racking of brains to comprehend that if one quarter of wheat
cost £2, 100 quarters will cost £200, 200 quarters £400, and
so on, that consequently the quantity of money that changes
place with the wheat, when sold, must increase with the quan
tity of that wheat

If the mass of commodities remain constant, the quantity of
circulating money varies with the fluctuations in the prices ol!
those commodities. It increases and diminishes because the;
sum of the prices increases or diminishes in consequence of the*
change of price. To produce this effect, it is by no meam>
requisite that the prices of all commodities should rise or fal
simultaneously. A rise or a fall in the prices of a number of
leading articles, is sufficient in the one case to increase, in the
other to diminish, the sum of the prices of all commodities
and, therefore, to put more or less money in circulation.
Whether the change in the price correspond to an actua!
change of value in the commodities, or whether it be the result
of mere fluctuations in market prices, the effect on the quan
tity of the medium of circulation remains the same.

Suppose the following articles to be sold or partially meta
morphosed simultaneously in different localities: say, one
quarter of wheat, 20 yards of linen, one Bible, and 4 gallons oi
brandy. If the price of each article be £2, and the sum of the
prices to be realised be consequently £8, it follows that £8 ID
money must go into circulation. If, on the other hand, these
same articles are links in the following chain of metamor
phoses: 1 quarter of wheat — £2 — 20 yards of linen — £2 — 1
Bible — £2 — 4 gallons of brandy — £2, a chain that is already
well-known to us, in that case the £2 cause the different com
modities to circulate one after the other, and after realizing
their prices successively, and therefore the sum of those prices,
£8, they come to rest at last in the pocket of the distiller.
The £2 thus make four moves. This repeated change of place
of the same pieces of money corresponds to the double change

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 135

in form of the commodities, to their motion in opposite direc
tions through two stages of circulation, and to the interlacing
of the metamorphoses of different commodities.1 These anti
thetic and complementary phases, of which the process of met
amorphosis consists, are gone through, not simultaneously, but
successively. Time is therefore required for the completion of
the series. Hence the velocity of the currency of money is
measured by the number of moves made by a given piece of
money in a given time. Suppose the circulation of the 4 ar
ticles takes a day. The sum of the prices to be realised in the
day is £8, the number of moves of the two pieces of money is
four, and the quantity of money circulating is £2. Hence, for
a given interval of time during the process of circulation, we
have the following relation : the quantity of money functioning
as the circulating medium is equal to the sum of the prices of
the commodities divided by the number of moves made by coins
of the same denomination. This law holds generally.

The total circulation of commodities in a given country
during a given period is made up on the one hand of numerous
isolated and simultaneous partial metamorphoses, sales which
are at the same time purchases, in which each coin changes its
place only once, or makes only one move ; on the other hand,
of numerous distinct series of metamorphoses partly running
side by side, and partly coalescing with each other, in each of
which series each coin makes a number of moves, the number
being greater or less according to circumstances. The total
number of moves made by all the circulating coins of one
denomination being given, we can arrive at the average num
ber of moves made by a single coin of that denomination, or at
the average velocity of the currency of money. The quantity
of money thrown into the circulation at the beginning of each
day is of course determined by the sum of the prices of all the
commodities circulating simultaneously side by side. But once
in circulation, coins are, so to say, made responsible for one
another. If the one increase its velocity, the other either

1 " Ce sont les productions qui le (1'argent) mettent en mouvemcnt et le font
circuler ... La cel£rit£ de son mouvement (sc. de 1'argent) supplee 4 sa quantiti.
Lorsqu'il en est besoin, il ne fait que glisser d'une main dans 1'autre sans s'arreter
un instant." (Le Trosnc L c. pp. 916, 916.)

136 Capitalist Production.

retards its own, or altogether falls out of circulation ; for the
circulation can absorb only such a quantity of gold as when
multiplied by the mean number of moves made by one single
coin or element, is equal to the sum of the prices to be real
ised. Hence if the number of moves made by the separate
pieces increase, the total number of those pieces in circulation
diminishes. If the number of the moves diminish, the total
number of pieces increases. Since the quantity of money cap
able of being absorbed by the circulation is given for a given
mean velocity of currency, all that is necessary in order to ab
stract a given number of sovereigns from the circulation is to
throw the same number of one-pound notes into it, a trick well
known to all bankers.

Just as the currency of money, generally considered, is but
a reflex of the circulation of commodities, or of the antithetical
metamorphoses they undergo, so, too, the velocity of that cur
rency reflects the rapidity with which commodities change
their forms, the continued interlacing of one series of meta
morphoses with- another, the hurried social interchange of
matter, the rapid disappearance of commodities from the
sphere of circulation, and the equally rapid substitution of
fresh ones in their places. Hence, in the velocity of the cur
rency we have the fluent unity of the antithetical and com
plementary phases, the unity of the conversion of the useful
aspect of commodities into their value-aspect, and their re-con
version from the latter aspect to the former, or the unity of the
two processes of sale and purchase. On the other hand, the
retardation of the currency reflects the separation of these two
processes into isolated antithetical phases, reflects the stagna
tion in the change of form, and therefore, in the social inter
change of matter. The circulation itself, of course, gives no
clue to the origin of this stagnation ; it merely puts in evidence
the phenomenon itself. The general public, who, simultane
ously, with the retardation of the currency, see money appear
and disappear less frequently at the periphery of circulation,
naturally attribute this retardation to a quantitive deficiency
in the circulating medium.1.

1 Money being . . . the common measure of buying and selling, every body who

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 137

The total quantity of money functioning during a given
period as the circulating medium, is determined, on the one
hand, by the sum of the prices of the circulating commodities,
and on the other hand, by the rapidity with which the anti
thetical phases of the metamorphoses follow one another. On
this rapidity depends what proportion of the sum of the prices
can, on the average, be realised by each single coin. But the
sum of the prices of the circulating commodities depends on
the quantity, as well as on the prices, of the commodities.
TThese three factors, however, state of prices, quantity of circu
lating commodities, and velocity of money-currency, are all
variable. Hence, the sum of the prices to be realised, and
consequently the quantity of the circulating medium depend
ing on that sum, will vary with the numerous variations of
these three factors in combination. Of these variations we
shall consider those alone that have been the most important
in the history of prices.

While prices remain constant, the quantity of the circulat
ing medium may increase owing to the number of circulating
commodities increasing, or to the velocity of currency decreas
ing, or to a combination of the two. On the other hand the

hath anything to sell, and cannot procure chapmen for it, is presently apt to think,
that want of money in the kingdom, or country, is the cause why his goods do not
go off; and so, want of money is the common cry; which is a great mistake. . .
What do these people want, who cry out for money ? . . . The farmer complains
... he thinks that were more money in the country, he should have a price for his
goods. Then it seems money is not his want, but a price for his corn and cattel,
which he would sell, but cannot. . . Why cannot he get a price? ... (1) Either
there is too much corn and cattel in the country, so that most who come to market
have need of selling, as he hath, and few of buying; or (2) There wants the usual
vent abroad by transportation. . . ; or (3) The consumption fails, as when men,
by reason of poverty, do not spend so much in their houses as formerly they did;
wherefore it is not the increase of specific money, which would at all advance the
farmer's goods, but the removal »f any of these three causes, which do truly keep
down the market. . . . The merchant and shopkeeper want money in the same
manner, that is, they want a vent for the goods they deal in, by reason that the
markets fail "... [A nation] " never thrives better, than when riches are tost
from hand to hand." (Sir Dudley North: " Discourses upon Trade," Lond. 1691,
pp. 11-15, passim.) Herrenschwand's fanciful notions amount merely to this, that
the antagonism, which has its origin in the nature of commodities, and is repro
duced in their circulation, can be removed by increasing the circulating medium.
But if, on the one hand, it is a popular delusion to ascribe stagnation in production
and circulation to insufficiency of the circulating medium, it by no means follows,
on the other hand, that an actual paucity of the medium in consequence, e.g., of
bungling legislative interference with the regulation of currency, may not give rise
to such stagnation.

138 Capitalist Production.

quantity of the circulating medium may decrease with a
decreasing number of commodities, or with an increasing
rapidity of their circulation.

With a general rise in the prices of commodities, the quan
tity of the circulating medium will remain constant, provided
the number of commodities in the circulation decrease propor
tionally to the increase in their prices, or provided the velocity
of currency increase at the same rate as prices rise, the number
of commodities in circulation remaining constant. The quan
tity of the circulating medium may decrease, owing to the num
ber of commodities decreasing more rapidly; or to the veloc
ity of currency increasing more rapidly, than prices rise.

With a general fall in the prices of commodities, the quantity
of the circulating medium will remain constant, provided the
number of commodities increase proportionately to their fall in
price, or provided the velocity of currency decrease in the same
proportion. The quantity of the circulating medium will
increase, provided the number of commodities increase quicker,
or the rapidity of circulation decrease quicker, than the prices
fall.

The variations of the different factors may mutually compen
sate each other, so that notwithstanding their continued in
stability, the sum of the prices to be realised and the quantity
of money in circulation remains constant; consequently, we
find, especially if we take long periods into consideration, that
the deviations from the average level, of the quantity of money
current in any country, are much smaller than we should at
first sight expect, apart of course from excessive perturbations
periodically arising from industrial and commercial crises, or,
less frequently, from fluctuations in the value of money.

The law, that the quantity of the circulating medium is
determined by the sum of the prices of the commodities
circulating, and the average velocity of currency1 may also be

1 " There is a certain measure and proportion of money requisite to drive the
trade of a nation, more or less than which would prejudice the same. Just as there
is a certain proportion of farthings necessary in a small retail trade, to change sil
ver money, and to even such reckonings as cannot be adjusted with the smallest
silver pieces. . . . Now, as the proportion of the number of farthings requisite
in commerce is to be taken from the number of people, the frequency of their

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 139

stated as follows : given the sum of the values of commodities,
and the average rapidity of their metamorphoses, the quantity
of precious metal current as money depends on the value of
that precious metal. The erroneous opinion that it is, on the
contrary, prices that are determined by the quantity of the
circulating medium, and that the latter depends on the :
quantity of the precious metals in a country ;* this opinion was i
based by those who first beheld it, on the absurd hypothesis that •
commodities are without a price, and money without a value,
when they first enter into circulation, and that, once in the
circulation, an aliquot part of the medley of commodities is
exchanged for an aliquot part of the heap of precious metals.3

exchanges: as also, and principally, from the value of the smallest silver pieces of
money; so in like manner, the proportion of money [gold and silver specie] requis
ite in our trade, is to be likewise taken from the frequency of commutations, «nd
from the bigness of the payments." (William Petty. " A Treatise on Taxes and
Contributions." Lond. 1662, p. 17.) The Theory of Hume was defended against
the attacks of J. Steuart and others, by A. Young, in his "' Political Arithmetic,"
Lond. 1774, in which work there is a special chapter entitled " Prices depend on
quantity of money," at p. 112, sqq. I have stated in "Critique, &c.," p. 232:
" He (Adam Smith) passes over without remark the question as to the quantity
of coin in circulation, and treats money quite wrongly as a mere commodity."
This statement applies only in so far as Adam Smith, ex officio, treats of money.
Now and then, however, as in his criticism of the earlier systems of political
economy, he takes the right view. " The quantity of coin in every country is
regulated by the value of the commodities which are to be circulated by it. ...
The value of the goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain
quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and
can give employment to no more. The channel of circulation necessarily draws to
itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more." (" Wealth of Na
tions." Bk. IV., ch. I.) 'In like manner, ex officio, he opens his work with an
•potheosis on the division of labour. Afterwards, in the last book which treats
of the sources of public revenue, he occasionally repeats the denunciations of the
division of labour made by his teacher, A. Ferguson.

1 "The prices of things will certainly rise in every nation, as the gold and silver
increase amongst the people; and consequently, where the gold and silver de
crease in any nation, the prices of all things must fall proportionably to such
decrease of money." (Jacob Vanderlint: "Money answers all Things." Lond.
1734, p. 6.) A careful comparison of this book with Hume's "Essays," proves
to my mind without doubt that Hume was acquainted with and made use of Van-
derlint's work, which is certainly an important one. The opinion that prices are
determined by the quantity of the circulating medium, was also held by Barbon
and other much earlier writers. " No inconvenience," says Vanderlint, " can arise
by an unrestrained trade, but very great advantage; since, if the cash of the na
tion be decreased by it, which prohibitions are designed to prevent, those nations
that get the cash will certainly find everything advance in price, as the cash in
creases amongst them. And . . . our manufactures, and everything else, will
soon become so moderate as to turn the balance of trade in our favour, and
thereby fetch the money back again." (1. c., pp. 43, 44.)

' That the price of each single kind of commodity forms part of the sum of the

140 Capitalist Production.

c. Coin and symbols of value.

That money takes the shape of coin, springs from its function
as the circulating medium. The weight of gold represented in
imagination by the prices or money-names of commodities,
must confront those commodities, within the circulation, in
the shape of coins or pieces of gold of a given denomination.
Coining, like the establishment of a standard of prices, is the
business of the State. The different national uniforms worn
at home by gold and silver as coins, and doffed again in the
market of the world, indicate the separation between the
internal or national spheres of the circulation of commodities,
and their universal sphere.

The only difference, therefore, between coin and bullion, is
one of shape, and gold can at any time pass from one form to

prices of all the commodities in circulation, is a self-evident proposition. But hew
use-values, which are incommensurable with regard to each other, are to be ex
changed, en masse, for the total sum of gold and silver in a country, is quite
incomprehensible. If we start from the notion that all commodities together form
one single commodity, of which each is but an aliquot part, we get the followh g
beautiful result: The total commodity = x cwt. of gold; commodity A = an aliqint
part of the total commodity «= the same aliquot part of x cwt. of gold. This is
stated in all seriousness by Montesquieu: " Si Ton compare la masse de Tor et de
1'argent qui est dans le monde avec la somme des marchandises qui y sont, il e?t
certain que chaque denree ou marchandise, en particulier, pourra etre compare'e a
une certaine portion de le masse entiere. Supposons qu'il n'y ait qu'une seu e
denree ou marchandise dans le monde, ou qu'il n'y ait qu'une seule qui s'ache'te,
et qu'elle se divise comme 1'argent: Cette partie de cette marchandise repondia
a une partie de la masse de 1'argent; la moitie du total de 1'une a la moitie cu
total de 1'autre, &c. . . . 1'etablissement du prix des choses depend toujoui s
fondamentalement de la raison du total des choses au total des signes." (Montes
quieu 1. c. t III., pp. 122, 13.) As to the further development of this theory
by Ricardo and his disciples, James Mill, Lord Overstone, and others, ste
"Critique of Political Economy," pp. 235, ff. John Stuart Mill, with his usual
eclectic logic, understands how to hold at the same time the view of his fathe ,
James Mill, and the opposite view. On a comparison of the text of his compen
dium, "Principles of Pol. Econ.," with his preface to the first edition, in which
preface he announces himself as the Adam Smith of his day — we do not kno'v
whether to admire more the simplicity of the man, or that of the public, who too<
him, in good faith, for the Adam Smith he announced himself 4o be, althoug i
he bears about as much resemblance to Adam Smith as say General Williams, of
Kars, to the Duke of Wellington. The original researches of Mr. J. S. Mill, whic \
are neither extensive nor profound, in the domain of political economy, will be
found mustered in rank and file in his little work, " Some Unsettled Questions of
Political Economy," which appeared in 1844. Locke asserts point blank the con
nexion between the absence of value in gold and silver, and the determination of
their values by quantity alone, "Mankind having consented to put an imaginary
value upon gold and silver . . . the intrinsik value, regarded in these metah,
is nothing but the quantity." ("Some considerations," &c., 1691, Works Ed. 1777,
vol. II.. p. 15.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 141

the other.1 But no sooner does coin leave the mint, than it
immediately finds itself on the high-road to the melting pot.
During their currency, coins wear away, some more, others
less. Name and substance, nominal weight and real weight,
begin their process of separation. Coins of the same denom
ination become different in value, because they are different in
weight. The weight of gold fixed upon as the standard of
prices, deviates "from the weight that serves as the circulating
medium, and the latter thereby ceases any longer to be a real
equivalent of the commodities whose prices it realises. The
history of coinage during the middle ages and down into the
18th century, records the ever renewed confusion arising from
this cause. The natural tendency of circulation to convert
coins into a mere semblance of what they profess to be, into a
symbol of the weight of metal they are officially supposed to
contain, is recognised by modern legislation, which fixes the
loss of weight sufficient to demonetise a gold coin, or to make
it no longer legal tender.

The fact that the currency of coins itself effects a separation
between their nominal and their real weight, creating a dis
tinction between them as mere pieces of metal on the one hand,
and as coins with a definite function on the other — this fact
implies the latent possibility of replacing metallic coins by
tokens of some other material, by symbols serving the same
purposes as coins. The practical difficulties in the way of
coining extremely minute quantities of gold or silver, and the
circumstance that at first the less precious metal is used as a
measure of value instead of the more precious, copper instead

* It lies, of course, entirely beyond my purpose to take into consideration such
details as the seigniorage on minting. I will, however, cite for the benefit of the
romantic sycophant, Adam Muller, who admires the " generous liberality " with
which the English Government coins gratuitously, the following opinion of Sir
Dudley North: "Silver and gold, like other commodities, have their ebbings and
flowings. Upon the arrival of quantities from Spain . . . it is carried into the
Tower, and coined. Not long after there will come a demand for bullion to be
exported again. If there is none, but all happens to be in coin, what then? Melt
it down again ; there's no loss in it, for the coining costs the owner nothing. Thus
the nation has been abused, and made to pay for the twisting of straw for asses
to eat. If the merchant were made to pay the price of the coinage, he would
not have sent his silver to the Tower without consideration; and coined money
would always keep a value above uncoined silver." (North, 1. c., p. 18.) North
was himself one of the foremost merchants in the reign of Charles II.

142 Capitalist Production.

of silver, silver instead of gold, and that the less precious
circulates as money until dethroned by the more precious — all
these facts explain the parts historically played by silver and
copper tokens as substitutes for gold coins. Silver and copper
tokens take the place of gold in those regions of the circulation
where coins pass from hand to hand most rapidly, and are sub
ject to the maximum amount of wear and tear. This occurs
where sales and purchases on a very small scale are continually
happening. In order to prevent these satellites from establish
ing themselves permanently in the place of gold, positive
enactments determine the extent to which they must be com-
pulsorily received as payment instead of gold. The particular
tracks pursued by the different species of coin in currency, run
naturally into each other. The tokens keep company with
gold, to pay fractional parts of the smallest gold coin ; gold is,
on the one hand, constantly pouring into retail circulation, and
on the other hand is as constantly being thrown out again by
being changed into tokens.1

The weight of metal in the silver and copper tokens is
arbitrarily fixed by law. When in currency, they wear awaj
even more rapidly than gold coins. Hence their functions
are totally independent of their weight^ and consequently of all
value. The function of gold as coin becomes completely inde
pendent of the metallic value of that gold. Therefore things
that are relatively without value, such as paper notes, can
serve as coins in its place. This purely symbolic character is
to a certain extent masked in metal tokens. In paper money
it stands out plainly. In fact, ce n'est oue le premier pas qui
cofite.

We allude here only to inconvertible paper money issued by

1 If silver never exceed what is wanted for the smaller payments, it cannot be
collected in sufficient quantities for the larger payments . . . the use ot gold in
the main payments necessarily implies also its use in the retail trade: those who
have gold coin offering them for small purchases, and receiving with the com
modity purchased a balance of silver in return; by which means the surplus of
silver that would otherwise encumber the retail dealer, is drawn off and dis
persed into general circulation. But if there is as much silver as will transact
the small payments independent of gold, the retail trader must then receive silver
for small purchases; and it must of necessity accumulate in his hands." (David
Buchanan. " Inquiry into the Taxation and Commercial Policy of Great Britain.**
Edinburgh, 1844, pp. 848, 249.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. '.43

the State and having compulsory circulation. It has its
immediate origin in the metallic currency. Money based upon
credit implies on the other hand conditions, which from our
standpoint of the simple circulation of commodities, are as yet
totally unknown to us. But we may affirm this much, that
just as true paper money takes its rise in the function of money
as the circulating medium, so money based upon credit takes
root spontaneously in the function of money as the means of
payment.1

The State puts in circulation bits of paper on which their
various denominations, say £1, £5, &c., are printed. In so far
as they actually take the place of gold to the same amount,
their movement is subject to the laws that regulate the currency
of money itself. A law peculiar to the circulation of paper
money can spring up only from the proportion in which that
paper money represents gold. Such a law exists; stated
simply, it is as follows: the issue of paper money must not
exceed in amount the gold (or silver as the case may be) which
would actually circulate if not replaced by symbols. Now the
quantity of gold which the circulation can absorb, constantly
fluctuates about a given level. Still, the mass of the circulat
ing medium in a given country never sinks below a certain
minimum easily ascertained by actual experience. The fact
that this minimum mass continually undergoes changes in its
constituent parts, or that the pieces of gold of which it consists
are being constantly replaced by fresh ones, causes of course no
change either in its amount or in the continuity of its circula-

1 The mandarin Wan-mao-in, the Chinese Chancellor of the Exchequer, took it
into his head one day to lay before the Son of Heaven a proposal that secretly
aimed at converting the ass-gnats of the empire into convertible bank notes. The
assignats Committee, in its report of April, 1854, gives him a severe snub
bing. Whether he also received the traditional drubbing with bamboos is not
stated. The concluding part of the report is as follows : — " The Committee has
carefully examined his proposal and finds that it is entirely in favour of the
merchants, and that no advantage will result to the crown." (Arbeiten der
Kaiserlich Russischen Gesandtschaft zu Peking uber China. Aus dem Russischen
von Dr. K. Abel und F. A. Mecklenburg. Erster Band. Berlin, 1858, pp. 47, 59.)
In his evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords on the Bank Acts, a
governor of the Bank of England says with regard to the abrasion of gold coins dur
ing currency: "Every year a fresh class of sovereigns becomes too light. The class
which one year passes with full weight, loses enough by wear and tear to draw the
•calet next year against it." (House of Lords' Committee, 1848, n. 429.)

144 Capitalist Production.

tion. It can thejefore be replaced by paper symbols. If, on
the other hand, all the conduits of circulation were to-day filled
with paper money to the full extent of their capacity for
absorbing money, they might to-morrow be overflowing in
consequence of a fluctuation in the circulation of commodities.
There would no longer be any standard. If the paper money
exceed its proper limit, which is the amount of gold coins of
the like denomination that can actually be current, it would,
apart from the danger of falling into general disrepute, re
present only that quantity of gold, which, in accordance with
the laws of the circulation of commodities, is required, and is
alone capable of being represented by paper. If the quantity
of paper money issued be double what it ought to be, then, as
a matter of fact, £1 would be the money-name not of \ of an
ounce, but of J of an ounce of gold. The effect would be the
same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold
as a standard of prices. Those values that were previously
expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the
price of £2.

Paper-money is a token representing gold or money. The
relation between it and the values of commodities is this, that
the latter are ideally expressed in the same quantities of gold
that are symbolically represented by the paper. Only in so
far as paper-money represents gold, which like all other com
modities has value, is it a symbol of value.1

Finally, some one may ask why gold is capable of being
replaced by tokens that have no value ? But, as we have
already seen, it is capable of being so replaced only in so far
as it functions exclusively as coin, or as the circulating

1 The following passage from Fullarton shows the want of clearness on the part
of even the best writers on money, in their comprehension of its various func
tions: " That, as far as concerns our domestic exchanges, all the monetary func
tions which are usually performed by gold and silver coins, may be performed as
effectually by a circulation of inconvertible notes, having no value but that
factitious and conventional value they derive from the law, is a fact which admits,
I conceive, of no denial. Value of this description may be made to answer all the
purposes of intrinsic value, and supersede even the necessity for a standard, pro
vided only the quantity of issues be kept under due limitation." (Fullarton:
"Regulation of Currencies," London, p. 210.) Because the commodity that
serves as money is capable of being replaced in circulation by mere symboli of
value, therefore its functions as a measure of value and a standard of prices art
declared to be superfluous.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 145

medium, and as nothing else. Now, money has other functions
besides this one, and the isolated function of serving as the
mere circulating medium is not necessarily the only one
attached to gold coin, although this is the case with those
abraded coins that continue to circulate. Each piece of money
is a mere coin, or means of circulation, only so long as it ac
tually circulates. But this is just the case with that minimum
mass of gold, which is capable of being replaced by paper-
money. That mass remains constantly within the sphere of
circulation, continually functions as a circulating medium, and
exists exclusively for that purpose. Its movement therefore
represents nothing but the continued alteration of the inverse
phases of the metamorphosis C — M — C, phases in which com
modities confront their value-forms, only to disappear again
immediately. The independent existence of the exchange
value of a commodity is here a transient apparition, by means
of which the commodity is immediately replaced by another
commodity. Hence, in this process which continually makes
money pass from hand to hand, the mere symbolical existence
of money suffices. Its functional existence absorbs, so to say,
its material existence. Being a transient and objective reflex
of the prices of commodities, it serves only as a symbol of itself,
and is therefore capable of being replaced by a token.1 One
thing is, however, requisite ; this token must have an objective
social validity of its own, and this the paper symbol acquires
by its forced currency. This compulsory action of the
State can take effect only within that inner sphere of circula
tion which is co-terminous with the territories of the com
munity, but it is also only within that sphere that money
completely responds to its function of being the circulating
medium, or becomes coin.

1 From the fact that gold and silver, so far as they are coins, or exclusively
serve as the medium of circulation, become mere tokens of themselves, Nicholas
Barbon deduces the right of Governments " to raise money," that is, to give to the
weight of silver that is called a shilling the name of a greater weight, such as a
crown; and so to pay creditors shillings, instead of crowns. " Money does wear
and grow lighter by often telling over ... It is the denomination and cur
rency of the money that men regard in bargaining, and not the quantity of silver
. . . Tis the public authority upon the metal that makes it money." (N.
Barbon, L c., pp. 29, 30, 25.)

146 Capitalist Production.

SECTION 3. MONEY.

The commodity that functions as a measure of value, and,
either in its own person or by a representative, as the medium
of circulation, is money. Gold (or silver) is therefore money.
It functions as money, on the one hand, when it has to be
present in its own golden person. It is then the money-com
modity, neither merely ideal, as in its function of a measure
of value, nor capable of being represented, as in its function of
circulating medium. On the other hand, it also functions as
money, when by virtue of its function, whether that function
be performed in person or by representative, it congeals into the
sole form of value, the only adequate form of existence of
exchange-value, in opposition to use-value, represented by all
other commodities,

a. Hoarding.

The continual movement in circuits of the two antithetical
metamorphoses of commodities, or the never ceasing alternation
of sale and purchase, is reflected in the restless currency of
money, or in the function that money performs of a perpetuum
mobile of circulation. But so soon as the series of metamor
phoses is interrupted, so soon as sales are not supplemented by
subsequent purchases, money ceases to be mobilised ; it is trans
formed, as Boisguillebert says, from "meuble" into "im-
meuble," from movable into immovable, from coin into
money.

With the very earliest development of the circulation of
commodities, there is also developed the necessity, and the
passionate desire, to hold fast the product of the first metamor
phosis. This product is the transformed shape of the com
modity, or its gold-chrysalis.1 Commodities are thus sold not
for the purpose of buying others, but in order to replace their
commodity-form by their money-form. From being the mere
means of effecting the circulation of commodities, this change
of form becomes the end and aim. The changed form of the
commodity is thus prevented from functioning as its uncondi-

»"Une richesse en argent n'est que . . . richesse en productions, convertief
en argent." (Mercier de la Riviere, 1. c.) "Une valeur en productions n'f
fait que changer de forme." (Id., p. 486.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 147

tionally alienable form^ or as its merely transient money-form.
The money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller
becomes a hoarder of money.

In the early stages of the circulation of commodities, it is
the surplus use-values alone that are converted into money.
Gold and silver thus become of themselves social expressions
for superfluity or wealth. This naive form of hoarding be
comes perpetuated in those communities in which the tra
ditional mode of production is carried on for the supply of a
fixed and limited circle of home wants. It is thus with the
people of Asia, and particularly of the East Indies. Vander-
lint, who fancies that the prices of commodities in a country
are determined by the quantity of gold and silver to be found
in it, asks himself why Indian commodities are so cheap. An
swer: Because the Hindoos bury their money. From 1602 to
1734, he remarks, they buried 150 millions of pounds sterling
of silver, which originally came from America to Europe.1
In the 10 years from 1856 to 1866, England exported to India
and China £120,000,000 in silver, which had been received in
exchange for Australian gold. Most of the silver exported to
China makes its way to India.

As the production of commodities further develops, every
producer of commodities is compelled to make sure of the
nexus rerum of the social pledge.2 His wants are constantly
making themselves felt, and necessitate the continual purchase
of other people's commodities, while the production and sale of
his own goods require time, and depend upon circumstances.
In order then to be able to buy without selling, he must have
sold previously without buying. This operation, conducted
on a general scale, appears to imply a contradiction. But the
precious metals at the sources of their production are directly
exchanged for other commodities. And here we have sales
(by the owners of commodities) without purchases (by the
owners of gold or silver.)3 And subsequent sales, by other

1 " 'Tis by this practice they keep all their goods and manufactures a> srch U»r
rates." (Vanderlint, 1. c., p. 96.)

•Money ... is a pledge." (John Bellers: "Essays about the Poor, Manu/%*
turers, Trade, Plantations, and Immorality," Lond., 1699, p. IS.)

* A purchase, in a " categorical " tense, implies that gold and tilrer are alrwdy
the converted form of commodities, or the product of a §al«.

148 Capitalist Production.

/reducers, unfollowed by purchases, merely bring about the
distribution of the newly produced precious metals among all
the owners of commodities. In this way, all along the line of
exchange, hoards of gold and silver of varied extent are ac
cumulated. With the possibility of holding and storing up
exchange value in the shape of a particular commodity, arises
also the greed for gold. Along with the extension of circula
tion, increases the power of money, that absolutely social form
of wealth ever ready for use. "Gold is a wonderful thing I
Whoever possesses it is lord of all he wants. By means of
gold one can even get souls into Paradise." (Columbus in his
letter from Jamaica, 1503.) Since gold does not disclose what
has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not,
is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and
buyable. The circulation becomes the great social retort into
which everything is thrown, to come out again as a gold-
crystal. Xot even are the bones of saints, and still less are
more delicate res sacrosanctse extra commercium hominum
able to withstand this alchemy.1 Just as every qualitative
difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so
money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it is, does
away with all distinctions.2 But money iteelf is a commodity,

1 Henry III., most Christian king of France, robbed cloisters of their relics, and
turned them into money. It is well known what part the despoiling of the
Delphic Temple, by the Phocians, played in the history of Greece. Temples with
the ancients served as the dwellings of the gods of commodities. They were
" sacred banks." With the Phoenicians, a trading people par excellence, money was
the transmuted shape of everything. It was, therefore, quite in order that the
virgins, who, at the feast of the Goddess of Love, gave themselves up to strangers,
should offer to the goddess the piece of money they received.
'"Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold!

Thus much of this, will make black white; foul, fair;

Wrong right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.

. . . What this, you gods? Why, this

Will lug your priests and servants from your sides;

Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads;

This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd;

Make the hoar leprosy ador'd; place thieves,

And give them title, knee and approbation,

With senators on the bench; this is it,

That makes the wappen'd widow wed again:

Come damned earth,

Thou common whore of mankind."

(Shakespeare: Timon of Athens.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 149

an external object, capable of becoming the private property
of any individual. Thus social power becomes the private
power of private persons. The ancients therefore denounced
money as subversive of the economical and moral order of
things.1 Modern society, which soon after its birth, pulled
Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth,2
greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering incarnation of
the very principle of its own life.

A commodity, in its capacity of a use-value, satisfies a
particular want, and is a particular element of material wealth.
But the value of a commodity measures the degree of its
attraction for all other elements of material wealth, and there
fore measures the social wealth of its owner. To a barbarian
owner of commodities^ and even to a West-European peasant,
value is the same as value-form, and therefore, to him the
increase in his hoard of gold and silver is an increase in value.
It is true that the value of money varies, at one time in con
sequence of a variation in its own value, at another, in
consequence of a change in the value of commodities. But
this, on the one hand, does not prevent 200 ounces of gold from
still containing more value than 100 ounces, nor, on the other
hand, does it hinder the actual metallic form of this article
from continuing to be the universal equivalent form of all other
commodities, and the immediate social incarnation of all
human labour. The desire after hoarding is in its very nature
unsatiable. In its qualitative aspect, or formally considered,
money has no bounds to its efficacy, i.e., it is the universal re
presentative of material wealth, because it is directly convert
ible into any other commodity. But, at the same time, every
actual sum of money is limited in amount, and therefore, as a

yip dv6p(»)irolffiv oiov Apyvpoi

\affTe' TOVTO xat ir6X«s
IIo/5<?et, r65' Avdpas f^avlffTT]<

l irapa\\d(r<rti
rpbs alffxpb d^purcrois %xeitf
Kal rairds tpyov 5y<ra-^/3eiav clfttvou..

(Sophocles, Antigone.)

* " 'EXT/fo&TTjs TTJS TrXeovel/as drd&iv in rdv pvxwv T^J 717* airrbv rbv
(Athen. Deipnos.)

150 Capitalist Production.

means of purchasing, has only a limited efficacy. This antag
onism between the quantitive limits of money and its qualita
tive boundlessness, continually acts as a spur to the hoarder in
his Sisyphus-like labour of accumulating. It is with him as it
is with a conqueror who sees in every new country annexed,
only a new boundary.

In order that gold may be held as money, and made to form
a hoard, it must be prevented from circulating, or from trans
forming itself into a means of enjoyment. The hoarder,
therefore, makes a sacrifice of the lusts of the flesh to his gold
fetish. He acts in earnest up to the Gospel of abstention. On
the other hand, he can withdraw from circulation no more than
what he has thrown into it in the shape of commodities. The
more he produces, the more he is able to sell. Hard work,
saving, and avarice, are, therefore, his three cardinal virtues,
and to sell much and buy little the sum of his political
economy.1

By the side of the gross form of a hoard, we find also its
aesthetic form in the possession of gold and silver articles.
This grows with the wealth of civil society. " Soyons riches ou
paraissons riches" (Diderot). In this way there is created,
on the one hand, a constantly extending market for gold and
silver, unconnected with their functions as money, and, on the
other hand, a latent source of supply, to which recourse is had
principally in times of crisis and social disturbance.

Hoarding serves various purposes in the economy of the
metallic circulation. Its first function arises out of the con
ditions to which the currency of gold and silver coins is sub
ject We have seen how, along with the continual fluctuations
in the extent and rapidity of the circulation of commodities
and in their prices, the quantity of money current unceasingly
ebbs and flows. This mass must, therefore, be capable of ex
pansion and contraction. At one time money must be attached
in order to act as circulating coin, at another, circulating coin
must be repelled in order to act again as more or less stagnant

* "Accrescere quanto piu si pu6 il numero de' venditori d'ogni merce, diminuerc
quanto piu si pu6 11 numero dei compratori, questt sono i cardini sui quali si
rtgfirano tutte le operazioni di economia politics." (Vcrri, 1. c. p. 62.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 151

money. In order that the mass of money, actually current,
may constantly saturate the absorbing power of the circulation,
it is necessary that the quantity of gold and silver in a country
be greater than the quantity required to function as coia
This condition is fulfilled by money taking the form of hoards.
These reserves serve as conduits for the supply or withdrawal
of money to or from the circulation, which in this way never
overflows its banks.1

b. Means of Payment.

In the simple form of the circulation of commodities hither
to considered, we found a given value always presented to us in
a double shape, as a commodity at one pole, as money at the
opposite pole. The owners of commodities came therefore into
contact as the respective representatives of what were already
equivalents. But with the development of circulation, condi
tions arise under which the alienation of commodities becomes
separated, by an interval of time, from the realisation of their
prices. It will be sufficient to indicate the most simple of
these conditions. One sort of article requires a longer, an
other a shorter time for its production. Again, the production
of different commodities depends on different seasons of the
year. One sort of commodity may be born on its own market
place, another has to make a long journey to market Commod
ity-owner No. 1, may therefore be ready to sell, before No. 2 is
ready to buy. When the same transactions are continually
repeated between the same persons, the conditions of sale are

1 "There is required for carrying on the trade of the nation a determinate sum of
specifick money, which varies, and is sometimes more, sometimes less, as the cir
cumstances we are in require. . . . This ebbing and flowing of money supplies
and accommodates itself, without any aid of Politicians. . . . The buckets
work alternately; when money is scarce, bullion is coined; when bullion is scarce,
money is melted." (Sir D. North, 1. c., Postscript, p. 3.) John Stuart Mill, who
for a long time was an official of the East India Company, confirms the fact that
in India silver ornaments still continue to perform directly the functions of a
hoard. The silver ornaments are brought out and coined when there is a high
rate of interest, and go back again when the rate of interest falls. (J. S. Mill's
Evidence. " Reports on Bank Acts," 1857, 2084.) According to a Parliamentary
document of 1864, on the gold and silver import and export of India, the im
port of gold and silver in 1863 exceeded the export by £19,367,764. During the
8 years immediately preceding 1864, the excess of imports over exports of the
precious metals amounted to £100,652,917. During this century far more than
£200,000,000 has been coined in India.

152 Capitalist Production.

regulated in accordance with the conditions of production.
On the other hand, the use of a given commodity, of a house,
for instance, is sold (in common parlance, let) for a definite
period. Here, it is only at the end of the term that the buyer
has actually received the use-value of the commodity. He
therefore buys it before he pays for it. The vendor sells an
existing commodity, the purchaser buys as the mere represen
tative of money, or rather of future money. The vendor be
comes a creditor, the purchaser becomes a debtor. Since the
metamorphosis of commodities, or the development of their
value-form, appears here under a new aspect, money also ac
quires a fresh function ; it becomes the means of payment.

The character of creditor: or of debtor, results here from th-B
simple circulation. The change in the form of that circula
tion stamps buyer and seller with this new die. At first, there
fore, these new parts are just as transient and alternating a*
those of seller and buyer, and are in turns played by the samo
actors. But the opposition is not nearly so pleasant, and is, f ar
more capable of crystallization.1 The same characters can,
however, be assumed independently of the circulation of com
modities. The class-struggles of the ancient world took the
form chiefly of a contest between debtors and creditors, whicl
in Rome ended in the ruin of the plebeian debtors. Thej
were displaced by slaves. In the middle- ages the contest
ended with the ruin of the feudal debtors, who lost their po
litical power together with the economical basis on which it
was established. Nevertheless, the money relation of debtor
and creditor that existed at these two periods reflected only the
deeper-lying antagonism between the general economical con
ditions of existence of the classes in question.

Let us return to the circulation of commodities. The ap
pearance of the two equivalents, commodities and money, at
the two poles of the process of sale, has ceased to be simulta
neous. The money functions now, first as a measure of value

1 The following shows the debtor and creditor relations existing between English
traders at the beginning of the 18th century. " Such a spirit of cruelty reigns
here in England among the men of trade, that is not to be met with in any other
society of men, nor in any other kingdom of the world." (" An Essay on Credit
and the Bankrupt Act," Lond., 1707, p. 2.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 153

in the determination of the price of the commodity sold; the
price fixed by the contract measures the obligation of the
debtor, or the sum of money that he has to pay at a fixed
date. Secondly, it serves as an ideal means of purchase. Al
though existing only in the promise of the buyer to pay, it
causes the commodity to change hands. It is not before the
day fixed for payment that the means of payment actually
steps into, circulation, leaves the hand of the buyer for that of
the seller. The circulating medium was transformed into a
hoard, because the process stopped short after the first phase,
because the converted shape of the commodity, viz., the money,
was withdrawn from circulation. The means of payment
enters the circulation, but only after the commodity has left
it. The money is no longer the means that brings about the
process. It only brings it to a close, by stepping in as thet
absolute form of existence of exchange value, or as the uni
versal commodity. The seJler turned his commodity into
money, in order thereby to satisfy some want ; the hoarder did
the same in order to keep his commodity in its money-shape,
and the debtor in order to be able to pay; if he do not pay,
his goods will be sold by the sheriff. The value-form of com
modities, money, is therefore now the end and aim of a sale,
and that owing to a social necessity springing out of the
process of circulation itself.

The buyer converts money back into commodities before he
has turned commodities into money : in other words, he
achieves the second metamorphosis of commodities before the
first. The seller's commodity circulates, and realises its price,
but only in the shape of a legal claim upon money. It is con
verted into a use-value before it has been converted into
money. The completion of its first metamorphosis follows
only at a later period.1

1 It will be seen from the following quotation from my book which appeared in
1859, why I take no notice in the text of an opposite form: "Contrariwise, in the
process M — C, the money can be alienated as a real means of purchase, and in
that way, the price of the commodity can be realised before the use-value of the
money is realised and the commodity actually delivered. This occurs constantly
under the every-day form of pre-payments. And it is under this form, that the
English government purchases opium from the ryots of India. ... In these cases,
however, the money always acts as a means of purchase Of course capital

154 Capitalist Production.

The obligations falling due within a given period, repre
sent the sum of the prices of the commodities, the sale oi which
gave rise to those obligations. The quantity of gold ne»^ssary
to realise this sum, depends, in the first instance, on the rapid
ity of currency of the means of payment. That quantity is
conditioned by two circumstances: first the relations between
debtors and creditors form a sort of chain, in such a way that
A, when he receives money from his debtor B, straightway
hands it over to C his creditor, and so on ; the second cir
cumstance is the length of the intervals between the different
due-days of the obligations. The continuous chain of pay
ments, or retarded first metamorphoses, is essentially different
from that interlacing of the series of metamorphoses which
we considered on a former page. By the currency of the
circulating medium, the connexion between buyers and sellers,
is not merely expressed. This connexion is originated by,
and exists in, the circulation alone. Contrariwise, the move
ment of the means of payment expresses a social relation that
was in existence long before.

The fact that a number of sales take place simultaneously,
and side by side, limits the extent to which coin can be re
placed by the rapidity of currency. On the other hand, this
fact is a new lever in economising the means of payment. In
proportion as payments are concentrated at one spot, special
institutions and methods are developed for their liquidation.
Such in the middle ages were the virements at Lyons. The
debts due to A from B, to B from C, to C from A, and so on,
have only to be confronted with each other, in order to annul
each other to a certain extent like positive and negative quan
tities. There thus remains only a single balance to pay. The
greater the amount of the payments concentrated, the less is
this balance relatively to that amount, and the less is the mass
of the means of payment in circulation.

The function of money as the means of payment implies a
contradiction without a terminus medius. In so far as the

also is advanced in the shape of money. . . . This point of view, however,
does not fall within the horizon of simple circulation. ("Critique," &c., pp.
188.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 155

payments balance one another, money functions only ideally
as money of account, as a measure of value. In so far as ac
tual payments have to be made, money does not serve as a
circulating medium, as a mere transient agent in the inter
change of products, but as the individual incarnation of social
labour, as the independent form of existence of exchange value,
as the universal commodity. This contradiction comes to a
head in those phases of industrial and commercial crises which
are known as monetary crises.1 Such a crisis occurs only
where the ever-lengthening chain of payments, and an artificial
system of settling them, has been fully developed. Whenever
there is a general and extensive disturbance of this mechanism,
no matter what its cause, money becomes suddenly and imme
diately transformed, from its merely ideal shape of money of
account, into hard cash. Profane commodities can no longer
replace it. The use-value of commodities becomes value
less, and their value vanishes in the presence of its own
independent form. On the eve of the crisis, the bourgeois,
with the self-sufficiency that springs from intoxicat
ing prosperity, declares money to be a vain imagination.
Commodities alone are money. But now the cry is every
where : money alone is a commodity ! As the hart pants after
fresh water, so pants his soul after money, the only wealth.2
In a crisis, the antithesis between commodities and their value-
form, money, becomes heightened into an absolute contradic
tion. Hence, in such events, the form under which money
appears is of no importance. The money famine continues,

1 The monetary crisis referred to in the text, being a phase of every crisis, must
be clearly distinguished from that particular form of crisis, which also is called a
monetary crisis, but which may be produced by itself as an independent phenomenon
in such a way as to react only indirectly on industry and commerce. The pivot of
these crises is to be found in moneyed capital, and their sphere of direct action is
therefore the sphere of that capital, vir., banking, the stock exchange, and finance.

1 "The sudden reversion from a system of credit to a system of hard cash heaps
theoretical fright on top of the practical panic; and the dealers by whose agency
circulation is affected, shudder before the impenetrable mystery in which their own
economical relations are involved" (Karl Marx, L c. p. 198). "The poor stand still,
because the rich have no money to employ them, though they have the same land
and hands to provide victuals and clothes, as ever they had; . . . which is the
true Riches of a Nation, and not the money." (John Bellers: "Proposal* for raUing
a College of Industry." Lond. 1695. p. 8.)

156 Capitalist Production.

whether payments have to be made in gold or in credit money
such as bank notes.1

If we now consider the sum total of the money current dur
ing a given period, we shall find that, given the rapidity of
currency of the circulating medium and of the means of pay
ment, it is equal to the sum of the prices to be realised, plus
the sum of the payments falling due, minus the payments that
balance each other, minus finally the number of circuits in
which the same piece of coin serves in turn as means of
circulation and of payment. Hence, even when prices, rapid
ity of currency, and the extent of the economy in payments,
are given, the quantity of money current and the mass of com
modities circulating during a given period, such as a day, no
longer correspond. Money that represents commodities long
withdrawn from circulation, continues to be current. Com
modities circulate, whose equivalent in money will not appear
on the scene till some future day. Moreover, the debts con
tracted each day, and the payments falling due on the same
day, are quite incommensurable quantities.2

Credit-money springs directly out of the function of money
as a means of payment. Certificates of the debts owing for
the purchased commodities circulate for the purpose of trans-

1 The following shows how such times are exploited by the "amis du commerce,"
"On one occasion (1839) an old grasping banker (in the city) in his private roorc
raised the lid of the desk he sat over, and displayed to a friend rolls of banknotes,
saying with intense glee there were £600,000 of them, they were held to make
money tight, and would all be let out after three o'clock on the same day." ("The
Theory of Exchanges. The Bank Charter Act of 1844." Lond. 1864. p. 81.) The
Observer, a semi-official government organ, contained the following paragraph on
24th April, 1864: "Some very curious rumours are current of the means which
have been resorted to in order to create a scarcity of Banknotes Ques
tionable as it would seem, to suppose that any trick of the kind would be adopted,
the report has been so universal that it really deserves mention."

8 "The amount of purchases or contracts entered upon during the course of any
given day, will not affect the quantity of money afloat on that particular day, but,
in the vast majority of cases, will resolve themselves into multifarious drafts upon
the quantity of money which may be afloat at subsequent dates more or less distant.
. . . . The bills granted or credits opened, to-day, need have no resemblance
whatever, either in quantity, amount, or duration, to those granted or entered upon
to-morrow or next day; nay, many of to-day's bills, and credits, when due, fall in
with a mass of liabilities whose origins traverse a range of antecedent dates alto
gether indefinite, bills at 12, 6, 3 months or 1 often aggregating together to swell
the common liabilities of one particular day. ..." ("The Currency Theory
Reviewed: a letter to the Scottish people." By a Banker in England. Edinburgh,
1846. pp. 29, 30 passim.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 157

ferring those debts to others. On the other hand, to the same
extent as the system of credit is extended, so is the function
of money as a means of payment. In that character it takes
various forms peculiar to itself under which it makes itself at
home in the sphere of great commercial transactions. Gold
and silver coin, on the other hand^ are mostly relegated to the
sphere of retail trade.1

When the production of commodities has sufficiently ex
tended itself, money begins to serve as the means of payment
beyond the sphere of the circulation of commodities. It be
comes the commodity that is the universal subject-matter of
all contracts.2 Rents, taxes, and such like payments are
transformed from payments in kind into money payments.
To what extent this transformation depends upon the general
conditions of production, is shown, to take one example, by
the fact that the Koman Empire twice failed in its attempt to
levy all contributions in money. The unspeakable misery of
the French agricultural population under Louis XIV., a mis
ery so eloquently denounced by Boisguillebert, Marshal, Vau-
ban, and others, was due not only to the weight of the taxes,
but also to the conversion of taxes in kind into money taxes.3

1 As an example of how little ready money is required in true commercial opera
tions, I give below a statement by one of the largest London houses of its yearly
receipts and payments. Its transactions during the year 1856, extending to many
milions of pounds sterling, are here reduced to the scale of one million.

RECEIPTS.
Bankers' and Merchants'

Bills payable after date, - £533,596
Cheques on Bankers, &c.,

payable on demand, - 357,715

Country Notes, - - - 9,627

Bank of England Notes, - 88,554

Gold - - - 28,089

Silver and Copper, - • 1,486

Post Office Orders, • • 983

Total, - £1,000,000

PAYMENTS.

Bills payable after date, - £302,674

Cheques on London Bankers, 663,672

Bank of England Notes, - 22,743

Gold 9,427

Silver and Copper, • • 1,484

Total, - £1,000,000

"Report from the Select Committee on the Bank Acts, July, 1858," p. Ixxi.

3 "The course of trade being thus turned, from exchanging of goods for goods, or
delivering and taking, to selling and paying, all the bargains . . . are now
stated upon the foot of a Prince in money." "An Essay upon Publick Credit."
3rd Ed. Lond., 1710, p. 8.)

1 "L'argent. . . est devenu le bourreau de toutes choses." Finance is the
"alambic, qui a fait eVaporer une quantit^ effroyable de biens et de denrees pour

158 Capitalist Production.

In Asia, on the other hand, the fact that state taxes are chiefly
composed of rents payable in kind, depends on conditions of
production that are reproduced with the regularity of natural
phenomena. And this mode of payment tends in its turn to
maintain the ancient form of production. It is one of the
secrets of the conservation of the Ottoman Empire. If the
foreign trade, forced upon Japan by Europeans, should lead
to the substitution of money rents for rents in kind, it will be
all up with the exemplary agriculture of that country. The
narrow economical conditions under which that agriculture is
carried on, will be swept away.

In every country, certain days of the year become, by habit
recognised settling days for various large and recurrent pay
ments. These dates depend, apart from other revolutions in
the wheel of reproduction, on conditions closely connected with
the seasons. They also regulate the dates for payments that
have no direct connexion with the circulation of commodities
such as taxes, rents, and so on. The quantity of money re
quisite to make the payments, falling due on those dates all
over the country, causes periodical, though merely superficial,
perturbations in the economy of the medium of payment.1

From the law of the rapidity of currency of the means of
payment, it follows that the quantity of the means of pay
ment required for all periodical payments, whatever their
source, is in inverse proportion to the length of their periods.2

faire ce fatal precis." "L'argent declare la guerre a tout le genre humain." (Bois
guillebert: "Dissertation sur la nature des richesses, de 1'argent et de« tribute."
Edit. Daire. Economistes financiers. Paris, 1843, t. i., pp. 413, 410, 417.)

1 "On Whitsuntide, 1824," says Mr. Craig before the Commons' Committee of
1826, "there was such an immense demand for notes upon the banks of Edinburgh,
that by 11 o'clock they had not a note left in their custody. They sent round to all
the different banks to borrow, but could not get them, and many of the transac
tions were adjusted by slips of paper only; yet by three o'clock the whole of the
notes were returned into the banks from which they had issued! It was a mere
transfer from hand to hand." Although the average effective circulation of bank
notes in Scotland is less than three millions sterling, yet on certain pay days in the
year, every single note in the possession of the bankers, amounting in the whole to
about £7,000,000, is called into activity. On these occasions the notes have a
single and specific function to perform, and so soon as they have performed it, they
flow back into the various banks from which they issued. (See John Fullarton,
"Regulation of Currencies." Lond: 1844, p. 85 note.) In explanation it should be
stated, that in Scotland, at the date of Fullarton's work, notes and not cheques were
used to withdraw deposit*.

•To the question. "If there were occasion to raise 4P mHl*r»s p.«^ whether tho

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 159

The development of money into a medium of payment
makes it necessary to accumulate money against the dates
fixed for the payment of the sums owing. While hoarding,
as a distinct mode of acquiring riches, vanishes with the prog
ress of civil society, the formation of reserves of the means of
payment grows with that progress.

c. Universal Money.

When money leaves the home sphere of circulation, it strips
off the local garbs which it there assumes, of a standard of
prices, of coin, of tokens, and of a symbol of value, and re
turns to its original form of bullion. In the trade between the
markets of the world, the value of commodities is expressed so
as to be universally recognised. Hence their independent
value-form also, in these cases, confronts them under the shape
of universal money. It is only in the markets of the world
that money acquires to the full extent the character of the
commodity whose bodily form is also the immediate social in
carnation of human labour in the abstract. Its real mode of
existence in this sphere adequately corresponds to its ideal
concept.

Within the sphere of home circulation, there can be but one
commodity which, by serving as a measure of value, becomes
money. In the markets of the world a double measure of
value holds sway, gold and silver.1

•ame 6 millions (gold) . . . would suffice for such revolutions and circulations
thereof, as trade requires," Petty replies in his usual masterly manner, "I answer
yes: for the expense being 40 millions, if the revolutions were in such short circles,
yiz., weekly, as happens among poor artizans and labourers, who receive and pay
every Saturday, then £g parts of 1 million of money would answer these ends; but
if the circles be quarterly, according to our custom of paying rent, and gathering
taxes, then 10 millions were requisite. Wherefore, supposing payments in general
to be of a mixed circle between one week and 13, then add 10 millions to 42,
the half of which will be 5:A, so as if we have 51A millions we have enough.
(William Petty: "Political Anatomy of Ireland.'* 1672. Edit: Lond. 1691, pp.
IS, 14.)

1 Hence the absurdity of every law prescribing that the banks of a country shall
form reserves of that precious metal alone which circulates at home. The "pleasant
difficulties" thus self-created by the Bank of England, are well known. On the
subject of the great epochs in the history of the changes in the relative value of gold
and silver, see Karl Marx, 1. c. p. 215 sq. Sir Robert Peel, by his Bank Act of
1844, sought to tide over the difficulty, by allowing the Bank of England to issue
notes against silver bullion, on condition that the reserve of silver should never ex
ceed more than one-fourth of the reserve of gold. The value of silver being for

160 Capitalist Production.

Money of the world serves as the universal medium of pay
ment, as the universal means of purchasing, and as the uni
versally recognised embodiment of all wealth. Its function
as a means of payment in the settling of international balances
is its chief one. Hence the watchword of the mercantilists,
balance of trade.1 Gold and silver serve as international

that purpose estimated at its price in the London market. — Note to the 4th German
edition. — We find ourselves once more in a period of a marked change in the relative
values of gold and silver. About 25 years ago the ratio of gold to silver was 15.5 to
I, now it is about 22 to 1, and silver is continually falling against gold. This is
essentially a result of a revolution in the processes of production of these two metals.
Formerly gold was obtained almost exclusively by washing alluvial strata containing
gold, the products of disintegration of gold-carrying rocks. But now this method
is no longer sufficient and has been crowded to the rear by the mining of quartz
layers containing gold, a method formerly considered as secondary, although wull
known even to the ancients (Diodorus, III, 12-14). On the other hand, immense
new silver deposits were discovered in the American Rocky Mountains, and these
as well as the Mexican silver mines opened up by means of railroads, which per
mitted the influx of modern machinery and fuel and thereby reduced the cost and
increased the output of silver mining. But there is a great difference in the way
in which both metals occur in the ore beds. The gold is generally solid, but scat
tered in minute particles through the quartz layers. The whole diggings must
therefore be crushed and the gold washed out or extracted by means of quicksilver.
Frequently one million grams of quartz do not contain more than 1 to 3 grams of
gold, and rarely more than 30 to 60 grams. Silver, on the ether hand, is rare y
found in the pure state, but it occurs in some ores which are easily separated fro n
the dross and contain as much as 40 to 90% of silver. Or smaller quantities of it
are found in ores like copper, lead, etc., which are themselves worth mining. Th s
alone is sufficient to show that the work of producing gold has rather increase!,
while that of producing silver has certainly decreased, and this quite naturally ex
plains the fall in the value of silver. This fall in value would express itself fn a
still greater fall of price, if the price of silver were not held up even now by arti
ficial means. The silver deposits of America, however, have been made accessible
only to a small extent, and there is, consequently, every prospect of a continued fall
in the value of silver. This must be further promoted by the relative decrease cf
the demand for silver for articles of use and luxury, its displacement by plated
wares, aluminum, etc. Judge, then, of the utopianism of the bimetallist illusion thzt
a forced international quotation could raise silver to its old value of 15.5 to 1. The
chances are rather that silver will lose more and more of its character as money o:i
the world market. F. E.

1 The opponents, themselves, of the mercantile system, a system which consic •
ered the settlement of surplus trade balances in gold and silver as the aim of inter
national trade, entirely misconceived the functions of mone)' of the world. I hav-«
shown by the example of Ricardo in what way their false conception of the law?
that regulate the quantity of the circulating medium, is reflected in their equally
false conception of the international movement in the precious metals (1. c. pp. 15"
sq.). His erroneous dogma: "An unfavourable balance of trade never arises but
from a redundant currency. . . . The exportation of the coin is caused by it;
cheapness, and is not the effect, but the cause of an unfavourable balance," alreadj
occurs in Barbon: "The Balance of Trade, if there be one, is not the cause ol
sending away the money out of a nation; but that proceeds from the difference ol
the value of bullion in every country." (N. Barbon; 1. c. pp. 59, 60.) MacCul
loch in "the Literature of Political Economy, a classified catalogue, Lond. 1845,'

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 161

means of purchasing chiefly and necessarily in those periods
when the customary equilibrium in the interchange of products
between different nations is suddenly disturbed. And lastly,
it serves as the universally recognised embodiment of social
wealth, whenever the question is not of buying or paying, but
of transferring wealth from one country to another, and when
ever this transference in the form of commodities is rendered
impossible, either by special conjunctures in the markets, or
by the purpose itself that is intended.1

Just as every country needs a reserve of money for its home
circulation, so, too, it requires one for external circulation in
the markets of the world. The functions of hoards, therefore,
arise in part out of the function of money, as the medium of
the home circulation and home payments, and in part out
of its function of money of the world.2 For this latter func
tion, the genuine money-commodity, actual gold and silver, is
necessary. On that account, Sir James Steuart, in order to
distinguish them from their purely local substitutes, calls gold
and silver "money of the world."

The current of the stream of gold and silver is a double one.
On the one hand, it spreads itself from its sources over all the
markets of the world, in order to become absorbed, to various
extents, into the different national spheres of circulation, to
fill the conduits of currency, to replace abraded gold and silver

praises Barbon for this anticipation, but prudently passes over the naive forms, in
which Barbon clothes the absurd suppositoin on which the "currency principle" is
based. The absence of real criticism and even of honesty, in that catalogue, cul
minates in the sections devoted to the history of the theory of money; the reason
is that MacCulloch in this part of the work is flattering Lord Overstone whom he
calls "fecile princeps argentariorum."

I For instance, in subsidies, money loans for carrying on wars or for enabling
banks to resume cash payments, &c., it is the money, form, and no other, of value
that may be wanted.

I 1 would desire, indeed, no more convincing evidence of the competency of the
machinery of the hoards in specie-paying countries to perform every necessary office
of international adjustment, without any sensible aid from the general circulation,
than the facility with which France, when but just recovering from the shock of a
destructive foreign invasion, completed within the space of 27 months the payment
of her forced contribution of nearly 20 millions to the allied powers, and a con
siderable proportion of the sum in specie, without any perceptible contraction or
derangement of her domestic currency, or even any alarming fluctuation of her
exchanges." (Fullarton, 1. c., p. 134.) — Note to the 4th German edition. — A still
more convincing illustration is given by the ease with which the same France, in
1871 to 1873, was able to pay off in 80 months a war indemnity ten time*

•ad to a considerable extent also in metal money. F. E.

1 62 Capitalist Production.

coins, to supply the material of articles of luxury, and to
petrify into hoards.1 This first current is started by the
countries that exchange their labour, realise in commodities,
for the labour embodied in the precious metals by gold and
silver-producing countries. On the other hand, there is a con
tinual flowing backwards and forwards of gold and silver be
tween the different national spheres of circulation, a current
whose motion depends on the ceaseless fluctuations in the
course of exchange.2

Countries in which the bourgeois form of production is de
veloped to a certain extent, limit the hoards concentrated in
the strong rooms of the banks to the minimum required for
the proper performance of their peculiar functions.3 When
ever these hoards are strikingly above their average level, it
is, with some exceptions, an indication of stagnation in the
circulation of commodities, of an interruption in the even flow
of their metamorphoses.4

1 "L'argent se partage entre les nations relativement au besoin qu'elles en ont.
. . etant toujours attire par les productions." (Le Trosne 1. c., p. 916.) "The
mines which are continually giving gold and silver, do give sufficient to supply
such a needful balance to every nation." (J. Vanderlint, 1. c., p. 40.)

1 "Exchanges rise and fall every week, and at some particular times in the yeaf
run high against a nation, and at other times run as high on the contrary." (N.
Barbon, 1. c., p. 39.)

* These various functions are liable to come into dangerous conflict with one an'
other whenever gold and silver have also to serve as a fund for the conversion of
bank-notes.

4 "What money is more than of absolute necessity for a Home Trade, is dead
stock . . . and brings no profit to that country it's kept in, but as it is trans
ported in trade, as well as imported." (John Bellers, Essays, p. 12.) "What if we
have too much coin? We may melt down the heaviest and turn it into the splendour
of plate, vessels or utensils of gold or silver; or send it out as a commodity, where
the same is wanted or desired; or let it out at interest, where interest is high."
(W. Petty: "Quantulumcunque," p. 39.) "Money is but the fat of the Body
Politick, whereof too much doth as often hinder its agility, as too little makes it
sick .... as fat lubricates the motion of the muscles, feeds in want of
victuals, fills up the uneven cavities, and beautifies the body; so doth money in the
state quicken its action, feeds from abroad in time of dearth at home; evens ac
counts . . and beautifies the whole; altho more especially the particular persons
that have it in plenty." (W. Petty. "Political Anatomy of Ireland," p. 14.)

PART II.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO
CAPITAL.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GENERAL FORMULA FOR CAPITAL.

THE circulation of commodities is the starting point of capital
The production of commodities, their circulation, and that
more developed form of their circulation called commerce,
these form the historical groundwork from which it rises.
The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the
16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-
embracing market

If we abstract from the material substance of the circula
tion of commodities, that is, from the exchange of the various
use-values, and consider only the economic forms produced by
this process of circulation, we find its final result to be money :
this final product of the circulation of commodities is the first
form in which capital appears.

As a matter of history, capital, as opposed to landed prop
erty, invariably takes the form at first of money ; it appears as
moneyecLjEfialth, as the capital of the merchant and of the
usurer.1 But we have no need to refer to the origin of capi
tal in order to discover that the first form of appearance of
capital is money. We can see it daily under our very eyes.

1 The contrast between the power, based on the personal relations of dominion and
servitude, that is conferred by landed property, and the impersonal power that is
given by money, is well expressed by the two French proverbs, "Nulle terre cans
seigneur," and "L'argent n'a pas de maitre."

163

164 Capitalist Production.

All new capital, to commence with, comes on the stage, that is,
on the market, whether of commodities, labour, or money, even
in our days, in the shape of money that by a definite process
has to be transformed into capital.

The firct distinction we notice between money that is money
only, and money that is capital, is nothing more than a differ
ence in their form of circulation.

The simplest form of the circulation of commodities is C —
M — C, the transformation of commodities into money, and the
change of the money back again into commodities ; or selling
in order to buy. But alongside of this form we find another
specifically different form: M — C — M, the transformation of
money into commodities, and the change of commodities back
again into money ; or buying in order to sell. Money th it
circulates in the latter manner is thereby transformed into,
becomes capital, and is already potentially capital.

Now let us examine the circuit M — C — M a little closer.
It consists, like the other, of two antithetical phases. In the
first phase, M — C, or the purchase, the money is changed in x>
a commodity. In the second phase, C — M, or the sale, the
commodity is changed back again into money. The combina
tion of these two phases constitutes the single movement
whereby money is exchanged for a commodity and the same
commodity is again exchanged for money; whereby a cori-
modity is bought in order to be sold, or, neglecting the dis
tinction in form between buying and selling, whereby a
commodity is bought with money, and then money is bought
with a commodity.1 The result, in which the phases of the
process vanish, is the exchange of money for money, M — M.
If I purchase 2000 Ibs. of cotton for £100, and resell the 2000
Ibs. of cotton for £110, I have, in fact, exchanged £100 for
£110, money for money.

Now it is evident that the circuit M — >C — M would be al>-
surd and without meaning if the intention were to exchange
by this means two equal sums of money, £100 for £100. Tie

1 "Arec de ! 'ardent on »chete de» merchandises, ct avec des raarchandise* >n
«ckete de I'arfent." fMercier de la Rariere: "L'ordre nature! et wentiel d«
politiquea." p. MI.)

The General Formula for Capital. 165

miser's plan would be far simpler and surer ; he sticks to his
£100 instead of exposing it to the dangers of circulation. And
yet, whether the merchant who has paid £100 for his cotton
sells it for £110, or lets it go for £100, or even £50, his money
has, at all events, gone through a characteristic and original
movement, quite different in kind from that which it goes
through in the hands of the peasant who sells corn, and with
the money thus set free buys clothes. We have therefore to
examine first the distinguishing characteristics of the forms of
the circuits M — C — M and C — M — C, and in doing this the
real difference that underlies the mere difference of form will
reveal itself.

Let us see, in the first place, what the two forms have in
common.

Both circuits are resolvable into the same two antithetical
phases, C — M, a sale, and M — C, a purchase. In each of
these phases the same material elements — a commodity, and
money, and the same economical dramatis persona?, a buyer
and a seller — confront one another. Each circuit is the unity
of the same two antithetical phases, and in each case this unity
is brought about by the intervention of three contracting par
ties, of whom one only sells, another only buys, while the third
both buys and sells.

What, however, first and foremost distinguishes the circuit
C — M — C from the circuit M — C! — M, is the inverted order of
succession of the two phases. The simple circulation of com
modities begins with a sale and ends with a purchase, while
the circulation of money as capital begins with a purchase
and ends with a sale. In the one case both the starting-
point and the goal are commodities, in the other they are
money. In the first form the movement is brought about
by the intervention of money, in the second by that of a)
commodity.

In the circulation C — M — C, the money is in the end con
verted into a commodity, that serves as a use-value ; it is spent
once for all. In the inverted form, M — C — M, on the con
trary, the buyer lays out money in order that, as a seller, he
may recover money. By the purchase of his commodity he

1 66 Capitalist Production.

throws money into circulation, in order to withdraw it again
by the sale of the same commodity. He lets the money go,
but only with the sly intention of getting it back again. The
money, therefore, is not spent, it is merely advanced.1

In the circuit C — M — C; the same piece of money changes
its place twice. The seller gets it from the buyer and pays it
away to another seller. The complete circulation, which be
gins with the receipt, concludes with the payment, of money
for commodities. It is the very contrary in the circuit M —
C — M. Here it is not the piece of money that changes iia
place twice, but the commodity. The buyer takes it from the
hands of the seller and passes .it into the hands of another
buyer. Just as in the simple circulation of commodities the
double change of place of the same piece of money effects ila
passage from one hand into another, so here the double change
of place of the same commodity brings about the reflux of the
money to its point of departure.

Such reflux is not dependent on the commodity being soli
for more than was paid for it. This circumstance influences
only the amount of the money that comes back. The reflux
itself takes place, so soon as the purchased commodity is re
sold, in other words, so soon as the circuit M — C — M is coir-
pleted. We have here, therefore, a palpable ^difference be
tween the circulation of money as capita], and its circulation
as mere money.

The circuit C — M — C comes completely to an end, so soo i
as the money brought in by the sale of one commodity 13
abstracted again by the purchase of another.

If, nevertheless, there follows a reflux of money to its start
ing point, this can only happen through a renewal or repeti
tion of the operation. If I sell a quarter of corn for £3, and
with this £3 buy clothes, the money, so far as I am concerned,
is spent and done with. It belongs to the clothes merchant
If I now sell a second quarter of corn, money indeed flows
back to me, not however as a sequel to the first transaction,

1 "When a thing is bought in order to be sold again, the sum employed is calle 1
money advanced; when it is bought not to be sold, it may be said to be expended."-- •
(James Steuart: "Works," &c. Edited by Gen. Sir James Steuart, his son. Load,
1806. V. I., p. 274.)

The General Formula for Capital. 167

but in consequence of its repetition. The money again leaves
me, so soon as I complete this second transaction by a fresh
purchase. Therefore, in the circuit C — M — C, the expendi
ture of money has nothing to do with its reflux. On the other
hand, in M — C — M, the reflux of the money is conditioned by
the very mode of its expenditure. Without this reflux, the
operation fails, or the process is interrupted and incomplete,
owing to the absence of its complementary and final phase, the
sale.

The circuit C — M — C starts with one commodity, and
finishes with another, which falls out of circulation and into
consumption. Consumption, the satisfaction of wants, in one
word, use-value, is its end and aim. The circuit M — C — M,
on the contrary, commences with money and ends with money.
Its leading motive, and the goal that attracts it, is therefore
mere exchange value.

In the simple circulation of commodities, the two extremes
of the circuit have the same economic form. They are both
commodities, and commodities of equal value. But they are
also use-values differing in their qualities, as, for example,
corn and clothes. The exchange of products, of the different
materials in which the labour of society is embodied, forms
here the basis of the movement. It is otherwise in the cir
culation M — C — M, which at first sight appears purposeless,
because tautological. Both extremes have the same economic
form. They are both money, and therefore are not qualita
tively different use-values; for money is but the converted
form of commodities, in which their particular use-values
vanish. To exchange £100 for cotton, and then this same
cotton again for £100, is merely a roundabout way of ex
changing money for money, the same for the same, and ap
pears to be an operation just as purposeless as it is absurd.1

1 "On n'echange pas de 1'argcnt centre de 1'argent," says Mercier de la Riviere to
the Mercantilists (1. c., p. 486). In a work, which, ex professo, treats of "trade"
and "speculation," occurs the following: "All trade consists in the exchange of
things of different kinds; and the advantage" (to the merchant?) "arises out of this
difference. To exchange a pound of bread against a pound of bread ....
would be attended with no advantage; .... Hence trade is advantageously
contrasted with gambling, which consists in a mere exchange of money for money."
(Th. Corbet, "An Inquiry into the Causes and Modes of the Wealth of Individuals;

1 68 Capitalist Production.

One sum of money is distinguishable from another only by its
amount. The character and tendency of the process M — O
— M, is therefore not due to any qualitative difference be
tween its extremes, both being money, but solely to their
quantitative difference. More money is withdrawn from cir
culation at the finish than was thrown into, it at the start.
The cotton that was bought for £100 is perhaps resold for
£100+£10 or £110. The exact form of this process is there-
fore M — C — M', where Mr=M+ A M=the original sum ad
vanced, plus an increment. This increment or excess over the
original value I call "surplus-value." The value originally
advanced, therefore, not only remains intact while in circula
tion, but adds to itself a surplus-value or expands itself. It is
this movement that converts it into capital.

Of course it is also possible, that in C — M — O, the two
extremes C — C, say corn and clothes, may represent different
quantities of value. The farmer may sell his corn above its
value, or may buy the clothes at less than their value. He
may, on the other hand, abe done" by the clothes merchant.
Yet, in the form of circulation now under consideration, such
differences in value are purely accidental. The fact that the
corn and the clothes are equivalents, does not deprive the pro
cess of ail meaning, as it does in M — C — M. The equivalence
of their values is rather a necessary condition to Jts_.normai
course.

The repetition or renewal of the act of selling in order to
buy, is kept within bounds by the very object it aims at,
namely, consumption or the satisfa£tian-of definite wants, an

or the principles of Trade and Speculation explained." London, 1841, p. 6.) Al
though Corbet does not see that M — M, the exchange of money for money, is the
characteristic form of circulation, not only of merchants' capital but of all capital,
yet at least he acknowledges that this form is common to gambling and to one spe
cies of trade, viz., speculation: but then comes MacCulloch and makes out, that to
buy in order to sell, is to speculate, and thus the difference between Speculation and
Trade vanishes. "Every transaction in which an individual buys produce in order
to sell it again, is, in fact, a speculation." (MacCulloch: "A Dictionary Practical,
&c., of Commerce." Lond., 1847, p. 1058.) With much more naivet6, Pinto, the
Pindar of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, remarks, "Le commerce est un jeu:
(taken from Locke) ct ce n'est pas avec des gueux qu'on peut gagner. Si Ton gag-
nait long-temps en tout avec tous, il faudrait rendre de bon accord les plus grander
parties du profit pour recommencer le jeu." (Pinto: "Traiti de la Circulation et du
Cridit" Amsterdam, 1771, p. 231.)

The General Formula for Capital. 169

aim that lies altogether outside the sphere of circulation. But
when we buy in order to sell, we, on the contrary, begin and
end with the same thing, money, exchange-value; and thereby
the movement becomes interminable. No doubt, M becomes
M+AM, £100 become £110. But when viewed in their
qualitative aspect alone, £110 are the same as £100, namely
money; and considered quantitatively, £110 is, like £100, a
sum of definite and limited value. If now, the £110 be spent
as money, they cease to play their part They are no longer
capital. Withdrawn from circulation, they become petrified
into a hoard, and though they remained in that state till
doomsday, not a single farthing would accrue to them. If,
then, the expansion of value is once aimed at, there is just the
same inducement to augment the value of the £110 as that of
the £100 ; for both are but limited expressions for exchange-
value, and therefore both have the same vocation to approach,
by quantitative increase, as near as possible to absolute wealth.
Momentarily, indeed, the value originally advanced, the £100
is distinguishable from the surplus value of £10 that is an
nexed to it during circulation ; but the distinction vanishes
immediately. At the end of the process we do not receive
with one hand the original £100, and with the other, the
surplus-value of £10. We simply get a value of £110, which
is in exactly the same condition and fitness for commencing
the expanding process, as the original £100 was. Money ends
the movement only to begin it again.1 Therefore, the final
result of every separate circuit, in which a purchase and con
sequent sale are completed, forms of itself the starting point
of a new circuit The simple circulation of commodities —
selling in order to buy — is a means of carrying out a purpose
unconnected with circulation, namely, the appropriation of
use-values, the satisfaction of wants. The circulation of
money as capital is, on the contrary, an end in itself, for the
expansion of value takes place only within this constantly

1 "Capital is divisible .... into the original capital and toe profit, the incre
ment to the capital .... although in practice this profit is immediately turned
into capital, and set in motion with the original." (F. Engels, "Umrisse zu einer
Kritik der Nationalokonomie, in: Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher, herausgegeben
TOD Arnold Ruge und Karl Marx." Paris, 1844, p. 99.)

170 Capitalist Production.

renewed movement. The circulation of capital has therefore
no limits.1 Thus the conscious representative of this move
ment, the possessor of money becomes a capitalist. His per
son, or rather his pocket, is the point from which the money
starts and to which it returns. The expansion of value,
which is the objective basis or main-spring of the circulation
M — 0 — M, becomes his subjective aim, and it is only in so far
as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth is the ab
stract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he func
tions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and en
dowed with consciousness and a will. Use-values must there
fore never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist;2
neither must the profit on any single transaction. The restless
never-ending process of profit-making alone is what he aims

1 Aristotle opposes (Economic to Chrematistic. He starts from the former. So
far as it is the art of gaining a livelihood, it is limited to procuring those articles
that are necessary to existence, and useful either to a household or the state. "True
wealth (6 dXTjflivdj irXoOroj) consists of such values in use; for the quantity of pos
sessions of this kind, capable of making life pleasant, is not unlimited. There is,
however, a second mode of acquiring things, to which we may by preference and
with correctness give the name of Chrematistic, and in this case, there appear to be
no limits to riches and possessions. Trade ( jj Kairtj\iK^ is literally retail trade, and
Aristotle takes this kind because in it values in use predominate) does not in its
nature belong to Chrematistic, for here the exchange has reference only to what is
necessary to themselves (the buyer or seller)." Therefore, as he goes on to show,
the original form of trade was barter, but with the extension of the latter, there
arose the necessity for money. On the discovery of money, barter of necessity de
veloped into KO.VTJ\IK^I into trading in c6mmodities, and this again, in opposition to
its original tendency, grew into Chrematistic, into the art of making money. Now
Chrematistic is distinguishable from (Economic in this way, that "in the case of
Chrematistic, circulation is the source of riches (iroifjTiK^ xpti/j-druv .... flid
\(n\\jArd}v Sta/SoXTjj). And it appears to revolve about money, for money is the be
ginning and end of this kind of exchange (rb ydp v6/xt<r/no ffroixtiov Kal x^pas TIJI
dXXa777? Iffrlv). Therefore also riches, such as Chrematistic strives for, are un
limited. Just as every art that is not a means to an end, but an end in itself, has
no limit to its aims, because it seeks constantly to approach nearer and nearer to
that end, while those arts that pursue means to an end, are not boundless, since
the goal itself imposes a limit upon them, so with Chrematistic, there are no bounds
to its aims, these aims being absolute wealth. (Economic not Chrematistic has a
limit .... the object of the former is something different from money, of the
latter the augmentation of money .... By confounding these two forms, which
overlap each other, some people have been led to look upon the preservation and
increase of money ad infinitum as the end and aim of (Economic." (Aristotles De
Rep. edit. Bekker. lib. I. c. 8, 9. passim.)

* "Commodities (here used in the sense of use-values) are not the terminating
object of the trading capitalist, money is his terminating object," (Th. Chalmers
On Pol. Econ. &c., 2nd Ed., Glasgow, 1832, p. 165, 166.)

The General Formula for Capital 171

at.1 This boundless greed after riches, this passionate chase
after exchange-value,2 is common to the capitalist and the
miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad,
the capitalist is a rational miser. The never-ending aug
mentation of exchange-value, which the miser strives after, by
seeking to save 3 his money from circulation, is attained by the
more acute capitalist, by constantly throwing it afresh into
circulation.4

The independent form, i. e., the money-form, which the
value of commodities assumes in the case of simple circulation,
serves only one purpose, namely, their exchange, and vanishes
in the final result of the movement. On the other hand, in
the circulation M — C — M, both the money and the commodity
represent only different modes of existence of value itself, the
money its general mode, and the commodity its particular, or,
so to say, disguised mode.5 It is constantly changing from
one form to the other without thereby becoming lost, and thus
assumes an automatically active character. If now we take
in turn each of the two different forms which self-expanding
value successively assumes in the course of its life, we then
arrive at these two propositions : Capital is money : Capital
is commodities.8 In truth, however, value is here the active
factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the
form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time
changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off
surplus-value from itself; the original value, in other words,

1 "II mercante non conta quasi per niente il lucro fatto, ma mira sempre al
future." (A. Genovesi, Lezioni di Economia Civile 1765), Custodi's edit, of Italian
Economists. Parte Moderna't. xiii. p. 139.)

* "The inextinguishable passion for gain, the auri sacra fames, will always lead
capitalists." (MacCulloch: "The principles of Polit. Econ." London, 1830, p.
179.) This view, of course, does not prevent the same MacCulloch and others of his
kidney, when in theoretical difficulties, such, for example, as the question of over
production, from transforming the same capitalist into a moral citizen, whose sole
concern is for use-values, and who even developes an insatiable hunger for boots,
hats, eggs, calico, and other extremely familiar sorts of use-values.

'Zwfeij' is a characteristic Greek expression for hoarding. So in English to save
has the same two meanings: sauver and epargner.

* "Questo infinito che le cose non hanno in progresso, hanno in giro." (Galiani.)
8 "Ce n'est pas la matiere qui fait le capital, mais la valeur de ces matieres." (J.

B. Say: "Trait* de 1'Econ. Polit." Seme. ed. Paris, 1817, t. 1., p. 428.)

•"Currency (1) employed in producing articles ... is capital." (MacLeod:
"The Theory and Practice of Banking." London, 1855, v. 1., ch. i., p. 55.)
"Capital is commodities." (James Mill: "Elements of Pol. Econ." Lond., 1821, p. 74.)

172 Capitalist Production.

expands spontaneously. For the movement, in the course of
which it adds surplus value, is its own movement, its expan
sion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value,
it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value
to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays
golden eggs.

Value, therefore, being the active factor in such a process,
and assuming at one time the form of money, at another that
of commodities, but through all these changes preserving itself
and expanding, it requires some independent form, by means
of which its identity may at any time be established. Ard
this form it possesses only in the shape of money. It is under
the form of money that value begins and ends, and begins
again, every act of its own spontaneous generation. It began
by being £100, it is now £110, and so on. But the money
itself is only one of the two forms of value. Unless it takes
the form of some commodity, it does not become capital.
There is here no antagonism, as in the case of hoarding, be
tween the money and commodities. The capitalist knows that
all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however
badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, in
wardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful
means whereby out of money to make more money.

In simple circulation, C — M — C, the value of commodities
attained at the most a form independent of their use-values,
i. e.f the form of money ; but that same value now in the cir
culation M — C — M; or the circulation of capital, suddenly
presents itself as an independent substance, endowed with a
motion of its own, passing through a life-process of its own,
in which money and commodities are mere forms which : t
assumes and casts ojMn turn. Nay, more: instead of simply
representing the relations of commodities, it enters now, so to
say, into private relations jwith itself. It differentiates itself
as original value from itself as surplus-value; as the father
differentiates himself from himself qu& the son, yet both are
one and of one age: for only by the surplus value of £10 does
the £100 originally advanced become capital, and so soon as'
this takes place, so soon as the son, and by the son, the father,

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 173

is begotten, so soon does their difference vanish, and they again
become one, £110.

Value therefore now becomes value in process, money in
process, and, as such, capital. It comes out of circulation,
enters into it again, preserves and multiplies itself within its
circuit, comes back out of it with expanded bulk, and begins
the same round ever afresh.1 M — M', money which begets
money, such is the description of Capital from the mouths
of its first interpreters, the Mercantilists.

Buying in order to sell, or, more accurately, buying in order
to sell dearer, M — C — M', appears certainly to be a form
peculiar to one kind of capital alone, namely, merchants'
capital. But industrial capital too is money ? that is changed
into commodities, and by the sale of these commodities, is re
converted into more money. The events that take place out
side the sphere of circulation, in the interval between the buy
ing and selling, do not affect the form of this movement.
Lastly, in the case of interest-bearing capital, the circulation
M — O — M' appears abridged. We have its result without the
intermediate stage, in the form M — M', "en style lapidaire"
so to say, money that is worth more money, value that is
greater than itself.

M — C — M' is therefore in reality the general formula of
capital as it appears prima facie within the sphere of circula
tion.

CHAPTER V.

CONTRADICTIONS IN THE GENERAL FORMTTLA OF CAPITA!,.

THE form which circulation takes when money becomes cap
ital, is opposed to all the laws we have hitherto investigated
bearing on the nature of commodities, value and money, and
even of circulation itself. What distinguishes this form from
that of the simple circulation of commodities, is the inverted

1 Capital : "portion f ructifiinte dc la richesse accum ul£e . . . valeur permanent*,
tnultipliantc." (Sisxnondi: "Nouvetux principes de 1'icon. polit.," t. i., p. 88, 89.)

174 Capitalist Production.

order of succession of the two antithetical processes, sale and
purchase. How can this purely formal distinction between
these processes change their character as it were by magic ?

But that is not all. This inversion has no existence for two
out of the three persons who transact business together. As
capitalist, I buy commodities from A. .and sell them again to ]Bj
but as a simple ownei^jofjconimodities, I sell them to B and
then purchase fresh ones from A.^ A and B see no difference
between the two sets of transactions. They are merely buyers
or sellers. And I on each occasion meet them as a mere own* r
of either money or commodities, as a buyer or a seller, and,
what is more, in both sets of transactions, I am opposed to A
only as a buyer and to B only as a seller, to the one only as
money, to the other only as commodities, and to either of
them as capital or a capitalist, or as representative of anything
that is more than money or commodities, or that can produce
any effect beyond what money and commodities can. For me
the purchase from A and the sale to B are part of a series.
But thp pnnnpvirm l^ptwpgn,, thfl two acts exists for me alone._
A does not trouble himself about my transaction with B, no*
does B about my business with A. And if I offered to explain
to them the meritorious nature of my action in inverting the-
order of succession, they would probably point out to me tha ;
I was mistaken as to that order of succession, and that the
whole transaction, instead of beginning with a purchase anc
ending with a sale, began, on the contrary, with a sale and was
concluded with a purchase. In truth, my first act, the pur
chase, was from the standpoint of A,, a sale, and my second act,
the sale, was from the standpoint of B, a purchase. Not con
tent with that, A and B would declare that the whole series
was superfluous and nothing but Hokus Pokus ; that for the
future A would buy direct frorp H, and B sell direct to A.
Thus the whole transaction would be reduced to a singlejict
forming an isolated, non-complemented phase in the ordinary
circulation of commodities, a mere sale from A's point of view,
and from B's, a mere purchase. The inversion, therefore, of
the order of succession, does not take us outside the sphere of
the simple circulation of commodities, and we must rather

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 175

look, whether there is in this simple circulation anything per
mitting an expansion of the value that enters into circulation,
and, consequently, a creation of surplus-value.

Let us take the process of circulation in a form under which
it presents itself as a simple and direct exchange of com
modities. This is always the case when two owners of com
modities buy from each other, and on the settling day the
amounts mutually owing are equal and cancel each other.
The money in this case is money of account and serves to ex
press the value of the commodities by their prices, but is not,
itself, in the shape of hard cash, confronted with them. So
far as regards use-values, it is clear that both parties may gain
some advantaga Both part with goods that, as use-values, are
of no service to them, and receive others that they can make
use of. And there may also be a further gain. A, who sells
wine and buys corn, possibly produces more^wine, with given
labour time, than farmer B could, and B, on the other hand,
more cornjhan wine-grower A could. A, therefore, may get,
for the same exchange value, more jgorn, and B_more wine,
than each would respectively get without any exchange by pro
ducing his own corn_and wine. With reference, therefore, to
use-value^jJiere is good ground for saying that "exchange is a
transaction by which bot]i sides jarain." * It is otherwise with
exchange value. "A man who has plenty of wine and no corn
treats with a man who has plenty of corn and no wine ; an ex
change takes place between them of corn to the value of 50,
for wine of the same value. This act produces no increase of
exchange value either for the one or the other ; for each of
them already possessed, before the exchange, a value equal
to that which he acquired by means of that operation. " 2 The
result is not altered by introducing money, as a medium of cir
culation, between the commodities, and making the sale and
the purchase two distinct acts.3 The value of a commodity is

*"L'£cbange est unc transaction admirable dans laquelle les deux contractants
gagnent— toujours (!)" (Destutt de Tracy: "Traite de la Volonte et de ses effets."
Paris, 1826, p. 68.) This work appeared afterwards as "Traite de 1'Econ. Polit.

•"Mercier de la Riviere," 1. c. p. 544.

8 "Que 1'une de ces deux valeurs soit argent, ou qu'elles soient toutes deux mer
chandises usuelles, rien de plus indifferent «n soi." (Mercier de la Riviere,"
1. c. p. 648.)

176 Capitalist Production.

expressed in its prigs before it goes into circulation, and is
therefore a precedent condition of circulation, not its result.1
Abstractedly considered, that is, apart from circumstances
not immediately flowing from the laws of the simple circula
tion of commodities, there is in an exchange nothing (if we
except the replacing of one use-value by another) but a
metamorphosis, a mere change in the form of ^thejspmmodity.
The same exchange value, i.e., the same quantity of incor
porated social labour, remains throughout in the hands of the
owner of the commodity first in the shape of his own com
modity, then in the form of the money for which he exchanged
it, and lastly, in the shape of the commodity he buys with that
money. Thi^ fihangp of form does not imply a change in the
magnitude of the value. But the change, which the value of
the commodity undergoes in this process, is limited to a change
in its money form. This form exists first as the price of the
commodity offered for sale, then as an actual sum of money,
which, however, was already expressed in the price, and lastly,
as the price of an equivalent commodity. This change of
form no more implies, taken alone, a change in the quantity
of value, than does the change of a £5 note into sovereigns,
half sovereigns and shillings. So far therefore as the circula
tion of commodities effects a change in the form alone of their
values, and is free from disturbing influences, it must be the
exchange of equivalents. Little as Vulgar-Economy knows
about the nature of value, yet whenever it wishes to consider
the phenomena of circulation in their purity, it assumes that
supply and demand are equal, which amounts to this, that their
effect is nil. If therefore, as regards the use-values ex
changed, both buyer and seller may possibly gain something,
this is not the case as regards the exchange values. Here we
must rather say, "Where equality exists there can be no gain."2
It is true, commodities may be sold at prices deviating from
their values, but these deviations are to be considered as in-

1 "Ce ne sont pas les contractants qui prononcent sur valcur; elle eat deride*
•Tint la convention." ("Le Trosne," p. 906.)

•"Dove e egualita non £ lucre." (Galiani, "Delia Moneta in Cuftodi. Porte
Moderns," t iv. p. 244.)

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 177

fractions of the laws of the exchange of commodites,1 which V
in its normal state is an exchange of equivalents, consequently, \
no method for increasing value.2

Hence, we see that behind all attempts to represent the
circulation of commodities as a source of surplus-value, there
lurks a quid pro quo, a mixing up of use-value and exchange
value. For instance, Condillac says : "It is not true that on
an exchange of commodities we give value for value. On the
contrary, each of the two contracting parties in every case,
gives a less for a greater value. ... If we really exchanged
equal values, neither party could make a profit. And yet,
they both gain, or ought to gain. Why ? The value of a
thing consists solely in its relation to our wants. What is
more to the one is less to the other, and vice versd. ... It
is not to be assumed that we offer for sale articles required for
our own consumption. . . . We wish to part with a use
less thing, in order to get one that we need ; we want to give
less for more. ... It was natural to think that, in an ex
change, value was given for value, whenever each of the ar
ticles exchanged was of equal value with the same quantity
of gold. . . . But there is another point to be considered in
our calculation. The question is, whether we both exchange
something superfluous for something necessary."3 We see in
this passage, how Condillac not only confuses use-value with
exchange value, but in a really childish manner assumes, that
in a society, in which the production of commodities is well
developed, each producer produces his own means of subsis
tence, and throws into circulation only the excess over his own
requirements.4 Still, Condillac' s argument is frequently used

1 "Lechange devient de"sarantageux pour 1'une des parties, lorsque quelque chose
e"trangere vient diminuer ou exagerer le prix; alors 1'egalite est blessee, mais la
lesion precede de cette cause et non de 1'ichange." ("Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 904.)

1 "L'echange est de sa nature un contrat d'e'galite' qui se fait de valeur pour valeur
{gale. II n'est done pas un moyen de s'enrichir, puisque Ton donne autant que Ton
recoiL" ("Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 903.)

•Condillac: "Le Commerce et le Gouvernement" (1776). Edit. Dairc et Molinari
in the "Melanges d'Econ. Polit." Paris, 1847, p. 267, etc.

• Le Trosne, therefore, answers hit friend Condillac with justice as follows: "Dans
une . . . societe formee il n'y a pas de surabondant en aucun genre." At the
§ame time, in a bantering way, he remarks: "If both the persons who exchange re-
ceive more to an equal amount, and part with less to an equal amount, they both get
the same." It is because Condillac has not the remotest idea of the nature of

178 Capitalist Production.

by modem economists, more especially when the point is to
show, that the exchange of commodities in its developed form,
commerce, is productive of surplus-value. For instance,
"Commerce .... adds value to products, for the same prod
ucts in the hands of consumers, are worth more than in the
hands of producers, and it may strictly be considered an act of
production."1 But commodities are not paid for twice over,
once on account of their use-value, and again on account of
their value. And though the use-value of a commodity is
more servicable to the buyer than to the seller, its money form
is more serviceable to the seller. Would he otherwise sell it?
We might therefore just as well say that the buyer performs
"strictly an act of production," by converting stockings, for
example, into money.

If commodities, or commodities and money, of equal ex
change-value, and consequently equivalents, are exchanged, it
is plain that no one abstracts more value from, than he thro^vs
into, circulation. There is no creation of surplus-value.
And, in its normal form, the circulation of commodities de
mands the exchange of equivalents. But in actual practice,
the process does not retain its normal form. Let us, theie-
fore, assume an exchange of non-equivalents.

In any case the market for commodities is only frequenfcxl
by owners of commodities, and the power which these persons
exercise over each other, is no other than the power of their
commodities. The material variety of these commodities is the
material incentive to the act of exchange, and makes buyers
and sellers mutually dependent, because none of them possess 38
the object of his own wants, and each holds in his hand the
object of another's wants. Besides these material differences
of their use-values, there is only one other difference between
commodities, namely, that between their bodily form and the
form into which they are converted by sale, the difference ba-

exchange value that he has been chosen by Herr Professor Wilhelm Roscher as a
proper person to answer for the soundness of his own childish notions. See
Roscher's "Die Grundlagen der Nationalokomonie, Dritte Auflage," 1858.

1S. P. Newman: "Elements of Polit Econ." Andover and New York, 18; 5,
p. 176.

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital 179

tween commodities and money. And consequently the owners
of commodities are distinguishable only as sellers, those who
own commodities, and buyers, those who own money.

Suppose then, that by some inexplicable privilege, the seller j \
is enabled to sell his commodities above their value, what is I
worth 100 for 110, in which case the price is nominally raised
10%. The seller therefore pockets a surplus value of 10.
But after he has sold he becomes a buyer. A third owner of
commodities comes to him now as seller, who in this capacity
also enjoys the privilege of selling his commodities 10% too
dear. Our friend gained 10 as a seller only to lose it again as
a buyer.1 The nett result is, that all owners of commodities
sell their goods to one another at 10% above their value, which
comes precisely to the same as if they sold them at their true
value. Such a general and nominal rise of prices has the
same effect as if the values had been expressed in weight of
silver instead of in weight of gold. The nominal prices of
commodities would rise, but the real relation between their
values would remain unchanged.

Let us make the opposite assumption, that the buyer has
the privilege of purchasing commodities under their value.
In this case it is no longer necessary to bear in mind that he
in his turn wll become a seller. He was so before he became
buyer; he had already lost 10% in selling before he gained
10% as buyer.2 Everything is just as it was.

The creation of surplus^value, and therefore the conversion j ,
of money into capital, can consequently be explained neither /
on the assumption that commodities are sold above their value, J
nor that they are bought below their value.3

1 "By the augmentation of the nominal value of the produce . . . sellers not en
riched . . . since what they gain as sellers, they precisely expend in the quality of
buyers." ("The Essential Principles of the Wealth of Nations," £c., London, 1797,
p. 66.)

* "Si 1'on est force de donner pour 18 livres une quantite de telle production qui
en valait 24, lorsqu'on employera ce meme argent a acheter, on aura £galement pour
18 1. ce que Ton payait 24." ("Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 897.)

8 "Chaque vendeur ne peut done parvenir a rencherir habituellement ses marchan-
discs, qu'en se soumettant aussi a payer habituellement plus cher les marchandises
des autres vendeurs; et par la meme raison, chaque consommateur ne peut payer
habituellement moins cher ce qu'il achete, qu'en se soumettant aussi a une diminu
tion semblable sur le prix des choses qu il vend." (Mercier de la Ravi6re," 1. c, p.
655.)

180 Capitalist Production.

The problem is in no way simplified by introducing irrele
vant matters after the manner of Col. Torrens: "Effectual
demand consists in the power and inclination ( !), on the part
of consumers, to give for commoditiee, either by immediate or
circuitous barter, some greater portion of ... capital than
their production costs." J In relation to circulation, producers
and consumers meet only as buyers and sellers. To assert
that the surplus-value acquired by the producer has its origin
In the fact that consumers pay for commodities more than their
is only to say in other words: The owjiej^of commod-
gq a $ellerf the privilege of selling too

The seller has himself produced the commodities or represents
their producer, but the buyer has to no less extent produced
the commodities represented by his money, or represents their
producer. The distinction between them is, that one buys and
the other sells. ^JOTe fact that the owner of the commodities,

under the designation of producer, sells them over their value,
and under the designation of consumer, pays too much for
them, does not carry us a single step further.2

To be consistent therefore, the upholders of the delusion that
surplus-value has its origin in a nominal rise of prices or in
the privilege which the seller has of selling too dear, must
assume the existence of a class that only buvs and does not sell*
i.e., only consumes and does not prodn^ The existence of
such a class is inexplicable from the standpoint we have so far
reached, viz., that of simple circulation. But let us anticipate.
The money with which such a class is constantly making pur
chases, must constantly flow into their pockets, without any
exchange, gratis, by might or right, from the pockets of the
commodity-owners themselves. To sell commodities above
their value to such a class, is only to crib back again a part
of the money previously given to it* The towns of Asia

!R. Torrena: "An Essay on the Production of Wealth." London, 1831, p. 349.

* "The idea of profits being paid by the consumers, is, assuredly, very absurd.
Who are the consumers?" (G. Ramsay: "An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth."
Edinburgh, 1336. p. 183.)

1 "When a man is in want of a demand, does Mr. Malthus recommend him to
pay some other person to take off his goods?" is a question put by an angry disciple
of Ricardo to Malthus, who, like his disciple. Parson Chalmers, economically glori
fies this class of simple buyers or consumers. (See "An Inquiry into those princi-

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. iBi

Minor thus paid a yearly money tribute to ancient Rome.
With this money Rome purchased from them commodities, and
purchased them too dear. The provincials cheated the Ro
mans, and thus got back from their conquerors, in the course
of trade, a portion of the tribute. Yet, for all that, the con
quered were the really cheated. Their goods were still paid
for with their own money. That is not the way to get rich or
to create surplus-value.

Let us therefore keep within the bounds of exchange where
sellers are also buyers, and buyers, sellers. Our difficulty may
perhaps have arisen from treating the actors as personifications
instead of as individuals.

A may be clever enough to get the advantage of B or C
without their being able to retaliate. A sells wine worth £40
to B, and obtains from him in exchange corn to the value of
£50. A has converted his £40 into £50, has made more money
out of less, and has converted his commodities into capital.
Let us examine this a little more closely. Before the exchange
we had £40 worth of wine in the hands of A, and £50 worth
of corn in those of B, a total value of £90. After the exchange
we have still the same total value of £90. The value in cir
culation has not increased by one iota, it is only distributed
differently between A and B. What is a loss of value to B
is surplus-value to A ; what is "minus" to one is "plus" to the
other. The same change would have taken place, if A, with
out the formality of an exchange, had directly stolen the £10
from B. The sum of the values in circulation can clearly not
be augmented by any change in their distribution, any more
than the quantity of the precious metals in a country by a
Jew selling a Queen Ann's farthing for a guinea. The cap
italist class, as a whole, in any country, cannot over-reach
themselves.1

Turn and twist then as we may, the fact remains unaltered.

pies respecting the Nature of Demand and the necessity of Consumption, lately ad
vocated by Mr. Malthus," 4c. Lond., 1821, p. 65.)

1 Destutt de Tracy, although, or perhaps because, he was a member of the Insti
tute, held the opposite view. He says, industrial capitalists make profits because
"they all sell for more than it has cost to produce. And to whom do they sell?
In the first instance to one another." (1. e., p. 230.)

1 82 Capitalist Production.

If ftqnivfl_1fntfi flfp pvp.linngfiHj no surplus-value res^lt^ and if
non^eciiuxakiits are exchanged, st.jl] no aiirphiq-yaJpg.1 Cir
culation, or the exchange of commodities, begets no value.2

The reason is now therefore plain why, in analysing the
standard form of capital, the form under which it determines
the economical organisation of modern society, we entirely
left out of consideration its most popular, and, so to say, ante
diluvian forms, merchants' capital and money-lenders' capital.

The circuit M — C — M', buying in order to sell dearer, is
seen most clearly in genuine merchants' capital. But the
movement takes place entirely within the

Since, however, it is impossibly by ^^^lofi^n alone, to ac
count for the conversion of money into capital, for the forma
tion of surplus-value^ it would appear, that merchants' capital
is an impossibility, so long as equivalents are e
therefore, it can only have its origin in the twofold advantage
gained, over both the selling and the buying producers, by the
merchant who parasitically shoves himself in between them.
It is in this sense that Franklin says, "war is robbery, com
merce is generally cheating."4 If the transformation of
merchants' money into capital is to be explained otherwise
than by the producers being simply cheated, a long series of
intermediate steps would be necessary, which, at present, when

1 "L'echange qui se fait de deux valeurs £gales n'augmente ni ne diminue la
masse des valeurs subsistantes dans la societe. L'echange de deux valeurs inegales

ne change rien non plus a la somme des valeurs sociales, bien qu'il ajoute
a la fortune de 1'un ce pu'il ote de la fortune de 1'autre." J. B. Say, 1. c. t. I.,
pp. 344, 345.) Say, not in the least troubled as to the consequences of this state
ment, borrows it, almost word for word, from the Physiocrats. The following example
will shew how Monsieur Say turned to account the writings of the Physiocrats, in
his day quite forgotten, for the purpose of expanding the "value" of his own. His
most celebrated saying, "On n'achete des produits qu'avec des produits" (1. c., t. II.,
p. 438) runs as follows in the original physiocratic work: "Les productions ne se
paient qu'avec des productions." ("Le Trosne," 1. c., p. 899.)

2 "Exchange confers no value at all upon products." (F. Wayland: "The Ele
ments of Political Economy." Boston, 1853, p. 168.)

8 Under the rule of invariable equivalents commerce would be impossible. (G.
Opdyke: "A Treatise on Polit Economy." New York, 1851, p. 66-69.) "The dif
ference between real value and exchange-value is based upon this fact, namely, that
the value of a thing is different from the socalled equivalent given for it in trade,
i.e., that this equivalent is no equivalent." (F. Engels, 1. c. p. 96.)

4 Benjamin Franklin: Works, Vol. II. edit. Sparks in "Positions to be examined
concerning National Wealth," p. 876.

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital. 183

the simple circulation of commodities forms our only assump
tion, are entirely wanting.

What we have said with reference to merchants' capital,
applies still more to money-lenders' capital. In merchants'
capital, the two extremes, the money that is thrown upon the
market, and the augmented money that is withdrawn from the
market, are at least connected by a purchase and a sale, in
other words by the movement of the circulation. In money
lenders' capital the form M — C — W is reduced to the two ex
tremes without a mean, M — M', money exchanged for more
money, a form that is incompatible with the nature of money,
and therefore remains inexplicable from the standpoint of the
circulation of commodities. Hence Aristotle: "since chrema-
tistic is a double science, one part belonging to commerce, the
other to economic, the latter being necessary and praiseworthy,
the former based on circulation and with justice disapproved
(for it is not based on Nature, but on mutual cheating), there
fore the usurer is most rightly hated, because money itself is
the source of his gain, and is not used for the purposes for
which it was invented. For it originated for the exchange of
commodities, but interest makes out ofjnoney, more^ money.
Hence its name ( TOKO? interest and offspring). For the be
gotten are like those who beget them. But interest is money I
of money, so that of all modes of making a living, this is the '
most contrary to nature." 1

In the course of our investigation, we shall find that both
merchants' capital and interest-bearing capital are derivative
forms, and at the same time it will become clear, why these
two forms appear in the course of history before the modern,
standard form of capital.

We have shown that^ surplus-value cannot be created by
circulation, and, therefore, that in its formation, something
must take place in the background, wnich is not apparent in
the circulation itself.2 But can surplus-value possibly origin
ate anywhere else than in circulation, which is the sum total

1 Aristotle, I. c. c. 10.

* Profit, in the usual condition of the market, is not made hy exchanging. Had
it not existed before, neither could it after that transaction." (Ramsay, 1. c., p.
184.)

1 84 Capitalist Production.

of all the mutual relations of commodity-owners, as far as they
are determined by their commodities ? Apart from circula
tion, the commodity-owner is in relation only with his own
commodity. So far as regards value, that relation is
limited to this, that the commodity contains a quantity of his
labour, that quantity being measured by a definite social
standard. This quantity is expressed by the value of the
commodity, and since the value is reckoned in money of ac
count, this quantity is also expressed by the price, which we
will suppose to be £10. But his labour is not represented both
by the value of the commodity, and by a surplus over that
value, not by a price of 10 that is also a price of 11, not by a
value that is greater than itself. The commodity owner canf
by his labour, create value, but not self -expand ing value. He
can increase the value of his commodity, by adding fresh
labour, and therefore more value to the value in hand, by mak
ing, for instance, leather into boots. The same material has
now more value, because it contains a greater quantity of
labour. The boots have therefore more value than the leathei,
but the value of the leather remains what it was; it has not
expanded itself, has not, during the making of the boots, an
nexed surplus value. It is therefore impossible that outsido
the sphere of circulation, a producer of commodities can, with
out coming into contact with other commodity owners, ex
pand value, and consequently convert money or commodities
into capital.

It is therefore impossible for capital to be produced by cir-
/nllati?rmi and it is equally impossible for it to originate apart
from circulation. It must have its origin both in circulation
and yet not in circulation.

We have, therefore, got a double result

The conversion of money into capital has to be explain£i_oji.
the basis of the laws that regulate the exchange of commod-
ities, in such a way that the starting point is the exfih&nge of
equivalents.1 Our friend, Moneybags, who as yet is only an

1 From the foregoing investigation, the reader will see that this statement only
means that the formation of capital must be possible even though the price and value
of * commodity be the same; for its formation cannot be attributed to any deviation
•f the on« from the other. If prices actually differ from values, we must, first of

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 185

embryo capitalist, must buy his commodities flfr theirvahieT
must sell them at their^ value,, and yet at the end of the pro
cess must withdraw more value from circulation than he threw..
into it at starting. His development into a full-grown capi
talist must take place, both within the sphere of circulation
and without it, These are the conditions of the problem.
Hie Rhodus, hie salta !

CHAPTER VI.

THE BITTING AND SELLING OF LABOUR-PC WEB.

THE change of value that occurs in the case of money intended
to be converted into capital, cannot take place in the money
itself, since in its function of means of purchase and of pay
ment, it does no more than realise the price of the commodity
it buys or pays for; and, as hard cash, it is value petrified,
never varying.1 Just as little can it originate in the second
act of circulation, the re-sale of the commodity, which does
no more than transform the article from its bodily form back
again into its money-form. The chajnge must, therefore, take
place in the commodity bought by the first act, M — C, but not
in its value, for equivalents are exchanged, and the commodity
is paid for at its full value. We are, therefore, forced to the

all, reduce the former to the latter, in other words treat the difference as accidental
in order that the phenomena may be observed in their purity, and our observations
not interfered with by disturbing circumstances that have nothing to do with the
process in question. We know, moreover, that this reduction is no mere scientific
process. The continual oscillation in prices, their rising and falling, compensate each
other, and reduce themselves to an average price, which is their hidden regulator. It
forms the guiding star of the merchant or the manufacturer in every undertaking
that requires time. He knows that when a long period of time is taken, commodities
are sold neither over nor under, but at their average price. If therefore he thought
about the matter at all, he would formulate the problem of the formation of capital
as follows: How can we account for the origin of capital on the supposition that
prices are regulated by the average price, i.e., ultimately by the value of the com
modities? I say "ultimately," because average prices do not directly coincide with
the values of commodities, as Adam Smith, Ricardo, and others believe.

1 "In the form of money. . . capital is productive of no profit." (Ricardo:
"Princ. of Pol. Eton." p. t«7.)

1 86 Capitalist Production.

conclusion that the change originates in the use-value, a& such,
of the commodity, i.e., in its consumption. In order to be able
to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our
friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the
sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity^ whose use-
value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of
value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an em
bodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value.
The possessor of money does find on the market such a special
commodity in capacity for labour orjabour-power.

By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood
the aggregate_of these mental and physical capabilities exist
ing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces
a use-value of. any description.

But in order that our owner of money may be able to find
labour-power offered for sale as a commodity, various condi
tions must first be fulfilled. The exchange of commodities of
itself implies no other relations of dependence than those which
result from its own nature. On this assumption, labour-power
can appear upon the market as a commodity only if, and so
far as, its possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is,
offers it for sale, or sells it, as a commodity. In order that h<3
may be able to do this, he must have it at his disposal, must
be the untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour, i.e., of
his person.1 He and the owner of money meet in the market,
and deal with each other as on the basis of equal rights, with
this difference alone, that one is buyer, the other seller; both,
therefore, equal in the eyes of the law. The continuance o:'
this relation demands that the owner of the labour-power
should sell it only for a definite period, for if he were to sell i :
rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself
converting himself from a free man into a slave, from ar
owner of a commodity into a commodity. He must constantly
look upon his labour-power as his own property, his own com
modity, and this he can only do by placing it at the disposal oi

1 In encyclopaedias of classical antiquities we find such nonsense as this — that in
the ancient world capital was fully developed, "except that the free labourer and »
sy«tem of credit was wanting." Mommscn also, in his "History of Rome," commits,
in this respect, one blunder after another.

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 187

the buyer temporarily, for a definite period of time. By this
means alone can he avoid renouncing his rights of ownership
over it.1

The second essential condition to the owner of money find
ing labour-power in the market as a commodity in this — that
the labourer instead of being in the position to sell com
modities in which his labour is incorporated, must be obliged
to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power, which
exists only in his living self.

In order that a man may be able to sell commodities other
than labour-power, he must of course have the means of
production, as raw material, implements, &c. No boots can
be made without leather. He requires also the means of sub
sistence. Nobody — not even "a musician of the future"
can live upon future products, or upon use-values in an un
finished state; and ever since the first moment of his appear
ance on the world's stage, man always has been, and must still
be a consumer, both before and while he is producing. In a
society where all products assume the form of commodities,
these commodities must be sold after they have been produced ;
it is only after their sale that they can serve in satisfying the
requirements of their producer. The time necessary for their
sale is superadded to that necessary for their production.

For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the
owner of money must meet in the market with the free
labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can

1 Hence legislation in various countries fixes a maximum for labour-contracts.
Wherever free labour is the rule, the laws regulate the mode of terminating this con
tract. In some States, particularly in Mexico (before the American Civil War, also
in the territories taken from Mexico, and also as a matter of fact, in the Danubian
provinces till the revolution affected by Kusa), slavery is hidden under the form of
peonage. By means of advances, repayable in labour, which are handed down
from generation to generation, not only the individual labourer, but his family,
become, de facto, the property of other persons and their families. Juarez abolished
peonage. The so-called Emperor Maximilian re-established it by a decree, which, in
the House of Representatives at Washington, was aptly denounced as a decree for
the re-introduction of slavery into Mexico. "I may make over to another the use,
for a limited time, of my particular bodily and mental aptitudes and capabilities;
because, in consequence of this restriction, they are impressed with a character of
alienation with regard to me as a whole. But by the alienation of all my labour-
time and the whole of my work, I should be converting the substance itself, in other
words, my general activity and reality, my person, into the property of another."
(Hegel, "Philosophic des Rechts." Berlin, 1840, p. 104 { 67.)

i88 Capitalist Production.

dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that oa

I the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short
of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour-
power.

The question why this free labourer confronts him in the
market, has no interest for the owner of money, who regards
the labour market as a branch of the general market for com
modities. And for the present it interests us just as little.
We cling to the fact theoretically, as he does practically. One
thing, however, is clear — nature does not produce on the one
side owners of money or commodities, and on the other men
possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation
has no natural basis, neither is its socal basis one that is
common to all historical periods. It is clearly the result of a
past historial development, the product of many economical
revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older forms
of social production.

So, too, the economical categories, already discussed by us,
bear the stamp of history. Definite historical conditions are
necessary that a product may become a commodity. It must
not be produced as the immediate means of subsistence of the
producer himself. Had we gone further, and inquired under
what circumstances all, or even the majority of products take
the form of commodities, we should have found that this can
only happen with production of a very specific kind, capitalist
production. Such an inquiry, however, would have been
foreign to the analysis of commodities. Production and cir
culation of commodities can take place, although the great
mass of the objects produced are intended for the immediate
requirements of their producers, are not turned into commodi
ties, and consequently social production is not yet by a long
way dominated in its length and breadth by exchange-value,
the appearance of products as commodities presupposed such a
development of the social division of labour, that the separation
of use-value from exchange-value, a separation which first
begins with barter, must already have been completed. But
such a degree of development is common to many forms of
society, which in other respects present the most varying

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 189

historical features. On the other hand, if we consider money,
its existence implies a definite stage in the exchange of com
modities. The particular functions of money which it per
forms, either as the mere equivalent of commodities, or as
means of circulation, or means of payment, as hoard or as
universal money, point, according to the extent and relative
preponderance of the one function or the other, to very differ
ent stages in the process of social production. Yet we know ^
by experience that a circulation of commodities relatively \
primitive, suffices for the production of all these forms.
Otherwise with capital. The historioaLfifladitions of its ex
istence are by no means given with the mere circulation of
money and oopi modifies. It can spring into life, only when
the owner of the meajis of production and subsistence meets in
the market with the free labourer selling his labour-power.
And this one historical condition comprises a world's history.
Capital therefore, announces from its first appearance a new
epoch in the process of social production.1

We must now examine more closely this peculiar commodity,
labour-power. Like all others it has a value.2 How is that
value determined ?

The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of
every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the
production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this
special article. So far as it has value, it represents no more
than a definite quantity of the average labour of society
incorporated in it. Labour-power exists only as a capacity, or
power of the living individual. Its production consequently
presupposes his existence. Given the individual, the produc
tion of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or
his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given
quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-
time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself

1 The capitalist epoch is therefore characterised by this, that labour-power takes
in the eyes of the labourer himself the form of a commodity which is his property;
his labour consequently becomes wage labour. On the other hand, it is only from
this moment that the produce of labour universally becomes a commodity.

'"The value or worth of a man, is as of all other things his price — that is to «»y,
so much as would be given for the use of his power." (Th. Hobbes: "Leviathan
in Works, Ed. Moleswortb. Load. 1S8&-44, v. tti., p. W.)

190 Capitalist Production.

to that necessary for the production of those meana of sub
sistence; in other words, the value of labour-power is the
value of the means of subsistence necessary for the mainte
nance of the labourer. Labour-power, however, becomes a
reality only by its exercise; it sets itself in action only by
working. But thereby a definite quantity of human muscle,
nerve, brain, &c., is wasted, and these require to be restored.
This increased expenditure demands a larger income.1 If the
owner of labour-power works to-day, to-morrow he must again
be able to repeat the same process in the same conditions as
regards health and strength. His means of subsistence must
therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state &s
a labouring individual. His natural wants, such as food,
clothing, fuel, and housing, vary according to the climatic and
other physical conditions of his country. On the other hand,
the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also
the modes of Satisfying them, are themselves the product of
historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent
on the degree of civilisation of a country, more particularly
on the conditions unde^r which, and consequently on the habits
and degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has
been formed.2 In contradistinction therefore to the case of

I other commodities, there enters into the determination of the
value oJL labour -power a historical and moral element. Never
theless, in a given country, at a given period, the average
quantity of the means of subsistence necessary for the labourer
is practically known.

The owner of labour-power is mortal. If then his appear
ance in the market is to be continuous, and the continuous con
version of money into capital assumes this, the seller of labour-
power must perpetuate himself, "in the way that every living
individual perpetuates himself, by procreation."3 The labour-
power withdrawn from the market by wear and tear and
death, must be continually replaced by, at the very least, an

* Hence the Roman Villicus, as orerlooker of the agricultural slaves, received
"more meagre fare than working slaves, because his work was lighter." (Th.
Mommsen, Rom. Geschicbte, 1856, p. 810.)

* Compare W. H. Thornton : "Orerpopulation and it« Remedy," Lend., 1846.
•Petty.

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 191

amount of fresh labour-power. Hence the sum of the
means of subsistence_necessary for the production of labour-
power must include the means necessary for the labourer's
substitutes, i.e., his children, in order that this race of peculiar
commodity-owners may perpetuate its appearance in the
market,1

In order to modify the human organism, so that it may ac
quire skill and handiness in a given branch of industry, and
become labour-power of a special kind, a special education or
training is requisite, and this, on its part, costs an equivalent
in commodities of a greater or less amo_unt. This amount
varies according to the more or less complicated character of
the labour-power. The expenses of Jiis education (excessive
ly small in the case of ordinary labour-power), enter pro tanto
into the total, value spent in its production.

The value of labour-power resolves itself into the value of a
definite quantity^ of tfae means ofsubsistencei it therefore
varies with the value of these means or with the quantity of
labour requisite fortheir production.

Some of the means of subsistence, such as food and fuel, are
consumed daily, and a fresh supply must be provided daily.
Others such as clothes and furniture last for longer periods
and require to be replaced only at longer intervals. One
article must be bought or paid for daily, another weekly,
another quarterly, and so on. But in whatever way the sum
total of these outlays may be spread over the year, they must
be covered by the average income, taking one day with an
other. If the total of the commodities required daily for the
production of labour-power=A, and those required weekly
— B, and those required quarterly — C, and so on, the daily
average of these commodities = 365A+52^+4C+&c . Suppose that in
this mass of commodities requisite for the average day there
are embodied 6 hours of social labour, then there is incor-

1 Its (labour's natural price. . . . consists in such a quantity of necessaries
and comforts of life, as, from the nature of the climate, and the habits of the coun
try, are necessary to support the labourer, and to enable him to rear such a family
as may preserve, in the market, an undiminished supply of labour.** (R. Torrens:
"An Essay on the external Corn Trade." Lond., 1816, p. 62.) The word labour is
here used incorrectly for labour-power. ^

192 Capitalist Production.

porated daily in labour-power half a day's average social
labour, in other words, half a dav.'a labour in requisite for the
daily production of labour-power. This quantity of labour
forms the value.joif a day's latxmr-power or the value of the
labour-power daily reproduced. If half a day's average social
labour is incorporated in three shillings, then three shillings
is the price corresponding to the value of a day's labour-power.
If its owner therefore offers it for sale at three shillings a
day, its selling price is equal to its value, and according to our
supposition, our friend Moneybags, who is intent upon con
verting his three shillings into capital, pays this value.

The minimum limit of the value of labour-power is deter
mined by the value of the commodities, without the daily
supply of which the labourer cannot renew jbis_vital egergr,
consequently by the value j>f those means of subsistence that
are physically indispensable. If the price of labour-power
fall to this minimum, it falls below its value, since under such
circumstances it can be maintained and developed only in a
crippled state. But the value of every commodity is deter
mined by the labour-time requisite to turn it out so as to be cf
normal quality.

It is a very cheap sort of sentimentality which declares this
method of determining the value of labour-power, a method
prescribed by the very nature of the case, to be a brutd
method, and which wails with Rossi that, "To comprehend
capacity for labour (puissance de travail) at the same time
that we make abstraction from the means of subsistence of the
labourers during the process of production, is to comprehend a
phantom (etre de raison). When we speak of labour, or
capacity for labour, we speak at the same time of the labourer
and his means of subsistence, of labourer and wages."1 Whe:a
we speak of capacity for labour, we do not speak of labour, any
more than when we speak of capacity for digestion, we spea!*:
of digestion. The latter process requires something more than
a good stomach. When we speak of capacity for labour we do
not abstract from the necessary means of subsistence. On th •»
contrary, their value is expressed in its value. If his capacit/

"Court d'Ecoe. Polit: "Bnixelle*, 1843, p. t70.

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 193

for labour remains unsold, the labourer derives no benefit from
it, but rather he will feel it to be a cruel nature-imposed
necessity that this capacity has cost for its production a de
finite amount of the means of subsistence and that it will con
tinue to do so for its reproduction. He will then agree with
Sismondi : "that capacity for labour. ... is nothing unless it
is sold."1

One consequence of the peculiar nature of labour-power as
a commodity is, that its use-value does not, on the conclusion
of this contract between the buyer and seller, immediately pass
into the hands of the former. Its value, like that of every
other commodity, is already fixed before it goes into circula
tion, since a definite quantity of social labour has been spent
upon it ; but its use-value consists in the subsequent exercise of
it* } force. The alienation of labour-power and its actual ap
propriation by the buyer, its employment as a use-value, are
separated by an interval of time. But in those cases in which
the formal alienation by sale of the use-value of a commodity,
is not simultaneous with its actual delivery to the buyer, the
money of the latter usually functions as means of payment.2
In every country in which the capitalist mode of production
reigns, it is the custom not to pay for labour-power before it
has been exercised for the period fixed by the contract, as for
example, the end of each_week. In all cases, therefore, the
use-value of the labour-power is advanced to the capitalist : the
labourer allows the buyer to consume it before he receives pay
ment of the price ; he everywhere gives credit to the capitalist.
That this credit is no mere fiction, is shown not only by the
occasional loss of wages on the bankruptcy of the capitalist,3
but also by a series of more enduring consequences.4 Never-

1 Sismondi: "Nouv. Princ. etc.," t. I. p. 112.

* All labour is paid after it has ceased." ("An inquiry into those Principles re
specting the nature of Demand," &c., p. 104.) "Le credit commercial a dti com-
mencer au moment ou 1'ouvrier, premier artisan de la production, a pu, au rooyen de
ses economies, attendre le salaire de son travail jusqu, 4 la fin de la semaine, de la
quinzaine, du mois, du trimestre, &c. (Ch. Ganilh: "Des Systemes de 1'Econ. Polit."
2e"me. edit. Paris, 1821, t. I. p. 150.)

•"L'ouvrier prete son Industrie," but adds Storch slyly: he "risks nothing"
except "de perdre son salaire .... L'ouvrier ne transmet rien de materiel."
(Storch: "Cours d'Econ. Polit. Econ." Petersbourg, 1815, t. II., p. 87.)

4 One example. In London there are two sorts of bakers, the "full priced," who

194 Capitalist Production.

theless, whether money serves as a means of purchase or as a
means of payment, this makes no alteration in the nature of
the exchange of commodities. The price of the labour-power
is fixed by the contract, although it is not realised till later,
like the rent of a house. The labour-power is sold, although
it is only paid for at a later period. It will, therefore, be
useful, for a clear comprehension of the relation of the parties,
to assume provisionally, that the possessor of labour-power, on
the occasion of each sale, immediately receives the price
stipulated to be paid for it

We now know how the value paid by the purchaser to tha

sell bread at its full value, and the "undersellers," who sell it under its value. The
latter class comprises more than three-fourths of the total number of bakers, (j.
xxxii in the Report of H. S. Tremenheere, commissioner to examine into "the grie>-
ances complained of by the journeymen bakers," &c., Lond. 1862.) The undersellen ,
almost without exception, sell bread adulterated with alum, soap, pearl ashes, chalk,
Derbyshire stone-dust, and such like agreeable nourishing and wholesome ingred:-
ents. (See the above cited blue book, as also the report of "the committee of
1855 on the adulteration of bread," and Dr. Hassall's "Adulterations detected,'
2d Ed. Lond. 1862.) Sir John Gordon stated before the committee of 1855, that "i:t
consequence of these adulterations, the poor man, who lives on two pounds cf
bread a day, does not now get one fourth part of nourishing matter, let alone tit
deleterious effects on his health." Tremenheere states (1. c, p. xlviii), as the rer-
son, why a very large part of the working class, although well aware of this adu '•
teration, nevertheless accept the alum, stone-dust, &c., as part of their purchas* :
that it is for them "a matter of necessity to take from their baker or from the
chandler's shop, such bread as they choose to supply." As they are not paid their
wages before the «nd of the week, they in their turn are unable "to pay for the
bread consumed by their families, during the week, before the end of the week, '
and Tremenheere adds on the evidence of witnesses, "it is notorious that bread coir-
posed of those mixtures, is made expressly for sale in this manner." In many
English and still more Scotch agricultural districts, wages are paid fortnightly and
even monthly; with such long intervals between the payments, the agricultural la
bourer is obliged to buy on credit . . . He must pay higher prices, and is in
fact tied to the shop which gives him credit. Thus at Horningham in Wilts, for ex
ample, where the wages are monthly, the same flour that he could buy elsewhere
at Is lOd per stone, costs him 2s 4d per stone. ("Sixth Report" on "Public Health '
by "The Medical Officer of the Privy Council, &c., 1864." p. 264.) "The bloc<
printers of Paisley and Kilmarnock enforced, by a strike, fortnightly, instead cf
monthly payment of wages." (Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for Slit
Oct, 1853," p. 34.) As a further pretty result of the credit given by tbs
workmen to the capitalist, we may refer to the method current in many English
coal mines, where the labourer is not paid till the end of the month, and ia
the meantime, receives sums on account from the capitalist, often in goods fcr
which the miner is obliged to pay more than the market price (Truck-system).
"It is a common practice with the coal masters to pay once a month, and advance
cash to their workmen at the end of each intermediate week. The cash is give 3
in the shop" (». e., the Tommy shop which belongs to the master); "the men take
it or one side and lay it out on the other." (Children's Employment Commie
»!on, III, Report, London, 1864, p. 88, L

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 195

possessor of this peculiar commodity, labour-power, is de
termined. The use-value which the former gets in exchange,
manifests itself only in the actual usufruct, in the consump
tion of the labour-power. The money owner buys every
thing necessary for this purpose, such as raw material, in the
market, and pays for it at its full value. The consumption
of labour-power is at one and the same time the production of
commodities and of surplus value. The consumption of
labour-power is completed, as in the case of every other com
modity, outside the limits of the market or of the sphere of
circulation. Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the
possessor of labour-power, we therefore take leave for a time
of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the sur
face and in view of all men, and follow them both into the
hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares
us in the face "No admittance except on business." Here we
shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is
produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit making.
This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries
the sale and purchase of labour-power goes, is in fact a very
Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom,
Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both
buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are
constrained only by their- own free will. They contract a's
free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form
in which they give legal expression to their common will.
Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as
with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange
equivalent for equivalent Property, because each disposes
only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks
only to himself. The only force that brings them together and
puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the
gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself
only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just be
cause they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-
established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an
all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advan
tage, for the common weal and in the interest of all.

196 Capitalist Production.

On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange
of. commodities, which furnishes the "Free-trader \7ulgaris"
with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he
judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can
perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis persona*.
He, who before was the money owner, now strides, in front as
capitalist ; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer.
The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on busi
ness ; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bring
ing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but —
a hiding.

PART III.

THE PRODUCTION OP ABSOLUTE SURPLUS-
VALUE.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LABOUR-PROCESS AND THE PROCESS OF PRODUCING
SURPLUS-VALUE.

SECTION 1. THE LABOUR-PROCESS OB THE PRODUCTION OF

USE-VALUES.

THE capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it; and v
labour-power in use is labour itself. The purchaser of labour- .
power consumes it by setting the seller of it to work. By v
working, the latter becomes actually, what before he only was
potentially, labour-power in action, a labourer. In order that
his labour may reappear in a commodity, he must, before all v
things, expend it on something useful, on something capable /
of satisfying a want of some sort. Hence, what the capitalist^
sets the labourer to produce, is a particular use-value, a ^/
specified article. The fact that the production of use-values,
or goods, is carried on under the control of a capitalist and
on his behalf, does not alter the general character of that
production. We shall, therefore, in the first place, have to
consider the labour-process independently of the particular
form it assumes under given social conditions.

Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man
and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord
starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between
himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of

197

198 Capitalist Production.

her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and
hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate
Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By
thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the
same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumber
ing powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway.
We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms
of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasur
able interval of time separates the state of things in which a
man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity,
from that state in which human labour was still in its first in
stinctive stage. We presuppose labour in a form that stamps
it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that
resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an
^ tLTchitect in the construction of her cells. But what distin-
^/ guishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that
\ the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects
./ it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a re-
; suit that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at
yits. commencement. He not only effects a Change of form in
vthe material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose
of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to
•J which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination
is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily
organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation,
the workman's will be steadily in consonance with his purpose.
This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the
nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on,
and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives
play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his at
tention is forced to be.

>J The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, tbe^per-
«i sonal activity of man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that
A work, and 3, its instruments.

*J The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water)
\ in the virgin state in which it supplies1 man with necessaries

1 "The earth's spontaneous productions being in small quantity, and quite inde
pendent of man, appear, as it were, to be furnished by Nature, in the same way as a

The Labour Process. 199

or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently v
of him, and is the universal subject of humajt labour. All iX
those things which labour merely separates from immediate
connection with their environment, are subjects of labour
spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we
catch and take from their element, water, timber which we
fell in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their
veins. If, on the other hand, the subject of labour has, so \Q^/
say, been filtered through previous labour, we call it
material; such is ore already extracted and ready for
ing. All raw material is the subject of labour, but not every
subject of labour is raw material ; it can only become so, after vX
it has undergone some alteration by means of labour.

An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, ^/
which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject ,/
of his labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. ^
He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical pro
perties of some substances in order to make other substances
subservient to his aims.1 Leaving out of consideration such
ready-made means of subsistence as fruits, in gathering which*'
a man's own limbs serve as the instruments of his labour, the ^
first thing of which the labourer possesses himself is not the
subject of labour but its instrument. Thus Nature becomes
one of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his
own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of the
Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is hisv/
original tool house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones^
for throwing, grinding, pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself */
is an instrument of labour, but when used as such in agri-vX
culture implies a whole series of other instruments and a com-^
paratively high development of labour.2 No sooner does

small sum is given to a young man, in order to put him in a way of industry, and
of making his fortune." (James Steuart: "Principles of Polit. Econ." edit. Dub
lin, 1770, v. I. p. 116.)

1 "Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning consists principally
in her mediating activity, which, by causing objects to act and re-act on each other
in accordance with their own nature, in this way, without any direct interference
in the process, carries out reason's intentions." (Hegel: "Encyklopadie, Erster
Theil. Die Logik." Berlin, 1840, p. 382.)

*In his otherwise miserable work ("Theorie de 1'Econ. Polit" Paris, 1819),
Ganilh enumerates in a striking manner in opposition to the "Physiocrats" the

,
J

200 Capitalist Production.

labour undergo the least development, than it requires specially
prepared instruments. Thus in the oldest caves we find stone
implements and weapons. In the earliest period of human
^history domesticated animals, i.e., animals which have been
bred for the purpose, and have undergone modifications by
means of labour, play the chief part as instruments of labour
along with specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and shells.1
^xThe use and fabrication of instruments of labour, although
existing in the germ among certain species of animals, is
vX specificity characteristic of the human labour-process, and
Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making animal.
Relics of by-gone instruments of labour possess the same im
portance for the investigation of extinct economical forms oi
society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct
species of animals. It is notJlifi-ailicles made, but how they
are^jnade, and by whaXJBstniments, that enables us to dis-
^ tinguish ^'fl^rr^t Af»nnmrn>R] ^jw^q 2 Instruments of labour
^not only supply a standard of the degree of development to
vwhich human labour has attained, but they are also indicators 1
v6f the social conditions under which that labour is carried on. J
Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature,
which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of
production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given
epoch of production, than those which, like pipe?, tubs, baskets,
jars, &c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which
latter class, we may in a general way, call the vascular system
of production. The latter first begins to play an important
part in the chemical industries.

In a wider sense we may include among the instruments of

long series of previous processes necessary before agriculture properly so called
can commence.

1 Turgot in his "Reflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Ricbesses"
(1766) brings well into prominence the importance of domesticated animals to
early civilisation.

* The least important commodities of all for the technological comparison of
different epochs of production are articles of luxury, in the strict meaning of the
term. However little our written histories up to this time notice the development of
material production, which is the basis of all social life, and therefore of all real
history, yet prehistoric times have been classified in accordance with the results,
hot of so called historical, but of materialistic investigations. These periods bavr
been divided, to correspond with the materials from which their implements and
weapons are made, viz., into the stone, the bronze, and the iron ages.

The Labour Process. 201

labour, in addition to those things that are used for directly
transferring labour to its subject, and which therefore, in one
way or another, serve as conductors of activity, all such objects>/y<
as are necessary for carrying on the labour-process. These do
not enter directly into the process, but without them it is either I/
impossible for it to take place at all, or possible only to
partial extent Once more we find the earth to be a universa
instrument of this sort, for it furnishes a locus standi to the
labourer and a field of employment for his activity. Among
instruments that are the result of previous labour and also
belong to this class, we find workshops, canals, roads, and
forth.

In the labour-process, therefore, man'sjactivity, with the help ^<
of the instruments of la^ojir. effects an alteration, designed -
from the commencement, in the material worked upon. The ^
process disappears in the product ; the latter is a use-value, ^
Nature's material adapted by a change of form to the wants of
man. Labour has incorporated itself with its subject : the forV
mer is materialised, the latter transformed. That which in*/
the labourer appeared as movement, now appears in the prod-
uct as a fixed quality without, motion^ The blacksmith forges
and the product is a forging.

If we examine the whole process from the point of view of •
its result, the product, it is plain that both the instruments and I/
the subject of laVjpur^ are me&ris of jrroduction.1 and that the */
labour itself is productive labour.2

Though a use-value, in the form of a product, issues from ^
the labour-process, yet other use-values, products of previous ^_
labour, enter into it as means of production. The same use- ,__
value is both the product of a previous process, and a means of ^--
production in a later process. Producig^are theref nrp nnt

results, but also jssential conditions of labour,

With tEe~exception of the extractive industries, in which ^

1 It appears paradoxical to assert, that uncaught fish, for instance, are a means of
production in the fishing industry. But hitherto no one has discovered the art of
catching fish in waters that contain none.

* This method of determining from the standpoint of the labour-process alone,
what is productive labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case of the
capitalist process of production.

202 Capitalist Production.

the material for labour is provided immediately by nature,
such as mining, hunting, fishing, and agriculture (so far as the
latter is confined to breaking up virgin soil), all branches of
, industry manipulate raw material, objects already filtered
through labour, already products of labour. Such is seed in
agriculture. Animals and plants, which we are accustomed to
consider as products of nature, are in their present form, not
only products of, say last year's labour, but the result of a
gradual transformation, continued through many generations,
under man's superintendence, and by means of his labour.
But in the great majority of cases, instruments of labour show
even to the most superficial observer, traces of the. labour of
past ages.

Raw material may either form the principal substance of a
^product, or it may enter into its formation only as an acces-
i/ sory. An accessory may be consumed by the instruments of
^-labour, as coal under a boiler, oil by a wheel, hay by draft-
v'' horses, or it may be mixed with the raw material in order to
-^produce some modification thereof, as chlorine into unbleached
linen, coal with iron, dye-stuff with wool, or again, it may help
v' to carry on the work itself, as in the case of the materials used
i/ for heating and lighting workshops. The distinction between
principal substance and accessory vanishes in the true chemical
industries, because there none of the raw material reappears, in
its original composition, in the substance of the product.1
^ Every object possesses various properties, and is thus capable
/ of being applied to different uses. One and the same product
v/ may therefore serve as raw material in very different processes.
J Corn, for example, is a raw material for millers, starch-manu
facturers, distillers, and cattle-breeders. It also enters as raw
material into its own production in the shape of seed : coal, too,
is at the same time the product of, and a means of production
in, coal-mining.

Again, a particular product may be used in one and the same

process, both as an instrument of labour and as raw material.

V Take, for instance, the fattening of cattle, where the animal is

1 Storch calls true raw materials "matieres," and accessory material "materiaux:"
Cherbuliez describes accessories as "matieres instrumentale*."

c&*^
The Labour Process. 203

the raw material, and at the same time an instrument for the
production of manure.

A product, though ready for immediate consumption, may^/
yet serve as raw material for a further product, as grapes when^//
they become the raw material for wine. On the other hand,*-/
labour may give us its product in such a form, that we can use ,/
it only as raw material, as is the case with cotton, thread, andv/
yarn. Such a raw material, though itself a product, may have ^/
to go through a whole series of different processes : in each of ^/
these in turn, it serves, with constantly varying form, as raw
material, until the last process of the series leaves it a perfect i/
product, ready for individual consumption, or for use as an */
instrument of labour.

Hence we see, that whether a use-value is to be regarded
raw material, as instrument of labour, or as product, this is
termined entirely by its function in the labour process, by the /
position it there occupies : as this varies, so does its character. v

Whenever therefore a product enters as a means of produc
tion into a new labour-process, it thereby loses its character of
product, and becomes a mere factor in the process. A spinner
treats spindles only as implements for spinning, and flax only
as the material that he spins. Of course it is impossible to i_
spin without material and spindles ; and therefore the existence -
of these things as products, at the commencement of the spin- ..
ning operation, must be presumed : but in the process itself, the < —
fact that they are products of previous labour, is a matter of *-
utter indifference ; just as in the digestive process, it is of no *~
importance whatever, that bread is the produce of the previous
labour of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. On the con- u
trary, it is generally by their imperfections as products, that v^_
the means of production in any process assert themselves in ^
their character as products. A blunt knife or weak threadL
forcibly remind us of Mr. A., the cutler, or Mr. B., the spinner. ^
In the finished product the labour by means of which it has '—
acquired its useful qualities is not palpable, has apparently -
vanished.

A machine which does not serve the purposes of labour, is
useless. In addition, it falls a prey to the destructive influence *-

2O4 Capitalist Production.

of natural forces. Iron rusts and wood rots. Yarn with which
we neither weave nor knit, is cotton wasted. Living labour
must seize upon these things and rouse them from their death-
sleep, change them from mere possible use-values into real and
effective ones. Bathed in the fire of labour, appropriated as
part and parcel of labour's organism, and, as it were, made
alive for the performance of their functions in the process, they
are in truth consumed, but consumed with a purpose, as ele
mentary constituents of new use-values, of new products, ever
ready as means of subsistence for individual consumption, or
as means of production for some new labour-process.

If then, on the one hand, finished products are. not only

. results, but also necessary conditions, of the labour-process, on

the other hand, their assumption into that process, their con-

- tact with living labour, is the sole means by which they can be

made to retain their character of use-values, and be utilised.

Laboju_uses up its material factors, its subject and its in-
strumejxts, consumes t]iem, and is therefore a process of con-
sumntion. Such productive consumption is distinguished
from individual consumption by this, that the latter uses up
products, as means of^subsistence for the living individual ; the
firmer, as means whereby alone, labour, the labour-power of
the living individual, is enabled tp_ act. The product, there
fore, of individual consumption, is the consumer himself; the
result of productive consumption, is a product distinct from
the consumer.

In so far then, as its instruments and subjects are themselves
products, labour consumes products in order to create products,
or in other words, consumes one set of products by turning
them into means of production for another set. But, just as
in the beginning, the only participators in the labour-process
were man and the^earth, which latter exists independently of
man, so even now we still employ in the process many means
of production, provided directly by nature, that do not repre
sent any combination of natural substances with human labour.

The labour process, resolved as above into its simple ele
mentary factors, is human action with a view to the produc
tion of use-values, appropriation of natural substances to hu-

The Labour Process. 205

man requirements; it is the necessary condition for effecting --
exchange of matter between man and Nature; it is the ever-r
lasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and *•*"
therefore is independent of every social phase of that existence, '
or rather, is common to every such phase. It was, therefore, /-
not necessary to represent our labourer in connexion with other
labourers; man and his labour one one side, Nature and its
materials on the other, sufficed. As the taste of the porridge
does not tell you who grew the oats, no more does this simple
process tell you of itself what are the social conditions under
which it is taking place, whether under the slave-owner's brutal
lash, or the anxious eye of the capitalist, whether Cincinnatus
carries it on in tilling his modest farm or a savage in killing
wild animals with stones.1

Let us now return to our would-be capitalist We left him
just after he had purchased, in the open market, all the neces
sary factors of the labouFprocess ; its objective factors, the
means of production, as well as its subjective factor, labour-^-
power. With the keen ©ye of an expert, hehad selected the
means of production and the kind of labour-power best adapted
to his particular trade, be it spinning, bootmaking, or any other
kind. He then proceeds to consume the commodity, the la- t,
bour-power that he has just bought, by causing the labourer, i- -
the impersonation of that labour-power, to consume the means
of production by his labour. The general character of the
labour-process is evidently not changed by the fact, that
labourer works for the capitalist instead of for himself ;
over, the particular methods and operations employed in boot-
making or spinning are not immediately changed by the inter
vention of the capitalist. He must begin by taking the labour-
power as he finds it in the market, and consequently be satis
fied with labour of such a kind as would be found in the period
immediately preceding the rise of the capitalists. Changes in

*By a wonderful feat of logical acumen, Colonel Torrens has discovered in this
stone of the savage the origin of capital. "In the first stone which he [the
savage] flings at the wild animal he pursues, in the stick that he seizes to strike
down the fruit which hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation of one
article for the purpose of aiding in the acquisition of another, and thus discover the
origin of capital. (R. Torrens: "An Esaajr on th« Production of Wealth," 4c.,
pp. 70-71.)

206 Capitalist Production.

the methods of production by the subordination of labour to
capital, can take place only at a later period, and therefore will
have to be treated of in a later chapter.

The labour-process, turned into the process by which the
capitalist consumes labour-power, exhibits two characteristic
phenomena. First, the labourer works under the control of
the capitalist to whom his labour belongs ; the capitalist taking
good care that the work is done in a proper manner, and that
the means of production are used with intelligence, so that
there is no unnecessary waste of raw material, and no wear and
tear of the implements beyond what is necessarily caused by
the work.

Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and

not that of the labourer, its immediate producer. Suppose

N that a capitalist pays for a day's labour-power at its value;

v, then the right to use that power for a day belongs to him, just

I as much as the right to use any other commodity, such as a
horse that he has hired for the day. To the purchaser of a
commodity belongs its qse. and the seller of labour-power, by
giving his labour, does no more, in reality, than part with the
' use-value that he has sold. From the instant he steps into
the workshop, the use-value of his labour-power, and therefore
also its use, which is labour, belongs to the capitalist. By the
purchase of labour-power, the capitalist incorporates labour, as
a living ferment, with the lifeless constituents of the product.
yFrom his point of view, the labour-process is nothing more
than the consumption of the commodity purchased, i.e., of
labour-power ; but this consumption cannot be effected except
by supplying the labour-power with the means of production.
The labour-process is a process between things that the capi
talist has purchased, things that have become his property.
s The product of this process also belongs, therefore, to him, just
as much as does the wine which is the product of a process of
fermentation completed in his cellar.1

1 "Products are appropriated before they are converted into capital; this conver
sion doe» not secure them from such appropriation." (Cherbuliez: "Riche ou
Pauvre," edit. Paris, 1841, pp. 53, 64.) "The Proletarian, by selling his labour for
a definite quantity of the necessaries of life, renounces all claim to a share in
the product The mode of appropriation of the products remains the same a*

The Labour Process. 207

SECTION 2. THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS-VALUE.

The product appropriated by the capitalist is a use-value, as J
yarn, for example, or boots. But, although boots are, in one
sense, the basis of all social progress, and our capitalist is a
decided "progressist," yet he does not manufacture boots for
their own sake. Us^-value is, by no means, the thing "qu'on J
aime pour lui-meme" in the production of commodities. Use- \
values are only produced by capitalists, because, and in so far ,\j
as, they are the material substratum, the depositaries of ex
change-value. Our capitalist hna_frFft nV>JQ^fQ JTI Tri'mxr : in the
first place, he wants to produce a use-value that has a Yfllne
in exchange, that is to say, an article destined to be sold, a
commodity; and secondly, he desires to produce a commodity
whose value shall be greater than the sum of the values of the
commodities used in its production, that is, of the means of
production and the labour-power, that he purchased with his
good money in the open market His aim is to produce not
only a use-value, but a commodity also; not only use-value,
but value; not only value, but at the same time surplus-
value.

It must be borne in mind, that we are now dealing with the
production of commodities, and that, up to this point, we have
only considered one aspect of the process. Just as commodities
are, at the same time, use-values and values, so the process of
producing them must be a labour^racess, and at the same
time, a process of creating value.1

before; It is no way altered by the bargain we have mentioned. The product be
longs exclusively to the capitalist, who supplied the raw material and the neces
saries of life; and this is a rigorous consequence of the law of appropriation, a law
whose fundamental principle was the very opposite, namely, that every labourer has
an exclusive right to the ownership of what he produces." (1. c. p. 58.) "When
the labourers receive wages for their labour .... the capitalist is then the
owner not of the capital only" (he means the means of production) "but of the
labour also. If what is paid as wages is included, as it commonly is, in the
term capital, it is absurd to talk of labour separately from capital. The word
capital as thus employed includes labour and capital both." (James Mill: "Ele
ments of Pol. Econ.," &c., Ed. 1821, pp. 70, 71.)

1 As has been stated in a previous note, the English language has two different
expressions for these two different aspects of labour; in the Simple Labour-process,
the process of producing Use- Values, it is Work; in the process of creation of
Value, it is Labour, taking the term in its strictly economical sense. — Ed.

208 Capitalist Production.

< Let us now examine production as a creation of value.

We know that the value of each commodity is determined
by the quantity of labour expended on and materialised in it,
by the working-time necessary, under given social conditions,
for its production. This rule also holds good in the case of
the product that accrued to our capitalist, as the result of the
labour-process carried on for him. Assuming this product to
be 10 Ibs. of yarn, our first step is to calculate the quantity of
labour realised in it.

For spinning the yarn, raw material is required ; suppose in
this case 10 Ibs. of cotton. We have no need at present to
investigate the value of this cotton, for our capitalist has, we
will assume, bought it at its full value, say of ten shillings.
In this price the labour required for the production of the
cotton is already expressed in terms of the average labour of
society. We will further assume that the wear and tear of the
spindle, which, for our present purpose, may represent all other
instruments of labour employed, amounts to the value of 2s.
If, then, twenty-four hours' labour, or two working days., are
required to produce the quantity of gold represented by tjgfilve
shillings, we have here, to begin with, two days' labour already
incorporated in the yarn.

We must not let ourselves be misled by the circumstance
that the cotton has taken a new shape while the substance of
the spindle has to a certain extent been used up. By the
general law of value, if the value of 40 Ibs. of yarn = the value
of 40 Ibs. of cotton -(-the value of a whole spindle, i.e., if the
same working timers required to produce the commodities on
either side of this equation, then 10 Ibs. of yarn are an equiva
lent for 10 Ibs. of cotton, together with one-fourth of a spindle.
In the case we are considering the same working time is ma
terialised in the 10 Ibs. of yarn on the one hand, and in the 10
Ibs. of cotton and the fraction of a spindle on the other.
Therefore, whether value appears in cotton, in a spindle, or
in yarn, makes no difference in the amount of that value.
The spindle and cotton, instead of resting quietly side by side,
join together in the process, their forms are altered, and they
are turned into yarn; but their value is no more affected by

The Labour Process. 209

this fact than it would be if they had been simply exchanged
for their equivalent in yarn.

The labour required for the production of the cotton, the
raw material of the yarn, is part of the labour necessary to
produce the yarn, and is therefore contained in the yarn. The
same applies to the labour embodied in the spindle, without
whose wear and tear the cotton could not be spun.

Hence, in determining the value of the yarn, or the labour- J
time required for its production, all the special processes car-v'
ried on at various times and in different places, which were---'
necessary, first to produce the cotton and the wasted portion of v *'
the spindle, and then with the cotton and spindle to spin the-./
yarn, may together be looked on as different and successive %/
phases of one and the same process. The whole of the labour v
in the yarn is past labour ; and it is a matter of no importance
that the operations necessary for the production of its con
stituent elements were carried on at times which, referred to
the present, are more remote than the final operation of spin
ning. If a definite quantity of labour, say thirty days, is
requisite to build a house, the total amount of labour incor
porated in it is not altered by the fact that the work of the
last day is done twenty-nine days later than that of the first.
Therefore the labour contained in the raw material and the vj
instruments of labour can be treated just as if it were labour
expended in an earlier stage of the spinning process, before the v
labour of actual spinning commenced.

The values of the means of production, i.e., the cotton and^
the spindle, which values are expressed in the price of twelve
shillings, are therefore constituent parts of the value of the^
Yarn, or, in other words, of the value of the product.

Two conditions must nevertheless be fulfilled. First, the
cotton and spindle must concur in the production of a use-
value ; they must in the present case become yarn. Value is i
independent of the particular use-value by which it is borne, I
but it must be embodied in a use-value of some kind. Sec- 1
ondly, the time occupied in the labor of production must not
exceed the time really necessary under the given social con
ditions of the case. Therefore, if no more than 1 Ib. of cotton

2io Capitalist Production.

be requisite to spin 1 Ib. of yarn, care must be taken that no
more than this weight of cotton is consumed in the production
of 1 Ib. of yarn; and similarly with regard to the spindle.
Though the capitalist have a hobby, and use a gold instead of a
steel spindle, yet the only labour that counts for anything in
the value of the yarn is that which would be required to pro
duce a steel spindle, because no more is necessary under the
given social conditions.

We now know what portion of the value of the yarn is owing
to the cotton and the spindle. It amounts to twelve shillings
or the value of two days' work. The next point for our con
sideration is, what portion of the value of the yarn is added

tO the COttOn by the I^Krmr Vm irvnoy

We have now to consider this labour under a very different
aspect from that which it had during the labour-process ; there,
we viewed it solely as that particular kind of human activity
which changes cotton into yarn; there, the more the labour
was suited to the work, the better the yarn, other circumstances
remaining the same. The labour of the spinner was then
viewed as specifically different from other kinds of productive
labour, different on the one hand in its special aim, viz., spin
ning, different, on the other hand, in the special character of its
operations, in the special nature of its means of production and
in the special use-value of its product. For the operation of
spinning, cotton and spindles are a necessity, but for making
rifled cannon they would be of no use whatever. Here, on the
contrary, where we consider the labour of the spinner only so
far as it is value-creating, i.e., a source of value, his labour dif
fers in no respect from the labour of the man who bores cannon,
or (what here more nearly concerns us), from the labour of the
cotton-planter and spindle-maker incorporated in the means of
production. It is solely by reason of this identity, that cotton
planting, spindle making and spinning, are capable of forming
the component parts, differing only quantitatively from each
other, of one whole, namely, the value of the yarn. Here, we
have nothing more to do with the quality, the nature and the
specific character of the labour, but merely with its quantity.
And this simply requires to be calculated. We proceed upon

The Labour Process. 211

the assumption that spinning is simple, unskilled labour, the
average labour of a given state of society. Hereafter we shall 1
see that the contrary assumption would make no difference.

While the labourer is at work, his labour constantly under
goes a transformation : from being motion, it becomes an object
without motion ; from being the labourer working, it becomes
the thing produced. At the end of one hour's spinning, that
act is represented by a definite quantity of yarn; in other
words, a definite quantity of labour, namely that of one hour,
has become embodied in the cotton. We say labour, i.e., the
expenditure of his vital force by the spinner, and not spinning
labour, because the special work of spinning counts here, only
so far as it is the expenditure of labour-power in general, and
not in so far as it is the specific work of the spinner.

In the process we are now considering it is of extreme inW
portance, that no more time be consumed in the work of trans-'
forming the cotton into yarn than is necessary under the given
social conditions. If under normal, i.e., average social condi
tions of production, a pounds of cotton ought to be made into
b pounds of yarn by one hour's labour, then a day's labour
does not count as 12 hours' labour unless 12 a pounds of cotton
have been made into 12 b pounds of yarn; for in the creation /
of value, the time that is socially necessary alone counts.

Kot only the labour, but also the raw material and the pro-v
duct now appear in quite a new light, very different from that v
in which we viewed them in the labour-process pure and sim
ple. The raw material serves now merely as an absorbent of ^
a definite quantity of labour. By this absorption it is in fact-^
changed into yarn, because it is spun, because labour-power
in the form of spinning is added to it; but the product, the >/,
yarn, is now nothing more than a measure of the labour ab- ^
sorbed by the cotton. If in one hour 1$ Ibs. of cotton can be ^
spun into If Ibs. of yarn, then 10 Ibs. of yarn indicate the
absorption of 6 hours' labour. TVfini^ q"«*d&MMUQ£ product,
these quantities being determined by experience, now represent
nothing but definite quantities of labour, definite masses of
crystallized labour-time. They are nothing more than the

212 Capitalist Production.

J materialisation of so many hours or so many days of social
J labour.

j We are here no more concerned about the facts, that the

j labour is the specific work of spinning, that its subject is cotton

^and its product yarn, than we are about the fact that the sub-

jject itself is already a product and therefore raw material.

If the spinner, instead of spinning, were working in a coal

mine, the subject of his labour, the coal, would be supplied by

J . Nature ; nevertheless, a definite quantity of extracted coal, a

J hundred weight, for example, would represent a definite quan-

' tity of absorbed labour.

We assumed, on the occasion of its sale, that the value of
a day!a labour-power is tiw^e- shillings, and that six hours' la-
bour are incorporated in that sum ; and consequently that this
amount of labour is requisite to produce the necessaries of life
daily required on an average by the labourer. If now our
spinner by working for one hour, can convert If Ibs. of cotton
into If Ibs. of yarn,1 it follows that in six hours he will convert
/ 10 Ibs. of cotton into 10 Ibs. of yarn. Hence, during the spin-
^ process, the cotton absorbs six hours' labour. The same

uantity of labour is also embodied in a piece of gold of the
\/value of three shillingsJ w Consequently by the mere labour of
v/spinning, a value of three shillings is added to the cotton.

Let us now consider the total value of the product, the 10
Ibs. of yarn. Two and a half days' labour have been embodied
in it, of which two days were contained in the cotton and in
the substance of the spindle worn away, and half a day was
absorbed during the process of spinning. This two and a half
days' labour is also represented by a piece of gold of the value
of fifteen shillings. Hence, fifteen shillings is an adequate
price for the 10 Ibs. of yarn, or the price of one pound is eight-
een-pence.

Our capitalist stares in astonishment. The value of the
product is exactly equal to the value of the capital advanced.
The value so advanced has not expanded, no surplus-value has
been created, and consequently money has not been converted
into capital. The price of the yarn is fifteen shillings, and

1 These figure* are quite arbitrary.

The Labour Process. 213

fifteen shillings were spent in the open market upon the con
stituent elements of the product, or, what amounts to the same
thing, upon the factors of the labour-process ; ten shillings were
paid for the cotton, two shillings for the substance of the spin
dle worn away, and three shillings for the labour-power. The
ewollen value of the yarn is of no avail, for it is merely the
sum of the values formerly existing in the cotton, the spindle,
and the labour-power ; out of such a simple addition of existing
values, no surplus-value can possibly arise.1 These separate
values are now all concentrated in one thing ; but so they were j
also in the sum of fifteen shillings, before it was split up into /
three parts, by the purchase of the commodities.

There is in reality nothing very strange in this result. The
value of one pound of yarn being eighteenpence, if our capita
list buys 10 Ibs. of yarn in the market, he must pay fifteen
shillings for them. It is clear that, whether a man buys his
house ready built, or gets it built for him, in neither case will
the mode of acquisition increase the amount of money laid out
on the house.

Our capitalist, who is at home in his vulgar economy, ex
claims : "Oh ! but I advanced my money for the express pur
pose of making more money." The way to Hell is paved with
good intentions, and he might just as easily have intended to
make money, without producing at all.2 He threatens all sorts
of things. He won't be caught napping again. In future he
will buy the commodities in the market, instead of manufac
turing them himself. But if all his brother capitalists were to
do the same, where would he find his commodities in the mar
ket? And his money he cannot eat. He tries persuasion.

1 This is the fundamental proposition on which is based the doctrine of the
Physiocrats as to the unproductiveness of all labour that is not agriculture: it is
irrefutable for the orthodox economist. "Cette fac.on d'imputer a une seule chose
la valeur de plusieurs autres" (par exemple au lin la consommation du tisserand),
"d'appliquer, pour ainsi dire, couche sur couche, plusieurs valeurs sur une seule,
fait que celle-ci grossit d'autant . . . . Le terme d'addition peint tres-bien la
maniere dont se forme le prix des ouvrages de main-d'ceuvre; ce prix n'est qu'un
total de plusieurs valeurs consommees et additionees ensemble; or, additionner n'est
pas multiplier." ("Mercier de la Riviere," 1. c., p. 599.)

* Thus from 1844-47 he withdrew part of his capital from productive employment,
in order to throw it away in railway speculations; and so also, during the Ameri
can Civil War, he closed his factory, and turned his work-people into the streets,
in order to gamble on the Liverpool cotton exchange.

214 Capitalist Production.

"Consider my abstinence; I might have played ducks and
drakes with the 15 shillings; but instead of that I consumed
it productively, and made yarn -with it." Very well, and by
way of reward he is now in possession of good yarn instead
of a bad conscience; and as for playing the part of a miser,
it would never do for him to relapse into such bad ways as
that; we have seen before to what results such asceticism
leads. Besides, where nothing is, the king has lost his rights :
whatever may be the merit of his abstinence, there is nothing
wherewith specially to remunerate it, because the value of the
product is merely the sum of the values of the commodities
that were thrown into the process of production. . Let him
therefore console himself with the reflection that virtue is its
own reward. But no, he becomes importunate. He says:
"The yarn is of no use to me: I produced it for sale." In
that case let him sell it, or, still better, let him for the future
produce only things for satisfying his personal wants, a rem
edy that his physician M'Culloch has already prescribed as
infallible against an epidemic of over-production. He now
gets obstinate. "Can the labourer," -he asks, "merely with
his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing ? Did
I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and
in which alone, his labour could be embodied? And as the
greater part of society consists of such ne'er-do-weels, have I
not rendered society incalculable service by my instruments
of production, my cotton and my spindle, and not only society,
but the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with
the necessaries of life ? And am I to be allowed nothing in
return for all this service?" Well, but has not the labourer
rendered him the equivalent service of changing his cotton
and spindle into yarn ? Moreover, there is here no question of
service.1 A service is nothing more than the useful effect of

1 Extol thyself, put on finery and adorn thyself . . . but whoever takes more
or better than he gives, that is usury, and is not service, but wrong done to his
neighbour, as when one steals and robs. All is not service and benefit to a neigh
bour that is called service and benefit For an adulteress and adulterer do one
another great service and pleasure. A horseman does an incendiary a great serv
ice, by helping him to rob on the highway, and pillage land and houses. The
papists do ours a great service in that they don't drown, burn, murder all of
them, or let them all rot in prison; but let some live, and only drive them out,

The Labour Process. 215

a use-value, be it of a commodity, or be it of labour.1 But
here we are dealing with exchange-value. The capitalist paid
to the labourer a value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave
him back an exact equivalent in the value of 3 shillings, added
by him to the cotton: he gave him value for value. Our
friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the
modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims : "Have
I myself not worked? Have I not performed the labour of
superintendence and of overlooking the spinner ? And does
not this labour, too, create value ?" His overlooker and his
manager try to hide their smiles. Meanwhile, after a hearty
laugh, he re-assumes his usual mien. Though he chanted to
us the whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he
would not give a brass farthing for it. He leaves this and all
such like subterfuges and juggling tricks to the professors of
political economy, who are paid for it. He himself is a prac
tical man; and though he does not always consider what he
says outside his business, yet in his business he knows what
he is about.

Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a
dfly'a ]flhrmr-pmyer amounts to 3 shillings, because on our as-
sumption half a day's labour is embodied in that quantity of
labour-power, i.e., because the means of subsistence that are
dally required for the production of labour-power, cost half a
day's labour. But the past labour that is embodied in the
labour-power, and the living labour that it can call into action ;
the daily cost of maintaining it,, and its daily expenditure in v'
work, are two totally different things.* The former determines "*
the exchange-value of the labour-power, the latter is its use-''
value. The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to
the labourer alive during 24 Virmra., does not in any way pre
vent him f™m wHqnfi n Tvhvlft day Therefore, the^value of
labour-power, and the value which_that labour-power creates

or take from them what they have. The devil himself does his servants inestimable
service . . . To sum up, the world is full of great, excellent, and daily service
and benefit." (Martin Luther: "An die Pfarherrn, wider den Wucher zu
piedigen," Wittenberg, 1540.)

*In "Critique of Pol. EC.," p. 34, I make the following remark on this point — "It
is not difficult to understand what 'service' the category 'service* must render to a
class of economists like J. B. Say and F. Bastiat."

216 Capitalist Production.

in foe labour process, are two entirely different magnitudes ;
and this difference of the two values was what the capitalist
had in view, when he was purchasing the labour-power. The
useful qualities that labour-power possesses, and by virtue of
which it makes yarn or boots, were to him nothing more than
a conditio sine qua non; for in order to create value, labour
must be expended in a useful manner. What really influenced
him was the specific use-value which this commodity possesses
of being a source not only of value, but of more value than it
has itpelf. This is the special service that the capitalist ex
pects from labour-power, and in this transaction he acts in ac
cordance with the "eternal laws" of the exchange of commodi-
^ ties. The seller of labour-power, like the seller of any other
./commodity, realises its exchange-value, and parts wiiji ita HM-
i/ value. He cannot take the one without giving the other. The
use-value ?* ]flbonr-pmvp.rT nr in other wordsr labour, belongs
j just as little to its seller, as the use-value of oil after it has
been sold belongs to the dealer who has sold it The owner
of the money has paid the value of a day's labour-power ; his,
herefore, is the ujse of it for a day ; a day's labour__hglongs to
C^fhim. The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sus
tenance of labour-power costs only half ajiay's labour, while
> on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during
, ^ a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during
v one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this cir-
y -/cumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the
\ ) ^uyer, but by no means an injury to the seller.

Our capitalist foresaw this state of things, and that was the
cause of his laughter. The labourer therefore finds, in the
workshop, the means of production necessary for working, not
only during six, but during twelve hours. Just as during the
six hours' process our 10 Ibs. of cotton absorbed six hours'
labour, and became 10 Ibs. of yarn, so now, 20 Ibs. of cotton
will absorb 12 hours' labour and be changed into 20 Ibs. of
yarn. Let us now examine the product of this prolonged
process. There is now materialised in this ^0 Ibs. of yarn the
labour of five days, of which four days are due to the cotton
and the lost steel of the spindle, the remaining day having

abour Process. 217

been absorbed by the cotton during the spinning process. Ex- '
pressed in gold, the labour of five days is thirty shillings.
This is therefore the price of the 20 Ibs. of yarn, giving, as
before, eighteenpence as the price of a pound. But the sum
of the values of the commodities that entered into the process
amounts to 27 shillings. The value of the yarn is 30 shillings.
Therefore the value of the product is ^ greater than the value
advanced for its production ; 27 shillings have been trans
formed into 30 shillings ; a surplus-value of 3 shillings has
been created. The trick has at last succeeded; money has
been converted into capital.

Every condition of the problem is satisfied, while thq laws
that regulate the exchange of commodities, have been in no
way violated. Equivalent has been exchanged for ~~": — 1 — *

For the capitalist as buyer paid for each commodity, for the /
cotton, the spindle and the labour-power, its full value. He /
then did what is done by every purchaser of commodities ; TieV
consumed their use-value. The consumption of the labour- •
power, which was also the process of producing commodities,
resulted in 20 Ibs. of yarn, having a value of 30 shillings.
The capitalist, formerly a buyer, now returns to market as a /
seller, of commodities. He sells his yarn at eighteenpence a^
pound, which is its exact value. Yet for all that he with-"'
draws 3 shillings more from circulation than he originally v
threw into it. This metamorphosis, this conversion of money
into capital, takes place both within the sphere of circulation
and also outside it; within the circulation, because conditioned
by the purchase of the labour-power in t.hp. market ; outside the
circulation, because what is done within it is only a stepping-
stone to the production of surplus-value, a process which is
entirely confined to the sphere of production. Thus "tout est
pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles."

By turning his money into commodities that serve as the
material elements of a new product, and as factors in the la
bour-process, by incorporating living labour with their dead
substance, the capitalist at the same time converts value, i.e.,
past, materialised, and dead labour into capital, into value big
with value, a live monster that is fruitful and multiplies.

218 Capitalist Production.

\ If we now compare the two processes of producing value and
\ of creating surplus-value, we see that the latter is nothing but
^the continuation of the former beyond a definite point. If on
the one hand the process be not Carried beyond the point,
x where the value paid by the capitalist^ for the labour-power is
replaced by an exact equivalent, it is simply a process of pro
ducing value; if, on the other hand, it be continued beyond
that point, it becomes a process of creating surplus-value.

If we proceed further, and compare the process^pf producing
x value with the labour-process, pure and simple, we find that
i the latter consists of the useful labour, the work, that produces
use-values. Here we contemplate the labour as producing a
particular article ; we view it under its qualitative aspect alone,
with regard to its end and aim. But viewed as a valujs-creat-
ing process, the same labour-process presents itself under its
* quantitative aspect alone. Here it is a question merely of the
. time_ occupied by the labourer in doing; the \yorjt ; of the period
during which the labour-power is usefully expended. Here,
v the commodities that take part in the process, do not count
any longer as necessary adjuncts of labour-power in the pro
duction of a definite, useful object. They count merely as
depositaries of so much absorbed or materialised labour; that
labour, whether previously embodied in the means of produc
tion, or incorporated in them for the first time during the
process by the action of labour-power, counts in either case
only according to its duration ; it amounts to so many hours or
days as the case may be.

Moreover, only so much of the time spent in the production
of any article is counted, as, under the given social conditions,
is necessary. The consequences of this are various. In the
first place, it becomes necessary that the labour should be
carried on under normal conditions. If a self-acting mule is
the implement in general use for spinning, it would be absurd
to supply the spinner with a distaff and spinning wheel. The
cotton too must not be such rubbish as to cause extra waste in
being worked, but must be of suitable quality. Otherwise the
spinner would be found to spend more timo in producing a
pound of yarn than is socially necessary, in which case the

The Labour Process. 219

excess of time would create neither value nor money. But
whether the material factors of the process are of normal
quality or not, depends not upon the labourer, but entirely
upon the capitalist. Then again, the labour-power itself must
be of average efficacy. In the trade in which it is being em
ployed, it must possess the average skill, handiness and quick
ness prevalent in that trade, and our capitalist took good care
to buy labour-power of such normal goodness. This power
must be applied with the average amount of exertion and with
the usual degree of intensity; and the capitalist is as careful
to see that this is done, as that his workmen are not idle for a
single moment. He has bought the use of the labour-power
for a definite period, and he insists upon his rights. He has
no intention of being robbed. Lastly, and for this purpose our \/
friend has a penal code of his own, all wasteful consumption of^
raw material or instruments of labour is strictly forbidden, be-.1-'
cause what is so wasted, represents labour superfluously ex-|uX
pended, labour that does not count in the product or enter into'-
its value.1

We now see, that the difference between labour, considered *
on the one hand as producing utilities, and on the other hand, ^

1 This is one of the circumstances that makes production by slave labour such
a costly process. The labourer here is, to use a striking expression of the ancients,
distinguishable only as instrumentum vocale, from an animal as instrumentum
semi-vocale, and from an implement as instrumentum mutum. But he himself
takes care to let both beast and implement feel that he is none of them, but is a
man. He convinces himself with imnvnse satisfaction, that he is a different being,
by treating the one unmercifully and damaging the other con amore. Hence the
principle, universally applied in this method of production, only to employ the rudest
and heaviest implements and such as are difficult to damage owing to their sheer
clumsiness. In the slave-states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, down to the date
of the civil war, ploughs constructed on old Chinese models, which turned up the
soil like a hog or a mole, instead of making furrows, were alone to be found. Conf.
J. C. Cairns. "The Slave Power," London, 1862, p. 46-49. In his "Sea Board
Slave States," Olmsted tells us: "I am here shown tools that no man in his senses,
with us, would allow a labourer, for whom he was paying wages, to be incumbered
with; and the excessive weight and clumsiness of which, I would judge, would make
work at least ten per cent greater than with those ordinarily used with us. And I
am assured that, in the careless and clumsy way they must be used by the slaves,
anything lighter or less rude could not be furnished them with good economy, and
that such tools as we constantly give our labourers and find our profit in giving
them, would not last out a day in a Virginia cornfield — much lighter and more
free from stones though it be than ours. So, too, when I ask why mules are so
universally substituted for horses on the farm, the first reason given, and confessedly
the most conclusive one, is that horses cannot bear the treatment that they always
must get from the negroes; horses are always soon foundered or crippled by them,

22O Capitalist Production.

v^ as creating value, a difference which we discovered bj- our
analysis of a commodity, resolves itself into a distinction be
tween two aspects of the process of production.

The process of production, considered on the one hand as

. 1 the unity of the labour-process and the process overeating

* value, is production of commodities ; considered on the other

hand as the unity of the labour-process and the process of pro-

jducing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process of production,

JOT capitalist production of commodities.

We stated, on a previous page, that in the creation of
surplus-value it does not in the least matter, whether the labour
appropriated by the capitalist be simple unskilled labour of
average quality or more complicated skilled labour. All
labour of a higher or more complicated character than averago
labour is expenditure of labour-power of a more costly kind,
labour-power whose production has cost more time and labour,
and which therefore has a higher value, than unskilled or
simple labour-power. This power being of higher value, its
consumption is labour of a higher class, labour that creates ir
equal times proportionally higher values than unskilled labour
does. Whatever difference in skill there may be between the

v labour of a spinner and that of a jeweller, the portion of his
labour by which the jeweller merely replaces the value of his

1 own labour-power, does not in any way differ in quality from
the additional gortioji by which he creates surplus-value. In \
the making of jewellery, just as in spinning, the surplus-value
results only from a quantitative excess of labour, from a
lengthening-out of one and the same labour-process, in the one
case, of the process of making jewels, in the other of the pro
cess of making yarn.1

while mules will bear cudgelling, or lose a meal or two now and then, and not be
materially injured, and they do not take cold or get sick, if neglected or over
worked. But I do not need to go further than the window of the room in which I
am writing, to see at almost any time, treatment of cattle that would ensure the im
mediate discharge of the driver by almost any farmer owning them in the North.**

1 The distinction between skilled and unskilled labour rests in part on pure illu
sion, or, to say the least, on distinctions that have long since ceased to be real, and
that survive only by virtue of a traditional convention; in part on the helpless con
dition of some groups of the working-class, a condition that prevents them from
exacting equally with the rest the value of their labour-power. Accidental cir
cumstances here play so great a part, that these two forms of labour sometimes

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 221

But on the other hand, in every process of creating value,
the reduction of skilled labour to average social labour, e.g.,
one day of skilled to six days of unskilled labour, is un
avoidable.1 We therefore save ourselves a superfluous oper
ation, and simplify our analysis, by the assumption, that the
labour of the workman employed by the capitalist is unskilled
average labour.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONSTANT CAPITAL AND VABIABLE CAPITAL.

THE various factors of the labour-process play different parts
in forming the value of the product.

The labourer adds fresh value to the subject of his labour
by expending upon it a given amount of additional labour, no
matter what the specific character and utility of that labour
may be. On the other hand, the values of the means of pro
duction used up in the process are preserved, and present

change places. Where, for instance, the physique of the working-class has deterio
rated, and is, relatively speaking, exhausted, which is the case In all countries with a
well developed capitalist production, the lower forms of labour which demand great
expenditure of muscle, are in general considered as skilled, compared with much
more delicate forms of labour; the latter sink down to the level of unskilled labour.
Take as an example the labour of a bricklayer, which in England occupies a much
higher level than that of a damask-wearer. Again, although the labour of a fustian
cutter demands great bodily exertion, and is at the same time unhealthy, yet it
counts only as unskilled labour. And then, we must not forget, that the so-called
skilled labour does not occupy a large space in the field of national labour. Laing
estimates that in England (and Wales) the livelihood of 11,800,000 people depends
on unskilled labour. If from the total population of 18,000,000 living at the time
when he wrote, we deduct 1,000,000 for the "genteel population," and 1,600,000
for paupers, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes, 4c., and 4,650,000 who compose the
middle-class, there remain the above mentioned 11,000,000. But in his middle-class
he includes people that live on the interest of small investments, officials, men of
letters, artists, schoolmasters and the like, and in order to swell the number he also
includes in these 4,650,000 the better paid portion of the factory operatives 1 The
bricklayers, too, figure amongst them. (S. Laing: "National Distress," &c., London,
1844.) "The great class who have nothing to give for food but ordinary labour, are
the great bulk of the people." (James Mill, in art: "Colony," Supplement to the
Encyclop. Brit., 1831.)

1 "Where reference is made to labour as a measure of value, it necessarily implies
labour of one particular kind . . .the proportion which the other kinds bear to it
being easily ascertained." ("Outlines of Pol. Econ.," Lond., 1832, pp. 22 and 23.)

222 Capitalist Production.

themselves afresh as constituent parts of the value of the pro
duct ; the values of the cotton and the spindle, for instance, re
appear again in the value of the yarn. The value of the
means of production is therefore preserved, by being trans
ferred to the product. This transfer takes place during the
conversion of those means into a product, or in other words,
during the labour-process. It is brought about by labour; but
how ?

The labourer does not perform two operations at once, one
in order to add value to the cotton, the other in order to pre
serve the value of the means of production, or, in what amounts
to the same thing, to transfer to the yarn, to the product, the
value of the cotton on which he works, and part of the valuo
of the spindle with which he works. But, by the very act o:f
adding new value, he preserves their former values. Since,
however, the addition of new value to the subject of his labour,
and the preservation of its former value, are two entirely dis
tinct results, produced simultaneously by the labourer, during
one operation, it is plain that this twofold nature of the re
suit can be explained only by the twofold nature of his labour
at one and the same time, it must in one character create value,
and in another character preserve or transfer value.

Now, in what manner does every labourer add new labour
and consequently new value ? Evidently, only by labouring
productively in a particular way ; the spinner by spinning, the
weaver by weaving, the smith by forging. But, while thus
incorporating labour generally, that is value, it is by the par
ticular form alone of the labour, by the spinning, the weaving
and the forging respectively, that the means of production, the
cotton and spindle, the yarn and loom, and the iron and anvil
become constituent elements of the product, of a new use-
value.1 Each use-value disappears, but only to re-appear
under a new form in a new use-value. Now, we saw, when
we were considering the process of creating value, that, if a
use-value be effectively consumed in the production of a new
use-value, the quantity of labour expended in the production

1 "Labour give* a new creation for one extinguished." ("A» essay on the Polit.
Econ. of Nations," London, 1881, p. 13.)

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 223

of the consumed article, forms a portion of the quantity of
labour necessary to produce the new use-value ; this portion is
therefore labour transferred from the means of production to
the newjDrpduct. Hence, the labourer preserves the values of
the consumed means of production, or transfers them as por
tions of its value to the product, not by virtue of his additional
labour, abstractedly considered, but by virtue of the particular
useful character of that labour, by virtue of its special pro
ductive form. In so far then as labour is such specific produc
tive activity, in so far as it is spinning, weaving, or forging,
it raises, by mere contact, the means of production from the
dead, makes them living factors of the labour-process, and
combines with them to form the new products.

If the special productive labour of the workman were not
spinning, he could not convert the cotton into yarn, and there
fore could not transfer the values of the cotton and spindle to
the yarn. Suppose the same workman were to change his
occupation to that of a joiner, he would still by a day's labour
add value to the material he works upon. Consequently, we
see, first, that the addition of new value takes place not by
virtue of his labour being spinning in particular, or joinering
in particular, but because it is labour in the abstract, a portion
of the total labour of society ; and we see next, that the value
added is of a given definite amount, not because his laTxmr
has a special utility, but because it is exerted^forajl£finite
time. On the one hand, then, it is by virtue^of itsgeneral
character, as being expenditure of human labour-power in the
abstract, that spinning adds new value to the values of the
cotton and the spindle; and on the other hand, it is by virtue
of its special character, as being a concrete, useful process, that
the same labour of spinning both transfers the values of the
means of production to the product, and preserves them in the
product. Hence at one and the same time there is produced a
twofold result

By the simple addition of a certain quantity of labour,
new value is added, and by the quality of this added labour,
the original values of the means of production are preserved
in the product This twofold effect, resulting from the two-

224 Capitalist Production.

fold character of labour, may be traced in various phenomena.
Let us assume, that some invention enables the spinner to
spin as much cotton in, 6 hours as he was able to spin before in
36 hours. His labour is now six times as effective as it was,
for the purposes of useful production. The product of 6
hours' work has increased sixfold, from 6 Ibs. to 36 Ibs. But
now the 36 Ibs. of cotton absorb only the same amount of
labour as formerly did the 6^1bs. One-sixth as much new
labour is absorbed by each pound of _ cotton, and consequently,
the value added by the labour to each pound is only one-sixth
of what it formerly was. On the other hand, in the product,
in the 36 Ibs. of yarn, the value transferred from the cotton i;i
six times as great as before. By the 6 hours' spinning, tho
value of the raw material preserved and transferred to thu
product is six times as great as before, although the new value
added by the labour of the spinner to each pound of the very
same raw material is one-sixth what it was formerly. Thiti
shows that the two properties of labour, by virtue of whict
it is enabled in one case to preserve value, and in the other to
create value, are essentially different. On the one hand, the
longer the time necessary to spin a given weight of cotton intc
yarn, the greater is the new value added to the material; on
the other hand, the greater the weight of the cotton spun in a J
given time, the greater is the value preserved, by being trans- '
ferred from it to the product.

Let us now assume, that the productiveness of the spinner's
labour, instead of varying, remains constant, that he therefore
requires the same time as he formerly did, to convert one
pound of cotton into yarn, but that the exchange value of the
cotton^varies, either by rising to six times its former value or
falling to one-sixth of that value. In both these cases, the
spinner puts the same quantity of labour into a pound of cot
ton, and therefore adds as much value, as he did before the
change in the value : he also produces a given weight of yarn in
the same time as he did before. Nevertheless, the value that
he transfers from the cotton to the yarn is either one-sixth
of what it was before the variation, or, as the case may be,
eix times as much as before. The same result occurs when the

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 225

value of the instruments of labour rises or falls, while their
useful efficacy in the process remains unaltered.

Again, if the technical conditions of the spinning process re
main unchanged, and no change of value takes place in the
means of production, the spinner continues to consume in
equal working-times equal quantities of raw material, and
equal quantities of machinery of unvarying value. The value
that he preserves in the product is directly proportional to the
new value that he adds to the product. In two weeks he incor
porates twice as much labour, and therefore twice as much
value, as in one week, and during the same time he consumes
twice as much material, and wears out twice as much ma
chinery, of double the value in each case; he therefore pre
serves, in the product of two weeks, twice as much value as in
the product of one week. So long as the conditions of produc
tion remain the same, the more value the labourer adds by
fresh labour, the more value he transfers and preserves; but
he does so merely because this addition of new value takes place
under conditions that have not varied and are independent of
his own labour. Of course, it may be said in one sense, that
the labourer preserves old value always in proportion to the
quantity of new value that he adds. Whether the value of
cotton rise from one shilling to two shillings, or fall to six
pence, the workman invariably preserves in the product of one
hour only one half as much value as he preserves in two hours.
In like manner, if the productiveness of his own labour varies
by rising or falling, he will in one hour spin either more or less
cotton, as the case may be, than he did before, and will con
sequently preserve in the product of one hour, more or less
value of cotton; but, all the same, he will preserve by two
hours' labour twice as much value as he will by one.

Value exists only in articles of utility, in objects : we leave
out of consideration its purely symbolical representation by
tokens. (Man himself, viewed as the impersonation of labour-
power, is a natural object, a thing, although a living conscious
thing, and labour is the manifestation of this power residing
in him.) If therefore an article loses it utility, it also loses
its value. The reason why means of production do not lose

226 Capitalist Production.

their value, at the same time that they lose their use-value, is
this : they lose in the labour-process the original form of their
use-value, only to assume in the product the form of a new use-
value. But, however important it may be to value, that i~
should have some object of utility to embody itself in, yet k
is a matter of complete indifference what particular object
serves this purpose; this we saw when treating of the meta
morphosis of commodities. Hence it follows that in the
labour-process the means of production transfer their value;
to the product only so far as along with their use-value they
lose also their exchange value. They give up to the produce
that value alone which they themselves lose as means of pro
duction. But in this respect the material factors of the labour -
process do not all behave alike.

The coal burnt under the boiler vanishes without leaving a
trace; so, too, the tallow with which the axles of wheels aro
greased. Dye stuffs and other auxiliary substances also vanish
but re-appear as properties of the product. Raw material
forms the substance of the product, but only after it ha 3
changed its form. Hence raw material and auxiliary sub
stances lost the characteristic form with which they are clothed
on entering the labour-process. It is otherwise with the in
struments of labour. Tools, machines, workshops, and vessels,
are of use in the labour-process, only so long as they retain
their original shape, and are ready each morning to renew tho
process with their shape unchanged. And just as during thei *
lifetime, that is to say, during the continued labour-process in
which they serve, they retain their shape independent of tho
product, so, too, they do after their death. The corpses of
machines, tools, workshops, &c., are always separate and dis
tinct from the product they helped to turn out. If we now
consider the case of any instrument of labour during the whol 3
period of its service, from the day of its entry into the work
shop, till the day of its banishment into the lumber room, WB
find that during this period its use-value has been completely
consumed, and therefore its exchange value completely trans
ferred to the product. For instance, if a spinning machina
lasts for 10 years, it is plain that during that working perio 1

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 227

its total value is gradually transferred to the product of the
10 years. The lifetime of an instrument of labour, therefore,
is spent in the repetition of a greater or less number of similar
operations. Its life may be compared with that of a human
being. Every day brings a man 24 hours nearer to his grave :
but how many days he has still to travel on that road, no man
can tell accurately by merely looking at him. This difficulty,
however, does not prevent life insurance offices from drawing,
by means of the theory of averages, very accurate, and at the
same time very profitable conclusions. So it is with the instru
ments of labour. It is known by experience how long on the
average a machine of a particular kind will last. Suppose its
use-value in the labour-process to last only six days. Then,
on the average, it loses each day one-sixth of its use-value, and
therefore parts with one-sixth of its value to the daily product
The wear and tear of all instruments, their daily loss of use-
value, and the corresponding quantity of value they part with
to the product, are accordingly calculated upon this basis.

It is thus strikingly clear, that means of production never
transfer jjiacfi-5Lalu^.to the product than they themselves lose
during the labour-process by the destructionjof their. -own use-
value. If such an instrument has no value to lose, if, in other
words, it is not the product of human labour, it transfers no
value to the product. It helps to create use-value without con
tributing to the formation of exchange value. In this class
are included all means of production supplied by Nature with
out human assistance, such as land, wind, water, metals in
situ, and timber in virgin forests.

Yet another interesting phenomenon here presents itself.
Suppose a machine to be worth £1000, and to wear out in 1000
days. Then one thousandth part of the value of the machine
is daily transferred to the day's product. At the same time,
though with diminishing vitality, the machine as a whole con
tinues to take part in the labour-process. Thus it appears
that one factor of the labour-process, a means of production,
continually enters as a whole into that process, while it enters
into the process of the formation of value by fractions only.
The difference between the two processes is here reflected in

228 Capitalist Production.

their material factors, by the same instrument of production
taking part as a whole in the labour-process, while at the same
time as an element in the formation of value, it enters only by
fractions.1

On the other hand, a means of production may take part as a
whole in the formation of value, while into the labour-process
it enters only bit by bit. Suppose that in spinning cotton, the
waste for every 115 Ibs. used amounts to 15 Ibs., which is con
verted, not into yarn, but into "devil's dust." Now, although
this 15 Ibs. of cotton never becomes a constituent element of
the yarn, yet assuming this amount of waste to be normal and
inevitable under average conditions of spinning,- its value is
just as surely transferred to the value of the yarn, as is the
value of the 100 Ibs. that form the substance of the yarn. The
use-value of 15 Ibs. of cotton must vanish into dust, before 100
Ibs. of yarn can be made. The destruction of this cotton is
therefore a necessary condition in the production of the yarn.
And because it is a necessary condition, and for no other rea
son, the value of that cotton is transferred to the product.
The same holds good for every kind of refuse resulting from a
labour-process, so far at least as such refuse cannot be furttnr
employed as a means in the production of new and independent

1 The subject of repairs of the implements of labour does not concern us here. A
machine that is undergoing repair, no longer plays the part of an instrument, 1 ut
that of a subject of labour. Work is no longer done with it, but upon it. It is
quite permissible for our purpose to assume, that the labour expended on the repairs
of instruments is included in the labour necessary for their original production.
But in the text we deal with that wear and tear, which no doctor can cure, and
which little by little brings about death, with "that kind of wear which cannot be
repaired from time to time, and which, in the case of a knife, would ultimately re
duce it to a state in which the cutler would say of it, it is not worth a new bladr."
We have shewn in the text, that a machine takes part in every labour-process as an
integral machine, but that into the simultaneous process of creating value it enters
only bit by bit. How great then is the confusion of ideas exhibited in the following
extract! "Mr. Ricardo says a portion of the labour of the engineer in making
[stocking] machines" is contained for example in the value of a pair of stockin js.
"Yet the total labour, that produced each single pair of stockings .... in
cludes the whole labour of the engineer, not a portion; for one machine makes many
pairs, and none of those pairs could have been done without any part of the ma
chine." ("Obs. on certain verbal disputes in Pol. Econ. particularly relating to
value," p. 54.) The author, an uncommonly self-satisfied wiseacre, is right in hi*
confusion and therefore in his contention, to this extent only, that neither Ricardo
nor any other economist, before or since him, has accurately distinguished the t vo
a«pect« of labour, and still less, therefore, the pan played by it under each of th«s«
«*pect» in the formation of value.

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 229

use-values. Such an employment of refuse may be seen in the
large machine works at Manchester, where mountains of iron
turnings are carted away to the foundry in the evening, in
order the next morning to re-appear in the workshops as solid
masses of iron.

We have seen that the means of production transfer value to
the new product, so far only as during the labour-process they
lose value in the shape of their old use-value. The maximum
loss of value that they can suffer in the process, is plainly
limited by the amount of the original value with which they
came into the process, or in other words, by the labour-time
necessary for their production. Therefore the means oj
duction can never add more value to the product than they
themselves possessj^gppnrlently^f Jjie process in which they
assist. However useful a given kind of raw material, or a
machine, or other means of production may be, though it may
cost £150, or, say, 500 days' labour, yet it cannot, under any
circumstances, add to the value of the product more than £150.
Its value is determined not by the labour-process into which it
enters as a means of production, but by that out of which it has
issued as a product. In the labour-process it only serves as a
mere use-value, a thing with useful properties, and could not,
therefore, transfer any value to the product, unless it possessed
such value previously.1

1 From this we may judge of the absurdity of J. B. Say, who pretends to account \
for surplus-value (Interest, Profit, Rent), by the "services productifs" which the \
means of production, soil, instruments, and raw material, render in the labour-proc
ess by means of their use-values. Mr. \Vm. Roscher who seldom loses an occasion
of registering, in black and white, ingenious apologetic fancies, records the following
specimen: — "J. B. Say (Trait*, t. 1. ch. 4) very truly remarks: the value produced
by an oil mill, after deduction of all costs, is something new, something quite differ-
ent from the labour by which the oil mill itself was erected." (1. c., p. 82, note.)
Very true, Mr. Professor! the oil produced by the oil mill is indeed something very
different from the labour expended in constructing the mill! By value, Mr. Roscher
understands such stuff as "oil," because oil has value, notwithstanding that "Na
ture" produces petroleum, though relatively "in small quantities," a fact to which
he seems to refer in his further observation: "It (Nature) produces scarcely any
exchange value." Mr. Roscber's "Nature" and the exchange value it produces are
rather like the foolish virgin who admitted indeed that she had had a child, but "it
was such a little one." This "savant serieux" in continuation remarks: "Ricardo's
school is in the habit of including capital as accumulated labour under the head of
labour. This is unskilful work, because, indeed, the owner of capital, after all, does
something more than the merely creating and preserving of the same: namely, the
abstention from the enjoyment of it, for which he demands, t.g., interest." (1. c.)

23° Capitalist Production.

While productive labour is changing the means of produc
tion into constituent elements of a new product, their value
undergoes a metempsychosis. It deserts the consumed body,
to occupy the newly created one. But this transmigration
takes place, as it were, behind the back of the labourer. He
is unable to add new labour, to create new value, without at
the same time preserving old values, and this, because the
labour he adds must be of a specific useful kind ; and he can
not do work of a useful kind, without employing products as
the means of production of a new product, and thereby trans
ferring their value to the new product. The property there
fore which labour-power in action, living labour, .possesses of
preserving value, at the same time that it adds it, is a gift of
Nature which costs the labourer nothing, but which is very
advantageous to the capitalist inasmuch as it preserves the
existing value of his capital.1 So long as trade is good, the
capitalist is too much absorbed in money-grubbing to take
notice of this gratuitous gift of labour. A violent interruption
of the labour-process by a crisis, makes him sensitively awaie
of it.2

As regards the means of production, what is really consumed
is their use-value, and the consumption of this use-value by
labour results in the product. There is no consumption cf

How very "skilful" is this "anatomico-physiological method" of political economy,
which, "indeed," converts a mere desire "after all" into a source of value.

1 "Of all the instruments of the farmers' trade, the labour of man ... is that en
which he is most to rely for the repayment of his capital. The other two . . . the
working stock of the cattle and the . . . carts, ploughs, spades, and so forti,
without a given portion of the first, are nothing at all." (Edmund Burk<::
"Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, originally presented to the Right Hon. W. Pitt,
in the month of November 1795," Edit. London, 1800, p. 10.)

1 In "The Times" of 26th November, 1862, a manufacturer, whose mill employ* d
800 hands, and consumed, on the average, 150 bales of East Indian, or 130 bales of
American cotton, complains, in doleful manner, of the standing expenses of bis
factory when not working. He estimates them at £6,000 a year. Among them a ~e
a number of items that do not concern us here, such as rent, rates, and taxes, ii-
surance, salaries of the manager, book-keeper, engineer, and others. Then he reck
ons £150 for coal used to heat the mill occasionally, and run the engine now ar d
then. Besides this, he includes the wages of the people employed at odd times :o
keep the machinery in working order. Lastly, he puts down £1,200 for depreciatic n
of machinery, because "the weather and the natural principle of decay do not sus
pend their operations because the steam-engine ceases to revolve." He says, eia-.
phatically, he does not estimate his depreciation at more than the small sum )f
£1,200, because his machinery is already nearly worn out.

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 231

their value.1 and it would therefore be inaccurate to say that
it is reproduced. It is rather preserved ; not by reason of any
operation it undergoes itself in the process; but because the
article in which it originally exists, vanishes, it is true, but
vanishes into some other article. Hence, in the value of the
product, there is a re-appearance of the value of the means of
production, but there is, strictly speaking, no reproduction of
that value. That which is produced is a new use-value in
which the old exchange-value re-appears.2

It is otherwise with the subjective factor of the labour-pro
cess, with labour-power in action. While the labourer, by
virtue of his labour being of a specialised kind that has a
special object, preserves and transfers to the product the value
of the means of production, he at the same time, by the mere
act of working, creates each instant an additional or new value.
Suppose the process of production to be stopped just when the
workman has produced an equivalent for the value of his own
labour-power, when, for example, by six hours' labour, he has
added a value of three shillings. This value is the surplus, of
the total value of the product, over the portion of its value
that is due to the means of production. It is the only original
bit of value formed during this process, the only portion of the
value of the product created by this process. Of course, we
do not forget that this new value only replaces the money
advanced by the capitalist in the purchase of the labour-power,

1 "Productive consumption . . . where the consumption of a commodity is a part
of the process of production. ... In these instances there is no consumption of
value." (S. P. Newman, 1. c. p. 296.)

1 In an American compendium that has gone through, perhaps, 20 editions, this
passage occurs: "It matters not in what form capital re-appears;" then after a
lengthy enumeration of all the possible ingredients of production whose value re
appears in the product, the passage concludes thus: "The various kinds of food,
clothing, and shelter, necessary for the existence and comfort of the human being,
are also changed. They are consumed from time to time, and their value re-appears
in that new vigour imparted to his body and mind, forming fresh capital, to be em
ployed again in the work of production." (F. Wayland, 1. c. pp. 31, 32.) Without
noticing any other oddities, it suffices to observe, that what re-appears in the fresh
vigour, is not the bread's price, but its blood-forming substances. What, on the
other hand, re-appears in the value of that vigour, is not the means of subsistence,
but their value. The same necessaries of life, at half the price, would form just as
much muscle and bone, just as much vigour, but not vigour of the same value. This
confusion of "value" and "vigour" coupled with our author's pharisaical indefinite-
ness, mark an attempt, futile for all that, to thrash out an explanation of surplus-
value from a mere re-appearance of pre-existing values.

232 Capitalist Production.

and spent by the labourer on the necessaries of life. With
regard to the money spent, the new value is merely a repro
duction ; but, nevertheless, it is an actual, and not, as in the
case of the value of the means of production, only an apparent,
reproduction. The substitution of one value for another, is
here effected by the creation of new value.

We know, however, from what has gone before, that the
labour-process may continue beyond the time necessary to re
produce and incorporate in the product a mere equivalent for
the value of the labour-power. Instead of the six hours that
are sufficient for the latter purpose, the process may continue
for twelve hours. The action of labour-power, therefore, not
only reproduces Jte own value, but produces value over and
above it. This surplus-value is the difference between the
value of the product and the value of the elements consumed
in the formation of that product, in other words, of the means
of production and_the Labour-power.

By our explanation of the different parts played by the vari
ous factors of the labour-process in the formation of the pro
duct's value, we have, in fact, disclosed the characters of the
different functions allotted to the different elements of capital
in the process of expanding its own value. The surplus of the
total value of the prqduct, over the sum of the values of its
constituent factors, is the surplus of the expanded capital over
the capital originally advanced. The means of production on
the one hand, labour-power on the other, are merely the differ-
ent modes of existence which the value of the original capital
assumed when from being money it was transformed into the
various factors of the labo_ur-process. That part of capital
then, which is represented by the means of production by the
raw material, auxiliary material and the instruments_pf labour,
does not, in the process of production, undergo any quajatitative
alteration of j^lue. I therefore call it the constant part of
capital, or, more shortly, constant capital.

On the other hand, that part of capital, represented by
labour-power, does, in the process of production, undergo an
alteration^of value. It both reproduces the equivalent of its
own value, and also produces an excess, a surplus-value, which

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 233

may itself vary, may be more or less according to circum
stances. This part, of capital is continually being transformed
from a constant into a variable magnitude. I therefore call it
the variable part of capital, or, shortly, variable_capital. The
same elements of capital which, from the point of view of the
labour-process, present themselves respectively as the objective
and subjective factors, as means of production and labour-
power, present themselves, from the point of view of the pro
cess of creating surplus-value, as constant and variable capital.
The definition of constant capital given above by no means
excludes the possibility of a change of value in its elements.
Suppose the price of cotton to be one day sixpence a pound,
and the next day, in consequence of a failure of the cotton crop,
a shilling a pound. Each pound of the cotton bought at six
pence, and worked up after the rise in value, transfers to the
product a value of one shilling; and the cotton already spun
before the rise, and perhaps circulating in the markets as yarn,
likewise transfers to the product twice its original value. It
is plain, however, that these changes of value are independent
of the increment or surplus-value added to the value of the
cotton by the spinning itself. If the old cotton had never
been spun, it could, after the rise, be resold at a shilling a
pound instead of at sixpence. Further, the fewer the processes
the cotton has gone through, the more certain is this result.
We therefore find that speculators make it a rule when such
sudden changes in value occur to speculate in that material on
which the least possible quantity of labour has been spent: to
speculate, therefore, in yarn rather than in cloth, in cotton
itself, rather than in yarn. The change of value in the case we
have been considering, originates, not in the process in which
the cotton plays the part of a means of production, and in
which it therefore functions as constant capital, but in the pro
cess in which the cotton itself is produced. The value of a
commodity, it is true, is determined by the quantity of labour
contained in it, but this quantity is itself limited by social con
ditions. If the time socially necessary for the production of
any commodity alters — and a given weight of cotton represents,
after a bad harvest, more labour than after a good one — all

234 Capitalist Production.

previously existing commodities of the same class are affected,
because they are, as it were, only individuals of the species,1
and their value at any given time is measured by the labour
socially necessary, i.e., by the labour necessary for their pro
duction under the then existing social conditions.

As the value of the raw material may change, so, too, may
that of the instruments of labour, of the machinery, &c., em
ployed in the process; and consequently that portion of the
value of the product transferred to it from them, may also
change. If in consequence of a new invention, machinery of a
particular kind can be produced by a diminished expenditure
of labour, the old machinery becomes depreciated more or less
and consequently transfers so much less value to the product.
But here again, the change in value originates outside the
process in which the machine is acting as a means of pro
duction. Once engaged in this process, the machine cannot
transfer more value than it possesses apart from the process.

Just as a change in the value of the means of production,
even after they have commenced to take a part in the labour
process, does not alter their character as constant capital, so,
too, a change in the proportion of constant to variable capital
does not affect the respective functions of these two kinds of
capital. The technical conditions of the labour process may
be revolutionised to such an extent, that where formerly ten
men using ten implements of small value worked up a relative
ly small quantity of raw m£tfirial,~one man may now, with the
aid of one expensive machine, work up one hundred times as
much raw material. In the latter case we have an enormous
increase in the constant capital, that is represented by the
total value of the means of production used, and at the same
time a great reduction in the variable capital, invested in
labour-power. Such a revolution, however, alters only the
quantitave relation between the constant and the variable cap-
ital, or the proportions in which the total capital is split up
into its constant and variable constituents; it has not in the
least degree affected the essential difference between the two.

1 "Toutes les productions d'un meme genre ne ferment proprement qu'une masse,
dont Ic prix se determine en general et sans egard aux circonstances particuliires."
(Le Trosne, 1. c., p. 893.)

The Rate of Surplus-value. 235

CHAPTER IX.

THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE.
SECTION" 1. THE DEGREE OF EXPLOITATION OF LABOUR-POWER.

THE surplus-value generated in the process of production by
C, the capital advanced, or in other words, the self-expansion
of the value of the capital C, presents itself for our consider
ation, in the first place, as a surplus, as the amount by which
the value of the product exceeds the value of its constituent
element

The capital C is made up of two components, one, the sum
of money _c laid out upon the means of production, and the
other, the sum of money v expended upon the labour-power;
c represents the portion that has become constant capital, and
v the portion that has become variable capital. At first then,
C=c+v: for example, if £500 is the capital advanced, its com
ponents may be such that the £500 =£410 const +£90 var.
When the process of production is finished, we get a com
modity whose value= (c+v)+s, where s is the surplus-value;
or taking our former figures, the value of th?s commodity may
be (£410 const. +£90 var.) +£90 surpl. Tho original capital
has now changed from C to C', from £500 to £590. The dif
ference is s or a surplus value of £90. Since the value of the
constituent elements of the product is equal to the value of
the advanced capital, it is mere tautology to say, that the ex
cess of the value of the product_over the value of its constitu
ent elements, is equal to the expansion of^the capital advanced
or to the surplus-value produced.

Nevertheless, we must examine this tautology a little more
closely. The two things compared are, the value of the pro
duct, and the value of its constituents consumed in the process
of production. Now we have seen how that portion of the
constant capital which consists of the instruments of labour,
transfers to the product only a fraction of its value, while the
remainder of that value continues to reside in those instru-

236 Capitalist Production.

ments. Since this remainder plays no part in the formation of
value, we may at present leave it on one side. To introduce it
into the calculation would make no difference. For instance,
taking our former example, c=£410 : suppose this sum to con
sist of £312 value of raw material, £44 value of auxiliary
material, and £54 value of the machinery worn away in the
process; and suppose that the total value of the machinery
employed is £1,054. Out of this latter sum, then, we reckon
as advanced for the purpose of turning out the product, the
sum of £54 alone, which the machinery loses hy wear and
tear in the process ; for this is all it parts with to the produce
Now if we also reckon the remaining £1,000, which still con
tinues in the machinery, as transferred to the product, we
ought also to reckon it as part of the value advanced, and thus
make it appear on hoth sides of our calculation.1 We shoulc,
in this way, get £1,500 on one side and £1,590 on the other.
The difference of these two sums, or the surplus-value, would
still be £90. Throughout this Book therefore, by constant
capital advanced for the production of value, we always mear,
unless the context is repugnant thereto, the value of the means
of production actually consumed in the procesa. and that valua
alone.

This being so, let us return to the formula C=c4-v. which
we saw transformed into C'=(c+v)+s, C becoming C'.
We know that the value of the constant capital is trans
ferred to, and merely re-appears in the product Th3
TIP.W value actually created in_J;he process, the value pro
duced, or value-product, is therefore not the same as the valu-3
of the product; it is not, as it would at first sight appear
(c+v)+s or £410 const +£90 var.+£90 surpl. ; but Z.-J-.L
or £90 var.+£90 surpl. not £590 but £180. If c=o, or in
other words, if there were branches of industry in which th<)
capitalist could dispense with all means of production madis
by previous labour, whether they be raw material, auxiliary
material, or instruments of labour, employing only labour-

1 "If we reckon the value of the fixed capital employed as a part of the advances,
we must reckon the remaining value of such capital at the end of the year as a par: •
of the annual returns." (Malthus, "Princ. of Pol. Econ." 2nd ed., Lond., 1836, p.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 237

power and materials supplied by Nature, in that case, there
would be no constant capital to transfer to the product. This
component of the value of the product, i.e., the £410 in our ex
ample, would be eliminated, but the sum of £180, the amount
of new value created, or the value produced, which contain*
£90 of surplus-value, would remain just as great as if c repre-
sented the highest value jmaginable. We should have C=
(0+v)=v or C' the expanded capital=v+s and therefore
(7 — C=s as before. On the other hand, if s=0, or in other
words, if the labour-power, whose value is advanced in the
form of variable capital, were to produce only its equivalent,
we should have C=c+v or C' the value of the product=
(c_j_v)_|_0 or €=(7. The capital advanced would, in this
case, not have expanded its value.

From what has gone before, we know that surplus-value is
purely the result of a variation in the value of v, of that portion
of the capital which is transformed into labour-power; con
sequently, v+s=v+v/ or v plus an increment of v. But the
fact that it is v alone that varies, and the conditions of that
variation, are obscured by the circumstance that in consequence
of the increase in the variable component of the capital, there
is also an increase in the sum total of the advanced capital. It
was originally £500 and becomes £590. Therefore in order
that our investigation may lead to accurate results, we must
make abstraction from that portion of the value of the pro
duct, in which constant capital alone appears, and consequently
must equate the constant capital to zero or make c=0. This
is merely an application of a mathematical rule, employed
whenever we operate with constant and variable magnitudes,
related to each other by the symbols of addition and sub
traction only.

A further difficulty is caused by the original form of the
variable capital. In our example, C'=£410 const. +£90 var
+£90 surpl. ; but £90 is a given and therefore a constant
quantity ; hen^e it appears absurd to treat it as variable. But
in fact, the term £90 var. is here merely a symbol to show that
this value undergoes a process. The portion of the capital in
vested in the purchase of labour-power is a definite quantity of

238 Capitalist Production.

materialised labour, a constant value like the value of the
labour-power purchased. But in the process of production the
place of the £90 is taken by the labour-power in action, dead
labour is replaced by living labour, something stagnant by
something flowing, a constant by a variable. The result is the
reproduction of v plus an increment of v. From the point of
view, then, of capitalist production, the whole process appears
as the spontaneous variation of the originally constant value,
which is transformed into labour-power. Both the process and
its result^ appear to be owing to this value. If, therefore, such
expressions as "£90 variable capital," or "so much self-
expanding value," appear contradictory, this is only because
they bring to the surface a contradiction immanent in cap
italist production.

At first sight it appears a strange proceeding, to equate the
constant capital to zero. Yet it is what we do every day. If,
for example, we wish to calculate the amount of England's
profits from the cotton industry, we first of all deduct the sums
paid for cotton to the United States, India, Egypt and other
countries ; in other words, the value of the capital that mere! y
re-aj3£ears in the value of thejprodnct is put=0.

Of course the ratio ol surplus-value not only to that portion
of the capital from which it immediately springs, and who^e
change of value it represents, but also to the f=mm 1;?tfl1 frf ^'Q
capital advanced is economically of^very great impojdaafieu
We shall, therefore, in the third book, treat of this ratio ex
haustively. In order to enable one portion of a capital to ex
pand its value by being converted into labour-power, it is
I necessary that another portion be converted into means of pro
duction. In order that variable capital may perform its fun 3-
tion, constant capital must be advanced in proper proportion,
a proportion given by the special technical conditions of each
labour-process. The circumstance, however, that retorts ard
other vessels, are necessary to a chemical process, does n->t
compel the chemist to notice them in the result of his analysis.
If we look at the means of production, in their relation to the
creation of value, and to the variation in the quantity of valua,
apart from anything else, they appear simply as the material

The Rate of Surplus-value. 239

in which labour-power, the value-creator, incorporates itself.
Neither the nature, nor the value of this material is of any
importance. The only requisite is that there be a sufficient
supply to absorb the labour expended in the process of pro
duction. That supply once given, the material may rise or
fall in value, or even be, as land and the sea, without any value
in itself ; but this will have no influence^^on the creation of value
or on the variation in the quantity of value.1

In the first place then we equate the constant ™j™ta1 fn 7prn
The capital advanced is consequently reduced from c-fv tojv,
and instead of the value of the product (c-f-v)-(-s we have now
the value produced (v+s). Given the new value produced^
£180, which sum consequently represents the whole labour ex
pended during the process, then subtracting from it £90 the
value of the variable capital, we have remaining £90, the
amount of the surplus-value. This sum of £90 or s expresses
the absolute quantity of surplus-value produced. The relative
quantity produced, or the increase per cent of the variable
capital, is determined, it is plain, by the ratio of the surplus-
value to the variable capital, or is expressed by J . In our
example this ratio isff , which gives an increase of 100%.
This relative increase^n the value of the variable capital, or
the relative .magnitude of the surplus-value, I call, "The rate
of^surplus-value." 2

We have seen that the labourer, during one portion of the
labour-process, produces only the value of his labour-power,
that is, the value of his means of subsistence. Now since his
work forms part of a system, based on the social division of
labour, he does not directly produce the actual necessaries
which he himself consumes; he produces instead a particular
commodity, yarn for example, whose value is equal to the
value of those necessaries or of the money with which they

*What Lucretius says is self-evident; "nit pa>8e creari de nihilo," out of nothing,
nothing can be created. Creation of valu* ia transformation of labour-power into
labour. Labour-power itself is energy transferred to a human organism by means of
nourishing matter.

* In the same way that the English use the terms "rate of profit," "rate of in
terest." We shall see, in Book III., that the wte of profit is no mystery, so soon
as we know the laws of surplus-value. If we reverse the process, we cannot com
prehend either the one or the other.

240 Capitalist Production.

can be bought. The portion of his day's labour devoted to
this purpose, will be greater orjess, in proportion to the value
of the necessaries that he daily requires on an average, or,
what amounts to the same thing, in proportion to the labour-
time required on an average to produce them. If the value
of those necessaries represents on an average the expenditure
of six hours' labour, the workman must on an average work
for six hours to produce that value. If instead of working for
the capitalist, he worked independently on his own account, he
would, other things being equal, still be obliged to labour for
the same number of hours, in order to produce the value of his
labour-power, and thereby to gain the means of subsistence
necessary for his conservation or continued reproduction. But
as we have seen, during that portion of his day's labour in
which he produces the value of his labour-power, say three
shillings, he produces only an equivalent for the value of his
labour-power already advanced by the capitalist; the new
value created only replaces the variable capital advanced. It
is owing to this fact, that the production of the new value of
three shillings takes the semblance of a mere reproduction.
That portion of the working day, then, during which this re
production takes place, I call "necessary" labour-time, and the
labour expended during that time I call "necessary" labour.1
fevTecessary, as regards the labourer, because independent of the
[particular social form of his labour; necessary, as regards
capital, and the world of capitalists, because on the continued
existence of the labourer depends their existence also.

During the second period of the labour-process, that in
which his labour is no longer necessary labour, the workman,
it is true, labours^ expends labour-power ; but his labour, being
no longer necessary labour, he creates no value for himself.
He creates surplus-value which, for the capitalist, has all the
charms of a creation out of nothing. This portion of the

1 In this work, we have, up to now, employe 1 the term "necessary labour-time,"
to designate the time i rcessary under given social conditions for the production of
any commodity. Henceforward we use it to designate also the time necessary for
the production of the p?" Icular commodity labour-power. The use of one and the
same technical terra in different senses is inconvenient, but in no science can it be
altogether avoided. Compare, for instance, the higher with the lower branches of
mathematics.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 241

working day, I name surplus labour-time, and to the labour
expended during that time, I give the name of surplus-labour.
It is every bit as important, for a correct understanding of
surplusjyjlue, to conceive it as a mere congelation of surplus-
labour-time, as nothing but nrmfprifllisgH syrplns-lflbour, as it
is, for a proper comprehension of value, to conceive it as a mere
congelation of^so^jnany hours of labour, as nothing but ma-
terialised labour. The essential difference between the various
economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society
based on slave labour, and one based on wage labour, lies only
in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case ex
tracted from the actual producer, the labourer.1

Since, on the one hand, the values of the variable capital
and of the labour-power purchased by that capital are equal,
and the value of this labour-power determines the necessary
portion of the working day ; and since, on the other hand, the
surplus-value is determined by the surplus portion of the
working day, it follows that surplus-value bears the same ratio
to variable capital, that surplus-labour does to necessary labour,
or in other words, the rate of surplus-value -7- = necessary tebor
Both ratios, -f and necls!ary^abor express the same thing in differ
ent ways; in the one case by reference to materialised, incor
porated labour, in the other by reference to living, fluent
labour.

The rate of surplus-value is therefore an exact expression j
for the degree ofj?xr>loitation of labour-power by capital or of I
the labourer by the capitalist.2

1 Herr Wilhelm Thucydides Roscher has found a mare's nest He haa made the
important discovery that if, on the one hand, the formation of surplus-value, or
surplus-produce, and the consequent accumulation of capital, is now-a-days due to
the thrift of the capitalist, on the other hand, in the lowest stages of civilisation it
is the strong who compel the weak to economise (1. c. p. 78). To economise what?
Labour? Or superfluous wealth that does not exist? What is it that makes such
men as Roscher account for the origin of surplus-value, by a mere rechauffe of the
more or less plausible excuses by the capitalist, for his appropriation of surplus-
value? It is, besides their real ignorance, their apologetic dread of a scientific
analysis of value and surplus-value, and of obtaining a result, possibly not alto
gether palatable to the powers that be.

* Although the rate of surplus-value is an exact expression for the degree of ex
ploitation of labour-power, it is, in no sense, an expression for the absolute amount
of exploitation. For example, if the necessary labour=5 hours and the surplus-la-
bour=5 hours, the degree of exploitation ia 100%. The amount of exploitation i»

242 Capitalist Production.

We assumed in our example, that the value of the product
=£410 const. +£90 var.-f£90 surpl., and that the capital
advanced =£500. Since the surplus-value =£90, and the ad
vanced capital— £500, we should, according to the usual way
of reckoning, get as the rate of surplus value (generally con
founded with rate of profits) 18%, a rate so low as possibly
to cause a pleasant surprise to Mr. Carey and other harmon-
isers. But in truth, the rate of surplus-value is not, equal
to £ or^but to -f : thus it is not &Qfl but f# or IQOfe. which
is more than fiveTlimes the apparent degree of exploitation.
Although, in the case we have supposed, we are ignorant cf
the actual length of the working day, and of the. duration in
days or weeks of the labour-process, as also of the number cf
labourers employed, yet the rate of surplus-value -7 accurately
discloses to us, by means of its equivalent expression,

the relation between the two parts of the working day. This
relation is here one of equality, the rate being 100%. Henco,
it is plain, the labourer, in our example, works one half of the
day for himself, the other half for the capitalist.

The method of calculating the rate of surpLifl-value is there
fore, shortly, as follows. We take the total value of the prc -
duct and put the constant Cjy^ital^hich merely re-appears^ in i :,
equal to zero. What remains, is the only value that has, in
the process of producing the commodity, been actually created.
If the amount of surplus-value be given, we have only to deduct
it from this remainder, to find the variable capital. And vice
versa, if the latter be given, and we require to find the surplus-
value. If both be given, we have only to perform the conclud
ing operation, viz., to calculate ~ , the ratio of the surplus-
value to the variable capital.

Though the method is so simple, yet it may not be amiss, by
means of a few examples, to exercise the reader in the applies -
tion of the novel principles underlying it.

First we will take the case of a spinning mill containing

here measured by 5 hours. If, on the other hand, the necessary labour=6 hours
and the surplus-labour— 6 hours, the degree of exploitation remains, as be for:,
100%, while the actual amount of exploitation has increased 20%, namely from foe
hours to six.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 243

10,000 mule spindles, spinning No. 32 yarn from American
cotton, and producing 1 Ib. of yarn weekly per spindle. We
assume the waste to be 6% : under these circumstances 10,600
Ibs. of cotton are consumed weekly, of which 600 Ibs. go to
waste. The price of the cotton in April, 1871, was 7f d. per
Ib. ; the raw material therefore costs in round numbers £342.
The 10,000 spindles, including preparation-machinery, and
motive power, cost, we will assume, £1 per spindle, amounting
to a total of £10,000. The wear and tear we put at 10%, or
£1000 yearly=£20 weekly. The rent of the building we
suppose to be £300 a year or £6 a week. Coal consumed (for
100 horse-power indicated, at 4 Ibs. of coal per horse-power per
hour during 60 hours, and inclusive of that consumed in heat
ing the mill), 11 tons a week at 8s. 6d. a ton, amounts to
about £4rJ a week : gas, £1 a week, oil, &c., £4^ a week. Total
cost of the above auxiliary materials, £10 weekly. Therefore
the constant portion of the value of the week's product is £378.
Wages amount to £52 a week. The price of the yarn is 12^d.
per Ib., which gives for the value of 10,000 Ibs. the sum of
££10. The surplus value is therefore in this case £510 —
£430=£80. We put the constant part of the value of the
product =Q± as it plays no part in the creaJioojaf-SLaliie. There
remains £132 as the weekly value created, which— £52 v#r.+
£80 surpl. The rate of surplus-value is therefore f~f =
153fJ-%. In a working day of 10 hours with average Tafeour
the result is: necessary labour =3f^-hours and surplus-labour

—« 2 i

One more example. Jacob gives the following calcx. tion
for the year 1815. Owing to the previous adjustment of sev
eral items it is very imperfect ; nevertheless for our purpose it
is sufficient. In it he assumes the price of wheat to be 8s. a
quarter, and the average yield per acre to be 22 bushels.

1 The above data, which may be relied upon, were given me by a Manchester spin*
ner. In England the horse-power of an engine was formerly calculated from th«
diameter of iti cylinder, now the actual horse-oower shown by the indicator ia taken.

244 Capitalist Production.

VALUE PRODUCED PER ACRE,

Seed, £1 9 0

Manure, 2 10 0

Wages, 3 10 0

Total, .. £7 9 0

Tithes, Rates, and

Taxes, £1 1 0

Rent 1 8 0

Farmer's Profit and

Interest, 1 2 0

Total, .. £3 11 0

Assuming that the price of the product is the same as its
value, we here find the surplus-value distributed under the
various heads of profit, interest, rent, &c. We have nothing
to do with these in detail; we simply add them together, and
the sum is a surplus-valve of £3 11s. Od. The sum of £3
19s. Od., paid for seed and manure, is constant capital, and we
put it equal to zero. There is left the sum of £3 10s. Od.,
which is the variable capital advan^d: and we see that a new
value of £3 10s. Od.+£3 11s. Od, has been produced in its
place. Therefore -f = -ff-j£~~ , giving a rate of surplus-
value of more than 100%. The labourer employs more than
one half of his working day in producing the surplus-value,
which different persons, under different pretexts, share
amongst themselves.1

^ * 2. - THE REPRESENTATION OF THE COMPONENTS OF
• rIE VALUE OF THE PRODUCT BY CORRESPONDING PRO
PORTIONAL PARTS OF THE PRODUCT

Let us now return to the example by which w« were shown
how the capitalist converts money into capital.

The product of a working day of 12 hours it1 20 ibs. of
yarn, having a value of 30s. ^o less thany^ths of this value,
or 24s., is due to mere re-appearance in it, of the value of the

* The calculations given in the text are intended merely as illustrations. We hrv»
in fact assumed that price%=values. We shall, however, see, in volume 117., that
even in the case of average prices th« assumption cannot be made in this very jiui
pie manner.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 245

means of production (20 Ibs. of cotton, value 20s., and spindle
worn away, 4s.) : it is therefore constant capital. The re
maining -fa ths or 6s- is the new value created during the spin
ning process : of this one half replaces the value of the day's
labour-power, or the variable capital, the remaining half con
stitutes a surplus-value of 3s. The total value then of the 20
Ibs. of yarn is made up as follows :

80s. value of yarn=24 const. + 3s. var.+3s. surpl.

Since the whole of the value is contained in tho 20 Ibs. of
yarn produced, it follows that the various component parts of
this value, can be represented as being contained respectively
in corresponding parts of the product.

If the value of 30s. is contained in 20 Ibs. of yarn, then
T^ths of this value, or the 24s. that form its constant part, is
contained in -j^-ths of the product or in 16 Ibs. of yarn. Of
the latter 13 £ Ibs. represent the value of the raw material, the
20s. worth of cotton spun, and 2§ Ibs. represent the 4s. worth
of spindle, &c., worn away in the process.

Hence the whole of the cotton used up in spinning the 20
Ibs. of yarn, is represented by 13 J Ibs. of yarn. This latter
weight of yarn contains, it is true, by weight, no more than 13 J
Ibs. of cotton, worth 13J shillings; but the 6f shillings ad
ditional value contained in it, are the equivalent for the cotton
consumed in spinning the remaining 6§ Ibs. of yarn. The
effect is the same as if these 6f Ibs. of yarn contained no cot
ton at all, and the whole 20 Ibs. of cotton were concentrated in
the 13 J Ibs. of yarn. The latter weight, on the other hand,
does not contain an atom either of the value of the auxiliary
materials and implements, or of the value newly created in the
process.

In the same way, the 2§ Ibs. of yarn, in which the 4s., the
remainder of the constant capital, is embodied, represents
nothing but the value of the auxiliary materials and instru
ments of labour consumed in producing the 20 Ibs. of yarn.

We have, therefore, arrived at this result: although eight-
tenths of the product, or 16 Ibs. of yarn, is, in its character of
an article of utility, just as much the fabric of the spinner's
labour, as the remainder of the same product, yet when viewed

246 Capitalist Production.

in this connexion, it does not contain, and has not absorbed any
labour expended during the process of spinning. It is just as
if the cotton had converted itself into yarn, without help; as
if the shape it had assumed was mere trickery and deceit:
for so soon as our capitalist sells it for 24s., and with the money
replaces his means of production, it becomes evident that this
.1 6 Ibs. of yarn is nothing more than so much cotton and spindle-
waste in disguise.

On the other hand, the remaining ^j-ths of the product, or 4
Ibs. of yarn, represent nothing but the new value of 6s., created
during the 12 hours' spinning process. All the value trans
ferred to those 4 Ibs., from the raw material and instruments
of labour consumed, was, so to say, intercepted in order to bo
incorporated in the 16 Ibs. first spun. In this case, it is as if
the spinner had spun 4 Ibs. of yarn out of air, or, as if he had
spun them with the aid of cotton and spindles, that, being the
spontaneous gift of Nature, transferred no value to the product.

Of this 4 Ibs. of yarn, in which the whole of the value newly
created during the process, is condensed, one half represents
the equivalent for the value of the labour consumed, or the 3s.
variable capital, the other half represents the 3s. surplus-value.

Since 12 working hours of the spinner are embodied in 6s.,
it follows that in yarn of the value of 30s., there must be em
bodied 60 working hours. And this quantity of labour-time
does in fact exist in the 20 Ibs. of yarn ; for in nj-ths or 16 Ibs.
there are materialised the 48 hours of labour expended, before
the commencement of the spinning process, on the means of
production ; and in the remaining -n$-ths or 4 Ibs. there are
materialised the 12 hours' work done during the process itself.

On a former page we saw that the value of the yarn is equal
to the sum of the new value created during the production of
that yarn plus the value previously existing in the means of
production.

It has now been shown how the various component parts of
the value of the product, parts that differ functionally from
each other, may be represented by corresponding proportional
parts of the product itself.

To split up in this manner the product into different parts,

The Rate of Surplus-value. 247

of which one represents only the labour previously spent on
the means of production, or the constant capital, another, only
the necessary labour spent during the process of production, or
the variable capital, and another and last part, only the surplus-
labour expended during the same process, or the surplus-value ;
to do this, is, as will be seen later on from its application to
complicated and hitherto unsolved problems, no less important
than it is simple.

In the preceding investigation we have treated the total
product as the final result, ready for use, of a working day of
12 hours. We can however follow this total product through
all the stages of its production; and in this way we shall
arrive at the same result as before, if we represent the partial
products, given off at the different stages, as functionally
different parts of the final or total product.

The spinner produces in 12 hours 20 Ibs. of yarn, or in 1
hour 1 J Ibs. ; consequently he produces in 8 hours 13£ Ibs., or
a partial product equal in value to all the cotton that is spun
in a whole day. In like manner the partial product of the
next period of 1 hour and 36 minutes, is 2| Ibs. of yarn: this
represents the value of the instruments of labour that are con
sumed in 12 hours. In the following hour and 12 minutes,
the spinner produces 2 Ibs. of yarn worth 3 shillings, a value
equal to the whole value he creates in his 6 hours necessary
labour. Finally, in the last hour and 12 minutes he produces
another 2 Ibs. of yarn, whose value is equal to the surplus-
value, created by his surplus-labour during half a day. This
method of calculation serves the English manufacturer for
everyday use ; it shows, he will say, that in the first 8 hours,
or J of the working day, he gets back the value of his cotton ;
and so on for the remaining hours. It is also a perfectly
correct method: being in fact the first method given above
with this difference, that instead of being applied to space, in
which the different parts of the completed product lie side by
side, it deals with time, in which those parts are successively
produced. But it can also be accompanied by very barbarian
notions, more especially in the heads of those who are as much
interested, practically, in the process of making value beget

248 Capitalist Production.

value, as they are in misunderstanding that process theoreti
cally. Such people may get the notion into their heads, that
one spinner, for example, produces or replaces in the first 8
hours of his working day the value of the cotton ; in the
following hour and 36 minutes the value of the instruments of
labour worn away ; in the next hour and 12 minutes the value
of the wages ; and that he devotes to the production of surplus-
value for the manufacturer, only that well known "last hour,"
In this way the poor spinner is made to perform the two-fold
miracle not only of producing cotton, spindles, steam-engine,
fcoal, oil, &c., at the same time that he spins with them, but
also of turning one working day into five ; for in, .the example
we are considering, the production of the raw material and in
struments of labour demands four working days of twehe
hours each, and their conversion into yarn requires another
such day. That the love of lucre induces an easy belief in
such miracles, and that sycophant doctrinaires are never
wanting to prove them, is vouched for by the following inci
dent of historical celebrity.

SECTION 3. — SENIOR'S "LAST HOUR."

One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior, who
may be called the bel-esprit of English economists, well knowi ,
alike for his economical "science," and for his beautiful style,
was summoned from Oxford to Manchester, to learn in the
latter place the political economy that he taught in the former.
The manufacturers elected him as their champion, not only
against the newly passed Factory Act, but against the sti.l
more menacing Ten-hours' agitation. With their usual prac
tical acuteness, they had found out that the learned Professor
"wanted a good deal of finishing;" it was this discovery that
caused them to write for him. On his side the Professor has
embodied the lecture he received from the Manchester manu
facturers, in a pamphlet, entitled: "Letters on the Factorp
Act, as it affects the cotton manufacture." London, 1831.
Here we find, amongst others, the following edifying passage :
"Under the present law, no mill in which persons under 13
years of age are employed, can be worked

The Rate of Surplus-value. 249

more than 11 J hours a day, that is 12 hours for 5 days in the
week, and nine on Saturday.

"Now the following analysis ( !) will show that in a mill so
worked, the whole net profit is derived from the last hour. I
will suppose a manufacturer to invest £100,000 : — £80,000 in
his mill and machinery, and £20,000 in raw material and
wages. The annual return of that mill, supposing the capital
to be turned once a year, and gross profits to be 15 per cent.,

ought to be goods worth £115,000 Of this

£115,000, each of the twenty-three half-hours of work pro
duces 5-115ths or one twenty-third. Of these 23-23rds (con
stituting the whole £115,000) twenty, that is to say £100,000
out of the £115,000, simply replace the capital; — one twenty-
third (or £5000 out of the £115,000) makes up for the de
terioration of the mill and machinery. The remaining
2-23rds, that is, the last two of the twenty-three half-hours of
every day, produce the net profit of 10 per cent. If, there
fore (prices remaining the same), the factory could be kept at
work thirteen hours instead of eleven and a half, with an
addition of about £2600 to the circulating capital, the net
profit would be more than doubled. On the other hand, if the
hours of working were reduced by one hour per day (prices
remaining the same), the net profit would be destroyed — if
they were reduced by one hour and a half, even the gross profit
would be destroyed."1

1 Senior, 1. c., p. 12, 18. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are of no im
portance for our purpose; for instance, the assertion, that manufacturers reckon as
part of their profit, gross or net, the amount required to make good wear and tear of
machinery, or in other words, to replace a part of the capital. So, too, we pass over
any question as to the accuracy of his figures. Leonard Homer has shown in "A
Letter to Mr. Senior," &c., London, 1837, that they are worth no more than the so-
called "Analysis." Leonard Horner was one of the Factory Inquiry Commissioners
in 1833, and Inspector, or rather Censor of Factories till 1859. He rendered undy
ing service to the English working class. He carried on a life-long contest, not
only with the embittered manufacturers, but also with the Cabinet, to whom the
number of votes given by the masters in the Lower House, was a matter of far
greater importance than the number of hours worked by the "hands" in the mills.

Apart from errors in principle, Senior's statement is confused. What he really
intended to say was this: The manufacturer employs the workman for 11^ hours
or for 23 half-hours daily. As the working day, so, too, the working year, may be
conceived to consist of 11 y3 hours or 23 half-hours, but each multiplied by the
number of working days in the year. On this supposition, the 23 half-hours yield
a«a annual product of £115,000; one half-hour yields,^ X £115,000; 20 half-hours
yield | X £115,000; "-£100,000, i.t., they replace no more than the capital ad-

250 Capitalist Production.

And the professor calls this an "analysis!" If, giving
credence to the out-cries of the manufacturers, he believed that
the workmen spend the best part of the day in the production,
i. e., the reproduction or replacement of the value of the build
ings, machinery, cotton, coal, &c., then his analysis was super
fluous. His answer would simply have been : — Gentlemen !
if you work your mills for 10 hours instead of 11 J, then, other
things being equal, the daily consumption of cotton, machinery,
&c., will decrease in proportion. You gain just as much as
you lose. Your work-people will in future spend one hour
and a half less time in producing or replacing the capital
that has been advanced. — If, on the other hand, he did net
believe them without further inquiry, but, as being an expert
in such matters, deemed an analysis necessary, then he ought,
in a question that is concerned exclusively with the relations
of net profit to the length of the working day, before all things
to have asked the manufacturers, to be careful not to lump
together machinery, workshops, raw material, and labour, but
to be good enough to place the constant capital, invested in
buildings, machinery, raw material, &c., on one :ide of th<3
account, and the capital advanced in wages on the other side.
If the professor then found, that in accordance with the calcu
lation of the manufacturers, the workman reproduced or re
placed his wages in 2 half -hours, in that case, he should hav<3
continued his analysis thus:

According to your figures, the workman in the last hour bu:
one produces his wages, and in the last hour your surplus-
value or net profit. Now, since in equal periods he producer
equal values, the produce of the last hour but one, must have
the same value as that of the last hour. Further, it is only
while he labours that he produces any value at all, and the
amount of his labour is measured by his labour-time. Thin
you say, amounts to \\\ hours a day. He employs one portion
of these 11^ hours, in producing or replacing his wages, and

vanced. There remain 8 half-hours, which yield ^ X £115,000= £15,000 or th«;
gross profit. Of these 3 half-hours, one yields ^X £115,000= £6000; 4. €., 1C
makes up for the wear and tear of the machinery; the remaining 2 half-hours, i.c.
tne last hour, yield X X £115,000= £10,000 or the net profit. In the text Senio
converts the last of the product into portions of the working day itself.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 251

the remaining portion in producing your not profit. Beyond
this he does absolutely nothing. But since, on your assump
tion, his wages, and the surplus-value he yields, are of equal
value, it is clear that he produces his wages in 5J hours, and
your net profit in the other 5f hours. Again, since the value
of the yarn produced in 2 hours, is equal to the sum of the
values of his wages and of your net profit, the measure of the
value of this yarn must be 11^ working hours, of which 5|
hours measure the value of the yarn produced in the last hour
but one, and 5f, the value of the yarn produced in the last
hour. We now come to a ticklish point ; therefore, attention !
The last working hour but one is, like the first, an ordinary
working hour, neither more nor less. How then can the
spinner produce in one hour, in the shape of yarn, a value that
embodies 5f hours labour \ The truth is that he performs no
such miracle. The use-value produced by him in one hour, is
a definite quantity of yarn. The value of this yarn is meas
ured by 5f working hours, of which 4f were, without any
assistance from him, previously embodied in the means of
production, in the cotton, the machinery, and so on; the re
maining one hour is added by him. Therefore since his wages
are produced in 5f hours, and the yarn produced in one hour
also contains 5J hours' work, there is no witchcraft in the re
sult, that the value created by his 5f hours' spinning, is equal
to the value of the product spun in one hour. You are alto
gether on the wrong track, if you think that he loses a single
moment of his working day, in reproducing or replacing the
values of the cotton, the machinery, and so on. On the con
trary, it is because his labour converts the cotton and spindles
into yarn, because he spins, that the values of the cotton and
spindles go over to the yarn of their own accord. This result
is owing to the quality of his labour, not to its quantity. It is
true, he will in one hour tranfer to the yarn more value, in the
shape of cotton, than he will in half an hour ; but that is only
because in one hour he spins up more cotton than in half an
hour. You see then, your assertion, that the workman pro
duces, in the last hour but one, the value of his wages, and in
the last hour your net profit, amounts to no more than this,

252 Capitalist Production.

that in the yarn produced by him in 2 working hours, whether
they are the 2 first or the 2 last hours of the working day, in
that yarn, there are incorporated 11£ working hours, or just a
whole day's work, i. e.t two hours of his own work and 9£ hours
of other people's. And my assertion that, in the first 5f hours,
he produces his wages, and in the last 5 J hours your net profit,
amounts only to this, that you pay him for the former, but not
for the latter. In speaking of payment of labour, instead of
payment of labour-power, I only talk your own slang. Now,
gentlemen, if you compare the working time you pay for, with
that which you do not pay for, you will find that they are to
one another, as half a day is to half a day ; this gives a rate of
100%, and a very pretty percentage it is. Further, there is
not the least doubt, that if you make your "hands" toil for 13
hours instead of 11£, and, as may be expected from you, treat
the work done in that extra one hour and a half, as pure
surplus-labour, then the latter will be increased from 5f hours'
labour to 7J hours' labour, and the rate of surplus-value from
100%, to 126-^%. So that you are altogether too sanguine,
in expecting that by such an addition of 1^ hours to the work
ing day, the rate will rise from 100% to 200% and more, in
other words that it will be "more than doubled." On the other
hand — man's heart is a wonderful thing, especially when car
ried in the purse — you take too pessimistic a view, when you
fear, that with a reduction of the hours of labour from 11 J to
10, the whole of your net profit will go to the dogs. Not at
all. All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus-
labour will fall from 5J hours to 4j hours, a period that still
gives a very profitable rate of surplus-value, namely 82^-%.
But this dreadful "last hour," about which you have invented
more stories than have the millenarians about the day of
judgment, is "all bosh." If it goes, it will cost neither you,
your net profit, nor the boys and girls whom you employ, their
"purity of mind."1 Whenever yvur "last hour" strikes in

1 If, on the one hand, Senior proved that the net profit of the manufacturer,
the existence of the English cotton industry, and England's command of the markets
of the world, depend on "the last working hour," on thr other hand, Dr. Andrew
Ure showed, that if children and young persons under 18 years of age, instead of be*
ing kept the full 12 hours in the warm and pure moral atmosphere of the factory,

The Rate of Surplus-value. 253

earnest, think on the Oxford Professor. And now, gentleman,
"farewell, and raay we meet again in yonder better world, but
not before."

Senior invented the battle cry of the "last hour" in 1836. *

are turned out an hour sooner into the heartless and frivolous outer world", they will
be deprived, by idleness and vice, of all hope of salvation for their souls. Sine*
1848, the factory inspectors have never tired of twitting the masters with this "last,''
this "fatal hour." Thus Mr. Howell in his report of the 31st May, 1855: "Had
the following ingenious calculation (he quotes Senior) been correct, every cotton
factory in the United Kingdom would have been working at a loss since the year
1850." (Reports of the Insp. of Fact, for the half-year, ending 30th April, 1855,
pp. 19, 20.) In the year 1848, after the passing of the 10 hour's bill, the masters
of some flax spinning mills, scattered, few and far between, over the country on the
borders of Dorset and Somerset, foisted a petition against the bill on to the shoul
ders of a few of their work people. One of the clauses of this petition is as fol
lows: "Your petitioners, as parents, conceive that an additional hour of leisure will
tend more to demoralise the children than otherwise, believing that idleness is the
parent of vice." On this the factory report of 81st Oct., 1848, says: The atmos
phere of the flax mills, in which the children of these virtuous and tender parents
work, is so loaded with dust and fibre from the raw material, that it is exception
ally unpleasant to stand even 10 minutes in the spinning rooms: for you are unable
to do so without the most painful sensation, owing to the eyes, the ears, the nostrils,
and mouth, being immediately filled by the clouds of flax dust from which there is
no escape. The labour itself, owing to the feverish haste of the machinery, demands
unceasing application of skill and movement, under the control of a watchfulness
that never tires, and it seems somewhat hard, to let parents apply the term "idling"
to their own children, who, after allowing for meal times, are fettered for 10 whole
hours to such an occupation, in such an atmosphere. . . . These children work

longer than the labourers in the neighbouring villages Such cruel

talk about "idleness and vice" ought to be branded as the purest cant, and the most

shameless hypocrisy That portion of the public, who, about 12

years ago, were struck by the assurance with which, under the sanction of high
authority, it was publicly and most earnestly proclaimed, that the whole net profit
of the manufacturer flows from the labour of the last hour, and that, therefore,
the reduction of the working day by one hour, would destroy his net profit; that
portion of the public, we say, will hardly believe its own eyes, when it now finds,
that the original discovery of the virtues of "the last hour" has since been so far
improved, as to include morals as well as profit; so that, if the duration of th«
labour of children, is reduced to a full 10 hours, their morals, together with the net
profits of their employers, will vanish, both being dependent on this last, this fatal
hour. (See Repts., Insp. of Fact., for 31st Oct., 1848, p. 101.) The same report
then gives some examples of the morality and virtue of these same pure-minded
manufacturers, of the tricks, the artifices, the cajoling, the threats, and the falsifica
tions, they made use of, in order, first, to compel a few defenceless workmen to sign
petitions of such a kind, and then to impose them upon Parliament as the petitions
of a who!e branch of industry, or a whole country. It is highly characteristic of the
present status of so called economical science, that neither Senior himself, who, at
a later period, to his honour be it said, energetically supported the factory legisla
tion, nor his opponents, from first to last, have ever been able to explain the false
conclusions of the "original discovery." They appeal to actual experience, but the
why and wherefore remains a mystery.

1 Nevertheless, the learned professor was not without some benefit from hi« jour
ney to Manchester. In the "Letters on the Factory Act," be makes the whole net
gains including "profit" and "interest," and even "something more," depend upon

254 Capitalist Production.

In the London Economist of the 15th April, 1848, the same cry
was again raised by James Wilson, an economical mandarin of
high standing : this time in opposition to the 10 hours' bill.

SECTION 4. STTBPLUS PRODUCE.

The portion of the product that represents the surplus-value,
(one-tenth of the 20 Ibs., or 2 Ibs. of yarn, in the example given
in Sec. 2,) we call "surplus-produce." Just as the rate of
surplus-value is determined by its relation, not to the sum total
of the capital, but to its variable part; in like manner, the re
lative quantity of surplus-produce is determined by the ratio
that this produce bears, not to the remaining part of the total
product, but to that part of it in which is incorporated the
necessary labour. Since the production of surplus-value is the
chief end and aim of capitalist production, it is clear, that the
greatness of a man's or a nation's wealth should be measured,
not by the absolute quantity produced, but bv the relative
magnitude of the surplus-produce.1

The sum of the necessary labour and the surplus-labour, i.e.,
of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the

a single unpaid hour's work of the labourer. One year previously, in his "Outlines
of Political Economy," written for the instruction of Oxford students and cultivated
Philistines, he had also "discovered, in opposition to Ricardo's determination of
value by labour, that profit is derived from the labour of the capitalist, and interest
from his asceticism, in other words, from his "abstinence." The dodge was an old
one, but the word "abstinence" was new. Herr Roscher translates it rightly by
"Enthaltung." Some of his countrymen, the Browns, Jones, and Robinsons, of
Germany, not so well versed in Latin as he, have, monk-like, rendered it by
"Entsagung" (renunciation).

1 "To an individual with a capital of £20,000, whose profits were £2.000 per an
num, it would be a mattter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a
100 or 1,000 men, whether the commodity produced sold for £10,000 or £20,000,
provided, in all cases, his profit were not diminished below £2,000. Is not the
real interest of the nation similar? Provided its net real income, its rent and
profits, be the same, it is of no importance whether the nation consists of 10 or of
12 millions of inhabitants." (Ric. 1. c., p. 416.) Long before Ricardo, Arthur
Young, a fanatical upholder of surplus produce, for the rest, a rambling uncritical
writer, whose reputation is in the inverse ratio of his merit, says, "Of what use, in
a modern kingdom, would be a whole province thus divided, [in the old Roman man
ner, by small independent peasants], however well cultivated, except for the mere
purpose of breeding men, which taken singly is a most useless purpose?" (Arthur
Young: Political Arithmetic, &c, London, 1774, p. 47.)

Very curious is "the strong inclination ... to represent net wealth as bene
ficial to the labouring class .... though it is evidently not on account of
being net." (Th. Hopkins, On Rent of Land, &c. London, 1828, p. 126.)

The Working Day. 255

value of his labour-power, and produces the surplus-value, this
sum constitutes the actual time during which he works, i.e., the
working day.

CHAPTEK X.

THE WORKING DAY.
SECTION 1 - THE LIMITS OF THE WORKING DAY.

Wz started with the supposition that labour-power is bought
and sold at its value. Its value, like that of all other commo
dities, is determined by the working time necessary to its
production. If the production of the average daily means of
subsistence of the labourer takes up 6 hours, he must work, on
the average, 6 hours every day, to produce his daily labour-
power, or to reproduce the value received as the result of its
sale. The necessary part of his working day amounts to 6
hours, and is, therefore, cceteris paribus, a given quantity.
But with this, the extent of the working day itself is not yet
given.

Let us assume that the line A B represents the length of the
necessary working time, say 6 hours. If the labour be pro
longed 1, 3, or 6 hours beyond A B, we have 3 other lines:
Working day I. Working day II. Working day III.

A - B— C. A - B - C. A - B - C.
representing 3 different working days of 7, 9, and 12 hours.
The extension B C of the line A B represents the length of
the surplus labour. As the working day is A B -)- B C or
A C, it varies with the variable quantity B C. Since A B
is constant, the ratio of B C to A B can always be calculated.
In working day I. it is J, in working day II, f in working day
III, | of A B. Since, further the ratio

termines the rate of the surplus-value, the latter is given, by
the ratio of B C to A B. It amounts in the 3 different working
days respectively to 16§, 50 and 100 per cent. On the other
hand, the rate of surplus-value alone would not give us the

256 Capitalist Production.

extent of the working day. If this rate e.g., were 100 per
cent, the working day might be of 8, 10, 12, or more hours.
It would indicate that the 2 constituent parts of the working
day, necessary-labour and surplus-labour time, were equal in
extent, but not how long each of these two constituent parts
was.

The working day is thus not a constant, but a variable
quantity. One of its parts, certainly, is determined by the
working time required for the reproduction of the labour-
power of the labourer himself. But its total amount varies
with the duration of the surplus-labour. The working day if,
therefore, determinable, but is, per se, indeterminate.1

Although the working day is not a fixed, but a fluent
quantity, it can, on the other hand, only vary within certain
limits. The minimum limit is, however, not determinable ;
of course, if we make the extension line BC or the surplus -
labour— 0, we have a minimum limit, i.e., the part of the day
which the labourer must necessarily work for his own main
tenance. • On the basis of capitalist production, however, this
necessary labour can form a part only of the working day ; th3
working day itself can never be reduced to this minimum. On
the other hand, the working day has a maximum limit. It
d cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point. This maximum
limit is conditioned by two things. First, by the physical
bounds of labour-power. Within the 24 hours of the natural
day a man can expend only a definite quantity of his vital force,
A horse, in like manner, can only work from day to day, 8
hours. During part of the day this force must rest, sleep ;
during another part the man has to satisfy other physical needs,
to feed, wash, and clothe himself. Besides these purely physi
cal limitations, the extension of the working day encounters
moral ones. The labourer needs time for satisfying his intel
lectual and social wants, the extent and number of which aro
conditioned by the general state of social advancement. Thn
variation of the working day fluctuates, therefore, within
physical and social bounds. But both these limiting condi-

1 "A day's labour is vague, it may be long or short" ("An Essay on Trade ant
Commerce, containing observations on taxes," &c. London, 1770. p. 73.)

The Working Day. 257

lions are of a very elastic nature, and allow the greatest lati
tude. So we find working days of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours,
i.e., of the most different lengths.

The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-rate.
To him its use-value belongs during one working day. He
has thus acquired the right to make the labour work for him
during one day. But what is a working day ? l

At all even! 3, less than a natural day. By how much ?
The capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thule, the
necessary limit of the working day. As capitalist, he is only
capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But
capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create
value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means
of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-
labour.2

Capital is dead labour, that vampire-like, only lives by
sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it
sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time
during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has
purchased of him.8

If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he
robs the capitalist.4

The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the ex
change of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get
the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commo
dity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been

1 This question is far more important than the celebrated question of Sir Robert
Peel to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce: What is a pound? A question
that could only have been proposed, because Peel was as much in the dark as to the
nature of money as the "little shilling men" of Birmingham.

•It is the aim of the capitalist to obtain with his expended capital the greatest
possible quantity of labour (d'obetnir du capital depense la plus forte somme de
travail possible). J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil . . Traite theorique et pratique" de* cntre-
prises industrielles. 2nd ed. Paris, 1857, p. 63.

* "An hour's labour lost in a day is a prodigious injury to a commercial State.
. . . There is a very great consumption of luxuries among the labouring poor of
this kingdom: particularly among the manufacturing populace, by which they also
consume their time, the most fatal of consumptions." An Essay on Trade and
Commerce, &c., p. 47 and 163.

* "Si le manouvrier libre prend un Instant de repos, I'eVonomie sordide qui le suit
del yeujc avec inquietude pretend qu'il la vole," N. Lingue*. "The"ori* des loix
civiles, Ac. London, 1767," t II., P- 46«.

258 Capitalist Production.

stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production,
rises :

The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the
crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and
a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it.
That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of
capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You
and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange
of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity
belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer,
who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my
daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay
/ for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and t3
sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c ,
I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal
amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preaca
to me constantly the gospel of "saving" and "abstinence. '
Good ! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole
wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of h.
I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as
much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, ani
healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the
working day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour-
power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain ia
labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour- power ani
the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average
time that (doing a reasonable amount of work) an average
labourer can live, is 30 years, the value of my labour-power,
which you pay me from day to day is B651XBO or j 0 1 5 p- of its
total value. But if you consume it in ten years, you pay ma
daily 3-7^3-5- instead of FfrVff of its total value, i.e., only ^ of its
daily value, and you rob me, therefore, every day of f of the
value of my commodity. You pay me for one day's labour-
power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our
contract and the law of exchanges, I demand, therefor, a
working day of normal length, and I demand it without any
appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out
of place. You may be a model citizen, perhaps a

The Working Day. 259

of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and
in the odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you rep
resent face to face with me has no heart in its breast. That
which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I de
mand the normal working day because I, like every other
seller, demand the value of my commodity.1

We see then, that> apart from extremely elastic bounds, the
nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit
to the working day, no limit to surplus-labour. {/The capitalist
maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the
working day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possi
ble, two working days out of one. On the other hand, the
peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its
consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his
right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to one
of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an anti
nomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the
law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides.
Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the de
termination of what is a working day, presents itself as the re
sult of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the
class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working class.

•f

SECTION 2. THE GREED FOB SURPLUS LABOR, MANUFAC
TURER AND BO YARD.

Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part
of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production,
the labourer free or not free, must add to the working time
necessary for his own maintenance an extra working time in
order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the
means of production,2 whether this proprietor be the Athenian

1 During the great strike of the London builders, 1860-61, for the reduction of
the working day to 9 hours, their Committee published a manifesto that contained, to
some extent, the plea of our workers. The manifesto allude*, not without irony, to
the fact, that the greatest profit^monger amongst the building masters, a certain
Sir M. Peto, was in the odour of sanctity. (This same Peto, after 1867, came to aa
end a la Strousberg.)

* "Those who labour .... in reality feed both the pensioner* . . »
[called the rich] and themselves." (Edmund Burke, 1. c., p. 2.)

260 Capitalist Production.

KaAfo K<lya0os, Etruscan tlieocrat, civis Bomanus, Norman
baron, American slave owner, Wallachian Bojard, modern
landlord or capitalist.1 It is, however, clear that in any
given economic formation of society, where not the exchange
value but the use-value of the product predominates, surplus-
labour will be limited by a given set of wants which may be
greater or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus-
labour arises from the nature of the production itself. Henc»
in antiquity overwork becomes horrible only when the object is
to obtain exchange value in its specific independent money-
form ; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory work
ing to death is here the recognized form of over- work. Only
read Diodorus Siculus.2 Still these are exceptions in antiq
uity. But as soon as people, whose production still moves
within the lower forms of slave-labour, corvee-labour, &c.,
are drawn into the whirlpool of an international mar
ket dominated by the capitalistic mode of production, the
sale of their products for export becoming their principal
interest, the civilized horrors of over-work are grafted
on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, &c. Hence the
negro labour in the Southern States of the American
Union preserved something of a patriarchal character, so lorg
as production was chiefly directed to immediate local consum >
tion. But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of
vital interest to these states, the over-working of the negro ar d
sometimes the using up of his life in 7 years' of labour became
a factor in a calculated and calculating system. 1 It was no
longer a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of
, useful products. It was now a question of production of sur
plus-labour itself. So was it also with the corvee, e.g., in the
Danubian Principalities (now Roumania).

1 Niebuhr in his "Roman History" says very naively: "It is evident that woiks
like the Etruscan, -which, in their ruins astound us, presuppose in little (!) sta es
lords and vassals." Sismondi says far more to the purpose that "Brussels late"
presupposes wage-lords and wage-slaves.

* "One cannot see these unfortunates (in the gold mines between Egypt, Ethiopia,
and Arabia) who cannot even have their bodies clean, or their nakedness clothrd,
without pitying their miserable lot There is no indulgence, no forbearance for the
sick, the feeble, the aged, for woraan'i weakness. All must, forced by blows, work
on until death puts an end to their sufferings and their distress." ("Dtod. Sic. BiW.
Hist." lib. 8. c. 13.)

The Working Day. 261

The comparison of the greed for surplus-labour in the
Danubian Principalities with the same greed in English fac
tories has special interest, because surplus-labour, in the corvee
has an independent and palpable form.

Suppose the working day consists of 6 hours of necessary
labour, and 6 hours of surplus-labour. Then the free labourer
gives the capitalist every week 6 X 6 or 36 hours of surplus-
labour. It is the same as if he worked 3 days in the week for
himself, and 3 days in the week gratis for the capitalist. But
this is not evident on the surface. Surplus-labour and neces
sary labour glide one into the other. I can, therefore, express
the same relationship by saying, e.g., that the labourer in every
minute works 30 seconds for himself, and 30 for the capitalist,
etc. It is otherwise with the corvee. The necessary labour
which the Wallachian peasant does for his own maintenance is
distinctly marked off from his surplus-labour on behalf of the
Boyard. The one he does on his own field, the other on the
seignorial estate. Both parts of the labour-time exist, there
fore, independently, side by side one with the other. In the
corvee the surplus-labour is accurately marked off from the
necessary labour. This, however, can make no difference with
regard to the quantitative relation of surplus-labour to neces
sary labour. Three days' surplus-labour in the week remain
three days that yield no equivalent to the labourer himself,
whether it be called corvee or wage-labour. But in the capi
talist the greed for surplus-labour appears in the straining
after an unlimited extension of the working day, in the Boyard
more simply in a direct hunting after days of corvee.1

•In the Danubian Principalities the corvee was mixed up
with rents in kind and other appurtenances of bondage, but it
formed the most important tribute paid to the ruling class.
Where this was the case, the corvee rarely arose from serfdom ;
serfdom much more frequently on the other hand took origin
from the corvee.2 This is what took place in the Roumanian

1 That which follows refers to the situation in the Roumanian provinces before th«
change effected since the Crimean war.

1 This holds likewise for Germany, and especially for Prussia east of the Elbe.
In the 15th century the German peasant was nearly everywhere a man, who, whilst
•ubject to certain rents paid in produce and labour was otherwise at least practically

262 Capitalist Production.

Provinces. Their original mode of production was based on
community of the soil, but not in the Slavonic or Indian form.
Part of the land was cultivated in severalty as freehold by the
members of the community, another part — ager publicus — was
cultivated by them in common. The products of this common
labour served partly as a reserve fund against bad harvests and
other accidents, partly as a public store for providing the costs
of war, religion, and other common expenses. In course of
time military and clerical dignitaries usurped, along with the
common land, the labour spent upon it. The labour of the free;
peasants on their common land was transformed into corvee for
the thieves of the common land. This corvee soon developed
into a servile relationship existing in point of fact, not in ponr:
of law, until Russia, the liberator of the world, made it legal
under pretence of abolishing serfdom. The code of the corvee,
which the Eussian General Kisseleff proclaimed in 1831, was*
of course dictated by the Boyards themselves. Thus Russia
conquered with one blow the magnates of the Danubian prov
inces, and the applause of liberal cretins throughout Europe.

According to the "R^glement organique," as this code of tho
corvee is called, every Wallachian peasant owes to the so-called
landlord, besides a mass of detailed payments in kind: (1), 1SJ
days of general labour; (2), one day of field labour; (3), ono
day of wood carrying. In all, 14 days in the year. With
deep insight into political economy, however, the working day
is not taken in its ordinary sense, but as the working day neces
sary to the production of an average daily product; and tba*
average daily product is determined in so crafty a way that n<>
Cyclops would be done with it in 24 hours. In dry words, tk*
Reglement itself declares with true Russian irony that by 1"
working days one must understand the product of the manual
labour of 36 days, by 1 day of field labour 3 days, and by 1 day

free. The German colonists in Brandenburg, Pomerania, Silesia, and Eastern Prus
sia, were even legally acknowledged as free men. The victory of the nobility in thi
peasants' war put an end to that. Not only were the conquered South German
peasants again enslaved. From the middle of the 16th century the peasants o:
Eastern Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, and Silesia, and soon after the free peas
ants of Schleswig-Holstein were degraded to the condition of serfs. (Maurer,
Fronhofe iv. vol.,— Meitten, der Boden des preussischen Staats. — Hansen, Leibeiger-
schaft in Schleswig-Holstein. — ED.)

The Working Day. 263

of wood carrying in like manner three times as much. In all,
42 corvee days. To this had to be added the so-called jobagie,
service due to the lord for extraordinary occasions. In propor
tion to the size of its population, every village has to furnish
annually a definite contingent to the jobagie. This additional
corvee is estimated at 14 days for each Wallachian peasant
Thus the prescribed corvee amounts to 56 working days yearly.
But the agricultural year in Wallachia numbers in consequence
of the severe climate only 210 days, of which 40 for Sundays
and holidays, 30 on an average for bad weather, together 70
days, do not count. 140 working days remain. The ratio of
the corvee to the necessary labour f for 66f% gives a much
smaller rate of surplus-value than that which regulates the
labour of the English agricultural of factory labourer. This
is, however, only the legally prescribed corvee. And in a
spirit yet more "liberal" than the English Factory Acts, the
"Reglement organique" has known how to facilitate its own
evasion. After it has made 56 days out of 12, the nominal
days work of each of the 56 corvee days is again so arranged
that a portion of it must fall on the ensuing day. In one day,
e.g., must be weeded an extent of land, which, for this work,
especially in maize plantations, needs twice as much time.
The legal day's work for some kinds of agricultural labour is
interpretable in such a way that the day begins in May and
ends in October. In Moldavia conditions are still harder.
"The corvee days of the 'Reglement organique/ " cried a Boy-
ard, drunk with victory, "amount to 365 days in the year." l
If the Reglement organique of the Danubian provinces was
a positive expression of the greed for surplus-labour which
every paragraph legalised, the English Factory Acts are the
negative expression of the same greed. These acts curb the
passion of capital for a limitless draining of labour-power, by
forcibly limiting the working day by state regulations, made
by a state that is ruled by capitalist and landlord. Apart from
the working-class movement that daily grew more threatening,
the limiting of factory labour was dictated by the same neces-

1 Further details are to be found in E. Regnault's "Histoire politique et sociale d*t
Principautla Danubiennes." Paris, 1855.

264 Capitalist Production.

sity which spread guano over the English fields. The same

blind eagerness for plunder that in the one case exhausted the

soil, had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living force of

, the nation. Periodical epidemics speak on this point as

I clearly as the diminishing military standard in Germany and

» France.1

The Factory Act of 1850 now in force (1867) allows for the
average working-day 10 hours, i.e., for the first 5 days 12
hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., including ^ an hour for breakfas;,
and an hour for dinner, and thus leaving 10£ working hours,
and 8 hours for Saturday, from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., of which |
an hour is subtracted for breakfast. 60 working hours are
left, 10 J for each of the first 5 days, 7£ for the last.2 Certai.i
guardians of these laws are appointed, Factory Inspectors, di
rectly under the Home Secretary, whose reports are published
half-yearly by order of Parliament. They give regular and
official statistics of the capitalistic greed for surplus-labour .
Let us listen, for a moment, to the Factory Inspectors.5

1 "In general and within certain limits, exceeding the medium size of their kinc ,
is evidence of the prosperity of organic beings. As to man, his bodily height lessen*
if his due growth is interfered with, either by physical or social condition*. In all
European countries in which the conscription holds, since its introduction, th;
medium height of adult men, and generally their fitness for military service, hai
diminished. Before the revolution (1789), the minimum for the infantry in Franc:
was 165 centimetres; in 1818 (law of March 10th), 157; by the law of 1852, 15<5
c. m. ; on the average in France more than half are rejected on account of deficien:
height or bodily weakness. The military standard in Saxony was in 1780, 178 c. m.
It is now 155. In Prussia it is 157. According to the statement of Dr. Meyer in
the Bavarian Gazette, May 9th, 1862, the result of an average of 9 years is, that ii.
Prussia out of 1000 conscripts 716 were unfit for military service, 317 because o:
deficiency in height, and 399 because of bodily defects. . . . Berlin in 1858
could not provide its contingent of recruits; it was 156 men short." J. von Liebig
"Die Chemie in mrer Anwendung auf Agrikultur und Physiologic, 1863," 7th Ed.,
vol 1., pp. 117, 118.

»The history of the Factory Act of 1850 will be found in the course of thb
chapter.

*I only touch here and there on the period from the beginning of modern in
dustry in England to 1845. For this period I refer the reader to "Die Lage dei
arbeitenden Klasse in England, von Friedrich Engels, Leipzig, 1845." How com
pletely Engels understood the nature of the capitalist mode of production is shown
by the Factory Reports, Reports on Mines, &c., that have appeared since 1845, and
how wonderfully he painted the circumstances in detail is seen on the most super
ficial comparison of his work with the official reports of the Children's Employment
Commission, published 18 to 20 years later (1863-1867). These deal especially with
the branches of industry in which the Factory Acts had not, up to 1862, been intro
duced, in fact are not yet introduced. Here, then, little ot no alteration had been
enforced, by authority, in the conditions painted by Engels. I borrow my examples

The Working Day. 265

"The fraudulent millowner begins work at a quarter of EJQ hour
(sometimes more, sometimes less) before 6 a.m., and leaves off
a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after
6 p.m. lie takes 5 minutes from the beginning and from the
end of the half hour nominally allowed for breakfast, and 10
minutes at the beginning and end of the hour nominally al
lowed for dinner. He works for a quarter of an hour (some
times more, sometimes less after 2 p.m. on Saturday. Thus
his gain is

Before 6 a. m 15 minutes.

After 6 p. m 15

At breakfast time 10

At dinner time . . , 20 "

60
Five days — 300 minutes.

On Saturday before 6 £. m 15 minutes.

At breakfast time 10 "

After 2 p. m 15 "

40 minutes.
Total weekly 340 minutes.

Or 5 hours and 40 minutes weekly, which multiplied by 50
working weeks in the year (allowing two for holidays and
occasional stoppages) is equal to 27 working days." l

"Five minutes a day's increased work, multiplied by 50
weeks, are equal to two and a half days of produce in the
year."9

"An additional hour a day gained by small instalments be
fore 6 a.m., after 6 p.m., and at the beginning and end of the

chiefly from the free trade period after 1848, that age of paradise, of which the
commercial travellers for the great firm of free trade, blatant as ignorant, tell such
fabulous tales. For the rest England figures here in the forground because she is
the classic representative of capitalist production, and she alone has a continuous
set of official statistics of the things we are considering.

1 Suggestions, &c. by Mr. L. Horner, Inspector of Factories in : Factory Regula
tions Act. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 9th August, 1859,
P. 4, 6.

"Reports of the Inspector of Factories for the 'ialf year, October, 1856, p. 85.

266 Capitalist Production.

times nominally fixed for meals, is nearly equivalent to work
ing 13 months in the year."1

.. Crises during which production is interrupted and the fac
tories work "short time," i.e., for only a part of the week,
naturally do not affect the tendency to extend the working
day. The less business there is, the more profit has to be made
on the business done. The less time spent in work, the more
of that time has to be turned into surplus labour-time.

Thus the Factory Inspector's report on the period of tho
crisis from 1857 to 1858 :

"It may seem inconsistent that there should be any over
working at a time when trade is so bad; but that very bad
ness leads to the transgression by unscrupulous men, they ge;

the extra profit of it In the last half year, says Leonard

Homer, 122 mills in my district have been given up ; 143 wero
found standing," yet, overwork is continued beyond the legal
hours.2

"For a great part of the time," says Mr. Howell, "owing to
the depression of trade, many factories were altogether closed,
and a still greater number were working short time. I continue,
however, to receive about the usual number of complaints tha ;
half, or three-quarters of an hour in the day, are snatched from
the workers by encroaching upon the times professedly allowed
for rest and refreshment." 8 The same phenomenon was repro
duced on a smaller scale during the frightful cotton-crisis from
1861 to 1865. 4 "It is sometimes advanced by way of excuse,
when persons are found at work in a factory, either at a mea.
hour, or at some illegal time, that they will not leave the mill a';
the appointed hour, and that compulsion is necessary to force
them to cease work [cleaning their machinery, &c.], especially
on Saturday afternoons. But, if the hands remain in a factor}
after the machinery has ceased to revolve . . . they would not
have been so employed if sufficient time had been set apart

1 Reports, &c., 30th April, 1858, p. 9.

1 Reports, &c., 1. c., p. 43.

• Reports, &c., 1. c., p. 25.

4 Reports, &c., for the half year ending 30th April, 1861. Sec Appendix No. 2;
Reports, &c., 31st October, 1862, p. 7, 62, 63. The violations of the Acts becarne
more numerous during the last half year 1863. Cf. Reports, &c., ending 31st
October, 1863, p. 7.

The Working Day. 267

specially for cleaning, &c., either before 6 a.m. [sic /] or before
2 p. m. on Saturday afternoons."1

"The profit to be gained by it (over-working in violation of
the Act) appears to be, to many, a greater temptation than they
can resist; they calculate upon the chance of not being found
out; and when they see the small amount of penalty and costs,
which those who have been convicted have had to pay, they
find that if they should be detected there will still be a con
siderable balance of gain. . . .2 In cases where the additional
time is gained by a multiplication of small thefts in the course
of the day, there are insuperable difficulties to the inspectors
making out a case."3

These "small thefts" of capital from the labourer's meal and
recreation time, the factory inspectors also designate as "petty
pilfering of minutes,"4 "snatching a few minutes,"5 or, aa
the labourers technically called them, "nibbling and cribbling
at meal times."6

It is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of sur
plus-value by surplus-labour, is not secret. "If you allow me,"
said a highly respectable master to me, "to work only ten min
utes in the day over-time, you put one thousand a year in my
pocket."7 "Moments are the elements of profit."8

1 Reports, &c., October 31st, 1860, p. 23. With what fanaticism, according to the
evidence of manufacturers given in courts of law, their hands set themselves against
every interruption in factory labour, the following curious circumstance shows. In
the beginning of June, 1836, information reached the magistrates of Dewsbury
(Yorkshire) that the owners of 8 large mills in the neighbourhood of Batley had
violated the Factory Acts. Some of these gentlemen were accused of having kept
at work 6 boys between 12 and 15 years of age, from 6 a.m. on Friday to 4 p.m. on
the following Saturday, not allowing them any respite except for meals and one
hour for sleep at midnight. And these children had to do this ceaseless labour of
30 hours in the "shoddy-hole," as the hole is called, in which the woolen rags are
pulled in pieces, and where a dense atmosphere of dust, shreds, &c., forces even the
adult workman to cover his mouth continually with handkerchiefs for the protec
tion of his lungs! The accused gentlemen affirm in lieu of taking an oath — as
quakers they were too scrupulously religious to take an oath — that they had, in their
great compassion for the unhappy children, allowed them four hours for sleep, but
the obstinate children absolutely would not go to bed. The quaker gentlemen
were mulcted in £20. Dryden anticipated these gentry:
"Fox full fraught in seeming santftity,
That feared an oath, but like the devil would lie.
That look'd like Lent, and had the holy leer,
And durst not sinJ before he said his prayer 1"

8 Rep., 31st Oct., 1856, p. 84. • 1. c. p., p. 48. • 1. c., p. 48.

•1. c., p. 35. M. c., p. 48. M. c., p. 4«.

•Report of the Insp., &c., 30th April, 1860, p. 60.

268 Capitalist Production.

Nothing is from this point of view more characteristic than
the designation of the workers who work full time as "full-
timers," and the children under 13 who are only allowed to
work 6 hours as "half-timers." The worker is here nothing
more than personified labour-time. All individual distinctions
are merged in those of "full-timers" and "half-timers."1

SECTION 3. BRANCHES OF ENGLISH INDUSTRY WITHOUT LEGAL

LIMITS TO EXPLOITATION.

We have hitherto considered the tendency to the extension of
the working day, the were-wolf's hunger for surplus-labour in
a department where the monstrous exactions, not surpassed,
says an English bourgeois economist, by the cruelties of tho
Spaniards to the American red-skins,2 caused capital at last to
be bound by the chains of legal regulations. Now, let us cast
a glance at certain branches of production in which the exploi
tation of labour is either free from fetters to this day, or was
so yesterday.

Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared a<j
chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Notting
ham, on the 14th of January, 1860, "that there was an amount;
of privation and suffering among that portion of the popula
tion connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts o :
the kingdom, indeed, in the civilized world . . . Children o::
nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two,
three, or four o'clock in the morning and compelled to work for
a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their
limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faceM
whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-
like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate We are my,

surprised that Mr. Mallett, or any other manufacturer, shoulc.
stand forward and protest against discussion The

1 This is the official expression both in the factories and in the reports.

8 "The cupidity of mill-owners whose cruelties in the pursuit of gain have hardly
been exceeded by those perpetrated by the Spaniards in the conquest of America ir
the pursuit of gold." John Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes, 3rd
Ed. London, 1835, p. 114. The theoretical part of this book, a kind of hand-book o:'
Political Economy, i«, considering the time of its publication, original in some parts,
e.g., on commercial crises. The historical part is, to a great extent, a shameless
plagiarism of Sir F. M. Eden's "History of the Poor," London, 1799.

The Working Day. 269

system, as the Rev. Montagu Valpy describes it, is one of
unmitigated slavery, socially, physically, morally, and spirit
ually What can be thought of a town which holds a public

meeting to petition that the period of labour for men shall be

diminished to eighteen hours a day? We declaim

against the Virginian and Carolina cotton-planters. Is their
black-market, their lash, and their barter of human flesh more
detestable than this slow sacrifice of humanity which takes
place in order that veils and collars may be fabricated for the
benefit of capitalists ?'n

The potteries of Staffordshire have, during the last 22 years,
been the subject of three parliamentary inquiries. The result
is embodied in Mr. Scriven's Report of 1841 to the "Children's
Employment Commissioners," in the report of Dr. Greenhow
of 1860 published by order of the medical officer of the Privy
Council (Public Health, 3rd Report, 112-113), lastly, in the
report of Mr. Longe of 1862 in the "First Report of the
Children's Employment Commission, of the 13th June, 1863."
For my purpose it is enough to take, from the reports of 1860
and 1863, some depositions of the exploited children them
selves. From the children we may form an opinion as to the
adults, especially the girls and women, and that in a branch of
industry by the side of which cotton-spinning appears an agree
able and healthful occupation.2

, William Wood, 9 years old, was 7 years and 10 months when
he began to work. He "ran moulds" (carried ready-moulded
articles into the drying room, afterwards bringing back the
empty mould) from the beginning. He came to work every
day in the week at 6 a.m., and left off about 9 p.m. "I work
till 9 o'clock at night six days in the week. I have done so
seven or eight weeks." Fifteen hours of labour for a child of
7 years old ! J. Murray, 12 years of age, says : "I turn jigger,
and run moulds. I come at 6. Sometimes I come at 4. I
worked all last night, till 6 o'clock this morning. I have not
been in bed since the night before last. There were eight or
nine other boys working last night. All but one have come this

1 "Daily Telegraph," 17th January, 1860.
•Cf. F. Engels' Lage, etc., p. 249-61.

270 Capitalist Production.

morning. I get 3 shillings and sixpence. I do not get any
more for working at night. I worked two nights last week."
Fernyhough, a boy of ten: "I have not always an hour (for
dinner). I have only half an hour sometimes; on Thursday,
Friday, and Saturday."1

Dr. Greenhow states that the average duration of life in the
pottery districts of Stoke-on-Trent, and Wolstanton is ex
traordinarily short. Although in the district of Stoke, only
36.6% and in Wolstanton only 30.4% of the adult male
population above 20 are employed in the potteries, among tho
men of that age in the first district more than half, in tho
second, nearly f of the whole deaths are the result of pul
monary diseases among the potters. Dr. Boothroyd, a medical
practitioner at Hanley, says: "Each successive generation o:f
potters is more dwarfed and less robust than the preceding
one." In like manner another doctor, Mr. M'Bean : "Since ho
began to practise among the potters 25 years ago, he has ob
served a marked degeneration especially shown in diminution
of stature and breadth." These statements are taken from tho
report of Dr. Greenhow in I860.2

From the report of the Commissioners in 1863, the follow
ing: Dr. J. T. Arledge, senior physician of the North Staf
fordshire Infirmary, says: "The potters as a class, both mer.
and women, represent a degenerated population, both phys
ically and morally. They are, as a rule, stunted in growth
ill-shaped, and frequently ill-formed in the chest ; they becomo
prematurely old, and are certainly short-lived; they are
phlegmatic and bloodless, and exhibit their debility of consti
tution by obstinate attacks of dyspepsia, and disorders of thci
liver and kidneys, and by rheumatism. But of all diseases
they are especially prone to chest-disease, to pneumonia,
phthisis, bronchitis, and asthma. One form would appear pe
culiar to them, and is known as potter's asthma, or potter'*
consumption. Scrofula attacking the glands, or bones, or othei
parts of the body, is a disease of two-thirds or more of the

'* Children's Employment Commission. First report, etc., 1868. Evidence, p. 16,
19, 18.

•Public Health, 3rd report, etc., p. 102, 104, 106.

The Working Day. 271

potters That the 'degenerescence* of the population of

this district is not even greater than it is, is due to the constant
recruiting from the adjacent country, and intermarriages with
more healthy races."1

Mr. Charles Parsons, late house surgeon of the same institu
tion, writes in a letter to Commissioner Longe, amongst other
things : "I can only speak from personal observation and not
from statistical data( but I do not hesitate to assert that my
indignation has been aroused again and again at the sight of
poor children whose health has been sacrificed to gratify the
avarice of either parents or employers." He enumerates the
causes of the diseases of the potters, and sums them up in the
phrase, "long hours." The report of the Commission trusts
that "a manufacture which has assumed so prominent a place
in the whole world, will not long be subject to the remark that
its great success is accompanied with the physical deterioration,
wide-spread bodily suffering, and early death of the work
people . . by whose labour and skill such great results have
been achieved."2 And all that holds of the potteries in Eng
land is true of those in Scotland.8

The manufacture of lucifer matches dates from 1833, from
the discovery of the method of applying phosphorus to the
match itself. Since 1845 this manufacture has rapidly devel
oped in England, and has extended especially amongst the
thickly populated parts of London as well as in Manchester,
Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle and Glas
gow. With it has spread the form of lockjaw, which a Vienna
physician in 1845 discovered to be a disease peculiar to lucifer-
matchmakers. Half the workers are children under thirteen,
and young persons under eighteen. The manufacture is on
account of its unhealthiness and unpleasantness in such bad
odour that only the most miserable part of the labouring class,
half-starved widows and so forth, deliver up their children
to it, "the ragged, half-starved, untaught children."4

Of the witnesses that Commissioner White examined

1 Child. Empl. Comm. I. Report, p. 24.

• Children's Employment Commission, p. 22, and xi

•1. c. p. xlvii.

•I. c. p. liv.

272 Capitalist Production.

(1863), 270 were under 18, 50 under 10, 10 only 8, and 5
only 6 years old. A range of the working day from 12 to 14
or 15 hours, night-labour, irregular meal times, meals for the
most part taken in the very workrooms that are pestilent with
phosphorus. Dante would have found the worst horrors of his
Inferno surpassed in this manufacture.

In the manufacture of paper-hangings the coarser sorts are
printed by machine; the finer by hand (block-printing). The
most active business months are from the beginning of October
to the end of April. During this time the work goes on fast
and furious without intermission from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. or
further into the night.

J. Leach deposes: "Last winter six out of nineteen girls
were away from ill-health at one time from over-work. I have
to bawl at them to keep them awake." W. Duffy: "I have
seen when the children could none of them keep their eyes
open for the work ; indeed, none of us could." J. Lightbourne :
"Am 13 ... We worked last winter till 9 (evening), and the
winter before till 10. I used to cry with sore feet every night
last winter." G. Apsden : "That boy of mine . . . when he
was 7 years old I used to carry him on my back to and fro
through the snow, and he used to have 16 hours a day ... I
have often knelt down to feed him as he stood by the machine,
for he could not leave it or stop." Smith, the managing
partner of a Manchester factory : "We (he means his "hands"
who work for "us") work on, with no stoppage for meals, so
that the day's work of 10J hours is finished by 4.30. p.m., and
all after that is overtime."1 (Does this Mr. Smith take no
meals himself during 10£ hours?) "We (this same Smith)
seldom leave off working before 6 p.m. (he means leave off the
consumption of 'our' labour-power machines), so that we
(iterum Crispinus) are really working overtime the whole year
round For all these, children and adults alike (152

1 This is not to be taken in the same sense as our surplus-labour time. These
gentlemen consider 10^ hours of labour as the normal working day, which includes
of course the normal surplus-labour. After this begins "overtime" which is paid a
little better. It will be seen later that the labour expended during the so-called
normal day is paid below its value, so that the overtime is simply a capitalist trick
in order to extort more surplus-labor, which it would still be, even if the labour-
power expended during the normal working day were properly paid

The Working Day. 273

children and young persons and 140 adults), the average work
for the last 18 months has been at the very least 7 days, 5
hours, or 78-J hours a week. For the six weeks ending May
2nd this year (1862), the average was higher — 8 days or 84
hours a week." Still this same Mr. Smith, who is so extremely
devoted to the pluralis majestatis, adds with a smile, "Machine
work is not great." So the employers in the block-printing
say : "Hand labour is more healthy than machine-work." On
the whole, manufacturers declare with indignation against tho
proposal "to stop the machines at least during meal times/
A clause, says Mr. Otley, manager of a wall-paper factory in
the Borough, "which allowed work between, say 6 a.m. and 9
p.m. . . . would suit us (!) very well, but the factory hours, 6
a.m. to 6 p.m., are not suitable. Our machine is always
stopped for dinner. (What generosity!) There is no waste
of paper and colour to speak of. But," he adds sympatheti
cally, "I can understand the loss of time not being liked.'
The report of the Commission opines with naivete that the
fear of some "leading firms" of losing time, i.e., the time for
appropriating the labour of others, and thence losing profit
is not a sufficient reason for allowing children under 13, and
young persons under 18, working 12 to 16 hours per day, to
lose their dinner, nor for giving it to them as coal and water
are supplied to the steam-engine, soap to wool, oil to the
wheel — as merely auxiliary material to the instruments of
labour, during the process of production itself.1

•No branch of industry in England (we do not take into
account the making of bread by machinery recently intro
duced) has preserved up to the present day a method of pro
duction so archaic, so — as we see from the poets of the Roman
Empire — pre-christian, as baking. But capital, as was said
earlier, is at first indifferent as to the technical character of the
labour-process; it begins by taking it ju?t as it finds it.

The incredible adulteration of bread, especially in London,
was first revealed by the House of Commons Committee "OH
the adulteration of articles of food'* (1855-56), and Dr.

1L c. Evidence, p. 123, 124, 125, 140, and 04.

274 Capitalist Production.

HassaH's work, "Adulterations detected."1 The consequence
of these revelations was the Act of August 6th, 1860, "for
preventing the adulteration of articles of food and drink," an
inoperative law; as it naturally shows the tenderest consider
ation for every free-trader who determines by the buying or
selling of adulterated commodities "to turn an honest penny."2
The Committee itself formulated more or less naively its con
viction that free-trade meant essentially trade with adulter
ated, or as the English ingeniously put it, "sophisticated"
goods. In fact this kind of sophistry knows better than Prota
goras how to make white black, and black white, and better
than the Eleatics how to demonstrate ad oculos that everything
is only appearance.3

At all events the committee had directed the attention of
the public to its "daily bread," and therefore to the baking
trade. At the same time in public meetings and in petitions
to Parliament rose the cry of the London journeymen bakers
against their over-work, &c. The cry was so urgent that Mr.
H. S. Tremenheere, also a member of the Commission of 1863
several times mentioned, was appointed Royal Commissioner
of Inquiry. His report,4 together with the evidence given,
roused not the heart of the public but its stomach. English
men, always well up in the Bible, knew well enough that man,
unless by elective grace a capitalist, or landlord, or sinecurist,

1 Alum finely powdered, or mixed with salt, is a normal article of commerce bear
ing the significant name qf "bakers' stuff."

* Soot is a well-known and very energetic form of carbon, and forms a manure
that capitalistic chimney-sweeps sell to English farmers. Now in 1862 the British
juryman had in a law-suit to decide whether soot, with which, unknown to the
buyer 90% of dust and sand are mixed, is genuine soot in the commercial sense or
adulterated soot in the legal sense. The "amis du commerce" decided it to be
genuine commercial soot, and non-suited the plaintiff farmer, who had in addition
to pay the costs of the suit.

1 The French chemist, Chevallier, in his treatise on the "sophistications" of
commodities, enumerates for many of the 600 or more articles which he passes in
review, 10, 20, 30 different methods of adulteration. He adds that he does not know
all the methods, and does not mention all that he knows. He gives 6 kinds of
adulteration of sugar, 9 of olive oil, 10 of butter, 12 of salt, 19 of milk, 20 of
.bread, 23 of brandy, 24 of meal, 28 of chocolate, 30 of wine, 32 of coffee, etc.
Even God Almighty does not escape this fate. See Ronard de Card, on the falsifi
cations of the materials of the Sacrament. (De la falsification des substances sacra
mentelles, Paris, 1856.)

* "Report, &c., relating to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers
ftc., London, 1862," and "Second Report &c., London, 1863."

The Working Day. 275

is commanded to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, but
they did not know that he had to eat daily in his bread a certain
quantity of human perspiration mixed with the discharge of
abcesses, cobwebs, dead black-beetles, and putrid German yeast,
without counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral in
gredients. Without any regard to his holiness, Freetrade, the
free baking-trade was therefore placed under the supervision
of the State inspectors (Close of the Parliamentary session of
1863), and by the same Act of Parliament, work from 9 in the
evening to 5 in the morning was forbidden for journeymen
bakers under 18. The last clause speaks volumes as to the
over-work in this old-fashioned, homely line of business.

"The work of a London journeyman baker begins, as a rule,
at about eleven at night. At that hour he 'makes the dough/
— a laborious process, which lasts from half-an-hour to three
quarters of an hour, according to the size of the batch or the
labour bestowed upon it He then lies down upon the knead-
ing-board, which is also the covering of the trough in which
the dough is 'made / and with a sack under him, and another
rolled up as a pillow, he sleeps for about a couple of hours.
He is then engaged in a rapid and continuous labour for about
five hours — throwing out the dough, 'scaling it off/ moulding
it, putting it into the oven, preparing and baking rolls and
fancy bread, taking the batch bread out of the oven, and up
into the shop, &c., &c. The temperature of a bakehouse ranges
from about 75 to upwards of 90 degrees, and in the smaller
bakehouses approximates usually to the higher rather than to
the lower degree of heat. When the business of making the
bread, rolls, &c., is over, that of its distribution begins, and a
considerable proportion of the journeymen in the trade, after
working hard in the manner described during the night, are
upon their legs for many hours during the day, carrying bas
kets, or wheeling hand-carts, and sometimes again in the bake
house, leaving off work at various hours between 1 and 6 pan.
according to the season of the year, or the amount and nature
of their master's business; while others are again engaged in
the bakehouse in 'bringing out' more batches until late in the

276 Capitalist Production.

, afternoon.1 . . . During what is called 'the London season/ the
operatives belonging to the 'full-priced' bakers at the West
End of the to\vn; generally begin work at 11 p.m., and are en
gaged in making the bread, with one or two short (sometimes
very short) intervals of rest, up to 8 o'clock the next morning.
They are then engaged all day long, up to 4, 5, 6, and as late
as 7 o'clock in the evening carrying out bread, or sometimes in
the afternoon in the bakehouse again, assisting in the biscuit-
baking. They may have, after they have done their work,
sometimes five or six, sometimes only four or five hours' sleep
before they begin again. On Fridays they always begin
sooner, some about ten o'clock, and continue in some cases, at
work, either in making or delivering the bread up to 8 p.m. on
Saturday night, but more generally up to 4 or 5 o'clock,
Sunday morning. On Sundays the men must attend twice or
three times during the day for an hour or two to make prepa
rations for the next day's bread The men employed

by the underselling masters (who sell their bread under the
'full price,' and who, as already pointed out, comprise three-
fourths of the London bakers) have not only to work on the
average longer hours, but their work is almost entirely confined
to the bakehouse. The underselling masters generally sell their
bread .... in the shop. If they send it out, which is not com
mon, except as supplying chandlers' shops, they usually employ
other hands for that purpose. It is not their practice to deliver

bread from house to house. Towards the end of the week

the men begin on Thursday night at 10 o'clock, and continue on
with only slight intermission until late on Saturday evening."2
VEven the bourgeois intellect understands the position of the
"underselling" masters. "The unpaid labour of the men was
made the source whereby the competition was carried on."3
And the "full-priced" baker denounces his underselling com
petitors to the Commission of Inquiry as thieves of foreign
labour and adulterators. "They only exist now by first de
frauding the public, and next getting 18 hours work out of
their men for 12 hours' wages."4

•1. c. First Report, &c., p. vi.

•1. c. p. Ixxi. "George Read, The History of Baking, London, 1848, p. 16.

•Report (First) &c. Evidence of the "full-priced" bak«r Cheeseman, p. 103.

The Working Day. 277

The adulteration of bread and the formation of a class of
bakers that sells the bread below the full price, date from the
beginning of the 18th century, from the time when the
corporate character of the trade was lost, and the capitalist in
the form of the miller or flour-factor, rises behind the nominal
master baker.1 Thus was laid the foundation of capitalistic
production in this trade, of the unlimited extension of the
working day and of night labour; although the latter only
since 1824 gained a serious footing, even in London.2

After what has just been said, it will be understood that the
Report of the Commission classes journeymen bakers among
the short-lived labourers, who, having by good luck escaped the
normal decimation of the children of the working-class, rarely
reach the age of 42. Nevertheless, the baking trade is always
overwhelmed with applicants. The sources of the supply of
these labour-powers to London are Scotland, the western agri
cultural districts of England, and Germany.

*In the years 1858-60, the journeymen bakers in Ireland
organized at their own expense great meetings to agitate
against night and Sunday work. The public — e.g., at the
Dublin meeting in May, 1860 — took their part with Irish
warmth. As a result of this movement, Jay labor alone was
successfully established in Wexford, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Water-
ford, &c. aln Limerick, where the grievances of the journey
men are demonstrated to be excessive, the movement has been
defeated by the opposition of the master bakers, the miller
bakers being the greatest opponents. The example of Limerick
led to a retrogression in Ennis and Tipperary. In Cork, where
the strongest possible demonstration of feeling took place, the
masters, by exercising their power of turning the men out of
employment, have defeated the movement. In Dublin, the
master bakers have offered the most determined opposition to

1 George Read, 1. c. At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th cen
turies the factors (agents) that crowded into every possible trade were still de
nounced as "public nuisances." Thus the Grand Jury at the quarter session of the
Justices of the Peace for the County of Somerset, addressed a presentment to the
Lower House which, among other things, states, "that these factors of Blackwell Hall
are a Public Nuisance and Prejudice to, the Clothing Trade, and ought to be put
down as a Nuisance." The case of our English Wool, &c., London, 1685, p. «, 7.

•First Report, &c.

278 Capitalist Production.

the movement, and by discountenancing as much as possible
the journeymen promoting it, have succeeded in leading the
men into acquiescence in Sunday work and night work, con
trary to the convictions of the men.771

The Committee of the English Government, which Govern
ment, in Ireland, is armed to the teeth, and generally knows
how to show it, remonstrates in mild, though funereal, tones
with the implacable master bakers of Dublin, Limerick, Cork,
£c. : "The Committee believe that the hours of labour are
limited by natural laws, which cannot be violated with im
punity. That for master bakers to induce their workmen, by
the fear of losing employment, to violate their religious con
victions and their better feelings, to disobey the laws of the
land, and to disregard public opinion (this all refers to Sunday
labour), is calculated to provoke ill-feeling between workmen
and masters, . . . and affords an example dangerous to religion,
morality, and social order. . . . The Committee believe that
any constant work beyond 12 hours a-day encroaches on the
domestic and private life of the working man, and so leads to
disastrous moral results, interfering with each man's home, and
the discharge of his family duties as a son, a brother, a hus
band, a father. That work beyond 12 hours has a tendency to
undermine the health of the working man, and so leads to
premature old age and death, to the great injury of families of
working men, thus deprived of the care and support of the
head of the family when most required."2

So far, we have dealt with Ireland. On the other side of
the channel, in Scotland, the agricultural labourer, the plough
man, protests against his 13-14 hours' work in the most in
clement climate, with 4 hours' additional work on Sunday (in
this land of Sabbatarians!),3 whilst, at the same time, three
railway men are standing before a London coroner's jury — a
guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous railway
accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another
world. The negligence of the employes is the cause of the

1 Report of Committee on the Baking Trade in Ireland for 1861.
« I. c.

• Public meeting of agricultural labourers at Lasswade, near Edinburgh, January
ftth, 1866. (See "Workman's Advocate," January 13th, 1866.) The formation

The Working Day. 279

misfortune. They declare with one voice before the jury that
ten or twelve years before, their labour only lasted eight hours
a-day. During the last five or six years it had been screwed
up to 14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pres
sure of holiday-makers, at times of excursion trains, it often
lasted for 40 or 50 hours without a break. They were ordinary
men, not Cyclops. At a certain point their labour-power
failed. Torpor seized them. Their brain ceased to think, their
eyes to see. The thoroughly "respectable" British jurymen
answered by a verdict that sent them to the next assizes on a
charge of manslaughter, and, in a gentle "rider" to their ver
dict, expressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of
the railways would, in future, be more extravagant in the
purchase of a sufficient quantity of labour-power, and more
"abstemious," more "self-denying," more "thrifty," in the
draining of paid labour-power.1

From the motley crowd of labourers of all callings, ages,

since the close of 1865 of a Trades' Union among the agricultural labourers at first
in Scotland is a historic event In one of the most oppressed agricultural districts
of England, Buckinghamshire, the labourers, in March, 1867, made a great strike for
the raising of their weekly wage from 9-10 shillings to 12 shillings. (It will be seen
from the preceding passage that the movement of the English agricultural proletariat,
entirely crushed since the suppression of its violent manifestations after 1830, and
especially since the introduction of the new Poor Laws, begins again in the sixties,
until it becomes finally epoch-making in 1872. I return to this in the 2nd volume,
as well as to the blue books that have appeared since 1867 on the position of the Eng
lish land labourers. Addendum to the 3rd ed.)

1 "Reynolds' Newspaper," January, 1866. — Every week this same paper has,
under the sensational headings, "Fearful and fatal accidents," "Appalling tragedies,"
&c., a whole list of fresh railway catastrophes. On these an employe" on the North
Staffordshire line comments: "Everyone knows the consequences that may occur if
the driver and fireman of a locomotive engine are not continually on the look-out.
How can that be expected from a man who has been at such work for 29 or 80
hours, exposed to the weather, and without rest. The following is an example which
is of very frequent occurrence: — One fireman commenced work on the Monday morn
ing at a very early hour. When he had finished what is called a day's work, he had
been on duty 14 hours 50 minutes. Before he had time to get his tea, he was
again called on for duty. . . . The next time he finished he had been on duty 14
hours 25 minutes, making a total of 29 hours 15 minutes without intermission.
The rest of the week's work was made up as follows: — Wednesday, 15 hours; Thurs
day, 15 hours 85 minutes; Friday, 14 Yi hours; Saturday, 14 hours 10 minutes, making
a total for the week of 88 hours 40 minutes. Now, sir, fancy his astonishment on
being paid 6J4 days for the whole. Thinking it was a mistake, he applied to the time
keeper, . . . and inquired what they considered a day's work, and was told 18
hours for a good man (i.e., 78 hours. ... He then asked for what he had made
over and above the 78 hours per week, but was refused. However, he was at last
told they would give him another quarter, »,»., lOd." 1. c,, 4th February, I860.

a8o Capitalist Production.

sexes, that press on us more busily than the souls of the slain
on Ulysses, on whom — without referring to the blue books
under their arms — we see at a glance the mark of over-work,
let us take two more figures whose striking contrast proves
that before capital all men are alike — a milliner and a black
smith.

* In the last week of June, 1863, all the London daily papers
published a paragraph with the "sensational" heading "Death
from simple over-work." It dealt with the death of the
milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years of age, employed in a
highly-respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a
lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often-told
story,1 was once more recounted. This girl worked, on an
average, 16£ hours, during the season often 30 hours, without a
break, whilst her failing labour-power was revived by occasional
supplies of sherry, port, or coffee. It was just now the height
of the season. It was necessary to conjure up in the twinkling
of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to
the ball in honour of the newly-imported Princess of Wales.
Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 26 £
hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded ^
of the cubic feet of air required for them. At night, they slept
in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the bedroom was
divided by partitions of board.2 And this was one of the best

*Cf. F. Engels. 1. c., pp. 253, 154.

•Dr. Lctheby, Consulting Physician of the Board of Health, declared: "The mini
mum of air for each adult ought to be in a sleeping room 300, and in a dwelling
room 500 cubic feet." Dr. Richardson, Senior Physician to one of the London
Hospitals: "With needlewomen of all kinds, including milliners, dressmakers, and
ordinary sempstresses, there are three miseries — over-work, deficient air, and either
deficient food or deficient digestion. . . . Needlework, in the main, ... is
infinitely better adapted to women than to men. But the mischiefs of the trade,
in the metropolis especially, are that it is monopolised by some twenty-six capitalists,
who, under the advantages that spring from capital, can bring in capital to forct
economy out of labour. This power tells throughout the whole class. If a dress-
makei can get a little circle of customers, such is the competition that, in her
home, she must work to the death to hold together, and this same over-work she
must of necessity inflict on any who may assist her. If she fail, or do not try
independently, she must join an establishment, where her labour is not less, but
where her money is safe. Placed thus, she becomes a mere slave, tossed about with
the variations of society. Now at home, in one room, starving, or near to it, then
engaged 15, 16, aye, even 18 hours out of the 24, in an air that is scarcely tolerable,
and on food which, even if it be good, cannot be digested in the absence of pure

The Working Day. 281

millinery establishments in London. Mary Anne Walkley fell
ill on the Friday; died on Sunday, without, to the astonish
ment of Madame Elise, having previously completed the work
in hand. The doctor, Mr. Keys, called too late to the death
bed, duly bore witness before the coroner's jury that "Mary
Anne Walkley had died from long hours of work in an over
crowded workroom, and a too small and badly-ventilated bed
room." In order to give the doctor a lesson in good manners,
the coroner's jury thereupon brought in a verdict that "the
deceased had died of apoplexy, but there was reason to fear
that her death had been accelerated by over-work in an over
crowded workroom, &c." "Our white slaves," cried the "Morn
ing Star," the organ of the free-traders, Cobden and Bright,
"our white slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most
part silently pine and die."1

"It is not in dressmakers' rooms that working to death is
the order of the day, but in a thousand other places ; in every
place I had almost said, where 'a thriving business' has to be
done. . . . We will take the blacksmith as a type. If
the poets were true, there is no mqn so hearty, so merry, as
the blacksmith ; he rises early and strikes his sparks before
the sun ; he eats and drinks and sleeps as no other man.
Working in moderation, he is, in fact, in one of the best of

air. On these victims, consumption, which is purely a disease of bad air, feeds."
Dr. Richardson: "Work and Overwork," in "Social Science Review," 18th July,
1863.

1 "Morning Star," 23rd June, 1863. — The "Times" made use of the circumstance
to defend the American slave owners against Bright, &c. "Very many of us think,"
says a leader of July 2nd, 1868, "that, while we work our own young women to
death, using the scourge of starvation, instead of the crack of the whip, as the
instrument of compulsion, we have scarcely a right to hound on fire and slaughter
against families who were born slave owners, and who, at least, feed their slaves
well, and work them lightly." In the same manner, the "Standard," a Tory organ,
fell foul of the Rev. Newman Hall: "He excommunicated the slave owners, but
prays with the fine folk who, without remorse, make the omnibus drivers and con
ductors of London, &c., work 16 hours a-day for the wages of a dog." Finally,
spake the oracle, Thomas Carlyle, of whom I wrote, in 1850, "Zum Teufel ist der
Genius, der Kultus ist geblieben." In a short parable, he reduces the one great
event of contemporary history, the American civil war, to this level, that the Peter
of the North wants to break the bead of the Paul of the South with all his might,
because the Peter of the North hires his labour by the day, and the Paul of the
South hires his by the life. ("Macmillan's Magazine." Ilias Americana in nuce.
August, 1863.) Thus, the bubble of Tory sympathy for the urban workers — by no
means for the rural — has burst at last. The sum of all is — slavery 1

282 Capitalist Production.

human positions, physically speaking. But we follow him into
the city or town, and we see the stress of work on that strong
man, and what then is his position in the death-rate of his
country. In Marylebone, blacksmiths die at the rate of 31 per
thousand per annum, or 11 above the mean of the male adults
of the country in its entirety. The occupation, instinctive
almost as a portion of human art, unobjectionable as a branch
of human industry, is made by mere excess of work, the de
stroyer of the man. He can strike so many blows per day,
walk so many steps, breathe so many breaths, produce so much
work, and live an average, say of fifty years; he is made to
strike so many more blows, to walk so many more, steps, to
breathe so many more breaths per day, and to increase alto
gether a fourth of his life. He meets the effort ; the result is,
that producing for a limited time a fourth more work, he dies
at 37 for 50."1

SECTION 4. DAY AND NIGHT WORK. THE REULY SYSTEM.

Constant capital, the means of production, considered from
the standpoint of the creation of surplus-value, only exist to
absorb labour, and with every drop of labour a proportional
quantity of surplus-labour. While they fail to do this, their
mere existence causes a relative loss to the capitalist, for they
represent during the time they lie fallow, a useless advance of
capital. And this loss becomes positive and absolute as soon
as the intermission of their employment necessitates additional
outlay at the recommencement of work. The prolongation of
the working day beyond the limits of the natural day, into
the night, only acts as a palliative. It quenches only in a slight
degree the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour. To
appropriate labour during all the 24 hours of the day is, there
fore, the inherent tendency of capitalist production. But as it
is physically impossible to exploit the same individual labour-
power constantly during the night as well as the day, to over
come this physical hindrance, an alternation becomes necessary
between the workpeople whose powers are exhausted by day,

1 Dr. Richardson, 1. c.

The Working Day. 283

and those who are used up by night. This alternation may be
effected in various ways ; e.g., it may be so arranged that part
of the workers are one week employed on day work, the next
week on night work. It is well-known that this relay system,
this alternation of two sets of workers, held full sway in the
full-blooded youth-time of the English cotton manufacture, and
that at the present time it still flourishes, among others, in the
cotton spinning of the Moscow district This 24 hours' process
of production exists to-day as a system in many of the branches
of industry of Great Britain that are still "free," in the
blast-furnaces, forges, plate-rolling mills, and other metal
lurgical establishments in England, Wales, and Scotland. The
working time here includes, besides the 24 hours of the 6
working days, a great part also of the 24 hours of Sunday.
The workers consist of men and women, adults and children
of both sexes. The ages of the children and young persons run
through all intermediate grades, from 8 (in some cases from 6)
to 18.1

In some branches of industry, the girls and women work
through the night together with the males.2

Placing on one side the generally injurious influence of
night-labour,8 the duration of the process of production, un-

1 Children's Employment Commission. Third Report. Lond::1., 1864, j. iv., v., vi.

a "Both in Staffordshire and in oouth Wale~ ;roun j girls an.\ women are employed
on the pit banks and on the coke heaps, not only ' >y -^ay but also by night. This
practice has been often noticed in Reports presente '. .o Parliament, as being attended
with great and notorious evils. These females err ployed with the men, hardly dis
tinguished from them in their dress, and b grimed with dirt and smoke, are exposed
to the deterioration of character, arising from the loss of :: elf -respect, which can
hardly fail to follow from their unfeminine occupation." (1. c. 194., p. xxvi. Cf.
Fourth Report (1865), 61, p. xiii.) It is the same in glass-works.

•A steel manufacturer wuo employs children in night labour remarked: "It
seems but natural that boys who work r.t night cann.«t 'leep and get proper rest by
day, but will be running about." (1. c. Fourth Report, 63, p. xiii.) On the im
portance of sunlight for the maintenance and growth of t! ; body, a physician
writes: "Light also acts upi i tho tissues of the body directly in hardening them
and supporting their elasticity. The muscles ^f animals, when they are deprived
of a proper amount of light, become soft and inelastic, the nervous power loses itt
tone from defective stimulation, and the elaboration of all growth seems to b«
perverted. ... In the case of children, constant access to plenty of light during
the day, and to the direct rays of the sun for a part of it, is most essential to
health. Light assists in the elaboration of good plastic blood, and hardens the
fibre after it has been laid down. It also act? as a stimulus upon the organs of
sight, and by this means brings about more activity in the various cerebral func
tions." Dr. W. Strange, Senior Physician of the Worcester General Hospital, from

284 Capitalist Production.

broken during the 24 hours, offers very welcome opportunities
of exceeding the limits of the normal working day, e.g., in the
branches of industry already mentioned, which are of an
exceedingly fatiguing nature; the official working day mean?
for each worker usually 12 hours by night or day. But the
over-work beyond this amount is in many cases, to use the
words of the English official report, "truly fearful."1

"It is impossible," the report continues, "for any mind to
realise the amount of work described in the following passages
as being performed by boys of from 9 to 12 years of age ....
without coming irresistibly to the conclusion that such abuses
of the power of parents and of employers can no • longer be
allowed to exist."3

"The practice of boys working at all by day and night
turns either in the usual course of things, or at pressing times,
seems inevitably to open the door to their not unfrequently
working unduly long hours. These hours are, indeed, in some
cases, not only cruelly but even incredibly long for children.
Amongst a number of boys it will, of course, not unfrequently
happen that one or more are from some cause absent When
this happens, their place is made up by one or more boys,
who work in the other turn. That this is a well understood
system is plain . . . from the answer of the manager of
some large rolling-mills, who, when I asked him how the
place of the boys absent from their turn was made up, *I
daresay, sir, you know that as well as I do,' and admitted, the
fact."'

"At a rolling-mill where the proper hours were from 6 rt.m.
to 5J p.m., a boy worked r»bout four nights every week till
8£ p.m. at least . . . and this for six months. Another, at 9
years old, sometimes made three 12-hour shifts running, and,

whose work on "Health" (1864) this passage is taken, writes in a letter to Mr.
White, one of the commissioners: "I Iiave had opportunities formerly, when in
Lancashire, of observing the effects of night-work upon children, and I have no
hesitation in saying, contrary to what some employers were fond of asserting, thpse
children who were subjected to it soon suffered in their health." (1. c. 284, p. 65.)
That such a question should furnish the material of serious controversy, showi
plainly how capitalist production acts on the brain-functions of capitalists and th*»«
retainers.

*L C. 57, p. xii. «L C. Fourth Report (1865), 58, p. xii. • 1. •

The Working Day. 285

when 10, lias made two days and two nights running." A
third, "now 10 ... worked from 6 a.m. till 12 p.m. three
nights, and till 9 p.m. the other nights." "Another, now 13,
. . . worked from 6 p.m. till 12 noon next day, for a week
together, and sometimes for three shifts together, e.g., from
Monday morning till Tuesday night." "Another, now 12, has
worked in an iron foundry at Stavely from 6 a.m. till 12 p.m.
for a fortnight on end; could not do it any more." "George
Allinsworth, age 9? came here as cellar-boy last Friday ; next
morning we had to begin at 3, so I stopped here all night.
Live five miles off. Slept on the floor of the furnace, over
head, with an apron under me, and a bit of a jacket over me.
The two other days I have been here at 6 a.m. Aye ! it is hot
in here. Before I came here I was nearly a year at the same
work at some works in the country. Began there, too, at 3 on
Saturday morning — always did, but was very gain [near]
home, and could sleep at home. Other days I began at 6 in the
morning, and gi'en over at 6 or 7 in the evening," &C.1

*1. c,, p. xiiL The degree of culture of these "labour-powers" must naturally b«
such as appears in the following dialogues with one of the commissioners: Jere
miah Haynes, age 12 — "Four times four is 8; 4 fours are 16. A king is him that
I is all ;'. i money and .-. >ld. We have a King (told it is a Queen), they call her
tb^ Princess Alexandria. Told that she married the Queen's son. The Queen's
son -i the T -incess Alexandria. A Princess is a man." William Turner, age 12—
"Don't live in England. Think it is a country, but didn't know before." John
Morris, ago 14 — "Have heard say that God made the world, and that all the people
was drowndcd but one; heard say that one was a little bird." William Smith, age
15 — f'God L*ade man, man made woman." Edward Taylor, age 15 — "Do not know
of London." Henry Matthewman, age 17 — "Had been to chapel, but missed a good
many times lately. One name that they preached about was Jesus Christ, but I
cannot say any ~*' •, and I cannot tell anything about him. He was not killed,
but died likj other people. He was not the same as other people in some ways,
because he was religious in some ways, and others isn't." (1. c. p. xv.) "The
devil is a good person. I don't know where he lives." "Christ was a wicked
man." "This girl spelt God as dog, and did not know the name of the queen."
("Ch. Employment Comm. V. Report, 1866," p. 55, n. 278.) The same system
obtains in the glass and paper works as in the metallurgical, already cited. In the
paper factories, where the paper is made by machinery, night-work is the rule for
all processes, except rag-sorting. In some cases night-work, by relays, is carried
on incessantly through the whole week, usually from Sunday night until midnight
of the following Saturday. Those who are on day-work work 5 days of 12, and 1
day of 18 hours; those on night-work 5 nights of 12, and 1 of 6 hours in each
week. In other cases each set works 24 hours consecutively on alternate days, one
set working 6 hours on Monday, and 18 on Saturday to make up the 24 hours. In
other cases an intermediate system prevails, by which all employed on the paper-
making machinery work 15 or 16 hours every day in the week. This system, says
Commissioner tord, "seems to combine all the evils of both the 12 hours* and the 24

Capitalist Production.

Let us now hear how capital itself regards this 24 hours'
system. The extreme forms of the system, its abuse in the
"cruel and incredible" extension of the working day are natur
ally passed over in silence. Capital only speaks of the system
in its "normal" form.

Messrs. Naylor & Vickers, steel manufacturers, who employ
between 600 and 700 persons, among whom only 10 per cent,
are under 18, and of those, only 20 boys under 18 work in
night sets thus express themselves: "The boys do not suffer
from the heat. The temperature is probably from 86° to 90°.
. . . . At the forges and in the rolling-mills the hands
work night and day, in relays, but all the other parts of the
work are day work, i.e., from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. In the forge
the hours are from 12 to 12. Some of the hands always work
in the night, without any alternation of day and night work.

We do not find any difference in the health of those

who work regularly by night and those who work by day, and
probably people can sleep better if they have the same period

of rest than if it is changed About 20 of the boys

under the age of 18 work in the night sets We

could not well do without lads under 18 working by night
The objection would be in the increase in the cost of produc
tion Skilled hands and the heads in every department

are difficult to get, but of the lads we could get any number.

But from the small proportion of boys that we employ

the subject (i.e., of restrictions on night work) is of little im
portance or interest to us."1

Mr. J. Ellis, one of the firm of Messrs. John Brown & Co.,
steel and iron works, employing about 3000 men and boys, part

hours' relays." Children under 18, young persons under 18, and women, work
under this night system. Sometimes under the 12 hours' system they are obliged, on
account of the non-appearance of those that ought to relieve them, to work a double
turn of 24 hours. The evidence proves that boys and* girls very often work over
time, which, not un frequently, extends to 24 or even 86 hours of uninterrupted
toil. In the continuous and unvarying process of glazing are found girls of 12
who work the whole month 14 hours a day, "without any regular relief or cessation
beyond 2 or, at most, 3 breaks of half-an-hour each for meals." In some mills,
where regular night-work has been entirely given up, over-work goes on to a terri
ble extent, "and that often in the dirtiest, and in the hottest, and in the most
monotonous of the various processes. ** ("Ch. Employment Comm. Report IV.,
1?65," p. xxxviii. and xxxix.) * Fourth Report, &c., 1865, 79. p. xvi.

The Working Day. 287

of whose operations, namely, iron and heavier steel work, goes
on night and day by relays states "that in the heavier steel
work one or two boys are employed to a score or two men."
Their concern employs upwards of 500 boys under 18 of whom
about J or 170 are under the age of 13. With reference to the
proposed alteration of the law, Mr. Ellis says : "I do not think
it would be very objectionable to require that no person under
the age of 18 should work more than 12 hours in the 24. But
we do not think that any line could be drawn over the age of
12, at which boys could be dispensed with for night work. But
we would sooner be prevented from employing boys under the
age of 13, or even so high as 14, at all, than not be allowed to
employ boys that we do have at night. Those boys who
work in the day sets must take their turn in the night sets also,
because the men could not work in the night sets only ; it

would ruin their health We think, however, that

night work in alternate weeks is no harm. (Messrs. Naylor &
Vickers, on the other hand, in conformity with the interest of
their business, considered that periodically changed night-
labour might possibly do more harm than continual night-
labour.) We find the men who do it, as well as the others who

do other work only by day Our objections to not

allowing boys under 18 to work at night, would be on account
of the increase of expense, but this is the only reason. (What
cynical naivete!) We think that the increase would be more
than the trade, with due regard to its being successfully carried
out, could fairly bear. (What mealy-mouthed phraseology!)
Labour is scarce here, and might fall short if there were such
a regulation." (i.e., Ellis Brown & Co. might fall into the fatal
perplexity of being obliged to pay labour-power its full value.)1
The "Cyclops Steel and Iron Works," of Messrs. Cammel &
Co., are conducted on the same large scale as those of the above
mentioned John Brown & Co. The managing director had
handed in his evidence to the Government Commissioner, Mr.
White, in writing. Later he found it convenient to suppress
the MS. when it had been returned to him for revision. Mr=
White, however, has a good memory. He remembered quite

M. c. 80, p. xvi.

288 Capitalist Production.

clearly that for the Messrs. Cyclops the forbidding of the
night-labour of children and young persons "would be im
possible, it would be tantamount to stopping their works," and
yet their business employs little more than 6% of boys under
18, and less than \% under 13.1

On the same subject Mr. E. F. Sanderson, of the firm of
Sanderson, Bros., & Co., steel rolling-mills and forges, Atter-
cliffe, says: "Great difficulty would be caused by preventing
boys under 18 from working at night. The chief would be the
increase of cost from employing men instead of boys. I can
not say what this would be, but probably it would not be
enough to enable the manufacturers to raise the pri.ce of steel,
and consequently it would fall on them, as of course the men
(what queer-headed folk !) would refuse to pay it." Mr. San
derson does not know how much he pays the children, but
"perhaps the younger boys get from 4s. to 5s. a week. . . .
The boys' work is of a kind for which the strength of the boys
is generally ('generally/ of course not always) quite sufficient,
and consequently there Would be no gain in the greater strength
of the men to counterbalance the loss, or it would be only in
the few cases in which the metal is heavy. The men would
not like so well not to have boys under them, as men would be
less obedient. Besides, boys must begin young to learn the
trade. Leaving day work alone open to boys would not answer
this purpose." And why not? Why could not boys learn
their handicraft in the day-time ? Your reason ? "Owing to
the men working days and nights in alternate weeks, the men
would be separated half the time from their boys, and would
lose half the profit which they make from them. The training
which they give to an apprentice is considered as part of the
return for the boys' labour, and thus enables the men to get it
at a cheaper rate. Each man would want half of this profit."
In other words, Messrs. Sanderson would have to pay part of
the wages of the adult men out of their own pockets instead of
by the night work of the boys. Messrs. Sanderson's profit
would thus fall to some extent, and this is the good Sanderson-

> 1. c. 82, p. xvii.

The Working Day. 289

ian reason why boys cannot learn their handicraft in the day.1
In addition to this, it would throw night labour on those who
worked instead of the boys, which they would not be able to
stand. The difficulties in fact would be so great that they
would very likely lead to the giving up of night work al
together, and "as far as the work itself is concerned/' says
E. F. Sanderson, "this would suit as well, but — " But Messrs.
Sanderson have something else to make besides steel. Steel-
making is simply a pretext for surplus-value making. The
smelting furnaces, rolling-mills, &c., the buildings, machinery,
iron, coal, &c. have something more to do than transform them
selves into steel. They are there to absorb surplus-labour, and
naturally absorb more in 2-i hours than in 12. In fact they
give, by grace of God and law, the Sandersons a cheque on the
working time of a certain number of hands for all the 24 hours
of the day, and they lose their character as capital, are there
fore a pure loss for the Sandersons, as soon as their function of
absorbing labour is interrupted. "But then there would be
the loss from so much expensive machinery, lying idle half the
time, and to get through the amount of work which we are able
to do on the present system, we should have to double our
premises and plant, which would double the outlay." But why
should these Sandersons pretend to a privilege not enjoyed by
the other capitalists who only work during the day, and whose
buildings, machinery, raw material, therefore lie "idle" during
the night? E. F. Sanderson answers in the name of all the
Sandersons : "It is true that there is this loss from machinery
lying idle in those manufactories in which work only goes on
by day. But the use of furnaces would involve a further loss
in our case. If they were kept up there would be a waste of
fuel (instead of, as now, a waste of the living substance of the
workers), and if they were not, there would be loss of time in
laying the fires and getting the heat up (whilst the loss of
sleeping time, even to children of 8, is a gain of working
time for the Sanderson tribe), and the furnaces themselves

1 In our reflecting and reasoning age a man is not worth much who cannot give a
good reason for everything, no matter how bad or how crazy. Everything in the
world that has been done wrong ha* been done wrong for the very befit of reason*.
(Hegel, 1. c., p. 249.)

290 Capitalist Production.

would suffer from the changes of temperature." (Whilst those
same furnaces suffer nothing from the day and night changes of
labour.)1

SECTION 5. THE STBUGGLE FOB A NORMAL WORKING DAY.

COMPULSORY LAWS *'OR THE EXTENSION OP THE WORKING
DAY FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE 14:TH TO THE END OF THE
17TH CENTURY.

"What is a working day? What is the length of time
during which capital may consume the labour-power whose
daily value it buys ? How far may the working day be ex
tended beyond the working time necessary for the reproduction
of labour-power itself?" It iia* been seen that to these ques
tions capital replies: the working day contains the full 24
hours, with the deduction of the few hours of repose without
which labour-power absolutely refuses its services again.

J 1. c. 85, p. xvii. To similar tender scruples of the glass manufacturers that
regular meal times for the children are impossible because as a consequence a cer
tain quantity of heat, radiited by the furnaces>, wot i be "a pure loss" or "wasted."
Commissioner White makes answer. His answer is unlike that oT Ur', Senior, &>:.,
and their puny German plagiarists a la Roscher who are touched b; th "rMtinence,"
"self-denial," "saving," of the capitalists in the expenditure of their gold, and by
their Timur-Tamerlanish prodigality of human life! "A certain amount of heat
beyond what is usual at present might also be going to waste, if meal times were
secured in these cases, but it seems likely not equal in money-value to the waste
of animal power now going on in glass-hour js throughout the kingdom from growing
boys not having enough quiet time to e; t their meals at ease, with a little rest
afterwards for digestion." (!• c., p. xlv.) And this in the year of progress 1863!
Without considering the expenditure of strength in lifting and carrying, such a
child, in the sheds where bottle and flint glass are made, walks during the perform
ance of his work 15-20 miles in every 6 hours! And the work often lasts 14 or 15
hours! In many of these glass works, as in the Moscow spinning mills, the system
of 6 hours' relays is in force. "During the working part of the week six hours
is the utmost unbroken period ever attained at any one time for rest, and out >f
this has to come the time spent in coming and going to and from work, washing,
dressing, and meals, leaving a very short period indeed for rest, and none for freih
air and play, unless at the expense of the sleep necessary for young boys, especially
at such hot and fatiguing work. . . . Even the short sleep is obviously liable
to be broken by a boy having to wake himself if it is night, or by the noise, if
it is day." Mr. White gives cases where a boy worked f "! consecutive hours;
others where boys of 12 drudged on until 2 in the morning, and then slept in tie
works till 5 a,m. (3 hours!) only to resume their work. "The amount of work,"
say Tremenheere and Tufnell, who drafted the general report, "done by bo}S,
youths, girls, and women, in the course of their daily or nightly spell of labour, is.
certainly extraordinary." (1. c., xliii. and xliv.) Meanwhile, late by night per
haps, self-denying Mr. Glass-Capital, primed with port-wine, reds out of his dub
•'ard droning out idiotically, "Britons never, never shall be slaves!"

The Working Day. 291

Hence it is self-evident that the labourer is nothing else, his
whole life through, than labour-power, that therefore all his
disposable time is by nature and law labour-time, to be devoted
to the self-expansion of capital. Time for education, for
intellectual development, for the fulfilling of social functions
and for social intercourse, for the free-play of his bodily and
mental activity, even the rest time of Sunday (and that in a
country of Sabbatarians I)1 — moonshine ! But in its blind un-
restrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour,
capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely
physical maximum bounds of the working day. It usurps the
time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of
the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of
fresh air and sunlight. It higgles over a meal-time, incorpor
ating it where possible with the process of production itself, so
that food is given to the labourer as to a mere means of pro
duction, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the
machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the resto
ration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers to just so
many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely
exhausted, renders essential. It is not the normal maintenance
of the labour-power which is to determine the limits of the
working day ; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of
labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful
it may be, which is to determine the limits of the labourers'
period of repose. Capital cares nothing for the length of life
of labour-power. All that concerns it is simply and solely the
maximum of labour-power, that can be rendered fluent in a

* In England even now occasionally in rural districts a labourer is condemned to
Imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath, by working in his front garden. The
same labourer is punished for breach of contract if he remains away from his
metal, paper, or glass works on the Sunday, even if it be from a religious whim.
The orthodox Parliament will hear nothing of Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in the
process of expanding capital. A memorial (August 1863), in which the London
day-labourers in fish and poultry shops asked for the abolition of Sunday labour,
states that their work lasts for the first 6 days of the week on an average 15 hours
a-day, and on Sunday 8—10 hours. From this same memorial we learn also that
the delicate gourmands among the aristocratic hypocrites of Exeter Hall, especially
encourage this "Sunday labour." These "holy ones," so zealous in cute curanda,
show their Christianity by the humility with which they bear the over-work, th«
privations, and the hanger of others. Obstquium ventrts ittis (.the labourers) per*
tuciosms esi.

292 Capitalist Production.

working day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of
the labourer's life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased pro
duce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.

The capitalistic mode of production (essentially the produc
tion of surplus value, the absorption of surplus-labour), pro
duces thus, with the extension of the working day, not only
the deterioration of human labour-power by robbing it of ita
normal, moral and physical, conditions of development and
function. It produces also the premature exhaustion and
death of this labour-power itself.1 It extends the labourer's
time of production during a given period by shortening hi;?
actual life-time.

But the value of the labour-power includes the value of tho
commodities necessary for the reproduction of the worker, o:-
for the keeping up of the working class. If then the unnatural
extension of the working day, that capital necessarily strive*
after in its unmeasured passion for self-expansion, shorten;]
the length of life of the individual labourer, and therefor tho
duration of his labour-power, the forces used up have to be re
placed at a more rapid rate and the sum of the expenses fo •
the reproduction of labour-power will be greater; just as in u
machine the part of its value to be reproduced every day i;
greater the more rapidly the machine is worn out. It would
seem therefore that the interest of capital itself points in tho
direction of a normal working day.

The slave-owner buys his labourer as he buys his horse. If
he loses his slave, he loses capital that can only be restored
by new outlay in the slave-mart. But "the rice-grounds o:f
Georgia, or the swamps of the Mississippi may be fatally in
jurious to the human constitution; but the waste of human
life which the cultivation of these districts necessitates, is noi
so great that it cannot be repaired from the teeming preserver
of Virginia and Kentucky. Considerations of economy, more
over, which, under a natural system, afford some security for
humane treatment by identifying the master's interest with

*"We have given in our previous report* the statement* of several experience!
manufacturers to the effect that over-hours. . . . certainly tend prematurely tit
exhaust the working power of the men.*' (L c. 64, p. riii.)

The Working Day. 293

the slave's preservation, when once trading in slaves is prac
tised, become reasons for racking to the uttermost the toil of
the slave ; for, when his place can at once be supplied from for
eign preserves, the duration of his life becomes a matter of less
moment than its productiveness while it lasts. It is accord
ingly a maxim of slave management, in slave-importing coun
tries, that the most effective economy is that which takes out
of the human chattel in the shortest space of time the utmost
amount of exertion it is capable of putting forth. It is in
tropical culture, where annual profits often equal the whole
capital of plantations, that negro life is most recklessly sac
rificed. It is the agriculture of the West Indies, which has
been for centuries prolific of fabulous wealth, that has engulfed
millions of the African race. It is in Cuba, at this day, whose
revenues are reckoned by millions, and whose planters are
princes, that we see in the servile class, the coarsest fare, the
most exhausting and unremitting toil, and even the absolute
destruction of a portion of its numbers every year."1

Mutaio nomine de te fabula narratur. For slave-trade
read labour-market, for Kentucky and Virginia, Ireland and
the agricultural districts of England, Scotland, and Wales,
for Africa, Germany. We heard how over-work thinned the
ranks of the bakers in London. Nevertheless the London
labour-market is always over-stocked with German and other
candidates for death in the bakeries. Pottery, as we saw, is
one of the shortest-lived industries. Is there any want there
fore of potters ? Josiah Wedgwood, the inventor of modern
pottery, himself originally a common workman, said in 1785
before the House of Commons that the whole trade employed
from 15,000 to 20,000 people.2 In the year 1861 the popula
tion alone of the town centres of this industry in Great Britain
numbered 101,302. "The cotton trade has existed for ninety
years ..... It has existed for three generations of the English
race, and I believe I may safely say that during that period it
has destroyed nine generations of factory operatives."3

"The Slave Power," p. 110, 111.

•John Ward: "History of the Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent," London, 1843,
. 42.
• Ferrand's Speech in the Hou»e of Commons, 27th April, 1863.

294 Capitalist Production.

No doubt in certain epochs of feverish activity the labour-
market shows significant gaps. In 1834, e.g. But then the
manufacturers proposed to the Poor Law Commissioners that
they should send the "surplus-population" of the agricultural
districts to the north, with the explanation "that the manu
facturers would absorb and use it up."1 "Agents were ap
pointed with the consent of the Poor Law Commissioners. . . .
An office was set up in Manchester, to which lists were sent of
those workpeople in the agricultural districts wanting employ
ment, and their names were registered in books. The manu
facturers attended at these offices, and selected such persons as
they chose; when they had selected such person's as their
'wants required,' they gave instructions to have them for
warded to Manchester, and they were sent, ticketed like bales
of goods, by canals, or with carriers, others tramping on the
road, and many of them were found on the way lost and half-
starved. This system had grown up into a regular trade.
This House will hardly believe it, but I tell them, that this
traffic in human flesh was as wyell kept up, they were in effecl
as regularly sold to these [Manchester] manufacturers as slave*

are sold to the cotton-grower in the United States Ir.

18fiO, 'the cotton trade was at its zenith.' .... The manu
facturers again found that they were short of hands. . . . The}
applied to the 'flesh agents/ as they are called. Those agents
sent to the southern downs of England, to the pastures of Dor
setshire, to the glades of Devonshire, to the people tending
kine in Wiltshire, but they sought in vain. The surplus-
population was 'absorbed.' ' The "Bury Guardian," said, on
the completion of the French treaty, that <;10,000 additional
hands could be absorbed by Lancashire, and that 30,000 or
40,000 will be needed." After the "flesh agents and sub-
agents" had in vain sought through the agricultural districts,
"a deputation came up to London, and waited on the right hor .
gentleman [Mr. Villiers, President of the Poor Law Board]
with a view of obtaining poor children from certain unioa
houses for the mills of Lancashire."2

* "Those were the very words used by the cotton manufacturers," 1. c.

* L c. Mr. Villiers, despite the best of intentions on hig part, was "legall) "

The Working Day. 295

What experience shows to the capitalist generally is a con
stant excess of population, i.e., an excess in relation to the
momentary requirements of surplus-labour-absorbing capital,
although this excess is made up of generations of human beings
stunted, shortrlived, swiftly replacing each other, plucked, so
to say, before maturity.1 And, indeed, experience shows to

obliged to refuse the requests of the manufacturers. These gentlemen, however,
attained their end through the obliging nature of local poor law boards. Mr. A.
Redgrave, Inspector of Factories, asserts that this time the system under which
orphans and pauper children were treated "legally" as apprentices "was not accom
panied with the old abuses" (on these "abuses" see Engels, 1. c.), although in one
case there certainly was "abuse of this system in respect to a number of girls and
young women brought from the agricultural districts of Scotland into Lancashire
end Cheshire." Under this system the manufacturer entered into a contract with
the workhouse authorities for a certain period. He fed, clothed, and lodged the
children, and gave them a small allowance of money. A remark of Mr. Redgrave
to be quoted directly seems strange, especially if we consider that even among the
ye:.. s of prosperity of the English cotton trade, the year 1860 stands unparalleled,
&u I that, besides, wages were exceptionally high. For this extraordinary demand
for work had to contend with the depopulation of Ireland, with unexampled emigra
tion from the English and Scotch agricultural districts to Australia and America,
with an actual diminution of the population in some of the English agricultural
districts, in consequence partly of an actual breakdown of the vital force of the
labourers, partly of the already effected dispersion of the disposable population
through the dealers in human flesh. Despite all this Mr. Redgrave says: "This
kir 1 of labour, however, would only be sought after when none other could be
procured, for it is a high-priced labour. The ordinary wages of a boy of 13 would
"-- a"i '. 4s. per week, but to lodge, to clothe, to feed, and to provide medical
attendance and proper superintendence for 50 or 100 of these boys, and to set
--Uc some remuneration for them, could not be accomplished for 4s. a-head per
wc:'...T' (Report of the Inspector of Factories for 80th April, 1860, p. 27.) Mr.
Redgrave forgets to tell us how the labourer himself can do all this for his chil
dren out of their 4s. a-week wages, when the manufacturer cannot do it for the
60 <. r 100 children lodged, boarded, superintended all together. To guard against
fal:; conclusions from the text, I ought here to remark that the English cotton
industry, since it was placed under the Factory Act of 1850 with its regulations of
labour-time, &c., must be regarded as the model industry of England. The English
cotton operative is in every respect better off than his continental companion in
misery. "The Prussian factory operative labours at least ten hours per week more
then his English competitor, and if employed at his own loom in his own house,
his labour is not restricted to even those additional hours." ("Rep. of Insp. of
Fact.," Oct. 1853, p. 103.) Redgrave, the Factory Inspector mentioned above, after
the Industrial Exhibition in 1851, travelled on the Continent, especially in France
and Germany, for the purpose of inquiring into the conditions of the factories.
Of the Prussian operative he says: "He receives a remuneration sufficient to pro
cure tl.i simple fare, and to supply the slender comforts to which he has been
accustomed. ... he lives upon his coarse fare, and works hard, wherein bis
position is subordinate to that of the English operative." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact.,"
81st Oct., 1853, p. 85.)

*The overworked "die off with strange rapidity; but the places of those who
perish are instantly filled, and a frequent change of persons makes no alteration
in the scene." ("England and America." London, 1833, vol. I, p. 65. By E, G.
Wakefield.)

296 Capitalist Production.

the intelligent observer with what swiftness and grip the
capitalist mode of production, dating, historically speaking,
only from yesterday, has seized the vital power of the people
by the very root — show how the degeneration of the industrial
population is only retarded by the constant absorption of prim
itive and physically uncorrupted elements from the country —
shows how even the country labourers, in spite of fresh air
and the principle of natural selection, that works so power
fully amongst them, and only permits the survival of the
strongest, are already beginning to die off.1 Capital that has
such good reasons for denying the sufferings of the legions of
workers that surround it, is in practice moved as much and as
little by the sight of the coming degradation and final de
population of the human race, as by the probable fall of the
earth into the sun. In every stock-jobbing swindle every one
knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every
one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after
he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in
safety. Apres moi le deluge! is the watchword of every ca]>-
italist and of every capitalist nation. Hence Capital is reck-
less of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under
cotflpUlsion from society.* To the outcry as to the physical
ancl mental degradation, the premature death, the torture of
overwork, it answers: Ought these to trouble us since they ir-

1 See "Public Health. Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Counci ,
1863." Published in London 1864. This report deals especially with the agricultun 1
labourers. "Sutherland ... is commonly represented as a highly improve!
county . . . but . . . recent inquiry has discovered that even there, ii
districts once famous for fine men and gallant soldiers, the inhabitants have de
generated into a meagre and stunted race. In the healthiest situations, on hill
sides fronting the sea, the faces of their famished children are as pale as the/
could be in the foul atmosphere of a London alley." (W. T. Thornton. "Over
population and its remedy." 1. c., pT 74, 75.) They resemble in fact the SO.OOC
"gallant Highlanders" whom Glasgow pigs together in its wynds and closes, witl
prostitutes and thieves.

1 "But though the health of a population is so important a fact of the national
capital, we are afraid it must be said that the class of employers of labour have not
been the most forward to guard and cherish this treasure. . . . The consider
ation of the health of the operatives was forced upon the millowners. ("Times,"
November 5th, 1861.) "The men of the West Riding became the clothiers of
mankind . . . the health of the workpeople was sacrificed, and the race in a
few generations must have degenerated. But a reaction set in. Lord Shaftes-
bury's Bill limited the hours of children's labour," &c. ("Report of the Registrar-
General," for October, 1861.)

The Working Day. 297

crease our profits ? But looking at things as a whole, all this
does not, indeed, depend on the good or ill will of the in-^s
dividual capitalist. Free competition brings out the inherent/
laws of capitalist production, in the shape of external coercive^ ^ I
laws having power over every individual capitalist.1 /

. The establishment of a normal working day is the result of
centuries ot struggle between capitalist and labourer. The
Tnstory of this struggle shows two opposed tendencies. Cora-
pare, e.g., the English factory legislation of our time with the
English Labour Statutes from the 14th century to well into
the middle of the 18th.2 Whilst the modern Factory Acts
compulsorily shortened the working-day, the earlier statutes
tried to lengthen it by compulsion. Of course the pretensions
of capital in embryo — when, beginning to grow, it secures the
right of absorbing a quantum sufficit of surplus-labour, not
merely by the force of economic relations, but by the help of
the State — appear very modest when put face to face with the
concessions that, growling and struggling, it has to make in its
adult condition. It takes centuries ere the "free" labourer,
thanks to the development of capitalistic production, agrees,
i.e., is compelled by social conditions, to sell the whole of his
active life, his very capacity for work, for the price of the
necessaries of life, his birthright for a mess of pottage. Hence
it is natural that the lengthening of the working day, which

*We, therefore, find, e.g., that in the beginning of 1863, 26 firms owning ex
tensive potteries in Staffordshire, amongst others, Josiah Wedgwood, & Sons' peti
tion in a memorial for "some legislative enactment." Competition with other
capitalists permits them no voluntary limitation of working-time for children, &c.
" Much as we deplore the evils before mentioned, it would not be possible to pre
vent them by any scheme of agreement between the manufacturers. . . . Taking
all these points into consideration, we have come to the conviction that some legis
lative enactment is wanted." ("Children's Employment Comm." Rep. 1., 1863, p.
822.) Most recently a much more striking example offers. The rise in the price
of cotton during a period of feverish activity, had induced the manufacturers in
Blackburn to shorten, by mutual consent, the working-time in their mills during a
certain fixed period. This period terminated about the end of November, 1871.
Meanwhile, the wealthier manufacturers, who combined spinning with weaving, used
the diminution of production resulting from this agreement, to extend their own
business and thus to make great profits at the expense of the small employers. The
latter thereupon turned in their extremity to the operatives, urged them earnestly
to agitate for the 9 hours' system, and promised contributions in money to this end.

1 The Labour Statutes, the like of which were enacted at the same time in France,
the Netherlands, and elsewhere, were first formally repealed in England in 181S,
long after the changes in methods of production had rendered them obsolete.

Capitalist Production.

capital from the middle of the 14th to the end of the 17th
century, tries to impose by State-measures on adult labourers,
approximately coincides with the shortening of the working
day which, in the second half of the 19th century, has here and
there been effected by the State to prevent the coining of
children's blood into capital. That which to-day, e.g., in the
State of Massachusetts, until recently the freest State of the
North-American Republic, has been proclaimed as the statutory
limit of the labour of children under 12, was in England, even
in the middle of the 17th century, the normal working-day of
able-bodied artizans, robust labourers, athletic blacksmiths.1

The first "Statute of Labourers" (23 Edward TIL, 1349)
found its immediate pretext (not its cause, for legislation of
this kind lasts centuries after the pretext for it has disap
peared) in the great plague that decimated the people, so that,
as a Tory writer says, "The difficulty of getting men to work
on reasonable terms (i.e., at a price that left their employers
a reasonable quantity of surplus-labour) grew to such a height
as to be quite intolerable."2 Reasonable wages were, there
fore, fixed by law as well as the limits of the working day.
The latter point, the only one that here interests us, is repeated
in the Statute of 1496 (Henry VIII.). The working day for
all artificers and field labourers from March to September
ought, according to this statute (which, however, could not be
enforced), to last from 5 in the morning to between 7 and 8

1 "No child under 12 years of age shall be employed in any manufacturing estab
lishment more than 10 hours in one day." General Statutes of Massachusetts, 63,
ch. 12. (The various Statutes were passed between 1836 and 1858.) "Labour per
formed during a period of 10 hours on any day in all cotton, woollen, silk, paper,
glass, and flax factories, or in manufactories of iron and brass, shall be considered
a legal day's labour. And be it enacted, that hereafter no minor engaged in any
factory shall be holden or required to work more than 10 hours in any day, or
60 hours in any week; and that hereafter no minor shall be admitted as a worker
under the age of 10 years in any factory within this State." State of New Jersey.
An Act to limit the hours of labour, &c., 61 and 62. (Law of llth March, 1855.)
"No minor who has attained the age of 12 years, and is under the age of 15
years, shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment more than 11 hours
in any one day, nor before 5 o'clock in the morning, nor after 7.30 in the evening."
("Revised Statutes of the State of Rhode Island," &c., ch. 39, § 23, 1st July, 1857.)

2 "Sophisms of Free Trade." 7th Ed. London, 1850, p. 205. 9th Ed., p. 253.
This same Tory, moreover, admits that "Acts of Parliament regulating wages, but
against the labourer and in favour of the master, lasted for the long period of
464 years. Population grew. These laws were then found, and really became, un
necessary and burdensome." (1. c., p. 206.)

The Working Day. 299

in the evening. But the meal times consist of 1 hour for
breakfast, 1J hours for dinner, and ^ an hour for "noon-
meate," i.e., exactly twice as much as under the factory acts
now in force.1 In winter, work was to last from 5 in the
morning until dark, with the same intervals. A statute of
Elizabeth of 1562 leaves the length of the working day for all
labourers "hired for daily or weekly wage'7 untouched, but
aims at limiting the intervals to 2J hours in the summer, or
to 2 in the winter. Dinner is only to last 1 hour, and the
"afternoon-sleep of half an hour" is only allowed between the
middle of May and the middle of August For every hour of
absence Id. is to be subtracted from the wage. In practice,
however, -the conditions were much more favourable to the
labourers than in the statute-book. William Petty, the father
of political economy, and to some extent the founder of Sta
tistics, says in a work that he published in the last third of the
17th century: "Labouring-men (then meaning field-labourers)
work 10 hours per diem, and make 20 meals per week, viz., 3
a day for working days, and 2 on Sundays ; whereby it is plain,
that if they could fast on Fryday nights, and dine in one hour
and a half, whereas they take two, from eleven to one ; thereby
this working 2V more> and spending -£$• less, the above-men
tioned (tax) might be raised."2 Was1 not Dr. Andrew Ure
right in crying down the 12 hours' bill of 1833 as a retrogres
sion to the times of the dark ages? It is true, these regula
tions contained in the statute mentioned by Petty, apply also to
apprentices. But the condition of child-labour, even at the
end of the 17th century, is seen from the following complaint:
"'Tis not their practice (in Germany) as with us in this king-

1 In reference to this statute, J. Wade with truth remarks: "From the statement
above (*. e.t with regard to the statute) it appears that in 1496 the diet was con
sidered equivalent to one third of the income of an artificer and one-half the income
of a labourer, which indicates a greater degree of independence among the working
classes than prevails at present; for the board, both of labourers and artificers,
would now be reckoned at a much higher proportion of their wages." (J. Wade,
"History of the Middle and Working Classes," p. 24, 26, and 577.) The opinion
that this difference is due to the difference in the price-relations between food and
clothing then and now is refuted by the most cursory glance at "Chronicon Pre-
tiosum, &c." By Bishop Fleetwood. 1st Ed., London, 1707; 2d Ed, London, 1745.

*W. Petty, "Political Anatomy of Ireland. Verbum Sapienti," 1762, Ed.
p. 10.

300 Capitalist Production.

dom, to bind an apprentice for seven years; three or four is
their common standard : and the reason is, because they are
educated from their cradle to something of employment, which
renders them the more apt to docile, and consequently the more
capable of attaining to a ripeness and quicker proficiency in
business. Whereas our youth, here in England, being bred to
nothing before they come to be apprentices, make a very slow
progress and require much longer time wherein to reach the
perfection of accomplished artists."1

< Still, during the greater part of the 18th century, up to the
epoch of Modern Industry and machinism, capital in England
had not succeeded in seizing for itself, by the payment of the
weekly value of labour-power, the whole week of the labourer
with the exception, however, of the agricultural labourers.
The fact that they could live for a whole week on the wage of
four days, did not appear to the labourers a sufficient reason
that they should work the other two days for the capitalist.
One party of English economists, in the interest of capital, de
nounces this obstinacy in the most violent manner, another

1 "A Discourse on the necessity of encouraging Mechanick Industry," London,
1689, p. 13. Macaulay, who has falsified English history in the interest of the
Whigs and the bourgeoisie, declares as follows: "The practice of setting children
prematurely to work . . . prevailed in the 17th century to an extent which,
when compared with the extent of the manufacturing system, seems almost incred
ible. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little creature of six years
old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of that time, and among them some
who were considered as eminently benevolent, mention with exultation the fact
that in that single city, boys and girls of very tender age create wealth exceeding
what was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve thousand pounds a year.
The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we
find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new
social evils. . . . That which is new is the intelligence and the humanity which
remedies them." ("History of England," vol. I., p. 419.) Macaulay might have
reported further that "extremely well-disposed" amir du commerce in the 17th
century, narrate with "exultation" how in a poorhouse in Holland a child of four
was employed, and that this example of "vertu mise en pratique" passes muster in
all the humanitarian works, d la Macaulay, to the time of Adam Smith. It is
true that with the substitution of manufacture for handicrafts, traces of the exploi
tation of children begin to appear. This exploitation existed always to a certain
extent among peasants, and was the more developed, the heavier the yoke pressing
on the husbandman. The tendency of capital is there unmistakably; but the facts
themselves are still as isolated as the phenomena of two-headed children. Hence
they were noted "with exultation" as especially worthy of remark and as wonders
by the far-seeing "amir du commerce," and recommended as models for their own
time and for posterity. This same Scotch sycophant and fine talker, Macaulay,
says: "We hear to-day only of retrogression and see only progress." What eyes,
ftad especially what cars!

The Working Day. 301

party defends the labourers. Let us listen, e.g., to the contest
between Postlethwayt whose Dictionary of Trade then had the
same reputation as the kindred works of M'Culloch and
M'Gregor to-day, and the author (already quoted) of the
"Essay on Trade and Commerce."1

Postlethwayt says among other things : "We cannot put an
end to those few observations, without noticing that trite re
mark in the mouth of too many ; that if the industrious poor
can obtain enough to maintain themselves in five days, they
will not work the whole six. Whence they infer the necessity
of even the necessaries of life being made dear by taxes, or any
other means, to compel the working artizan and manufacturer
to labour the whole six days in the week, without ceasing. I
must beg leave to differ in sentiment from those great
politicians, who contend for the perpetual slavery of the work
ing people of this kingdom ; they forget the vulgar adage, all
work and no play. Have not the English boasted of the in
genuity and dexterity of her working artists and manufacturers
which have heretofore given credit and reputation to British
wares in general ? What has this been owing to ? To nothing
more probably than the relaxation of the working people in
their own way. Were they obliged to toil the year round, the
whole six days in the week, in a repetition of the same work,
might it not blunt their ingenuity, and render them stupid in
stead of alert and dexterous ; and might not our workmen lose
their reputation instead of maintaining it by such eternal
slavery ? . . . . And what sort of workmanship could we ex
pect from such hard-driven animals ? . . . . Many of them
will execute as much work in four days as a Frenchman will in

1 Among the accusers of the workpeople, the most angry is the anonymous author
quoted in the text of "An Essay on trade and commerce, containing observations on
Taxation, &c., London, 1770." He had already dealt with this subject in his earlier
work: "Considerations on Taxes." London, 1765. On the same side follows
Polonius Arthur Young, the unutterable statistical prattler. Among the defenders
of the working classes the foremost are: Jacob Vanderlint, in: "Money answers
all things." London, 1734; the Rev. Nathaniel Forster, D.D.; in "An Enquiry into
the Causes of the Present Price of Provisions," London, 1766; Dr. Price, and
especially Postlethwayt, as well in the supplement to his "Universal Dictionary of
Trade and Commerce,", as in his "Great Britain's Commercial Interest explained and
improved." 2nd Edition, 1755. The facts themselves are confirmed by many other
writers of the time, among others by Josiah Tucker.

302 Capitalist Production.

five or six. But if Englishmen are to be eternal drudges, 'tis
to be feared they will degenerate below the Frenchmen. As
our people are famed for bravery in war, do we not say that it
is owing to good English roast beef and pudding in their
bellies, as well as their constitutional spirit of liberty ? And
why may not the superior ingenuity and dexterity of our
artists and manufactures, be owing to that freedom and liberty
to direct themselves in their own way, and I hope we shall
never have them deprived of such privileges and that good
living from whence their ingenuity no less than their courage
may proceed."1 Thereupon the author of the "Essay on Trade
and Commerce" replies: "If the making of every seventh
day an holiday is supposed to be of divine institution, as it
implies the appropriating the other six days to labour" (he
means capital as we shall soon see) "surely it will not be

thought cruel to enforce it That mankind ia

general, are naturally inclined to ease and indolence, we fatally
experience to be true, from the conduct of our manufacturing
populace, who do not labour, upon an average, above four davs

in a week, unless provisions happen to be very dear

Put all the necessaries of the poor under one denomination ;
for instance, call them all wheat, or suppose that .... the
bushel of wheat shall cost five shillings and that he (a manu
facturer) earns a shilling by his labour, he then would ba
obliged to work five days only in a week. If the bushel of
wheat should cost but four shillings, he would be obliged t)
work but four days; but as wages in this kingdom are muei
higher in proportion to the price of necessaries. ... the
manufacturer, who labours four days, has a surplus of money
to live idle with the rest of the week .... I hope [
have said enough to make it appear that the moderate labour
of six days in a week is no slavery. Our labouring people do
this, and to all appearance are the happiest of all our laboui-
ing poor,2 but the Dutch do this in manufactures, and appear
to be a very happy people. The French do so, when holidays

1 Postlethwayt, 1. c., "First Preliminary Discourse," p. 14.

* "An Essay," &c. He himself relates on p. 96 wherein the "happiness" of tie
English agricultural labour already in 1770 consisted. "Their powers are alwaj*
upon the stretch, they cannot live cheaper than they do, nor work harder."

The Working Day. 303

do not intervene.1 But our populace have adopted a notion,
that as Englishmen they enjoy a birthright privilege of being
more free and independent than in any country in Europe.
Now this idea, as far as it may affect the bravery of our troops,
may be of some use ; but the less the manufacturing poor have
of it, certainly the better for themselves and for the State.
The labouring people should never think themselves independ
ent of their superiors It is extremely dangerous to

encourage mobs in a commercial state like ours, where, per
haps, seven parts out of eight of the whole, are people with
little or no property. The cure will not be perfect, till our
manufacturing poor are contented to labour six days for the
same sum which they now earn in four days."2 To this end,
and for "extirpating idleness, debauchery and excess," promot
ing a spirit of industry, "lowering the price of labour in our
manufactories, and easing the lands of the heavy burden of
poor's rates," our "faithful Eckart" of capital proposes this
approved device : to shut up such labourers as become depend
ent on public support, in a word, paupers, in "an ideal work
house" Such ideal workhouse must be made a "House of
Terror," and not an asylum for the poor, "where they are to
be plentifully fed, warmly and decently clothed, and where
they do but little work."3 In this "House of Terror," this
"ideal workhouse, the poor shall work 14 hours in a day,
allowing proper time for meals, in such manner that there shall
remain 12 hours of neat-labour."4

Twelve working hours daily in the Ideal Workhouse, in the
"House of Terror" of 1770'! 63 years later, in 1833, when the
English Parliament reduced the working day for children of
13 to 18, in four branches of industry to 12 full hours, the
judgment day of English Industry had dawned! In 1852,

1 Protestantism, by changing almost all the traditional holidays into workdays,
plays an important part in the genesis of capital.

»"An Essay," &c., p. 16, 41, 96, 87, 55, 67, 69.— Jacob Vanderlint, as early aa
1734, declared that the secret of the out-cry of the capitalists as to the laziness of
the working people was simply that they claimed for the same wages 6 days' labour
instead of 4.

•1. c. p. 242.

4 1. c, "The French," he says, "laugh at our enthusiastic ideas of liberty." L c.
p. 78.

304 Capitalist Production.

•when Louis Bonaparte sought to secure his position with the
bourgeoisie by tampering with the legal working day, the
French people cried out with one voice "the law that limits
the working day to 12 hours is the one good that has remained
to us of the legislation of the Republic I"1. At Zurich the wrork
of children over 10, is limited to 12 hours; in Aargau in 1862,
the work of children between 13 and 16, was reduced from
12^ to 12 hours; in Austria in 1860, for children between 14
and 16, the same reduction was made.2 "What a progress,"
since 1770! Macaulay would shout with exultation!

The "House of Terror" for paupers of which the capitalistic
soul of 1770 only dreamed, was realized a few years later in
the shape of a gigantic "Workhouse" for the industrial worker
himself. It is called the Factory. And the ideal this time
fades before the reality.

SECTION 6. THE STRUGGLE FOB THE NORMAL WORDING DAY.

COMPULSORY LIMITATION BY LAW OF THE WORKING TIME.
THE ENGLISH FACTORY ACTS, 1833 TO 1864.

After capital had taken centuries in extending the working-
day to its normal maximum limit, and then beyond this to the
limit of the natural day of 12 hours,3 there followed on the
birth of machinism and modern industry in the last third of

1 "They especially objected to work beyond the 12 hours per day, because the law
which fixed those hours, is the only good which remains to them of the legislation
of the Republic." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact.," 31st October, 1856, p. 80.) The
French Twelve hours' Bill of September 5th, 1850, a bourgeois edition of the decree
of the Provisional Government of March 2nd, 1848, holds in all workshops without
exceptions. Before this law the working day in France was without definite limit.
It lasted in the factories 14, 15, or more hours. See "Des classes ouvrieres en
France pendant 1'annee 1848. Par M. Blanqui." M. Blanqui the economist, not the
Revolutionist, had been entrusted by the Government with an inquiry into the con
dition of the working class.

1 Belgium is the model bourgeois state in regard to the regulation of the working
day. Lord Howard of Welden, English Plenipotentiary at Brussels, reports to the
Foreign Office, May 12th, 1862 : "M. Rogier, the minister, informed me that
children's labour is limited neither by a general law nor by any local regulations;
that the Government, during the last three years, intended in every session to pro
pose a bill on the subject, but always found an insuperable obstacle in the jealous
opposition to any legislation in contradiction with the principle of perfect freedom of
labour."

1 "It is certainly much to be regretted that any class of persons should toil 18
hours a day, which, including the time for their meals and for going to and re
turning from their work, amounts, in fact, to 14 of the 24 hours. . . . Without

The Working Day. 305

the 18th century, a violent encroachment like that of an
avalanche in its intensity and extent. All bounds of morals
and nature, age and sex, day and night, were broken down.
Even the ideas of day and night, of rustic simplicity in the old
statutes, became so confused that an English judge, as late as
1860, needed a quite Talmudic sagacity to explain "judicially"
what was day and what was night.1 Capital celebrated its
orgies.

As soon as the working class, stunned at first by the noise
and turmoil of the new system of production, recovered, in
some measure, its senses, its resistance began, and first in the
native land of machinism, in England. For 30 years, how
ever, the concessions conquered by the workpeople were purely
nominal. Parliament passed 5 Labour Laws between 1802
and 1833, but was shrewd enough not to vote a penny for their
carrying out, for the requisite officials, &c.2

They remained a dead letter. "The fact is, that prior to the
Act of 1833, young persons and children were worked all night,
all day, or both ad libitum/'3

A normal working day for modern industry only dates from
the Factory Act of 1833, which included cotton, wool, flax, and
silk factories. Nothing is more characteristic of the spirit of

entering into the question of health, no one will hesitate, I think, to admit that, in a
moral point of view, so entire an absorption of the time of the working classes,
without intermission, from the early age of 13, and in trades not subject to restric
tion, much younger, must be extremely prejudicial, and is an evil greatly to be de
plored .... For the sake, therefore, of public morals, of bringing up an orderly
population, and of giving the great body of the people a reasonable enjoyment of
life, it is much to be desired that in all trades some portion of every working day
should be reserved for rest and leisure." (Leonard Homer in Reports of Insp. of
Fact, Dec., 1841.)

1 See "Judgment of Mr. J. H. Otwey, Belfast. Hilary Sessions, County Antrim,
1860."

* It is very characteristic of the regime of Louis Philippe, the bourgeois king, that
the one Factory Act passed during his reign, that of March 22nd, 1841, was never
put in force. And this law only dealt with child-labour. It fixed 8 hours a day for
children between 8 and 12, 12 hours for children between 12 and 16, &c., with many
exceptions which allow night-work even for children 8 years old. The supervision
and enforcement of this law are, in a country where every mouse is under police
administration, left to the good-will of the amis du commerce. Only since 1S53,
in one single department — the Departement du Nord — has a paid government in
spector been appointed. Not less characteristic of the development of French so
ciety, generally, is the fact, that Louis Philippe's law stood solitary among the all*
embracing mass of French laws, till the Revolution of 1848.

• "Report of Injp. of Fact.," 30th April, 1860, p. 50.

306 Capitalist Production.

capital than the history of the English Factory Acts from 1833
to 1864.

The Act of 1833 declares the ordinary factory working day
to be from half-past five in the morning to half-past eight in
the evening, and within these limits, a period of 15 hours, it is
lawful to employ young persons (i.e., persons between 13 and
18 years of age), at any time of the day, provided no one in
dividual young person should work more than 12 hours in any
one day, except in certain cases especially provided for. The
6th section of the Act provided : "That there shall be allowed
in the course of every day not less than one and a half hours for
meals to every such person restricted as hereinbefore pro
vided." The employment of children under 9, with excep
tions mentioned later, was forbidden; the work of children
between 9 and 13 was limited to 8 hours a day, night work,
i.e., according to this Act, work between 8.30 p.m. and 5.30
a.m., was forbidden for all persons between 9 and 18.

The law-makers were so far from wishing to trench on the
freedom of capital to exploit adult labour-power, or, as they
called it, "the freedom of labour," that they created a special
system in order to prevent the Factory Acts from having a
consequence so outrageous.

"The great evil of the factory system as at present con
ducted," says the first report of the Central Board of the Corr-
mission of June 28th, 1833, "has appeared to us to be that it
entails the necessity of continuing the labour of children to
the utmost length of that of the adults. The only remedy for
this evil, short of the limitation of the labour of adults, which
would, in our opinion, create an evil greater than that which is
sought to be remedied, appears to be the plan of working
double sets of children." . . . Under the name of System
of Relays, this "plan" was therefore carried out, so that, e.g.,
from 5.30 a.m. until 1.30 in the afternoon, one set of children
between 9 and 13, and from 1.30 p.m. to 8.30 in the evening
another set were "put to," &c.

In order to reward the manufacturers for having, in tho
most barefaced way, ignored all the Acts as to children's labou *
passed during the last twenty-two years, the bill was yet

The Working Day. 307

further gilded for them. Parliament decreed that after March
1st, 1834, no child under 11, after March 1st, 1835, no child
under 12, and after March 1st, 1836, no child under 13, was to
work more than eight hours in a factory. This "liberalism/'
so full consideration for "capital," was the more noteworthy
as, Dr. Farre, Sir A. Carlisle, Sir B. Brodie, Sir C. Bell, Mr.
Guthrie, &c., in a word, the most distinguished physicians and
surgeons in London, had declared in their evidence before the
House of Commons, that there was danger in delay. Dr.
Farre expressed himself still more coarsely. "Legislation is
necessary for the prevention of death, in any form in which it
can be prematurely inflicted, and certainly this (i.e., the fac
tory method) must be viewed as a most cruel mode of in
flicting it."

That same "reformed" Parliament, which in its delicate
consideration for the manufacturers, condemned children
under 13, for years to come, to 72 hours of work per week in
the Factory Hell, on the other hand, in the Emancipation Act,
which also administered freedom drop by drop, forbade the
planters, from the outset, to work any negro slave more than
45 hours a week.

But in no wise conciliated capital now began a noisy agita
tion that went on for several years. It turned chiefly on the
age of those who, under the name of children, were limited to
8 hours work, and were subject to a certain amount of com
pulsory education. According to capitalistic anthropology, the
age of childhood ended at 10, or at the outside, at 11. The
more nearly the time approached for the coming into full force
of the Factory Act, the fatal year 1836, the more wildly raged
the mob of manufacturers. They managed, in fact, to in
timidate the government to such an extent that in 1835 it pro
posed to lower the limit of the age of childhood from 13 to 12.
In the meantime the pressure from without grew more threat
ening. Courage failed the House of Commons. It refused to
throw children of 13 under the Juggernaut Car of capital for
more than 8 hours a day, and the Act of 1833 came into full
operation. It remained unaltered until June, 1844.

In the ten years during which it regulated factory work,

308 Capitalist Production.

first in part, and then entirely, the official reports of the factory-
inspectors teem with complaints as to the impossibility of
putting the Act into force. As the law of 1833 left it optional
with the lords of capital during the 15 hours, from 5.30 a.m.
to 8.30 p.m., to make every "young person," and "every child"
begin, break off, resume, or end his 12 or 8 hours at any
moment they liked, and also permitted them to assign to differ
ent persons different times for meals, these gentlemen soon
discovered a new "system of relays," by which the labour-
horses were not changed at fixed stations, but were constantly
re-harnessed at changing stations. We do not pause longer on
the beauty of this system, as we shall have to return to it later.
But this much is clear at the first glance : that this system
annulled the whole Factory Act, not only in the spirit, but in
the letter. How could factory inspectors, with this complex
book-keeping in respect to each individual child or young
person, enforce the legally determined work time and the
granting of the legal meal-times ? In a great many of the
factories, the old brutalities soon blossomed out again un
punished. In an interview with the Home Secretary (1844),
the factory inspectors demonstrated the impossibility of any
control under the newly invented relay system.1 In the mean
time, however, circumstances had greatly changed. The fac
tory hands, especially since 1838, had made the Ten Hours'
Bill their economical, as they had made the Charter their
political, election-cry. Some of the manufacturers, even, who
had managed their factories in conformity with the Act of
1833, overwhelmed Parliament with memorials on the im
moral competition of their false brethren whom greater impu
dence, or more fortunate local circumstances, enabled to break
the law. Moreover, however much the individual manufac
turer might give the rein to his old lust for gain, the spokes
men and political leaders of the manufacturing class ordered
a change of front and of speech towards the workpeople. They
had entered upon the contest for the repeal of the Corn Laws,
and needed the workers to help them to victory. They prom
ised, therefore, not only a double-sized loaf of bread, but the

x"R«pt. of Intp. of Fact.," Slit October, 1849, p. 6.

The Working Day. 309

enactment of the Ten Hours' Bill in the Free Trade millen-
ium.1 Thus they still less dared to oppose a measure intended
only to make the law of 1833 a reality. Threatened in their
holiest interest, the rent of land, the Tories thundered with
philanthropic indignation against the "nefarious practices"2
of their foes.

•* This was the origin of the additional Factory Act of June
7th, 1844. It came into effect on September 10th, 1844. It
places under protection a new category of workers, viz., the
women over 18. They were placed in every respect on the
same footing as the young persons, their work time limited to
twelve hours, their night-labour forbidden, &c. For the first
time, legislation saw itself compelled to control directly and
officially the labour of adults. In the Factory Report of 1844-
1845, it is said with irony : "No instances have come to my
knowledge of adult women having expressed any regret at
their rights being thus far interfered with."3 The working
time of children under 13 was reduced to 6£, and in certain
circumstances to 7 hours a-day.4

To get rid of the abuses of the "spurious relay-system," the
law established besides others the following important regula
tions : — "That the hours of work of children and young persons
shall be reckoned from the time when any child or young
person shall begin to work in the morning." So that if A,
e.g., begins work at 8 in the morning, and B at 10, B's work
day must nevertheless end at the same hour as A's. "The
time shall be regulated by a public clock," for example, the
nearest railway clock, by which the factory clock is to be set.
The occupier is to hang up a "legible" printed notice stating
the hours for the beginning and ending of work and the times
allowed for the several meals. Children beginning work be
fore 12 noon may not be again employed after 1 p.m. The
afternoon shift must therefore consist of other children than

*"Rept. of Insp. of Fact," 81st October, 1848, p. 98.

1 Leonard Horner uses the expression "nefarious practices" in his official reports.
("Report of Insp. of Fact.," 31st October, 1859, p. 7.)

»"Rept.," &c., 30th Sept., 1844, p. 16.

* The Act allows children to be employed for 10 hours if they do not work day
•fter day, but only on alternate days. In the main this clause remained inoperative.

3io Capitalist Production.

those employed in the morning. Of the hour and a half for
meal times, "one hour thereof at the least shall be given before
three of the clock in the afternoon. . . . and at the same
period of the day. No child or young person shall be em
ployed more than five hours before 1 p.m. without an interval
for meal time of at least 30 minutes. No child or young per
son [or female] shall be employed or allowed to remain in any
room in which any manufacturing process is then [i.e., at meal
times] carried on/7 &c.

It ha.: been seen that lliccc minutiae, which, with military
uniformity, regulate by stroke of the clock the times, limits,
pauses of the work, were not at all the products of Parlia
mentary fancy. They developed gradually out of circum
stances as natural laws of the modern mode of production.
Their formulation, official recognition, and proclamation by the
State, were the result of a long struggle of classes. One of
tLeir first consequences was that in practice the working day
of the adult males in factories became subject to the came
limitations, since in most processes of production the co-opera
tion of the children, young persons, and women 13 indis
pensable. On the whole, therefore, during the pericJ from
1844 to 1847, the 12 hours' working day became r:neral and
uniform in all branches of industry under the Factory Act

The manufacturers, however, did not allow this "progress"
without a compensating "retrogression." At their instigation
the House of Commons reduced the minimum age for exploit
able children from 9 to 8, in order to assure that additional
supply of factory children which is due to capitalists, accord
ing to divine and human law.1

The years 1846-47 are epoch-making in the economic history
of England. The Repeal of the Corn Laws, and of the duties
on cotton and other raw material ; free trade proclaimed as the
guiding star of legislation ; in a word, the arrival of the mil-
lenium. On the other hand, in the same years, the Chartist
movement and the 10 hours' agitation reached their highest

1 "As a reduction in their hours of work would cause a larger number (of chil-
drtn) to be employed, it was thought that the additional supply of children from 8
to 0 years of age would meet the increased demand" (1. c., p. 13.)

The Working Day. 311

point. They found allies in the Tories panting for revenge.
Despite the fanatical opposition of the army of perjured Free
traders, with Bright and Cobden at their head, the Ten Hours'
Bill, struggled for so long, went through Parliament.

The new Factory Act of June 8th? 1847, enacted that on
July 1st, 1847, there should be a preliminary shortening of the
working day for "young persons" (from 13 to 18), and all
females to 11 hours, but that on May 1st, 1848, there should
be a definite limitation of the working day to 10 hours. In
other respects, the Act only amended and completed the Acts
of 1833 and 1844.

Capital now entered upon a preliminary campaign in order
to hinder the Act from coming into full force on May 1st,
1848. And the workers themselves, under the pretence that
they had been taught by experience, were to help in the destruc
tion of their own work. The moment was cleverly chosen.
"It must be remembered, too, that there has been more than
two years of great suffering (in consequence of the terrible
crisis of 1846-47) among the factory operatives, from many
mills having worked short time, and many being altogether
closed. A considerable number of the operatives must there
fore be in very narrow circumstances ; many, it is to be feared,
in debt ; so that it might fairly have been presumed that at the
present time they would prefer working the longer time, in
order to make up for past losses, perhaps to pay off debts, or
get their furniture out of pawn, or replace that sold, or to get
a new supply of clothes for themselves and their families."1

The manufacturers tried to aggravate the natural effect of
these circumstances by a general reduction of wages by 10%.
This was done, so to say, to celebrate the inauguration of the
new Free Trade era. Then followed a further reduction of
8$% as soon as the working day was shortened to 11, and a
reduction of double that amount as soon as it was finally
shortened to 10 hours. Wherever, therefore, circumstances
allowed it, a reduction of wages of at least 25% took place.2

1 "Rep. of Insp. of Fact.," 81st Oct, 1848, p. 16.

1 "I found that men who had been getting 10s. a week, had had Is. taken off for
a reduction in the rate of 10 per cent, and Is. 6d. off the remaining 9s. for the re-

312 Capitalist Production.

Under such favourably prepared conditions the agitation
among the factory workers for the repeal of the Act of 1847
was begun. Neither lies, bribery, nor threats were spared in
this attempt. But all was in vain. Concerning the half-
dozen petitions in which workpeople were made to complain of
"their oppression by the Act," the petitioners themselves de
clared under oral examination, that their signatures had been
extorted from them. "They felt themselves oppressed, but not
exactly by the Factory Act."1 But if the manufacturers did
not succeed in making the workpeople speak as they wished,
they themselves shrieked all the louder in press and Parliament
in the name of the workpeople. They denounced the Factory
Inspectors as a kind of revolutionary commissioners like thoso
of the French National Convention ruthlessly sacrificing tho
unhappy factory workers to their humanitarian crotchet. Thin
manoeuvre also failed. Factory Inspector Leonard Homer
conducted in his own person, and through his sub-inspectors,
many examinations of witnesses in the factories of Lancashire.
About 70% of the workpeople examined declared in favour
of 10 hours, a much smaller percentage in favour of 11, and ar
altogether insignificant minority for the old 12 hours.2

Another "friendly" dodge was to make the adult males
work 12 to 15 hours, and then to blazon abroad this fact as
the best proof of what the proletariat desired in its heart of
hearts. But the "ruthless" Factory Inspector Leonard Homer
was again to the fore. The majority of the "over-timers"
declared: "They would much prefer working ten hours for
less wages, but that they had no choice; that so many were
out of employment (so many spinners getting very low wages
by having to work as piecers, being unable to do better), that
if they refused to work the longer time, others would im-

duction in time, together 2s. 6d., and notwithstanding this, many of them said they
would rather work 10 hours." 1. c.

1 " 'Though I signed it [the petition], I said at the time I was putting my hand to a
wrong thing.' 'Then why did you put your hand to it?' 'Because I should have
been turned off if I had refused.' Whence it would appear that this petitioner felt
himself 'oppressed,' but not exactly by the Factory Act." 1. c. p. 102.

1 1. c. p. 17, 1. c. In Mr. Horner's district 10,270 adult male labourers were thus
examined in 101 factories. Their evidence is to be found in the appendix to the
Factory Reports for the half-year ending October 1848. These examinations furnish
valuable material in other connexions also.

The Working Day. 313

mediately get their places, so that it was a question with them
of agreeing to work the long time, or of being thrown out of
employment altogether."1

-The preliminary campaign of capital thus came to grief, and
the Ten Hours' Act came into force May 1st, 1848. But mean
while the fiasco of the Chartist party whose leaders were im
prisoned, and whose organisation was dismembered, had shaken
the confidence of the English working class in its own strength.
Soon after this the June insurrections in Paris and its bloody
suppression united, in England as on the Continent, all frac
tions of the ruling classes, landlords and capitalists, stock-
exchange wolves and shop-keepers. Protectionists and Free
traders, government and opposition, priests and free-thinkers,
young whores and old nuns, under the common cry for the sal
vation of Property, Religion, the Family and Society. The
working class was everywhere proclaimed, placed under a ban,
under a virtual law of suspects. The manufacturers had no
need any longer to restrain themselves. They broke out in
open revolt not only against the Ten Hours' Act, but against
the whole of the legislation that since 1833 had aimed at re
stricting in some measure the "free" exploitation of labour-
power. It was a pro-slavery rebellion in miniature, carried on
for over two years with a cynical recklessness, a terrorist
energy all the cheaper because the rebel capitalist risked
nothing except the skin of his "hands."

To understand that which follows we must remember that
the Factory Acts of 1833, 1844, and 1847 were all three in
force so far as the one did not amend the other: that not one
of these limited the working day of tho male worker over 18,
and that since 1833 the 15 hours from 5.80 a.m. to 8.30 p.m.
had remained the legal "day," within the limits of which
at first the 12; and later tl.e 10 hours' labour of young persons
and women had to be performed under the prescribed condi
tions.

The manufacturers began by here and there discharging a

1 1. c. See the evidence collected by Leonard Homer himself, Nos. 69, 70, 71, 72,
92, 93, and that collected by Sub-Inspector A., Nos. 51, 62, 68, 69, 62, 70, of the
Appendix. One manufacturer, too, tells the plain truth. See No. 14, and No.
266, 1. c.

314 Capitalist Production.

part of, in many cases half of, the young persons and women
employed by them, and then, for the adult males, restoring
the almost obsolete night-work. The Ten Hours' Act, they
cried, leaves no other alternative,1

Their second step dealt with the legal pauses for meals,
Let us hear the Factory Inspectors. "Since the restriction of
the hours of work to ten; the factory occupiers maintain,
although they have not yet practically gone the whole length,
that supposing the hours of work to be from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.,
they fulfil the provisions of the statutes by allowing an hour
before 9 a.m. and half-an-hour after 7 p.m. [for meals]. In
some cases they now allow an hour, or half an hour for dinner,
insisting at the same time, that they are not bound to allow
any part of the hour and a half in the course of the factory
working-day."2 The manufacturers maintained therefore that
the scrupulously strict provisions of the Acts of 1844 with
regard to meal times only gave the operatives permission to eat
and drink before coming into, and after leaving the factory —
i.e., at home. And why should not the workpeople eat their
dinner before 9 in the morning? The crown lawyers, how
ever, decided that the prescribed meal times "must be in the
interval during the working hours, and that it will not be
lawful to work for 10 hours continuously, from 9 a.m. to 7
p.m., without any interval/73

After these pleasant demonstrations, Capital preluded its
revolt by a step which agreed with the letter of the law of
1844, and was therefore legal.

The Act of 1844 certainly prohibited the employment after

1 p.m. of such children, from 8 to 13, as had been employed
before noon. But it did not regulate in any way the 6^
hours' work of the children whose work-time began at 12 mid
day or later. Children of 8 might, if they began work at noon,
be employed from 12 to 1, 1 hour ; from 2 to 4 in the afternoon,

2 hours ; from 5 to 8 :30 in the evening, 3£ hours ; in all, the
legal 6^ hours. Or better still. In order to make their work

1 Reports, &c., for 81st October, 1848, p. 183, 184.
* Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1848, p. 47.
•Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1848, p. 180.

The Working Day. 315

coincide with that of the adult male labourers up to 8.30 p.m.,
the manufacturers only had to give them no work till 2 in the
afternoon; they could then keep them in the factory without
intermission till 8.30 in the evening. "And it is now expressly
admitted that the practice exists in England from the desire
of mill-owners to have their machinery at work for more than
10 hours a-day, to keep the children at work with male adults
after all the young persons and women have left, and until
8.30 p.m., if the factory-owners choose."1 Workmen and
factory inspectors protested on hygienic and moral grounds, but
Capital answered:

"My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,
The penalty and forfeit of nay bond."

In fact, according to statistics laid before the House of Com
mons on July 26th, 1850, in spite of all protests, on July 15th,
1850, 3,742 children were subjected to this "practice" in 257
factories.2 Still this was not enough. The lynx eye of
Capital discovered that the Act of 1844 did not allow 5 hours'
work before mid-day without a pause of at least 30 minutes for
refreshment, but prescribed nothing of the kind for work after
mid-day. Therefore, it claimed and obtained the enjoyment
not only of making children of 8 drudge without intermission
from 2 to 8.30 p.m., but also of making them hunger during
that time.

"Ay, his heart,

So says the bond." »

•-This Shylock-clinging to the letter of the law of 1844, so far
as it regulated children's labour, was but to lead up to an open

1 Reports, &c., 1 c., p. 142.

3 Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1850, pp. 5, 6.

8 The nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its undeveloped
form. In the code which the influence of the slave-owners, shortly before the out
break of the American civil war, imposed on the territory of New Mexico, it is said
that the labourer, in as much as the capitalist has bought his labour-power, "is his
(the capitalist's) money." The same view was current among the Roman patricians.
The money they had advanced to the plebeian debtor had been transformed via the
means of subsistence into the flesh and blood of the debtor. This "flesh and blood"
were, therefore, "their money." Hence, the Shylock-law of the Ten Fables.
Linguet's hypothesis that the patrician creditors from time to time prepared, beyond
the Tiber, banquets of debtors' flesh, may remain as undecided as that of Daum«r
on the Christian Eucharist.

gi6 Capitalist Production.

revolt against the same law^ so far as it regulated the labour of
"young persons and women." It will be remembered that the
abolition of the "false relay system" was the chief aim and
object of that law. The masters began their revolt with the
simple declaration that the sections of the Act of 1844 which
prohibited the ad libitum use of young persons and women in
such short fractions of the day of 15 hours as the employer
chose, were "comparatively harmless" so long as the work-
time was fixed at 12 hours. But under the Ten Hours' Ac",
they were a "grievous hardship."1 They informed the in
spectors in the coolest manner that they should place them
selves above the letter of the law, and re-introduce the old
system on their own account2 They were acting in the inter
ests of the ill-advised operatives themselves, "in order to be
able to pay them higher wages." "This was the only possible
plan by which to maintain, under the Ten Hours' Act, the in
dustrial supremacy of Great Britain." "Perhaps it may be a
little difficult to detect irregularities under the relay system;
but what of that ? Is the great manufacturing interest of this
country to be treated as a secondary matter in order to save
same little trouble to Inspectors and Sub-Inspectors of Fac
tories ?"3

All these shifts naturally were of no avail. The Factory
Inspectors appealed to the Law Courts. But soon such a cloud
of dust in the way of petitions from the masters overwhelmed
the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, that in a circular of
August 5th, 1848, he recommends the inspectors not "to lay
informations against mill-owners for a breach of the letter of
the Act, or for employment of young persons by relays in cases
in which there is no reason to believe that such young persons
have been actually employed for a longer period than that
sanctioned by law." Hereupon, Factory Inspector J. Stuart
allowed the so-called relay system during the 15 hours of the
factory day throughout Scotland, where it soon flourished again
as of old. The English Factory Inspectors, on the other hand,

1 Reports, &c., for SOth April, 1848, p. 28.

'Thus, among others, Philanthropist Ashworth to Leonard Homer, in a disgusting
Quaker letter. (Reports, &c., April, 1849, p. 4.)
•L c-, p. 140.

The Working Day. 317

declared that the Home Secretary had no power dictatorially
to suspend the law, and continued their legal proceedings
against the pro-slavery rebellion.

/But what was the good of summoning the capitalists when
the Courts, in this case the country magistrates — Cobbett's
"Great Unpaid" — acquitted them? In these tribunals, the
masters sat in judgment on themselves. An example. One
Eskrigge, cotton-spinner, of the firm of Kershaw, Leese, &
Co., had laid before the Factory Inspector of his district the
scheme of a relay system intended for his mill. Receiving a
refusal, he at first kept quiet. A few months later, an in
dividual named Robinson^ also a cotton-spinner, and if not his
Man Friday, at all events related to Eskrigge, appeared before
the borough magistrates of Stockport on a charge of introduc
ing the identical plan of relays invented by Eskrigge. Four
Justices sat, among them three cotton-spinners, at their head
this same inevitable Eskrigge. Eskrigge acquitted Robinson,
and now was of opinion that what was right for Robinson was
fair for Eskrigge. Supported by his own legal decision, he in
troduced the system at once into his own factory.1 Of course,
the composition of this tribunal was in itself a violation of the
law.2 These judicial farces, exclaims Inspector Howell,
urgently call for a remedy — either that the law should be so
altered as to be made to conform to these decisions, or that it
should be administered by a less fallible tribunal, whose de
cisions would conform to the law. . . . when these cases are
brought forward. I long for a stipendiary magistrate."3

The Crown lawyers declared the masters' interpretation of
the Act of 1848 absurd. But the Saviours of Society would
not allow themselves to be turned from their purpose. Leonard
Homer reports, "Having endeavoured to enforce the Act . . .
by ten prosecutions in seven magisterial divisions, and having
been supported by the magistrates in one case only. ... I

'Reports, 4c., for 80th April, 1849, pp. 21, 22. Cf. like examples ibid. pp. 4, 5.

•By I. and II. Will. IV., ch. 24, s. 10, known as Sir John Hobhouse's Factory
Act, It was forbidden to any owner of a cotton-spinning or weaving mill, or the
father, son, or brother of such owner, to act »s Justice of the Peace in any in
quiries that concerned the Factory Act

.1 c.

318 Capitalist Production.

considered it useless to prosecute-^niora for this evasion of the
law. That part of the Act o^ 1884\vhich was framed for
securing uniformity in the houT^_^f^work, ... is thus no
longer in force in my district (Lancashire). Neither have the
sub-inspectors or myself any means of satisfying ourselves,
when we inspect a mill working by shifts, that the young per
sons and women are not working more than 10 hours a-day.
. . . In a return of the 30th April, ... of mill-owners work
ing by shifts, the number amounts to 114, and has been for
some time rapidly increasing. In general, the time of work
ing the mill is extended to 134 hours, from 6 a.m. to 7^ p.m.,
... in some instances it amounts to 15 hours, from 5£ a.m.
to 8^ p. m."1 Already, in December, 1848, Leonard Homer
had a list of 65 manufacturers and 29 overlookers who unani
mously declared that no system of supervision could, under thn
relay system, prevent enormous overwork.2 Now, the same
children and young persons were shifted from the spinning-
room to the weaving-room, now, during 15 hours, from ono
factory to another.3 How was it possible to control a system
which, "under the guise of relays, is some one of the many
plans for shuffling 'the hands' about in endless variety, anc
shifting the hours of work and of rest for different individuals
throughout the day, so that you may never have one complete
set of hands working together in the same room at the same
time."4

/ But altogether independently of actual overwork, this so-
called relay-system was an offspring of capitalistic fantasy
such as Fourier, in his humorous sketches of "Courtes
Seances," has never surpassed, except that the "attraction of
labour" was changed into the attraction of capital. Look, for
example, at those schemes of the masters which the "respect
able" press praised as models of "what a reasonable degree of
care and method can accomplish." The personnel of the work
people was sometimes divided into from 12 to 14 categories,
which themselves constantly changed and rechanged their con-

1 Reports, &a, for 30th April, 1849, p. ft.

•Reports, &c,, for 31st October, 1840, p. ft.

•Reports, &c-, for SOtli April, 1849, p. fl.

•Reports, &c* for 1st October, 1848, p. »5.

The Working Day. 319

rfituent parts. During the 15 hours of the factory day, capital
dragged in the labourer now for 30 minutes, now for an hour,
and then pushed him out again, to drag him into the factory
and to thrust him out afresh, hounding him hither and thither,
in scattered shreds of time, without ever losing hold of him
until the full 10 hours' work was done. As on the stage, the
same persons had to appear in turns in the different scenes
of the different acts. But as an actor during the whole course
of the play belongs to the stage, so the operatives, during 15
hours, belonged to the factory, without reckoning the time
for going and coming. Thus the hours of rest were turned
into hours of enforced idleness, which drove the youths to
the pot-house, and the girls to the brothel. At every new
trick that the capitalist, from day to day, hit upon for keep
ing his machinery going 12 or 15 hours without increasing
the number of his hands, the worker had to swallow his meals
now in this fragment of time, now in that. At the time of the
10 hours' agitation, the masters cried out that the working mob
petitioned in the hope of obtaining 12 hours' wages for 10
hours' work. Now they reversed the medal. They paid 10
hours' wages for 12 or 15 hours' lordship over labour-power.1
This was the gist of the matter, this the masters' interpretation
of the 10 hours' law! These were the same unctuous free
traders, perspiring with the love of humanity, who for full 10
years, during the Anti-Corn Law agitation, had preached to
the operatives, by a reckoning of pounds, shillings and pence,
that with free importation of corn, and with the means pos
sessed by English industry, 10 hours' labour would be quite
enough to enrich the capitalist.2 This revolt of capital, after
two years, was at last crowned with victory by a decision of
one of the four highest Courts of Justice in England, the
Court of Exchequer, which in a case brought before it on
February 8th, 1850, decided that the manufacturers were

1 Sec Reports, &c., for 80th April, 1849, p, 6, and the detailed explanation of the
"shifting system," by Factory Inspectors HoweJl and Saunders, in "Reports, &c.t for
81st October, 1848." See also the petition to the Queen from the clergy of Asntou
«nd vicinity, in the spring of 1849, against the "shift system.**

'Cf. for example, "The Factory Question aad the Ten Hours' BilL" By R. H.
Ore* 1*87.

320 Capitalist Production.

certainly acting against the sense of the Act of 1844, but that
this Act itself contained certain words that rendered it mean
ingless. "By this decision, the Ten Hours' Act was abol
ished."1 A crowd of masters, who until then had been afraid
of using the relay-system for young persons and women, now
took it up heart and soul.2

But on this apparently decisive victory of capital, followed
at once a revulsion. The workpeople had hitherto offered a
passive, although inflexible and unremitting resistance. They
now protested in Lancashire and Yorkshire in threatening
meetings. The pretended Ten Hours' Act, was thus simple
humbug, parliamentary cheating, had never existed! The
Factory Inspectors urgently warned the Government that the
antagonism of classes had arrived at an incredible tension.
Some of the masters themselves murmured: "On account of
the contradictory decisions of the magistrates, a condition of
things altogether abnormal and anarchial obtains. One lav/
holds in Yorkshire, another in Lancashire; one law in ono
parish of Lancashire, another in its immediate neighborhood.
The manufacturer in large towns could evade the law, tho
manufacturer in country districts could not find the people
necessary for the relay-system, still less for the shifting oj'
hands from one factory to another," &c. And the first birth
right of capital is equal exploitation of labour-power by all
capitalists.

je Under these circumstances a compromise between masters
and men was effected that received the seal of Parliament in
the additional Factory Act of August 5th, 1850. The work
ing day for "young persons and women," was raised from 10
to 10£ hours for the first five days of the week, and was
shortened to 7J on the Saturday. The work was to go on be
tween 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.,8 with pauses of not less than 1£ hours
for meal-times, these meal-times to be allowed at one and the

1 F. Engels: "The English Ten Hours' Bill." (In the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
Politisch-cekonomische Revue." Edited by K. Marx. April number, 1850, p. 13.)
The same "high" Court of Justice discovered, during the American Civil War, »
verbal ambiguity which exactly reversed the meaning of the law against the arming
of pirate ships.

*Rep., &c., for 30th April, 1850.

• IB winter, from 7 *.m. to 7 p.m. may be rubstituted-

The Working Day. 321

same time for all, and conformably to the conditions of 1844.
By this an end was put to the relay-system once for all.1 For
children's labour, the Act of 1844 remained in force.

One set of masters, this time as before, secured to itself
special seigneurial rights over the children of the proletariat.
These were the silk manufacturers. In 1833 they had howled
out in threatening fashion, "if the liberty of working children
of any age for 10 hours a day were taken away, it would stop
their works."2 It would be impossible for them to buy a suffi
cient number of children over 13. They extorted the privilege
they desired. The pretext was shown on subsequent investiga
tion to be a deliberate lie.3 It did not, however, prevent them,
during 10 years, from spinning silk 10 hours a day out of the
blood of little children who had to be placed upon stools for
the performance of their work.4 The Act of 1844 certainly
"robbed" them of the "liberty" of employing children under
11 longer than 6£ hours a day. But it secured to them, on the
other hand, the privilege of working children between 11 and
13, 10 hours a day, and of annulling in their case the educa
tion made compulsory for all other factory children. This
time the pretext was "the delicate texture of the fabric in
which they were employed, requiring a lightness of touch, only
to be acquired by their early introduction to these factories."5
The children were slaughtered out-and-out for the sake of their
delicate fingers, as in Southern Russia the horned cattle for the
sake of their hide and tallow.' At length, in 1850, the privilege
granted in 1844 was limited to the departments of silk- twist
ing and silk-winding. But here, to make amends to capital
bereft of its "freedom," the work time for children from 11
to 13 was raised from 10 to 10£ hours. Pretext: "Labour in
silk mills was lighter than in mills for other fabrics, and less
likely in other respects also to be prejudicial to health."6
Official medical inquiries proved afterwards that, on the con-

1 "The present law (of 1850) was a compromise whereby the employed surrendered
the benefit of the Ten Hours' Act for the advantage of one uniform period for the
commencement and termination of the labour of those whose labour is restricted."
(Reports, 4c., for 30th April, 1852, p. 14.)

•Reports, ftc., for Sept., 1844, p. 18. »L e, «L c,

•1. c,

•Report* &c., for 81st Oct, 1861, p. M.

322

Capitalist Production.

trary, "the average death-rate is exceedingly high in the silk
districts, and amongst the female part of the population is
higher even than it is in the cotton districts of Lancashire."1
Despite the protests of the Factory Inspector, renewed every
6 months, the mischief continues to this hour.2
<• The Act of 1850 changed the 15 hours' time from 6 a.m. to
8.30 p.m., into the 12 hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. for "young
persons and women" only. It did not, therefore, affect chil
dren who could always be employed for half an hour before
and 2£ hours after this period, provided the whole of their
labour did not exceed 6£ hours. Whilst the bill was under
discussion, the Factory Inspectors laid before Parliament sta
tistics of the infamous abuses due to this anomaly. To no
purpose. In the background lurked the intention of screwing
up, during prosperous years, the working day of adult males

M. c., p. 27. On the whole the working population, subject to the Factory Act,
has greatly improved physically. All medical testimony agrees on this point, and
personal observation at different times has convinced me of it. Nevertheless, and
exclusive of the terrible death-rate of children in the first years of their life, the
official reports of Dr. Greenhow show the unfavourable health condition of the manu
facturing districts as compared with "agricultural districts of normal health." As
evidence, take the following table from his 1861 report: —

Percentage

Death-rate

Percentage

of Adult

from

of Adult

Males en
gaged in

Pulmonary
Affections

Name of District.

Pulmonaiy
Affections

Females
engaged in

Kind of Female
Occupation.

manufac

per 100,000

manufac

tures.

Males.

Females.

tures.

14-9

598

VVigan

644

18-0

Cotton

42-6

708

Blackburn

734

34-9

Do.

37-3

547

Halifax

564

20-4

Worsted

41-9

611

Bradford

603

30-0

Do.

31-0

691

Macclesfield

804

26-0

Silk

14-9

588

Leek

705

17-2

Do.

36-6

721

Stoke-upon-Trent

665

19-3

Earthenware

30-4

726

Woolstanton

727

13-9

Do.

Eight healthy agri

305

cultural districts

340

* It is well-known with what reluctance the English "free traders" gave up the
protective duty on the silk manufacture. Instead of the protection against French
importation, the absence of protection to English factory children now serves their
turn.

The Working Day. 323

to 15 hours by the aid of the children. The experience of the
three following years showed that such an attempt must come
to grief against the resistance of the adult male operatives.
The Act of 1850 was therefore finally completed in 1853 by
forbidding the "employment of children in the morning be
fore and in the evening after young persons and women."
Henceforth with a few exceptions the Factory Act of 1850
regulated the working day of all workers in the branches of
industry that come under it.1 Since the passing of the first
Factory Act half a century had elapsed.2

Factory legislation for the first time went beyond its original
sphere in the "Printworks' Acts of 1845." The displeasure
with which capital received this new "extravagance" speaks
through every line of the Act. It limits the working day for
children from 8 to 13, and for women to 16 hours, between
6 a.m. and 10 p.m., without any legal pause for meal times.
It allows males over 13 to be worked at will day and night.3
It is a Parliamentary abortion.4

However, the principle had triumphed with its victory in
those great branches of industry which form the most char
acteristic creation of the modern mode of production. Their
wonderful development from 1853 to 1860, hand-in-hand with
the physical and moral regeneration of the factory workers,

1 During 1859 and 1860, the zenith years of the English cotton industry, some
manufacturers tried, by the decoy bait of higher wages for over-time, to reconcile
the adult male operatives to an extension of the working day. The hand-mule spin
ners and self-actor minders put an end to the experiment by a petition to their
employers in which they say, "Plainly speaking, our lives are to us a burthen; and,
while we are confined to the mills nearly two days a wetk mart than the other
operatives of the country, we feel like helots in the land, and that we are perpetu
ating a system injurious to ourselves and future generations. . . . This, there
fore, is to give you most respectful notice that when we commence work again after
the Christmas and New Years' holidays, we shall work 60 hours per week, and no
more, or from six to six, with one hour and a half out." (Reports, Ac., for SOth
April, 1860, p. 80.)

•On the means that the wording of this Act afforded for its violation cf. the
Parliamentary Return "Factory Regulations Act" (6th August, 1859), and in it
Leonard Homer's "Suggestions for amending the Factory Acts to enable the Inspec
tors to prevent illegal working, now become very prevalent."

' "Children of the age of 8 years and upwards, have, indeed, been employed from
6 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the last half year in my district." (Reports, &c., for 31st
October, 1867, p. 39.)

* "The Printworks' Act is admitted to be a failure, both with reference to it*
educational and protective provisions." (Reports, 4c., for Slst October, 1868, p. 58.)

324 Capitalist Production.

struck the most purblind. The masters from whom the legal
limitation and regulation had been wrung step by step after a
civil war of half a century, themselves referred ostentatiously
to the contrast with the branches of exploitation still "free."1
The Pharisees of "political economy" now proclaimed the dis
cernment of the necessity of a legally fixed working day as a
characteristic new discovery rf their "science."2 It will be
easily understood that after the factory magnates had resigned
themselves and become reconciled to the inevitable, the pow«?r
of resistance of capital gradually weakened, whilst at the same
time the power of attack of the working class grew with the
number of its allies in the classes of society not immediately
interested in the question. Hence the comparatively rap d
advance since 1860.

The dye-works and bleach-works all came under the Factory
Act of 1850 in 1860 ;3 lace and stocking manufacturers in
1861.

In consequence of the first report of the Commission on the
employment of children (1863), the same fate was shared by
the manufacturers of all earthenwares (not merely pottery),
lucifer-matches, percussion-caps, cartridges, carpets, fustian-

lThus, e.g., E. Potter in a letter to the "Times" of March 24th, 1863. Th«
"Times" reminded him of the manufacturers' revolt against the Ten Hours' Bill.

•Thus, among others, Mr. W. Newmarch, collaborator and editor of Tooke's "His
tory of Prices." Is it a scientific advance to make cowardly concessions to put lie
opinion?

• The Act passed in 1860, determined that, In regard to dye and bleach-works, the
working day should be fixed on August 1st, 1861, provisionally at 12 hours, and
definitely on August 1st, 1862, at 10 hours, i.e.t at 10 1/3 hours for ordinary days, and
7}^ for Saturday. Now, when the fatal year, 1862, came, the old farce was repeated.
Besides, the manufacturers petitioned Parliament to allow the employment of young
persons and women for 12 hours during one year longer. "In the existing condition
of the trade (the time of the cotton famine), It was greatly to the advantage of ih«
operatives to work 12 hours per day, and make wages when they could." A bill to
this effect had been brought in, "and it was mainly due to the action of the operat ve
bleachers Jn Scotland that .':e bill was abandoned." (Reports, &c., for 31st October,
1862, p. 14-15.) Thus lefeatjd by the very work-people, in whose name it pre
tended to speak, Capital Discovered, with the help of lawyer spectacles, that the Act
-)f 1860, drawn up, like all the Acts of Parliament for the "protection of labou%"
/n equivocal phrases, gave them a pretext to exclude from its working the calender ?r»
and finishers. English jurisprudence, ever the faithful servant of capital, sanctiored
in the Court of Common Pleas this piece of pettifogging. "The operatives hfve
been greatly disappointed . . . they have complained of overwork, and it is
greatly to be regretted that the clear intention of the legislature should have f si ed
by reason of a faulty definition." (L c., p. 18.)

The Working Day. 325

catting, and maay prot-erfses included under the name of
"finishing." In the year 1863 bleaching in the open air1 and
baking were placed under special Acts, by which, in the
former, the labour of young persons and women during the
night-time (from 8 in the evening to 6 in the morning), and in
the latter, the employment of journeymen bakers under 18,
between 9 in the evening and 5 in the morning were forbidden.
We shall return to the later proposals of the same Commission,
which threatened to deprive of their "freedom" all the import
ant branches of English Industry, with the exception of agri
culture, mines, and the means of transport.2

1 The "open-air bleachers" had evaded the law of 1860, by me«ina of the lie that no
women worked at it in the night. The lie was exposed by the Factory Inspectors,
and at the same time Parliament was, by petitions t'rom the operatives, bereft »f
its notions as to the cool meadow-fragrance, in which bleaching in the open-air wa
reported to take place. In this aerial bleaching, drying-rooms were used at tempera
tures of from 90° to 100° Fahrenheit, in which the work was done for the moat ;jart
by ^irls. "Cooling" is the technical expression for their occasional escape fiom the
drying-rooms into the fresh air. "Fifteen girls in stoves. Heat from 80° to 90° for
linens, and 100' and upwards for cambrics. Twelve Jrls ironing and doing up
in a smr.ll room about 10 f :et square, in the centre of which is a close stove. The
girls stand r>und the stove, which throws out a terrific heat, and dries the cambrics
rapidly for the ironers. The hours of work for these hands are unlimited. If busy,
they work till 9 or 12 at night f r successive nights." (Reports, &c., for 31st Octo
ber, 1862, p. 56.) A medical man states: "No special hours are allowed for cooling,
but if the temperature gets too high, or the workers' hands get soiled from perspira
tion, they are allowed to go out for a few minutes. . . . My experience, which
is considerable, in treating the diseases of stove workers, compels me to express the
opinion that their sanitary condition is by no means so high as that of the operatives
in a spinning factory (and Capital, in its memorials to Parliament, had painted them
as floridly healthy, after the manner of Rubens). The diseases most observable
amongst them are phthisis, bronchitis, irregularity of uterine functions, hysteria in
its most aggravated forms, and rheumatism. All of these, I believe, are either di
rectly or indirectly induced by the impure, overheated air of the apartments in
which the hands are employed, and the want of sufficient comfortable clothing to
protect them from the cold, damp atmosphere, in winter, when going to their
homes." (1. c. p. 56-57.) The Factory Inspectors remarked on the supplementary
law of 1860, torn from these open-air bleachers: "The Act has not orly failed to
afford that protection to the workers which it c.ppears to offer, but contains a clause
. . . apparently so worded that, unless persons are detected working after 8
o'clock at night they appear to come under no protective provisions at all, and if
they do so work, the mode of proof is so doubtful that a conviction can scarcely
follow." (1. c., p. 52.) "To all intents and purposes, therefore, as an Act for any
benevolent or educational purpose, it is a failure; since it can scarcely be called
benevolent to permit, which is tantamount to compelling, women and children to
work 14 hours a day with or without meals, as the case may be, and perhaps for
longer hours ihan these, without limit as to age, without reference to sex, and
without regard to the social habits of the families of the neighbourhood, in which
such works (bleaching and dyeing) are situated." (Reports, &c., for 30th April,
1863, p. 40.)

J Note to the 2nd Ed. Since 1836, when I wrote the above passages, a reaction
ha» again set in.

326 Capitalist Production.

SECTION 7. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE NORMAL WORKING-DAY.

RE-ACTION OF THE ENGLISH ACTS ON OTHER COUNTRIES.

The reader will bear in mind that the production of surplus-
value, or the extraction of surplus-labour, is the specific end
and aim, the sum and substance, of capitalist production quite
apart from any changes in the mode of production, which
may arise from the subordination of labour to capital. He
will remember that as far as we have at present gone, only the
independent labourer, and therefore only the labourer legally
qualified to act for himself, enters as a vendor of a commodity
into a contract with the capitalist. If, therefore, in our his
torical sketch, on the one hand, modern industry ; on the other,
the labour of those who are physically and legally minors, play
important parts, the former was to us only a special depart
ment, and the latter only a specially striking example of labour
exploitation. Without, however, anticipating the subsequent
development of our inquiry, from the mere connexion of th«3
historic facts before us, it follows :

First. The passion of capital for an unlimited and reckless
extension of the working day, is first gratified in the industries
earliest revolutionised by water-power, steam, and machinery,
in those first creations of the modern mode of production,
cotton, wool, flax, and silk spinning, and weaving. The
changes in the material mode of production, and the corre
sponding changes in the social relations of the producers1 gavo
rise first to an extravagance beyond all bounds, and then in
opposition to this, called forth a control on the part of Society
which legally limits, regulates, and makes uniform the work
ing day and its pauses. This control appears, therefore, dur
ing the first half of the nineteenth century simply as ex
ceptional legislation.2 As soon as this primitive dominion or!

1 "The conduct of each of these classes (capitalists and workmen) has been tht
result of the relative situation in which they have been placed." (Reports, &c., for
31st October, 1848, p. 113.)

* "The employments, placed under restriction, were connected with the manufac
ture of textile fabrics by the aid of steam or water-power. There were two condi
tions to which an employment must be subject to cause it to be inspected, viz., the
use of steam or water-power, and the manufacture of certain specified fibres." (Re
port*, &c., for Slst October, 1864, p. 6.)

The Working Day. 327

the new mode of production was conquered, it was found that,
in the meantime, not only had many other branches of produc
tion been made to adopt the same factory system, but that
manufacturers with more or less obsolete methods, such as
potteries, glass-making, &c., that old-fashioned handicrafts,
like baking, and, finally, even that the so-called domestic in
dustries such as nail-making,1 had long since fallen as com
pletely under capitalist exploitation as the factories themselves.
Legislation was, therefore, compelled to gradually get rid of
its exceptional character, or where, as in England, it proceeds
after the manner of the Roman Casuists, to declare any house
in which work was done to be a factory.2

Second. The history of the regulation of the working day in
certain branches of production, and the struggle still going on
in others in regard to this regulation, prove conclusively that
the isolated labourer, the labourer as "free" vendor of his
labour-power, when capitalist production has once attained a
certain stage, succumbs without any power of resistance. The
creation of a normal working day is, therefore, the product of
a protracted civil war, more or less dissembled, between the
capitalist class and the working class. As the contest takes
place in the arena of modern industry, it first breaks out in
the home of that industry — England.3 The English factory
workers were the champions, not only of the English, but of
the modern working-class generally, as their theorists were
the first to throw down the gauntlet to the theory of capital.4

1 On the condition of so-called domestic industries, specially valuable materials
are to be found in the latest reports of the Children's Employment Commission.

1 "The Acts of last Session (1864) . . . embrace a diversity of occupations,
the customs in which differ greatly, and the use of mechanical power to give motion
to machinery is no longer one of the elements necessary, as formerly, to constitute,
in legal phrase, a 'Factory.' " (Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1864, p. 8.)

* Belgium, the paradise of Continental Liberalism, shows no trace of this move
ment. Even in the coal and metal mines, labourers of both sexes, and all ages, are
consumed in perfect "freedom," at any period, and through any length of time.
Of every 1000 persons employed there, 733 are men, 88 women, 135 boys, and 44
girls under 16; in the blast-furnaces, &c., of every 1000, 688 are men, 149 women,
98 boys, and 85 girls under 16. Add to this the low wages for the enormous exploi
tation of mature and immature labour-power. The average daily pay for a man is
2s. 8d.( for a woman, Is. 8d., for a boy, Is. 2J^d. As a result, Belgium had in 1863,
as compared with 1850, nearly doubled both the amount and the value of its exports
of coal, iron, &c.

* Robert Owen, soon after 1810, not only maintained the necessity of a limitation

328 Capitalist Production.

Hence, the philosopher of the Factory, Ure, denounces as *n
ineffable disgrace to the English working-class that they in
scribed "the slavery of the Factory Acts" on the banner whi«*ii
they bore against capital, manfully striving for "perfect free
dom of labour."1

France limps slowly behind England. The February rev
olution was necessary to bring into the world the 12 hours'
law,2 which is much more deficient than its English original.
For all that, the French revolutionary method has its special
advantages. It once for all commands the same limit to the
working-day in all shops and factories without distinction,
whilst English legislation reluctantly yields to the pressure of
circumstances, now on this point, nov on that, and is getting
lost in a hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory enact
ments.3 On the other hand, the French law proclaims as a
principle that which in England was only won in the name
of children, minors, and women, and has been only recently
for the first time claimed as a general right.4

of the working day in theory, but actually introduced the 10 hours' day into his
factory at New Lanark. This was laughed at as a communistic Utopia; so were his
"Combination of children's education with productive labour," and the Co-operative
Societies of working-men, first called into being by him. To-day, the first Utopia is
a Factory Act, the second figures as an official phrase in all Factory Acts, the third
is already being used as a cloak for reactionary humbug.

xUre: "French translation, Philosophic des Manufactures." Paris, 1836, VoL II.,
p. 39, 40, 67, 77, &c.

2 In the Compte Rendu of the International Statistical Congress at Paris, 1856, it
is stated: "The French law, which limits the length of daily labour in factories and
workshops to 12 hours, does not confine this work to definite fixed hours. For
children's labour only the work-time is prescribed as between 5 a. m. and 9 p. m.
Therefore, some of the masters use the right which this fatal silence gives them to
keep their works going, without intermission, day in, day out, possibly with the
exception of Sunday. For this purpose they use two different sets of workers, of
whom neither is in the workshop more than 12 hours at a time, but the work of the
establishment lasts day and night. The law is satisfied, but is humanity?" Besides
"the destructive influence of night labour on the human organism," stress is also
laid upon "the fatal influence of the association of the two sexes by night in the
same badly-lighted workshops."

•"For instance, there is within my district one occupier who, within the same
curtilage, is at the same time a bleacher and dyer under the Bleaching and Dyeing
Works Act, a printer under the Print Works Act, and a finisher under the Factory
Act." (Report of Mr. Baker, in Reports, &c., for Octobre 81st, 1861, p. 20.) After
enumerating the different provisions of these Acts, and the complications arising from
them, Mr. Baker says: "It will hence appear that it must be very difficult to secure
the execution of these three Acts of Parliament where the occupier chooses to evade
the law." But what is assured to the lawyers by this is lawsuits.
* Thus the Factory Inspectors at last venture to say: "These objections (of

The Working Day. 329

In the United States of Js'orth America, every independent
movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery dis
figured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate
itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.
But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The
first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours' agitation, that
ran with the seven-leagued boots of the locomotive from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California. The
General Congress of Labour at Baltimore (August 16th, 1866)
declared : "The first and great necessity of the present, to free
the labour of this country from capitalistic slavery, is the pass
ing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal work
ing-day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved
to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is
attained."1 At the same time, the Congress of the Inter
national Working Men's Association at Geneva, on the prop
osition of the London General Council, resolved that "the
limitation of the working-day is a preliminary condition with
out which all further attempts at improvement and emancipa
tion must prove abortive. . . . the Congress proposes
eight hours as the legal limit of the working-day."

Thus the movement of the working-class on both sides of
the Atlantic, that had grown instinctively out of the conditions
of production themselves, endorsed the words of the English
Factory Inspector, R. J. Saunders : "Further steps towards a
reformation of society can never be carried out with any hope
of success, unless the hours of labour be limited, and the pre
scribed limit strictly enforced." 2

It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the

capital to the legal limitation of the working-day) must succumb before the broad
principle of the rights of labour. . . . There is a time when the master's right in
his workman's labour ceases, and his time becomes his own, even if there were no
exhaustion in the question." (Reports, &c., for 31st Oct., 1862, p. 54.)

1 "We, the workers of Dunkirk, declare that the length of time of labour required
under the present system is too great, and that, far from leaving the worker time for
rest and education, it plunges him into a condition of servitude but little better than
slavery. That is why we decide that 8 hours are enough for a working-day, and
nnght to be legally recognized as enough; why we call to our help that powerful
lever, the press; . . . and why we shall consider all those that refuse us thia
help as enemies of the reform of labour and of the rights of the labourer." (Reso
lution of the Working Men of Dunkirk, New York State, 1806.)

•Reports, &c.f for Oct., 1848, p. 112.

330 Capitalist Production.

process of production other than he entered. In the market
he stood as owner of the commodity "labour- power" face to
face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer.
The contract, by which he sold to the capitalist his labour-
power proved, so to say, in black and white that he disposed
of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it is discovered
that he was no "free agent," that the time for which he is free
to sell his labour-power is the time for which he is forced to
sell it,1 that in fact the vampire will not lose its hold on him
"so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be
exploited."2 For "protection" against "the serpent of their
agonies," the labourers must put their heads together, and, as
a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social
barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling, by
voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families
into slavery and death.3 In place of the pompous catalogue
QJLtl/e "inalienable rights of man" comes the modest Magna
Charta of a legally limited working-day, which shall make
clear -^Svhen the time which the worker sells is ended, and
when his own begins."4 Quantum mutatus ab illo!

1 "The proceedings (the manoeuvres of capital, e.g., from 1848-50) have afforded,
moreover, incontrovertible proof of the fallacy of the assertion so often advanced,
that operatives need no protection, but may be considered as free agents in the dis
posal of the only property which they possess — the labour of their hands and the
sweat of their brows." (Reports, &c., for April 30th, 1850, p. 45.) "Free labour
(if so it may be termed) even in a free country, requires the strong arm of the law
to protect it." (Reports, &c., for October 31st, 1804, p. 84.) "To permit, which is
tantamount to compelling ... to work 14 hours a day with or without meals,"
&c. (Repts., &c., for April 30th, 1863, p. 40.) • Friedrich Engels, 1. c., p. 6.

•The 10 Hours' Act has, in the branches of industry that come under it, "put an
end to the premature decrepitude of the former long-hour workers." (Reports, &c.,
for 81st Oct., 1859, p. 47.) "Capital (in factories) can never be employed in keep
ing the machinery in motion beyond a limited time, without certain injury to the
health and morals of the labouiers employed; and they are not in a position to
protect themselves," (1. c., p. 8.)

* "A still greater boon is the distinction at last made clear between the worker'i
own time and his master's. The worker knows now when that which he sells is
ended, and when his own begins; and by possessing a sure foreknowledge of this, is
enabled to pre-arrange his own minutes for his own purposes." (1. c., p. 52.) "By
making them masters of their own time (the Factory Acts) have given them a moral
energy which is directing them to the eventual possession of political power" (1. c.,
p. 47). With suppressed irony, and in very well weighed words, the Factory In
spectors hint that the actual law also frees the capitalist from some of the brutality
natural to a man who is a mere embodiment of capital, and that it has given him
time for little "culture." Formerly the master had no time for anything but money;
the servant had no time for anything but labour" (1. c., p. 48).

Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value. 331

CHAPTER XI.

BATE AOT MASS OP SURPLUS-VALUE.

IN this chapter, as hitherto, the value of labour-power, and
therefore the part of the working-day necessary for the repro
duction or maintenance iv' "lint labour-power, are supposed to
be Oiven, constant magnitudes.

This premised, with tho rate, the mass is at the same time
given of the surplus-value that the individual labourer fur
nishes to the capitalist in a definite period of time. If, e.g.,
the necessary labour amounts to u hours daily, expressed in a
quantum ox' *old=3 shillings, then 3s. is the daily value of
one labour-power or the value of th< capital advanced in the
buying of one lauour-^owcr. If, 'urther, the rate of surplus-
value be=100%, this .aiiablc capi1:.l of 3s. produces a mass
of surplus-value of os., or "he labourer supplies daily a mass of
surplus-labour equ. J to *» hour*.

But the variable capital 01 n capitalist is the expression in
money of the total value of all the labour-powers that he
employs simultaneously. Its value is, therefore, equal to the
average value of one labour-power, multiplied by the number
of labour-powers employed. With a given value of labour-
power, therefore, the magnitude of the variable capital varies
directly as the number of labourers employed simultaneously.
If the daily value of one labour-power = 3s., then a capital of
300s. must be advanced in order to exploit daily 100 labour-
powers, of n times 3s., in order to exploit daily n labour-
powers.

In the same way, if a variable capital of 3s., being the daily
value of one Labour-power, produce a daily surplus-value of 3s.,
a variable capital rf 300s. will produce a daily surplus-value of
300s., and one of n times 3s. a daily surplus-value of nX3s.
The mass of the surplus-value produced is therefore equal to
the surplus-value which the working-day of one labourer gup-
plies multiplied by the number of labourers employed. But

332 Capitalist Production.

as further the mass of surplus-value which a single labourer
produces, the value of labour-power being given, is determined
by the rate of the surplus-value, this law follows : the mass of
the surplus-value produced is equal to the amount of the
variable capital advanced, multiplied by the rate of surplus-
value ; in other words : it is determined by the compound ratio
between the number of labour-powers exploited simultaneously
by the same capitalist and the degree of exploitation of each
individual labour-power.

Let the mass of the surplus-value be S, the surplus-value
supplied by the individual labourer in the average day s, the
variable capital daily advanced in the purchase of one in
dividual labour-power v, the sum total of the variable capital
V, the value of an average labour-power P, its degree of ex-

ploitation a ^necessary-labor) apd the number of labourers employed
n ; we have :

S =

It is always supposed, not only that the value of an average
labour-power is constant, but that the labourers employed by
a capitalist are reduced to average labourers. There are ex
eeptional cases in which the surplus-value produced does not
increase in proportion to the number of labourers exploited,
but then the value of the labour-power does not remain con
stant

In the production of a definite mass of surplus-value, there
fore, the decrease of one factor may be compensated by the in
crease of the other. If the variable capital diminishes, and at
the same time the rate of surplus-value increases in the same
ratio, the mass of surplus-value produced remains unaltered.
If on our earlier assumption the capitalist must advance 3008.,
in order to exploit 100 labourers a day, and if the rate of
surplus-value amounts to 50%, this variable capital of 300s.
yields a surplus-value of 150s. or of 100X3 working hours.
If the rate of surplus-value doubles, or the working day, in-

Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value. 333

stead of being extended from 6 to 9, is extended from 6 to 12
hours and at the same time variable capital is lessened by half,
and reduced to 150s., it yields also a surplus-value of 150s. or
50X6 working hours. Diminution of the variable capital may
therefore be compensated by a proportionate rise in the degree
of exploitation of labour-power, or the decrease in the number
of the labourers employed by a proportionate extension of the
working-day. Within certain limits therefore the supply of
labour exploitable by capital is independent of the supply of
labourers.1 On the contrary, a fall in the rate of surplus-
value leaves unaltered the mass of the surplus-value produced,
if the amount of the variable capital, or number of the labour
ers employed, increases in the same proportion.

Nevertheless, the compensation of a decrease in the number
of labourers employed, or of the amount of variable capital
advanced, by a rise in the rate of surplus-value, or by the
lengthening of the working-day, has impassable limits. What
ever the value of labour-power may be, whether the working
time necessary for the maintenance of the labourer is 2 or 10
hours, the total value that a labourer can produce, day in, day
out, is always less than the value in which 24 hours of labour
are embodied, less than 12s., if 12s. is the money expression for
24 hours of realized labour. In our former assumption, ac
cording to which 6 working hours are daily necessary in order
to reproduce the labour-power itself or to replace the value
of the capital advanced in its purchase, a variable capital of
1500s., that employs 500 labourers at a rate of surplus-value of
100% with a 12 hours' working-day, produces daily a surplus-
value of 1500s. or of 6X500 working hours. A capital of
300s. that employs 100 labourers a day with a rate of surplus-
value of 200% or with a working-day of 18 hours, produces
only a mass of surplus-value of 600s. or 12X100 working
hours ; and its total value-product, the equivalent of the varia
ble capital advanced plus the surplus-value, can, day in, day
out, never reach the sum of 1200s. or 24X100 working hours.

1 This elementary law appears to be unknown to the vulgar economists, who, up-
sidedown Archimedes, in the determination of the market-price of labour by supply
and demand, imagine they have found the fulcrum by means of which, not to roovt
the world, but to stop its motion.

334 Capitalist Production.

The absolute limit of the average working-day — this being by
Nature always less than 2-i hours — sets an absolute limit to
the compensation of a reduction of variable capital by a higher
rate of surplus-value, or of the decrease of the number of la
bourers exploited by a higher degree of exploitation of labour-
power. This palpable law is of importance for the clearing up
of many phenomena, arising from a tendency (to be worked
out later on) of capital to reduce as much as possible the num
ber of labourers employed by it, or its variable constituent
transformed into labour-power, in contradiction to its other
tendency to produce the greatest possible mass of surplus-value.
On the other hand, if the mass of labour-power employed, or
the amount of variable capital, increases, but not in proportion,
to the fall in the rate of surplus-value, the mass of the surplus-
value produced, falls.

A third law results from the determination, of the mass of
the surplus-value produced, by the two factors : rate of surplus-
value and amount of variable capital advanced. The rate of
surplus-value, or the degree of exploitation of labour-power,
and the value of labour-power, or the amount of necessary
working time being given, it is self-evident that the greater the
variable capital, the greater would be the mass of the value
produced and of the surplus-value. If the limit of the work
ing-day is given, and also the limit of its necessary constituent,
the mass of value and surplus-value that an individual capital
ist produces, is clearly exclusively dependent on the mass oi
labour that he sets in motion. But this, under the conditiona
supposed above, depends on the mass of labour-power, or the
number of labourers whom he exploits, and this number in ita
turn is determined by the amount of the variable capital ad
vanced. With a given rate of surplus-value, and a given value
of labour-power, therefore, the masses of surplus-value pro
duced vary directly as the amounts of the variable capitala
advanced. Now we know that the capitalist divides his capita]
into two parts. One part he lays out in means of production.
This is the constant part of his capital. The other part he lays
out in living labour-power. This part forms his variable
capital. On the basis of the same mode of social production,

Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value. 335

the division of capital into constant and variable differs in
different branches of production, and within the same branch
of production, too, this relation changes with changes in the
technical conditions and in the social combinations of the pro
cesses of production. But in whatever proportion a given
capital breaks up into a constant and a variable part, whether
the latter is to the former as 1 : 2 or 1 : 10 or 1 : x, the law just
laid down is not affected by this. For, according to our previ-
ious analysis, the value of the constant capital reappears in the
value of the product, but does not enter into the newly produced
value, the newly created value-product. To employ 1000
spinners, more raw material, spindles, &c., are, of course, re
quired, than to employ 100. The value of these additional
means of production however may rise, fall, reman, unaltered,
be large or small ; it has no influence on the process of creation
of surplus-value by means of the labour-powers that put them
in motion. The law demonstrated above now, therefore, take*
this form : the masses of value and of surplus-value produced
by different capitals — the value of labour-power being given
and its degree of exploitation being equal — vary directly as the
amounts of the variable constituents of these capitals, i.e., as
their constituents transformed into living labour-power.

This law clearly contradicts all experience based on appear
ance. Every one knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning
the percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs
much constant and little variable capital, does not, on account
of this, pocket less profit or surplus-value than a baker, who
relatively sets in motion much variable and little constant
capital. For the solution of this apparent contradiction, many
intermediate terms are as yet wanted, as from the standpoint
of elementary algebra many intermediate terms are wanted to
understand that J may represent an actual magnitude. 'Class
ical economy, although not formulating the law, holds instinc
tively to it, because it is a necessary consequence of the general
law of value. It tries to rescue the law from collision with
contradictory phenomena by a violent abstraction. It will be
Been later1 how the school of Ricardo has come to grief over

1 Further particulars will be found in "Theories of Surplus-Value,1 edited by
Karl Kautsky.

336 Capitalist Production.

this stumbling-block. Vulgar economy which, indeed, <f
really learnt nothing," here as everywhere sticks to appear
ances in opposition to the law which regulates and explains
them. In opposition to Spinoza, it believes that "ignorance is
a sufficient reason."

The labour which is set in motion by the total Capital of a
society, day in, day out, may be regarded as a single collective
working-day. If, e.g., the number of labourers is a million,
and the average working-day of u labourer is 10 hours, the
social working-day consists of ten million hours. With a given
length of this working-day, whether its limits are fixed
physically or socially, the mass of surplus-value can only be in
creased by increasing the number of labourers, i.e., of the
labouring population. The growth of population here forma
the mathematical limit to the production of surplus-value by
the total social capital. On the contrary, with a given amount
of population, this limit is formed by the possible lengthening
of the working-day.1 It will, however, be seen in the follow
ing chapter that this law only holds for the form of surplus -
value dealt with up to the present.

From the treatment of the production of surplus-value, so
far, it follows that not every sum of money, or of value, is at
pleasure transformable into capital. To effect this transforma
tion, in fact, a certain minimum of money or of exchange -
value must be presupposed in the hands of the individual
possessor of money or commodities. The minimum of variable
capital is the cost price of a single labour-power, employed tho
whole year through, day in, day out, for the production o::
surplus-value. If this labourer were in possession of his own
means of production, and were satisfied to live as a labourer,
he need not work beyond the time necessary for the reproduc
tion of his means of subsistence, say 8 hours a day. He would ,
besides, only require the means of production sufficient for &
working hours. The capitalist, on the other hand, who make*.

1 "The labour, that is the economic time, of society, is a given portion, say tec
hours a day cf a million of people, or ten million hours. . . . Capital has it:
boundary of increase. This boundary may, at any given period, be attained in tb<
actv.al extent of economic time employed." ("An Essay on the Political Economy o]
Nations." London, 1821, pp. 47, 49.)

Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value. 337

him do, besides these 8 hours, say 4 hours' surplus-labour, re
quires an additional sum of money for furnishing the addi
tional means of production. On our supposition, however, he
would have to employ two labourers in order to live, on the
surplus-value appropriated daily, as well as, and no better than
a labourer, i.e., to be able to satisfy his necessary wants. In
this case the mere maintenance of life would be the end of his
production, not the increase of wealth; but this latter is im
plied in capitalist production. That he may live only twice
as well as an ordinary labourer, and besides turn half of the
surplus-value produced into capital, he would have to raise,
with the number of labourers, the minimum of the capital ad
vanced 8 times. Of course he can, like his labourer, take to
work himself, participate directly in the process of production,
but he is then only a hybrid between capitalist and labourer, a
"small master." A certain stage of .capitalist production ne
cessitates that the capitalist be able to devote the whole of the
time during which he functions as a capitalist, i.e., as personi
fied capital, to the appropriation and therefore control of the
labour of others, and to the selling of the products of this la
bour.1 The guilds of the middle ages therefore tried to
prevent by force the transformation of the master of a trade
into a capitalist, by limiting the number of labourers that could
be employed by one master within a very small maximum.
The possessor of money or commodities actually turns into a
capitalist in such cases only where the minimum sum advanced
for production greatly exceeds the maximum of the middle
ages. Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of

1 "The farmer cannot rely on his own labour, and if he does, I will maintain that
he is a loser by it. His employment should be a general attention to the whole: his
thresher must be watched, or he will soon lose his wages in corn not threshed out;
his mowers, reapers, &c., must be looked after; he must constantly go round his
fences; he must see there is no neglect; which would be the case if he was confined
to any one spot." ("An Inquiry into the connection between the Price of Provisions
and the Size of Farms, &c. By a Farmer." London, 1773, p. 12.) This book ia
very interesting. In it the genesis of the "capitalist farmer" or "merchant farmer,"
as he is explicitly called, may be studied, and his self-glorification at the expense
of the small farmer who has only to do with bare subsistence, be noted. "The class
of capitalists are from the first partially, and they become ultimately completely,
discharged from the necessity of the manual labour." ("Text-book of Lectures on
the Political Economy of Nations. By the Rev. Richard Jones." Hertford, 185S.
Lecture III. p. 39.)

338 Capitalist Production.

the law discovered by Hegel (in his "Logic"), that merelj
quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into quali
tative changes.1

The minimum of the sum of value that the individual pos
sessor of money or commodities must command, in order to
metamorphose himself into a capitalist, changes with the dif
ferent stages of development of capitalist production, and is
at given stages different in different spheres of production,
according to their special and technical conditions. Certain
spheres of production demand, even at the very outset of capi
talist production, a minimum of capital that is not as yet
found in the hands of single individuals. This gives rise
partly to state subsidies to private persons, as in France in the
time of Colbert, and as in many German states up to our own
epoch ; partly to the formation of societies with legal monopoly
for the exploitation of certain branches of industry and com
merce, the fore-runners of our own modern joint-stock com
panies.2

Within the process of production, as we have seen, capital
acquired the command over labour, i. e.f over functioning la
bouring-power or the labourer himself. Personified capital,
the capitalist takes care that the labourer does his work regu
larly and with the proper degree of intensity.

Capital further developed into a coercive relation, which
compels the working class to do more work than the narrow
round of its own life-wants prescribes. As a producer of the
activity of others, as a pumper-out of surplus-labour and ex
ploiter of labour-power, it surpasses in energy, disregard of

1 The molecular theory of modern chemistry first scientifically worked out by
Laurent and Gerhardt rests on no other law. (Addition to 3rd Edition.) For the
explanation of this statement, which is not very clear to non-chemists, we remark that
the author speaks here of the homologous series of carbon compounds, first so named
by C. Gerhardt in 1843, each series of which has its own general algebraic formula.
Thus the series of paraffins: Cn H*n-}-*, that of the normal alcohols: Cn H*n-f*O;
of the normal fatty acids: Cn H2n O* and many others. In the above examples, by
the simply quantitative addition of C H* to the molecular formula, a qualitatively
different body is each time formed. On the share (overestimated by Marx) of
Laurent and Jerhardt in the determination of this important fact see Kopp, "Ent-
wicklung der Chemie." Miinchen, 1873, pp. 709, 716, and Schorlemmer, "Rise and
Progress of Organic Chemistry." London, 1879, p. 64. — Ed.

•Martin Luther calls these kinds of institutions: "The Company Monopolia.M

Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value. 339

bounds, recklessness and efficiency, all earlier systems of pro
duction based on directly compulsory labour.

At first, capital subordinates labour on the basis of the tech
nical conditions in which it historically finds it. It does not,
therefore, change immediately the mode of production. The
production of surplus-value — in the form hitherto considered
by us — by means of simple extension of the working-day,
proved, therefore, ».c be independent of any change in the
mode of producti a itself. It was not less active in the old-
fashioned bakeries ;h: . in the modern cotton factories.

If we consider tin process of production from the point of
view of the simple labor, r-process, the labourer stands in rela
tion to the means of production, not in their quality as capital,
but as the mere means and material of his own intelligent pro
ductive activity. In tanning, e. g., he deals with the skins as
his simple object of labour. It is not the capitalist whose skin
he tans. But it is different as soon as we deal with the process
of production from the point of view of the process of creation
of surplus-value. The means of production are at once
changed into means for the absorption of the labour of others.
It is now no longer the labourer that employes the means of
production, but the means of production that employ the la
bourer. Instead of being consumed by him as material ele
ments of his productive activity, they consume him as the
ferment necessary to their own life-process, and the life-process
of capital consists only in its movement as value constantly
expanding, constantly multiplying itself. Furnaces and work
shops that stand idle by night, and absorb no living labour, are
"a mere loss" to the capitalist. Hence, furnaces and work
shops constitute lawful claims upon the night-labour of the
workpeople. The simple transformation of money into the
material factors of the process of production, into means of
production, transforms the latter into a title and a right to the
labour and surplus-labour of others. An example will show,
In conclusion, how this sophistication, peculiar to and charac
teristic of capitalist production, this complete inversion of the
relation between dead and living labour, between value and

34° Capitalist Production.

the force that creates value, mirrors itself in the consciousness
of capitalists. During the revolt of the English factory lords
between 1848 and 1850, "the head of one of the oldest and
most respectable houses in the West of Scotland, Messrs. Car-
lile Sons & Co., of the linen and cotton thread factory at Pais
ley, a company which has now existed for about a century,
which was in operation in 1752, and four generations of the
same family have conducted it" . . . this "very intelli
gent gentleman" then wrote a letter * in the "Glasgow Daily
Mail" of April 25th, 1849, with the title, "The relay system/'
in which among other things the following grotesquely nai'vs
passage occurs: "Let us now . . . see what evils will
attend the limiting to 10 hours the working of the factory.
They amount to the most serious damage to the mill-
owner's prospects and property. If he (i. e., his "hands")
worked 12 hours before, and is limited to 10, then every 1'}
machines or spindles in his establishment shrink to 10, and
should the works be disposed of, they will be valued only as 10,
so that a sixth part would thus be deducted from the value o::
every factory in the country." 2

To this West of Scotland bourgeois brain, inheriting thd
accumulated capitalistic qualities of "four generations," the
value of the means of production, spindles, &c. is so insepar
ably mixed up with their property, as capital, to expand their
own value, and to swallow up daily a definite quantity of the
unpaid labour of others, that the head of the firm of Carlile &
Co. actually imagines that if he sells his factory, not only will
the value of the spindles be paid to him, but, in addition, their
power of annexing surplus-value, not only the labour which is
embodied in them, and is necessary to the production of spin
dles of this kind, but also the surplus-labour which they help

1 Reports of Insp. of Fact;, April SOth, 1849, p. 69.

*1. c., p. 60. Factory Inspector Stuart, himself a Scotchman, and in contrast to
the English Factory Inspectors, quite taken captive by the capitalistic method of
thinking, remarks expressly on this letter which he incorporates in his report that it
is "the most useful of the communications which any of the factory-owners working
with relays have given to those engaged in the same trade, and which is the most
calculated to remove the prejudices of such of them as have scruples respecting any
change of the arrangement of the hours of work,"

Rate and Mass of Surplus Value. 341

to pump out daily from the brave Scots of Paisley, and for
that very reason he thinks that with the shortening of the
working-day by 2 hours, the selling-price of 12 spinning ma
chines dwindles to that of 10 1

PART IV.
PRODUCTION OF RELATIVE SURPLUS^VALUE

CHAPTER XII.

THE CONCEPT OF RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALTTE.

THAT portion of the working-day which merely produces ar
equivalent for the value paid by the capitalist for his labour
power, has, up to this point, been treated by us as a constant
magnitude; and such in fact it is, under given conditions of
production and at a given stage in the economical develop
ment of society. Beyond this, his necessary labour-time,
the labourer, we saw, could continue to work for 2, 3, 4,
6, &c., hours. The rate of surplus-value and the length of the
working day depended on the magnitude of this prolongation.
Though the necessary labour-time was constant, we saw, on
the other hand, that the total working-day was variable.
Now suppose we have a working-day whose length, and whose
apportionment between necessary labour and surplus-labour,
are given. Let the whole line a c, a — • — • — b — c, repre
sent, for example, a working-day of 12 hours; the portion of
a b 10 hours of necessary labour, and the portion b c 2 hours
of surplus-labour. How now can the production of surplus-
/ value be increased, i.e., how can the surplus-labour be pro-
\/ longed, without, or independently of, any prolongation of a c ?
Although the lengh of a c is given, b c appears to be capable
of prolongation, if not by extension beyond its end c, which is
also the end of the working day a c, yet, at all events, by push
ing back its starting point b in the direction of a. Assume
that b' — b in the line, a b' b c is equal to half of b c
a-- b'— 1

The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value. 343

or to one hour's labour- time. If now, in a c, the working day
of 12 hours; we move the point b to b', b c becomes b' c ; the
surplus-labour increases by one-half, from 2 hours to 3 hours,
although the working day remains as before at 12 hours.
This extension of the surplus labour-time from b c to b' c,
from 2 hours to 3 hours, is, however, evidently impossible,
without a simultaneous contraction of the necessary labour-
time from a b into a b', from 10 hours to 9 hours. The pro-£/
longation of the surplus-labour would correspond to a shorten- \
ing of the necessary labour; or a portion of the labour-time
previously consumed, in reality, for the labourer's own bene
fit, would be converted into labour-time for the benefit of the
capitalist. There would be an alteration, not in the length
of the working day, but in its division into necessary labour-
time and surplus labour-time.

On the other hand, it is evident that the duration of the/
surplus-labour is given, when the length of the working day>/

and the value of labour-power, are given. The value of la-^

urV/
power, determines the labour-time necessary for the repro^

hour-power, i.e., the labour-time requisite to produce labou

duction of that value. If one working hour be embodied in
sixpence, and the value of a day's labour-power be five shill
ings, the labourer must work 10 hours a day, in order to re
place the value paid by capital for his labour-power, or to
produce an equivalent for the value of his daily necessary
means of subsistence. Given the value of these means of sub
sistence, the value of his labour-power is given; l and given \
the value of his labour-power, the duration of his necessary
bour-time is given. The duration of the surplus-labour,

1 The value of his average daily wages is determined by what the labourer requires
"so as to live, labour, and generate." (Wm. Petty: "Political Anatomy of Ireland,"
1672, p. 64.) "The price of Labour is always constituted of the price of necessaries
. . . whenever . . . the labouring man's wages will not, suitably to his low
rank and station, as a labouring man, support such a family as is often the lot of
many of them to have," he does not receive proper wages. (J. Vanderlint, 1. c. p.
15.) "Le simple ouvrier, qui n'a que ses bras et son Industrie, n'a rien qn'autant
qu'U parvient a vendre a d'autres sa peine. ... En tout genre de travail il doit
arriver, et il arrive en effet, que le salaire de 1'ouvrier se borne a ce qui lui est n£ce»-
taire pour lui procurer sa substance." (Turgot, Reflexions, &c., Oeuvres ed. Daire t.
I. p. 10). "The price of the necessaries of life is, in fact, the cost of producin|
labour." (Malthus, Inquiry into, &c., Rent, London, 1815, p. 48 note).

344 Capitalist Production.

ever, is arrived at, by subtracting the necessary labour-tiirm
from the total working day. Ten hours subtracted from

^twelve, leave two, and it is not easy to see, how, under the
^given conditions, the surplus-labour can possibly be prolonged
beyond two hours. Xo doubt, the capitalist can, instead of
five shillings, pay the labourer four shillings and sixpence or
even less. For the reproduction of this value of four shill
ings and sixpence, nine hours labour-time would suffice ; and
consequently three hours of surplus-labour, instead of two,
would accrue to the capitalist, and the surplus-value would ri.se
from one shilling to eighteenpence. This result, however,
^^Would be obtained only by lowering the wages of the labourer

, below the value of his labour-power. With the four shillings
and sixpence which he produces in nine hours, he commands
one-tenth less of the necessaries of life than before, and conse
quently the proper reproduction of his labour-power is crip-
pled. The surplus-labour would in this case be prolonged
only by an overstepping of its normal limits ; its domai i

^•Tvould be extended only by a usurpation of part of the domai i
of necessary labour-time. Despite the important part whiei
this method plays in actual practice, we are excluded frori
considering it in this place, by our assumption, that all com-

y modities, including labour-power, are bought and sold at their
full value. Granted this, it follows that the labour-time nec
essary for the production of labour-power, or for the reproduc
tion of its value, cannot be lessened by a fall in the labourer',*
wages below the value of his labour-power, but only by a fall
in this value itself. Given the length of the working day, tho
prolongation of the surplus-labour must of necessity originate
in the curtailment of the necessary labour-time ; the latter
cannot arise from the former. In the example we have taken,

'/it is necessary that the value of labour-power should actually
fall by one-tenth, in order that the necessary labour-time may
be diminished by one-tenth, i.e., from ten hours to nine, and
in order that the surplus-labour may consequently be pro
longed from two hours to three.

\j Such a fall in the value of labour-power implies, however,
that the same necessaries of life which were formerly pro-

The Concept of Relative Surplus- Value. 345

duced in ten hours, can now be produced in nine hours. But v
this is impossible without an increase in the productiveness of v
labour. For example, suppose a shoemaker, with given tools,
makes in one working day of twelve hours, one pair of boots.
If he must make two pairs in the same time, the productive
ness of his labour must be doubled ; and this cannot be done,
except by an alteration in his tools or in his mode of working, u^
or in both. Hence, the conditions of production, i.e., his \y
node of production, and the labour-process itself, must be V
revolutionised. By increase in the productiveness of labour, >
we mean, generally, an alteration in the labour-process, of ^
cuch i\ kind as to shorten the labour-time socially necessary for </
\..3 production of a commodity, and to endow a given quantity^

< c labour with the power of producing a greater quantity of '-'
use-value.1 Hitherto in treating of surplus-value, arising"
from a simple prolongation of the working day, we have as
sumed the mode of production to be given and invariable.
But when surplus-value has to be produced by the conversion

< i necessary labour into surplus-labour, it by no means suffices
for capital to take over the labour-process in the form under
which it has been liistoricallv handed down, and then simply

«' *r •/

to prolong Lhe duration of that process. The technical and so- v
cial conditions of Jhe jMLQQeas, and consequently the very mode v^
of production must be revolutionised, l>efore the productive
ness of labour can be increased. By that means al<>m>. can thr
value of labour- power be made to sink, and the portion of the^
working day necessary for the reproduction of that value, bey
shortened.

The surplus-value produced by prolongation of the working
day, I call absolute surplus-value. On the other hand, the ^
surplus-value arising from the curtailment of the necessary^
labour-time, and from the corresponding alteration in the re-v
speetive lengths of the two components of the working day,
call relative surplus-value.

1 "Quando si perfezionano le arti, che non e altro cbe la scoperta di nuove vie,
onde si possa compierc una manufattura con meno gente o (che e lo stesso) in minor
tempo di prima." (Galiani 1. c. p. 159.) "L'£conomie sur les frais de production
ne peut done etre autre chose que 1'^conomie sur la quantit£ de travail employ^ pour
produire." (Sismondi, Etudes t. I. p. 22.)

346 Capitalist Production.

In order to effect a fall in the value of labour-power, the in
crease in the productiveness of labour must seize upon those
branches of industry; whose products determine the value of
labour-power, and consequently either belong to the class of
customary means of subsistence, or are capable of supplying
the place of those means. But the value of a commodity is
determined, not only by the quantity of labour which the la
bourer directly bestows upon that commodity, but also by the
labour contained in the means of production. For instance,
• the value of a pair of boots depends, not only on the cobbler's
.labour, but also on the value of the leather, wax, thread, &c.
Hence, a fall in the value of labour-power is also brought about
- by an increase in the productiveness of labour, and by a cor-
v./responding cheapening of commodities in those industries
^ which supply the instruments of labour and the raw material,
that form the material elements of the constant capital re
quired for producing the necessaries of life. But an increase,
in the productiveness of labour in those branches of industry
which supply neither the necessaries of life, nor the means oi'
production for such necessaries, leaves the value of labour-
power undisturbed.

The cheapened commodity, of course, causes only a prc
tanto fall in the value of labour-power, a fall proportional tc
the extent of that commodity's employment in the reproduc
tion of labour-power. Shirts, for instance, are a necessary
means of subsistence, but are only one out of many. The
j totality of the necessaries of life consists, however, of various
J commodities, each the product of a distinct industry ; and the
' value of each of those commodities enters as a component part
v into the value of labour-power. This latter value decreases
with the decrease of the labour-time necessary for its reproduc
tion ; the total decrease being the sum of all the different cur-
J tailments of labour-time effected in those various and distinct
industries. This general result is treated, here, as if it were
the immediate result directly aimed at in each individual case.
Whenever an individual capitalist cheapens shirts, for in
stance, by increasing the productiveness of labour, he by no
means necessarily aims at reducing the value of labour-power

The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value. 347

and shortening, pro tanto, the necessary labour-time. But it
is only in so far as he ultimately contributes to this result,
that he assists in raising the general rate of surplus-value.1
The general and necessary tendencies of capital must be dis
tinguished from their forms of manifestation.

It is not our intention to consider, here, the way in which
the laws, immanent in capitalist production, manifest them
selves in the movements of individual masses of capital, where i
they assert themselves as coercive laws of competition, and are
brought home to the mind and consciousness of the individual
capitalist as the directing motives of his operations. But this
much is clear ; a scientific analysis of competition is not possi
ble, before we have a conception of the inner nature of capital,
just as the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are not
intelligible to any but him, who is acquainted with their real
motions, motions which are not directly perceptible by the
senses. Nevertheless, for the better comprehension of the
production of relative surplus-value, we may add the follow
ing remarks, in which we assume nothing more than the re
sults we have already obtained.

If one hour's labour is embodied in sixpence, a value of six
shillings will be produced in a working day of 12 hours.
Suppose, that with the prevailing productiveness of labour, 12
articles are produced in these 12 hours. Let the value of the
means of production used in each article be sixpence. Under
these circumstances, each article costs one shilling: sixpence
for the value of the means of production, and sixpence for the
value newly added in working with those means. Now let
some one capitalist contrive to double the productiveness of v
labour, and to produce in the working day of 12 hours, 24 in-^
stead of 12 such articles. The value of the means of produce
tion remaining the same, the value of each article will fall to>/
ninepence, made up of sixpence for the value of the means of ^
production and threepence for the value newly added by the^
labour. Despite the doubled productiveness of labour, the v

1 "Let us suppose ... the products ... of the manufacturer are doubled
by improvement in machinery ... he will be able to clothe his workmen by
means of a smaller proportion of the entire return . . . and thus his profit will
be raised. But in no other way will it be influenced." (Ramsay, 1. c. p. 168, 169.)

'348 Capitalist Production.

day's labour creates, as before, a new value of six shillings and
no more, which, however, is now spread over twice as many
articles. Of this value each article now has embodied in it
•j^-th, instead of-^-th, threepence instead of sixpence; or, what
amounts to the same thing, only half an hour's instead of a
whole hour's labour-time, is now added to the means of pro
duction while they are being transformed into each article.
,/The individual value of these articles is now below their social
value; in other words, they have cost less labour-time than
the great bulk of the same article produced under the average

• social conditions. Each article costs, on an average, one shill
ing, and represents 2 hours of social labour; but -under the
altered mode of production it costs only ninepence, or contains
only 1J hours' labour. The real value of a commodity is,

^however, not its individual value, but its social value; that is
to say, the real value is not measured by the labour-time that
the article in each individual case costs the producer, but by
the labour-time socially required for its production. If there
fore, the capitalist who applies the new method, sells his com
modity at its social value of one shilling, he sells it for three
pence above its individual value, and thus realises an extra
surplus-value of threepence. On the other hand, the working
day of 12 hours is, as regards him, now represented by 24 arti-
/ cles instead of 12. Hence, in order to get rid of the product

* of one working day, the demand must be double what it was,
i.e., the market must become twice as extensive. Other things

J )being equal, his commodities can command a more extended
v market only by a diminution of their prices. He will there
fore sell them above their individual but under their social
Rvalue, say at tenpence each. By this means he still squeezes
an extra surplus-value of one penny out of each. This aug
mentation of surplus-value is pocketed by him, whether his
commodities belong or not to the class of necessary means of
subsistence that participate in determining the general value
of labour-power. Hence, independently of this latter circum-
J stance, there is a motive for each individual capitalist to
^ cheapen his commodities, by increasing the productiveness of
V labour.

The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value. 349

Nevertheless, even in this case, the increased production of
surplus-value arises from the curtailment of the necessary
labour-time, and from the corresponding prolongation of the
surplus-labour.1 Let the necessary labour-time amount to 10
hours, the value of a day's labour-power to five shillings, the
surplus labour-time to 2 hours, and the daily surplus-value to
one shilling. But the capitalist now produces 24 articles,
which he sells at tenpence a-piece, making twenty shillings in
all. Since the value of the means of production is twelve
shillings, 14f of these articles merely replace the constant
capital advanced. The labour of the 12 hours' working day
is represented by the remaining 9| articles. Since the price
of the labour power is five shillings, 6 articles represent the
necessary labour-time, and 3J articles the surplus-labour.
The ratio of the necessary labour to the surplus-labour, which
under average social conditions was 5 : 1, is now only 5 : 3.
The same result may be arrived at in the following way. The
value of the product of the working day of 12 hours is twenty
shillings. Of this sum, twelve shillings belong to the value
of the means of production, a value that merely re-appears.
There remain eight shillings, which are the expression in
money, of the value newly created during the working day.
This sum is greater than the sum in which average social
labour of the same kind is expressed: twelve hours of the
latter labour are expressed by six shillings only. The excep
tionally productive labour operates as intensified labour; it
creates in equal periods of time greater values than average
social labour of the same kind. (See Ch. I. Sect. 1. p. 45.)
But our capitalist still continues to pay as before only five
shillings as the value of a day's labour-power. Hence, instead
of 10 hours, the labourer need now work only 7£ hours, in
order to re-produce this value. His surplus-labour is, there
fore, increased 2f hours, and the surplus-value he produces

1 "A man's profit does not depend upon his command of the produce of other men'*
labour, but upon his command of labour itself. If be can sell his goods at a higher
price, while his workmen's wages remain unaltered, he is clearly benefited. . . .
A smaller proportion of what he produces is sufficient to put that labour into mo-
uor;, and a larger proportion consequently remains for himself." ("Outline* of
Pol. Econ." London, 1832, pp. 49, 50.)

55O Capitalist Production.

grows from one, into three shillings. Hence, the capitalist
who applies the improved method of production appropriates
to surplus-labour a greater portion of the working day, than
the other capitalists in the same trade. He does individually,
what the whole body of capitalists engaged in producing rela
tive surplus-value, do collectively. On the other hand, how
ever, this extra surplus-value vanishes, so soon as the new
method of production has become general and has consequently
caused the difference between the individual value of tHe
cheapened commodity and its social value to vanish. The law
of the determination of value by labour-time, a law which
brings under its sway the individual capitalist who applies
the new method of production, by compelling him to sell his
goods under their social value, this same law, acting as a co
ercive law of competition, forces his competitors to adopt the
new method.1 The general rate of surplus-value is, therefore,
ultimately affected by the whole process, only when the in
crease in the productiveness of labour, has seized upon those
branches of production that are connected with, and has
cheapened those commodities that form part of, the necessary
means of subsistence, and are therefore elements of the value
of labour-power.

The value of commodities is in inverse ratio to the produc
tiveness of labour. And so, too, is the value of labour-power,
because it depends on the values of commodities. Relative
surplus-value is, on the contrary, directly proportional to that
productiveness. It rises with rising and falls with falling
productiveness. The value of money being assumed to be
I constant, an average social working day of 12 hours always
produces the same new value, six shillings, no matter how this

.sum may be apportioned between surplus- value and wages.
But if, in consequence of increased productiveness, the value

_jof the necessaries of life fall, and the value of a day's labour-

1 "If my neighbour by doing much with Httle labour, can sell cheap, I must con
trive to sell as cheap as he. So that every art, trade, or engine, doing work with
labour of fewer hands, and consequently cheaper, begets in others a kind of necessity
and emulation, either of using the same art, trade, or engine, or of inventing some
thing like it, that every man may b« upon the square, that no man may be able to
undersell his neighbour." ("The Advantage* of the East India Trade to England."
London, 1720, p.. 67.)

The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value. 351

power be thereby reduced from five shillings to three, the sur- !
plus-value increases from one shilling to three. Ten hours
were necessary for the reproduction of the value of the labour-
power; now only six are required. Four hours have been set
free, and can be annexed to the domain of surplus-labour.
Hence there is immanent in capital an inclination and con
stant tendency, to heighten the productiveness of labour, in
order to cheapen commodities, and by such cheapening to
cheapen the labourer himself.1

The value of a commodity is, in itself, of no interest to the
capitalist. What alone interests him, is the surplus-value that
dwells in it, and is realisable by sale. Realisation of the sur
plus-value necessarily carries with it the refunding of the
value that was advanced. Now, since relative surplus-value
increases in direct proportion to the development of the pro
ductiveness of labour, while, on the other hand, the value of
commodities diminishes in the same proportion ; since one and
the same process cheapens commodities, and augments the sur-\A
plus-value contained in them ; we have here the solution of the ^
riddle: why does the capitalist, whose sole concern is the pro
duction of exchange-value, continually strive to depress the
exchange-value of commodities ? A. riddle with which Ques- V
nay, one of the founders of political economy, tormented his
opponents, and to which they could give him no answer.
"You acknowledge," he says, "that the more expenses and the
cost of labour can, in the manufacture of industrial products,
be reduced without injury to production, the more advantage
ous is such reduction, because it diminishes the price of the
finished article. And yet, you believe that the production of
wealth, which arises from the labour of the workpeople, con-

1 "In whatever proportion the expenses of a labourer are diminished, in the same
proportion will his wages be diminished, if the restraints upon industry are at the
same time taken off." ("Considerations concerning taking off of the Bounty on Corn
Exported," &c., Lend, 1753, p. 7.) "The interest of trade requires, that corn and all
provisions should be as cheap as possible; for whatever makes them dear, must make
labour dear also ... in all countries where industry is not restrained the price
of provisions must affect the price of labour. This will always be diminished when
the necessaries of life grow cheaper." (1. c. p. 8.) "Wages are decreased in the
same proportion as the powers of production increase. Machinery, it is true, cheap
ens the necessaries of life, but it also cheapens the labourer." ("A Prire Essay on
the Comparative Merits of Competition and Co-operation." London, 1834, p. 27.)

35* Capitalist Production.

sists in the augmentation of the exchange- value of their
products."1

The shortening of the working day is, therefore, bj IK)
means what is aimed at, in capitalist production, when labour
is economised by increasing its productiveness,2 It is only
the shortening of the labour-time, necessary for the production
of a definite quantity of commodities, that is aimed at. lie
fact that, the workman, when the productiveness of his labour
has been increased, produces, say 10 times as many commodi
ties as before, and thus spends one-tenth as much labour-tine
on each, by no means prevents him from continuing to work 1 2
hours as before, nor from producing in those 12 hours 1200
articles instead of 120. Xay, more, his working day may te
prolonged at the same time, so as to make him produce, say
1400 articles in 14 hours. In the treatises, therefore, cf
economists of the stamp of MacCulloch, Ure, Senior, and tut i
quanti, we may read upon one page, that the labourer owes a
debt of gratitude to capital for developing his product ivenes .
because the necessary labour-time is thereby shortened, and 01
the next page, that he must prove his gratitude by working ii
future for 15 hours instead of 10. The object of all develop
ment of the productiveness of labour, within the limits of
capitalist production, is to shorten that part of the working
day, during which the workman must labour for his own bene
fit, and by that very shortening, to lengthen the other pan of
the day. during which he is at liberty to work gratis for th*
capitalist. How far this result is also attainable, without
cheapening commodities, will appear from an examination of

1 "Ils umnmariU <roe plus oo peat, sans prejudice, epargner de frats oo dc tramx

- : • . • ~ - j. • :. 7 • . ; '. M Ml : - • ~ i :' * : ' » z, • ". : f-sr » ? _ 5 : r :' r f r 2 r ~. ; f s ' r r -
Stable par la iliMUHinn des prix de tea •magi*. Ofieilaal Us croient quc la pr<>
dvctm de liik-nw qai resolte des traraux dea artisans coosiste dans ranfBMBtatioi
de la raleor renale de lean otrrrase*. " (Qoeanar : *Diafaf«CB wr le Cnaairii i « t
Far ks Traranx des artisans,- pp. 1S», 199.)

* ~Ces *f* •!•!••!• si ecoootaes du trarafl des «a»ikr» qn'H faodrah qu'Hs pa? -
assent." (J- N. "Bidaat: *T>u Monopole qui fitM* dans ks arts •ilMliiil r
::---:?. PUfa, UH r II I¥( «—::•-- - b« i ' "• > • &C MfCtd M
i i rmnmmt tone mi laboor.- (Du«ald Stewart: Works ed. by Sir W. Hamiltoc.
Ediaborsn, T. riiL. 1S*5. Lecmre on Poiit. Econ-, p. Sit.) "Tbeir (ibe i. ^ikilistf ' >

« tkat (fee froduciiie peters of tbe labourers they »pJoy sboold be rtt
poasibie. OB proaotiaf that pgwtr their atteatioo is fixed aad a!ara«* r» •
fixed." (R. T<m: L e. Lecture HI.)

Lo-Operation. 353

the particular modes o* producing relative surplus-value, to
which examination we now proceed.

CHAPTER XIII.

CO-OPERATION.

CAPITALIST production only then really begins, as we have
already seen, when each individual capital employs simultane
ously a comparatively large number of labourers ; when conse
quently the labour-process is carried on on an extensive scale
and yields, relatively, large quantities of products. A greater
number of labourers working together, at the same time, in -
one place (or, if you wiR, in the same field of labour), in v
order to produce the same sort of commodity under the master- '
ship of one capitalist, constitutes, both historically and logi-"
cally, the starting point of capitalist production. With regard v
to the mode of production itself, manufacture, in its strict v
meaning, is hardly to be distinguished, in its earliest stages, y
from the handicraft trades of the guilds, otherwise than by the •
greater number of workmen simultaneously employed by one
and the same individual capital. The workshop of thev-
mediaeval master handicraftsman is simply enlarged.

At first, therefore, the difference is purely quantitative.^
We have shown that the surplus-value produced by a given
capital is equal to the surplus-value produced by each work
man multiplied by the number of workmen simultaneously em
ployed. The number of workmen in itself does not affect, ^
either the rate of surplus-value, or the degree of exploitation v
of labour-power. If a 'working day of 12 hours be embodied
in six shillings, 1200 such days will be embodied in 1200
times 6 shillings. In one case 12X1200 working hours, and
in the other 12 such hours are incorporated in the product
In the production of value a number of workmen rank merely
as so maiy individual workmen; and it therefore makes no
difference in the value produced whether the 1200 men work

separate] ' or united under the control of one capitalist.

354 Capitalist Production.

Nevertheless, within certain limits, a modification takes
place. The labour realised in value, is labour of an average
social quality; is consequently the expenditure of average
labour-power. Any average magnitude, however, is merely
the average of a number of separate magnitudes all of one
kind, but differing as to quantity. In every industry, each
individual labourer, be he Peter or Paul; differs from the
average labourer. These individual differences, or "errors'*
as they are called in mathematics, compensate one another,
and vanish, whenever a certain minimum number of workmen
are employed together. The celebrated sophist and syco
phant, Edmund Burke, goes so far as to make the following
assertion, based on his practical observations as a farmer;
viz., that "in so small a platoon" as that of five farm labour
ers, all individual differences in the labour vanish, and that
consequently any given five adult farm labourers taken to
gether, will in the same time do as much work as any other
five.1 But, however that may be, it is clear, that the collec
tive working day of a large number of workmen simultane
ously employed, divided by the number of these workmen,
gives one day of average social labour. For example, let the
working day of each individual be 12 hours. Then the collect
ive working day of 12 men simultaneously employed, consists
of 144 hours ; and although the labour of each of the dozen
men may deviate more or less from average social labour, each
of them requiring a different time for the same operation, yet
since the working day of each is one-twelfth of the collective
working day of 144 hours, it possesses the qualities of an aver-
-.cm —oial working day. From the point of view, however,
of the capitalist who employs these 12 men, the working day
is that of the whole dozen. Each individual man's day is

^'Unquestionably, there 5s a good deal of difference between the value of one
man's labour and that of another from strength, dexterity, and honest application.
But I am quite sure, from my best observation, that any given five men will, in their
total, afford a proportion of labour equal to any other five within the periods of life
I have stated; that is, that among such five men there will be one possessing all the
qualifications of a good workman, one bad, and the other three middling, and ap
proximating to the first and the last So that in so small a platoon as that of even
five, you will find the full complement of all that five men can earn." (E. Burke, L
e. p. 15, 16). Compare Quetelet on the average individual.

Co-Operation. 355

an aliquot part of the collective working day, no matter
whether the 12 men assist one another in their work, or
whether the connexion between their operations consists mere
ly in the fact, that the men are all working for the same capi
talist. But if the 12 men are employed in six pairs, by as
many different small masters, it will be quite a matter of
chance, whether each of these masters produces the same value,
and consequently whether he realises the general rate of sur
plus-value. Deviations would occur in individual cases. If
one workman required considerably more time for the produc
tion of a commodity than is socially necessary, the duration of
the necessary labour-time would, in his case, sensibly deviate
from the labour-time socially necessary on an average; and
consequently his labour would not count as average labour, nor
his labour-power as average labour-power. It would either
be not saleable at all, or only at something below the average
value of labour-power. A fixed minimum of efficiency in all
labour is therefore assumed, and we shall see, later on, that
capitalist production provides the means of fixing this mini
mum. ISTevertheless, this minimum deviates from the aver
age, although on the other hand the capitalist has to pay the
average value of labour-power. Of the six small masters, one
would therefore squeeze out more than the average rate of
surplus-value, another less. The inequalities would be com
pensated for the society at large, but not for the individual
masters. Thus the laws of the production of ^.alue are only
fully realised for the individual producer, wliev be produces
as a capitalist, and employes a number of workmen together,
whose labour, by its collective nature, is at onw stamped as
average social labour.1

Even without an alteration in the system of working, the
simultaneous employment of a large number of labourers
effects a revolution in the material conditions of the labour-
process. The buildings in which they work, the store-houses

1 Professor Roscher claims to have discovered that one needlewoman employed by
Mrs. Roscher during two days, does more work than two needlewomen employed
together during one day. The learned professor should not study the capitalist proc
ess of production in the nursery, nor under circumstances where the principal per
sonage, the capitalist, is wanting.

356 Capitalist Production.

for the raw material, the implements and utensils used simul
taneously or in turns by the workmen ; in short, a portion of
the means of production, are now consumed in common. On
the one hand, the exchange-value of these means of production
is not increased ; for the exchange value of a commodity is not
raised by its use-value being consumed more thoroughly and to
greater advantage. On the other hand, they are used in com
mon, and therefore on a larger scale than before. A room
where twenty weavers work at twenty looms must be larger
than the room of a single weaver with two assistants. But it
costs less labour to build one workshop for twenty persons
than to build ten to accommodate two weavers each; thus the
value of the means of production that are concentrated for use

v in common on a large scale does not increase in direct propor-

v tion to the expansion and to the increased useful effect of
those means. When consumed in common, they give up a
smaller part of their value to each single product; partly be
cause the total value they part with is spread over a greater
quantity of products, and partly because their value, though
absolutely greater, is, having regard to their sphere of action
in the process, relatively less than the value of isolated means
of production. Owing to this, the value of a part of the con
stant capital falls, and in proportion to the magnitude of the

- fall, the total value of the commodity also falls. The effect is
the same as 'if the means of production had cost less. The

y economy in their application is entirely owing to their being
consumed in common by a large number of workmen. More
over, this character of being necessary conditions of social
labour, a character that distinguishes them from the dispersed
and relatively more costly means of production of isolated, in
dependent labourers, or small masters, is acquired even wher
the numerous workmen assembled together do not assist one
another, but merely work side by side. A portion of the-
instruments of labour acquires this social character before the
labour-process itself does so.

Economy in the use of the means of production has to b<>
considered under two aspects. First, as cheapening commodi-
ties, and thereby bringing about a fall in the value of labour*

Co-Operation. 357

power. Secondly, as altering the ratio of the surplus-value ta,
the total capital advanced, -Le.f to the sum of the values of the »
constant and variable capital. The latter aspect will not be~-
considered until we come to the third volume, to which, with
the object of treating them in their proper connexion, we also
relegate many other points that relate to the present question.
The march of our analysis compels this splitting up of the
subject matter, a splitting up that is quite in keeping with the
spirit of capitalist production. For since, in this mode of pro
duction, the workman finds the instruments of labour existing
independently of him as another man's property, economy in
their use appears, with regard to him, to be a distinct operation,
one that does not concern him, and which, therefore, has no
connexion with the methods by which his own personal pro
ductiveness is increased.

When numerous labourers work together side by side, •
whether in one and the same process, or in different but con-v/
nected processes, they are said to co-operate, or to work in co-/
operation.1

Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the
defensive power of a regiment of infantry, is essentially differ
ent from the sum of the offensive or defensive powers of the
individual cavalry or infantry soldiers taken separately, so
the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated /
workmen differs from the social force that is developed, whenv/
many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same un-^
divided operation, such as raising a heavy weight, turning a^
winch, or removing an obstacle.2 In such cases the effect of
the combined labour could either not be produced at all by
isolated individual labour, or it could only be produced by a
great expenditure of time, or on a very dwarfed scale. Not
only have we here an increase in the productive power of the ^

1 "Concourg de forces." (Destutt de Tracy, 1. c., p. 78.)

1 "There are numerous operations of so simple a kind as not to admit a division
into parts, which cannot be performed without the co-operation of many pairs of
hands. I woul<} instance the lifting of a large tree on to a wain . . . every
thing, in short, which cannot be done unless a great many pairs of hands help each
other in the same undivided employment and at the same time" (E. G. Wakefield:
MA View of the Art of Colonisation." London: 1849, p. 1C8).

358 Capitalist Production.

^individual, by means of co-operation, but the creation of a new
power, namely, the collective power of masses.1

Apart from the new power that arises from the fusion of
many forces into one single force, mere social contact begets in

/ most industries an emulation and a stimulation of the animal
spirits that heighten the efficiency of each individual workman.
Hence it is that a dozen persons working together will, in
their collective working-day of 144 hours, produce far more
than twelve isolated men each working 12 hours, or than one

- man who works twelve days in succession.2 The reason oi
this is that a man is, if not as Aristotle contends, a political,3
at all events a social animal.

Although a number of man may be occupied together at the
same time on the same, or the same kind of work, yet the
labour of each, as a part of the collective labour, may corres
pond to a distinct phase of the labour-process, through all
whose phases, in consequence of co-operation, the subject oi
their labour passes with greater speed. For instance, if a
dozen masons plitte themselves in a row, so as to pass stones
from the foot of a ladder to its summit, each of them does the
same thing; nevertheless, their separate acts form connected
parts of one total operation ; they are particular phases, which
must be gone through by each stone; and the stones are thus
carried up quicker by the 24 hands of the row of men than
they could be if each man went separately up and down the

1 "As one man cannot, and ten men must strain to lift a tun of weight, yet 100
men can do it only by the strength of a finger of each of them." (John Bellers:
"Proposals for raising a College of Industry." London, 1696, p. 21.)

1 "There is also" (when the same number of men are employed by one farmer on
300 acres, instead of by ten farmers with 30 acres a piece) "an advantage in the pro
portion of servants, which will not so easily be understood but by practical men;
for it is natural to say, as 1 is to 4, so are 3: to 12; but this will not hold good in
practice; for in harvest time and many other operations which require that kind of
despatch by the throwing many hands together, the work is better and more expedi-
tiously done; f. i. in harvest, 2 drivers, 2 loaders, 2 pitchers, 2 rakers, and the reit
at the rick, or in the barn, will despatch double the work that the same number of
hands would do if divided into different gangs on different farms." ("An Inquiry
into the connection between the present Price of Provisions and the Size of Farms."
By a Farmer. London, 1773, pp. 7, 8.)

* Strictly, Aristotle's definition is that man is by nature a town-citizen. This U
quite as characteristic of ancient classical society as Franklin's definition of
a tool-making animal, is characteristic of Yankeedom.

Co-Operation. 359

ladder with his burden.1 The object is carried over the same
distance in a shorter time. Again, a combination of labour
occurs whenever a building, for instance, is taken in hand on
different sides simultaneously; although here also the co
operating masons are doing the same, or the same kind of
work. The 12 masons, in their collective working day of 144
hours, make much more progress with the building than one
mason could make working for 12 days, or 144 hours. The
reason is, that a body of men working in concert has hands v
and eyes both before and behind, and is, to a certain degree, •
omni-present. The various parts of the work progress simul- ''
taneously.

In the above instances we have laid stress upon the point
that the men do the same, or the same kind of work, because
this, the most simple form of labour in common, plays a great
part in co-operation, even in its most fully developed stage.
If the work be complicated, then the mere number of the men
who co-operate allows of the various operations being appor
tioned to different hands, and, consequently, of being carried
on simultaneously. The time necessary for the completion of
the whole work is thereby shortened.2

In many industries, there are critical periods, determined by
the nature of the process, during which certain definite results
must be obtained. For instance, if a flock of sheep has to be
shorn, or a field of wheat to be cut and harvested, the quantity
and quality of the product depends on the work being begun
and ended within a certain time. In these cases, the time
that ought to be taken by the process is prescribed, just as it

1 On doit encore remarquer que cette division partielle de travail peut sc faire
quand meme les ouvriers sont occupes d'une meme besogne. DCS masons par ex-
emple, occupes a faire passer de mains en mains des briques a un echafaudage su-
perieur, font tous la meme besogne, et pourtant il existe parmi eux une espece de
division de travail, qui consiste en ce que chacun d'eux fait passer la brique par un
espacc donn£, et que tous ensemble la font parvenir beaucoup plus promptement 4
1'endroit marque qu'ils ne le feraient si chacun d'eux portait sa brique separiment
jusqu 'a 1'echafaudage superieur," (F. Skarbek: "Theorie des richesses sociales."
Paris, 1829. t. I. pp. 97, 98.)

* "Est-il question d'executer un travail compliqu£, plusieur» choses doivent 4tre
faites simultanement. L'un en fait une pendant que 1'autre en fait une autre, et
tous contribuent a 1'cffet qu'un seul homme n'aurait pu produire. L'un rame pendant
que 1'autre tient le gouvernail, et qu'un troisieme jette le filet ou harponne le poisaon,
et 1* peche a un succes impossible sans ce concours." (Destutt de Tracy, 1. c.)

360 Capitalist Production.

is in herring fishing. A single person cannot carve a working
day of more than, say 12 hours, out of the natural day, but 100
men co-operating extend the working day to 1,200 hours.
The shortness of the time allowed for the work is compensated
for by the large mass of labour thrown upon the field of pro
duction at the decisive moment. The completion of the task
within the proper time depends on the simultaneous applica
tion of numerous combined working days ; the amount of use
ful effect depends on the number of labourers; this number,
however, is always smaller than the number of isolated la
bourers required to do the same amount of work in the same
period.1 It is owing to the absence of this kind of co-opera
tion that, in the western part of the United States, quantities
of corn, and in those parts of East India where English rule
has destroyed the old communities, quantities of cotton, are
yearly wasted.2

On the one hand, co-operation allows of the work being car
ried on over an extended space ; it is consequently imperatively
called for in certain undertakings, such as draining, construct
ing dykes, irrigation works, and the making of canals, roads
and railways. On the other hand, while extending the scale
of production, it renders possible a relative contraction of the
arena. This contraction of arena simultaneous with, and aris
ing from, extension of scale, whereby a number of useless ex
penses are cut down, is owing to the conglome>ation of labour
ers, to the aggregation of various processes, and to the con
centration of the means of production.8

1 "The doing of it (agricultural work) at the critical juncture is of so much the
greater consequence." ("An Inquiry into the Connection between the Present Price,'*
&c., p. 0.) "In agriculture, there is no more important factor than that of time."
(Liebig: "Ueber Theorie und Praxis in der Landwirthschaft." 1856. p. 23.)

* "The next evil is one which one would scarcely expect to find in a country which
exports more labour than any other in the world, with the exception, perhaps, of
China and England — the impossibility of procuring a sufficient number of hands to
clean the cotton. The consequence of this is that large quantities of the crop are
left unpicked, while another portion is gathered from the ground when it has fallen,
and is of course discoloured and partially rotted, so that for want of labour at the
proper season the cultivator is actually forced to submit to the loss of a large part
of that crop for which England is so anxiously looking." (Bengal Hurkaru. Bi-
Monthly Overland Summary of News, 22nd July, 1861.)

' In the progress of culture "all, and perhaps more than all, the capital and labour
which once loosely occupied 500 acres, are now concentrated for the more complete
tillage of 100." Although "relatively to the amount of capital and labour employed,

Co-Operation. 361

The combined working day produces, relatively to an equal
sum of isolated working-days, a greater quantity of use-values,
and, consequently, diminishes the labour-time necessary for the
production of a given useful effect. Whether the combined
working-day, in a given case, acquires this increased produc
tive power, because it heightens the mechanical force of labour,
or extends its sphere of action over a greater space, or con
tracts the field of production relatively to the scale of produc
tion, or at the critical moment sets large masses of labour to
work, or excites emulation between individuals and raises their
animal spirits, or impresses on the similar operations carried
on by a number of men the stamp of continuity and many-
sidedness, or performs simultaneously different operations, or
economises the means of production by use in common, or lends
to individual labour the character of average social labour —
which ever of these be the cause of the increase, the special
productive power of the combined working day is, under all
circumstances, the social productive power of labour, or the
productive power of social labour. This power is due to co
operation itself. When the labourer co-operates systematic
ally with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality,
and develops the capabilities of his species.1

As a general rule, labourers cannot co-operate without being
brought together : their assemblage in one place is a necessary
condition of their co-operation. Hence wage labourers cannot
co-operate, unless they are employed simultaneously by the
same capital, the same capitalist, and unless therefore their
labour-powers are bought simultaneously by him. The total
value of these labour-powers, or the amount of the wages of
these labourers for a day, or a week, as the case may be, must
be ready in the pocket of the capitalist, before the workmen
are assembled for the process of production. The payment of

space is concentrated, it is an enlarged sphere of production, as compared to the
•phere of production formerly occupied or worked upon by one single independent
agent of production." (R. Jones: "An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth," part
I. On Rent. London, 1831, p. 191.)

1 "La forza di ciascuno uomo e minima, ma la riunione delle minime force forma
una forza totale maggiore anche della somma delle forze medesime fino a che le forte
per essere riunite possono diminuere il tempo ed accrescere lo spazio della loro
azione." (G. R. Carli, Note to P. Verri, 1. c. t, xv. p. 196.)

362 Capitalist Production.

300 workmen at once, though only for one day, requires a

greater outlay of capital, than does the payment of a smaller

number of men, week by week, during a whole year. Hence

v. the number of the labourers that co-operate, or the scale of

co-operation, depends, in the first instance, on the amount of

; capital that the individual capitalist can spare for the purchase

v of labour-power; in other words, on the extent to which a

single capitalist has command over the means of subsistence of

a number of labourers.

And as with the variable, so it is with the constant capital.
/ For example, the outlay on raw material is 30 times as great,
for the capitalist who employs 300 men, as it is for each of
the 30 capitalists who employ 10 men. The value and quan
tity of the instruments of labour used in common do not, it is
true, increase at the same rate as the number of workmen, but
they do increase very considerably. Hence, concentration of
large masses of the means of production in the hands of indi
vidual capitalists, is a material condition for the co-operation
of wage-labourers, and the extent of the co-operation or the
scale of production, depends on the extent of this concentra
tion.

We saw in a former chapter, that a certain minimum amount
of capital was necessary, in order that the number of labourers
simultaneously employed, and, consequently, the amount of
surplus-value produced, might suffice to liberate the employer
himself from manual labour, to convert him from a small
master into a capitalist, and thus formally to establish capital
ist production. We now see that a certain minimum amount
is a necessary condition for the conversion of numerous iso
lated and independent processes into one combined social
process.

We also saw that at first, the subjection of labour to capital
was only a formal result of the fact, that the labourer, instead
of working for himself, works for and consequently under the
capitalist. By the co-operation of numerous wage-labourers,
the sway of capital developes into a requisite for carrying on
the labour-process itself, into a real requisite of production.
That a capitalist should command on the field of production,

Co-Operation. 363

is now as indispensable as that a general should command on
the field of Battle.

All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less^/
-a directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious work-,
ing of the individual activities, and to perform the general
functions that have their origin in the action of the combined
organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate or
gans. A single violin player is his own conductor ; an orches
tra requires a separate one. The work of directing, superin- ^
tending, and adjusting, becomes one of the functions of capital, v
from the moment that the labour under the control of capital, ^
becomes co-operative. Once a function of capital, it acquires v'
special characteristics.

The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist produc- /
tion, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus- v
value,1 and consequently to exploit labour-power to the great-v
est possible extent. As the number of the co-operating labour
ers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of
capital, and with it, the necessity for capital to overcome this
resistance by counter-pressure. The control exercised by the
capitalist is not only a special function, due to the nature of
the social labour-process, and peculiar to that process, but it is,
at the same time, a function of the exploitation of a social
labour-process, and is consequently rooted in the unavoidable
antagonism between the exploiter and the living and labouring
raw material he exploits.

Again, in proportion to the increasing mass of the means of
production, now no longer the property of the labourer, but
of the capitalist, the necessity increases for some effective
control over the proper application of those means.2 More-

1 "Profits ... is the sole end of trade." (J. Vanderlint, 1. c., p. 11.)
1 That Philistine paper, the Spectator, states that after the introduction of a
sort of partnership between capitalist and workmen in the "Wirework Company of
Manchester," "the first result was a sudden decrease in waste, the men not seeing
why they should waste their own property any more than any other master's, and
waste is, perhaps, next to bad debts, the greatest source of manufacturing loss."
The same paper finds that the main defect in the Rochdale co-operative experiments
»s this: "They showed that associations of workmen could manage shops, mills,
and almost all forms of industry with success, and they immediately improved
the condition of the men; but then they did not leave a clear place for masters."
Quclle horreur!

364 Capitalist Production.

over, the cooperation of wage labourers is entirely brought
about by the capital that employs them. Their union into one
single productive body and the establishment of a connexion
between their individual functions, are matters foreign and
external to them, are not their own act, but the act of the
capital that brings and keeps them together. Hence the con-

^nexion existing between their various labours appears to them.

^ideally, in the shape of a preconceived plan of the capitalist,
practically in the shape of the authority of the same capi

talist, in the shape of the powerful will of another, who sub
jects their activity to his aims. If, then, the control of the
capitalist is in substance twofold by reason of the twofold
nature of the process of production itself, — which, on the one
hand, is a social process for producing use-values, on the other,
a process for creating surplus-value — in form that control is
despotic. As co-operation extends its scale, this despotism
takes forms peculiar to itself. Just as at first the capitalist
is relieved from actual labour so soon as his capital has reached
that minimum amount with which capitalist production, as
such begins, so now, he hands over the work of direct and con
stant supervision of the individual workmen, and groups of
workmen, to a special kind of wage labourer. An industrial
army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires,
like a real army,/officers (managers), and sergeants (foremen,
overlookers), who, while the work is being done, command in
the name of the capitalist. I The work of supervision becomes
their established and exclusive function. When comparing
the mode of production of isolated peasants and artizans with
production by slave labour the political economist counts this
labour of superintendence among the faux frais of production.1
But, when considering the capitalist mode of production, he,
on the contrary, treats the work of control made necessary by
the co-operative character of the labour process as identical
with the different work of control, necessitated by the capitalist

1 Professor Cairns, after stating that the superintendence of labour is a leading
feature of production by slaves in the Southern States of North America, continues:
"The peasant proprietor (of the North), appropriating the whole produce of his toil,
needs no other stimulus to exertion. Superintendence is here completely dispensed
with." (Cairnes, 1. c., pp. 48, 49.)

Co-Operation. 365

character of that process and the antagonism of interests be
tween capitalist and labourer.1 It is not because he is a leader
of industry that a man is a capitalist ; on the contrary, he is a
leader of industry because he is a capitalist. The leadership
of industry is an attribute of capital, just as in feudal times
the functions of general and judge were attributes of landed
property.2

The labourer is the owner of his labour-power until he has
done bargaining for its sale with the capitalist; and he can
sell no more than what he has — i.e., his individual, isolated
labour-power. This state of things is in no way altered by
the fact that the capitalist, instead of buying the labour-power
of one man, buys that of 100, and enters into separate con
tracts with 100 unconnected men instead of with one. He
is at liberty to set the 100 men to work, without letting them
co-operate. He pays them the value of 100 independent
labour-powers, but he does not pay for the combined labour-
power of the hundred. Being independent of each other, the
labourers are isolated persons, who enter into relations with
the capitalist, but not with one another. This co-operation
begins only with the labour process, but they have then ceased
to belong to themselves. On entering that process, they be
come incorporated with capital. As co-operators, as members
of a working organism, they are but special modes of existence
of capital. Hence, the productive power developed by the
labourer when working in co-operation, is the productive power
of capital. This power is developed gratuitously, whenever
the workmen are placed under given conditions, and it is capi
tal that places them under such conditions. Because this
power costs capital nothing, and because, on the other hand,
the labourer himself does not develop it before his labour
belongs to capital, it appears as a power with which capital

1 Sir James Steuart, a writer altogether remarkable for his quick eye for the
characteristic social distinctions between different modes of production, says: "Why
do large undertakings in the manufacturing way ruin private industry, but by coming
nearer to the simplicity of slaves?" ("Prin. of Pol. Econ.," London, 1767, v. I., p.
167, 168.)

'Auguste Comte and his school might therefore have shown that feudal lords »re
»n eternal necessity in the same way that they have done in the case of the loro*
of capital.

366 Capitalist Production.

is endowed by Mature — a productive power that is immanent
in capital.

The colossal effects of simple co-operation are to he seen in
the gigantic structures of the ancient Asiatics, Egyptians,
Etruscans, £c. "It has happened in times past that these
Oriental States, after supplying the expenses of their civil and
military establishments, have found themselves in possession
of a surplus which they could apply to works of magnificence
or utility, and in the construction of these their command over
the hands and arms of almost the entire non-agricultural
population has produced stupendous monuments 'which still
indicate their power. The teeming valley of the Kile . . .
produced food for a swarming non-agricultural population, and
this food, belonging to the monarch and the priesthood, afford
ed the means of erecting the mighty monuments which filled
the land. ... In moving the colossal statues and vast masses
of which the transport creates wonder, human labour almost
alone, wras prodigally used. . . . The number of the labourers
and the concentration of their efforts sufficed. We see mighty
coral reefs rising from the depths of the ocean into islands and
firm land, yet each individual depositor is puny, weak, and
contemptible. The non-agricultural labourers of an Asiatic
monarchy have little but their individual bodily exertions to
bring to the task, but their number is their strength, and the
power of directing these masses gave rise to the palaces anc
temples, the pyramids, and the armies of gigantic statues of
which the remains astonish and perplex us. It is that con
finement of the revenues which feed them, to one or a feu
hands, which makes such undertakings possible."1 This power
of Asiatic and Egyptian kings, Etruscan theocrats, &c., has in
modern society been transferred to the capitalist, whether he
be an isolated, or as in joint stock companies, a collective
capitalist.

Co-operation, such as we find it at the dawn of human de
velopment, among races who live by the chase,2 or say, in

1 R. Jones. "Text-book of Lectures," &c., pp. 77, 78. The an~ien4 Assyrian,
Egyptian, and other collections in London, and in other European capitals, rnj»lre us
eye-witnesses of the modes of carrying on that co-operative labour.

2 Linguet is probably right, when in his "Theorie des Lois Civiks." he declar«i

Co-Operation. 367

tLe agriculture of Indian communities, is based, on the one
hand, on ownership in common of the means of production, '
and on the other hand, on the fact, that in those cases, each
individual has no more torn himself off from the navel-string
of his tribe or community, than each bee has freed itself from
connexion with the hive. Such co-operation is distinguished </
from capitalistic co-operation by both of the above characteris-i/
tics. The sporadic application of co-operation on a large scale v
in ancient times, in the middle ages, and in modern colonies, *
reposes on relations of dominion and servitude, principally on^
slavery. The capitalistic form, on the contrary, presupposes^
from first to last, the free wage labourer, who sells his labour-^
power to capital. Historically, however, this form is devel-u
oped in opposition to peasant agriculture and to the carrying
on of independent handicrafts whether in guilds or not.1 From
the standpoint of these, capitalistic co-operation does not mani
fest itself as a particular historical form of co-operation, but
co-operation itself appears to be a historical fonn peculiar to,
and specifically distinguishing, the capitalist process of pro
duction.

Just as the social productive power of labour that is de- *
veloped by co-operation, appears to be the productive power -
of capital, so co-operation itself, contrasted with the process of *
production carried on by isolated independent labourers, or-'
even by small employers, appears to be a specific form of the j
capitalist process of production. It is the first change experi- *
enced by the actual labour-process, when subjected to capital.
This change takes place spontaneously. The simultaneous ^
employment of a large number of wage-labourers, in one andi/
the same process, which is a necessary condition of this change, iA
also forms the starting point of capitalist production. This ^
point coincides with the birth of capital itself. If then, on the

hunting to be the first form of co-operation, and man-hunting (war) one of the
earliest forms of hunting.

1 Peasant agriculture on a small scale, and the carrying on of independent handi
crafts, which together form the basis of the feudal mode of production, and after
the dissolution of that system, continue side by side with the capitalist mode, also
form the economic foundation of the classical communities at their best, after the
primitive form of ownership of land in common had disappeared, and before slavery
had seized on production in earnest.

368 Capitalist Production.

v/ one hand; the capitalist mode of production presents itself to
us historically, as a necessary condition to the transformation

*s of the labour-process into a social process, so, on the other hand,

\ this social form of the labour-process presents itself, as a
method employed by capital for the more profitable exploita
tion of labour, by increasing that labour's productiveness.

In the elementary form, under which we have hitherto
viewed it, co-operation is a necessary concomitant of all pro
duction on a large scale, but it does not, in itself, represent
a fixed form characteristic of a particular epoch in the develop
ment of the capitalist mode of production. At the most it
appears to do so, and that only approximately, in the handi
craft-like beginnings of manufacture,1 and in that kind of
agriculture on a large scale, which corresponds to the epoch of
manufacture, and is distinguished from peasant agriculture,
mainly by the number of .the labourers simultaneously em
ployed, and by the mass of the means of production con-

j centrated for their use. Simple co-operation is always the
prevailing form, in those branches of production in which
capital operates on a large scale, ^M^ivision of labour and
machinery play but a subordinate part.

Co-operation ever constitutes the fundamental form of the
capitalist mode of production; nevertheless, the elementary
form of co-operation continues to subsist as a particular form
of capitalist production side by side with the more developed
forms of that mode of production.

CHAPTEK XIV.

DIVISION OF LABOUR AND MANUFACTURE.
SECTION 1. TWOFOLD ORIGIN OF MANUFACTURE.

THAT co-operation which is based on division of labour, as-
7 sumes its typical form in the manufacture, and is the prevalent

1 "Whether the united skill, industry, and emulation of many together on th«
•ame work be not the way to advance it? And whether it had been otherwise
possible for England, to have carried on her Woollen Manufacture to so great a p«r«
fcction?" (Berkeley. "The Querist." London, 1750, p. 56, par. 521.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 369

characteristic form of the capitalist process of production
throughout the manufacturing period properly so called. That
period, roughly speaking, extends from the middle of the 16th
to the last third of the 18th century.

Manufacture takes its rise in two ways: —

(1) By the assemblage, in one workshop under the control ^
of a single capitalist, of labourers belonging to various inde- *
pendent handicrafts, but through whose hands a given article v"
must pass on its way to completion. A carriage, for example, •'
was formerly the product of the labour of a great number of
independent artificers, such as wheelwrights, harness-makers,
tailors, locksmiths, upholsterers, turners, fringe-makers, gla
ziers, painters, polishers, gilders, &c. In the manufacture of
carriages, however, all these different artificers are assembled
in one building, where they work into one another's hands.
It is true that a carriage cannot be gilt before it has been made.
But if a number of carriages are being made simultaneously,
some may be in the hands of the gilders while others are going
through an earlier process. So far, we are still in the domain v
of simple co-operation, which finds its materials ready to hand-
in the shape of men and things. But very soon an important^/
change takes place. The tailor, the locksmith, and the other
artificers, being now exclusively occupied in carriage-making, "
each gradually loses, through want of practice, the ability to u
carry on, to its full extent, his old handicraft. But, on thev
other hand, his activity now confined in one groove, assumes
the form best adapted to the narrowed sphere of action. At
first, carriage manufacture is a combination of various inde
pendent handicrafts. By degrees, it becomes the splitting up \J
of carriage making into its various detail processes, each of "
which crystallizes into the exclusive function of a particular
workman, the manufacture, as a whole, being carried on by
the men in conjunction. In the same way, cloth manufacture,
as also a whole series of other manufactures, arose by com
bining different handicrafts together under the control of a
single capitalist.1

*To give a more modern instance: The silk spinning and weaving of Lyons and
Nimes "est toute patriarcale; elle emploie beaucoup de femmes et d'enfants, mais

370 Capitalist Production.

(2.) Manufacture also arises in a way exactly the reverse of
this — namely, by one capitalist employing simultaneously in

*' one workshop a number of artificers, who all do the same, or
the same kind of work, such as making paper, type, or needles.

' This is co-operation in its most elementary form. Each of
these artificers (with the help, perhaps, of one or two appren
tices), makes the entire commodity, and he consequently per
forms in succession all the operations necessary for its produc
tion. He still works in his old handicraft-like way. But
very soon external circumstances cause a different use to be
made of the concentration of the workmen on one spot, and
of the simultaneousness of their work. An increased quantity
of the article has perhaps to be delivered within a given time.
The work is therefore re-distributed. Instead of each man
being allowed to perform all the various operations in succes
sion, these operations are changed into disconnected, isolated
ones, carried on side by side; each is assigned to a different
artificer, and the whole of them together are performed simul
taneously by the co-operating workmen. This accidental re
partition gets repeated, developes advantages of its own, and
gradually ossifies into a systematic division of labour. The
commodity, from being the individual product of an inde
pendent artificer, becomes the social product of a union of
artificers, each of whom performs one, and only one, of the
constituent partial operations. The same operations which, in
the case of a papermaker belonging to a German Guild, merged
one into the other as the successive acts of one artificer, became
in the Dutch paper manufacture so many partial operations
carried on side by side by numerous co-operating labourers.
The needlemaker of the Nuremberg Guild was the corner-

sans les Ipuiser ni les corrompre; elle les laisse dans leur belles valle'es de la Drome,
du Var, de 1'Isere, de Vaucluse, pour y dlever des vers et divider leurs cocons; jamais
elle n'entre dans une veritable fabrique. Pour etre aussi bien observe . . . le
principe de la division du travail s'y revet d'un caractere special. II y a bien des
divideuses, des moulineurs, des teinturiers, des encolleurs, puis des tisserands; mais
ils ne sont pas reunis dans un xneme etablissement, ne dependent pas d'un meme
maitre; tous ils sont inde"pendants." (A. Blanqui: "Cours d'Econ. Industrielle."
Recueilli par A. Blaise. Paris, 1838-39, pp. 79). Since Blanqui wrote this, the
various independent labourers have, to some extent, been united in factories. [And
•ince Marx wrote the above, the powerloom has invaded these factories, and is now
— 1886 — rapidly superseding the bandloom. ED.]

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 371

stone on which the English needle manufacture was raised.
But while in Nuremberg that single artificer performed a series
of perhaps 20 operations one after another, in England it was
not long before there were 20 needlemakers side by side, each
performing one alone of those 20 operations; and in conse
quence of further experience, each of those 20 operations was
again split up, isolated, and made the exclusive function of a
separate workman.

The mode in which manufacture arises, its growth out of ^
handicrafts, is therefore twofold. On the one hand, it arises*7
from the union of various independent handicrafts, which be-/
come stripped of their independence and specialised to such an v
extent as to be reduced to mere supplementary partial processes «/
in the production of one particular commodity. On the other '--
hand, it arises from the co-operation of artificers of one handi
craft; it splits up that particular handicraft into its various'-'
detail operations, isolating, and making these operations i
pendent of one another up to the point where each becomes
exclusive function of a particular labourer. On the one hand,v
therefore, manufacture either introduces division of labour
into a process of production, or further developes that divi
sion; on the other hand, it unites together handicrafts that
were formerly separate. But whatever may have been its par
ticular starting point, its final form is invariably the same — a
productive mechanism whose parts are human beings.

For a proper understanding of the division of labour iny
manufacture, it is essential that the following points be firmly-'
grasped. First, the decomposition of a process of production-
into its various successive steps coincides, here, strictly with-
the resolution of a handicraft into its successive manual opera-u
tions. Whether complex or simple, each operation has to be.-
done by hand, retains the character of a handicraft, and is*/
therefore dependent on the strength, skill, quickness, and sure- ^
ness, of the individual workman in handling his tools. The v
handicraft continues to be the basis. This narrow technical"
basis excludes a really scientific analysis of any definite process
of industrial production, since it is still a condition that each
detail process gone through by the product must be capable of

372 Capitalist Production.

being done by hand and of forming, in its way, a separate
handicraft. It is just because handicraft skill continues, in
this way, to be the foundation of the process of production,
that each workman becomes exclusively assigned to a partial
function, and that for the rest of his life, his labour-power is
turned into the organ of this detail function.

Secondly, this division of labour is a particular sort of co
operation, and many of its disadvantages spring from the
general character of co-operation, and not from this particular
form of it.

SECTION 2. THE DETAIL LABOURER AND HIS IMPLEMENTS.

If we now go more into detail, it is, in the first place, clear
that a labourer who all his life performs one and the same
simple operation, converts his whole body into the automatic,
specialised implement of that operation. Consequently, he
takes less time in doing it, than the artificer who performs a
whole series of operations in succession. But the collective
labourer, who constitutes the living mechanism of manufacture,
is made up solely of such specialised detail labourers. Hence,
in comparison with the independent handicraft, more is pro
duced in a given time, or the productive power of labour is
- increased.1 Moreover, when once this fractional work is es
tablished as the exclusive function of one person, the methods
it employs become perfected. The workman's continued repe
tition of the same simple act, and the concentration of his
attention on it, teach him by experience how to attain the
desired effect with the minimum of exertion. But since there
are always several generations of labourers living at one time,
and working together at the manufacture of a given article,
the technical skill, the tricks of the trade thus acquired, be
come established, and are accumulated and handed down.2
Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detainabourer,

1 "The more any manufacture of much variety shall be distributed and assigned
to different artists, the same must needs be better done and with greater expedition,
with less loss of time and labour." ("The Advantages of the East India Trade,"
Lond., 1780. p. 71.)

•"Easy labour is transmitted skill." (Th. Hodgskin, 1. c. p. 125.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 373

by reproducing, and systematically driving to an extreme
within the workshop, the naturally developed differentiation
of trades, which it found ready to hand in society at large.
On the other hand, the conversion of fractional work into the
life-calling of one man; corresponds to the tendency shown by
earlier societies, to make trades hereditary; either to petrify
them into castes, or whenever definite historical conditions
beget in the individual a tendency to vary in a manner incom
patible with the nature of castes, to ossify them into guilds.
Castes and guilds arise from the action of the same natural
law, that regulates the differentiation of plants and animals
into species and varieties, except that, when a certain degree
of development has been reached, the heredity of castes and
the exclusiveness of guilds are ordained as a law of society.1
"The muslins of Dakka in fineness, the calicoes and other piece
goods of Coromandel in brilliant and durable colours, have
never been surpassed. Yet they are produced without capital,
machinery, division of labour, or any of those means which
give such facilities to the manufacturing interest of Europe.
The weaver is merely a detached individual, working a web
when ordered of a customer, and with a loom of the rudest
construction, consisting sometimes of a few branches or bars of
wood, put roughly together. There is even no expedient for
rolling up the warp ; the loom must therefore be kept stretched
to its full length, and becomes so inconveniently large, that it
cannot be contained within the hut of the manufacturer, who
is therefore compelled to ply his trade in the open air, where
it is interrupted by every vicissitude of the weather."2 It is
only the special skill accumulated from generation to genera-

1 "The arts also have ... in Egypt reached the requisite degree of perfection.
For it is the only country where artificers may not in any way meddle with th«
affairs of another class of citizens, but must follow that calling alone which by
law is hereditary in their clan ... In other countries it is found that trades
men divide their attention between too many objects. At one time they try agri
culture, at another they take to commerce, at another they busy themselves with two
or three occupations at once. In free countries, they mostly frequent the assemblies
of the people. ... In Egypt, on the contrary, every artificer is severely pun
ished if he meddles with affairs of State, or carries on several trades at once. Thus
there is nothing to disturb their application to their calling. . . . Moreover, since
they inherit from their forefathers numerous rules, they are eager to discover fresh
advantages." (Diodorus Siculus: Bibl. Hist. 1. 1. c. 74.)

•Historical and descriptive account of Brit. India, Ac., by Hugh Murray and

374 Capitalist Production.

tion, and transmitted from father to son, that gives to the
Hindoo, as it does to the spider, this proficiency. And yet the
work of such a Hindoo weaver is very complicated, compared
with that of a manufacturing labourer.

An artificer, who performs one after another the various
fractional operations in the production of a finished article,
must at one time change his place, at another his tools. The
transition from one operation to another interrupts the flow
/ of his labour, and creates, so to say, gaps in his working day.
These gaps close up so soon as he is tied to one and the same
' operation all day long; they vanish in proportion as the
changes in his work diminish. The resulting increased pro-
-^ ductive power is owing either to an increased expenditure of
labour-power in a given time — i.e., to increased intensity of
labour — or to a decrease in the amount of labour-power un-
productively consumed. The extra expenditure of power, de
manded by every transition from rest to motion, is made up
! for by prolonging the duration of the normal velocity when
I once acquired. On the other hand, constant labour of one
A uniform kind disturbs the intensity and flow of a man's animal
/ spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere change of
activity.

The productiveness of labour depends not only on the pro-
.. ficiency of the workman, but on the perfection of his tools.
Tools of the same kind, such as knives, drills, gimlets, ham
mers, &c. may be employed in different processes ; and the
same tool may serve various purposes in a single process. But
so soon as the different operations of a labour-process are dis
connected the one from the other, and each fractional operation
acquires in the hands of the detail labourer a suitable and
peculiar form, alterations become necessary in the implements
that previously served more than one purpose. The direction
taken by this change is determined by the difficulties ex
perienced in consequence of the unchanged form of the imple
ment. Manufacture is characterized by the differentiation of

James Wilson, Sec., Edinburgh 1882. v. II. p. 449. The Indian loom is upright, ». /.,
the warp is stretched vertically.

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 375

the instruments of labour — a differentiation whereby imple-'^
ments of a given sort acquire fixed shapes, adapted to each
particular application, and by the specialisation of those in-1/
struments, giving to each special instrument its full play onl)V
in the hands of a specific detail labourer. In Birmingham
alone 500 varieties of hammers are produced, and not only is
each adapted to one particular process, but several varieties
often serve exclusively for the different operations in one and
the same process. The manufacturing period simplifies, inw
proves, and multiplies the implements of labour, by adapting/
them to the exclusively special functions of each detail la- *
bourer.1 It thus creates at the same time one of the material
conditions for the existence of machinery, which consists of a
combination of simple instruments.

The detail labourer and his implements are the simplest ^
elements of manufacture. Let us now turn to its aspect as a ^

whole- d^i'Si^1

SECTION 3. THE TWO FUNDAMENTAL FORMS OF MANUFAC
TURE I HETEROGENEOUS MANUFACTURE, SERIAL MANUFAC
TURE.

The organisation of manufacture has two fundamental >
forms, which, in spite of occasional blending, are essentially v
different in kind, and, moreover, play very distinct parts in the

subsequent transformation of manufacture into modern indus-^^
try carried on by machinery. This double character arises*',
from the nature of the article produced. This article either^' •
results from the mere mechanical fitting together of partial
products made independently, or owes its completed shape to
a series of connected processes and manipulations.

A locomotive, for instance, consists of more than 5000 inde
pendent parts. It cannot, however, serve as an example of

1 Darwin in his epoch-making work on the origin of species, remarks, with refer
ence to the natural organs of plants and animals, "So long as one and the same
organ has different kinds of work to perform, a ground for its changeability may
possibly be found in this, that natural selection preserves or suppresses each small
Variation of form less carefully than if that organ were destined for one special
purpose alone. Thus, knives that are adapted to cut all sorts of things, may, on the
whole, be of one shape; but an implement destined to be used exclusively in one
way must have a different shape for every different use."

3/6 Capitalist Production.

the first kind of genuine manufacture, for it is a structure
produced by modern mechanical industry. But a watch can;
and William Petty used it to illustrate the division of labour
in manufacture. Formerly the individual work of a Nurem
berg artificer, the watch has been transformed into the social
product of an immense number of detail labourers, such as
mainspring makers, dial makers, spiral spring makers, jewelled
hole makers, ruby lever makers, hand makers, case makers,
screw makers, gilders, with numerous sub-divisions, such as
wheel makers (brass and steel separate), pin makers, movement
makers, acheveur de pignon (fixes the wheels on the axles,
polishes the facets, &c.), pivot makers, planteur de finissage
(puts the wheels and springs in the works), fiuisseur de barillet
(cuts teeth in the wheels, makes the holes of the right size,
&c.), escapement makers, cylinder makers for cylinder escape
ment, escapement wheel makers, balance wheel makers, ra-
quette makers (apparatus for regulating the watch), the
planteur d'echappement (escapement maker proper) ; then the
repasseur de barrillet (finishes the box for the spring, &c.),
steel polishers, wheel polishers, screw polishers, figure painters,
dial enarnellers (melt the enamel on the copper), fabricant de
pendants (makes the ring by which the case is hung), fiuisseur
de charniere (puts the brass hinge in the cover, &c.) faiseur
de secret (puts in the springs that open the case), graveur,
ciseleur, polisseur de boite, &c., &c., and last of all the re
passeur, who fits together the whole watch and hands it over in
a going state. Only a few parts of the watch pass through
^several hands ; and all these membra disjecta come together for
-'the first time in the hand that binds them into one mechanical
* whole. This external 'relation between the finished product,
and its various and diverse elements makes it, as well in this
v case as in the case of all similar finished articles, a matter of
chance whether the detail labourers are brought together in
^one workshop or not The detail operations may further be
carried on like so many independent handicrafts, as they are
in the Cantons of Vaud and Neufchatel ; while in Geneva there
exist large watch manufactories where the detail labourers
directly co-operate under the control of a single capitalist.

Di'insion of Labour and Manufacture. 377

And even in the latter case the dial, the springs, and the case,
are seldom made in the factory itself. To carry on the trade
as a manufacture, with concentration of workmen, is, in the
watch trade, profitable only under exceptional conditions, be
cause competition is greater between the labourers who desire
to work at home, and because the splitting up of the work
into a number of heterogeneous processes, permits but little
use of the instruments of labour in common, and the capitalist,
by scattering the work, saves the outlay on workshops, &C.1
Nevertheless the position of this detail labourer who, though^'
he works at home, does so for a capitalist (manufacturer,/
etablisseur), is very different from that of the independent !/\
artificer, who works for his own customers.2

The second kind of manufacture, its perfected form, pro-/
duces articles that go through connected phases of develop-/
ment, through a series of processes step by step, like the wirev
in the manufacture of needles, which passes through the hands
of 72 and sometimes even 92 different detail workmen.

In so far as such a manufacture, when first started, com- •.
bines scattered handicrafts, it lessens the space by which the^
various phases of production are separated from each other.
The time taken in passing from one stage to another is^
shortened, so is the labour that effectuates this passage.3 In/
comparison with a handicraft, productive power is gained, and "

1 In the year 1854 Geneva produced 80,000 watches, which is not one-fifth of the
production in the Canton of Neufchatel. La Chaux-de-Fond alone, which we may
look upon as a huge watch manufactory, produces yearly twice as many as Geneva.
From 1850-61 Geneva produced 750,000 watches. See "Report from Geneva on the
Watch Trade" in "Reports by H. M.'s Secretaries of Embassy and Legation on the
Manufactures, Commerce, &c., No. 6, 1863." The want of connexion alone, between
the processes into which the production of articles that merely consist of parts fitted
together is split up, makes it very difficult to convert such a manufacture into a
branch of modern industry carried on by machinery; but in the case of a watch there
are two other impediments in addition, the minuteness and delicacy of its parts, and
its character as an article of luxury. Hence their variety, which is such, that in the
best London houses scarcely a dozen watches are made alike in the course of a year.
The watch manufactory of Messrs. Vacheron & Constantin, in which machinery has
been employed with success, produces at the most three or four different varieties of
size and form.

* In watchmaking, that classical example of heterogeneous manufacture, we may
study with great accuracy the above mentioned differentiation and specialisation of
the instruments of labour caused by the sub-division of handicrafts.

* "In so close a cohabitation of the people, the carriage must needs be lea*."
("The Advantage! of the East India Trade," p. 106.)

3/8 Capitalist Production.

this gain is owing to the general co-operative character of
*• manufacture. On the other hand, division of labour, which is
the distinguishing principle of manufacture, requires the isola
tion of the various stages of production and their independ
ence of each other. The establishment and maintenance of a
connexion between the isolated functions necessitates the in
cessant transport of the article from one hand to another, and
from one process to another. From the standpoint of modern
mechanical industry, this necessity stands forth as a character
istic and costly disadvantage, and one that is immanent in the
principle of manufacture.1

If we confine our attention to some particular lot of raw
materials, of rags, for instance, in paper manufacture, or of
wire in needle manufacture, we perceive that it passes in
succession through a series of stages in the hands of the
various detail workmen until completion. On the other hand,
if we look at the workshop as a whole, we see the raw material
in all the stages of its production at the same time. The col
lective labourer, with one set of his many hands armed with
one kind of tools, draws the wire, with another set, armed
with different tools, he, at the same time, straightens it, with
another, he cuts it, with another points it and so on. The
-/different detail processes which were successive in time, have
wybecome simultaneous, go on side by side in space. Hence,
J production of greater quantum of finished commodities in a
- given time.2 This simultaneity, it is true, is due to the
> general co-operative form of the process as a whole ; but
Manufacture not only finds the conditions for co-operation
really to hand, it also, to some extent, creates them by the
sub-division of handicraft labour. On the other hand, it

1 "The isolation of the different stages of manufacture, consequent upon the em
ployment of manual labour, adds immensely to the cost of production, the loss
mainly arising from the mere removals from one process to another." ("The In
dustry of Nations." Lond., 1855. Part II., p. 200.)

1 "It (the division of labour) produces also an economy of time by separating the
work into its different branches, all of which may be carried on into execution at
the same moment. . . . By carrying on all the different processes at once, which
an individual must have executed separately, it becomes possible to produce a multi
tude of pins completely finished in the same time as a single pin might have bee*
either cut or pointed." (Dugald Stewart, 1. c., p. 319.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 379

accomplishes this social organisation of the labour-process onty/
by riveting each labourer to a single fractional detail.

Since the fractional product of each detail labourer is, at the^
same time, only a particular stage in the development of one./'
and the same finished article, each labourer, or each group of ^
labourers, prepares the raw material for another labourer or*y
group. The result of the labour of the one is the starting J
point for the labour of the other. The workman therefore^/
gives occupation directly to the other. The labour-time*'
necessary in each partial process, for attaining the desired
effect, is learnt by experience; and the mechanism of Manu
facture, as a whole, is based on the assumption that a given
result will be obtained in a given time. It is only on this
assumption that the various supplementary labour-processes
can proceed uninterruptedly, simultaneously, and side by side.
It is clear that this direct dependence of the operations, and •
therefore of the labourers, on each other, compels each one of*
them to spend on his work no more than the necessary time/
and thus a continuity, uniformity, regularity, order,1 and even S
intensity of labour, of quite a different kind, is begotten than^
is to be found in an independent handicraft or even in simple^
co-operation. The rule that the labour- time expended on ay
commodity should not exceed that which is socially necessary
for its production, appears, in the production of commodities
generally, to be established by the mere effect of competition ;
since, to express ourselves superficially, each single producer
is obliged to sell his commodity at its market price. In
Manufacture, on the contrary, the turning out of a given
quantum of product in a given time is a technical law of the
process of production itself.2

Different operations take, however, unequal periods, and
yield therefore, in equal times unequal quantities of fractional
products. If, therefore, the same labourer has, day after day,

1 "The more variety of artists to every manufacture . . . the greater the order
and regularity 6f every work, the same must needs be done in less time, the labour
must be less." ("The Advantages," &c., p. 68.)

2 Nevertheless, the manufacturing system, in many branches of industry, attains
this result but very imperfectly, because it knows not how to control with certainty
the general chemical and physical conditions of the process of production.

380 Capitalist Production.

to perform the same operation, there must be a different num
ber of labourers for each operation ; for instance, in type manu
facture, there are four founders and two breakers to one rub
ber: the founder casts 2,000 type an hour, the breaker breaks
up 4,000, and the rubber polishes 8,000. Here we have again
the principle of co-operation in its simplest form, th& simulta
neous employment of many doing the same thing; only now,
this principle is the expression of an organic relation. The
division of labour, as carried out in the Manufacture, not only
simplifies and multiplies the qualitatively different parts of the
social collective labourer, but also creates a fixed mathematical
relation or ratio which regulates the qualitative extent of those
parts — i.e., the relative number of labourers, or the relative
size of the group of labourers, for each detail operation. It de-
velopes, along with the qualitative sub-division of the social
labour process, a quantitative rule and proportionality for that
process.

When once the most fitting proportion has been experi
mentally established for the numbers of the detail labourers in
the various groups when producing on a given scale, that scale
can be extended only by employing a multiple of each particu
lar group.1 There is this to boot, that the same individual can
do certain kinds of work just as well on a large as on a small
scale ; for instance, the labour of superintendence, the carriage
of the fractional product from one stage to the next, &c. The
isolation of such functions, their allotment to a particular
labourer, does not become advantageous till after an increase
in the number of labourers employed ; but this increase must
affect every group proportionally.

The isolated group of labourers to whom any particular
detail function is assigned, is made up of homogeneous ele
ments, and is one of the constituent parts of the total
mechanism. In many manufactures, however, the group itself

1 "When (from the peculiar nature of the produce of each manufactory), the num
ber of processes into which it is most advantageous to divide it is ascertained, as
well as the number of individuals to be employed, then all other manufactories which
do not employ a direct multiple of this number will produce the article at a greater
cost. . . . Hence arises one of the causes of the great size of manufacturing
establishments." (C. Babbage. "On the Economy of Machinery," 1st ed. London,
1833. Ch. xxi., p. 172-173.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 381

it* an organised body of labour, the total mechanism being a
repetition or multiplication of these elementary organisms.
Take, for instance, the manufacture of glass bottles. It may
be resolved into three essentially different stages. First, the
preliminary stage, consisting of the preparation of the com
ponents of the glass, mixing the sand and lime, &c., and melt
ing them into a fluid mass of glass.1 Various detail labourers
are employed in this first stage, and also in the final one of re
moving the bottles from the drying furnace, sorting and pack
ing them, &c. In the middle, between these two stages, comes
the glass melting proper, the manipulation of the fluid mass.
At each mouth of the furnace, there works a group, called "the
hole," consisting of one bottlemaker or finisher, one blower,
one gatherer, one putter-up or whetter-off, and one taker-in.
These five detail workers are so many special organs of a single
working organism that acts only as a whole, and therefore can
operate only by the direct co-operation of the whole five. The
whole body is paralysed if but one of its members be wanting.
But a glass furnace has several openings (in England from 4
to 6), each of which contains an earthenware melting-pot full
of molten glass, and employs a similar five-membered group of
workers. The organisation of each group is based on division
of labour, but the bond between the different groups is simple
co-operation, which, by using in common one of the means of
production the furnace, causes it to be more economically con
sumed. Such a furnace, with its 4-6 groups, constitutes a
glass house; and a glass manufactory comprises a number of
such glass houses, together with the apparatus and workmen
requisite for the preparatory and final stages.

Finally, just as Manufacture arises in part from the com
bination of various handicrafts, so, too, it developes into a com
bination of various manufactures. The larger English glass
manufacturers, for instance, make their own earthenware
melting-pots, because, on the quality of these depends, to a
great extent, the success or failure of the process. The manu-

1 In England, the melting-furnace is distinct from the glass-furnace in which the
glass is manipulated. In Belgium, one and the same furnace serves for both
processes-

382 Capitalist Production.

facture of one of the means of production is here united with
that of the product. On the other hand, the manufacture of
the product may be united with other manufactures, of which
that product is the raw material, or with the products of which
it is itself subsequently mixed. Thus, we find the manufac
ture of flint glass combined with that of glass cutting and brass
founding; the latter for the metal settings of various articles
of glass. The various manufactures so combined form more or
less separate departments of a larger manufacture, but are at
the same time independent processes, each with its own
division of labour. In spite of the many advantages offered by
this combination of manufactures, it never grows into a com
plete technical system on its own foundation. That happens
only on its transformation into an industry carried on by ma
chinery.

Early in the manufacturing period, the principle of lessen
ing the necessary labour-time in the production of commodi
ties,1 was accepted and formulated: and the use of machines,
especially for certain simple first processes that have to be con
ducted on a very large scale, and with the application of great
force, sprang up here and there. Thus, at an early period in
paper manufacture, the tearing up of the rags was done by
paper mills ; and in metal works, the pounding of the ores
was effected by stamping mills.2 The Roman Empire had
handed down the elementary form of all machinery in the
water-wheel.3

The handicraft period bequeathed to us the great inventions
of the compass, of gunpowder, of type-printing, and of the
automatic clock. But, on the whole, machinery played that
subordinate part which Adam Smith assigns to it in compari-
sion with division of labour.4 The sporadic use of machinery

1 This can be seen from W. Petty, John Sellers, Andrew Yarranton, "The Ad
vantages of the East India Trade," and J. Vanderlint, not to mention others.

2 Towards the end of the 16th century, mortars and sieves were still used in France
for pounding and washing ores.

8 The whole history of the development of machinery can be traced in the history
of the corn mill. The factory in England is still a "mill." In German technological
works of the first decade of this century, the term "Muhle" is still found in u»e,
not only for all machinery driven by the forces of Nature, but also for all manu
factures where apparatus in the nature of machinery is applied.

•As will be seen more in detail in "Theories of Surplus-Value," Adam Smith b*s

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 383

in the 17th century was of the greatest importance, because it
supplied the great mathematicians of that time with a practical
basis and stimulant to the creation of the science of mechanics.

The collective labourer, formed by the combination of a S
number of detail labourers, is the machinery specially char-v//
acteristic of the manufacturing period. The various opera-^
tions that are performed in turns by the producer of a com
modity, and coalesce one with another during the progress of
production, lay claim to him in various ways. In one opera
tion he must exert more strength, in another more skill, in an
other more attention ; and the seme individual does not possess
all these qualities in an equal degree. After Manufacture has
once separated, made independent, and isolated the various
operations, the labourers are divided, classified, and grouped
according to their predominating qualities. If their natural
endowments are, on the one hand, the foundation on which
the division of labour is built up, on the other hand, Manu
facture, once introduced, developes in them new powers that
are by nature fitted only for limited and special functions.
The collective labourer now possesses, in an equal degree of
excellence, all the qualities requisite for production, and ex
pends them in the most economical manner, by exclusively
employing all his organs, consisting of particular labourers, or
groups of labourers, in performing their special functions.1
The one-sidedness and the deficiencies of the detail labourer \J/
become perfections, when he is a part of the collective labourer.2 J
The habit of doing only one thing converts him into a never

not established a single new proposition relating to division of labour. What, how
ever, characterises him as the political economist par excellence of the period of
Manufacture, is the stress he lays on division of labour. The subordinate part which
he assigns to machinery gave occasion in the early days of modern mechanical in
dustry to the polemic of Lauderdale, and, at a later period, to that of Ure. A. Smith
also confounds differentiation of the instruments of labour, in which the detail
labourers themselves took an active part, with the invention of machinery; in this
Utter, it is not the workmen in manufactories, but learned men, handicraftsmen,
and even peasants (Brindley), who play a part.

* "The master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into different
processes, each requiring different degrees of skill or of force, can purchase exactly
that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each process; whereas, if the
whole work were executed by one workman, that person must possess sufficient skill
to perform the most difficult, and sufficient strength to execute the most laborious of
the operations into which the article is divided." (Ch. Babbage. 1. c., ch. xviii.)

1 For instance, abnormal development of some muscles, curvature of bones, &c.

384 Capitalist Production.

failing instrument, while his connexion with the whole me
chanism compels him to work with the regularity of the parts
of a machine.1

Since the collective labourer has functions, both simple and
v complex, both high and low, his members, the individual
'.labour-powers, require different degrees of training, and must
v^herefore have different values. Manufacture, therefore, de-
v/yelopes a hierarchy of labour-powers, to which there corres-
-- 'ponds a scale of wages. If, on the one hand, the individual
laborers are appropriated and annexed for life by a limited
function; on the other hand, the various operations of the
hierarchy are parcelled out among the laboures according to
both their natural and their acquired capabilities.2 Every
v process of production, however, requires certain simple manip
ulations, which every man is capable of doing. They too are
x'now severed from their connexion with more pregnant mo-
•' ments of activity, and ossified into exclusive functions of spec-
' ially appointed labourers. Hence, Manufacture begets, in every
/ handicraft that it seizes upon, a class of so-called unskilled
~ labourers, a class which handicraft industry strictly excluded.
If it developes a one-sided specialty into a perfection, at the
expense of the whole of a man's working capacity, it also
begins to make a specialty of the absence of all development.
J Alongside of the hierarchic gradation there steps the sim
ple separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled.
For the latter, the cost of apprenticeship vanishes; for the
' former, it diminishes, compared with that of artificers, in

1 The question put by one of the Inquiry Commissioners, How the young persons
are kept steadily to their work, is very correctly answered by Mr. Wm. Marshall, the
general manager of a glass manufactory: "They cannot well neglect their work;
when they once begin, they must go on; they are just the same as parts of a
machine." ("Children's Empl. Comm.," 4th Rep., 1865, p. 247.)

8 Dr. Ure, in his apotheosis of Modern Mechanical Industry, brings out the peculiar
character of manufacture more sharply than previous economists, who had not his
polemical interest in the matters, and more sharply even than his contemporaries —
Babbage, e.g., who, though much bis superior as a mathematician and mechanician,
treated mechanical industry from the standpoint of manufacture alone. Ure says,
"This appropriation ... to each, a workman of appropriate value and cost was
naturally assigned, forms the very essence of division of labour." On the other
hand, he describes this division as "adaptation of labour to the different talents of
men," and lastly, characterises the whole manufacturing system as "a system for
the division or gradation of labour," as "the division of labour into degrees of
skill," &c. (Ure, 1. c. pp. 19-28 passim.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 385

consequence of the functions being simplified. In both '
cases the value of labour-power falls.1 An exception to thisv
law holds goo4 whenever the decomposition of the labour-
process begets rvew and comprehensive functions, that either
had no place at all, or only a very modest one, in handicrafts.
The fall in the value of labour-power, caused by the disap-v
pearance or diminution of the expense of apprenticeship, im- v
plies a direct increase of surplus-value for the benefit of v'
capital ; for everything that shortens the necessary labour- -•
time required for the reproduction of labour-power, extends
the domain of surplus-labour.

SECTION 4. DIVISION OF LABOUR IN MANUFACTURE, AND

DIVISION OF LABOUR IN SOCIETY.

We first considered the origin of Manufacture, then its
simple elements, then the detail labourer and his implements,
and finally, the totality of the mechanism. We shall now
lightly touch upon the relation between the division of labour •
in manufacture, and the social division of labour, which forms\x
the foundation of all production of commodities.

If we keep labour alone in view, we may designate the
separation of social production into its main division or.
genera — viz., agriculture, industries, etc., as division of labour
hi_j!gn>e.ralr and the splitting up of these families into species
and sub-species, as division of labour in particular, and the
division of labour within the workshop as division of labourjn
singular or in detail.2

1 "Each handicraftsman being . . . enabled to perfect himself by practice ia
one point, became ... a cheaper workman." (Ure, 1. c., p. 19.)

1 "Division of labour proceeds from the separation of professions the most widely
different to that division, where several labourers divide between them the preparation
of one and the same product, as in manufacture." (Storch: "Cours d'Econ. Pol.
Paris Edn." t. I., p. 173.) "Nous rencontrons chez les peuples parvenus a un certain
degre de civilisation trois genres de divisions d'industrie: la premiere, que nous
nommerons generate, amene la distinction des producteurs en agriculteurs, manu-
facturiers et commer^ans, elle se rapporte aux trois principales branches d'industrie
nationale; la seconde, qu'on pourrait appeler spe'ciale, est la division de chaque genre
d'industrie en especes ... la troisieme division d'industrie, celle enfin qu'on
de?rait qualifier de division de la besogne ou de travail proprement dit, est cell* qui
•'fctablit dans les arts et les metiers scares . . . qui s'etablit dans la plupart dea
manufactures et des ateliers." (Skarbek. 1. c. pp. S4, 85.)

386 Capitalist Production.

Division of labour in a society, and the corresponding ty
ing down of individuals to a particular calling, developes itself,
just as does the division of labour in manufacture, from oppo
site starting points. Within a family,1 and after further de
velopment within a tribe, there springs up naturally a division
of labour, caused by differences of sex and age, a division that
is consequently based on a purely physiological foundation,
which division enlarges its materials by the expansion of the
community, by the increase of population, and more especially,
by the conflicts between different tribes, and the subjugation
of one tribe by another. On the other hand, as I have before
remarked, the exchange of products springs up at the points
where different f an.ilies, tribes, communities, come in contac: ;
for, in the beginning of civilisation, it is not private indi
viduals but families, tribes, &c., that meet on an independent
footing. Different communities find different means of pro
duction and different means of subsistence in their natur.il
environment. Hence, their modes of production, and of living,
V and their products are different. It is this spontaneously de
veloped difference whicli, when different communities come in
contact, calls forth the mutual exchange of products, and the
consequent gradual conversion of those products into com
modities. Exchange does not create the differences between
the spheres of production, but brings such as are already differ
ent into relation, and thus converts them into more or less inter
dependent branches of the collective production of an enlarged
society. In the latter case, the social division of labour arises
from the exchange between spheres of production, that are
originally distinct and independent of one another. In tie
former, where the physiological division of labour is the star>
ing point, the particular organs of a compact whole grow loos'3,
and break off, principally owing to the exchange of commodi
ties with foreign communities, and then isolate themselves so

1 Note to the third edition. Subsequent very searching study of the primitive
condition of man, led the author to the conclusion, that it was not the family that-
originally developed into the tribe, but that, on the contrary, the tribe was the primi
tive and spontaneously developed form of human association, on the basis of blood
relationship, and that out of the first incipient loosening of the tribal bonds, tie
many and various forms of the family were afterwards developed. (Ed. 3rd ed.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 387

far, that the sole bond, still connecting the various kinds of
work, is the exchange of the products as commodities. In the
one case, it is the making dependent what was before inde
pendent ; in the other case, the making independent what was
before dependent

The foundation of every division of labour that is well de
veloped, and brought about by the exchange of commodities, is
the separation between town and country.1 It may be said,
that the whole economical history of society is summed up in
the movement of this antithesis. We pass it over, however,
for the present.

Just as a certain number of simultaneously employed
labourers are the material pre-requisites for division of labour
in manufacture, so are the number and density of the popula
tion, which here correspond to the agglomeration in one work
shop, a necessary condition for the division of labour in
society.2 Nevertheless, this density is more or les.i rolative.
A. relatively thinly populated country, with well-developed
means of communication, has a dense r population than a more
numerously populated country, with badly-developed means of
communication ; and in this sense tho Northern States of the
American Union, for instance, are more thickly populated than
India.3

Since the production and the circulation of commodities are
the general pre-requisites of the capitalist mode of production,
division of labour in manufacture demands, that division of
labour in society at large should previously have attained a

1 Sir James Steuart is the economist who has handled this subject best. How
little his book, which appeared ten years before the "Wealth of Nations," is known,
even at the present time, may be judged from the fact that the admirers of Malthus
do not even know that the first edition of the latter's work on population contains,
except in the purely declamatory part, very little but extracts from Steuart, and in
a less degree, from Wallace and Townsend.

2 "There is a certain density of population which is convenient, both for social
intercourse, and for that combination of powers by which the produce of labour is
increased." (James Mill, 1. c. p. 50.) "As the number of labourers increases, the
productive power of society augments in the compound ratio of that increase, multi
plied by the effects of the division of labour." (Th. Hodgskin, 1. c. pp. 125, 126.)

3 In consequence of the great demand for cotton after 1861, the production of
cotton, in some thickly populated districts of India, was extended at the expense of
rice cultivation. In consequence there arose local famines, the defective means of
communication not permitting the failure of rice in one district to be compensated
by importation from another.

388 Capitalist Production.

certain degree of development Inversely, the former division
reacts upon and developes and multiplies the latter. Simul
taneously, with the differentiation of the instruments of labour,
the industries that produce these instruments, become more
and more differentiated.1 If the manufacturing system seize
v-upon an industry, which, previously, was carried on in con-
y/nexion with others, either as a chief or as a subordinate
v industry, and by one producer, these industries immediately
v-separate their connexion, and become independent. If it
u,.seize upon a particular stage in the production of a com-
^/modity, the other stages of its production become -converted
.. into so many independent industries. It has already been
stated, that where the finished article consists merely of
a number of parts fitted together, the detail operations may re
establish themselves as genuine and separate handicrafts. In
order to carry out more . perfectly the division of labour in
manufacture, a single branch of production is, according to
the varieties of its raw material, or the various forms that
one and the same raw material may assume, split up into
numerous, and to some extent, entirely new manufactures.
Accordingly, in France alone, the first half of the 18th cen
tury, over 100 different kinds of silk stuffs were woven, and
in Avignon, it was law, that " every apprentice should devote
himself to only one sort of fabrication, and should not learn
the preparation of several kinds of stuff at once." The
territorial division of labour, which confines special branches
of production to special districts of a country, acquires fresh
stimulus from the manufacturing system, which exploits every
special advantage.2 The Colonial system and the opening
out of the markets of the world, both of which are included
in the general conditions of existence of the manufacturing
period, furnish rich material for developing the division of
labour in society. It is not the place, here, to go on to

1 Thus, the fabrication of shuttles formed, as early as the 17th century, a special
• branch of industry in Holland.

* "Whether the woollen manufacture of England is not divided into several parts
or branches appropriated to particular places, where they are only or principally
manufactured; fine cloths in Somersetshire coarse in Yorkshire, long ells at Exeter,
•oie* at Sudbury, crapes at Norwich, linseys at Kendal, blanket* at Whitney, and
ao forth." (Berkeley: "The Querist," 1750, p. B20.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 389

show how division of labour seizes upon, not only the econom
ical, but every other sphere of society, and everywhere lays
the foundation of that all engrossing system of specialising
and sorting men, that development in a man of one single
faculty at the expense of all other faculties, which caused A.
Ferguson, the master of Adam Smith, to exclaim : " We make
a nation of Helots, and have no free citizens."1

But, in spite of the numberous analogies and links connect- /
ing them, division of labour in the interior of a society, andv
that in the interior of a workshop, differ not only in degree, v/
but also in kind. The analogy appears most indisputable where v
there is an invisible bond uniting the various branches of
trade. For instance the cattle breeder produces hides, the
tanner makes the hides into leather, and the shoemaker, the
leather into boots. Here the thing produced by each of them
is but a step towards the final form, which is the product of
all their labours combined. There are, besides, all the various
industries that supply the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the
shoemaker with the means of production. Now it is quite
possible to imagine, with Adam Smith, that the difference be
tween the above social division of labour, and the division in
manufacture, is merely subjective, exists merely for the ob
server, who, in a manufacture, can see with one glance, all
the numerous operations being performed on one spot, while
in the instance given above, the spreading out of the work over
great areas, and the great number of people employed in
each branch of labour, obscure the connexion.2 But what is

1 A. Ferguson: "History of Civil Society." Edinburgh, 1767; Part iv. sect, ii.,
p. 286.

a In manufacture proper, he says, the division of labour appears to be greater,
because "those employed in every different branch of the work can often be col
lected into the same workhouse, and placed at once under the view of the spectator.
In those, great manufactures, (!) on the contrary, which are destined to supply the
great wants of the great body of the people, every different branch of the work em
ploys so great a number of workmen, that it is impossible to collect them all into the
same workhouse . . . the division is not near so obvious." (A. Smith: "Wealth
of Nations," bk. i. ch. i.) The celebrated passage in the same chapter that begins
with the words, "Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day
labourer in a civilized and thriving country," &c., and then proceeds to depict what
an enormous number and variety of industries contribute to the satisfaction of the
wants of an ordinary labourer, is copied almost word for word from B. de Mande-
ville's Remarks to his "Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Ben«fita."
(First ed.. without the remarks, 1706; with the remarks, 1714.)

390 Capitalist Production.

v it that forms the bond between the independent labours of
the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the shoemaker? It is the
fact that their respective products are commodities. What, on
the other hand, characterises division of labour in manufac-

< tures ? The fact that the detail labourer produces no com
modities.1 It is only the common product of all the detail

'labourers that becomes a commodity.2 Division of labour in
a society is brought about by the purchase and sale of the
products of different branches of industry, while the connexion
between the detail operations in a workshop, are due to the
sale of the labour-power of several workmen to one capitalist,

\ who applies it as combined labour-power. The division of
labour in the workshop implies concentration of the means of
production in the hands of one capitalist ; the division of
labour in society implies their dispersion among many inde
pendent producers of commodities. While within the work
shop, the iron law of proportionality subjects definite numbers
of workmen to definite functions, in the society outside the
workshop, chance and caprice have full play in distributing the
producers and their means of production among the various
branches of industry. The different spheres of production,
it is true, constantly tend to an equilibrium : for, on the one
hand, while each producer of a commodity is bound to pro
duce a use-value, to satisfy a particular social want, and while

1 "There is no longer anything which we can call the natural reward of individual
labour. Each labourer produces only some part of a whole, and each part, having no
value or utility in itself, there is nothing on which the labourer can seize, and say:
It is my product, this I will keep to myself." ("Labour Defended against the Claims
of Capital." Lond., 1825, p. 25.) The author of this admirable work is the Th.
Hodgskin I have already cited.

* This distinction between division of labour in society and in manufacture, was
practically illustrated to the Yankees. One of the new taxes devised at Washington
during the civil war, was the duty of 6% "on all industrial products." Question:
What is an industrial product? Answer of the legislature: A thing is produced
"when it is made," and it is made when it is ready for sale. Now, for one example
out of many. The New York and Philadelphia manufacturers had previously been
in the habit of "making" umbrellas, with all their belongings. But since an
umbrella is a mixtum compositum of very heterogeneous parts, by degrees these
parts became the products of various separate industrirs, carried on independently
in different places. They entered as separate commodities into the umbrella man
ufactory, where they were fitted together. The Yankees have given to articles thus
fitted together, the name of "assembled articles," a name they deserve, for being
an assemblage of taxes. Thus the umbrella "assembles," first, 6% on the price of
etch of its elements, and a further 6% on its own total price.

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 391

the extent of these wants differs quantitatively, still there
exists an inner relation which settles their proportions into a
regular system, and that system one of spontaneous growth;
and, on the other hand, the law of the value of commodities
ultimately determines how much of its disposable working-time
society can expend on each particular class of commodities.
But this constant tendency to equilibrium, of the various
spheres of production, is exercised, only in the shape of a
reaction against the constant upsetting of this equilibrium.
The a priori system on which the division of labour, within
the workshop, is regularly carried out, becomes in the division
of labour within the society, an a posteriori, nature-imposed
necessity, controlling the lawless caprice of the producers, and
perceptible in the barometrical fluctuations of the market
prices. Division of labour within the^workshop implies the
undisputed authority of tke capitalist over men, that are but
parts of a mecHanism that 'belongs to him. The division of
labour within the society brings into contact independent
commodity-producers, who acknowledge no other authority
but that of competition, of the coercion exerted by the pressure
of their mutual interests ; just as in the animal kingdom, the
bellum omnium contra omnes more or less preserves the con
ditions of existence of every species. The same bourgeois
mind which praises division of labour in the workshop, life
long annexation of the labourer to a partial operation, and his
complete subjection to capital, as being an organisation of
labour that increases its productiveness — that same bourgeois
mind denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to
socially control and regulate the process of production, as an
inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property,
freedom and unrestricted play for the bent of the individual
capitalist. It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apol-
ogists of the factory system have nothing more damning to
urge against a general organization of the labour of society,
than that it would turn all society into one immense factory.

If, in a society with capitalist production, anarchy in the
social division of labour and despotism in that of the workshop
are mutual conditions the one of the other, we find, on the con-

392 Capitalist .Production.

trary, in those earlier forms of society in which the separation
of trades has been spontaneously developed, then crystallized,
and finally made permanent by law, on the one hand, a speci
men of the organization of the labour of society, in accordance
with an approved and authoritative plan, and on the other,
the entire exclusion of division of labour in the workshop,
or at all events a mere dwarflike or sporadic and accidental
development of the same.1

Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities,
some of which have continued down to this day, are based on
possession in common of the land, on the blending of agricul
ture and handicrafts, and on an unalterable division of labour,
which serves, whenever a new community is started, as a plan
and scheme ready cut and dried. Occupying areas of from
100 up to several thousand acres, each forms a compact whole
producing .ill it requires. The chief part of the products is
destined for direct use by the community itself, and does not
take the form of a commodity. Hence, production here is
independent of that division of labour brought about, in Indian
society as a whole, by means of the exchange of commodities.
It is the surplus alone that becomes a commodity, and a portion
of even that, not until it has reached the hands of the State,
into whose hands from time immemorial a certain quantity of
these products has found its way in the shape of rent in kind.
The constitution of these communities varies in different parts
of India. In those of the simplest form, the land is tilled in
common, and the produce divided among the members. At
the same time, spinning and weaving are carried on in each
family as subsidiary industries. Side by side with the masses
thus occupied with one and the same work, we find the "chief
inhabitant," who is judge, police, and tax-gatherer in one ; the
bookkeeper who keeps the accounts of the tillage and registers
everything, relating thereto ; another official, who prosecutes

1 "On peut . . . etablir en regie generale, que moins 1'autorite preside a la
division du travail dans 1'interieur de la soci£te, plus la division du travail se
d£veloppe dans 1'interieur de 1'atelier, et plus elle y est soumise a I'autorite' d'un
seul. Ainsi 1'autorite dans 1'atelier et celle dans la societe, par rapport a la division
dutravail, sont en raison inverse 1'une de 1'autre." (Karl Marx, "Misere," 4c., pp.
180-181.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 393

criminals, protects strangers travelling through, and escorts
them to the next village; the boundary man, who guards the
boundaries against neighbouring communities ; the water-over
seer, who distributes the water from the common tanks for
irrigation; the Brahmin, who conducts the religious services;
the schoolmaster, who on the sand teaches the children reading
and writing; the calendar-Brahmin, or astrologer, who makes
known the lucky or unlucky days for seed-time and harvest,
and for every other kind of agricultural work ; a smith and a
carpenter, who make and repair all the agricultural imple
ments; the potter, who makes all the pottery of the village;
the barber, the washerman, who washes clothes, the silversmith,
here and there the poet, who in some communities .replaces the
silversmith, in others the schoolmaster. This dozen of indi
viduals is maintained at the expense of the whole community.
If the population increases, a new community is founded, on
the pattern of the old one, on unoccupied land. The whole
mechanism discloses a systematic division of labour ; but a
division like that in manufactures is impossible, since the
smith and the carpenter, &£., find an unchanging market, and
at the most there occur, according to the sizes of the villages,
two or three of each, instead of one.1 The law that regulates
the division of labour in the community acts with the irresisti
ble authority of a law of Nature, at the same time that each
individual artificer, the smith, the carpenter, and so on, con
ducts in his workshop all the operations of his handicraft in
the traditional way, but independently, and without recogniz
ing any authority over him. The simplicity of the organisa
tion for production in these self-sufficing communities that
constantly reproduce themselves in the same form, and when
accidentally destroyed, spring up again on the spot and with
the same name 2 — this simplicity supplies the key to the secret

1Licut.-Col. Mark Wilks: "Historical Sketches of the South of India." Lond.,
1810-17, v. I., pp. 118-20. A good description of the various forms of the Indian
communities is to be found in George Campbell's "Modern India." Lond., 1852.

* "Under this simple form . . . the inhabitants of the country have lived from
time immemorial. The boundaries of the villages have been but seldom altered; and
though the villages themselves have been sometimes injured, and even desolated by
war, famine, and disease, the same name, the same limits, the same interests, and
even the same families, have continued for ages. The inhabitants give thcms*lves

394 Capitalist Production.

of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies, an unchangeable-
ness in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and
refounding of Asiatic States, and the never-ceasing changes
of dynasty. The structure of the economical elements of
society remains untouched by the storm-clouds of the political
sky.

The rules of the guilds, as I have said before, by limiting
/most strictly the number of apprentices and journeymen that a
-•single master could employ, prevented him from becoming i.
capitalist. Moreover, he could not employ his journeymen ir.
/ any other handicraft than the one in which he was a master.
The guilds zealously repelled every encroachment by the capita',
of merchants, the only form of free capital with which the}
came in contact. A merchant could buy every kind of com
modity, but labour as a commodity he could not buy. He
existed only on sufferance, as a dealer in the products of the
handicrafts. If circumstances called for a further division of
labour, the existing guilds split themselves up into varieties, or
founded new guilds by the side of the old ones ; all this, how
ever, without concentrating various handicrafts in a single
o workshop. Hence, the guild organization, however much it
may have contributed by separating, isolating, and perfecting
the handicrafts, to create the material conditions for the exist
ence of manufacture, excluded division of labour in the work-
A shop. On the whole, the labourer and his means of production
^ remained closely united, like the snail with its shell, and thus
'* there was wanting the principal basis of manufacture, the sep-
J aration of the labourer from his means of production, and the
,, conversion of these means into capital.

While division of labour in society at large, whether such
division be brought about or not "by exchange of commodities,
is common to economical formations of society the most diverse,
division of labour in the workshop, as practised by manufac
ture, is a special creation of the capitalist mode of production
alone.

no trouble about the breaking up and division of kingdoms; while the village remains
entire, they care not to what power it is transferred, or to what sovereign it devolves;
its internal economy remains unchanged." (Th. Stamford Raffles, late Lieut. Gov.
of Java: "The History of Java." Lond., 1817, Vol. I., p. 285.)

Division of Labour atid Manufacture. 395

SECTION 5. THE CAPITALISTIC CHARACTER OF MANUFACTURE.

An increased number of labourers under the control of one -
capitalist is the natural starting-point, as well of co-operation7
generally, as of manufacture in particular. But the division^-
of labour in the manufacture makes this increase in the num-\/
ber of workmen a technical necessity. The minimum number ^
that any given capitalist is bound to employ is here prescribed _
by the previously established division of labour. On the other ^-
hand, the advantages of further division are obtainable only
by adding to the number of workmen, and this can be done N
only by adding multiples of the various detail groups. But
an increase in the variable component of the capital employed^
necessitates an increase in its constant component, too, in the^
workshops, implements, &c., and, in particular, in the raw
material, the call for which grows quicker than the number of
workmen. The quantity of it consumed in a given time, by a
given amount of labour, increases in the same ratio as does the
productive power of that labour in consequence of its division.
Hence, it is a law, based on the very nature of manufacture,1/
that the minimum amount of capital, which is bound to be in ^
the hands of each capitalist, must keep increasing; in other-
words, that the transformation into capital of the social means '
of production and subsistence must keep extending.1

In manufacture, as well as in simple co-operation, the collec
tive working organism is a form of existence of capital. The
mechanism that is made up of numerous individual detail
labourers belongs to the capitalist. Hence, the productive
power resulting from a combination of labourers appears to be
the productive power of capital. Manufacture proper not only

1 "It is not sufficient that the capital" (the writer should have said the necessary
means of subsistence and of production) "required for the sub-division of handi
crafts should be in readiness in the society: it must also be accumulated in the hands
of the employers in sufficiently large quantities to enable them to conduct their
operations on a large scale. . . . The more the division increases, the more does
the constant employment of a given number of labourers require greater outlay of
capital in tools, raw material, &c.," (Storch: Cours d'Econ. Polit. Paris Ed., t. I. pp.
250, 251.) "La concentration des instruments de production et la division du travail
sont aussi inseparables 1'une de 1'autre que le sont, dans le regime politique, la con-
centration des pouvoirs publics et la division des interets prives." (Karl Marx. 1. c.,
p. 134.)

396 Capitalist Production.

subjects the previously independent workman to the discipline

and command of capital, but, in addition, creates a hierarchic

gradation of the workmen themselves. While simple co-opera

tion leaves the mode of working by the individual for the most

1 part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revolutionises it, and

v seizes labour-power by its very roots. It converts the labourer

v,' into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at

w the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts ;

just is in the States of La Plata they butcher a whole beast

for the sake of his hide or his tallow. Not only is the detail

work distributed to the different individuals, but the individual

himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation,1

and the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which makes man

a mere fragment of his own body, becomes realised.2 If, at

/first, the workman sells his labour-power to capital, because the

-""material means of producing a commodity fail him, now hiu

•••Very labour-power refuses its services unless it has been sold

"to capital. Its functions can be exercised only in an environ -

l/^tnent that exists in the workshop of the capitalist after the

sale. By nature unfitted to make anything independently

the manufacturing labourer developes productive activity as t.

mere appendage of the capitalist's workshop.3 As the choser.

people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so

j division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the

property of capital.

The knowledge, the judgment, and the will, which, though

' in ever so small a degree, are practised by the independent
peasant or handicraftsman, in the same way as the savage
makes the whole art of war consist in the exercise of his per
sonal cunning — these faculties are now required only for the
workshop as a whole. Intelligence in production expands in

1 Dugald Stewart calls manufacturing labourers "living automatons . . . cm-
ployed in the details of the work." (1. c., p. 318.)

2 In corals, each individual is, in fact, the stomach of the whole group; but it sup
plies the group with nourishment, instead of, like the Roman patrician, withdraw
ing it.

3 "L'ouvrier qui porte dans ses bras tout un metier, peut aller partout exercer son
Industrie et trouver des moyens de subsister: 1'autre (the manufacturing labourer)
n'est qu'un accessoire qui, separe de ses confreres, n'a plus ni capacite, ni independ-
ance, ct qui se trouve force d'accepter la loi qu'on juge a propos de lui imposer."
(Storch. 1. c. Petersb. edit., 1815, t. I., p. 204.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 397

one direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is ^
lost by the detail labourers, is concentrated in the capital that
employs them.1 It is a result of the division of labour in/
manufactures, that the labourer is brought face to face witb\/
the intellectual potencies of the material process of production, *
as the property of another, and as a ruling power. This sepa-v
ration begins in simple co-operation, where the. capitalist re
presents to the single workman, the oneness and the will of
the associated labour. It is developed in manufacture which
cuts down the labourer into a detail labourer. It is com
pleted in modern industry, which makes science a productive
force distinct from labour and presses it into the service of
capital.2

In manufacture, in order to make the collective labourer,
and through him capital, rich in social productive power, each
labourer must be made poor in individual productive powers.
"Ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition.
Reflection and fancy are subject to err ; but a habit of moving L
the hand or the foot is independent of either. Manufactures,
accordingly, prosper most where the mind is least consulted,
and where the workshop may ... be considered as an engine,
the parts of which are men."3 As a matter of fact, some
few manufacturers in the middle of the 18th century preferred,
for certain operations that were trade secrets, to employ half-
idiotic persons.4

"The understandings of the greater part of men," says Adam
Smith, "are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments.
The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple
operations . . . has no occasion to exert his understanding.
. . . . He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is

1 A. Ferguson, 1. c., p. 281 : "The former may have gained what the other has
lest."

1 "The man of knowledge and the productive labourer come to be widely divided
from each other, and knowledge, instead of remaining the handmaid of labour in the
hand of the labourer fo increase his productive powers . . . has almost every
where arrayed itself against labour . . . systematically deluding and leading them
(the labourers) astray in order to render their muscular powers entirely mechanical
and obedient." (W. Thompson: "An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribu
tion of Wealth. London, 1824," p. 274.)

* A. Ferguson, 1. c., p. 280.

*J. D. Tuckett: "A History of the Past and Present State of the Labouring
Population." Lond., 1846.

398 Capitalist Production.

possible for a human creature to become." After describing
the stupidity of the detail labourer he goes on : "The uni
formity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of

his mind It corrupts even the activity of his body and

renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and
perseverance in any other employments than that to which
-•- he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade
seems in this manner to be acquired at the expense of his in
tellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved
and civilised society, this is the state into which the labouring
poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily
r fall."1 For preventing the complete deterioration of the great
• mass of the people by division of labour, A. Smith commend3
education of the people by the State, but prudently, and in
homoeopathic doses. G. Gamier, his French translator and
commentator, who, under the first French Empire, quite natu
rally developed into a senator, quite as naturally opposes him
on this point Education of the masses, he urges, violates tho
first law of the division of labour, and with it "our whole
social system would be proscribed." "Like all other divisions
of labour," he says, "that between hand labour and head la
bour 2 is more pronounced and decided in proportion as society
(he rightly uses this word, for capital, landed property anc
their State) becomes richer. This division of labour, like
every other, is an effect of past, and a cause of future progress
.... ought the government then to work in opposition to this
division of labour, and to hinder its natural course ? Ought it
to expend a part of the public money in the attempt to con-

JA. Smith: Wealth of Nations, Bk. V., ch. I., art II. Being a pupil of A. Fer
guson who showed the disadvantageous effects of division of labour, Adam Smith was
' perfectly clear on this point. In the introduction to his work, where he ex pro-
fesso praise* division of labour, he indicates only in a cursory manner that it is the
source of social inequalities. It is not till the 5th Book, on the Revenue of the
State, that he reproduces Ferguson. In my "Misere de la Philosophic," I have
sufficiently explained the historical connection between Ferguson, A. Smith,
Lemontey, and Say, as regards their criticisms of Division of Labour, and have
•hown. for the first time, that Division of Labour as practised in manufactures, it
a specific form of the capitalist mode of production.

•Ferguson had already said, 1. c. p. 281: "And thinking itself, in this age of
•cparmtions, may become a peculiar craft."

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 399

found and blend together two classes of labour, which are
striving after division and separation?"1

Some crippling of body and mind is inseparable even from ^
division of labour in society as a whole. Since, however, manv^
uf acture carries this social separation of branches of labour ^X
much further, and also, by its peculiar division, attacks the in- ^"
dividual at the very roots of his life, it is the first to afford ^
the materials for, and to give a start to, industrial pathology.2 *X

"To subdivide a man is to execute him, if he deserves the
sentence, to assassinate him if he does not. . . . The sub
division of labour is the assassination of a people."3

Co-operation based on division of labour, in other words,
manufacture, commences as a spontaneous formation. So soon
as it attains some consistence and extension, it becomes the re
cognised methodical and systematic form of capitalist produc
tion. History shows how the division of labour peculiar to
manufacture, strictly so called, acquires the best adapted form
at first by experience, as it were behind the backs of the actors,
and then, like the guild handicrafts, strives to hold fast that
form when once found, and here and there succeeds in keeping
it for centuries. Any alteration in this form, except in trivial
matters, is solely owing to a revolution in the instruments of
labour. Modern manufacture wherever it arises — I do not
here allude to modern industry based on machinery — either
finds the disjecta membra poetse ready to hand, and only wait-

1 G. Gamier, vol. V. of his translation of A. Smith, pp. 4—5.

* Ramazzini, professor of practical medicine at Padua, published in 1713 his work
"De morbis artificum," which was translated into French 1781, reprinted in 1841 in
the "Encyclopedic des Sciences Medicales. 7me Dis. Auteurs Classiques." The
period of Modern Mechanical Industry has, of course, very much enlarged his cat
alogue of labour's diseases. See "Hygiene physique et morale de 1'ouvrier dans leg
grandes villes en general et dans la ville de Lyon en particulier. Par le Dr. A. L.
Fonterel, Paris, 1858," and "Die Krankheiten, welche verschiednen Standen, Altern
und Geschlechtern eigenthumlich sind'. 6 Vols. Ulm, 1860," and others. In 1854
the Society of Arts appointed a Commission of Inquiry into industrial pathology.
The list of documents collected by this commission is to be seen in the catalogue of
the "Twickenham Economic Museum." Very important are the official "Reports
on Public Health." See also Eduard Reich, M.D. "Ueber die Entartung des
Menschen," Erlangen, 1868.

• (D. Urquhart: Familiar Words. Lond., 1855, p. 119.) Hegel held very
heretical views on division of labour. In his Rechtsphilosophie he says: "By well
educated men we understand in the first instance, those who can do everything that
others do."

4OO Capitalist Production.

ing to be collected together, as is the case in the manufacture
of clothes in large towns, or it can easily apply the principle
of division, simply by exclusively assigning the various opera
tions of a handicraft (such as bookbinding) to particular men.
In such cases, a week's experience is enough to determine the
proportion between the numbers of the hands necessary for the
various functions.1

By decomposition of handicrafts, by specialisation of the in
struments of labour, by the formation of detail labourers, and
'by grouping and combining the latter into a single mechanism,
"division of labour in manufacture creates a qualitative grada-
^tion, and a quantitative proportion in the social process of
production ; it consequently creates a definite organization of
the labour of society, and thereby developes at the same time
\/new productive forces in the society. In its specific capitalist
^ form — and under the given conditions, it could take no other
^form than a capitalistic one — manufacture is but a particular
>-Tnethod of begetting relative surplus-value, or of augmenting
> at the expense of the labourer the self-expansion of capital — •
usually called social wealth, "Wealth of Nations," &c. It in-
J; creases the social productive power of labour, not only for the
benefit of the capitalist instead of for that of the labourer, but
'it does this by crippling the individual labourers. It creates
new conditions for the lordship of capital over labour. If,
therefore, on the one hand, it presents itself historically as a
progress and as a necessary phase in the economic develop
ment of society, on the other hand it is a refined and civilised
method of exploitation.

Political economy, which as an independent science, first
sprang into being during the period of manufacture, views
the social division of labour only from the standpoint of manu
facture,2 and sees in it only the means of producing more com
modities with a given quantity of labour, and, consequently,

1 The simple belief in the inventive genius exercised a priori by the individual
capitalist in division of labour, exists now-a-days only among German professors,
of the stamp of Herr Roscher, who, to recompense the capitalist from whose
Jovian head division of labour sprang ready formed, dedicates to him "various
wages" (diverse Arbeitslohne). The more or less extensive application of division
of labour depends on length of purse, not on greatness of genius.

* The older writers, like Petty and the anonymous author of "Advantage* of the

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 401

of cheapening commodities and hurrying on the accumulation
of capital. In most striking contrast with this accentuation of
quantity and exchange-value, is the attitude of the writers of
classical antiquity, who hold exclusively by quality and use-
value.1 In consequence of the separation of the social
branches of production, commodities are better made, the vari
ous bents and talents of men select a suitable field,2 and with
out some restraint no important results can be obtained any
where.3 Hence both product and producer are improved by
division of labour. If the growth of the quantity produced is
occasionally mentioned, this is only done with reference to the
greater abundance of use values. There is not a word alluding
to exchange-value or* to the cheapening of commodities. This
aspect, from the standpoint of use-value alone, is taken as well
by Plato,4 who treats division of labour as the foundation on

East India Trade," bring out the capitalist character of division of labour as applied
in manufacture more than A. Smith does.

1 Amongst the moderns may be excepted a few writers of the 18th century, like
Beccaria and James Harris, who with regard to division of labour almost entirely
follow the ancients. Thus, Beccaria: "Ciascuno prova coll" esperienza, che applicando
la mano e 1'ingegno sempre allo stesso genere di opere e di produtte, egli piu facili,
piu abbondanti e migliori ne traca risultati, di quello che se ciascuno isolatamente le
cose tutte a se necessarie soltanto facesse. . . . Dividendosi in tal maniera per
la comune e privati utilita gli uomini in varie classi e condizioni." (Cesarc Beccaria:
"Element! di Econ. Pubblica," ed. Custodi, Parte Moderna, t. xi., p. 28.) James
Harris, afterwards Earl of Malmesbury, celebrated for the "Diaries" of his embassy
at St. Petersburg, says in a note to his "Dialogue Concerning Happiness," Lond.,
1741, reprinted afterwards in "Three Treatises, &c., 3 Ed., Lond., 1772:" "The
whole argument to prove society natural {i.e., by division of employments) . . .
is taken from the second book of Plato's Republic."

* Thus, in the Odyssey xiv., 228, "f AXXoj y&p r' &\\oiffiv dvTjp eirirtpirtTat tpyoit"
and Archilochus in Sextus Empiricus, " *AXXo» AXXy ^r1 tpyy KapSlijv lalvercu. "

3 " noXX' -fi-rrlffTa.ro tpya, Acet/cws d'-fal vra.ro irdvra." Every Athenian considered
himself superior as a producer of commodities to a Spartan; for the latter in time of
war had men enough at his disposal but could not command money, as Thucydides
makes Pericles say in the speech inciting the Athenians to the Peloponnesian war:
"Ziiftcurf rt irotpArfpoi ol avrovpyol rutv avdpdiruv % xPtfJMffl foXe/iety." (Thuc: l.I.c.
41.) Nevertheless, even with regard to material production, afcapictla., as opposed
to division of labour remained their ideal, " trap1 G>v y&p rb «0, irapd rofrrtitv /cai rd
atfrapm." It should be mentioned here that at the date of the fall of the 30
Tyrants there were still not 5000 Athenians without landed property.

• With Plato, division of labour within the community is a development from the
multifarious requirements, and the limited capacities of individuals. The main
point with him is, that the labourer must adapt himself to the work, not the work
to the labourer; which latter is unavoidable, if he carries on several trades at once,
thus making one or the other of them subordinate. "Ou ybp $6£\et rb irparr6fJLevov T^V
roO vp&TTQrroi <rxoXV irepiptvctv, dXX1 &vdyicrj rbv irpdrrovra ry irparrontvy
«reuioXoi/0ei> ^ fv irapcpyov /it'pei. — 'AvdyKij. — 'E/C 8$ TOVTUV irXelw re 2/ccurra

4O2 Capitalist Production.

which the division of society into classes is based, as by Xeno
phon,1 who with characteristic bourgeois instinct, approaches
more nearly to division of labour within the workshop. Plato's
Republic, in so far as division of labour is treated in it, as the
formative principle of the State, is merely the Athenian ideali
sation of the Egyptian system of castes, Egypt having served
as the model of an industrial country to many of his contem
poraries also, amongst others to Isocrates,2 and it continued to
have this importance to the Greeks of the Kornan Empire.3
During the manufacturing period proper, i.e., the period

ylyverai Kal /tdXXcov ical pq.ov, 6rav eft eV Atari $i5<riv Kal Iv tcatpQ <rxo\V TWV £XXcj)»
Aywv KpdTTi}" (Rep. 1. 2. Ed. Baiter, Orelli, &c.). So in Thucydides 1. c. c., 4'.5:
"Seafaring is an art like any other, and cannot, as circumstances require, be carried
on as a subsidiary occupation; nay, other subsidiary occupations cannot be carried (in
alongside of this one." If the work, says Plato, has to wait for the labourer, the
critical point in the process is missed and the article spoiled, tpyov Kcupbv 8i6\\vrc I.
The same Platonic idea is found recurring in the protest of the English bleache -s
against the cause in the Factory Act that provides fixed meal times for all oper
atives. Their business cannot wait the convenience of the workmen, for "in the
various operations of singeing, washing, bleaching, mangling, calendering, ar.d
dyeing, none of them can be stopped at a given moment without risk of damage
to enforce the same dinner hour for all the work-people might occasion
ally subject valuable goods to the risk of danger by incomplete operations." le
platonisme ou va-t-il se nicher!

* Xenophon says, it is not only an honour to receive food from the table of the
King of Persia, but such food is much more tasty than other food. "And theie
is nothing wonderful in this, for as the other arts are brought to special perfection
in the great towns, «o the royal food is prepared in a special way. For in the sraa 1
towns the same man makes bedsteads, doors, ploughs and tables: often, too, he
builds houses into the bargain, and is quite content if he finds custom sufficier t
for his sustenance. It is altogether impossible for a man who does so many things to
do them all well. But in the great towns, where each man can find many buyers, ore
trade is sufficient to maintain the man who carries it on. Nay, there is often not evei
need of one complete trade, but one man makes shoes for men, another for womer .
Here and there one man gets a living by sewing, another by cutting out shoes;
one does nothing but cut out clothes, another nothing but sew the pieces together.
It follows necessarily then, that he who does the simplest kind of work, undoubtec -
ly does it better than any one else. So it is with the art of cooking." (Xer.
Cyrop. 1. viii., c. 2.) Xenophon here lays stress exclusively upon the excellence
to be attained in use-value, although he well knows that the gradations of the d •
vision of labour depend on the extent of the market.

1 He (Busiris) divided them all into special castes ..... commanded that
the same' individuals should always carry on the same trade, for he knew that the /
who change their occupations become skilled in none; but that those who constant!;/
stick to one occupation bring it to the highest perfection. In truth, we shall als >
find that in relation to the arts and handicrafts, they have outstripped their rival *
more than a master does a bungler; and the contrivances for maintaining the mon
archy and the other institutions, of their State are so admirable that the mos:
celebrated philosophers who treat of this subject praise the constitution of th>
Egyptian State above all others. (Isocrates, Busiris, c. 8.)

•Cf. Diodorus Siculus.

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 403

during which manufacture is the predominant form taken by
capitalist production, many obstacles are opposed to the full
development of the peculiar tendencies of manufacture. Al- "'
though manufacture creates, as we have already seen, a simple
separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled, simul
taneously with their hierarchic arrangement in clasees, yet the -
number of the unskilled labourers, owing ,to the preponderating "
influence of the skilled, remains very limited. Although it
adapts the detail operations to the various degrees of maturity,
strength, and development of the living instruments of labour,
thus conducing to exploitation of women and children, yet this
tendency as a whole is wrecked on the habits and the resistance
of the male labourers. Although the splitting up of handi
crafts lowers the cost of forming the workman, and thereby
lowers his value, yet for the more difficult detail work, a longer
apprenticeship is necessary, and, even where it would be super
fluous, is jealously insisted upon by the workmen. In Eng
land, for instance, we find the laws of apprenticeship, with the
seven years' probation, in full force down to the end of the
manufacturing period ; and they are not thrown on one side till •
the advent of Modern Industry. Since handicraft skill is the •
foundation of manufacture, and since the mechanism of manu
facture as a whole possesses no framework, apart from the la
bourers themselves, capital is constantly compelled to wrestle
with the insubordination of the workmen. "By the infirmity
of human nature," says friend Ure, "it happens that the more
skilful the workman, the more self-willed and intractable he is
apt to become, and of course the less fit a component of a me
chanical system in which ... he may do great damage to the
whole."1 Hence throughout the whole manufacturing period
there runs the complaint of want of discipline among the work
men.2 And had we not the testimony of contemporary writers,
the simple facts that, during the period between the 16th cen
tury and the epoch of Modern Industry, capital failed to be
come the master of the whole disposable working-time of the

»Ure, I. c., p. 20.

1 This is more the case in England than in France, and more in France than in
Holland.

404 Capitalist Production.

manufacturing labourers, that manufactures are short-lived,
and change their locality from one country to another with the
emigrating or immigrating workmen, these facts would speak
volumes. "Order must in one way or another be established,"
exclaims in 1770 the oft-cited author of the "Essay on Trade
and Commerce." "Order," re-echoes Dr. Andrew Ure 66
years later, "Order" was wanting in manufacture based on
"the scholastic dogma of division of labour," and "Arkwright
created order."

At the same time manufacture was unable, either to seize
upon the production of society to its full extent, or to revolu
tionise that production to its very core. It towered up as
an economical work of art, on the broad foundation of the town
handicrafts, and of the rural domestic industries. At a given
stage in its development, the narrow technical basis on which
manufacture rested, came into conflict with requirements of
production that were created by manufacture itself.

One of its most finished creations was the workshop for the
production of the instruments of labour themselves, including
especially the complicated mechanical apparatus then already
employed. A machine-factory, says Ure, "displayed the di
vision of labour in manifold gradations — the file, the drill, the
lathe, having each its different workman in the order of skill/
(p. 21.) This workshop, the product of the division of labour
in manufacture, produced in its turn — machines. It is thej
that sweep away the handicraftsman's work as the regulating
-principle of social production. Thus, on the one hand, the
technical reason for the life-long annexation of the workman to
a detail function is removed. On the other hand, the fetters
that this same principle laid on the dominion of capital, fall
away.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 405

CHAPTER XV.

MACHINERY AND MODERN INDUSTRY.
SECTION 1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MACHINERY.

JOHN STUART MILL says in his Principles of Political Econ
omy: "It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet ;
made have lighted the day's toil of any human being." l
That is, however, by no means the aim of the capitalistic ap
plication of machinery. Like every other increase in the
productiveness of labour, machinery is intended to cheapen
commodities, and, by shortening that portion of the working-
day, in which the labourer works for himself, to lengthen
the other portion that he gives, without an equivalent, to the
capitalist. In short, it is a means for producing surplus-
value.

In manufacture, the revolution in the mode of production
begins with, the labour-power, in modern industry it begins
with the instruments of labour. Our first inquiry then is,
how the instruments of labour are converted from tools into
machines, or what is the difference between a machine and the
implements of a handicraft ? We are only concerned here with
striking and general characteristics; for epochs in the history
of society are no more separated from each other by hard and
fast lines of demarcation, than are geological epochs.

Mathematicians and mechanicians, and in this they are fol
lowed by a few English economists, call a tool a simple ma
chine, and a machine a complex tool. They see no essential
difference between them, and even give the name of machine to
the simple mechanical powers, the lever, the inclined plane, the
screw, the wedge, &c.2 As a matter of fact, every machine is
a combination of those simple powers, no matter how they

1 Mill should have said, "of any human being not fed by other people's labour,"
for, without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do
idlers.

* See, for instance, Hutton : "Course of Mathematics."

406 Capitalist Production.

may be disguised. From the economical standpoint this ex
planation is worth nothing, because the historical element is
wanting. Another explanation of the difference between tool
and machine is that in the case of a tool, man is the motive
power, while the motive power of a machine is something dif
ferent from man, is, for instance, an animal, water, wind, and
so on.1 According to this, a plough drawn by oxen, which :.s
a contrivance common to the most different epochs, would be a
machine, while Claussen's circular loom, which, worked by a
single labourer, weaves 96,000 picks per minute, would be
a mere tool. Nay, this very loom, though a tool when worke I
by hand, would, if worked by steam, be a machine. And since
the application of animal power is one of man's earliest inven
tions, production by machinery would have preceded produc
tion by handicrafts. When in 1735, John Wyalt brought out
his spinning machine, 'and began the industrial revolution of
the 18th century, not a word did he say about an ass driving
it instead of a man, and yet this part fell to the ass. He de
scribed it as a machine "to spin without fingers."2

1 "From this point of view we may draw a sharp line of distinction between u
tool and a machine: spades, hammers, chisels, &c., combinations of levers and of
screws, in all of which, no matter how complicated they may be in other respects.

man is the motive power, all this falls under the idea of a tool; bu:

the plough, which is drawn by animal power, and windmills, &c., must be classed
among machines." (Wilhelm Schulz: "Die Bewegung der Produktion. Zurich.
1843," p. 38.) In many respects a book to be recommended.

* Before his time, spinning machines, although very imperfect ones, had alreadj
been used, and Italy was probably the country of their first appearance. A critica
history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the 18th cen
tury are the work of a single individual. Hitherto there is no such book. Darwir
has interested us in the history of Nature's Technology, i.e., in the formation ol
the organs of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of productior
for sustaining life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of or
gans that are the material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention?
And would not such a history be easier to compile since, as Vico says, human
history differs from natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not
the latter? Technology discloses man's mode of dealing with Nature, the process
of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode
of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from
them. Every history of religion even, that fails to take account of this material
basis, is uncritical. It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earth
ly core of the misty creations of religion, than, conversely, it is, to develop from the
actual relations of life the corresponding celestialised forms of those relations. The
latter method is the only materialistic, and therefore the only scientific one. The
weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that ex
cludes history and its process, are at once evident from the abstract and ideological

Machinery and Modern- Industry. 407

All fully developed machinery consists of three essentially
different parts, the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechan
ism, and finally the tool or working machine. The motor
mechanism is tHat which puts the whole in motion. It~erther
generates its own~motTve power, like the steam engine, the
caloric engine, the electro-magnetic machine, &c., or it receives
its impulse from some already existing natural force, like the
water-wheel from a head of water, the wind-mill from wind,
&c. The transmitting mechanism, composed of fly-wheels,
shafting, toothed wheels, pullies, straps, ropes, bands, pinions,
and gearing of the most varied kinds, regulates the motion,
changes its form where necessary, as for instance, from linear
to circular, and divides and distributes it among the working
machines. These two first parts of the whole mechanism are
there, solely for putting the working machines in motion, by
means of which motion the subject of labour is seized upon
and modified as desired. The tool or working-machine is that
part of the machinery with which the industrial revolution of
the 18th century started. And to this day it constantly serves
as such a starting point, whenever a handicraft, or a manu
facture, is turned into an industry carried on by machinery.

On a closer examination of the working-machine proper, we
find in it, as a general rule, though often, no doubt, under very
altered forms, the apparatus and tools used by the handicrafts
man or manufacturing workman ; with this difference, that
instead of being human implements, they are the implements
of a mechanism, or mechanical implements. Either the entire
machine is only a more or less altered mechanical edition of
the old handicraft tool, as, for instance, the power-loom j1 or
the working parts fitted in the frame of the machine are old
acquaintances, as spindles are in a mule, needles in a stocking-
loom, saws in a sawing machine, and knives in a chopping
machine. The distinction between these tools and the body
proper of the machine, exists from their very birth ; for they

conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their
own speciality.

1 Especially in the original form of the power-loom, we recognise, at the first
glance, the ancient loom. In its modern form, the power-loom has undergone es
sential alterations.

408 Capitalist Production.

continue for the most part to be produced by handicraft, or by
manufacture, and are afterwards fitted into the body of the
machine, which is the product of machinery.1 The machine
proper is therefore a mechanism that, after being set in motion,
performs with its tools the same operations that were formerly
done by the workman with similar tools. Whether the motive
power is derived from man, or from some other machine, makes
no difference in this respect. From the moment that the tocl
proper is taken from man, and fitted into a mechanism, i
machine takes the place of a mere implement. The differencB
strikes one at once, even in those cases where man himself
continues to be the prime mover. The number of implements
that he himself can use simultaneously, is limited by the num
ber of his own natural instruments of production, by tin*
number of his bodily organs. In Germany, they tried at first
to make one spinner work two spinning wheels, that is, to
work simultaneously with both hands and both feet. This wan
too difficult. Later, a treddle spinning wheel with two spin
dles was invented, but adepts in spinning, who could spin two
threads at once, were almost as scarce as two-headed men
The Jenny, on the other hand, even at its very birth, spur
with 12-18 spindles, and the stocking-loom knits with many
thousand needles at once. The number of tools that a machine
can bring into play simultaneously, is from the very first
emancipated from the organic limits that hedge in the tools of
a handicraftsman.

In many manual implements the distinction between man as
mere motive power, and man as the workman or operator
properly so-called, is brought into striking contrast. For in
stance, the foot is merely the prime mover of the spinning
wheel, while the hand, working with the spindle, and drawing
and twisting, performs the real operation of spinning. It is
this last part of the handicraftsman's implement that is first

1 It is only during the last 15 years (i.e., since about 1850), that a constantly
increasing portion of these machine tools have been made in England by machinery,
and that not by the same manufacturers who make the machines. Instances of
machines for the fabrication of these mechanical tools are, the automatic bobbin-
making engine, the card-setting engine, shuttle-making machines, and machines for
forging mule and throstle spindles.

Machinery and Modern 'Industry. 409

seized upon by the industrial revolution, leaving to the work
man, in addition to his new labour of watching the machine
with his eyes and correcting its mistakes with his hands, the
merely mechanical part of being the moving power.' On the
other hand, implements, in regard to which man has always
acted as a simple motive power, as, for instance, by turning the
crank of a mill,1 by pumping, by moving up and down the arm
of a bellows, by pounding with a mortar, &c., such implements
soon call for the application of animals, water,2 and wind as
motive powers. Here and there, long before the period of
manufacture, and also, to some extent, during that period,
these implements pass over into machines, but without creat
ing any revolution in the mode of production. It becomes
evident, in the period of Modern Industry, that these imple
ments, even under their form of manual tools, are already
machines. For instance, the pumps with which the Dutch, in
1836-7, emptied the Lake of Harlem, were constructed on the
principle of ordinary pumps; the only difference being, that
their pistons were driven by cyclopean steam-engines, instead
of by men. The common and very imperfect bellows of the
blacksmith is, in England, occasionally converted into a blow
ing-engine, by connecting its arm with a steam-engine. The
steam-engine itself, such as it was at its invention, during the
manufacturing period at the close of the 17th century, and
such as it continued to be down to 1780,3 did not give rise to
any industrial revolution. It was, on the contrary, the inven-

1 Moses says: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads the corn." The Christian
philanthropists of Germany, on the contrary, fastened a wooden board round the
necks of the serfs, whom they used as a motive power for grinding, in order to
prevent them from putting flour into their mouths with their hands.

2 It was partly the want of streams with a good fall on them, and partly their
battles with superabundance of water in other respects, that compelled the Dutch to
resort to wind as a motive power. The windmill itself they got from Germany,
where its invention was the origin of a pretty squabble between the nobles, the
priests, and the emperor, as to which of those three the wind "belonged." The air
makes bondage, was the cry in Germany, at the same time that the wind was making
Holland free. What it reduced to bondage in this case, was not the Dutchman, but
the land for the Dutchman. In 1836, 12,000 windmills of 6000 horse-power were
still employed in Holland, to prevent two-thirds of the land from being reconverted
into morasses.

' It was, indeed, very much improved by Watt's first so-called single acting en
gine; but, in this form, it continued to be a mere machine for raising water, and
the liquor from salt mines.

4io Capitalist Production.

tion of machines that made a revolution in the form of steam-
engines necessary. As soon as man, instead of working with
an implement on the subject of his labour, becomes merely
the motive power of an implement-machine, it is a mere acci
dent that motive power takes the disguise of human muscle ;
and it may equally well take the form of wind, water or steam.
Of course, this does not prevent such a change of form from
producing great technical alterations in the mechanism that
was originally constructed to be driven by man alone. Now
adays, all machines that have their way to make, such as sew
ing machines, bread-making machines, &c., are, unless from
their very nature their use on a small scale is excluded, con
structed to be driven both by human and by purely mechan
ical motive power.

The machine, which is the starting point of the industrial
revolution, supersedes the workman, who handles a single tool,
by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools, and
set in motion by a single motive power, whatever the form of
that power may be.1 Here we have the machine, but only as
an elementary factor of production by machinery.

Increase in the size of the machine, and in the number of its
working tools, calls for a more massive mechanism to drive it ;
and this mechanism requires, in order to overcome its resist
ance, a mightier moving power than that of man, apart from
the fact that man is a very imperfect instrument for producing
uniform continued motion. But assuming that he is acting
simply as a motor, that a machine has taken the place of his
tool, it is evident that he can be replaced by natural forces.
Of all the great motors handed down from the manufacturing
period, horse-power is the worst, partly because a horse has a
head of his own, partly because he is costly, and the extent to
which he is applicable in factories is very restricted.2 Never-

1 "The union of all these simple instruments, set in motion by a single motor,
constitutes a machine." (Babbage, 1. c.)

2 In January, 1861, John C. Morton read before the Society of Arts a paper on
"The forces employed in agriculture." He there states: "Every improvement that
furthers the uniformity of the land makes the steam-engine more and more applica
ble to the production of pure mechanical force. . . . Horse-power is requisite
wherever crooked fences and other obstructions prevent uniform action. These
obstructions are vanishing day by day. For operations that demand more exercise

Machinery and Modern Industry. 411

theless the horse was extensively used during the infancy of
Modern Industry. This is proved, as well by the complaints
of contemporary agriculturists, as by the term "horse-power,"
which has survived to this day as an expression for mechanical
force.

Wind was too inconstant and uncontrollable, and besides, in
England, the birthplace of Modern Industry, the use of water-
power preponderated even during the manufacturing period.
In the 17th century attempts had already been made to turn
two pairs of millstones with a single water-wheel. But the
increased size of the gearing was too much for the water-
power, which had now become insufficient, and this was one
of the circumstances that led to a more accurate investigation
of the laws of friction. In the same way the irregularity
caused by the motive power in mills that were put in motion
by pushing and pulling a lever, led to the theory, and the
application, of the fly-wheel, which afterwards plays so im
portant a part in Modern Industry.1 In this way, during the
manufacturing period, were developed the first scientific and
technical elements of Modern Mechanical Industry. Ark-
wright's throstle-spinning mill was from the very first turned
by water. But for all that, the use of water, as the predomi
nant motive power, was beset with difficulties. It could not be
increased at will, it failed at certain seasons of the year, and,
above all, it was essentially local.2 Xot till the invention of
Watt's second and so called double-acting steam-engine, was a

of will than actual force, the only power applicable is that controlled every instant
by the human mind — in other words, man-power." Mr. Morton then reduces steam-
power, horse-power, and man-power, to the unit in general use for steam-engines,
namely, the force required to raise 33,000 Ibs. one foot in one minute, and reckons
the cost of one horse-power from a steam-engine to be 3d., and from a horse to
be 5y3d. per hour. Further, if a horse must fully maintain its health, it can work
no more than 8 hours a day. Three at the least out of every seven horses used on
tillage land during the year can be dispensed with, by using steam-power, at an
expense not greater than that which, the horses dispensed with, would cost dur
ing the 3 or 4 months in which alone they can be used effectively. Lastly, steam-
power, in those agricultural operations in which it can be employed, improves, in
comparison with horse-power, the quality of the work. To do the work of a steam-
engine would require 66 men, at a total cost of 16s. an hour, and to do the work of
a horse, 32 men, at a total cost of 8s. an hour.

1 Faulhebr, 1625; De Cous, 1688.

1 The modern turbine frees the industrial exploitation of water-power from many
of its former fetters.

412 Capitalist Production.

prime mover found, that begot its own force by the consump
tion of coal and water, whose power was entirely under man's
control, that was mobile and a means of locomotion, that was
urban and not, like the water-wheel, rural, that permitted pro
duction to be concentrated in towns instead of, like the water-
wheels, being scattered up and down the country,1 that was of
universal technical application, and, relatively speaking, little
affected in its choice of residence by local circumstances. The
greatness of Watt's genius showed itself in the specification of
the patent that he took out in April, 1784. In that specifica
tion his steam-engine is described, not as an invention for a
specific purpose, but as an agent universally applicable in
Mechanical Industry. In it he points out applications, many
of which, as for instance, the steam-hammer, were not intro
duced till half a century later. Nevertheless he doubted the
use of steam-engines in navigation. His successors, Boultoc
and Watt, sent to the exhibition of 1851 steam-engines of colos
sal size for ocean steamers.

As soon as tools had been converted from being manual
implements of man into implements of a mechanical apparatus,
of a machine, the motive mechanism also acquired an indepen
dent form, entirely emancipated from the restraints of human
strength. Thereupon the individual machine, that we have
hitherto been considering, sinks into a mere factor in produc
tion by machinery. One motive mechanism was now able to
drive many machines at once. The motive mechanism grows
with the number of the machines that are turned simultane
ously, and the transmitting mechanism becomes a wide-spread
ing apparatus.

We now proceed to distinguish the co-operation of a number

1 "In the early days of textile manufactures, the locality of the factory depended
upon the existence of a stream having a sufficient fall to turn a water-wheel; and,
although the establishment of the water mills was the commencement of the break
ing up of the domestic system of manufacture, yet the mills necessarily situated
upon streams, and frequently at considerable distances the one from the other, form
ed part of a rural, rather than an urban system; and it was not until the introduc
tion of the steam-power as a substitute for the stream that factories were congre
gated in towns, and localities where the coal and water required for the production
of steam were found in sufficient quantities. The steam-engine is the parent of
manufacturing towns." (A. Redgrave in "Reports of the Insp. of Fact. 30th
April, 1866," p. 36.)

Machinery and Modern Industry. 413

of machines of one kind from a complex system of machinery.
In the one case, the product is entirely made by a single
machine, which performs all the various operations previously
done by one handicraftsman with his tool ; as, for instance, by
a weaver with his loom ; or by several handicraftsmen success
ively, either separately or as members of a system of Manu
facture.1 For example, in the manufacture of envelopes, one
man folded the paper with the folder, another laid on the gum,
a third turned the flap over, on which the device is impressed,
a fourth embossed the device, and so on ; and for each of these
operations the envelope had to change hands. One single
envelope machine now performs all these operations at once,
and makes more than 3000 envelopes in an hour. In the Lon
don exhibition of 1862, there was an American machine for
making paper cornets. It cut the paper, pasted, folded, and
finished 300 in a minute. Here, the whole process, which,
when carried on as Manufacture, was split up into, and carried
out by, a series of operations, is completed by a single machine,
working a combination of various tools. Now, whether such
a machine be merely a reproduction of a complicated manual
implement, or a combination of various simple implements
specialised by Manufacture, in either case, in the factory, i.e.,
in the workshop in which machinery alone is used, we meet
again with simple co-operation ; and, leaving the workman
out of consideration for the moment, this co-operation presents
itself to us, in the first instance, as the conglomeration in one
place of similar and simultaneously acting machines. Thus, a
weaving factory is constituted of a number of power-looms,
working side by side, and a sewing factory of a number of
sewing machines all in the same building. But there is here
a technical oneness in the whole system, owing to all the ma-

1 From the standpoint of division of labour in Manufacture, weaving was not
simple, but on the contrary, complicated manual labour; and consequently the
power-loom is a machine that does very complicated work. It is altogether errone
ous to suppose that modern machinery originally appropriated these operations alone,
which division of labour had simplified. Spinning and weaving were, during the
manufacturing period, split up into new species, and the implements were modified
and improved; but the labour itself was in no way divided, and it retained its handi
craft character. It is not the labour, but the instrument of labour, that serves as
the starting-point of the machine.

414 Capitalist Production.

chines receiving their impulse simultaneously, and in an equal
degree, from the pulsations of the common prime mover, by
the intermediary of the transmitting mechanism ; and this
mechanism, to a certain extent, is also common to them all,
since only particular ramifications of it branch off to each
machine. Just as a number of tools, then, form the organs of
a machine, so a number of machines of one kind constitute the
organs of the motive mechanism.

A real machinery system, however, does not take the place
of these independent machines, until the subject of labour goes
through a connected series of detail processes, that are carried
out by a chain of machines of various kinds, the one supple
menting the other. Here we have again the co-operation by
division of labour that characterises Manufacture; only now,
it is a combination of detail machines. The special tools of
the various detail workmen, such as those of the beaters, coml>-
ers, spinners, &c., in the woollen manufacture, are now trans
formed into the tools of specialised machines, each machine
constituting a special organ, with a special function, in th?
system. In those branches of industry in which the machinery
system is first introduced, Manufacture itself furnishes, in a
general way, the natural basis for the division, and consequent
organisation, of the process of production.1 Nevertheless an
essential difference at once manifests itself. In Manufacture
it is the workmen who, with their manual implements, must,

1 Before the epoch of Mechanical Industry, the wool manufacture was the pre
dominating manufacture in England. Hence it was in this industry that, in the first
half of the 18th century, the most experiments were made. Cotton, which required
less careful preparation for its treatment by machinery, derived the benefit of th«
experience gained on wool, just as afterwards the manipulation of wool by machin
ery was developed on the lines of cotton-spinning and weaving by machinery. I"
was only during the 10 years immediately preceding 1866, that isolated details 01
the wool manufacture, such as wool-combing, were incorporated in the factor}
system. "The application of power to the process of combing wool ....
extensively in operation since the introduction of the combing machine, especially
Lister's . . . undoubtedly had the effect of throwing a very large number oi
men out of work. Wool was formerly combed by hand, most frequently in the
cottage of the comber. It is now very generally combed in the factory, and hand
labour is superseded, except in some particular kinds of work, in which hand-combed
wool is still preferred. Many of the hand-combers found employment in the fac
tories, but the produce of the hand-combers bears so small a proportion to that of
the machine, that the employment of a very large number of combers has passed
away." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 81st Oct., 1856, p. 16.)

Machinery and Modern Industry. 415

either singly or in groups, carry on each particular detail proc
ess. If, on the one hand, the workman becomes adapted to the
process, on the oiher, the process was previously made suitable
to the workman. This subjective principle of the division of
labour no longer exists in production by machinery. Here,
the process as a whole is examined objectively, in itself, that is
to say, without regard to the question of its execution by hu
man hands, it is analysed into its constituent phases; and the
problem, how to execute each detail process, and bind them all
into a whole, is solved by the aid of machines, chemistry, &C.1
But, of course, in this case also, theory must be perfected by
accumulated experience on a large scale. Each detail machine
supplies raw material to the machine next in order ; and since
they are all working at the same time, the product is always
going through the various stages of its fabrication, and is also
constantly in a state of transition, from one phase to another.
Just as in Manufacture, the direct co-operation of the detail
labourers establishes a numerical proportion between the spe
cial groups, so in an organised system of machinery, where
one detail machine is constantly kept employed by another, a
fixed relation is established between their numbers, their size,
and their speed. The collective machine, now an organised
system of various kinds of single machines, and of groups of
single machines, becomes more and more perfect, the more the
process as a whole becomes a continuous one, i.e., the less the
raw material is interrupted in its passage from its first phase
to its last ; in other words, the more its passage from one phase
to another is effected, not by the hand of man, but by the ma
chinery itself. In Manufacture the isolation of each detail
process is a condition imposed by the nature of division of
labour, but in the fully developed factory the continuity of
those processes is, on the contrary, imperative.

A system of machinery, whether it reposes on the mere co
operation of similar machines, as in weaving, or on a combina
tion of different machines, as in spinning, constitutes in itself

1 "The principle of the factory system, then, i« to substitute ... the parti-
tion of a process into its essential constituents, for the division or graduation of
fabour among artisans." (Andrew Ure: "The Philosophy of Manufacture*."
Ixmd., 1885, p. 20.)

416 Capitalist Production.

a huge automaton, whenever it is driven by a self-acting prime
mover. But although the factory as a whole be driven by its
steam-engine, yet either some of the individual machines may
require the aid of the workman for some of their movements
(such aid was necessary for the running in of the mule car
riage, before the invention of the self-acting mule, and is still
necessary in fine-spinning mills) ; or, to enable a machine to do
its work, certain parts of it may require to be handled by tho
workman like a manual tool; this was the case in machine -
makers' workshops, before the conversion of the slide rest into
a self-actor. As soon as a machine executes, without man's
help, all the movements requisite to elaborate the raw material,
needing only attendance from him, we have an automatic sys
tern of machinery, and one that is susceptible of constant im
provement in its details. Such improvements as the apparatiu
that stops a drawing frame, whenever a sliver breaks, and the
self-acting stop, that stops the power-loom so soon as the shuttle
bobbin is emptied of weft, are quite modern inventions. As
an example, both of continuity of production, and of the carry
ing out of the automatic principle, we may take a modern
paper mill. In the paper industry generally, we may advan
tageously study in detail not only the distinctions between
modes of production based on different means of production,
but also the connexion of the social conditions of production
with those modes : for the old German paper-making furnishes
us with a sample of handicraft production ; that of Holland
in the 17th and of France in the 18th century with a sample
of manufacturing in the strict sense ; and that of modern Eng
land with a sample of automatic fabrication of this article.
Besides these, there still exist, in India and 'China, two dis
tinct antique Asiatic forms of the same industry.

An organised system of machines, to which motion is com
municated by the transmitting mechanism from a central
automaton, is the most developed form of production by ma
chinery. Here we have, in the place of the isolated machine,
a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories, and
whose demon power, at first veiled under the slow and meas-

Machinery and Modern Industry. 417

ured motions of his giant limbs, at length breaks out into the
fast and furious whirl of his countless working organs.

There were mules and steam-engines before there were any
labourers, whose exclusive occupation it was to make mules
and steam-engines; just as men wore clothes before there were
such people as tailors. The inventions of Vaucanson, Ark-
wright, Watt, and others, were, however, practicable, only
because those inventors found, ready to hand, a considerable
number of skilled mechanical workmen, placed at their dis
posal by the manufacturing period. Some of these workmen
were independent handier aftmen of various trades, others were
grouped together in manufactures, in which, as before-men
tioned, division of labour was strictly carried out. As inven
tions increased in nunrbcr, and the demand for the newly
discovered machines grew larger, the machine-making industry
split up, more and more, into numerous independent branches,
And division of labour in these manufactures was more and
more developed. Here, then, we see in Manufacture the imme-
diate technical foundation of Modern Industry. Manufacture
produced the macmnery, By means oi which Modern Industry
abolished the handicraft and manufacturing systems in those
spheres of production that it first seized upon. The factory
system was therefore raised, in the natural course of things, on
an inadequate foundation. When the system attained to a
certain degree of development, it had to root up this ready-
made foundation, which in the meantime had been elaborated
on the old lines, and to build up for itself a basis that should
correspond to its methods of production. Just as the indi
vidual machine retains a dwarfish character, so long as it is
worked by the power of man alone, and just as no system of
machinery could be properly developed before the steam engine
took the place of the earlier motive powers, animals, wind, and
even water ; so, too, Modern Industry was crippled in its com
plete development, so long as its characteristic instrument of
production, the machine, owed its existence to personal
strength and personal skill, and depended on the muscular de
velopment, the keenness of sight, and the cunning of hand,
with which the detail workmen in manufactures, and the

2 A

4i 8 Capitalist Production.

manual labourers in handicrafts, wielded their dwarfish imple
ments. Thus, apart from the dearuess of the machines made
in this way, a circumstance that is ever present to the mind of
the capitalist, the expansion of industries carried on by means
of machinery, and the invasion by machinery of fresh branches
of production, were dependent on the growth of a class of work
men, who, owing to the almost artistic nature of their employ
ment, could increase their numbers only gradually, and not by
leaps and bounds. But besides this, at a certain stage of its
development, Modern Industry became technologically incom
patible with the basis "furnished for iFby handicraft and Manu
facture. The increasing size of the prime movers, of fte
transmitting mechanism, and of the machines proper, the
greater complication, multiformity and regularity of the details
of these machines, as they more and more departed from the
model of those originally made by manual labour, and acquired
a form, untrammelled except by the conditions under which,
they worked,1 the perfecting of the automatic system, and the
use, every day more avoidable, of a more refractory ma
terial, such as iron instead of wood — the solution of all thesa
problems, which sprang up by the force of circumstances,
everywhere met with a stumbling-block in the personal restric
tions which even the collective labourer of Manufacture could
not break through, except to a limited extent. Such machines
as the modern hydraulic press, the modern powerloom, and th<3
modern carding engine, could never have been furnished by
Manufacture.

A radical change in the mode of production ia one sphere of
industry involves a similar change in other spheres. This

1 The powerloom was at first made chiefly of wood; in Its improved modern fort*
ft is made of "iron. To what an extent the old forms of the instruments of pro
duction influenced their new forms at first starting, is shown by, amongst otnet
things, the most superficial comparison of the present powerloom with the old om,
of the modern blowing apparatus of a blast-furnace with the first inefficient nu-
chanical reproduction of the ordinary bellows, and perhaps more strikingly than
in any other way, by the attempts before the invention of the present locomotivt,
to construct a locomotive that actually had two feet, which after the fashion of »
horse, it raised alternately from the ground. It is only after considerable develop
ment of the science of mechanics, and accumulated practical experience, that th;
form of a machine becomes settled entirely in accordance with mechanical prin
ciples, and emancipated from the traditional form of the tool that gave rise to If.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 419

happens at first in such branches of industry as are connected
together by being separate phases of a process, and yet are
isolated by the social division of labour, in such a way, that
each of them produces an independent commodity. Thus
spinning by machinery made weaying by ^afln'Tiftrv y. *«***-
sity, and botn together made the mechanicaland chemical revo
lution thai took plW» 111 bitching, printing, and dyeing, im-
perative. So too, on the other hand, the revolution in cotton-
spinning called forth the invention of the gin, for separating
the seeds from the cotton fibre; it was only by means of this
invention, that the production of cotton became possible on the
enormous scale at present required.1 But more especially, the
revolution in the modes of production of industry and agricul
ture made necessary a revolution in the general conditions of
the social process of production, i.e., in the means of communi
cation and of transport. In a sodiety whose pivot, to use an
expression of Fourier, was agriculture on a small scale, with its
subsidiary domestic industries, and the urban handicrafts, the
means of communication and transport were so utterly inade
quate to the productive requirements of the manufacturing
period, with its extended division of social labour, its concen
tration of the instruments of labour, and of the workmen, and
its colonial markets, that they became in fact revolutionised.
In the same way the means of communication and transport
handed down from the manufacturing period soon became un
bearable trammels on Modern Industry, with its feverish haste
of production, its enormous extent, its constant flinging of
capital and labour from one sphere of production into another,
and its newly-created connexions with the markets of the
whole world. Hence, apart from the radical changes intro
duced in the construction of sailing vessels, the means of
communication and transport became gradually adapted to the
modes of production of mechanical industry, by the creation of
a system of river steamers, railways, ocean steamers, and

1 Eli Whitney's cotton gin had until very recent times undergone less essential
changes than any other machine of the 18th century. It is only during the last
decade (i.e., sine* 1856) that another American, Mr. Emery, of Albany, New York,
has rendered Whitney's gin antiquated by an improvement as iimple as it is
tffecUve.

420 Capitalist Production.

telegraphs. But the huge masses of iron that had now to he
forged, to be welded, to be cut, to be bored, and to be shaped,
demanded, on their part, cyclopean machines, for the construc
tion of which the methods of the manufacturing period were
utterly inadequate.

Modern Industry had therefore itself to take in hand the
machine, its characteristic instrument ot production, and 1o
construct machines by machines. It was not till i^ncnEs,
that it built tip for itself a fitting technical foundation, and
stood on its own feet. Machinery, simultaneously with the
increasing use of it, in the first decades of this century, appro
priated, by degrees, the fabrication of machines proper. But
it was only during the decade preceding 1866, that the con
struction of railways and ocean steamers on a stupendous scale
called into existence the cyclopean machines now employed in
the construction of prime movers.

The most essential condition to the production of machine
by machines was a prime mover capable of exerting any
amount of force, and yet under perfect control. Such a cor-
dition was already supplied by the steam-engine. But at th3
same time it was necessary to produce the geometrically accu
rate straight lines, planes, circles, cylinders, cones, and spheres,
required in the detail parts of the machines. This problem
Henry Maudsley solved in the first decade of this century b;T
the invention of the slide rest, a tool that was soon mado
automatic, and in a modified form was applied to other con
structive machines besides the lathe, for which it was originally
intended. This mechanical appliance replaces, not some par
ticular tool, but the hand itself, which produces a given form
by holding and guiding the cutting tool along the iron or other
material operated upon. Thus it became possible to produce
the forms of the individual parts of machinery "with a degree
of ease, accuracy, and speed, that no accumulated experience;
of the hand of the most skilled workman could give/'1

1 "The Industry of Nations, Lond., 1855," Part II., p. 239. This work also re
marks: "Simple and outwardly unimportant as this appendage to lathes may appear,
it is not, we believe, averring too much to state, that its influence in improving am
extending the use of machinery has been as great as that produced by Watt's i»
provements of the stoem-engine itself. Its introduction went at once to perfect all
machinery, to cheapen it, and to stimulate invention and improvement."

Machinery and Modern Industry. 421

If we now fix our attention on that portion of the machinery
employed in the construction of machines, which constitutes
the operating tool, we find the manual implements reappear
ing, but on a cyclopean scale. The operating part of the
boring machine is an immense drill driven by a steam-engine;
without this machine, on the other hand, the cylinders cf large
steam-engines and of hydaulic presses could not be made.
The mechanical lathe is only a cyclopean reproduction of the
ordinary foot-lathe; the planing machine, an iron carpenter,
that works on iron with the same tools that the human car
penter employs on wood; the instrument that, on the London
wharves, cuts the veneers, is a gigantic razor; the tool of the
shearing machine, which shears iron as easily as a tailor's
scissors cut cloth, is a monster pair of scissors; and the
steam hammer works with an ordinary hammer head, but of
such a weight that not Thor himself could wield it.1 These
steam hammers are an invention of Nasmyth, and there is one
that weighs over 6 tons and strikes with a vertical fall of 7
feet, on an anvil weighing 36 tons. It is mere child's play for
it to crush a block of granite into powder, yet it is no less
capable of driving, with a succession of light taps, a nail into a
piece of soft wood.2

The implements of labour, in the form of machinery, neces
sitate the substitution of natural forces for human force, and
the conscious application of science, instead of rule of thumb.
In Manufacture, the organisation of the social labour-process
is purely subjective ; it is a combination of detail labourers ;
in its machinery system, Modern Industry has a productive or
ganism that is purely objective, in which the labourer becomes
a mere appendage to an already existing material condition of
production. In simple co-operation, and even in that founded
on division of labour, the suppression of the isolated, by the
collective, workman still appears to be more or less accidental.
Machinery, with a few exceptions to be mentioned later, oper-

1 One of these machines, used for forging paddle-wheel shafts in London, is called
"Thor." It forges a shaft of 16 y£ tons with as much ease as a blacksmith forges a
horse-shoe.

* Wood working machines that are also capable of being employed on a smau
•cale are mostly American inventions.

422 Capitalist Production.

ates only by means of associated labour, or labour in common.
Hence, the co-operative character of the labour-process is, in
the latter case, a technical necessity dictated by the instrument
of labour itself.

SECTION 2. THE VALUE TRANSFERRED BY MACHINES'? TO

THE PRODUCT.

We saw that the productive forces resulting from co-opera
tion and division of labour cost capital nothing. They are
natural forces of social labour. So also physical forces, like
steam, water, &c., when appropriated to productive processes,
cost nothing. But just as a man requires lungs to breathe
with, so he requires something that is work of man's hand, ir
order to consume physical forces productively. A water-whee'
is necessary to exploit the force of water, and a steam engine to
exploit the elasticity of steam. Once discovered, the law of
the deviation of the magnetic needle in the field of an electric'
current, or the law of magnetisation of iron, around which
an electric current circulates, cost never a penny.1 But the
exploitation of these laws for the purposes of telegraphy, &c..
necessitates a costly and expensive apparatus. The tool, as we
have seen, is not exterminated by the machine. From being
a dwarf implement of the human organism, it expands and
multiplies into the implement of mechanism created by man.
Capital now sets the labourer to work, not with a manual tool,
but with a machine which itself handles the tools. Although,
therefore, it is clear at the first glance that, by incorporating
both stupendous physical forces, and the natural science*, with
the process of production, Modern Industry raises the produc
tiveness of labour to an extraordinary degree, it is by no means
equally clear, that this increased productive force is not, on
the other hand, purchased by an increased expenditure ~0f

1 Science, generally speaking, costs the capitalist nothing, a fact that by no means
hinders him from exploiting it. The science of others is as much annexed by capital
as the labour pf others. Capitalistic appropriation and personal appropriation,
whether of science or of material wealth, are, however, totally different things. Dr.
Ure himself deplores the gross ignorance of mechanical science existing among hi*
dear machinery-exploiting manufacturers, and Liebig can a tale unfold about th«
•Bounding ignorance of chemistry displayed by English chemical manufacturer*.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 423

labour*— Machinery, like every other component of constant
capital, creates no new value, but yields up its own value to
the product that it serves to beget. In so far as the machine
has value, and, in consequence, parts with value to the product,
it forms an element in the value of that product Instead of
being cheapened, the product is made dearer in proportion to
the value of the machine. And it is clear as noon-day, that
machines and systems of machinery, the characteristic instru
ments of labour of Modern Industry, are incomparably more
loaded with value than the implements used in handicrafts
and manufactures.

In the first place, it must be observed that the machinery,
while always entering as a whole into the labour-process, enters
into the value-begetting process only by bits. It never adds
more value than it loses, on an average, by wear and tear.
Hence there is a great difference between the value of a ma
chine, and the value transferred in a given time by that
machine to the product The longer the life of tHe machine
in the Iabour-proce5s~the~~greater is that difference. It is true,
no doubt, as we have already seen, that every instrument of
labour enters as a whole into the labour-process, and only piece
meal, proportionally to its average daily loss by wear and tear,
into the value-begetting process. But this difference between
the instrument as a whole and its daily wear and tear, is much
greater in a machine than in a tool, because the machine, being
made from more durable material, has a longer life ; because its
employment, being regulated by strictly scientific laws, allows
of greater economy in the wear and tear of its parts, and in the
materials it consumes ; and lastly, because its field of produc
tion is incomparably larger than that of a tool. After making
allowance, both in the case of the machine and of the tool, for
their average daily cost, that is for the value they transmit to
the product by their average daily wear and tear, and for
their consumption of auxiliary substances, such as oil, coal, and
so on, theyjjajgh^dojheir work gratuitously, just like the forces
furnished by nature without the help of Tnan. The greater
the productive power of the machinery compared with that of
the tool, the greater is the extent of its gratuitous service com-

424 Capitalist Production.

pared with that of the tool. In Modern Industry man suc
ceeded for the first time in making the product of his past
labour work on a large scale gratuitously, like the forces of
nature.1

In treating of Co-operation and Manufacture, it was shown
that certain general factors of production, such as buildings,
are, in comparison with the scattered means of production of
the isolated workman, economised by being consumed in com
mon, and that they therefore make the product cheaper. In a
system of machinery, not only is the framework of the machine
consumed in common by its numerous operating implements,
but the prime mover, together with a part of the transmitting
mechanism, is consumed in common by the numerous operative
machines.

Given the difference between the value of the machinery,
and the value transferred by it in a day to the product, the
extent to which this latter value makes the product dearer,
depends in the first instance, upon the size of the product; so
to say, upon its area. Mr. Baynes, of Blackburn, in a lecture
published in 1858, estimates that "each real mechanical horse
power2 will drive 450 self-acting mule spindles, with pre-

1 Ricardo lays such stress on this effect of machinery (of which, in other connex
ions, he takes no more notice than he does of the general distinction between the
labour-process and the process of creating surplus-value), that he occasionally loses
sight of the value given up by machines to the product, and puts machines on the
same footing as natural forces. Thus "Adam Smith nowhere undervalues the serv
ices which the natural agents and machinery perform for us, but he very justly dis
tinguishes the nature of the value which they add to commodities ... as they
perform their work gratuitously, the assistance which they afford us, adds nothing
to value in exchange." (Ric. 1. c., p. 336, 837.) This observation of Ricardo is of
course correct in so far as it is directed against J. B. Say, who imagines that
machines render the "service" of creating value which forms a part of "profits."

8 A horse-power is equal to a force of 33,000 foot-pounds per minute, i.t., to a
force that raises 33,000 pounds one foot in a minute, or one pound 33,000 feet.
This is the horse-power meant in the text. In ordinary language, and also here and
there in quotations in this work, a distinction is drawn between the "nominal" and
the "commercial" or "indicated" horse-power of the same engine. The old or
nominal horse-power is calculated exclusively from the length of piston-stroke, and
the diameter of the cylinder, and leaves pressure of steam and piston speed out of
consideration. It expresses practically this: This engine would be one of 50
horse-power, if it were driven with the same low pressure of steam, and the same
slow piston speed, as in the days of Boulton and Watt. But the two latter factors
have increased enormously since those days. In order to measure the mechanical
force exerted to-day by an engine, an indicator has been invented which shows the
pressure of the steam in the cylinder. The piston speed is easily ascertained Thus

Machinery and Modern Industry. 425

pare-tion, or 200 throstle spindles, or 15 looms for 40 inch
cloth with the appliances for warping, sizing, &c." In the
first case, it is the day's produce of 450 mule spindles, in
the second, of 200 throstle spindles, in the third, of 15 power-
looms, over which the daily cost of one horse-power, and the
wear and tear of the machinery set in motion by that power,
are spread ; so that only a very minute value is transferred by
such wear and tear to a pound of yarn or a yard of cloth. The
same is the case with the steam-hammer mentioned above.
Since its daily wear and tear, its coal-consumption, &c., are
spread over the stupendous masses of iron hammered by it in
a day, only a small value is added to a hundredweight of iron ;
but that value would be very great, if the cyclopean instrument
were employed in driving in nails.

Given a machine's capacity for work, that is, the number
of its operating tools, or, where it is a question of force, their
mass, the amount of its product will depend on the velocity of
its working parts, on the speed, for instance, of the spindles, or
on the number of blows given by the hammer in a minute.
Many of these colossal hammers strike seventy times in a
minute, and Ryder's patent machine for forging spindles with
small hammers gives as many as 700 strokes per minute.

Given the rate at which machinery transfers its value to the
product, the amount of value so transferred depends on the
total value of the machinery.1 The less labour it contains, the
less value it imparts to the product. The less value it gives
up, so much the more productive it is, and so much the more

the "indicated" or "commercial" horse-power of an engine is expressed by a mathe
matical formula, involving diameter of cylinder, length of stroke, piston speed, and
steam pressure, simultaneously, and showing what multiple of 33,000 pounds is
really raised by the engine in a minute. Hence, one "nominal" horse-power may
exert three, four, or even five "indicated" or "real" horse-powers. This observa
tion is made for the purpose of explaining various citations in the subsequent
pages. — (The editor.)

1 The reader who is imbued with capitalist notions will naturally miss here the
"interest" that the machine, in proportion to its capital value, adds to the product.
It is, however, easily seen that since a machine no more creates new value than any
other part of constant capital, it cannot add any value under the name of "interest."
It is also evident that here, where we are treating of the production of surplus
value, we cannot assume a priori the existence of any part of that value under the
name of interest. The capitalist mode of calculating, which appears, prima focit,
absurd, and repugnant to the laws of the creation of value, will be explained in the
third book of this work.

426 Capitalist Production.

its services approximate to those of natural forces. But the
production of machinery by machinery lessens its value rela
tively to its extension and efficacy.

An analysis and comparison of the prices of commodities
produced by handicrafts or manufacturers, and of the prices of
the same commodities produced by machinery, shows generally
that, in the product of machinery, the value due to the instru
ments of labour, increases relatively, but decreases absolutely.
In other words, its absolute amount decreases, but its amount,
relatively to the total value of the product, of a pound of yarn,
for instance, increases.1

It is evident that whenever it costs as much labour to pro
duce a machine as is saved by the employment of that machine,
there is nothing but a transposition of labour; consequently
the total labour required to produce a commodity is not
lessened or the productiveness of labour is not increased. It
is clear, however, that the difference between the labour a
machine costs, and the labour it saves, in other words, that the
degree of its productiveness does not depend on the difference
between its own value and the value of the implement it re
places. As long as the labour spent on a machine, and conse
quently the portion of its value added to the product, remains

1 This portion of value which is added by the machinery, decreases both absolutely
and relatively, when the machinery does away with horses and other animals that
are employed as mere moving forces, and not as machines for changing the form of
matter. It may here be incidentally observed, that Descartes, in defining animals as
mere machines, saw with eyes of the manufacturing period, while to eyes of the
middle ages, animals were assistants to man, as they were later to Von Haller in his
"Restauration der Staatswissenschaften." That Descartes, like Bacon, anticipated
an alteration in the form of production, and the practical subjugation of Nature by
Man, as a result of the altered methods of thought, is plain from his "Discours de
la Methode." He there says: "II est possible (by the methods he introduced in
philosophy) de parvenir a des connaissances fort utiles a la vie, et qu'au lieu de
cette philosophic speculative qu'on enseigne dans les ecoles, on en peut trouver une
pratique, par laquelle, connaissant la force et les actions du feu, de 1'eau, de 1'air,
des astres, et de tous les autres corps qui nous environnent, aussi distinctement que
nous connaissons les divers metiers de nos artisans, nous les pourrious employer en
meme faqon a tous les usages auxquels ils sont propres, et ainsi nous rendre comme
maitres et possesseurs de la nature" and thus "contribuer au perfectionnement de
la vie humaine." In the preface to Sir Dudley North's "Discourses upon Trade "
(1691) it is stated, that Descartes' method had begun to free political economy from
the old fables and superstitious notions of gold, trade, &c. On the whole, however,
the early English economists sided with Bacon and Hobbes as their philosophers;
while, at a later period, the philosopher /car' l(oxV °* political economy in Eng*
land, France, and Italy, was Locke.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 427

smaller than the value added by the workman to the product
with his tool, there is always a difference of labour saved in
favour of the machine. The productiveness of a machine is
therefore^easured by the human labour-power it replaces.
According to Mr. Baynes, 2£ operatives are required for the
450 mule spindles, inclusive of preparation machinery,1 that
are driven by one-horse power; each self-acting mule spindle,
working ten hours, produces 13 ounces of yarn (average num
ber or thickness) ; consequently 2J operatives spin weekly
365£ Ibs. of yarn. Hence, leaving waste on one side, 366 Ibs.
of cotton absorb, during their conversion into yarn, only 150
hours' labour, or fifteen days' labour of ten hours each. But
with a spinning-wheel, supposing the hand-spinner to produce
thirteen ounces of yarn in sixty hours, the same weight of cot
ton would absorb 2700 days' labour of ten hours each, or
27,000 hours' labour.2 Where block printing, the old method
of printing calico by hand, has been superseded by machine
printing, a single machine prints, with the aid of one man or
boy, as much calico of four colours in one hour, as it formerly
took 200 men to do.3 Before Eli Whitney invented the cot
ton-gin in 1793, the separation of the seed from a pound of
cotton cost an average day's labour. By means of his inven
tion one negress was enabled to clean 100 Ibs. daily ; and since
then, the efficacy of the gin has been considerably increased.
A pound of cotton wool, previously costing 50 cents to produce,
included after that invention more unpaid labour, and was
consequently sold with greater profit, at 10 cents. In India
they employ for separating the wool from the seed, an instru
ment, half machine, half tool, called a churka ; with this one

1 According to the annual report (1863) of the Essen chamber of commerce,
there was produced in 1862, at the cast-steel works of Krupp, with its 161 furnaces,
thirty-two steam-engines (in the year 1800 this was about the number of all the
steam-engines working in Manchester), and fourteen steam-hammers (representing
in all 1286 horse-power), forty-nine forges, 203 tool-machines, and about 2400 work
men — thirteen million pounds of cast steel. Here there are not two workmen to
each horse-power.

1 Babbage estimate* that in Java the spinning labour alone adds 117% to the value
of the cotton. At the same period (1832) the total value added to the cotton by
machinery and labour in the fine spinning-industry, amounted to about 33% of the
value of the cotton. ("On the Economy of Machinery," p.

* Machine printing also economises colour.

428 Capitalist Production.

man and a woman can clean 28 Ibs. daily. With the churka
invented some years ago by Dr. Forbes, one man and a boy pro
duce 250 pounds daily. If oxen, steam, or water, be used for
driving it, only a few boys and girls as feeders are required.
Sixteen of these machines driven by oxen do as much work in
a day as formerly 750 people did on an average.1

As already stated, a steam-plough does as much work in one
hour at a cost of threepence, as 66 men at a cost of 15 shillings.
I return to this example in order to clear up an erroneous
notion. The 15 shillings are by no means the expression in
money of all the labour expended in one hour by the 66 men.
If the ratio of surplus labour to necessary labour were 100%,
these 66 men would produce in one hour a value of 30 shill
ings, although their wages, 15 shillings, represent only their
labour for half an hour. Suppose, then, a machine cost a;i
much as the wages for a year of the 150 men it displaces, say
£3000 ; this £3000 is by no means the expression in money o:*
the labour added to the object produced by these 150 men be
fore the introduction of the machine, but only of that portior
of their year's labour which was expended for themselves anc
represented by their wages. On the other hand, the £3000.
the money value of the machine, expresses all the labour ex
pended on its production, no matter in what proportion this
labour constitutes wages for the workman, and surplus-value
for the capitalist. Therefore, though a machine cost as much
as the labour-power displaced by its cost, yet the labour
materalised in it is even then much less than the living labour
it replaces.2

The use of machinery for the exclusive purpose of cheapen
ing the product, is limited in this way, that less labour must
be expended in producing the machinery than is displaced by
the employment of that machinery. For the capitalist, how
ever, this use is still more limited. Instead of paying for the
labour, he only pays the value of the labour-power employed ;

1 Sec paper read by Dr. Watson, Reporter on Products to the Government of
India, before the Society of Arts, 17th April, 1860.

• "These mute agents (machines) are always the produce of much less labour than
that which they displace, even when they are of the same money value." (Ricardo,
1. c., p. 4(U

Machinery and Modern Industry. 429

therefore, the limit to his using a machine is fixed by the
difference between the value of the machine and the value of
the labour-power replaced by it. Since the division of the
day's work into necessary and surplus-labour differs in differ
ent countries, and even in the same country at different
periods, or in different branches of industry ; and further, since
the actual wage of the labourer at one time sinks below the
value of his labour-power, at another rises above it, it is possi
ble for the difference between the price of the machinery to
vary very much, although the difference between the quantity
of labour requisite to produce the machine and the total quan
tity replaced by it, remain constant.1 But it is the former
difference alone that determines the cost, to the capitalist, of
producing a commodity, and, through the pressure of competi
tion, influences his action. Hence the invention now-a-days
of machines in England that are employed only in North
America; just as in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
machines were invented in Germany to be used only in Hol
land, and just as many a French invention of the eighteenth
century was exploited in England alone. In the older coun
tries, machinery, when employed in some branches of industry,
creates such a redundancy of labour in other branches that in
these latter the fall of wages below the value of labour-power
impedes the use of machinery, and, from the standpoint of the
capitalist, whose profit comes, not from a diminution of the
labour employed, but of the labour paid for, renders that use
Burperfluous and often impossible. In some branches of the
woollen manufacture in England the employment of children
has during recent years been considerably diminished, and in
some cases has been entirely abolished. Why ? Because the
Factory Acts made two sets of children necessary, one working
six hours, the other four, or each working five hours. But the
parents refuse to sell the "half-timers" cheaper than the
"full-timers." Hence the substitution of machinery for the
"half-timers."2 Before the labour of women and of children

1 Hence in a communistic society there would be a very different scope for the
employment of machinery than there can be in a bourgeois society.

* "Employers of labour would not unnecessarily retain two sets of children under
thirteen. ... In fact one class of manufacturers, the spinners of woollen yarn.

430 Capitalist Production.

under 10 years of age was forbidden in mines, capitalists con
sidered the employment of naked women and girls, often in
company with men, so far sanctioned by their moral code, arid
especially by their ledgers, that it was only after the passing
of the Act that they had recourse to machinery. The Yankees
have invented a stone-breaking machine. The English do not
make use of it, because the "wretch" 1 who does this work gets
paid for such a small portion of his labour, that machinery
would increase the cost of production to the capitalist.2 In
England women are still occasionally used instead of horsus
for hauling canal boats,8 because the labour required to pr<>-
duce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity,
while that required to maintain the women of the surpk.s
population is below all calculation. Hence nowhere do we find
a more shameful squandering of human labour-power for the
most despicable purposes than in England, the land of rm.-
chinery.

SECTION 3. THE APPROXIMATE EFFECTS OF MACHINERY OS

THE WORKMAN.

The starting point of Modern Industry is, as we have shown,
the revolution in the instruments of labour, and this revolt -
tion attains its most highly developed form in the organise!
system of machinery in a factory. Before we inquire ho^v
human material is incorporated with this objective organism,
let us consider some general effects of this revolution on the
labourer himself.

now rarely employ children under thirteen years of age, i.e., half-timers. They have
introduced improved and new machinery of various kinds, which altogether super
sedes the employment of children (i.e., under 13 years); f.i., I will mention ore
process as an illustration of this diminution in the number of children, wherein ty
the addition of an apparatus, called a piecing machine, to existing machines, tl e
work of six or four half-times, according to the peculiarity of each machine, can le
performed by one young person (over 13 years) . . . the half-time system 'stim
ulated* the invention of the piecing machine." (Reports of Insp. of Fact, for 81:t
Oct., 1858.)

1 "Wretch" is the recognized term in English political economy for the agricultural
labourer.

* "Machinery . . . can frequently not be employed until labour (he mean*
wages) rises." (Ricardo, 1. c., p. 679.)

• See "Report of the Social Science Congress, at Edinburgh." Oct., 1803.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 431

(L Appropriation of supplementary Labour-power by
Capital. The Employment of Women and Children.

In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it
becomes a means of employing labourers of slight muscular
strength, and those whose bodily development is incomplete,
but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour of
women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for
by capitalists who used machinery. That mighty substitute
for labour and labourers was forthwith changed into a means
for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling,
under the direct sway of capital, every member of the work
man's family, without distinction of age or sex. Compulsory
work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the
children's play, but also of free labour at home within mod
erate limits for the support of the family.1

The value of labour-power was determined, not only by
the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult
laborer, but also by that necessary to maintain his family.
Machinery, by throwing every member of that family on to
the labour market, spreads the value of the man's labour-
power over his whole family It thus depreciates his labour-
power. To purchase the labour-power of a family of four
workers may, perhaps, cost more than it formerly did to
purchase the labour-power of the head of the family, but, in
return, four days' labour takes the place of one, and their price
falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus-labour of
four over the surplus-labour of one. In order that the family
may live, four people must now, not only labour, but expend

1 Dr. Edward Smith, during the cotton crisis caused by the American Civil War,
was sent by the English Government to Lancashire, Cheshire, and other places, to
report on the sanitary condition of the cotton operatives. He reported, that from
a hygienic point of view, and apart from the banishment of the operatives from the
factory atmosphere, the crisis had several advantages. The women now bad suffi
cient leisure to give their infants the breast, instead of poisoning them with "God
frey's cordial." They had time to learn to cook. Unfortunately the acquisition of
this art occurred at a time when they had nothing to cook. But from this we see
how capital, for the purposes of its self-expansion, has usurped the labour necessary
In the home of the family. This crisis was also utilised to teach sewing to the
daughters of the workmen in sewing schools. An American revolution and a uni-
Ytrsal crisis in order that the working girts, who spin for the whole world, might
learn to sewl

432 Capitalist Production.

surplus-labor for the capitalist. Thus we se€, that machinery,
while augmenting the human material that forms the principal
object of capital's exploiting power,1 at the same time raises
the degree of exploitation.

Machinery also revolutionises out and out the contract be
tween the labourer and the capitalist, which formally fixes
their mutual relations. Taking the exchange of commodities
as our basis, our first assumption was that capitalist and
labourer met as free persons, as independent owners of com
modities ; the one possessing money and means of production,
the other labour-power. But now the capitalist buys children
and young persons under age. Previously, the workman sold
his own labour power, which he disposed of nominally as a
free agent. Xow he sells wife and child. He has become a
slave dealer.2 The demand for children's labour often resem
bles in form the inquiries for negro slaves, such as were
formerly to be read among the advertisements in American

1 "The numerical increase of labourers has been great, through the growing substi
tution of female for male, and above all, of childish for adult labour. Three girls
of 13, at wages of from 6 shillings to 8 shillings a week, have replaced the one
man of mature age, of wages varying from 18 shillings to 45 shillings." (Th. de
Quincey: "The Logic of Political Econ., London, 1845." Note to p. 147.) Since
certain family functions, such as nursing and suckling children, cannot be entirely
suppressed, the mothers confiscated by capital, must try substitutes of some sort.
Domestic work, such as sewing and mending, must be replaced by the purchase of
ready-made articles. Hence, the diminished expenditure of labour in the house is
accompanied by an increased expenditure of money. The cost of keeping the fam
ily increases, and balances the greater income. In addition to this, economy and
judgment in the consumption and preparation of the means of subsistence becomes
impossible. Abundant material relating to these facts, which are concealed by
official political economy, is to be found in the Reports of the Inspectors of Fac
tories, of the Children's Employment Commission, and more especially in the Re
ports on Public Health.

* In striking contrast with the great fact, that the shortening of the hours of
labour of women and children in English factories was exacted from capital by the
male operatives, we find in the latest reports of the Children's Employment Com
mission traits of the operative parents in relation to the traffic in children, that are
truly revolting and thoroughly like slave-dealing. But the Pharisee of a capitalist,
as may be seen from the same reports, denounces this brutality which he himself
creates, perpetuates, and exploits, and which he moreover baptizes "Freedom of
labour." "Infant labour has been called into aid . . . even to work for their
own daily bread. Without strength to endure such disproportionate toil, without
instruction to guide their future life, they have been thrown into a situation phys
ically and morally polluted. The Jewish historian has remarked upon the overthrow
of Jerusalem by Titus that it was no wonder it should have been destroyed, with
such a signal destruction, when an inhuman mother sacrificed her own offspring to
satisfy the cravings of absolute hunger." ("Public Economy Concentrated." Car
lisle, 1838, p. 56.)

Machinery and Modern Industry. 433

journals. "My attention," says an English factory inspector,
"was drawn to an advertisement in the local paper of one of
the most important manufacturing towns of my district, of
which the following is a copy: Wanted, 12 to 20 young pre-
sons, not younger than what can pass for 13 years. Wages, 4
shillings a week. Apply &C."1 The phase "what can pass
for 13 years," has reference to the fact, that by the Factory
Act, children under 13 years may work only 6 hours. A sur
geon official appointed must certify their age. The manu
facturer, therefore, asks for children who look as if they were
already 13 years old. The decrease, often by leaps and bounds
in the number of children under 13 years employed in fac
tories, a decrease that is shown in an astonishing manner by
the English statistics of the last 20 years, was for the most
part, according to the evidence of the factory inspectors them
selves, the work of the certifying surgeons, who overstated the
age of the children, agreeably to the capitalist's greed for ex
ploitation, and the sordid trafficking needs of the parents. In
the notorious district of Bethnal Green, a public market is held
every Monday and Tuesday morning, where children of both
sexes from 9 years of age upwards, hire themselves out to the
silk manufacturers. " The usual terms are Is. 8d. a week
(this belongs to the parents) and *2d. for myself and tea/
The contract is binding only for the week. The scene and
language while this market is going on are quite disgraceful."2
It has also occurred in England, that women have taken "chil
dren from the workhouse and let any one have them out for 2s.
6d. a week."3 In spite of legislation, the number of boys
sold in Great Britain by their parents to act as live chimney-
sweeping machines (althought there exist plenty of machines
to replace them) exceeds 2000. 4 The revolution effected by
machinery in the judicial relations between the buyer and the
seller of labour-power, causing the transaction as a whole to

1 A. Redgrave in "Reports of Insp. of Fact, for 31st October, 1858," pp. 40, 41.

8 Children's Employment Commission, Fifth Report, London, 1866, p. 81, n. 31.
Note to the 4th edition: The silk industry of Bethnal Green is now almost
ruined. — Ed.

*• Children's Employment Commission, Third Report, London, 1864, p. 53, n. IB.

•1. c., Fifth Report, p. 22, n. 137.

2 B

434 Capitalist Production.

lose the appearance of a contract between free persons, afforded
the English Parliament an excuse, founded on judicial princi
ples, for the interference of the state with factories. When
ever the law limits the labour of children to 6 hours in
industries not before interfered with, the complaints of the
manufacturers are always renewed. They allege that num
bers of the parents withdraw their children from the industry-
brought under the act, in order to sell them where "freedom of
labour" still rules i.e., where children under 13 years are com
pelled to work like grown-up people, and therefore can be got
rid of at a higher price. But since capital is by nature a
leveller, since it exacts in every sphere of production equality
in the conditions of the exploitation of labour, the limitation
by law of children's labour, in one branch of industry, becomes
the cause of its limitation in others.

We have already alluded to the physical deterioration as
well of the children and young persons as of the women, whom
machinery, first directly in the factories that shoot up on its
bases, and then indirectly in all the remaining branches of in
dustry, subjects to the exploitation of capital. In this place,
therefore, we dwell only on one point, the enormous mortality,
during the first few years of their life, of the children of the
operatives. In sixteen of the registration districts into which
England is divided, there are, for every 100,000 children alive
under the age of one year, only 9000 death in the year on an
average (in one district only 7047) ; in 24 districts the deaths
are over 10,000, but under 11,000 ; in 39 districts over 11,000,
but under 12,000; in 48 districts over 12,000, but under
13,000; in 22 districts over 20,000; in 25 districts over
21,000; in 17 over 22,000; in 11 over 23,000; in Hoo, Wol-
verhampton, Ashton-under-Lyne, and Preston, over 24,000 ; in
Nottingham, Stockport, and Bradford, over 25,000 ; in Wis-
beach, 26,000; and in Manchester, 26,12s.1 As was shown
by an official medical inquiry in the year 1861, the high death-
rates are, apart from local causes, principally due to the
employment of the mothers away from their homes, and to the
neglect and maltreatment consequent on her absence, such as,

1 Sixth Report on Public Health. Lond., 1864, p. 34.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 435

amongst others, insufficient nourishment, unsuitable food, and
dosing with opiates; beside this, there arises an unnatural
estrangement between mother and child, and as a consequence
intentional starving and poisoning of the children.1 In those
agricultural districts, "where a minimum in the employment
of women exists, the death-rate is on the other hand very low."2
The Inquiry-Commission of 1861 led, however, to the unex
pected result, that in some purely agricultural districts border
ing on the North Sea; the death-rate of children under one
year old almost equalled that of the worst factory districts.
Dr. Julian Hunter was therefore commissioned to investigate
this phenomenon on the spot. His report is incorporated with
the "Sixth Report on Public Health."8 Up to that time it
was supposed, that the children were decimated by malaria,
and other diseases peculiar to low-lying and marshy districts.
But the inquiry showed the very opposite, namely, that the
same cause which drove away malaria, the conversion of the
land, from a morass in winter and a scanty pasture in summer,
into fruitful corn land, created the exceptional death-rate of
the infants.4 The 70 medical men, whom Dr. Hunter exam
ined in that district, were "wonderfully in accord" on this
point. In fact, the revolution in the mode of cultivation had
led to the introduction of the industrial system. Married
women, who work in gangs along with boys and girls, are, for
a stipulated sum of money, placed at the disposal of the
farmer, by a man called "the undertaker," who contracts for
the whole gang. "These gangs will sometimes travel many
miles from their own village ; they are to be met morning and
evening on the roads, dressed in short petticoats, with suitable
coats and boots, and sometimes trousers, looking wonderfully
strong and healthy, but tainted with a customary immorality,

»"It (the inquiry of 1861) . . . showed, moreover, that while, with the de
scribed circumstances, infants perish under the neglect and mismanagement which
their mothers' occupations imply, the mothers hecome to a grievous extent denatural
ized towards their offspring — commonly not troubling themselves much at the death,
and even sometime* . . . taking direct measures to insure it." (1. c.)

*L c., p. 454.

•L e., p. 454-468. " Report by Dr. Henry Julian Hunter on take excessive mor
tality of infants in some rural districts of England."

•1. c., p. 35 and pp. 455, 4*6.

436 Capitalist Production.

and heedless of the fatal results which their love of this busy
and independent life is bringing on their unfortunate offspring
who are pining at home."1 Every phenomenon of the factory
districts is here reproduced, including, but to a greater extent,
ill-disguised infanticide, and dosing children with opiates.2
"My knowledge of such evils," says Dr. Simon, the medical
officer of the Privy Council and editor in chief of the Reports
on Public Health, "may excuse the profound misgiving with
which I regard any large industrial employment of adult
women."3 "Happy indeed," exclaims Mr. Baker, the factory
inspector, in his official report, "happy indeed will it be for the
manufacturing districts of England, when every married
woman having a family is prohibited from working in any
textile works at all."4

The moral degradation caused by the capitalistic exploita
tion of women and children has been so exhaustively depicted
by F. Engels in his "Lage der Arbeitenden Klasse Englands,"
and other writers, that I need only mention the subject in this
place. But the intellectual desolation, artificially produced by
converting immature human beings into mere machines for the
fabrication of surplus-value, a state of mind clearly dis
tinguishable from that natural ignorance which keeps the
mind fallow without destroying its capacity for development,
its natural fertility, this desolation finally compelled even the
English Parliament to make elementary education a com
pulsory condition to the "productive" employment of children
under 14 years, in every industry subject to the Factory Acts.
The spirit of capitalist production stands out clearly in the
ludicrous wording of the so-called education clauses in the
Factory Acts, in the absence of an administrative machinery,
an absence that again makes the compulsion illusory, in the

1 1. c.', p. 456.

1 In the agricultural as well as in the factory districts the consumption of opium
among the grown-up labourers, both male and female, is extending daily. "To push
the sale of opiate ... is the great aim of some enterprising wholesale merchants.
By druggists it is considered the leading article." (1. c., p. 459.) Infants that take
opiates "shrank up into little old men," or "wizzened like little monkeys," (1. c.,
p. 460.) We here see how India and China avenged themselves on England.

•1. c., p. 37.

«"Rcj^ *i Insp. of Fact, for 31st Oct., 1868," p. 69. Mr. Baker was formerly a
doctor.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 437

opposition of the manufacturers themselves to these education
clauses, and in the tricks and dodges they put in practice for
evading them. "For this the legislature is alone to blame, by
having passed a delusive law, which, while it would seem to
provide that the children employed in factories shall be
educated, contains no enactment by which that professed end
can be secured. It provides nothing more than that the
children shall on certain days of the week, and for a certain
number of hours (three) in each day, be inclosed within the
four walls of a place called a school, and that the employer of
the child shall receive weekly a certificate to that effect signed
by a person designated by the subscriber as a schoolmaster or
schoolmistress."1 Previous to the passing of the amended
Factory Act, 1844:, it happened, not unfrequently, that the
certificate of attendance at school were signed by the school
master or schoolmistress with a cross, as they themselves were
unable to write. "On one occasion, on visiting a place called a
school, from which certificates of school attendance had issued,
I was so struck with the ignorance of the master, that I said
to him: "Pray, sir, can you read?" His reply was: "Aye,
summat!" and as a justification of his right to grant certifi
cates, he added : "At any rate, I am before my scholars." The
inspectors, when the Bill of 1844: was in preparation, did not
fail to represent the disgraceful state of the places called
schools, certificates from which they were obliged to admit as
a compliance with the laws, but they were successful only in
obtaining thus much, that since the passing of the Act of 1844,
the figures in the school certificate must be filled up in the
handwriting of the schoolmaster, who must also sign his
Christian and surname in full."2 Sir John Kincaid, factory
inspector for Scotland, relates experiences of the same kind.
"The first school we visited was kept by a Mrs. Ann Killin.
Upon asking her to spell her name, she straightway made a
mistake, by beginning with the letter C, but correcting herself
immediately, she said her name began with a K. On looking
at her signature, however, in the school certificate books, I

1 Leonard Horncr in "Reports of Insp. of Fact, for 30th June, 1857," p. 17.
•L. Homer in "Rep. of Insp. of Fact for 81st Oct., 1865," pp. 18, 19.

438 Capitalist Production.

noticed that she spelt it in various ways, while her hand
writing left no doubt as to her unfitness to teach. She her
self also acknowledged that she could not keep the register
. . . . In a second school I found the schoolroom 15 feet
long, and 10 feet wide, and counted in this space 75 children,
who were gabbling something unintelligible."1 But it is not
only in the miserable places above referred to that the chil
dren obtained certificates of school attendance without having
received instruction of any value, for in many schools where
there is a competent teacher, his efforts are of little avail from
the distracting crowd of children of all ages, from infants of
3 years old and upwards ; his livelihood, miserable at the best,
depending on the pence received from the greatest number of
children whom it is possible to cram into the space. To this is
to be added scanty school furniture, deficiency of books, and
other materials for teaching, and the depressing effect upon
the poor children themselves of a close, noisome atmosphere.
I have been in many schools, where I have seen rows of
children doing absolutely nothing; and this is certified as
school attendance, and, in statistical returns, such children are
set down as being educated."2 In Scotland the manufacturers
try all they can to do without the children that are obliged to
attend school. "It requires no further argument to prove
that the educational clauses of the Factory Act, being held in
such disfavour among mill owners tend in a great measure to
exclude that class of children alike from the employment and
the benefit of education contemplated by this Act."3 Horribly
grotesque does this appear in print works, which are regulated
by a special Act, By that Act, "every child, before being em
ployed in a print work must have attended school for at least
30 days, and not less than 150 hours, during the six months
immediately preceding such first day of employment, and
during the continuance of its employment in the print works,
it must attend for a like period of 30 days, and 150 hours
during every successive period of six months. . . . The

1 Sir John Kincaid in "Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 81st Oct., 1868," pp. 81, 82.
•L. Homer in "Reports, &c., for 81st Oct., 1857," pp. 17, 18.
•Sir J. Kincaid in "Reports, &c., 31st Oct., 1856," p. 66.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 439

attendance at school must be between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. No
attendance of less than 2£ hours, nor more than 5 hours on
any one day, shall be reckoned as part of the 150 hours.
Under ordinary circumstances the children attend school
morning and afternoon for 30 days, for at least 5 hours each
day, and upon the expiration of the 30 days, the statutory total
of 150 hours having been attained, having, in their language,
made up their book, they return to the print work, where they
continue until the six months have expired, when another in
stalment of school attendance becomes due, and they again seek

the school until the book is again made up Many

boys having attended school for the required number of hours,
when they return to school after the expiration of their six
months' work in the print work, are in the same condition as
when they first attended school as print-work boys, that they
have lost all they gained by their previous school attendance.
•£.,•• In other print works the children's attendance at
school is made to depend altogether upon the exigencies of the
work in the establishment. The requisite number of hours is
made up each six months, by instalments consisting of from
3 to five hours at a time, spreading over, perhaps, the whole six
months. . . . For instance, the attendance on one day
might be from 8 to 11 a.m., on another day from 1 p.m. to 4
p.m., and the child might not appear at school again for
several days, when it would attend from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. ;
then it might attend for 3 or 4 days consecutively, or for a
week, then it would not appear in school for 3 weeks or a
month, after that upon some odd days at some odd hours when
the operative who employed it chose to spare it; and thus the
child was, as it were, buffeted from school to work, from work
to school, until the tale of 150 hours was told."1

1 A. Redgrave in "Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1857," pp. 41-42. In those in
dustries where the Factory Act proper (not the Print Worki Act referred to in the
text) has been in force for some time, the obstacles in the way of the education
clauses have, in recent years, been overcome. In industries not under the Act, the
views of Mr. J. Geddes, a glass manufacturer, still extensively prevail. He informed
Mr. White, one of the Inquiry Commissioners: "A* far as I can see, the greater
amount of education which a part of the working class has enjoyed for some years
past is an evil. It is dangerous, because it makes them independent." (Children's
Empl. Comm., Fourth Report, Lond., 1865, p. 253.)

44° Capitalist Production,

By the excessive addition of women and children to the
ranks of the workers, machinery at last hreaks down the re
sistance which the male operatives in the manufacturing period
continued to oppose to the despotism of capital.1

b. Prolongation of the working-day.

If machinery be the most powerful means for increasing the
productiveness of labour — i.e., for shortening the working
time required in the production of a commodity, it becomes
in the hands of capital the most powerful means, in those in
dustries first invaded by it, for lengthening the working day
beyond all bounds set by human nature. It creates, on the ono
hand, new conditions by which capital is enabled to give fre<;
scope to this its constant tendency, and on the other hand, nev>
motives with which to whet capital's appetite for the labour
of others.

In the first place, in form of machinery, the implements
of labour become automatic, things moving and working inde
pendent of the workman. They are thenceforth an industrial
perpetuum mobile, that would go on producing forever, did r
not meet with certain natural obstructions in the weak bodies
and the strong wills of its human attendants. The automaton
as capital, and because it is capital, is endowed, in the persor
of the capitalist, with intelligence and will ; it is therefore
animated by the longing to reduce to a minimum the resistance
offered by that repellant yet elastic natural barrier, man.2
This resistance is moreover lessened by the apparent lightness
of machine work, and by the more pliant and docile character
of the women and children employed on it.3

1 "Mr. E., a manufacturer . . . informed me that he employed females exclu
sively at his power-looms . . . gives a decided preference to married females,
especially those who have families at home dependent on them for support; they are
attentive, docile, more so than unmarried females, and are compelled to use their
utmost exertions to procure the necessaries of life. Thus are the virtues, the pe
culiar virtues of the female character to be perverted to her injury — thus all that
is most dutiful and tender in her nature is made a means of her bondage and suffer
ing." (Ten Hours' Factory Bill. The Speech of Lord Ashley, March 15th, Lond.,
1844, p. 20.)

* "Since the general introduction of machinery, human nature has been forced far
beyond its average strength." (Rob. Owen: "Observations on the effects of the
manufacturing system, 2nd Ed, Lond., 1817.")

' The English, who have a tendency to look upon the earliest form of appearance

Machinery and Modern Industry. 441

The productiveness of machinery is, as we saw, inversely
proportional to the value transferred by it to the product
The longer the life of the machine, the greater is the mass of
the products over which the value transmitted by the machine
is spread, and the less is the portion of that value added to
each single commodity. The active lifetime of a machine is,
however, clearly dependent on the length of the working day,
or on the duration of the daily labour-process multiplied by
the number of days for which the process is carried on.

The wear and tear of a machine is not exactly proportional
to its working time. And even if it were so, a machine working
16 hours daily for T-£ years, covers as long a working period
as, and transmits to the total product no more value than, the
same machine would if it worked only 8 hours daily for 15
years. But in the first case the value of the machine would
be reproduced twice as quickly as in the latter, and the capi
talist would, by this use of the machine, absorb in 7£ years as
much surplus-value as in the second case he would in 15.

The material wear and tear of a machine is of two kinds.
The one arises from use, as coins wear away by circulating,
the other from non-use, as a sword rusts when left in its
scabbard. The latter kind is due to the elements. The
former is more or less directly proportional, the latter to a
certain extent inversely proportional, to the use of the
machine.1

of a thing as the cause of its existence, arc in the habit of attributing the long hours
of work in factories to the extensive kidnapping of children, practised by capitalists
in the infancy of the factory system, on workhonses and orphanages, by means of
which robbery, unresisting material for exploitation was procured. Thus, for in
stance, Fielden, himself a manufacturer, says: "It is evident that the long hours
of work were brought about by the circumstance of so great a number of destitute
children being supplied from different parts of the country, that the masters were
independent of the hands, and that having once established the custom by means of
the miserable materials they had procured in this way, they could impose it on their
neighbours with the greater facility." (J. Fielden: "The Curse of the Factory
System. Lond., 1836," p. 11.) With reference to the labour of women, Saunders,
the Factory inspector, says in his report of 1844: "Amongst the female operatives
there are some women who, for many weeks in succession, except for a few days,
are employed from 6 a. m. till midnight, with less than 2 hours for meals, so that on
5 days of the week they have only 6 hours left out of the 24, for going to and from
their homes and resting in bed."

1 Occasion . . . injury to the delicate moving parts of metallic mechanism by
inaction." (Ure, 1. c., p. 28.)

Capitalist

But in addition to the mateuiJ v>ear and tear, a machine
also undergoes, what \ve may call a moral depreciation. It
loses exchange-value, either by vnaeMres of the same sort being
produced cheaper than it, or by better machines entering into
competition with it.1 In both cases, be the machine ever so
young and full of life, its value is no longer determined by
the labour actually materialised in it, but by the labour-time
requisite to reproduce either it or the better machine. It has,
therefore, lost value move or less. The shorter the period
taken to reproduce its total value, the less is the danger of
moral depreciation ; and the longer the working day, the
shorter is that period. When machinery is first introduced
into an industry, new methods of reproducing it more cheaply
follow blow upon blow,2 and so do improvements, that not only
affect individual parts and details of the machine, but its en
tire build. It is, therefore, in the early days of the life of
machinery that this special incentive to the prolongation of the
working day makes itself felt most acutely.3

Given the length of the working day, all other circumstances
remaining the same, the exploitation of double the number of
workmen demands, not only a doubling of that part of constant
capital which is invested in machinery and buildings, but also
of that part which is laid out in raw material and auxiliary
substances. The lengthening of the working day, on the other
hand, allows of production on an extended scale without any
alteration in the amount of capital laid out on machinery and

1 The "Manchester Spinner" (Times, 26th Nov. 1862) before referred to says In
relation to this subject: "It (namely, the "allowance for deterioration of machin
ery") is also intended to cover the loss which is constantly arising from the super
seding of machines before they are worn out, by others of a new and better con
struction."

• "It has been estimated, roughly, that the first individual of a newly-invented
machine will cost about five times as much as the construction of the second." (Bab-
bage, 1. c., p. 211.)

8 "The improvements which took place not long ago in frames for making patent
net was so great that a machine in good repair which had cost £1,200, sold a few
years after for £60 . . . improvements succeeded each other so rapidly, that
machines which had never been finished were abandoned in the hands of their
makers, because new improvements had superseded their utility." (Babbage, 1. c.,
p. 233.) In these stormy, go-ahead times, therefore, the tulle manufacturers soon
extended the working day, by means of double sets of bands, from the original •
hours to 24.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 443

buildings.1 Not only is there, therefore, an increase of sur
plus-value, but the outlay necessary to obtain it diminishes.
It is true that this takes place, more or less, with every length
ening of the working day ; but in the case under consideration,
the change is more marked, because the capital converted into
the instruments of labour preponderates to a greater degree.2
The development of the factory system fixes a constantly in
creasing portion of the capital in a form, in which, on the one
hand, its value is capable of continual self-expansion, and in
which, on the other hand, it loses both use-value and exchange-
value whenever it loses contact with living labour. "When a ,
labourer," said Mr. Ashworth, a cotton magnate, to Professor
Kassau W. Senior, "lays down his spade, he renders useless,
for that period, a capital worth eighteen pence. When one of
our people leaves the mill, he renders useless a capital that has
cost £100,000."3 Only fancy ! making "useless" for a single
moment, a capital that has cost £100,000 ! It is, in truth,
monstrous, that a single one of our people should ever leave
the factory! The increased use of our machinery, as Senior
after the instruction he received from Ashworth clearly per
ceives, makes a constantly increasing lengthening of the work
ing day "desirable."4

Machinery produces relative surplus-value; not only by
directly depreciating the value of labour-power, and by in-

1 "It is self-evident, that, amid the ebbings and flowings of the markets and the
alternate expansions and contractions of demand, occasions will constantly recur, in
which the manufacturer may employ additional floating capital without employing
additional fixed capital ... if additional quantities of raw material can be
worked up without incurring an additional expense for buildings and machinery."
(R. Torrens: "On Wages and Combinations. London, 1834," p. 63.)

'This circumstance is mentioned only for the sake of completeness, for I shall
not consider the rate of profit, i.e., the ratio of the surplus-value to the total capital
advanced, until I come to the third book.

• Senior, "Letters on the Factory Act. London, 1837," p. 18, 14.

* "The great proportion of fixed to circulating capital . . . makes long hours of
work desirable." With the increased use of machinery, &c., "the motives to long
hours of work will become greater, as the only means by which a large proportion of
fixed capital can be made profitable." (1. c., pp. 11-13.) "There are certain ex
penses upon a mill which go on in the same proportion whether the mill be running
short or full time, as, for instance, rent, rates, and taxes, insurance against fire,
wages of several permanent servants, deterioration of machinery, with various other
charges upon a manufacturing establishment, the proportion of which to profits in
creases as the production decreases. ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact for 31st Oct., 1862,"
p. 1».)

Capitalist Production.

directly cheapening the same through cheapening the com
modities that enter into its reproduction, but also, when it is
first introduced sporadically into an industry, by converting
the labour employed by the owner of that machinery, into
labour of a higher degree and greater efficacy, by raising the
social value of the article produced above its individual value,
and thus enabling the capitalist to replace the value of a day's
labour-power by a smaller portion of the value of the day's
product. During this transition period, when the use of ma
chinery is a sort of monopoly, the profits are therefore excep
tional, and the capitalist endeavours to exploit thoroughly uihe
sunny time of this his first love," by prolonging the working
day as much as possible. The magnitude of the profit whets
his appetite for more profit.

As the use of machinery becomes more general in a parti
cular industry, the social value of the product sinks down to
its individual value, and the law that surplus-value^ does not
arise from the labour-power that has been replaced by the
machinery, but from the labour-power actually employed in
working with the machinery, asserts itself. Surplus-value
arises from the variable capital alone,, and we saw that the
amount of surplus-value depends on two factors, viz., the rate
of surplus-value and the number of the workmen simul
taneously employed. Given the length of the working day,
the rate of surplus-value is determined by the relative dura
tion of the necessary labour and of the surplus-labour in
a day. The number of the labourers simultaneously em
ployed depends, on its side, on the ratio of the variable to the
constant capital. Xow, however much the use of machinery
may increase the surplus-labour at the expense of the necessary
labour by heightening the productiveness of labour, it is clear
j that it attains this result, only by diminishing the number of
: workmen employed by a given amount of capital. It^ converts
what was formerly variable capital, invested in labour-power,
into machinery, which, being constant capital, does not pro
duce surplus-value. It is impossible, for instance, to squeeze
as much surplus-value out of 2 as out of 24 labourers. If each
of these 24 men gives only one hour of surplus-labour in 12, the

Machinery and Modern Industry. 445

24 men give together 24 hours of surplus-labour, while 24
hours is the total labour of the two men. Hence, the applica
tion of machinery to the production of surplus-value implies
a contradiction which is immanent in it, since, of the two
factors of the surplus-value created by a given amount of
capital, one, the rate of surplus-value cannot be increased, ex
cept by diminishing the other, the number of workmen. This
contradiction comes to light, as soon as by the general employ
ment of machinery in a given industry, the value of the
machine-produced commodity regulates the value of all com
modities of the same sort ; and it is this contradiction, that in
its turn, drives the capitalist, without his being conscious of
the fact,1 to excessive lengthening of the working day, in order
that he may compensate the decrease in the relative number
of labourers exploited, by an increase not only of the relative,
but of the absolute surplus-labour.

If, then, the capitalistic employment of machinery, on the
one hand, supplies new and powerful motives to an excessive
lengthening of the working day, and radically changes, as well
the methods of labour, as also the character of the social work
ing organism, in such a manner as to break down all opposition
to this tendency, on the other hand it produces, partly by
opening out to the capitalist new strata of the working class,
previously inaccessible to him, partly by setting free the
labourers it supplants, a surplus working population,2 which is
compelled to submit to the dictation of capital. Hence that
remarkable phenomenon in the history of Modern Industry,
that machinery sweeps away every moral and natural restric
tion on the length of the working day. Hence, too, the
economical paradox, that the most powerful instrument for
shortening labour-time, becomes the most unfailing means for
placing every moment of the labourer's time and that of his
family, at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of
expanding the value of his capital. "If," dreamed Aristotle,

1 Why it is, that the capitalist, and also the political economists who are embued
with his views, are unconscious of this immanent contradiction, will appear from the
first part of the third volume.

3 It is one of the greatest merits of Ricardo to have seen in machinery not only tn«
means of producing commodities, but of creating a "redundant population."

446 Capitalist Production.

the greatest thinker of antiquity, "if every tool, when sum
moned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits
it, just as the creations of Daedalus moved of themselves, or the
tripods of Hephajstos went of their own accord to their sacred
work, if the weavers' shuttles were to weave of themselves,
then there would be no need either of apprentices for the
master workers, or of slaves for the lords."1 And Antiparos,
a Greek poet of the time of Cicero, hailed the invention of the
water-wheel for grinding corn, an invention that is the ele
mentary form of all machinery, as the giver of freedom to
female slaves, and the bringer back of the golden age.2 Oh!
those heathens ! They understood, as the learned Bastiat, and
before him the still wiser MacCulloch have discovered, nothing
of political economy and Christianity. They did not> for
example, comprehend that machinery is the surest means of
lengthening the working day. They perhaps excused the
slavery of one on the ground that it was a means to the full
development of another. But to preach slavery of the masses,
in order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus, might
become "eminent spinners," "extensive sausage-makers," and
"influential shoe-black dealers/' to do this, they lacked the
bump of Christianity.

*F. Biese. "Die Philosophic dcs AristotelesT" Vol. 2. Berlin, 1842, p. 408.

1 1 give below the translation of this poem by Stolberg, because it brings into relief,
quite in the spirit of former quotations referring to division of labour, the antithesis
between the views of the ancients and the moderns. "Spare the hand that grinds
the corn, Oh, miller girls, and softly sleep. Let Chanticleer announce the morn in
vain! Deo has commanded the work of the girls to be done by the Nymphs, and now
they skip lightly over the wheels, so that the shaken axles revolve with their spokes
and pull round the load of the revolving stones. Let us live the life of our fathers,
and let us rest from work and enjoy the gifts that the Goddess sends us "

"Schonet der raahlenden Hand, o Mullerinnen und schlafet
Sanft! es verkunde der Hahn euch den Morgen umsonst!
Dao hat die Arbeit der Madchen den Nymphen befohlen,
Und itzt hupfen sic leicht uber die Rader dahin,
Dass die erschiitterten Achsen mit ihren Spcichen sich wilzen,
Und im Kreise die Last drehen des walzenden Steins.
Lasst uns leben das Leben der Vater, und lasst uns der Gaben
Arbeitslos uns freun, welche die Gottin uns schenkt."

(Gedichte aus dem Griechischen ubersetrt von Christian Graf zu Stolberg, Hanv
burg. 1782.)

and Modern Industry. 44?

c. Intensification of Labour.

The immoderate lengthening of the working day, produced
by machinery in the hands of capital, leads to a reaction on
the part of society, the very sources of whose life are menaced ;
and, thence, to a normal working day whose length is fixed by
law.- Thenceforth a phenomenon that we have already met
with, namely, the intensification of labour, develops into great
importance. Our analysis of absolute surplus-value had refer
ence primarily to the extension or duration of the labour, its
intensity being assumed as given. We now proceed to con-
eider the substitution of a more intensified labour for labour
of more extensive duration, and the degree of the former.

It is self-evident, that in proportion as the use of machinery
spreads, and the experience of a special class of workmen
habituated to machinery accumulates, the rapidity and inten
sity of labour increase as a natural consequence. Thus in
England, during half a century, lengthening of the working
day went hand in hand with increasing intensity of factory
labour. Nevertheless the reader will clearly see, that where
we have labour, not carried on by fits and starts, but repeated
'day after day with unvarying uniformity, a point must inevit
ably be reached, where extension of the working day and in
tensity of the labour mutually exclude one another, in such a
way that lengthening of the working day becomes compatible
only with a lower degree of intensity, and, a higher degree of
intensity, only with a shortening of the working day. So soon
as the gradually surging revolt of the working class compelled
Parliament to shorten compulsorily the hours of labour, and to
begin by imposing a normal working day on factories proper,
eo soon consequently as an. increased production of surplus
value by the prolongation of the working day was once for all
put a stop to, from that moment capital threw itself with all
its might into the production of relative surplus-value, by
hastening on the further improvement of machinery. At the
same time a change took place in the nature of relative surplus-
value. Generally speaking, the mode of producing relative
surplus- value consists in raising the productive power of the

448 Capitalist Production.

workman, so as to enable him to produce more in a given time
with the same expenditure of labour. Labour-time continues
to transmit as before the same value to the total product, but
this unchanged amount of exchange value is spread over more
use-values; hence the value of each single commodity sinks.
Otherwise, however, so soon as the compulsory shortening of
the hours of labour takes place. The immense impetus it gives;
to the development of productive power, and to economy in
the means of production, imposes on the workman increased
expenditure of labour in a given time, heightened tension of
labour-power, and closer filling up of the pores of the working
day, or condensation of labour to a degree that is attainable
only within the limits of the shortened working day. This
condensation of a greater mass of labour into a given period
thenceforward counts for what it really is, a greater quantity
of labour. In addition to a measure of its extension, i.e., dura
tion, labour now acquires a measure of its intensity or of the
degree of its condensation or density.1 The denser hour of
the ten hours' working-day contains more labour, i.e., ex
pended labour-power, than the more porous hour of the twelve
hours' working-day. The product therefore of one of the
former hours has as much or more value than has the product
of 1J of the latter hours. Apart from the increased yield of
relative surplus-value through the heightened productiveness of
labour, the same mass of value is now produced for the cap
italist, say, by 3J hours of surplus labour, and 6J hours of
necessary labour, as was previously produced by four hours of
surplus labour and eight hours of necessary labour

We now come to the question : How is the labour intensified ?

The first effect of shortening the working day results^ from
the self-evident law} that the efficiency of labour-power is in
an inverse ratio to the duration of its expenditure. Hence,
within certain limits what is lost by shortening the duration is
gained by the increasing tension of labour-power. That the

1 There are, of course, always differences in the intensities of the labour in various
industries. But these differences are, as Adam Smith has shown, compensated to a
partial extent by minor circumstances, peculiar to each sort of labour. Labour-time,
A a. measure of v*lu&, ia not, however, affected in this case, except in so far as the
duration of labour, and the degree of its intensity, art two antithetical and mutually
exchirive expressions for one and the same quantity of labour.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 449

workman moreover really does expend more tabouj^povver, JS
ensured by the mode in ' which lEe capitalist pays him.1 In
those industries, such as potteries, where machinery plays little
or no part^ the introduction of the Factory Acts has strikingly
shown that the mere shortening of the working-day increases
to a wonderful degree the regularity, uniformity, order, con
tinuity, and energy of the labour.2 It seemed, however, doubt
ful whether this effect was produced in the factory proper,
where the dependence of the workman on the continuous and
uniform motion of the machinery had already created the
strictest discipline. Hence, when in 1844 the reduction of the
working-day to less than twelve hours was being debated, the
masters almost unanimously declared "that their overlookers
in the different rooms took good care that the hands lost no
time/' that the "extent of vigilance and attention on the part
of the workmen was hardly capable of being increased," and
therefore, that the speed of the machinery and other conditions
remaining unaltered, "to expect in a well-managed factory any
important result from increased atteiitioiToT the workmen was
an absurdity^3 This assertion was_ contradicted by experi-
meni&r^M?. Robert Gardner reduced the hours of labour in
hisTwo large factories at Preston, on and after the 20th April,
1844, from twelve to eleven hours a day. The result of about
a year's working was that "the same amount of product for the
same cost was received, and the workpeople as a whole earned
in eleven hours as much wages a's they did before in twelve."4
I pass over the experiments made in the spinning and carding
rooms, because they were accompanied by an increase of 2% in
the speed of the machines. But in the weaving department,
where, moreover, many sorts of figured fancy articles were
woven, there was not the slightest alteration in the conditions
of the work. The result was : "From 6th January to 20th
April, 1844, with a twelve hours' day, average weekly wages of
each hand 10s. l^d., from 20th April to 29th June, 1844, with

1 Especially by piece-work, a form we shall investigate in Part VI. of this book,

* See "Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 31st October, 1865."

* Rep. of Insp, of Fact, for 1844 and the quarter ending 30th April 1845, pp.
20-21.

* 1. c., p. 19. Since the wages for piece-work were unaltered, the weekly wages
depended on the quantity produced.

• C

450 Capitalist Production.

day of eleven hours, average weekly wages 10s. 3£d.m Here
we have more produced in eleven hours than previously in
twelve, and entirely in consequence of more steady application
and economy of time by the workpeople. While they got the
same wages and gained one hour of spare time, the capitalist
got the same amount produced and saved the cost of coal, gas,
and other such items, for one hour. Similar experiments^ and
with the like success, were carried out in the mills of Messrs.
Horrocks and Jacson.2

The shortening of the hours of labour creates, to begin with,
the subjective conditions for the condensation of labour, bj
enabling the workman to exert more strength in a given time.
So soon as that shortening becomes compulsory, machinery be
comes in the hands of capital the objective means, systemati
cally employed for squeezing out more labour in a given time.
This is effected in two ways: by increasing the speed of tho
machinery, and by giving the workman more machinery to
tend. Improved construction of the machinery is necessary,
partly because without it greater pressure cannot be put on
the workman, and partly because the shortened hours of labou:*
force the capitalist to exercise the strictest watch "qyerjffi® cost
of production. The improvements in the steam-engine havo
increased the piston speed, and at the same time have made h
possible, by m^-ans of a greater economy of power, to drivo
with the same or even a smaller consumption of coal moro
machinery with the same engine. The improvements in tho
transmitting mechanism have lessened friction, and, what so
strikingly distinguishes modern from the older machinery,
have reduced the diameter and weight of the shafting to a
constantly decreasing minimum. Finally, the improvements
in the operative machines have, while reducing their size, in
creased their speed and efficiency, as in the modern power
loom ; or, while increasing the size of their frame-work, have
also increased the extent and number of their working parts

ll. c., p. 22.

1 The moral element played an important part in the above experiments. Th<
workpeople told the factory inspector: "We work with more spirit, we have th<
reward ever before us of getting away sooner at night, and one active and cheerfu
spirit pervades the whole mill, from the youngest piecer to the oldest hand, and w<
can greatly help each other" (1. c.)

Machinery and Modern Industry. 451

as in spinning mules, or have added to the speed of these
working parts by imperceptible alterations of detail, such as
those which ten years ago increased the speed of the spindles in
self-acting mules by one-fifth.

The reduction of the working day to 12 hours dates in
England from 1832. In 1836 a manufacturer stated : "The
labour now undergone in the factories is much greater than it
used to be ... compared with thirty or forty years ago . . .
owing to the greater attention and activity required by the
greatly increased speed which is given to the machinery."1 In
the year 1844, Lord Ashley, now Lord Shaftesbury, made in
the House of Commons the following statements, supported by
documentary evidence:

"The labour performed by those engaged in the processes of
manufacture, is three times as great as in the beginning of such
operations. Machinery has executed, no doubt, the work that
would demand the sinews of millions of men ; but it has also
prodigiously multiplied the labour of those who are governed
by its fearful movements ... In 1815, the labour of following
a pair of mules spinning cotton of No. 40 — reckoning 12 hours
to the working-day — involved a necessity of walking 8 miles.
In 1832, the distance travelled in following a pair of mules,
spinning cotton yarn of the same number, was 20 miles, and
frequently more. In 1835" (query — 1815 or 1825?) "the
spinner put up daily, on each of these mules, 820 stretches,
making a total of 1,640 stretches in the course of the day. In
1832, the spinner put up on each mule 2,200 stretches, making
a total of 4,400. In 1844, 2,400 stretches, making a total of
4,800 ; and in some cases the amount of labour required is
even still greater ... I have another document sent to me in
1842, stating that the labour is progressively increasing-
increasing not only because the distance to be travelled is
greater, but because the quantity of goods produced is multi
plied, while the hands are fewer in proportion than before;
and, moreover, because an inferior species of cotton is now
often spun, which it is more difficult to work ... In the
carding-room there has also been a great increase of labour.

»John Fielden, I. c., p. 82.

452 Capitalist Production.

Quo person there does the work formerly divided between two.
In the weaving-room, where a vast number of persons are em
ployed, and principally females . . . the labour has increased
within the last few years fully 10 per cent, owing to the in
creased speed of the machinery in spinning. In 1838, the
number of hanks spun per week was 18,000, in 1843 it
amounted to 21,000. In 1819 the number of picks in power-
loom-weaving per minute was 60 — in 1842 it was 140, show
ing a vast increase of labour."1

In the face of this remarkable intensity of labour which had
already been reached in 1844 under the Twelve Hours' Act,
there appeared to be a justification for the assertion made at
that time by the English manufacturers, that any further pro
gress in that direction was impossible, and therefore that every
further reduction of the hours of labour meant a lessened pro
duction. The apparent correctness of their reasons will bo
best shown by the following contemporary statement by Leon
ard Horner, the factory inspector, their ever watchful censor.

"Now, as the quantity produced must, in the main, be regu
lated by the speed of the machinery, it must be the interest 03"
the mill owner to drive it at the utmost rate of speed con
sistent with these following conditions, viz., the preservatior
of the machinery from too rapid deterioration ; the preservatior
of the quality of the article manufactured ; and the capability
of the workman to follow the motion without a greater exer
tion than he can sustain for a constancy. One of the mosl
important problems, therefore, which the owner of a factory
has to solve is to find out the maximum speed at which he can
run, with a due regard to the above conditions. It frequently
happens that he finds he has gone too fast, that breakages and
bad work more than counterbalance the increased speed, and
that he is obliged to slacken his pace. I therefore concluded,
that as an active and intelligent millowner would find out the
safe maximum, it would not be possible to produce as much in
eleven hours as in twelve. I further assumed that the opera
tive paid by piece work, would exert himself to the utmost

* Lord Ashley, 1. c., p. ft-0, passim.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 453

consistent with the power of continuing at the same rate."1
Horner, therefore, came to the conclusion that a reduction
of the working hours below twelve would necessarily diminish
production.2 He himself, ten years later, cites his opinion of
1845 in proof of how much he under-estimated in that year
the elasticity of machinery, and of man's labour-power, both of
which are simultaneously stretched to an extreme by the com
pulsory shortening of the working day.

We now come to the period that follows the introduction of
the Ten Hours' Act in 1847 into the English cotton, woollen,
silk, and flax mills.

"The speed of the spindles has increased upon throstles 500,
and upon mules 1000 revolutions a minute, i.e., the speed of
the throstle spindle, which in 1839 was 4500 times a minute,
is now (1862) 5000; and of the mule spindle, that was 5000,
is now 6000 times a minute, amounting in the former case to
one-tenth, and in the second case to one-fifth addition in
crease."3 James Xasmyth, the eminent civil engineer of Pat-
ricroftj near Manchester, explained in a letter to Leonard
Horner, written in 1852, the nature of the improvements in the
steam-engine that had been made between the years 1848 and
1852. After remarking that the horse-power of steam-engines,
being always estimated in the official returns according to the
power of similar engines in 1828, * is only nominal, and can
serve only as an index of their real power, he goes on to say :
"I am confident that from the same weight of steam-engine
machinery, we are now obtaining at least 50 per cent, more
duty or work performed on the average, and that in many
cases the identical steam-engines which in the days of the
restricted speed of 220 feet per minute, yielded 50 horse-

1 Rep. of Ir»sp. of Fact, for Quarter ending 30th September, 1844, and from 1st
October, 1844, to 30th April, 1845. p. 20.

*1. c., p. 22.

8 "Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 31st October, 1862," p. 62.

*This was altered in the "Parliamentary Return" of 1862. In it the actual horse
power of the modern steam-engines and water-wheels appears in place of the nominal.
The doubling spindles, too, are no longer included in the spinning spindles (as was
the case in the "Returns" of 1839, 1850, and 1856); further, in the case of woollen
mills, the number of "gigs" is added, a distinction made between jute and hemp
mills on the one band and Sax mills on the other, and finally stocking-weaving is for
the first *ime inserted in the report.

454 Capitalist Production.

power, are now yielding upwards of 100." .... "The modern
steam-engine of 100 horse-power is capable of being driven at
a much greater force than formerly, arising from improve
ments in its construction, the capacity and construction of the
boilers, £c." . . . "Although the same number of hands are
employed in proportion to the horse-power as at former periods,
there are fewer hands employed in proportion to the ma
chinery."1 "In the year 1850, the factories of the United King
dom employed 134,217 nominal horse-power to give motion to
25,638,716 spindles and 301,445 looms. The number of spin
dles and looms in 1856 was respectively 33,503,580 of the
former, and 369,205 of the latter, which, reckoning the force
of the nominal horse-power required to be the same as in 1850.
would require a force equal to 175,000 horses, but the actual
power given in the return for 1856 is 161,435, less by above
10,000 horses than, calculating upon the basis of the return of
1850, the factories ought to have required in 1856."2 "The-
facts thus brought out by the Return (of 1856) appear to be
that the factory system is increasing rapidly; that althougl.
the same number of hands are employed in proportion to the
horse-power as at former periods, there are fewer hands em
ployed in proportion to the machinery ; that the steam-engine
is enabled to drive an increased weight of machinery by econ
omy of force and other methods, and that an increased quan
tity of work can be turned off by improvements in machinery,
and in methods of manufacture, by increase of speed of the
machinery, and by a variety of other causes."3

"The great improvements made in machines of every kind
have raised their productive power very much. Without anj
doubt, the shortening of the hours of labour .... gave the
impulse to these improvements. The latter, combined with
the more intense strain on the workman, have had the effect,
that at least as much is produced in the shortened (by twc
hours or one-sixth) working-day as was previously produced
during the longer one."4

l"Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 31st October, 1856," pp. 13-14, 20 and 1852, p. ft.
•1. c., p. 14-15. •!. c., p. 20.

* Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1858, p. 9-10. Compare Reports, &c., for lOtk
April, 1800, p. SO, seqq.

Machinery and Modern Industry, 455

One fact is sufficient to show how greatly the wealth of the
manufacturers increased along with the more intense exploita
tion of labour-power. From 1838 to 1850, the average pro
portional increase in English cotton and other factories was
32%, while from 1850 to 1856 it amounted to 86%.

But however great the progress of English industry had
heen during the 8 years from 1848 to 1856 under the influence
of a working-day of 10 hours, it was far surpassed during the
next period of 6 years from 1856 to 1862. In silk factories,
for instance, there were in 1856, spindles 1,093,799; in 1862,
1,388,544; in 1856, looms 9,260; in 1862, 10,709. But the
number of operatives was, in 1856, 56,131; in 1862, 52,429.
The increase in the spindles was therefore 26.9% and in the
looms 15.6%, while the number of the operatives decrease'd
7%. In the year 1850 there were employed in worsted mills
875,830 spindles; in 1856, 1,324,549 (increase 51.2%), and
in 1862, 1,289,172 (decrease 2.7%). But if we deduct the
doubling spindles that figure in the numbers for 1856, but not
in those for 1862, it will be found that after 1856 the number
of spindles remained nearly stationary. On the other hand,
after 1850, the speed of the spindles and looms was in many
cases doubled. The number of power-looms in worsted mills
was in 1850, 32,617; in 1856, 38,956; in 1862, 43,048. The
number of the operatives was, in 1850, 79,737; in 1856, 87,-
794; in 1862, 86,063; included in these, however, the children
under 14 years of age were, in 1850, 9,956; in 1856, 11,$28_;
in 1862, 13,178. In spite, therefore, of the greatly increased
number of looms in 1862, compared with 1856, the total num
ber of the workpeople employed decreased, and that of the
children exploited increased.1

On the 27th of April, 1863, Mr. Ferrand said in the House
of Commons: ."I have been informed by delegates from 16
districts of Lancashire and Cheshire, in whose behalf I speak,
that the work in the factories is, in consequence of the improve
ments in machinery, constantly on the increase. Instead of as
formerly one person with two helps tenting two looms, one
person now tents three looms without helps, and it is no un-

1 "Report of Inap. of Fact for 31ft Oct., 1862," pp. 100 and 130.

456 Capitalist Production.

common thing for one person to tent four. Twelve hours*
work, as is evident from the facts adduced, is now compressed
into less than 10 hours. It is therefore self-evident, to what
an enormous extent the toil of the factory operative has in
creased during the last 10 years."1

Although, therefore, the Factory Inspectors unceasingly and
with justice, commend the results of the Acts of 1844 and
1850, yet they admit that the shortening of the hours of labour
has already called forth such an intensification of the labour as
is injurious to the health of the workman and to his capacity
for work. "In most of the cotton, worsted, and silk mills, an
exhausting state of excitement necessary to enable the workers
satisfactorily to mind the machinery, the motion of which has
been greatly accelerated within the last few years, seems to nn
not unlikely to be one of the causes of that excess of mortality
from lung disease, which Dr. Greenhow has pointed out in hh
recent report on this subject."2 There cannot be the slightest
doubt that the tendency that urges capital as soon as a pro-
jlongation of the hours of labour is once for all forbidden, to
compensate itself, by a systematic heightening of the intensity
j of labour, and to convert every improvement in machinery into
' a more perfect means of exhausting the workman, must sooi
lead to a state of things in which a reduction of the hours of
labour will again be inevitable.3 On the other hand, the rapic
advance of English industry between 1848 and the present
time, under the influence of a day of 10 hours, surpasses the
advance made between 1833 and 1847, when the day was 12
hours long, by far more than the latter surpasses the advance

1 On 2 modern power-looms a weaver now makes in a week of 60 hours 26 pieces
of certain quality, length, and breadth; while on the old power-looms he could make
no more than 4 such pieces. The cost of weaving a piece of such cloth had already
soon after 1850 fallen from 2s. 9d. to 5J^d.

"Thirty years ago (1841) one spinner with three piecers was not required to attend
to more than one pair of mules with 300-324 spindles. At the present time (1871)
he has to mind with the help of 5 piecers 2200 spindles, and produces not less than
seven times as much yarn as in 1841." (Alex. Redgrave, Factory Inspector — in the
journal of Arts, 5th January, 1872.)

*Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 31st Oct. 1861, pp. 25, 26.

'The agitation for a working day of 8 hours has now (1867) begun in Lancashire
among the factory operatives.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 457

made during the half century after the first introduction of
the factory system, when the working day was without limits.1

SECTION IV.-

'HE FACTORY.

At the commencement of this chapter we considered that
which we may call the body of the factory, i. e., machinery
organised into a system. We there jaw how machinery, by

1 The following few figures indicate the increase in the "factories" of the United
Kingdom since 1848:

Quantity Expor
ted, 1848.

Quantity Expor
ted, 1851.

Quantity Expor
ted, 1860.

Quantity Expor
ted, 1865.

COTTON.

Cotton yarn ....
Sewing thread.
Cotton cloth . . .

FLAX ft HEMP.

Yarn

Ibs. 135,831,162
Ibs.
ydsl.091,373,930

Ibs. 11,722,182

Ibs. 143,966,106
Ibs. 4,392,176
ydsl, 543,161, 789

Ibs. 18,841,326

Ibs. 197.343,655
Ibs. 6,297,554
yds2, 776,218,427

Ibs. 31,210,612

Ibs. 103,751,455
Ibs. 4,648,611
yds2,015,237,851

Ibs. 36,777,334

Cloth

yds. 88,901,519

yds. 129,106,753

yds. 143,996,773

yds. 247,012,529

SILK.

Ibs 466 825

Ibs 462 513

Ibs 897 402

yds 812 589

Cloth

vrU

yds 1 181 455

yds 1 307 293

yds 2 869 837

WOOL.

Woollen and "\
Worsted yarns J
Cloth

Ibs.
j_

Ibs. 14,670.680
yds 241 1 20 973

Ibs. 27,533,968
yds 190 381 537

Ibs. 31,669,267
yds 278 837 4^8

yds.

Value Expor
ted, 1848.

Value Expor
ted, 1851.

Value Expor
ted, 1860.

Value Expor
ted, 1865.

COTTON.

Yarn

£
5 927 831

£
6 634 026

£
9 870 875

£
10 351 04

Cloth

16 753 369

23 454 810

42 141 505

46 903,796

FLAX ft HEMP.

Yarn

493 449

951 426

1 801 °7°

2 505,497

Cloth

2 802 789

4 107 896

4 804 803

9 155,318

SILK.

Yarn

195 380

918 342

768,067

Cloth

77 789

1 130 398

1 587 303

1,409,221

WO'iL.

Yarn
Cloth

776,975
5 733 828

1,484,544
8 377 183

8,843,450
12 156 998

5,424,017
20,102,259

458 Capitalist Production.

annexing the labour of women and children, augments the
number of human beings who form the material for capitalistic
exploitation, how it confiscates the whole of the workman's
disposable time, by immoderate extension of the hours of
labour, and how finally its progress, which allows of enormous
increase of production in shorter and shorter periods, serves as
a means of systematically getting more work done in a shorter
time, or in exploiting labour-power more intensely. We now
turn to the factory as a whole, and that in its most perfect
form.

Dr. Ure, the Pindar of the automatic factory, describes it, on
the one hand as "Combined co-operation of many orders o::
workpeople, adult and young, in tending with assiduous skill, a
system of productive machines, continuously impelled by £,
central power" (the prime mover) ; on the other hand, as "s
vast automaton, composed of various mechanical and intel
lectual organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for the produc
tion of a common object, all of them being subordinate to a
self-regulated moving force." These two descriptions are far
from being identical. In one, the collective labourer, or social
body of labour, appears as the dominant subject and the me
chanical automaton as the object; in the other, the automaton
itself is the subject, and the workmen are merely conscious
organs, co-ordinate with the unconscious organs of the automa
ton, and together with them, subordinated to the central
moving-power. The first description is applicable to every
possible employment of machinery on a large scale, the second
is characteristic of its use by capital, and therefore of the
modern factory system. Ure prefers therefore, to describe the
central machine, from which the motion comes, not only as an

See the Bluebooks "Statistical Abstract of the United Kingdom, Nos. 8 and 13."
Lend., 1861 and 1866. In Lancashire the number of mills increased only 4 per cent,
between 1839 and 1850; 19 per cent, between 1850 and 1856; and 33 per cent be
tween 1856 and 1862; while the persons employed in them during each of the above
periods of 11 yean increased absolutely, but diminished relatively. (See "Rep. of
Insp. of Fact., for 31st Oct., 1862," p. 63.) The cotton trade preponderates In
Lancashire. We may form an idea of the stupendous nature of the cotton trade in
that district, when we consider that, of the gross number of textile factories in the
United Kingdom, it absorbs 45.2 per cent., of the spindles 83.3 per cent., of the
power-looms 81.4 per cent., of the mechanical horse-power 72.6 per cent., and of the
total number of persons employed 58.2 per cent. (1. c., p. 62-63.)

Machinery and Modern Industry. 459

automaton, but as an autocrat "In these spacious halls the
benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads
of willing menials."1

Along with the tool, the skill of the workman in handling it
passes over to the machine. The capabilities of the tool are
emancipated from the restraints that are inseparable from
human labour-power. Thereby the technical foundation on
which is based the division of labour in Manufacture, is swept
away. Hence, in the place of the hierarchy of specialised
workmen that characterises manufacture, there steps, in the
automatic factory, a tendency to equalise and reduce to one
and the same level every kind of work that has to be done
by the minders of the machines;2 in the place of the artifi
cially produced differentiations of the detail workmen, step
the natural differences of age and sex.

So far as division of labour re-appears in the factory, it is
primarily a distribution of the workmen among the specialised
machines; and of masses of workmen, not however organised
into groups, among the various departments of the factory,
in each of which they work at a number of similar machines
placed together; their co-operation, therefore, is only simple.
The organised group, peculiar to manufacture, is replaced by
the connexion between the head workman and his few assist
ants. The essential division is, into workmen who are actually
employed on the machines (among whom are included a few
who look after the engine), and into mere attendants (almost
exclusively children) of these workmen. Among the attend
ants are reckoned more or less all "Feeders" who supply the
machines with the material to be worked. In addition to
these two principal classes, there is a numerically unimportant
class of persons, whose occupation it is to look after the whole
of the machinery and repair it from time to time; such as
engineers, mechanics, joiners, &c. This is a superior class of
workmen, some of them scientifically educated, others brought
up to a trade; it is distinct from the factory operative class,

«Ure, 1. c., p. 18.

•Ure, 1. c., p. 81. See Karl Marx, Poverty of Philosophy, p. uj.

460 Capitalist Production.

and merely aggregated to it,1 This division of labour is purely
technical.

To work at a machine, the workman should be taught from
childhood, in order that he may learn to adapt his own move
ments to the uniform and unceasing motion of an automaton.
When the machinery, as a whole, forms a system of manifold
machines, working simultaneously and in concert, the co-opera
tion based upon it, requires the distribution of various groups
of workmen among the different kinds of machines. But the
employment of machinery does away with the necessity of
crystallizing this distribution after the manner of- Manufac
ture, by the constant annexation of a particular man to a par
ticular function.2 Since the motion of the whole system does
not proceed from the workman, but from the machinery, a
change of persons can take place at any time without an inter
ruption of the work. The most striking proof of this is
afforded by the relays system, put into operation by the manu
facturers during their revolt from 1848-1850. Lastly, the
quickness with which machine work is learnt by young people,
does away with the necessity of bringing up for exclusive em
ployment by machinery, a special class of operatives.3 With

1 It looks very like intentional misleading by statistics (which misleading it would
be possible to prove in detail in other cases too), when the English factory legislation
excludes from its operation the class of labourers last mentioned in the text, while
the parliamentary returns expressly include in the category of factory operatives, not
only engineers, mechanics, &c., but also managers, salesmen, messengers, warehouse
men, packers, &c., in short everybody, except the owner of the factory himself.

8 Ure grants this. He says, "in case of need," the workmen can be moved at the
will of the manager from one machine to another, and he triumphantly exclaims:
"Such a change is in flat contradiction with the old routine, that divides the labour,
and to one workman assigns the task of fashioning the head of a needle, to another
the sharpening of the point." He had much better have asked himself, why this
"old routine" is departed from in the automatic factory, only "in case of need."

1 When distress is very great, as, for instance, during the American civil war, the
factory operative is now and then set by the Bourgeois to do the roughest of work,
such as road-making, &c. The English "ateliers nationaux" of 1862 and the follow
ing years, established for the benefit of the destitute cotton operatives, differ from
the French of 1848 in this, that in the latter the workmen had to do unproductive
work at the expense of the state, in the former they had to do productive municipal
work to the advantage of the bourgeois, and that, too, cheaper than the regular
workmen, with whom they were thus thrown into competition. "The physical ap
pearance of the cotton operatives is unquestionably improved. This I attribute
as to the men, to outdoor labour on public works." ("Rep. of Insp. of
Fact.," 81st Oct., 1865, p. 59.) The writer here alludes to the Preston factory
operatives, who were employed on Preston Moor.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 461

regard to the work of the mere attendants, it can, to some
extent, be replaced in the mill by machines,1 and owing to its
extreme simplicity, it allows of a rapid and constant change
of the individuals burdened with this drudgery.

Although then, technically speaking, the old system of
division of labour Ts~thrown "overboard by machinery, it hangs
on in the factory, as a traditional habit handed down from
Manufacture, and is afterwards systematically re-moulded and
established in a more hideous form by capital, as a means of
exploiting labour-power. The life-long speciality of handling
one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long speciality of
serving one and the same machine. Machinery is put to a
wrong use, with the object of transforming the workman, from
his very childhood, into a part of a detail-machine.2 In this
way, not only are the expenses of his re-production considerably
lessened, but at the same time his helpless dependence upon
the factory as a whole, and therefore upon the capitalist, is
rendered complete. Here as everywhere else, we must dis
tinguish between the increased productiveness due to the
development of the social process of production, and that due
to the capitalist exploitation of that process. In handicrafts
and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the
factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements
of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the
movements of the machine that he must follow. In manu
facture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the ^j
factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the work- (

*An example: The various mechanical apparatus introduced since the Act of 1844
into woollen mills, for replacing the labour of children. So soon as it shall happen
that the children of the manufacturers themselves have to go through a course of
schooling as helpers in the mill, this almost unexplored territory of mechanics will
soon make remarkable progress. "Of machinery, perhaps self-acting mules are as
dangerous as any other kind. Most of the accidents from them happen to little
children, from their creeping under the mules to sweep the floor whilst the mules are
in motion. Several 'minders' have been fined for this offence, but without much
general benefit. If machine makers would only invent a self -sweeper, by whose use
the necessity for these little children to creep under the machinery might be pre
vented, it would be a happy addition to our protective measures." ("Reports of
Insp. of Fact." for 31st Oct., 1866, p. 63.)

* So much then for Proudhon's wonderful idea: he "construes" .machinery not
as a synthesis of instruments of labour, but as a synthesis of detail operations for
the benefit of the labourer himself

462 Capitalist Production.

man, who becomes its mere living appendage. "The miserable
routine of endless drudgery .and toil in which the same
mechanical process is gone through over and over again, is like
the labour of Sisyphus. The burden of labour, like the rock,
keeps ever falling back on the worn-out labourer."1 At the
same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to
the uttermost, it does away with the many-sided play of the
muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily
and intellectual activity.2 The lightening of the labour, ever,
becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not j[reej:h3
labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest.
Every kind of capitalist production in so far" alTif ls~not only
a labour-process, but also a process of creating surplus-value,
has this in common, that it is not the workman that employs
the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour that
employ the workman. But it is only in the factory system
that this inversion for the first time acquires technical and
palpable reality. By means of its conversion into an automa
ton, the instrument of labour confronts the labourer, during
the labour-process, in the shape of capital, of dead labour, tha
dominates, and pumps dry, living labour-power. The separa
tion of the intellectual powers of production from the manual
labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might o:'
capital over labour, is, as we have already shown, finally com
pleted by modern industry erected on the foundation oj'
machinery. The special skill of each individual insignificant
factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before
the science, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of
labour that are embodied in the factory mechanism and
together with that mechanism, constitute the power of the
"master." This "master," therefore, in whose brain the
machinery and his monopoly of it are inseparably united.

1 F. Engels, 1. c. p. 217. Even an ordinary and optimist freetrader, like Mr.
Molinari, goes so far as to say "Un homme s'use plus vite en survcillant, quinzt
heures par jour, Involution uniforme d'un mecanisme, qu'en excrgant, dans le menu
ecpace de temps, sa force physique, Ce travail de surveillance qui servirait peut
etre d'utile gymnastique i 1'intelligence, s'il n'etait pas trop prolonged, detruit i lj
longue, par son execs, et 1'intelligence, et le corps meme." (G. de Molinari
£tudes Economiques." Paris 1846.)

• F. Engels, 1. c. p. *16.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 463

whenever he falls out with his "hands," contemptuously tells
them: "The factory operatives should keep in wholesome
remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species of
skilled labour; and that there is none which is more easily
acquired, or of its quality more amply remunerated, or which
by a short training of the least expert can be more quickly, as
well as abundantly, acquired. . . . The master's machin
ery really plays a far more important part in the business of
production than the labour and the skill of the operative, which
six months' education can teach, and a common labourer can
learn."1 The technical subordination of the workman to the
uniform motion of the instruments of labour, and the peculiar
composition of the body of workpeople, consisting as it does of
individuals of both sexes and of all ages, give rise to a barrack
discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the
factory, and which fully developes the before mentioned labour
of overlooking, thereby dividing the workpeople into operatives
and overlookers, into private soldiers and sergeants of an
industrial army. "The main difficulty [in the automatic
factory] . . . lay . . . above all in training human
beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to iden
tify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex
automaton. To devise and administer a successful code of
factory discipline, suited to the necessities of factory diligence,
was the Herculean enterprise, the noble achievement of Ark-
wright ! Even at the present day, when the system is perfectly
organised and its labour lightened to the utmost, it is found
nearly impossible to convert persons past the age of puberty,
into useful factory hands."2 The factory code in which capi
tal formulates, like a private legislator, and at his own good
will, his autocracy over his workpeople, unaccompanied by that
division of responsibility, in other matters so much approved

1 "The Matter Spinners' and Manufacturers' Defence Fund. Report of the Com
mittee." Manchester, 1854, p. 17. We shall see hereafter that the "master" can
sing quite another «ong, when he is threatened with the loss of his "living" autom
aton.

' Ure, 1. c. p. 15. Whoever knows the life history of Arkwright, will never dub
this barber-genius "noble." Of all the great inventors of the 18th century, he was
incontestably the greatest thicver of other people's inventions and the meancct
fellow.

464 Capitalist Production.

of by the bourgeoisie, and unaccompanied by the still more
approved representative system, this code is but the capitalistic
caricature of that social regulation of the labour-process which
becomes requisite in co-operation on a great scale, and in
the employment in common, of instruments of labour and
especially of machinery. The place of the slave driver's lash
is taken by the overlooker's book of penalties. All punish
ments naturally resolve themselves into fines and deductions
from wages, and the law-giving talent of the factory Lycurgu*
so arranges matters, that a violation of his laws is, if possible,
more profitable to him than the keeping of them.1

1 "The slavery in which the bourgeoisie has bound the proletariat, comes nowhere
more plainly into daylight than in the factory system. In it all freedom comes to an
end both at law and in fact. The workman must be in the factory at half past five.
If he come a few minutes late, he is punished; if he come 10 minutes late, he is not
allowed to enter until after breakfast, and thus loses a quarter of a day's wage. H:
must eat, drink and sleep at word of command. . . . The despotic bell calls him
from his bed, calls him from breakfast and dinner. And how does he fare in th:
mill? There the master is the absolute law-giver. He makes what regulations lv:
pleases; he alters and makes additions to his code at pleasure; and if he insert th<:
veriest nonsense, the courts say to the workman: Since you have entered into thi;
contract voluntarily, you must now carry it out. . . . These workmen are con
demned to live, from their ninth year till their death, under this mental and bodily
torture." (F. Engels 1. c. p. 217, sq.) What, "the courts say," I will illustrate by
two examples. One occurs at Sheffield at the end of 1866. In that town a workmar
had engaged himself for 2 years in a steelworks. In consequence of a quarrel wit!
his employer he left the works, and declared that under no circumstances would h«
work for that master any more. He was prosecuted for breach of contract, anc
condemned to two months' imprisonment. (If the master break the contract, he car
be proceeded against only in a civil action, and risks nothing but money damages)
After the workman has served his two months, the master invites him to return tc
the works, pursuant to the contract. Workman says; no: he has already been pun
ished for the breach. The master prosecutes again, the court condemns again, al
though one of the judges, Mr. Shee, publicly denounces this as a legal monstrosity,
by which a man can periodically, as long as he lives, be punished over and over again
for the same offence or crime. This judgment was given not by the "Great Unpaid,"
the provincial Dogberries, but by one of the highest courts of justice in London.

Note to the 4th German edition. — This has now been abolished. With the excep
tion of a few cases, for instance in public gas works, the English laborer has been
placed on an equity with the employers in cases of contract breaking, and can be
proceeded against only by the civil courts. F. E. — .

The second case occurs in Wiltshire at the end of November 1863. About 30
power-loom weavers, in the employment of one Harrup, a cloth manufacturer at
Leower's Mill, Westbury Leigh, struck work because master Harrup indulged in
the agreeable habit of making deductions from their wages for being late in the morn
ing; 6d. for 2 minutes; Is. for 3 minutes, and Is. 6d. for ten minutes. This is
at the rate of 9s. per hour, and £4 10s. Od. per diem; while the wages of the
weavers on the average of a year, never exceed 10s. to 12s. weekly. Harrup also
appointed a boy to announce the starting time by a whistle, which he often did be-
' fore six o'clock in the morning: and if the hands were not all there at the moment
the whistle ceased, the doors were closed, and those hands who were outside were

Machinery and Modern Industry. 465

We shall here merely allude to the material conditions under
which factory labour is carried on. Every organ of sense is
injured in an equal degree by artificial elevation of the tem
perature, by the dust-laden atmosphere, by the deafening noise,
not to mention danger to life and limb among the thickly
crowded machinery, which, with the regularity of the seasons,
issues its list of the killed and wounded in the industrial
battle.1 Economy of the social means of production, matured

fined: and as there was no clock on the premises, the unfortunate hands were at the
mercy of the young Harrup-inspired time-keeper. The hands on strike, mothers of
families as well as girls, offered to resume work if the time-keeper were replaced by
a clock, and a more reasonable scale of fines were introduced. Harrup summoned
19 women and girls before the magistrates for breach of contract. To the utter in
dignation of all present, they were each mulcted in a fine of 6d. and 2s. Gd. for costs.
Harrup was followed from the court by a crowd of people who hissed him. — A
favourite operation with manufacturers is to punish the workpeople by deductions
made from their wages on account of faults in the material worked on. This method
gave rise in 18C6 to a general strike in the English pottery districts. The reports of
the Ch. Empl. Com. (1863-1866), give cases where the worker not only receives no
wages, but becomes, by means of his labour, and of the penal regulations, the
debtor to boot, of his worthy master. The late cotton crisis also furnished edifying
examples of the sagacity shown by the factory autocrats in making deductions from
wages. Mr. R. Baker, the Inspector of Factories, says, "I have myself had lately
to direct prosecutions against one cotton mill occupier for having in those pinching
and painful times deducted lOd. a piece from some of the young workers employed
by him, for the surgeon's certificate (for which he himself had only paid 6d.), when
only allowed by the law to deduct 8d., and by custom nothing at all ....
And I have been informed of another, who, in order to keep without the law, but
to attain the same object, charges the poor children who work for him a shilling
each, as a fee for learning them the art and mystery of cotton spinning, so soon
as they are declared by the surgeon fit and proper persons for that occupation. There
may therefore be undercurrent causes for such extraordinary exhibitions as strikes,
not only wherever they arise, but particularly at such times as the present, which
without explanation, render them inexplicable to the public understanding." He al
ludes here to a strike of power-loom weavers at Darwin, June, 1863. ("Reports of
Insp. of Fact, for 30 April, 1863," pp. 50-51.) The reports always go beyond their
official dates.

1 The protection afforded by the Factory Acts against dangerous machinery has
had a beneficial effect. "But . . . there are other sources of accident which did
not exist twenty years since; one especially, viz., the increased speed on the ma
chinery. Wheels, rollers, spindles and shuttles are now propelled at increased and
increasing rates; fingers must be quicker and defter in their movements to take up
the broken thread, for, if placed with hesitation or carelessness, they are sacrificed.
. . . A large number of accidents are caused by the eagerness of the workpeople
to get through their work expeditiously. It must be remembered that it is of the
highest importance to manufacturers that their machinery should be in motion, i.e.,
producing yarns and goods. Every minute's stoppage is not only a loss of power,
but of production, and the workpeople are urged by the overlookers, who are in
terested in the quantity of work turned off, to keep the machinery in motion; and
it is no less important to those of the operatives who are paid by the weight or
piece that the machines should be kept in motion. Consequently, although it is
strictly- forbidden in many, nay in most factories, that machinery should be clean*

466 Capitalist Production.

and forced as in a hothouse by the factory system, is turned, in
the hands of capital into systematic robbery of what is neces
sary for the life of the workman while he is at work, robbery
of space, light, air, and of protection to his person against the
dangerous and unwholesome accompaniments of the productive
process, not to mention the robbery of appliances for the com
fort of the workman.1 Is Fourier wrong when he calls fac
tories "tempered bagnos ?"2

SECTION 5. — THE STEIFE BETWEEN WORKMAN AND MACHINE.

The contest between the capitalist and the wage-labourer
dates back to the very origin of capital. It raged on through
out the whole manufacturing period.8 But only since the

ed while in motion, it is nevertheless the constant practice in most if not in all.
that the workpeople do, unreproved, pick out waste, wipe rollers and wheels, &c.,
while their frames are in motion. Thus from this cause only, 906 accidents have

occurred during the six months Although a great deal of cleaning is

constantly going on day by day, yet Saturday is generally the day set apart for the
thorough cleaning of the machinery, and a great deal of this is done while the ma
chinery is in motion." Since cleaning is not paid for, the workpeople seek to get
done with it as speedily as possible. Hence "the number of accidents which occur
on Fridays, and especially on Saturdays, is much larger than on any other day.
On the former the excess is nearly 12 per cent, over the average number of the
four first days of the week, and on the Jatter day the excess is 25 per cent over the
average of the preceding five days; or, if the number of working-hours on Satur
day being taken into account — TJ^hours on Saturday as compared with 10J4 on
other days — there is an excess of 66 per cent on Saturdays over the average of
the other five days." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1866," p. 9, 15, 16, 17.)

1 In Part I. of Book III. I shall give an account of a recent campaign by the
English manufacturers against the Clauses in the Factory Acts that protect the
"hands" against dangerous machinery. For the present, let this one quotation from
the official report of Leonard Horner suffice: "I have heard some millownera speak
with inexcusable levity of some of the accidents; such, for instance, as the loss of a
finger being a trifling matter. A working-man's living and prospects depend so
much upon his fingers, that any loss of them is a very serious matter to him.
When I have heard such inconsiderate remarks made, I have usually put this
question: Suppose you were in want of an additional workman, and two were to
apply, both equally well qualified in other respects, but one had lost a thumb or
a forefinger, which would you engage? There never was a hesitation as to the an
swer." .... The manufacturers have "mistaken prejudices against what they
have heard represented as a pseudo-philanthropic legislation." ("Rep. of Insp. of
Fact., 31st Oct., 1855." These manufacturers are clever folk, and not without rea
son were they enthusiastic for the slave-holder's rebellion.

8 In those factories that have been longest subject to the Factory Acts, with their
compulsory limitation of the hours of labour, and other regulations, many of the
older abuses have vanished. The very improvement of the machinery demands to a
certain extent "improved construction of the buildings," and this is an advantage
to the workpeople. (See "Rep. of Insp. of Fact for 31st Oct., 1863," p. 108.)

* See amongst others, John Houghton: "Husbandry and Trade improved.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 467

introduction of machinery has the workman fought against the
instrument oFTabour itself, the material embodiment of capital.
He revolts against this particular form of the means of produc
tion, as being the material basis of the capitalist mode of pro
duction.

In the 17th century nearly all Europe experienced revolts
of the workpeople against the ribbon-loom, a machine for
weaving ribbons and trimmings, called in Germany Band-
miihle, Schnurmuhle, and Miihlenstuhl. These machines were
invented in Germany. Abbe Lancellotti, in a work that ap
peared in Venice in 1636, but which was written in 1579, says
as follows: "Anthony Muller of Danzig, saw about 50 years
ago in that town, a very ingenious machine, which weaves 4 to
6 pieces at once. But the Mayor being apprehensive that this
invention might throw a large number of workmen on the
streets, caused- the inventor to be secretly strangled or
drowned." In Leyden, this machine was not used till 1629 ;
there the riots of the ribbon-weavers at length compelled the
Town Council to prohibit it. "In hac urbe," says Boxhorn
(Inst. Pol., 1663), referring to the introduction of this ma
chine in Leyden, "ante hos viginti circiter annos instrumentum
quidam invenerunt textorium, quo solus plus panni et facilius
conficere poterat, quam plures aequali tempore. Hinc turbse
ortae et querulse textorum, tandemque usus hujus instrument
a magistratu prohibitus est." After making various decrees
more or less prohibitive against this loom in 1632, 1639, &c.,
the States General of Holland at length permitted it to be
used, under certain conditions, by the decree of the 15th De
cember, 1661. It was also prohibited in Cologne in 1676, at
the same time that its introduction into England was causing
disturbances among the workpeople. By an imperial Edict of
19th Feb., 1685, its use was forbidden throughout all Germany.

don, 1727." "The Advantages of the East India Trade, 1720." John Sellers, 1.
c. The masters and their workmen are, unhappily, in a perpetual war with each
other. The invariable object of the former is to get their work done as cheaply as
possible; and they do not fail to employ every artifice to this purpose, whilst the
latter are equally attentive to every occasion of distressing their masters into a com
pliance with higher demands." ("An Inquiry into the Causes of the Present High
Prices of Provisions," p. 61-62. Author, the Rev. Nathaniel Forstcr, quite oa the
side of the workmen.)

468 Capitalist Production.

In Hamburg it was burnt in public by order of the Senate,
The Emperor Charles VI., on 9th Feb., 1719, renewed the
edict of 1685, and not till 1765 was its use openly allowed in
the Electorate of Saxony. This machine, which shook Europe
to its foundations, was in fact the precursor of the mule and
the power-loom, and of the industrial revolution of the 18th
century. It enabled a totally inexperienced boy, to set tho
whole loom with all its shuttles in motion, by simply moving a
rod backwards and forwards, and in its improved form pro
duced from 40 to 50 pieces at once.

About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by £
Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Ever
as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven
by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as
it was by parliament, only with great difficulty. Xo soonei
had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine
that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by
100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty
thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding
wool, petitioned parliament against Arkwright's scribbling
mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of
machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing dis
tricts during the first 15 years of this century, chiefly caused
by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the
Luddite movement, gave the anti-jacobin governments of a
Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most
re-actionary and forcible measures. It took both time and
experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between
machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their
attacks, not against the material instruments of production,
but against the mode in which they are used.1

The contests about wages in Manufacture, presuppose manu
facture, and are in no sense directed against its existence. The
opposition against the establishment of new manufactures, pro
ceeds from the guilds and privileged towns, not from the work-

1 In old-fashioned manufactures the revolts of the workpeople against machinery,
even to this day, occasionally assume a savage character as in the case of the
Sheffield file cutters in 1865.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 469

people. Hence the writers of the manufacturing period treat
the division of labour chiefly as a means of virtually supplying
a deficiency of labourers, and not as a means of actually dis
placing those in work. This distinction is self-evident If it
be said that 100 millions of people would be required in Eng
land to spin with the old spinning-wheel the cotton that is now
spun with mules by 500,000 people, this does not mean that
the mules took the place of those millions who never existed.
It means only this, that many millions of workpeople would be
required to replace the spinning machinery. If, on the other
hand, we say, that in England the power-loom threw 800,000
weavers on the streets, we do not fefer to existing machinery,
that would have to be replaced by a definite number of work
people, but to a number of weavers in existence who were
actually replaced or displaced by the looms. During the man
ufacturing period, handicraft labour, altered though it was by
division of labour, was yet the basis. The demands of the
new colonial markets could not be satisfied owing to the
relatively small number of town operatives handed down from
the middle ages, and the manufactures proper opened out new
fields of production to the rural population, driven from the
land by the dissolution of the feudal system. At that time,
therefore, division of labour and co-operation in the workshops,
were viewed more from the positive aspect, that they made
the workpeople more productive.1 Long before the period of
Modern Industry, co-operation and the concentration of the
instruments of labour in the hands of a few, gave rise, in
numerous countries where these methods were applied in agri-

1 Sir James Stewart also understands machinery quite in this sense. "Je con-
sidere done les machines comme des moyens d'augraenter (virtuellement) le nombre
des gens industrieux qu'on n'est pas oblige de nourrir. ... En quoi 1'effet d'une
machine differe-t-il de celui de nouveaux habitants?" (French trans, t. I., 1. I.,
ch. XIX.) More naive is Petty, who says, it replaces "Polygamy." The above
point of view is, at the most, admissible only for some parts of the United States.
On the other hand, "machinery can seldom be used with success to abridge the
labour of an individual; more time would be lost in its construction than could be
saved by its application. It is only useful when it acts on great masses, when a
single machine can assist the work of thousands. It is accordingly in the most
populous countries, where there are most idle men, that it is most abundant. . . .
It is not called into use by a scarcity of men, but by the facility with which they
can be brought to work in masses." (Piercy Ravenstone: "Thoughts on the Fund
ing System and its Effects." London, 1824, p. 15.)

47° Capitalist Production.

culture, to great, sudden and forcible revolutions in the modes
of production, and consequentially, in the conditions of exist
ence, and the means of employment of the rural populations.
But this contest at first takes^ place more between the large
and the small landed proprietors, than between capital and
wage-labour; on the other hand, when the labourers are dis
placed by the instruments of labour, by sheep, horses, &c., in
this case force is directly resorted to in the first instance as the
prelude to the industrial revolution. The labourers are first
driven from the land, and then come the sheep. Land grab
bing on a great scale, such as was perpetrated in England, is
the first step in creating a field for the establishment of agri
culture on a great scale.1 Hence this subversion of agriculture
puts on, at first, more the appearance of a political revolution.
The instrument of labour, when it takes the form of a
machine, immediately becomes a competitor of the workman
himself.2 The self-expansion of capital by means of machinery
is theB<»forward directly proportional to the number of the
workpeople, whose means of livelihood have been destroyed by
that machinery. The whole system of capitalist production is
based on the fact that the workman sells his labour-power as a
commodity. Division of labour specialises this labour-power,
by reducing it to skill in handling a particular tool. So soon
as the handling of this tool becomes the work of a machine,
then, with the use-value, the exchange-value too, of the work
man's labour-power vanishes; the workman becomes unsale
able, like paper money thrown out of currency by legal enact
ment. That portion of the working class, thus by machinery
rendered superfluous, t.e., no longer immediately necessary
for the self-expansion of capital, either goes to the wall in the
unequal contest of the old handicrafts and manufactures with
machinery, or else floods all the more easily accessible branches
of industry, swamps the labour market, and sinks the price of
labour-power below its value. It is impressed upon the work-

1 Note to the 4th German edition. — This applies also to Germany. Wherever
agriculture on a large scale exists in Germany, that is, particularly in the East, it
was made possible through the "trapping of peasants" in vogue since the 16th
century, and more particularly since 1648. F. E. —

* "Machinery and labour are in constant competition." Ricardo, 1. c., p. 4,79.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 471

people, as a great consolation, first, that their sufferings are
only temporary ("a temporary inconvenience"), secondly, that
machinery acquires the mastery over the whole of a given field
of production/ only t>y degrees, so that the extent and intensity
of its destructive effect is diminished. The first consolation
neutralizes the second. When machinery seizes on an industry
by degrees, it produces chronic misery among the operatives
who compete with it Where the transition is rapid, the effect
is acute and felt by great masses. History discloses no tragedy
more horrible than the gradual extinction of the English hand-
loom weavers, an extinction that was spread over several de
cades, and finally sealed in 1838. Many of them died of star
vation, many with families vegetated for a long time on 2J d.
a day.1 On the other hand, the English cotton machinery pro
duced an acute effect in India. The Governor General re
ported 1834— 35. "The misery hardly finds a parallel in the
history of commerce. The bones of the cotton-weavers are
bleaching the plains of India." No doubt, in turning them
out of this "temporal" world, the machinery caused them no
more than "a temporary inconvenience." For the rest, since
machinery is continually seizing upon new fields of production,
its temporary effect is really permanent. Hence, the char
acter of independance and estrangement which the capitalist
mode of production as a whole gives to the instruments of
labour and to the product, as against the workman, is devel-

1 The competition between hand-weaving and power-weaving in England, before
the passing of the Poor Law of 1833, was prolonged by supplementing the wages,
which had fallen considerably below the minimum, with parish relief. "The Rev.
Mr. Turner was, in 1827, rector of Wilmslow, in Cheshire, a manufacturing dis
trict The questions of the Committee of Emigration, and Mr. Turner's answers,
show how the competition of human labour is maintained against machinery.' Ques
tion: Has not the use of the power-loom superseded the use of the hand-loom? An
swer: Undoubtedly; it would have superseded them much more than it has done,
if the hand-loom weavers were not enabled to submit to a reduction of wages.
Question: 'But in submitting he has accepted wages which are insufficient to
support him, and looks to parochial contribution as the remainder of his support?
Answer: Yes, and in fact the competition between the hand-loom and the power-
loom is maintained out of the poor-rates. Thus degrading pauperism or expatria
tion, is the benefit which the industrious receive from the introduction of machinery,
to i* reduced from the respectable and in some degree independent mechanic, to
the cringing wretch who lives on the debasing bread of charity. This they call a
tempory inconvenience." ("A Prize Essay on the comparative merits of Compe
tition and Co-operation." Lond., 1834, p. 29.)

472 Capitalist Production.

oped by means of machinery into a thorough antagonism.1
Therefore, it is with the advent of machinery, that the work
man for the first time brutally revolts against the instruments
of labour.

The instrument of labour strikes down the labourer. This
direct antagonism between the two comes out most strongly,
whenever newly introduced machinery competes with handi
crafts or manufactures, handed down from former times. But
even in Modern Industry the continental improvement of
machinery, and the development of the automatic system, has
an analogous effect. "The object of improved machinery is to
diminish manual labour, to provide for the performance of a
process or the completion of a link in a manufacture by the
aid of an iron instead of the human apparatus."2 "The
adaptation of power to machinery heretofore moved by hand,
is almost of daily occurrence ... the minor improve
ments in machinery having for their object economy of power,
the production of better work, the turning off more work in
the same time, or in supplying the place of a child, a female,
or a man, are constant, and although sometimes apparently of
no great moment, have somewhat important results."3
"Whenever a process requires peculiar dexterity and steadiness
of hand, it is withdrawn, as soon as possible, from the cunning
workman, who is prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it
is placed in charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating
that a child can superintend it."4 "On the automatic plan

1 "The same cause which may increase the revenue of the country" (.i.e., a»
Ricardo explains in the same passage, the revenues of landlords and capitalists,
whose wealth, from the economical point of view, forms the Wealth of the Nation),
"may at the same time render the population redundant and deteriorate the condi
tion of the labourer." (Ricardo, 1. c., p. 46ft.) "The constant aim and the ten
dency of every improvement in machinery is, in fact, to do away entirely with the
labour of man, or to lessen its price by substituting the labour of women and chil
dren for that of grown up men, or of unskilled for that of skilled workmen."
(Ure, 1. c., t. L, p. 35).

2 "Rep. Insp. Fact, for 31st October, 1858," p. 43.
8 "Rep. Insp. Fact, for 31st October, 1866," p. 15.

* Ure, 1. c., p. 19. "The great advantage of the machinery employed in brick-
making consists in this, that the employer is made entirely independent of skilled
labourers." ("Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Report," Lond., 1866, p. 180, n. 46.) Mr. A.
Sturrock, superintendent of the machine department of the Great Northern Railway,
says, with regard to the building of locomotives, &c. : "Expensive English workmen
are being less used every day. The production of the workshops of England is

Machinery and Modern Industry. 473

•killed labour gets progressively superseded."1 "The effect of
improvements in machinery, not merely in superseding the
necessity for the employment of the same quantity of adult
labour as before, in order to produce a given result, but in
substituting one description of human labour for another, the
less skilled for the more skilled, juvenile for adult, female for
male, causes a fresh disturbance in the rate of wages."2 "The
effect of substituting the self-acting mule for the common mule,
is to discharge the greater part of the men spinners, and to
retain adolescents and children."3 The extraordinary power
of expansion of the factory system owing to accumulated prac
tical experience, to the mechanical means at hand, and to con
stant technical progress, was proved to us by the giant strides
of that system under the pressure of a shortened working day.
But who, in 1860, the Zenith year of the English cotton indus
try, would have dreamt of the galloping improvements in ma
chinery, and the corresponding displacement of working people,
called into being during the following 3 years, under the
stimulus of the American Civil War ? A couple of examples
from the Reports of the Inspectors of Factories will suffice on
this point. A Manchester manufacturer states : "We formerly
had 75 carding engines, now we have 12, doing the same quan
tity of work. . . . We are doing with fewer hands by 14,
at a saving in wages of £10 a-week. Our estimated saving in
waste is about 10% in the quantity of cotton consumed." "In
another fine spinning mill in Manchester, I was informed that
through increased speed and the adoption of some self-acting
processes, a reduction had been made, in number, for a fourth
in one department, and of above half in another, and that the
introduction of the combing machine in place of the second
carding, had considerably reduced the number of hands for
merly employed in the carding room." Another spinning mill
is estimated to effect a saving of labour of 10%. The Messrs.

being increased by the use of improved tools and these tools are again served by
a low class of labour . . . Formerly their skilled labour necessarily produced all
the parts of engines. Now the parts of engines are produced by labour with less
skill, but with good tools. By tools, I mean engineer's machinery, lathes, planing
machines, drills, and so on. ("Royal Com. on Railways." Lond., 1867, Minutes of
Evidence, n. 17,862 and 17,863.)
lUre, 1. c., p. 20. » Ure, 1. c., p. 321. » Ure, 1. c. p. 23.

474 Capitalist Production.

Gilmour, spinners at Manchester, state : "In our blowing-room
department we consider our expense with new machinery is
fully one-third less in wages and hands ... in the jack-
frame and drawing-frame room, about one-third less in ex
pense, and likewise one-third less in hands; in the spinning-
room about one-third less in expenses. But this is not all ;
when our yarn goes to the manufacturers, it is so much better
by the application of our new machinery, that they will pro
duce a greater quantity of cloth, and cheaper than from the
yarn produced by old machinery."1 Mr. Redgrave further
remarks in the same Report : "The reduction of hands against
increased production is, in fact, constantly taking place; in
woollen mills the reduction commenced some time1 since, and
is continuing; a few days since, the master of a school in the
neighbourhood of Rochdale said to me, that the great falling
off in the girls' school is not only caused by the distress, but by
the changes of machinery in the woollen mills, in consequence
of which a reduction of 70 short-timers had taken place."2

The following table shows the total result of the mechanical
improvements in the English cotton industry due to the
American civil war.

NUMBER OF FACTORIES.

1858 1861 1868

England and Waleg 2,046 2,715 2,405

Scotland 152 163 131

Ireland 12 9 13

United Kingdom 2,210 2,887 2,549

NUMBER OF POWER-LOOMS.

1858 1861 1868

England and Wales 275,590 368,125 344,719

Scotland 21,624 30,110 31,864

Ireland 1,633 1,757 2,746

United Kingdom 298,847 399,992 379,329

1 "Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st Oct., 1863," pp. 108, 109.

1 1. c., p. 109. The rapid improvement of machinery, during; the crisis, allowed the
English manufacturers, immediately after the termination of the American civil war,
and almost in no time, to glut the markets of the world again. Cloth, during the
last six months of 1866, was almost unsaleable. Thereupon began the consignment
of goods to India and China, thus naturally making the glut more intense. At the
beginning of 1867 the manufacturers resorted to their usual way out of the difficulty,

Machinery and Modern Industry, 475

NUMBER OF SPINDLES.

1858 1861 1868

England and Wales 25,818,576 28,352,152 30,478,228

Scotland 2,041,129 1,915,398 1,397,546

Ireland 150,512 119,944 124,240

United Kingdom 28,010,217 30,387,494 32,000,014

NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED.

1858 1861 1868

England and Wales 341,170 407,598 357,052

Scotland 34,698 41,237 39,809

Ireland 3,345 2,734 4,203

United Kingdom 379,213 451,569 401,064

Hence, between 1861 and 1868, 338 cotton factories dis
appeared, in other words more productive machinery on a
larger scale was concentrated in the hands of a smaller num
ber of capitalists. The number of power-looms decreased by
20,663 ; but since their product increased in the same period,
an improved loom must have yielded more than an old one.
Lastly the number of spindles increased by 1,612,541, while
the number of operatives decreased by 50,505. The "tem
porary" misery, inflicted on the workpeople by the cotton-crisis,
was heightened, and from being temporary made permanent,
by the rapid and persistent progress of machinery.

But machinery not only acts as a competitor who gets the
better of the workman, and is constantly on the point of
making him superfluous. It is also a power inimical to him,
and as such capital proclaims it from the roof tops and as such
makes use of it. It is the most powerful weapon for repress
ing strikes, those periodical revolts of the working class against
the autocracy of capital.1 According to Gaskell, the steam

viz., reducing wages 6 per cent. The workpeople resisted, and said that the only
remedy was to work short time, 4 days a-week; and their theory was the correct
one. After holding out for some time, the self-elected captains of industry had to
make up their minds to short time, with reduced wages in some places, and in others
without.

1 "The relation of master and man in the blown-flint bottle trades amounts to a
chronic strike." Hence the impetus given to the manufacture of pressed glass, in
which the chief operations are done by machinery. One firm in Newcastle, who
formerly produced 350,000 Ibs. of blown-flint glass, now produces in its place 3,000,.
600 Ibs. of pressed glass. ("Ch. Empl. Comm., Fourth Rep.," 1865, pp. 288, SM.)

476 Capitalist Production.

engine was from the very first an antagonist of human pcrwer,
an antagonist that enabled the capitalist to tread under foot
the growing claims of the workmen, who threatened the newly
born factory system with a crisis.1 It would be possible to
write quite a history of the inventions, made since 1830, for
the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the
revolts of the working class. At the head of these in import
ance, stands the- self-acting mule, because it opened up a new
epoch in the automatic system.2

Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer, gives thia,
following evidence before the Trades Union Commission, with
regard to the improvements made by him in machinery and
introduced in consequence of the wide-spread and long striken
of the engineers in 1851. "The characteristic feature of our
modern mechanical improvements, is the introduction of self
acting tool machinery. What every mechanical workman has
now to do, and what every boy can do, is not to work himself
but to superintend the beautiful labour of the machine. The
whole class of workmen that depend exclusively on their skill,
is now done away with. Formerly, I employed four boys to
every mechanic. Thanks to these new mechanical combina
tions, I have reduced the number of grown-up men from
1500 to 750. The result was a considerable increase in my
profits,"

Ure says of a machine used in calico printing: "At length
capitalists sought deliverance from this intolerable bondage"
[namely the, in their eyes, burdensome terms of their contracts
with the workmen] "in the resources of science, and were
speedily re-instated in their legitimate rule, that of the head
Over the inferior members." Speaking of an invention for
dressing warps : "Then the combined malcontents, who fancied
themselves impregnably intrenched behind the old lines of
division of labour, found their flanks turned and their defences
rendered useless by the new mechanical tactics, and were
obliged to surrender at discretion." With regard to the in-

1 Gaskell. "The Manufacturing Population of England, London, 1833," pp. 3, 4.
* W. Fairbairn discovered several very important applications of machinery to the
construction of machines, in consequence of strikes in his own workshops.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 477

vention of the self-acting mule, he says : "A creation destined
to restore order among the industrious classes. . . . This
invention confirms the great doctrine already propounded, that
when capital enlists science into her service, the refractory
hand of labour will always he taught docility."1 Although
lire's work appeared 30 years ago, at a time when the factory
system was comparatively hut little developed, it still perfectly
expresses the spirit of the factory, not only hy its undisguised
cynicism, but also by the naivete with which it blurts out the
stupid contradictions of the capitalist brain. For instance,
after propounding the "doctrine" stated above, that capital,
with the aid of science taken into its pay, always reduces the
refractory hand of labour to docility, he grows indignant be
cause "it (physico-mechanical science) has been accused of
lending itself to the rich capitalist as an instrument for
harrassing the poor." After preaching a long sermon to show
how advantageous the rapid development of machinery is to
the working classes, he warns them, that by their obstinacy
and their strikes they hasten that development "Violent re
vulsions of this nature," he says, "display short-sighted man in
the contemptible character of a self -tormentor." A few pages
before he states the contrary. "Had it not been for the
violent collisions and interruptions resulting from erroneous
views among the factory operatives, the factory system would
have been developed still more rapidly and beneficially for all
concerned." Then he exclaims again: "Fortunately for the
state of society in the cotton districts of Great Britain, the
improvements in machinery are gradual." "It" (improve
ment in machinery) "is said to lower the rate of earnings of
adults by displacing a portion of them, and thus rendering
their number superabundant as compared with the demand
for their labour. It certainly augments the demand for the
labour of children and increases the rate of their wages." On
the other hand, this same dispenser of consolation defends the
lowness of the children's wages on the ground that it pre
vents parents from sending their children at too early an age
into the factory. The whole of his book is a vindication of a

»Ure, I. c., pp. W8-S70.

Capitalist Production.

working day of unrestricted length; that Parliament should
forbid children of 13 years to be exhausted by working 12
hours a day, reminds his liberal soul of the darkest days of the
middle ages. This does not prevent him from calling upon the
factory operatives to thank Providence, who by means of
machinery has given them the leisure to think of their "im
mortal interests."1

SECTION 6. - THE THEORY OF COMPENSATION AS REGARDS THIS
WORKPEOPLE DISPLACED BY MACHINERY.

James Mill, MacCulloch, Torrens, Senior, John Stuart Mill.
and a whole series besides, of bourgeois political economists,
insist that all machinery that displaces workmen^ simul
taneously and necessarily sets free an amount of capital
adequate to employ the same identical workmen.2

Suppose a capitalist to employ 100 workmen, at £30 a year
each, in a carpet factory. The variable capital annually
laid out amounts, therefore, to £3000. Suppose, also, that he
discharges 50 of his workmen, and employs the remaining 50
with machinery that costs him £1500. To simplify matters,
we take no account of buildings, coal, &c. Further suppose
that the raw material annually consumed costs £3000, both
before and after the change.3 Is any capital set free by this
metamorphosis ? Before the change, the total sum of £6000
consisted half of constant, and half of variable capital. After
the change it consists of £4500 constant (£3000 raw material
and £1500 machinery), and £1500 variable capital. The vari
able capital, instead of being one half, is only one quarter, of
the total capital. Instead of being set free, a part of the
capital is here locked up in such a way as to cease to be ex
changed against labour-power: variable has been changed into
constant capital. Other things remaining unchanged, the
capital of £6000, can, in future, employ no more than 50 men.

1. c. pp. 368, 7, 870, 280, 821, 281, 370, 47*.

8 Ricardo originally was also of this opinion, but afterwards expressly disclaimed
it, with the scientific impartiality and love of truth characteristic of him. See 1. c.
ch. xxxi. "On Machinery."

*Nota bene. My illustration is entirely on the lines of those giren by the above*
mamed economists.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 479

With each improvement in the machinery, it will employ fewer.
If the newly introduced machinery had cost less than did the
labour-power and implements displaced by it, if, for instance,
instead of costing £1500, it had cost only £1000, a variable
capital of £1000 would have been converted into constant
capital, and locked up ; and a capital of £500 would have been
set free. The latter sum, supposing wages unchanged, would
form a fund sufficient to employ about 16 out of the 50 men
discharged ; nay, less than 16, for, in order to be employed as
capital, a part of this £500 must now become constant capital,
thus leaving only the remainder to be laid out in labour-
power.

But, suppose, besides, that the making of the new machinery
affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can
that be called compensation to the carpet makers, thrown on
the streets? At the best, its construction employs fewer men
than its employment displaces. The sum of £1500 that
formerly represented the wages of the discharged carpet-
makers, now represents in the shape of machinery: (1) the
value of the means of production used in the construction of
that machinery, (2) the wages of the mechanics employed in
its construction, and (3) the surplus-value falling to the share
of their "master." Further, the machinery need not be re
newed till it is worn out. Hence, in order to keep the in
creased number of mechanics in constant employment, one
carpet manufacturer after another must displace workmen by
machines.

As a matter of fact, the apologists do not mean this sort of
setting free. They have in their minds the means of sub
sistence of the liberated workpeople. It cannot be denied, in
the above instance, that the machinery not only liberates 50
men, thus placing them at others' disposal, but, at the same
time, it withdraws from their consumption, and sets free,
means of subsistence to the value of £1500. The simple fact,
by no means a new one, that machinery cuts off the workmen
from their means of subsistence is, therefore, in economical
parlance tantamount to this, that machinery liberates means of
"subsistence for the workman, or converts those rneaens into

480 Capitalist Production.

capital for his employment. The mode of expression, you see,
is everything. Nominibus mollire licet mala.

This theory implies that the £1500 worth of means of sub
sistence was capital that was being expanded by the labour of
the 50 men discharged. That, consequently, this capital falls
out of employment so soon as they commence their forced
holidays, and never rests till it has found a fresh investment,
where it can again be productively consumed by these same 50
men. That sooner or later, therefore, the capital and the
workmen must come together again, and that, then, the com
pensation is complete. That the sufferings of the workmen
displaced by machinery are therefore as transient as are tha
riches of this world.

In relation to the discharged workmen, the £1500 worth of
means of subsistence never was capital. What really con
fronted them as capital, was the sum of £1500, afterwards laid
out in machinery. On looking closer it will be seen that thin
sum represented part of the carpets produced in a year by the
50 discharged men, which part they received as wages from
their employer in money instead of in kind. With the carpets
in the form of money, they bought means of subsistence to the
value of £1500. These means, therefore, were to them, not
capital, but commodities, and they, as regards these com
modities, were not wage-labourers, but buyers. The circum
stance that they were "freed" by the machinery, from the
means of purchase, changed them from buyers into non-buyers.
Hence a lessened demand for those commodities — voila tout
If this diminution be not compensated by an increase from
some other quarter, the market price of the commodities falls.
If this state of things lasts for some time, and extends, there
follows a discharge of workmen employed in the production of
these commodities. Some of the capital that was previously
devoted to production of necessary means of subsistence, has
to become reproduced in another form. While prices fall, and
capital is being displaced, the labourers employed in the pro
duction of necessary means of subsistence are in their turn
"freed" from a part of their wages. Instead, therefore, of
proving that, when machinery frees the workman from his

Machinery and Modern Industry 481

means of subsistence, it simultaneously converts those means
into capital for his further employment, our apologists, with
their cut-and-dried law of supply and demand, prove, on the
contrary, that machinery throws workmen on the streets not
only in that branch of production in which it is introduced, but
also in those branches in wliich it is not introduced.

The real facts, which are travestied by the optimism of
economists, are as follows : The labourers, when driven out of
the workshop by the machinery, are thrown upon the labour
market, and there add to the number of workmen at the dis
posal of the capitalists. In Part VII. of this book it will be
seen that this effect of machinery, which, as we have seen, is
represented to be a compensation to the working class, is on
the contrary a most frightful scourge. For the present I will
only say this: The labourers that are thrown out of work in
any branch of industry, can no doubt seek for employment in
some other branch. If they find it, and thus renew the bond
between them and the means of subsistence, this takes place
only by the intermediary of a new and additional capital that
is seeking investment; not at all by the intermediary of the
capital that formerly employed them and was afterwards con
verted into machinery. And even should they find employ
ment, what a poor look-out is theirs ! Crippled as they are by
division of labour, these poor devils are worth so little outside
their old trade, that they cannot find admission into any indus
tries, except a few of inferior kind, that are over-supplied with
underpaid workmen.1 Further, every branch of industry
attracts each year a new stream of men, who furnish a con
tingent from which to fill up vacancies, and to draw a supply
for expansion. So soon as machinery sets free a part of the
workmen employed in a given branch of industry, the reserve

1 A disciple of Ricardo, in answer to the insipidities of J. B. Say, remarks on this
point: "Where division of labour is well developed, the skill of the labourer is
available only in that particular branch in which it has been acquired; he himself is
a sort of machine. It does not therefore help matters one jot, to repeat in parrot
fashion, that things have a tendency to find their level. On looking around us we
cannot but see, that they are unable to find their level for a long time; and that
when they do find it, the level is always lower than at the commencement of the
process." ("An Inquiry into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand,"
&c. Lond. 1831, p. 72.)

• E

482 Capitalist Production.

men are also diverted into new channels of employment, and
become absorbed in other branches ; meanwhile the original
victims, during the period of transition, for the most part
starve and perish.

It is an undoubted fact that machinery, as such, is not re
sponsible for "setting free" the workman from the means of
subsistence. It cheapens and increases production in that
branch which it seizes on, and at first makes no change in tho
mass of the means of subsistence produced in other branches.
Hence, after its introduction, the society possesses as much, it
not more, of the necessaries of life than before, for the la
bourers thrown out of work ; and that quite apart from thc>
enormous share of the annual produce wasted by the non-
workers. And this is the point relied on by our apologists!
The contradictions and antagonisms inseparable from the capi
talist employment of machinery, do not exist, they say, since
they do not arise out of machinery, as such, but out of its
capitalist employment! Since therefore machinery, consid
ered alone, shortens the hours of labour, but, when in the
service of capital, lengthens them; since in itself it lightens
labour, but when employed by capital, heightens the intensity
of labour ; since in itself it is a victory of man over the forces
of nature, but in the hands of capital, makes man the slave
of those forces; since in itself it increases the wealth of the
producers, but in the hands of capital, makes them paupers —
for all these reasons and others besides, says the bourgeois
economist without more ado, it is clear as noonday that all
these contradictions are a mere semblance of the reality, and
that, as a matter of fact, they have neither an actual nor a
theoretical existence. Thus he saves himself from all further
puzzling of the brain, and what is more, implicitly declares his
opponent to be stupid enough to contend against, not the capi
talistic employment of machinery, but machinery itself.

No doubt he is far from denying that temporary incon
venience may result from the capitalist use of machinery. But
where is the medal without its reverse! Any employment
of machinery, except by capital, is to him an impossibility.
Exploitation of the workman by the machine is therefore, with

Machinery and Modern Industry. 483

him, identical with exploitation of the machine by the work
man. Whoever, therefore, exposes the real state of things in
the capitalistic employment of machinery, is against its em
ployment in any way, and is an enemy of social progress!1
Exactly the reasoning of the celebrated Bill Sykes. "Gentle
men of the jury, no doubt the throat of this commercial
traveller has been cut. But that is not my fault, it is the fault
of the knife ! Must we, for such a temporary inconvenience,
abolish the use of the knife ? Only consider ! where would
agriculture and trade be without the knife ? Is it not as
salutary in surgery, as it is knowing in anatomy ? And in
addition a willing help at the festive board ? If you abolish
the knife — you hurl us back into the depths of barbarism^

Although machinery necessarily throws men out of work in
those industries into which it is introduced, yet it may, not
withstanding this, bring about an increase of employment in
other industries. This effect, however, has nothing in common
with the so-called theory of compensation. Since every article
produced by a machine is cheaper than a similar article pro
duced by hand, we deduce the following infallible law : If the
total quantity of the article produced by machinery, be equal
to the total quantity of the article previously produced by a
handicraft or by manufacture, and now made by machinery,
then the total labour expended is diminished. The new labour
spent on the instruments of labour, on the machinery, on the
coal, and so on, must necessarily be less than the labour dis
placed by the use of the machinery ; otherwise the product of
the machine would be as dear, or dearer, than the product of
the manual labour. But, as a matter of fact, the total quantity
of the article produced by machinery with a diminished num-

1 MacCulloch, amongst others, is a past master in this pretentious cretinism.
"If," he says, with the affected naivete of a child of 8 years, "if it be advantageous,
to develope the skill of the workman more and more, so that he is capable of produc
ing, with the same or with a less quantity of labour, a constantly increasing quantity
of commodities, it must also be advantageous, that he should avail himself of the help
of such machinery as will assist him most effectively in the attainment of this result."
(MacCulloch: "Princ. of Pol. Econ.," Lond. 1830, p. 166.)

a "The inventor of the spinning machine has ruined India, a fact, however, that
touches us but little." A. Thiers: De la propriete. — M. Thiers here confound* the
spinning machine with the power-loom, "a fact, however, that touches. i»« but
little."

484 Capitalist Production.

ber of workmen, instead of remaining equal to, by far exceeds
the total quantity of the hand-made article that has been dis
placed. Suppose that 400,000 yards of cloth have been pro
duced on power-looms by fewer weavers than could weave
100,000 yards by hand. In the quadrupled product there lios
four times as much raw material. Hence the production of
raw material must be quadrupled. But as regards the instru
ments of labour, such as buildings, coal, machinery, and so on,
it is different; the limit up to which the additional labour
required for their production can increase, varies with the
difference between the quantity of the machine-made article,
and the quantity of the same article that the same number of
workmen could make by hand.

Hence, as the use of machinery extends in a given industry,
the immediate effect is to increase production in the other ir-
dustries that furnish the first with means of production. How
far employment is thereby found for an increased number of
men, depends, given the length of the working-day and tha
intensity of labour, on the composition of the capital employed,
i.e., on the ratio of its constant to its variable component .
This ratio, in its turn, varies considerably with the extent to
which machinery has already seized on, or is then seizing on,
those trades. The number of the men condemned to work in
coal and metal mines increased enormously owing to tho
progress of the English factory system; but during the last
few decades this increase of number has been less rapid, owing
to the use of new machinery in mining.1 A new type of
workman springs into life along with the machine, namely, its
maker. We have already learnt that machinery has possessed
itself even of this branch of production on a scale that grow:*
greater every day.2 As to raw material,3 there is not tin)

1 According to the census of 1861 (Vol. II., Lond., 1863), the number of people
employed in coal mines in England and Wales, amounted to 246,613, of which 73,54.'>
were under, and 173,067 were over 20 years. Of those under 20, 835 were between
5 and 10 years. 80,701 between 10 and Ifi years. 42.010 between 15 and 19 years.
The number employed in iron, copper, lead, tin, and other mines of every descrip
tion, was 319,222.

•In England and Wales, in 1861, there were employed in making machinery
60,807 persons, including the masters and their clerks, &c., also all agents ami
business people connected with this industry, but excluding the makers of smal
machines, such as sewing machines, &c., as also the makers of the operative parfci
of machines, such as spindles. The total number of civil engineers amounted fc<
8829.

•Since iron is one of the most important raw materials, let me here state that, ir

Machinery and Modern Industry. 485

least doubt that the rapid strides of cotton spinning, not only
pushed on with tropical luxuriance the growth of cotton in the
United States, and with it the African slave trade, but also
made the breeding of slaves the chief business of the border
slave-states. When, in 1790, the first census of slaves was
taken in the United States, their number was 697,000 ; in 1861
it had nearly reached four millions. On the other hand, it
is no less certain that the rise of the English woollen factories,
together with the gradual conversion of arable land into sheep
pasture, brought about the superfluity of agricultural labourers
that led to their being driven in masses into the towns. Ire
land, having during the last twenty years reduced its popula
tion by nearly one half, is at this moment undergoing the pro
cess of still further reducing the number of its inhabitants, so
as exactly to suit the requirements of its landlords and of the
English woollen manufacturers.

When machinery is applied to any of the preliminary or
intermediate stages through which the subject of labour has
to pass on its way to completion, there is an increased yield
of material in those stages, and simultaneously an increased
demand for labour in the handicrafts or manufactures supplied
by the produce of the machines. Spinning by machinery, for
example, supplied yarn so cheaply and so abundantly that the
hand-loom weavers were, at first, about to work full time with
out increased outlay. Their earnings accordingly rose.1
Hence a flow of people into the cotton-weaving trade, till at
length the 800,000 weavers, called into existence by the Jenny,
the throstle and the mule, were overwhelmed by the power-
loom. So also, owing to the abundance of clothing materials
produced by machinery, the number of tailors, seamtresses and
needle-women, went on increasing until the appearance of the
sewing machine.

1861, there were in England and Wales 125,771 operative iron founders, of whom
123,430 were males, 2341 females. Of the former 30,810 were under, and 92,620
over 20 years.

1 "A family of four grown up persons, with two children as winders, earned at
the end of the last, and the beginning of the present century, by ten hours' daily
labour, £4 a week. If the work was very pressing, they could earn more . . .
Before that they had always suffered from a deficient supply of yarn." (Gaskell,
1. c., pp. 25-27.)

486 Capitalist Production.

In proportion as machinery, with the aid of a relatively
small number of workpeople, increases the mass of raw
materials, intermediate products, instruments of labour, &c.,
the working-up of these raw materials and intermediate pro
ducts becomes split up into numberless branches ; social pro
duction increases in diversity. The factory system carries the
social division of labour immeasurably further than does
manufacture, for it increases the productiveness of the in
dustries it seizes upon, in a far higher degree.

The immediate result of machinery is to augment surplus-
value and the mass of products in which surplus-value is
embodied. And, as the substances consumed by the capitalist*
and their dependants become more plentiful, so too do theso
orders of society. Their growing wealth, and the relatively
diminished number of workmen required to produce the neces
saries of life beget, simultaneously with the rise of new am.
luxurious wants, the means of satisfying those wants. A"
larger portion of the produce of society is changed into surplus
produce, and a larger part of the surplus produce is supplied
for consumption in a multiplicity of refined shapes. In othei
words, the production of luxuries increases.1 The refined and
varied forms of the products are also due to new relations witb
the markets of the world, relations that are created by Modern
Industry. Xot only are greater quantities of foreign articles
of luxury exchanged for home products, but a greater mass of
foreign raw materials, ingredients, and intermediate products,
are used as means of production in the home industries.
Owing to these relations with the markets of the world the
demand for labour increases in the carrying trades, which
split up into numerous varieties.2

The increase of the means of production and subsistence,
accompanied by a relative diminution in the number of
labourers, causes an increased demand for labour in making
canals, docks, tunnels, bridges, and so on, works that can only

1 F. Engels in "Lage, &c.," points out the miserable condition of a large number
of those who work on these very articles of luxury. See also numerous instances in
the "Reports of the Children's Employment Commission."

* In 1861, in England and Wales, there were 94,665 sailors in the merchant
service.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 487

bear fruit in the far future. Entirely new branches of pro
duction, creating new fields of labour, are also formed, as the
direct result either of machinery or of the general industrial
changes brought about by it. But the place occupied by these
branches in the general production is, even in the most de
veloped countries, far from important. The number of
labourers that find employment in them is directly propor
tional to the demand, created by those industries, for the
crudest form of manual labour. The chief industries of this
kind are, at present, gas works, telegraphs, photography,
steam navigation, and railways. According to the census of
1861 for England and Wales, we find in the gas industry
(gasworks, production of mechanical apparatus, servants of
the gas companies &c.), 15,211 persons; in telegraphy, 2399;
in photography, 2366; steam navigation, 3570; and in rail
ways, 70,599, of whom the unskilled "navvies," more or less
permanently employed, and the whole administrative and com
mercial staff, make up about 28,000. The total number of
persons, therefore, employed in these five new industries
amounts to 94,145.

Lastly, the extraordinary productiveness of modern indus
try, accompanied as it is by both a more extensive and a
more intense exploitation of labour-power in all other spheres
of production, allows of the unproductive employment of a
larger and larger part of the working class, and the consequent
reproduction, on a constantly extending scale, of the ancient
domestic slaves under the name of a servant class, including
men-servants, women-servants, lackeys, &c. According to the
census of 1861, the population of England and Wales was
20,066,244; of these, 9,776,259 males, and 10,289,965 female.
If we deduct from this population all who are too old or too
young for work, all unproductive women, young persons and
children, the "ideological" classes, such as government officials,
priests, lawyers, soldiers, &c. ; further, all who have no occu
pation but to consume the labour of others in the form of
rent, interest, &c. ; and, lastly, paupers, vagabonds, and
criminals, there remain in round numbers eight millions of
the two sexes of every age, including in that number every

488 Capitalist Production.

capitalist who is in any way engaged in industry, commerce, or
finance. Among these, 8 millions are :

Agricultural labourers (including shej> PERSONS.
herds, farm servants, and maidserv
ants living in the houses of farmers), 1,098,261

All who are employed in cotton, woollen,
worsted, flax, hemp, silk, and jute fac
tories, in stocking making and lace
making by machinery, . . . 642,607*

All who are employed in coal mines and

metal mines, ..... 565,835

All who are employed in metal works
(blast-furnaces, rolling mills, &c.),
and metal manufactures of every kind, 396,998*

The servant class, .... 1,208,6483

All the persons employed in textile factories and in mines,
taken together, number 1,208,442 ; those employed in textile
factories and metal industries, taken together, number 1,039,-
605 ; in both cases less than the number of modern domestic
slaves. What a splendid result of the capitalist exploitation
of machinery !

SECTION 7. REPULSION AND ATTRACTION OP WORKPEOPLE BY

THE FACTORY SYSTEM. CRISIS IN THE COTTON TRADE.

All political economists of any standing admit that the
introduction of new machinery has a baneful effect on the
workmen in the old handicrafts and manufactures with which
this machinery at first competes. Almost all of them bemoan
the slavery of the factory operative. And what is the great
trump-card that they play? That machinery, after the

1 Of these only 177,596 are males above 13 years of age.

*Of these, 30,601 are females.

1 Of these, 137,447 males. None are included in the 1,208,648 who do not serve
in private houses. Between 1861 and 1870 the number of male servants nearly
doubled itself. It increased to 267,671. In the year 1847 there were 2694 game
keepers (for the landlords' preserves), in 1869 there were 4921. The young servant
girls in the houses of the London lower middle class are in common parlance called
"slaveys."

Machinery and Modern Industry. 489

horrors of the period of introduction and development have
subsided, instead of diminishing, in the long run increases
the number of the slaves of labour! Yes, political economy
revels in the hideous theory, hideous to every " philanthro
pist " who believes in the eternal nature-ordained necessity for
capitalist production, that after a period of growth and transi
tion, even its crowning success, the factory system based on
machinery, grinds down more workpeople than on its first
introduction it throws on the streets.1

It is true that in some cases, as we saw from instances of
English worsted and silk factories, an extraordinary extension
of the factory system may, at a certain stage of its develop
ment, be accompanied not only by a relative, but by an
absolute decrease in the number of operatives employed. In
the year 1860, when a special census of all the factories in the
United Kingdom was taken by order of Parliament, the fac
tories in those parts of Lancashire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire,
included in the district of Mr. Baker, the factory inspector,
numbered 652 ; 570 of these contained 85,622 power-looms,
6,819,146 spindles (exclusive of doubling spindles), employed
27,439 horse-power (steam), and 1390 (water), and 94,119
persons. In the year 1865, the same factories contained,
looms 95,163, spindles 7,025,031, had a steam-power of
28,925 horses, and a water-power of 1445 horses, and em
ployed 88,913 persons. Between 1860 and 1865, therefore,

1 Ganilh, on the contrary, considers the final result of the factory system to be an
absolutely less number of operatives, at whose expense an increased number of
"gens honnetes" live and develop their well-known "perfectibilite perfectible." Lit-
tie as he understands the movement of production, at least he feels, that machinery
roust needs be a very fatal institution, if its introduction converts busy workmen
into paupers, and its development calls more slaves of labour into existence than it
has suppressed. It is not possible to bring out the cretinism of his standpoint, ex-
cept by his own words: "Les classes condamne"es a produire et a consommer
diminuent, et les classes qui dirigent le travail, qui soulagent, consolent, et eclairent
toute la population, se multiplient. . . . et s'approprient tous les bienfaits qui
resultent de la diminution des frais du travail, de 1'abondance des productions, et du
bon marche des consommations. Dans cette direction, 1'espece humaine s'eleve aux
plus hautes conceptions du genie, penetre dans les profondeurs mysterieuses de la
religion, etablit les principes salutaires de la morale (which consists in 's'approprier
tous les bienfaits,'' &c.), les lois tutelaires de la liberte (liberty of 'les classes con-
damnees a produire?') et du pouvoir, de 1'obeissance et de la justice, du devoir et
de I'humaniteV' For this twaddle see "Des Systemes d'Economie Politique, £c.»
Par M. Ch. Ganilh." 2eme ed., Paris, 1821, t. II., p. 224, and see p. 212.

490 Capitalist Production.

the increase in looms was 11%, in spindles 3%, and in engine-
power 3%, while the number of persons employed decreased
5^%.1 Between 1852 and 1862, considerable extension of the
English woollen manufacture took place, while the number of
hands employed in it remained almost stationary, showing how
greatly the introduction of new machines had superseded the
labour of preceding periods.2 In certain cases, the increase in
the number of hands employed is only apparent ; that is, it i»
not due to the extension of the factories already established,
but to the gradual annexation of connected trades; for in
stance, the increase in power-looms, and in the hands em
ployed by them between 1838 and 1856, was, in the cotton
trade, simply owing to the extension of this branch of in
dustry ; but in the other trades to the application of steam-
power to the carpet-loom, to the ribbon-loom, and to the linen-
loom, which previously had been worked by the power of
men.3 Hence the increase of the hands in these latter trades
was merely a symptom of a diminution in the total number
employed. Finally, we have considered this question entirely
apart from the fact, that everywhere, except in the metal
industries, young persons (under 18), and women and children
form the preponderating element in the class of factory
handsT^

Nevertheless, in spite of the mass of hands actually dis
placed and virtually replaced by machinery, we can under
stand how the factory operatives, through the building of
more mills and the extension of old ones in a given industry,
may become more numerous than the manufacturing work-

1 "Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31 Oct., 1865," p. 58, sq. At the same time, how
ever, means of employment for an increased number of hands was ready in 110 new
mills with 11,625 looms, 628,756 spindles and 2695 total horse-power of steam and
water (1 c.).

1 "Reports, &c., for 31 Oct., 1862," p. 79. At the end of 1871, Mr. A. Redgrave,
the factory inspector, in a lecture given at Bradford, in the New Mechanics' Insti
tution, said: "What has struck me for some time past is the altered appearance of
the woollen factories. Formerly they were filled with women and children, now
machinery seems to do all the work. At my asking for an explanation of this from
a manufacturer, he gave me the following: 'Under the old system I employed 63
persons; after the introduction of improved machinery I reduced my hands to 33,
and lately, in consequence of new and extensive alterations, I have been in a position
to reduce those 33 to 13.' "

* See "Reports, &c., 31 Oct., 1856," p. 16.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 491

men and handicraftsmen that have been displaced. Suppose,
for example, that in the old mode of production, a capital of
£500 is employed weekly, two-fifths being constant and three-
fifths variable capital, i.e., £200 being laid out in means of
production, and £300, say £1 per man, in labour-power. On
the introduction of machinery the composition of this capital
becomes altered. We will suppose it to consist of four-fifths
constant and one-fifth variable, which means that only £100 is
now laid out in labour-power. Consequently, two-thirds of
the workmen are discharged. If now the business extends,
and the total capital employed grows to £1500 under un
changed conditions, the number of operatives employed will
increase to 300, just as many as before the introduction of the
machinery. If the capital further grows to £2000, 400 men
will be employed, or one-third more than under the old system.
Their numbers have, in point of fact, increased by 100, but
relatively,~T.e., in proportion to the total capital advanced,
they have diminished by 800, for the £2000 capital would, in
the old state of things, have employed 1200 instead of 400
men. Hence, a relative decrease in the number of hands is
consistent with an actual increase. We assumed above that
while the total capital increases, its composition remains tho
same, because the conditions of production remain constant.
But we have already seen that, with every advance in the use
of machinery, the constant component of capital, that part
which consists of machinery, raw material, &c., increases,
while the variable component, the part laid out in labour-
power, decreases. We also know that in no other system of
production is improvement so continuous, and the composition
of the capital employed so constantly changing as in the
factory system. These changes are, however, continually inter
rupted by periods of rest, during which there is a mere quanti
tative extension of the factories on the existing technical basis.
During such periods the operatives increase in number. Thus,
in 1835; the total number of operatives in the cotton, woollen,
worsted, flax, and silk factories in the United Kingdom was
only 354,684; while in 1861 the number of the power-loom
weavers alone (of both sexes and of all ages, from eight yeari

492 Capitalist Production.

upwards), amounted to 230,654. Certainly, this growth ap
pears less important when we consider that in 1838 the hand-
loom weavers with their families still numbered 800,000, x not
to mention those thrown out of work in Asia, and on the
Continent of Europe.

In the few remarks I have still to make on this point, I
shall refer to some actually existing relations, the existence of
which our theoretical investigation has not yet disclosed.

So long as, in a given branch of industry, the factory system
extends itself at the expense of the old handicrafts or of manu
facture, the result is as sure as is the result of an encounter be
tween any army furnished with breach-loaders, and one armed
with bows and arrows. This first period, during which ma
chinery conquers its field of action, is of decisive importance
owing to the extraordinary profits that it helps to produce.
These profits not only form a source of accelerated accumu
lation, but also attract into the favoured sphere of production
a large part of the additional social capital that is being
constantly created, and is ever on the look-out for new in
vestments. The special advantages of this first period of fast
and furious activity are felt in every branch of production
that machinery invades. ^./So soon, however, as the factory
system has gained a certain breadth of footing and a definite
degree of maturity, and, especially, so soon as its technical
basis, machinery, is itself produced by machinery; so soon as
coal mining and iron mining, the metal industries, and the
means of transport have been revolutionised ; so soon, in short,
as the general conditions requisite for production by the
modern industrial system have been established, this mode
of production acquires an elasticity, a capacity for sudden
extension by leaps and bounds that finds no hindrance except
in the supply of raw material and in the disposal of the pro
duce. On the one hand, the immediate effect of machinery is

1 "The sufferings of the hand-loom weavers were the subject of an inquiry by a
Royal Commission, but although their distress was acknowledged and lamented, the
amelioration of their condition was left, and probably necessarily so, to the chances
and changes of time, which it may now be hoped" f20 years later 11 "have nearly
obliterated those miseries, and not improbably by the present great extension of
the power-loom." ("Rep. Insp. of Fct., 31 Oct., 1856," p. 15.)

Machinery and Modern Industry. 493

to increase the supply of raw material in the same way, for
example, as the cotton gin augmented the production of
cotton.1 On the other hand; the cheapness of the articles pro
duced by machinery, and the improved means of transport
and communication furnish the weapons for conquering foreign
markets. By mining-handicraft production in other countries,
machinery forcibly converts them into fields for the supply of
its raw material. In this way East India was compelled to
produce cotton, wool, hemp, jute, and indigo for Great
Britain.2 By constantly making a part of the hands "super
numerary," modern industry, in all countries where it has
taken root, gives a spur to emigration and to the colonization
of foreign lands, which are thereby converted into settlements
for growing the raw material of the mother country; just as
Australia, for example, was converted into a colony for grow
ing wool.3 A new and international division of labour, a
division suited to the requirements of the chief centres of
modern industry springs up, and converts one part of the globe
into a chiefly agricultural field of production, for supplying
the other part which remains a chiefly industrial field. This
evolution hangs together with radical changes in agriculture
which we need not here further inquire into.4

1 Other ways in which machinery affects the production of raw material will be
mentioned in the third book.

* EXPORT Ot COTTON FROM INDIA TO GREAT BRITAIN.

1846.— 34,540,143 Ibs. I860.— 204,141,168 Ibs. 1865.— 445,947,600 Ibs.

•EXPORT or WOOL FROM INDIA TO GREAT BRITAIN.
1846.— 4,570,581 Ibs. I860.— 20,214,173 Ibs. 1865.— 20,679,111 Ibs.

EXPORT Ot WOOL FROM THE CAPE TO GREAT BRITAIN.

—-2,958,457 Ibs. I860.— 16,574,345 Ibs. 1865.— 29,920,628 Iba.

EXPORT OF WOOL FROM AUSTRALIA TO GREAT BRITAIN.
1846.— 21,789,346 Ibs. I860.— 59,166,616 Ibs. 1865.— 109,734,261 Ibs.

4 The economical development of the United States is itself a product of European,
more especially of English modern industry. In their present form (1866) the
States must still be considered a European colony. Note to the 4th German
edition. — Since then the United States has developed into the second industrial
country of the world, without thereby losing its colonial character entirely. F. E. —

EXPORT OF COTTON FROM THE UNITED STATES TO GREAT BRITAIN.

1846.— 401,949,393 Ibs. 1852.— 765,630,543 Ibs. 1859.— 961,707,264 Ibs. I860.—
1,115,890,608 Ibs.

Capitalist Production.

On the motion of llr. Gladstone, the House of Commons
ordered, on the 17th February, 1867, a return of the total
quantities of grain, corn, and flour, of all sorts, imported into,
and exported from, the United Kingdom, between the years
1831 and 1866. I give below a summary of the result. The
flour is given in quarters of corn.

QUINQUENNIAL PERIODS AND THE YEAR 1866.

ANNUAL AVERAGE.

1831-1835.

1836-1840.

1841-1845.

1846-1850

Import (Qrs.) -

1,096,373

2,389,729

2,843,865

8,776,55:

Rxport

225,363

251,770

139,056

155,46:

Excess of Import
over export • -

871,110

2,137,959

2,704,809

8,621,091

POPULATION.

Yearly average in
each period, - -

24,621,107

25,929,507

27,262,569

27,797,598

Average quantity of
corn, &c., in qrs.,
consumed annu
ally per head over
and above the
home produce con
sumed, . - - -

0-036

0-082

0-099

0-310

EXPORT OF CORN, &C., FROM THE UNITED STATES TO GREAT BRITAIN.

1850.

1862.

Wheat,

cwts, 16,202,312

41,033,503

Barley,

8,669,663

6,624,800

Oats,

3,174,801

4,426,994

Rye,

388,749

7,108

Flour,

3,819,440

7,207,113

Buckwheat, cwts. 1054

19,571

1850.

1862.

Maize,

cwts. ... 5,473,161

11,694,818

Bere or Bigg (a sort of 1 2Q39
Barley), cwts. J

7674

Peas, c

wts. fill.«20

1,024.728

Beans, " 1,828,972

8,037,137

Total

exports, . 34,365,801

74,083,361

Machinery and Modern Industry.

495

QUINQUENNIAL PERIODS, &c.— ( CONTINUED. )

ANNUAL AVERAGE.

1851-1855.

1856-1860.

1861-1865.

1866.

Import (Qrs.) • •

8,345,237

10,912,612

15,009,871

16,457,340

Export

307,491

341,150

302,754

216,218

Excess of Import
over export

8,037,746

10,572,462

14,707,117

16,241,122

POPULATION.

Yearly average in
each period, - -

27,572,923

28,391,544

29,381,460

29,936,404

Average quantity of
corn, &c., in qrs.,
consumed annu
ally per head over
and above the
home produce con
sumed, - - - -

0-291

0-372

0-543

The enormous power, inherent in the factory system, of ex
panding by jumps, and the dependence of that system on the
markets of the world, necessarily beget feverish production,
followed by over-filling of the markets, whereupon contraction
of the markets brings on crippling of production. The life of
modern industry becomes a series of periods of moderate
activity, prosperity, over-production, crisis and stagnation.
The uncertainty and instability to which machinery subjects
the employment, and consequently the conditions of existence,
of the operatives become normal, owing to these periodic
changes of the industrial cycle. Except in the periods of pros
perity, there rages between the capitalists the most furious
combat for the share of each in the markets. This share is
directly proportional to the cheapness of the product. Besides
the rivalry that this struggle begets in the application of
improved machinery for replacing labour-power, and of new
methods of production, there also comes a time in every indus
trial cycle, when a forcible reduction of wages beneath the

496 Capitalist Production.

value of labour-power, is attempted for the purpose of cheap
ening commodities.1

A necessary condition, therefore, to the growth of the num
ber of facto ry hands, is a proportionally much more rapid
growth of the amount of capital invested in mills. This
growth, however, is conditioned by the ebb and flow of the
industrial cycle. It is, besides, constantly interrupted by the
technical progress that at one time virtually supplies the place
of new workmen, at another, actually displaces old ones. This
qualitative change in mechanical industry continually dis
charges hands from the factory, or shuts its doors against th«3
fresh stream of recruits, while the purely quantitative exten
sion of the factories absorbs not only the men thrown out of
work, but also fresh contingents. The workpeople are thus
continually both repelled and attracted, hustled from pillar to
post, while, at the same time, constant changes take place ir.
the sex, age, and skill of the levies.

The lot of the factory operatives will be best depicted by tak
ing a rapid survey of the course of the English cotton industry.

From 1770 to 1815 this trade was depressed or stagnant for

1 In an appeal made in July, 1866, to the Trade Societies of England, by the
shoemakers of Leicester, who had been thrown on the streets by a lock-out, it is
stated: "Twenty years ago the Leicester shoe trade was revolutionised by the
introduction of riveting in the place of stitching. At that time good wages could
be earned. Great competition was shown between the different firms as to which
could turn out the neatest article. Shortly afterwards, however, a worse kind of
competition sprang up, namely, that of underselling one another in the market.
The injurious consequences soon manifested themselves in reductions of wages,
and so sweepingly quick was the fall in the price of labour, that many firms now
pay only one half of the original wages. And yet, though wages sink lower and
lower, profits appear, with each alteration in the scale of wages, to increase." Even
bad times are utilized by the manufacturers, for making exceptional profits by ex
cessive lowering of wages, i.e., by a direct robbery of the labourer's means of sub
sistence. One example (it has reference to the crisis in the Coventry silk weaving) :
"From information I have received from manufacturers as well as workmen, there
seems to be no doubt that wages have been reduced to a greater extent than eithel
the competition of the foreign producers, or other circumstances have rendered
necessary . . . the majority of weavers are working at a reduction of 30 to 40
per cent, in their wages. A piece of ribbon for making which the weaver got 6s.
or 7s. five years back, now only brings them 3s. 3d. or 3s. 6d. ; other work is now
priced at 2s. and 2s. 3d. which was formerly priced at 4s. and 4s. 3d. The
reduction in wage seems to have been carried to a greater extent than is neces
sary for increasing demand. Indeed, the reduction in the cost of weaving, in
the case of many descriptions of ribbons, has not been accompanied by any cor
responding reduction in the selling price of the manufactured article." (Mr. F. D.
Longe's Report. "Ch. Emp. Com., V. Rep., 1866," p. 114, 1.)

Machinery and Modern Industry. 497

5 years only. During this period of 45 years the English
manufacturers had a monopoly of machinery and of the mark
ets of the world. From 1815 to 1821 depression; 1822 and
1823 prosperity ; 1824 abolition of the laws against Trades'
Unions, great extension of factories everywhere; 1825 crisis;

1826 great misery and riots among the factory operatives;

1827 slight improvement; 1828 great increase in power-looms,
and in exports; 1829 exports, especially to India, surpass all
former years; 1830 glutted markets, great distress; 1831 to

1833 continued depression, the monopoly of the trade with
India and China withdrawn from the East India Company;

1834 great increase of factories and machinery, shortness of
hands. The new poor law furthers the migration of agricul
tural labourers into the factory districts. The country districts
swept of children. White slave trade; 1835 great prosperity,
contemporaneous starvation of the handloom weavers; 1836
great prosperity; 1837 and 1838 depression and crisis; 1839
revival ; 1840 great depression, riots, calling out of the mili
tary; 1841 and 1842 frightful suffering among the factory
operatives ; 1842 the manufacturers lock the hands out of the
factories in order to enforce the repeal of the Corn Laws.
The operatives stream in thousands into the towns of Lanca
shire and Yorkshire, are driven back by the military, and
their leaders brought to trial at Lancaster; 1843 great misery;
1844 revival; 1845 great prosperity; 1846 continued improve
ment at first, then reaction. Repeal of the Corn Laws ; 1847
crisis, general reduction of wages by 10 and more per cent,
in honour of the "big loaf;" 1848 continued depression;
Manchester under military protection; 1849 revival; 1850
prosperity; 1851 falling prices, low wages, frequent strikes;
1852 improvement begins, strikes continue, the manufacturers
threaten to import foreign hands; 1853 increasing exports.
Strike for 8 months, and great misery at Preston ; 1854
prosperity, glutted markets; 1855 news of failures stream in
from the United States, Canada, and the Eastern markets;
1856 great prosperity; 1857 crisis; 1858 improvement; 1859
great prosperity, increase in factories; 1860 Zenith of the
English cotton trade, the Indian, Australian, and other mark-

498 Capitalist Production.

ets so glutted with goods that even in 1863 they had not ab
sorbed the whole lot ; the French Treaty of Commerce, enorm
ous growth of factories and machinery; 1861 prosperity con
tinues for a time, reaction, the American civil war, cotton
famine; 1862 to 1863 complete collapse.

The history of the cotton famine is too characteristic to dis
pense with dwelling upon it for a moment From the indi
cations as to the condition of the markets of the world in 1860
and 1861, we see that the cotton famine came in the nick of
time for the manufacturers, and was to some extent advan
tageous to them, a fact that was acknowledged in the reports
of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, proclaimed in Par
liament by Palmerston and Derby, and confirmed by events.1
No doubt, among the 2887 cotton mills in the United Kingdom
in 1861, there were many of small size. According to the
report of Mr. A. Redgrave, out of the 2109 mills included in
his district, 392 or 19% employed less than ten horse-power
each ; 345, or 16% employed 10 II. P., and less than 20 H. P. ;
while 1372 employed upwards of 20 II. P.2 The majority of
the small mills were weaving sheds, built during the period pf
prosperity after 1858, for the most part by speculators, of
whom one supplied the yarn, another the machinery, a third
the buildings, and were worked by men who had been over
lookers, or by other persons of small means. These small
manufacturers mostly went to the wall. The same fate would
have overtaken them in the commercial crisis that was staved
off only by the cotton famine. Although they formed one-
third of the total number of manufacturers, yet their mills
absorbed a much smaller part of the capital invested in the
cotton trade. As to the extent of the stoppage, it appears
from authentic estimates, that in October 1862, 60.3% of the
spindles, and 58% of the looms were standing. This refers to
the cotton trade as a whole, and, of course, requires consider
able modification for individual districts. Only very few mills
worked full time (60 hours a week), the remainder worked at
intervals. Even in those few cases where full time was
worked, and at the customary rate of piece-wage, the weekly

1 Conf. Reports of Insp. of Fact. 81st October, 1862, p. 30. • L c., p. 19.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 499

wages of the operatives necessarily shrank, owing to good
cotton being replaced by bad, Sea Island by Egyptian (in fine
spinning mills), American and Egyptian by Surat, and pure
cotton by mixing of waste and Surat. The shorter fibre of
the Surat cotton and its dirty condition, the greater fragility
of the thread, the substitution of all sorts of heavy ingredients
for flour in sizing the warps, all these lessened the speed of the
machinery, or the number of looms that could be superin
tended by one weaver, increased the labour caused by defects
in the machinery, and reduced the piece-wage by reducing the
mass of the product turned off. Where Surat cotton was used
the loss to the operatives when on full time, amounted to 20,
30, and more per cent. But besides this, the majority of the
manufacturers reduced the rate of piece-wage by 5, 7-J, and 10
per cent. We can therefore conceive the situation of those
hands who were employed for only 3, 3£ or 4 days a week, of
for only 6 hours a day. Even in 1863, after a comparative
improvement had set in, the weekly wages of spinners and of
weavers were 3s. 4d., 3s. 10d., 4s. 6d. and 5s. Id.1 Even in
this miserable state of things, however, the inventive spirit of
the master never stood still, but was exercised in making
deductions from wages. These were to some extent inflicted
•as a penalty for defects in the finished article that were really
due to his bad cotton and to his unsuitable machinery. More
over, where the manufacturer owned the cottages of the work
people, he paid himself his rents by deducting the amount
from these miserable wages. Mr. Redgrave tells us of self-
acting minders (operatives who manage a pair of self-acting
mules) "earning at the end of a fortnight's full work 8s. lid.,
and that from this sum was deduced the rent of the house,
the manufacturer, however, returning half the rent as a gift.
The minders took away the sum of 6s. lid. In many places
the self-acting minders ranged from 5s. to 9s. per week, and
the weavers from 2s. to 6s. ptr week, during the latter part of
1862. "2 Even when working short time the rent was fre
quently deducted from the wages of the operatives.8 No

1 "Rep. Insp. of Fact., 81st October, 1865," pp. 41-46.
«"Rep, In«p. of Fact., 81st October, 1883." • 1. c., p. 61.

500 Capitalist Production.

wonder that in some parts of Lancashire a kind of famine
fever broke out But more characteristic than all this, was
the revolution that took place in the process of production at
the expense of the workpeople. Experimenta in corpore vili,
like those of anatomists on frogs, were formally made. "Al
though," says Mr. Redgrave, "I have given the actual earnings
of the operatives in the several mills, it does not follow that
they earn the same amount week by week. The operatives
are subject to great fluctuation from the constant experi
mentalizing of the manufacturers .... the earnings of the
operatives rise and fall with the quality of the cotton mixings ;
sometimes they have been within 15 per cent, of former
earnings, and then, in a week or two, they have fallen off frorr.
50 to 60 per cent."1 These experiments were not made solely
at the expense of the workman's means of subsistence. His
five senses also had to pay the penalty. "The people who are
employed in making up Surat cotton complain very much.
They inform me, on opening the bales of cotton there is an
intolerable smell, which causes sickness .... In the mixing,
scribbling and carding rooms, the dust and dirt which are
disengaged, irritate the air passages, and give rise to cough
and difficulty of breathing. A disease of the skin, no doubt
from the irritation of the dirt contained in the Surat cotton,
also prevails . . . The fibre being so short, a great amount of
size, both animal and vegetable, is used .... Bronchitis is
more prevalent owing to the dust. Inflammatory sore throat
is common, from the same cause. Sickness and dyspepsia are
produced by the frequent breaking of the weft, when the
weaver sucks the weft through the eye of the shuttle." On
the other hand, the substitutes for flour were a Fortunatus'
purse to the manufacturers, by increasing the weight of the
yarn. They caused "15 Ibs. of raw material to weigh 26 Ibs.
after it was woven."2 In the Report of Inspectors of Factories
for 30th April, 1864, we read as follows: "The trade is avail
ing itself of this resource at present to an extent which is
even discreditable. I have heard on good authority of a cloth
weighing 8 Ibs. which was made of 5^ Ibs. cotton and 2} Ibs.

*L c., pp. 50-51. M. c., pp. 82-63.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 501

size; and of another cloth weighing 5£ Ibs., of which 2 Ibs.
was size. These were ordinary export shirtings. In cloths of
other descriptions, as much as 50 per cent, size is sometimes
added ; so that a manufacturer may, and does truly boast, thai
he is getting rich by selling cloth for less money per pound
than he paid for the mere yarn of which they are composed."1
But the workpeople had to suffer, not only from the experi
ments of the manufacturers inside the mills, and of the muni
cipalities outside, not only from reduced wages and absence of
work, from want and from charity, and from the eulogistic
speeches of lords and commons. "Unfortunate females who,
in consequence of the cotton famine, were at its commence
ment thrown out of employment, and have thereby become
outcasts of society; and now though trade has revived, and
work is plentiful, continue members of that unfortunate class,
and are likely to continue so. There are also in the borough
more youthful prostitutes than I have known for the last 25
years."2

We find then, in the first 45 years of the English cotton
trade, from 1770 to 1815, only 5 years of crisis and stagna
tion ; but this was the period of monopoly. The second period
from 1815 to 1863 counts, during its 48 years, only 20 years
of revival and prosperity against 28 of depression and stag
nation. Between 1815 and 1830 the competition with the
continent of Europe and with the United States sets in.
After 1833, the extension of the Asiatic markets is enforced
by "destruction of the human race" (the wholesale extinction
of Indian handloom weavers). After the repeal of the Corn
Laws, from 1846 to 1863, there are 8 years of moderate
activity and prosperity against 9 years of depression and stag
nation. The condition of the adult male operatives, even
during the years of prosperity, may be judged from the note
subjoined.8

1 Rep. &c. 30th April, 1864, p. 27.

1 From a letter of Mr. Harris, Chief Constable of Bolton, in Rep. of Insp. of
Fact., 31st October, 1865, pp. 61-62.

* In an appeal, dated 1863, of the factory operatives of Lancashire, &c., for the
purpose of forming a society for organised emigration, we find the following: "That
a large emigration of factory workers is now absolutely essential to raise them

502 Capitalist Production.

SECTION 8. BEVOLUTION EFFECTED IN MANUFACTURE,

HANDICKAFTS. AND DOMESTIC INDUSTRY BY MODERN IN
DUSTRY.

a. Overthrow of Co-operation based on Handicraft and on the
Division of Labour.

We have seen how machinery does away with co-operation
based on handicrafts, and with manufacture based on the divi
sion of handicraft labour. An example of the first sort is the
mowing-machine ; it replaces co-operation between mowers.
A striking example of the second kind, is the needle-making
machine. According to Adam Smith, 10 men, in his day,
made in co-operation, over 48,000 needles a-day. On the
other hand, a single needle-machine makes 145,000 in a work
ing day of 11 hours. One woman or one girl superintends
four such machines, and so produces near upon 600,000
needles in a day, and upwards of 3,000,000 in a week.1 A
single machine, when it takes the place of co-operation or of
manufacture, may itself serve as the basis of an industry of a

from their present prostrate condition, few will deny; but to show that a con
tinuous stream of emigration is at all times demanded, and, without which it is
impossible for them to maintain their position in ordinary times, we beg to call
attention to the subjoined facts: — In 1814 the official value of cotton goods ex
ported was £17,665,378, whilst the real marketable value was £20,070,824. In
1858 the official value of cotton goods exported, was £182,221,681; but the real
or marketable value was only £43,001,322, being a ten-fold quantity sold for little
more than double the former price. To produce results so disadvantageous to the
country generally, and to the factory workers in particular, several causes have
co-operated, which, had circumstances permitted, we should have brought more
prominently under your notice; suffice it for the present to say that the most
obvious one is the constant redundancy of labour, without which a trade so ruinous
in its effects never could have been carried on, and which requires a constantly
extending market to save it from annihilation. Our cotton mills may be brought
to a stand by the periodical stagnations of trade, which, under present arrange
ments, are as inevitable as death itself; but the human mind is constantly at
work, and although we believe we are under the mark in stating that six millions
of persons have left these shores during the last 25 years, yet, from the natural
increase of population, and the displacement of labour to cheapen production, a
large percentage of the male adults in the most prosperous times find it impossible
to obtain work in factories on any conditions whatever." ("Reports of Insp. of
Fact., 30th April, 1863," pp. 51-52. We shall, in a later chapter, see how our
friends, the manufacturers, endeavored, during the catastrophe in the cotton trade,
to prevent by every means, including State interference, the emigration of the
operatives.

»"Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Report, 1864," p. 108, n. 447.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 503

handicraft character. Still, such a return to handicrafts
is hut a transition to the factory system, "which, as a rule,
makes its appearance so soon as the human muscles are re
placed, for the purpose of driving the machines, by a me
chanical motive power, such as steam or water. Here and
there, but in any case Imly for a time, an industry may be
carried on, on a small scale, by means of mechanical power.
This is effected by hiring steam power, as is done in some
of the Birmingham trades, or by the use of small caloric-
engines, as in some branches of weaving.1 In the Coventry
silk weaving industry the experiment of "cottage factories"
was tried. In the centre of a square surrounded by rows of
cottages, an engine-house was built and the engine connected
by shafts with the looms in the cottages. In all cases the
power was hired at so much per loom. The rent was pay
able weekly, whether the looms worked or not. Each cottage
held from 2 to 6 looms; some belonged to the weaver, some
were bought on credit, some were hired. The struggle be
tween these cottage factories and the factory proper, lasted
over 12 years. It ended with the complete ruin of the 300
cottage-factories.2 "Wherever the nature of the process did
not involve production on a large scale, the new industries
that have sprung up in the last few decades, such as envelope
making, steel-pen making, £c., have, as a general rule, first
passed through the handicraft stage, and then the manufactur
ing stage, as short phases of transition to the factory stage.
The transition is very difficult in those cases where the pro
duction of the article by manufacture consists, not of a series
of graduated processes, but of a great number of discon
nected ones. This circumstance formed a great hindrance to
15 years ago, a machine was invented that automatically per
formed 6 separate operations at once. The first steel-pens
were supplied by the handicraft system, in the year 1820, at
£7 4s, the gross; in 1830 they were supplied by manufacture

1 In the United States the restoration in this way, of handicrafts based on
machinery is frequent; and therefore, when the inevitable transition to the factory
system shall take place, the ensuing concentration will, compared with Europe and
even with England, stride on in seven-league boots.

1 See "Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 81st Oct., 1865," p. 64.

504 Capitalist Production.

at 8s., and to-day the factory system supplies them to the
trade at from 2s. to 6d. the gross.1

•

b. Re-action of the Factory System on Manufacture and
Domestic Industries.

Along with the development of the factory system and of
the revolution in agriculture that accompanies it, production
in all the other branches of industry not only extends, hut
alters its character. The principle, carried out in the factory
system, of analysing the process of production into its con
stituent phases, and of solving the problems thus proposed by
the application of mechanics, of chemistry, and of the whol-3
range of the natural sciences, becomes the determining prin
ciple everywhere. Hence, machinery squeezes itself into th<i
manufacturing industries first for one detail process, then fo:*
another. Thus the solid crystal of their organisation, based
on the old division of labour, becomes dissolved, and makes
way for constant changes. Independently of this, a radica"
change takes place in the composition of the collective labourer.
a change of the persons working in combination. In contrast
with the manufacturing period, the division of labour is
thenceforth based, wherever possible, on the employment of
women, of children of all ages, and of unskilled labourers,
in one word, on cheap labour, as it is characteristically called
in England. This is the case not only with all production on
a large scale, whether employing machinery or not, but also
with the so-called domestic industry, whether carried on in
the houses of the workpeople or in small workshops. This
modern so-called domestic industry has nothing, except the
name, in common with the old-fashioned domestic industry,
the existence of which presupposes independent urban handi
crafts, independent peasant farming, and above all, a dwell
ing-house for the labourer and his family. That old-fash-

1 Mr. Gillott erected in Birmingham the first steel-pen factory on a large scale. It
produced, so early as 1851, over 180,000,000 of pens yearly, and consumed 120 tons
of steel. Birmingham has the monopoly of this industry in the United Kingdom,
and at present produces thousands of millions of steel pens. According to the
Census of 1861, the number of persons employed was 1428, of whom 1268 were
females from 5 years of age upwards.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 505

ioned industry has now been converted into an outside de
partment of the factory, the manufactory, or the warehouse.
Besides the factory operatives, the manufacturing workmen
and the handicraftsmen, whom it concentrates in large masses
at one spot, and directly commands, capital also sets in mo
tion, hy means of invisible threads, another army ; that of the
workers in the domestic industries, who dwell in the large
towns and are also scattered over the face of the country. An
example: The shirt factory of Messrs. Tille at Londonderry,
which employs 1000 operatives in the factory itself, and 9000
people spread up and down the country and working in their
own houses.1

The exploitation of cheap and immature labour-power is
carried out in a more shameless manner in modern Manu- \l/
facture than in the factory proper. This is because the tech
nical foundation of the factory system, namely, the substi
tution of machines for muscular power, and the light char
acter of the labour, is almost entirely absent in Manufacture,
and at the same time women and over-young children are
subjected, in a most unconscionable way, to the influence of
poisonous or injurious substances. This exploitation is more
shameless in the so-called domestic industry than in manu
factures, and that because the power of resistance in the
labourers decreases with their dissemination ; because a whole
series of plundering parasites insinuate themselves between
the employer and the workman ; because a domestic industry
has always to compete, either with the factory system, or with
manufacturing in the same branch of production ; because
poverty robs the workman of the conditions most essential to
his labour, of space, light and ventilation ; because employ
ment becomes more and more irregular; and, finally, because
in these the last resorts of the masses made "redundant" by
Modern Industry and Agriculture, competition for work at
tains its maximum. Economy in the means .of production,
first systematically carried out in the factory system, and
there, from the very beginning, coincident with the most reck
less squandering of labour-power, and robbery of the con-

1 Cb. Empl. Comm., II. Rep. 1864, p. LXVIIL, n. 415.

506 Capitalist Production.

ditions normally requisite for labour — this economy now
shows its antagonistic and murderous side more and more in
a given branch of industry, the less the social productive
power of labour and the technical basis for a combination of
processes are developed in that branch.

c. Modern Manufacture.

I now proceed, by a few examples, to illustrate the prin
ciples laid down above. As a matter of fact, the reader is
already familiar with numerous instances given in the chapter
on the working day. In the hardware manufactures of
Birmingham and the neighborhood, there are employed,
mostly in very heavy work, 30,000 children and young per
sons, besides 10,000 women. There they are to be seen in
the unwholesome brass-foundries, button factories, enamelling,
galvanizing, and lackering works.1 Owing to the excessive
labour of their workpeople, both adult and non-adult, certair
London houses where newspapers and books are printed have
got the ill-omened name of "slaughter-houses."2 Similar ex
cesses are practised in bookbinding, where the victims are
chiefly women, girls, and children ; young persons have to do
heavy work in rope-walks and night-work in salt mines, candle
manufactories, and chemical works ; young people are worked
to death at turning the looms in silk weaving, when it is not
carried on by machinery.3 One of the most shameful, the
most dirty, and the worst paid kinds of labour, and one on
which women and young girls are by preference employed, is
the sorting of rags. It is well known that Great Britain,
apart from its own immense store of rags, is the emporium
for the rag trade of the whole world. They flow in from
Japan, from the most remote States of South America, and
from the Canary Islands. But the chief sources of their
supply are Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Egypt, Turkey,
Belgium, and Holland. They are used for manure, for mak-

1 And now forsooth children are employed at file-cutting in Sheffield.

2Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. 1866, p. 3, n. 24, p. 6, n. 55, 56, p. 7, n. 59, 60.

* L. c. pp. 114, 115, n. 6, 7. The commissioner justly remarks that though as
a rule machines take the place of men, here literally young persons replace
machines.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 507

ing bed-flocks, for shoddy, and they serve as the raw material
of paper. The rag-sorters are the medium for the spread
of small-pox and other infectious diseases, and they themselves
are the first victims.1 A classical example of over-work, of
hard and inappropriate labour, and of its brutaiising effects
on the workman from his childhood upwards, is afforded not
only by coal-mining and miners generally, but also by tile and
brick making, in which industry the recently invented ma
chinery is, in England, used only here and there. Between
May and September the work lasts from 5 in the morning till
8 in the evening, and where the drying is done in the open
air, it often lasts from 4 in the morning till 9 in the even
ing. Work from 5 in the morning till 7 in the evening is
considered "reduced" and "moderate." Both boys and girls
of 6 and even of 4 years of age are employed. They work for
the same number of hours, often longer, than the adults. The
work is hard and the summer heat increases the exhaustion.
In a certain tile field at Mosley, e.g., a young woman, 2i
years of age, was in the habit of making 2000 tiles a day, with
the assistance of 2 little girls, who carried the clay for her,
and stacked the tiles. These girls carried daily 10 tons up
the slippery sides of the clay pits, from a depth of 30 feetv
and then for a distance of 210 feet. "It is impossible for a
child to pass through the purgatory of a tile-field without
great moral degradation . . . the low language, which
they are accustomed to hear from their tenderest years, the
filthy, indecent, and shameless habits, amidst which, unknow
ing, and half wild, they grow up, make them in after life
lawless, abandoned, dissolute. ... A frightful source of
demoralization is the mode of living. Each moulder, who ie
always a skilled labourer, and the chief of a group, supplies
his 7 subordinates with board and lodging in his cottage.
Whether members of his family or not, the men, boys, and
girls all sleep in the cottage, which contains generally two,
exceptionally 3 rooms, all on the ground floor, and badly venti
lated. These people are so exhausted after the day's work,

1 See th« Report on the rag trade, and numerous detail* in Public Health, VIII.
Rep. Lond. 1866, app. pp. 196, 208.

508 Capitalist Production.

that neither the rules of health, of cleanliness, nor of decency
are in the least observed. Many of these cottages are models
of untidiness, dirt, and dust . . . The greatest evil of
the system that employs young girls on this sort of work, con
sists in this, that, as a rule, it chains them fast from child
hood for the whole of their after-life to the most abandoned
rabble. They become rough, foul-mouthed boys, before Na
ture has taught them that they are women. Clothed in a
few dirty rags, the legs naked far above the knees, hair and
face besmeared with dirt, they learn to treat all feelings of
decency and of shame with contempt. During meal-times
they lie at full length in the fields, or watch the boys bathing
in a neighboring canal. Their heavy day's work at length
completed, they put on better clothes, and accompany the mer.
to the public houses/' That excessive insobriety is prevalent
from childhood upwards among the whole of this class, is.
only natural. "The worst is that the brickmakers despair of
themselves. You might as well, said one of the better kind
to a chaplain of South allfield, try to raise and improve the
devil as a brickie, sir!"1

As to the manner in which capital effects an economy in
the requisites of labour, in modern Manufacture (in which I
include all workshops of larger size, except factories proper),
official and most ample material bearing on it is to be found
in the Public Health Keports IV. (1863) and VI. (1864).
The description of the workshops, more especially those of the
London printers and tailors, surpasses the most loathsome
phantasies of our romance writers. The effect on the health
of the workpeople is self-evident Dr. Simon, the chief
medical officer of the Privy Council and the official editor of
the "Public Health Keport," says: "In my fourth Keport
(1863) I showed, how it is practically impossible for the
workpeople to insist upon that which is their first sanitary
right, viz., the right that, no matter what the work for which
their employer brings them together, the labour, so far as it
depends upon him, should be freed from all avoidably un-

1 Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep., 1866, xvi., n. 96, 97, and p. 130, n. 39, 61. See also
III. Rep., 1864, p. 48, 56.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 509

wholesome conditions. I pointed out> that while the work
people are practically incapable of doing themselves this sani
tary justice, they are unable to obtain any effective support
from the paid adrninstrations of the sanitary police. . . .
The life of myriads of workmen and workwomen is now use
lessly tortured and shortened by the never-ending physical
suffering that their mere occupation begets."1 In illustration
of the way in which the workrooms influence the state of
health, Dr. Simon gives the following table of mortality.2

Number of persons of all

Industries compared

Death rate per 100,000 men in

ages employed in the re

as regards

the respective industries between

spective industries.

health.

the stated ages.

Agriculture in

Age 2S-35-

Age 35-45-

Age 45-55.

958,265

England & Wales

743

805

1,H5

22,301 men ~|
12,379 women J

London tailors

958

1,262

2,093

( 13,803

London printers

894

1,747

2,367

b. Modern Domestic Industry.

I now come to the so-called domestic industry. In order to
^et an idea of the horrors of this sphere, in which capital
conducts its exploitation in the background of modern me
chanical industry, one must go to the apparently quiet idyllic
trade of nail-making,3 carried on in a few remote villages of
England. In this place, however, it will be enough to give a

1 Public Health. Sixth Rep. Lend. 1864, p. 81.

8 1. c., p. 30. Dr. Simon remarks that the mortality among the London tailors and
printers between the ages of 25 and 35 is in fact much greater, because the em
ployers in London obtain from the country a great number of young people up to 30
years of age, as "apprentices" and "improvers," who come for the purpose of being
perfected in their trade. These figure in the census as Londoners, they swell out
the number of heads on which the London death-rate is calculated, without adding
proportionally to the number of deaths in that place. The greater part of them
in fact return to the country, and especially in cases of severe illness. (1. c.)

* I allude here to hammered nails, as distinguished from nails cut out and made
by machinery. See Child. Empl. Comm., Third Rep. p. xi, p. xix, n. 125-130, p.
68, n. 11, p. 114, n. 487. t>. 137, n. 674-

510 Capitalist Production.

few examples from those branches of the lace-making and
straw-plaiting industries that are not yet carried on by the
aid of machinery, and that as yet do not compete with
branches carried on in factories or in manufactories.

Of the 150,000 persons employed in England in the pro
duction of lace, about 10,000 fall under the authority of the
Factory Act? 1861. Almost the whole of the remaining 140,-
000 are women, young persons, and children of both sexes,
the male sex, however, being weakly represented. The state
of health of this cheap material for exploitation will be seen
from the following table, computed by Dr. Trueman, physi
cian to the Nottingham General Dispensary. Out of 686 fe
male patients who were lace makers, most of them betweer
the ages of 17 and 24, the number of consumptive ones were:

1852.— 1 in 45. 1855.— 1 in 18. 1858.— 1 in 15.

1853.— 1 in 28. 1856. — 1 in 15. 1859. — 1 in 9.

1854.— 1 in 17. 1857.— 1 in 13. I860.— 1 in 8.

1861.— 1 in 8.1

This progress in the rate of consumption ought to suffice for
the most optimist of progressists, and for the biggest hawker
of lies among the Free Trade bagmen of Germany.

The Factory Act of 1861 regulates the actual making of the
lace, so far as it is done by machinery, and this is the rule in
England. The branches that we are now about to examine,
solely with regard to those of the workpeople who work at
home, and not those who work in manufactories or ware
houses, fall into two divisions, viz., (1), finishing; (2), mend
ing. The former gives the finishing touches to the machine-
made lace, and includes numerous sub-divisions.

The lace finishing is done either in what are called "Mis
tresses' Houses,'' or by women in their own houses, with or
without the help of their children. The women who keep the
"Mistresses' Houses" are themselves poor. The workroom is
in a private house. The mistresses take orders from manu
facturers, or from warehousemen, and employ as many women,

Cb. Empl. Comm., 17, Rep., •»-. xxii., jr.. 16k

Machinery and Modern Industry. 511

girls, and young children as the size of their rooms and the
fluctuating demand of the business will allow. The number
of the workwomen employed in these workrooms varies from
20 to 40 in some, and from 10 to 20 in others. The average
age at which the children commence work is six years, but in
many cases it is below five. The usual working hours are
from 8 in the morning till eight in the evening, with 1J hours
for meals, which are taken at irregular intervals, and often in
the foul workrooms. When business is brisk, the labour fre
quently lasts from 8 or even 6 o'clock in the morning till 10,
11, or 12 o'clock at night. In English barracks the regulation
space allotted to each soldier is 500-600 cubic feet, and in the
military hospitals 1200 cubic feet. But in those finishing
styes there are but 67 to 100 cubic feet to each person. At
the same time the oxygen of the air is consumed by gas-lights.
In order to keep the lace clean, and although the floor is tiled
or flagged, the children are often compelled, even in winter, to
pull off their shoes. "It is not at all uncommon in Notting
ham to find 14 to 20 children huddled together in a small
room, of, perhaps, not more than 12 feet square, and employed
for 15 hours out of the 24, at work that of itself is exhausting,
from its weariness and monotony, and is besides carried on
under every possible unwholesome condition. . . . Even
the very youngest children work with a strained attention and
a rapidity that is astonishing, hardly ever giving their fingers
rest or slowering their motion. If a question be asked them,
they never raise their eyes from their work for fear of losing
a single moment." The "long stick" is used by the mistresses
as a stimulant more and more as the working hours are pro
longed. "The children gradually tire and becomes as restless
as birds towards the end of their long detention at an occupa
tion that is monotonous, eye-straining, and exhausting from
the uniformity in the posture of the body. Their work is like
slavery."1 When women and their children work at home,
which now-a-days means in a hired room, often in a garret,
the state of things is, if possible, still worse. This sort of
work is giving out within a circle of 80 miles radius from Not-

1 Cb. Empl. Comra., II. Rep., 1804, pp, xix., xx., xxi.

512 Capitalist Production.

tingham. On leaving the warehouses at 9 or 10 o'clock at
night, the children are often given a bundle of lace to take
home with them and finish. The .Pharisee of a capitalist
represented by one of his servants, accompanies this action, of
course, with the unctuous phrase : "That's for mother," yet he
knows well enough that the poor children must sit up and
help.1

t Pillow lace making is chiefly carried on in England in two
agricultural districts one, the Honiton lace district, extending
from 20 to 30 miles along the south coast of Devonshire, and
including a few places in North Devon ; the other comprising
a great part of the counties of Buckingham, Bedford, ard
Northampton, and also the adjoining portions of 'Oxfordshire
and Huntingdonshire. The cottages of the agricultural la
bourers are the places where the work is usually carried on.
Many manufacturers employ upwards of 3000 of these lace
makers, who are chiefly children and young persons of the f<>
male sex exclusively. The state of things described as in*
eidental to lace finishing is here repeated, save that instead
of the "mistresses' houses," we find what are called "lace
schools," kept by poor women in their cottages. From their
fifth year and often earlier, until their twelfth or fifteenti
year, the children work in these schools; during the first year
the very young ones work from four to eight hours, and later
on, from six in the morning till eight and ten o'clock at night.
"The rooms are generally the ordinary living rooms of small
cottages, the chimney stopped up to keep out draughts, tho
inmates kept warm by their own animal heat alone, and thi?
frequently in winter. In other cases, these so-called school
rooms are like small store-rooms without fire-places. . .
The overcrowding in these dens and the consequent vitiation
of the air are often extreme. Added to this is the injurious
effect of drains, privies, decomposing substances, and other
filth usual in the purileus of the smaller cottages." With re
gard to space: "In one lace school 18 girls and a mistress.
35 cubic feet to each person ; in another, where the smell was
unbearable, 18 persons and 24^ cubic feet per head. In thia

1 1. c., pp. Jan., xxvi.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 513

industry are to be found employed children of 2 and 2^
years."1

Where lace-making ends in the counties of Buckingham and
Bedford, straw-plaiting begins, and extends over a large part
of Hertfordshire and the westerly and northerly parts of
Essex. In 1861, there were 40,043 persons employed in
straw-plaiting and straw-hat making; of these 3815 were
males of all ages, the rest females, of whom 14,913, includ
ing about 7000 children, were under 20 years of age. In
the place of the lace-schools we find here the "straw-plait
schools." The children commence their instruction in straw-
plaiting generally in their 4th, often between their 3rd and
4th year. Education, of course, they get none. The children
themselves call the elementary schools, "natural schools," to
distinguish them from these blood-sucking institutions, in
which they are kept at work simply to get through the task,
generally 30 yards daily, prescribed by their half-starved
mothers. These same mothers often make them work at
home, after school is over, till 10, 11, and 12 o'clock at night.
The straw cuts their mouths, with which they constantly
moisten it, and their fingers. Dr. Ballard gives it as the
general opinion of the whole body of medical officers in Lon
don, that 300 cubic feet is the minimum space proper for
each person in a bedroom or work-room. But in the straw-
plait schools space is more sparingly allotted than in the
lace-schools, "12f, 17, 18£ and below 22 cubic feet for
each person." The smaller of these numbers, says one of
the commissioners, Mr. White, represents less space than the
half of what a child would occupy if packed in a box measur
ing 3 feet in each direction. Thus do the children enjoy life
till the age of 12 or 14. The wretched half -starved parents
think of nothing but getting as much as possible out of their
children. The latter, as soon as they are grown up, do not
care a farthing, and naturally so, for their parents, and leave
them. "It is no wonder that ignorance and vice abound in a
population so brought up. ... Their morality is at the
lowest ebb, ... a great number of the women have il-

*1. c., pp. xxix., xxx.
2G

514 Capitalist Production.

legitimate children, and that at such an immature age that
even those most conversant with criminal statistics are as
tounded."1 And the native land of these model families
is the pattern Christian country of Europe so says at least
Count Montalembert, certainly a competent au/thority on
Christianity !

Wages in the above industries, miserable as they are (the
maximum wages of a child in the straw-plait schools rising
in rare cases to 3 shillings, are reduced far below their
nominal amount by the prevalence of the truck system every
where, but especially in the lace districts.2

e. Passage of modern Manufacture, and Domestic Industry
into Modern Mechanical Industry. The hastening of
this revolution by the application of the Factory Acts to
those Industries.

The cheapening of labour-power, by sheer abuse of the
labour of women and children, by sheer robbery of every nor
mal condition requisite for working and living, and by the
sheer brutality of over-work and night-work, meets at last
with natural obstacles that cannot be overstepped. So also,
when based on these methods, do the cheapening of com
modities and capitalist exploitation in general. So soon us
this point is at last reached — and it takes many years — tie
hour has struck for the introduction of machinery, and for tie
thenceforth rapid conversion of the scattered domestic indus
tries and also of manufactures into factory industries.

An example, on the most colossal scale, of this movement is
afforded by the production of wearing apparel. This ir-
dustry) according to the classification of the Childrens' Em
ployment Commission, comprises straw-hat makers, ladies'-hat
makers, cap-makers, tailors, milliners and dressmakers, shirt -
makers, corset-makers, glove-makers, shoemakers, besides
many minor branches, such as the making of neck-ties, collars,
&c. In 1861, the number of females employed in these in
dustries, in England and Wales, amounted to 586,299, of

M. c. pp. xl, xli.

'Child, Empl. Comm. I. Rep. 1863, p. 185.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 515

these 115,242 at the least were under 20, and 16,650 under 15
years of age. The number of these workwomen in the United
Kingdom in 1861, was 750,334. The number of males em
ployed in England and Wales, in haymaking, shoe-making,
glove-making and tailoring was 437,969; of these 14,964
under 15 years, 89,285 between 15 and 20, and 333,117 over
20 years. Many of the smaller branches are not included in
these figures. But take the figures as they stand ; we then
have for England and Wales alone, according to the census
of 1861, a total of 1,024,277 persons, about as many as are
absorbed by agriculture and cattle breeding. We begin to
understand what becomes of the immense quantities of goods
conjured up by the magic of machinery, and of the enormous
masses of workpeople, which that machinery sets free.

The production of wearing apparel is carried on partly in
manufactories in whose workrooms there is but a reproduction
of that division of labour, the membra disjecta of which were
found ready to hand ; partly by small master-handicraftsmen ;
these, however, do not, as formerly, work for individual con
sumers, but for manufactories and warehouses, and to such
an extent that often whole towns and stretches of country
carry on certain branches, such as shoe-making, as a specialty ;
finally, on a very great scale by the so-called domestic workers,
who form an external department of the manufactories, ware
houses, and even of the workshops of the smaller masters.1

The raw material, &c., is supplied by mechanical industry,
the mass of cheap human material (taillable a merci et miseri-
corde) is composed of the individuals "liberated" by me
chanical industry and improved agriculture. The manu
factures of this class owed their origin chiefly to the capital
ist's need of having at hand an army ready equipped to meet
any increase of demand.2 These manufactures, nevertheless,
allowed the scattered handicrafts and domestic industries to

1 In England millinery and dressmaking are for the most part carried on, on the
premises of the employer, partly by workwomen who live there, partly by women
who live off the premises.

* Mr. White, a commissioner, visited a military clothing manufactory that employed
1000 to 1200 persons, almost all females, and a shoe manufactory with 1800 person*;
of these nearly one half were children and young persons.

516 Capitalist Production.

continue to exist as a broad foundation. The great production
of surplus-value in these branches of labour, and the pro
gressive cheapening of their articles, were and are chiefly due
to the minimum wages paid, no more than requisite for a
miserable vegetation, and to the extension of working time
up to the maximum endurable by the human organism. It
was in fact by the cheapness of the human sweat and the
human blood, which were converted into commodities, that
the markets were constantly being extended, and continue
daily to be extended ; more especially was this the case with
England's colonial markets, where, besides, English tastes and
habits prevail. At last the critical point was reached, lie
basis of the old method, sheer brutality in the exploitation of
the workpeople, accompanied more or less by a systematic di
vision of labour, no longer sufficed for the extending marke "&
and for the still more rapidly extending competition of the
capitalists. The hour struck for the advent of machinery.
The decisively revolutionary machine, the machine which at
tacks in an equal degree the whole of the numberless branches
of this sphere of production, dressmaking, tailoring, shoc-
making, sewing, hat-making, and many others, is the sewing-
machine.

Its immediate effect on the workpeople is like that of all
machinery, which, since the rise of modern industry, haa
seized upon new branches of trade. Children of too tender
an age are sent adrift The wage of the machine hands rises
compared with that of the house-workers, many of whom be
long to the poorest of the poor. That of the better situate* 1
handicraftsmen, with whom the machine competes, sinks.
The new machine hands are exclusively girls and young
women. With the help of mechanical force, they destroy
the monopoly that male labour had of the heavier work, and
they drive off from the lighter work numbers of old women
and very young children. The overpowering competition
crushes the weakest of the manual labourers. The fearful in
crease in death from starvation during the last 10 years it
London runs parallel with the extension of machine sewing.3

1 An instance. The weekly report of deaths by the Registrar General dated 26tl

Machinery and Modern Industry. 517

The new workwomen turn the machine by hand and foot, 01
by hand alone, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, ac-
cording to the weight, size and special make of the machine,
and expend a great deal of labour-power. Their occupation
is unwholesome, owing to the long hours, although in most
cases they are not so long as under the old system. Wher
ever the sewing machine locates itself in narrow and already
over-crowded workrooms, it adds to the unwholesome in
fluences. "The effect," says Mr. Lord, "on entering low-
ceiled workrooms in which 30 to 40 machine hands are work
ing is unbearable. . . . The heat, partly due to the gas
stoves used for warming the irons, is horrible. . . . Even
when moderate hours of work, i.e., from 8 in the morning till
6 in the evening, prevail in such places, yet 3 or 4 persons
fall into a swoon regularly every day."1
' The revolution in the industrial methods which is the
necessary result of the revolution in the instruments of pro
duction, is effected by a medley of transition forms. These
forms vary according to the extent to which the sewing ma
chine has become prevalent in one branch of industry or the
other, to the time during which it has been in operation, to the
previous condition of the workpeople, to the preponderance
of manufacture, of handicrafts or of domestic industry, to the
rent of the workrooms, £c.2 In dressmaking, for instance,
where the labour for the most part was already organised,
chiefly by simple co-operation, the sewing machine at first
formed nearly a new factor in that manufacturing industry.
In tailoring, shirtmaking, shoemaking, £c., all the forms are
intermingled. Here the factory system proper. There Mid
dlemen receive the raw material from the capitalist en chef,
and group around their sewing machines, in "chambers" and
"garrets," from 10 to 50 or more workwomen. Finally, as is

Feb., 18G4, contains 5 cases of death from starvation. On the same day the "Times"
reports another case. Six victims of starvation in one week!

1 Child. Empl. Comm., Second Rep., 1864, p. Ixvii. n. 406-9, p. 84, n. 124, p.
Ixxiii., n. 441, p. 66, n. 6, p. 84, n. 126, p. 78, n. 76, n. 69, p. Ixxii., n. 483.

a "The rental of premises required for workrooms seems the element which
ultimately determines the point; and consequently it is in the metropolis, that the
oi'l system of giving work out to small employers and families has been longest re
tained, and earliest returned to." (1. c. p. 83, n. 123.) The concluding statement
in this quotation refers exclusively to shoemaking.

518 Capitalist Production.

always the case with machinery when not organised into a
system, and when it can also be used in dwarfish proportions,
handicraftsmen and domestic workers, along with their fam
ilies, or with a little extra labour from without, makes use of
their own sewing machines.1 The system actually prevalent
in England is, that the capitalist concentrates a large number
of machines on his premises, and then distributes the pr<>
duce of those machines for further manipulation amongst the
domestic workers.2 The variety of the transition forms, how
ever, does not conceal the tendency to conversion into the
factory system proper. This tendency is nurtured by the very
nature of the sewing machine, the manifold uses of which
push on the concentration, under one roof, and one manage^-
ment, of previously separated branches of a trade. It is alsD
favoured by the circumstance that preparatory needlework,
and certain other operations, are most conveniently done on
the premises where the machine is at work ; as well as by th 2
inevitable expropriation of the hand sewers, and of the do
mestic workers who work with their own machines. This
fate has already in part overtaken them. The constantly
increasing amount of capital invested in sewing machines/1
gives the spur to the production of, and gluts the markets
with, machine-made articles, thereby giving the signal to tho
domestic workers for the sale of their machines. The over
production of sewing machines themselves, causes their pro
ducers, in bad want of a sale, to let them out for so much i
week, thus crushing by their deadly competition the smal"
owners of machines.4 Constant changes in the construction
of the machines, and their ever-increasing cheapness, de
preciate day by day the older makes, and allow of their being
sold in great numbers, at absurd prices, to large capitalists,
who alone can thus employ them at a profit Finally, the sub
stitution of the steam-engine for man gives in this, as in all
similar revolutions, the finishing blow. At first, the use of

1 In glove-making and other industries where the condition of the workp/ "^ple is
hardly distinguishable from that of paupers, this docs not occur.

•1. c. p. 2, n. 122.

* In the wholesale boot and shoe trade of Leicester alone, there were ii 1804,
800 sewing machines already in use.

«L c. p. 84, n. 124.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 519

steam power meets with mere technical difficulties, such as
unsteadiness in the machines, difficulty in controlling their
speed, rapid wear and tear of the lighter machines, &c., all
of which are soon overcome by experience.1 If, on the one
hand, the concentration of many machines in large manu
factories leads to the use of steam power, on the other hand,
the competition of steam with human muscles hastens on the
concentration of workpeople and machines in large factories.
Tkus England is at present experiencing, not only in the
colossal industry of making wearing apparel, but in most of
the other trades mentioned above, the conversion of manu
facture, of handicrafts, and of domestic work into the factory
system, after each of those forms of production, totally
changed and disorganized under the influence of modern in
dustry, has long ago reproduced, and even overdone, all the
horrors of the factory system, without participating in any of
the elements of social progress it contains.2
•^ This industrial revolution which takes place spontaneously,
is artificially helped on by the extension of the Factory Acts
to all industries in which women, young persons and children
are employed. The compulsory regulation of the working
day as regards its length, pauses, beginning and end, the sys
tem of relays of children, the exclusion of all children under a
certain age, &c., necessitates on the one hand more machinery3
and the substitution of steam as a motive power in the place

1 Instances: The Army Clothing Depot at Pimlico, London, the Shirt factory of
Tillie and Henderson at Londonderry, and the clothes factory of Messrs. Tail at
Limerick which employs about 1200 hands.

'"Tendency to factory system" (1. c. p. Ixvii.). "The whole employment is at
this time in a state of transition, and is undergoing the same change as that effected
in the lac« trade, weaving, &c." (1. c. n. 405.) "A complete revolution" (1. c. p.
xlvi. n. 318). At the date of the Child. Empl. Comm. of 1840, stocking making was
still done by manual labour. Since 1846 various sorts of machines have been in
troduced, which are now driv^- by steam. The total number of persons of both
sexes and of all ages from 3 years upwards, employed in stocking making in Eng
land, was in 1862 about 129,000. Of these only 4063 were, according to the Parlia
mentary Return of the llth February, 1862, working under the Factory Acts.

1 Thus, e.g., in the earthenware trade, Messrs. Cochrane, of the Britain Pottery,
Glasgow, report: "To keep up our quantity we have gone extensively into machines
wrought by unskilled labour, and every day convinces us that we can produce a
greater quantity than by the old method." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct.,
1866," p. 13.) "The effect of the Fact. Acts is to force on the further introduc
tion of machinery" (1. c., p. 13-14).

520 Capitalist Production.

of muscles.1 On the other hand, in order to make up for the
loss of time, an expansion occurs of the means of production
used in common, of the furnaces, buildings, &c. ; in one word,
greater concentration of the means of production and a corres*
pondingly greater concourse of workpeople. The chief objec
tion, repeatedly and passionately urged on behalf of each
manufacture threatened with the Factory Act, is in fact this,
that in order to continue the business on the old scale a
greater outlay of capital will be necessary. But as regards
labour in the so-called domestic industries and the inter
mediate forms between them and Manufacture, so soon as
limits are put to the working day and to the employment of
children, those industries go to the wall. Unlimited exploita
tion of cheap labour-power is the sole foundation of their
power to compete.

One of the essential conditions for the existence of the fac
tory system, especially when the length of the working day ::s
fixed, is certainty in the result, i.e., the production in a given
time of a given quantity^f^COmmodities, or of a given useful
effect The statutory pauses in the working day, moreover,
imply the assumption that periodical and sudden cessation of
the work does no harm to the article undergoing the process of
production. This certainty in the result, and this possibility
of interrupting the work are, of course, easier to be attained
in the purely mechanical industries than in those in whicl
chemical and physical processes play a part; as, for instance,
in the earthenware trade, in bleaching, dyeing, baking, and in
most of the metal industries. Wherever there is a working
day without restriction as to length, wherever there is night
work and unrestricted waste of human life, there the slightest
obstacle presented by the nature of the work to a change for
the better is soon looked upon as an everlasting barrier erected
by Xature. No poison kills vermin with more certainty than
the Factory Act removes such everlasting barriers. Xo one
made a greater outcry over "impossibilities" than our friends
the earthenwares manufacturers. In 1864, however, they

1 Thus, after the extension of the Factory Act to the potteries, great increase of
power-jiggers in place of hand-moved jiggers.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 521

were brought under the Act, and within sixteen months every
" impossibility" had vanished. "The improved method,"
called forth by the Act, "of making slip by pressure instead
of by exaporation, the newly-constructed stoves for drying
the ware in its green state, &c., are each events of great im
portances in the pottery art, and mark an advance which the
preceding century could not rival. ... It has even con
siderably reduced the temperature of the stoves themselves
with a considerable saving of fuel, and with a readier effect
on the ware."1 In spite of every prophecy, the cost price of
earthenware did not rise, but the quantity produced did, and
to such an extent that the export for the twelve months, end
ing December, 1865, exceeded in value by £138,628 the
average of the preceding three years. In the manufacture of
matches it was thought to be an indispensable requirement,
that boys, even while bolting their dinner, should go on dip
ping the matches in melted phosphoms, the poisonous vapour
from which rose into their faces. The Factory Act (1861)
made the saving of time a necessity, and so forced into ex
istence a dipping machine, the vapour from which could not
come in contact with the workers.2 So, at the present time,
in those branches of the lace manufacture not yet subject to
the Factory Act, it is maintained that the meal times cannot
be regular owing to the different periods required by the
various kinds of lace for drying, which periods vary from
three minutes up to an hour and more. To this the Children's
Employment Commissioners answer: "The circumstances of
this case are precisely analogous to that of the paper-stainers,
dealt with in our first report. Some of the principal manu
facturers in the trade urged that in consequence of the nature
of the materials used, and their various processes, they would
be unable, without serious loss, to stop for meal times at any
given moment. But it was seen from the evidence that, by
due care and previous arrangement, the apprehended difficulty

^'Report of Insp. of Fact., 81st Oct., 1865," pp. 96 and 127.

1 The introduction of this and other machinery into match-making caused in one
department alone 230 young persons to be replaced by 32 boys and girls of 14 to 17
years of age. This saving in labour was carried still further in 1865, by the em
ployment of steam power.

522 Capitalist Production.

would be got over; and accordingly, by clause 6 of section 6
of the Factory Acts Extension Act, passed during this Session
of Parliament, an interval of eighteen months is given to
them from the passing of the Act before they are required
to conform to the meal hours, specified by the Factory Acts."1
Hardly had the Act been passed when our friends the manu
facturers found out: "The inconveniences we expected to
arise from the introduction of the Factory Acts into our
branch of manufacture, I am happy to say, have not arisen.
We do not find the production at all interfered with; in
short, we produce more in the same time."2 It is evident
that the English legislature, which certainly no one will
venture to reproach with being overdosed with genius, hss
been led by experience to the conclusion that a simple corr-
pulsory law is sufficient to enact away all the so-called im
pediments, opposed by the nature of the process, to the re
striction and regulation of the working day. Hence, on
the introduction of the Factory Act into a given industry,
a period varying from six to eighteen months is fixed within
which it is incumbent on the manufacturers to remove all
technical impediments to the working of the Act, Mira-
beau's "Impossible! ne me dites jamaisce bete de mot!" is par
ticularly applicable to modern technology. But though the
Factory Acts thus artificially ripen the material element?
necessary for the conversion of the manufacturing system into
the factory system, yet at the same time, owing to the neces
sity they impose for greater outlay of capital, they hasten
on the decline of the small masters, and the concentration of
capital.3

Besides the purely technical impediments that are remov
able by technical means, the irregular habits of the work-

1 "Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep., 1864," p. ix., n. 60.

8 "Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct. 1865," p. 22.

' "But it must be borne in mind that those improvements, though carried out fully
in some establishments, are by no means general, and are not capable of being
brought into use in many of the old manufactories without an expenditure of capital
beyond the means of many of the present occupiers." "I cannot but rejoice," writes
Sub-Insp. May, "that notwithstanding the temporary disorganization which in
evitably follows the introduction of such a measure (as the Factory Act Extension
Act), and is, indeed, directly indicative of the evils which it was intended tc rem
edy, &c." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact, 31st Oct., 1865.)

Machinery and Modern Industry. 523

people themselves obstruct the regulation of the hours of
labour. This is especially the case where piece wage pre
dominates, and where loss of time in one part of the day or
week can be made good by subsequent overtime, or by night
work, a process which brutalises the adult workman, and
ruins his wife and children.1 Although this absence of
regularity in the expenditure of labour-power is a natural
and rude reaction against the tedium of monotonous drudgery,
it originates, also, to a much greater degree from anarchy
in production, anarchy that in its turn pre-supposes un
bridled exploitation of labour-power by the capitalist. Be
sides the general periodic changes of the industrial cycle, and
the special fluctuations in the markets to which each industry
is subject, we may also reckon what is called "the season,"
dependent either on the periodicity of favourable seasons
of the year for navigation ; or on fashion, and the sudden
placing of large orders that have to be executed in the shortest
possible time. The habit of giving such orders becomes more
frequent with the extension of railways and telegraphs.
"The extension of the railway system throughout the coun
try has tended very much to encourage giving short notice.
Purchasers now come up from Glasgow, Manchester, and Ed
inburgh once every fortnight or so to the wholesale city
warehouses which we supply, and give small orders requiring
immediate execution, instead of buying from stock as they
used to do. Years ago we were always able to work in the
slack times, so as to meet the demand of the next season,
but now no one can say beforehand what will be the de
mand then."2

1 With blast furnaces, for instance, "work towards the end of the we«k being
generally much increased in duration in consequence of the habit of the men of
idling on Monday and occasionally during a part or the whole of Tuesday also."
(Child. Empl. Comm., III. Rep., p. vi.) "The little masters generally have very
irregular hours. They lose two or three days, and then work all night to make it
up. . . . They always employ their own children, if they have any." (1. c., p.
vii.) "The want of regularity in coming to work, encouraged by the possibility and
practice of making up for this by working longer hours." (1. c., p. xviii.) "In
Birmingham .... an enormous amount of time is lost .... idling part
of the time, slaving the rest." (1. c., p. xi.)

1 "Child Empl. Comm., IV. Rep. p. xxxii.," "The extension of the railway sys
tem is said to have contributed greatly to this custom of giving sudden orders, and
the consequent hurry, neglect of meal times, and late hours of the workpeople."
(1. c., p. xxxi.)

524 Capitalist Production.

In those factories and manufactories that are not yet sub
ject to the Factory Acts, the most fearful overwork prevails
periodically during what is called the season, in consequence
of sudden orders. In the outside department of the factory,
of the manufactory, and of the warehouse, the so-called do
mestic workers, whose employment is at the best irregular,
are entirely dependent for their raw material and their orders
on the caprice of the capitalist, who, in this industry, is not
hampered by any regard for depreciation of his buildings
and machinery, and risks nothing by a stoppage of work,
but the skin of the worker himself. Here then he sets him
self systematically to work to form an industrial reserve forco
that shall be ready at a moment's notice; during one part o:~
the year he decimates this force by the most inhuman toil,
during the other part, he lets it starve for want of work
"The employers avail themselves of the habitual irregularity
in the home-work, when any extra work is wanted at a push,
so that the work goes on till 11, and 12 p.m. or 2 a.m., or as
the usual phrase is, "all hours," and that in localities where
"the stench is enough to knock you down, you go to the door,
perhaps, and open it, but shudder to go further."1 "They
are curious men," said one of the witnesses, a shoemaker,
speaking of the masters, "they think it does a boy no harm to
work too hard for half the year, if he is nearly idle for the
other half."2

In the same way as technical impediments, so too, those
"usages which have grown with the growth of trade" were
and still are proclaimed by interested capitalists as obstacles
due to the nature of the work. This was a favorite cry of the
cotton lords at the time they were first threatened with the
Factory Acts. Although their industry more than any other
depends on navigation, yet experience has given them the lie.
Since then, every pretended obstruction to business has been
treated by the Factory inspectors as a mere sham.8 The

1 Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. p. xxxv. n. 236, 237.

•Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. p. 127, n. 56.

* "With respect to the loss of trade by non-completion of shipping orders in time,
I remember that this was the pet argument of the factory masters in 1832 and 1838.
Nothing that can be advanced now on this subject, could have the force that it had

Machinery and Modern Industry. 525

thoroughly conscientious investigations of the Children's Em
ployment Commission prove that the effect of the regulation
of the hours of work, in some industries, was to spread the
mass of labour previously employed more evenly over the
whole year;1 that this regulation was the first rational bridle
on the murderous, meaningless caprices of fashion,2 caprices
that consort so badly with the system of modern industry;
that the development of ocean navigation and of the means
of communication generally, has swept away the technical
basis on which season-work was really supported,3 and that
all other so-called unconquerable difficulties vanish before
larger buildings, additional machinery, increase in the num
ber of workpeople employed,4 and the alterations caused by
all these in the mode of conducting the wholesale trade.5 But
for all that, capital never becomes reconciled to such changes
— and this is admitted over and over again by its own repre
sentatives — except "under the pressure of a General Act of

then, before steam bad halved all distances and established new regulations for
transit. It quite failed at that time of proof when put to the test, and again it will
certainly fail should it have to be tried." (Reports of Insp. of Fact, 31 Oct., 1862,
pp. 54, 56.

1 Ch. Ernpl. Comm. IV. Rep. p. xviii. n. 118.

•John Bellers remarked as far back as 1699: "The uncertainty of fashions does
increase necessitous poor. It has two great mischiefs in it. 1st, The journeymen
are miserable in winter for want of work, the mercers and master weavers not dar
ing to lay out their stocks to keep the journeymen employed before the spring
comes, and they know what the fashion will then be: 2ndly, in the spring the jour
neymen are not sufficient, but the master-weavers must draw in many prentices, that
they may supply the trade of the kingdom in a quarter or half a year, which robs the
plough of hands, drains the country of labourers, and in a great part stocks the city
with beggars, and starves some in winter that are ashamed to beg." (Essays about
the Poor, Manufactures, &c., p. 9.)

*Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. p. 171, n. 34.

* The evidence of some Bradford export-houses is as follows: "Under these cir
cumstances, it seems clear that no boys need be worked longer than from 8 a.m. to
7 or 7.30 p.m., in making up. It is merely a question of extra hands and extra
outlay. If some masters were not so greedy, the boys would not work late; an
extra machine costs only £16 or £18; much of such overtime as does occur is to be
referred to an insufficiency of appliances, and a want of space." Ch. Empl. Comm.
V. Rep. p. 171, n. 31, 36, 38.

• 1. c. A London manufacturer, who in other respects looks upon the compulsory
regulation of the hours of labour as a protection for the workpeople against the
manufacturers, and for the manufacturers themselves against the wholesale trade,
states: "The pressure in our business is caused by the shippers, who want, e.g., to
send the goods by sailing vessel so as to reach their destination at a given season,
and at the same time want to pocket the difference in freight between a sailing
vessel and a steamship, or who select the earlier of two steamships in order to be
in the foreign market before their competitors."

526 Capitalist Production.

Parliament"1 for the compulsory regulation of the hours
of labour.

SECTION 9. THE FACTORY ACTS. SANITARY AND EDUCATION

CLAUSES OF THE SAME. THEIR GENERAL EXTENSION IN
ENGLAND.

Factory legislation, that first conscious and methodical re
action of society against the spontaneously developed form of
the process of production, is, as we have seen, just as much
the necessary product of modern industry as cotton yarn, self-
actors, and the electric telegraph. Before passing to the con
sideration of the extension of that legislation in England, we
shall shortly notice certain clauses contained in the Factory
Acts, and not relating to the hours of work.

Apart from their wording, which makes it easy for the
capitalist to evade them, the sanitary clauses are extremely
meagre, and, in fact, limited to provisions for whitewashing
the walls, for insuring cleanliness in some other matters, for
ventilation, and for protection against dangerous machinery.
In the third book we shall return again to the fanatical op
position of the masters to those clauses which imposed upon
them a slight expenditure on appliances for protecting the
limbs of their workpeople, an opposition that throws a fresh
and glaring light on the free trade dogma, according to which,
in a society with conflicting interests, each individual neces
sarily furthers the common weal by seeking nothing but his
own personal advantage ! One example is enough. The
reader knows that during the last 20 years, the flax industry
has very much extended, and that, with that extension, the
number of scutching mills in Ireland has increased. In
1864 there were in that country 1800 of these mills. Kegu-
larly in autumn and winter women and "young persons," the
wives, sons, and daughters of the neighboring small farmers,
a class of people totally unaccustomed to machinery, are
taken from field labour to feed the rollers of the scutching

* "This could be obviated," says a manufacturer, "at the expense of an enlarge
ment of the works under the pressure of a General Act of Parliament" L c.
p. x. n. Si.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 527

mills with flax. The accidents, both as regards number and
kind, are wholly unexampled in the history of machinery. In
one scutching mill, at Kildinan, near Cork, there occurred
between 1852 and 1856, six fatal accidents and sixty
mutilations; every one of which might have been prevented
by the simplest appliances, at the cost of a few shillings.
Dr. W. White, the certifying surgeon for factories at Down-
pa trick, states in his official report, dated the 15th December,
1865 ; "The serious accidents at the scutching mills are of
the most fearful nature. In many cases a quarter of the
body is torn from the trunk, and either involves death, or a
future of wretched incapacity and suffering. The increase of
mills in the country will, of course, extend these dreadful re
sults, and it will be a great boon if they are brought under
the legislature. I am convinced that by proper supervision
of scutching mills a vast sacrifice of life and limb would be
averted."1

•What could possibly show better the character of the capi
talist mode of production, than the necessity that exists for
forcing upon it, by Acts of Parliament, the simplest ap
pliances for maintaining cleanliness and health ? In the pot
teries the Factory Act of 1864 "has whitewashed and cleansed
upwards of 200 workshops, after a period of abstinence from
any such cleaning, in many cases of 20 years, and in some,
entirely," (this is the "abstinence" of the capitalist!) "in
which were employed 27,800 artisans, hitherto breathing
through protracted days and often nights of labour, a mephitic
atmosphere, and which rendered an otherwise comparatively
innocuous occupation, pregnant with disease and death, The
Act has improved the ventilation very much."2 At the same
time, this portion of the Act strikingly shows that the capi
talist mode of production, owing to its very nature, excludes
all rational improvement beyond a certain point. It has
been stated over and over again that the English doctors are
unanimous in declaring that where the work is continuous,
600 cubic feet is the very least space that should be allowed

* 1. c. p. xv. n. 72. sqq.

•Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st October, 1865, p. 127.

5^8 Capitalist Production.

for each person. Now, if the Factory Acts, owing to their
compulsory provisions, indirectly hasten on the conversion of
small workshops into factories, thus indirectly attacking the
proprietary rights of the smaller capitalists, and assuring a
monopoly to the great ones, so, if it were made obligatory to
provide the proper space for each workman in every work
shop, thousands of small employers would, at one full swoop,
be expropriated directly ! The very root of the capitalist
mode of production, i.e., the self-expansion of all capital, large
or small, by means of the "free" purchase and consumption
of labour-power, would be attacked. Factory legislation is
therefore brought to a dead-lock before these 500 cubic feet
of breathing space. The sanitary officers, the industrial in
quiry commissioners, the factory inspectors, all harp, over
and over again, upon the necessity for those 500 cubic feet,
and upon the impossibility of wringing them out of capital.
They thus, in fact, declare that consumption and other lung
diseases among the workpeople are necessary conditions to
the existence of capital.1

Paltry as the education clauses of the Act appear on the
whole, yet they proclaim elementary education to be an in
dispensable condition to the employment of children.2 The
success of those clauses proved for the first time the possi
bility of combining education and gymnastics8 with manual

1 It has been found out by experiment, that with each respiration of average in
tensity made by a healthy average individual, about 25 cubic inches of air are con
sumed, and that about 20 respirations are made in each minute. Hence the air
inhaled in 24 hours by each individual is about 720,000 cubic inches, or 416 cubic
feet. It is clear, however, that air which has been once breathed, can no longer
serve for the same process until it has been purified in the great workshop of
Nature. According to the experiments of Valentin and Brunner, it appears that
a healthy man gives off about 1300 cubic inches of carbonic acid per hour; this would
give about 8 ounces of solid carbon thrown off from the lungs in 24 hours. "Every
man should have at least 800 cubic feet." (Huxley.)

* According to the English Factory Act, parents cannot send their children under
14 years of age into Factories under the control of the Act, unless at the same
time they allow them to receive elementary education. The manufacturer is re
sponsible for compliance with the Act. "Factory education is compulsory, and it
is a condition of labour." (Rep. Insp. Fact. 31st Oct., 1803, p. 111.

1 On the very advantageous results of combining gymnastics (and drilling in the
case of boys) with compulsory education for factory children and pauper scholars,
see the speech of N. W. Senior at the seventh annual congress of "The National
Association for the Promotion of Social Science," in "Report of Proceedings, 4c.,
Lond. 1863," p. 63, 64, also the Rep. In»p. Fact., 31st Oct., 1865, p, 118, 119, 180,
126 »qq.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 529

labour, and, consequently, of combining manual labour with
education and gymnastics. The factory inspectors soon found
out by questioning the schoolmasters, that the factory children,
although receiving only one half the education of the regular
day scholars, yet learnt quite as much and often more. "This
can be accounted for by the simple fact that, with only being
at school for one half of the day, they are always fresh, and
nearly always ready and willing to receive instruction. The
system on which they work, half manual labour, and half
school, renders each employment a rest and a relief to the
other; consequently, both are far more congenial to the child,
than would be the case were he kept constantly at one. It is
quite clear that a boy who has been at school all the morning,
cannot (in hot weather particularly) cope with one who comes
fresh and bright from his work."1 Further information on
this point will be found in Senior's speech at the Social
Science Congress at Edinburgh in 1863. He there shows,
amongst other things, how the monotonous and uselessly long
school hours of the children of the upper and middle classes,
uselessly add to the labour of the teacher, "while he not only
fruitlessly, but absolutely injuriously, wastes the time, health,
and energy of the children."2 From the Factory system
budded, as Robert Owen has shown us in detail, the genn of
the education of the future, an education that will, in the
case of every child over a given age, combine productive

1 Rep. Insp. Fact. 31st Oct. 1865, p. 118. A silk manufacturer naively states to
the Children's Employment Commissioners: "I am quite sure that the true secret
of producing efficient workpeople is to be found in uniting education and labour
from a period of childhood. Of course the occupation must not be too severe, nor
irksome, or unhealthy. But of the advantage of the union I have no doubt. I wish
my own children could have some work as well as play to give variety to their
schooling." (Ch. Empl. Comra. V. Rep. p. 82. n. 86.)

* Senior, 1. c. p. 66. How Modern Industry, when it has attained to a certain
pitch, is capable, by the revolution it effects in the mode of production and in the
social conditions of production, of also revolutionizing people's minds, is strikingly
shown by a comparison of Senior's speech in 1863, with his philippic against the
Factory Act of 1883; or by a comparison, of the views of the congress above referred
to, with the fact that in certain country districts of England poor parents are for
bidden, on pain of death by starvation, to educate their children. Thus, g.g., Mr.
Snell reports it tc be a common occurrence in Somersetshire that, when a poor per
son claims parish relief, he is compelled to take his children from school. Mr.
Wollarton, the clergyman at Feltham, also tells of cases where all relief was denied
to certain families "because they were tending their children to schooll"

530 Capitalist Production.

labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of
the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as
the only method of producing fully developed human beings.

Modern Industry, as we have seen, sweeps away by techni
cal means the manufacturing division of labour, under which
each man is bound hand and foot for life to a single detail-
operation. At the same time, the capitalistic form of that in
dustry reproduces this same division of labour in a still more
monstrous shape; in the factory proper, by converting tho
workman into a living appendage of the machine ; and every
where outside the Factory, partly by the sporadic use of
machinery and machine workers,1 partly by re-establishing-
the divisions of labour on a fresh basis by the general intro
duction of the labour of women and children, and of cheap
unskilled labour.

The antagonism between the manufacturing division of
labour and the methods of Modern Industry makes itself
forcibly felt It manifests itself, amongst other ways, in the
frightful fact that a great part of the children employed in
modern factories and manufactures, are from their earliest
years riveted to the most simple manipulations, and exploited
for years, without being taught a single sort of work that
would afterwards make them of use, even in the same manufac
tory or factory. In the English letter press printing trade, for
example, there existed formerly a system, corresponding to
that in the old manufactures and handicrafts, of advancing
the apprentices from easy to more and more difficult work.
They went through a course of teaching till they were finished
printers. To be able to read and write was for every one of

1 Wherever handicraft-machines, driven by men, compete directly or indirectly
with more developed machines driven by mechanical power, a great change takes
place with regard to the labourer who drives the machine. At first the steam-engine
replaces this labourer, afterwards he must replace the steam-engine. Consequently
the tension and the amount of labour-power expended become monstrous, and
especially so in the case of the children who are condemned to this torture. Thus
Mr. Longe, one of the commissioners, found in Coventry and the neighbourhood
boys of from 10 to 15 years employed in driving the ribbon looms, not to mention
younger children who had to drive smaller machines. "It is extraordinarily fatiguing
work. The boy is a mere substitute for steam-power." (Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep.
1866, p. 114, n. 6.) As to the fatal consequences of "this system of slavery," a*
the official report styles it, see 1. c. p. 114 sqq.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 531

them a requirement of their trade. All this was changed by
the printing machine. It employs two sort of labourers, one
grown up, tenters, the other, boys mostly from 11 to 17 years
of age whose sole business is either to spread the sheets of
paper under the machine, or to take from it the printed sheets.
They perform this weary task, in London especially, for 14, 15,
and 16 hours at a stretch, during several days in the week, and
frequently for 36 hours, with only 2 hours' rest for meals and
sleep I1 A great part of them cannot read, and they are, as a
rule, utter savages and very extraordinary creatures. " To
qualify them for, the work which they have to do, they require
no intellectual training ; there is little room in it for skill, and
less for judgment; their wages, though rather high for boys, do
not increase proportionately as they grow up, and the majority
of them cannot look for advancement to the better paid and
more responsible post of machine minder, because while each
machine has but one minder, it has at least two, and often four
boys attached to it."2 As soon as they get too old for such
child's work, that is about 17 at the latest, they are discharged
from the printing establishments. They become recruits of
crime. Several attempts to procure them employment else
where, were rendered of no avail by their ignorance and
brutality, and by their mental and bodily degradation.

As with the division of labour in the interior of the manu
facturing workshops, so it is with the division of labour in
the interior of society. So long as handicraft and manufacture
form the general groundwork of social production, the sub
jection of the producer to one branch exclusively, the breaking
up of the multifariousness of his employment,3 is a necessary
step in the development. On that ground-work each separate

M. c. p. 8, n. 24.

•I. c. p. 7, n. 60.

• "In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland, not many years ago, every peasant,
according to the Statistical Account, made his own shoes of leather tanned by him
self. Many a shepherd and cottar too, with his wife and children, appeared at
Church in clothes which had been touched by no hands but their own, since they
were shorn from the sheep and sown in the flaxneld. In the preparation of these,
it is added, scarcely a single article had been purchased, except the awl, needle,
thimble, and a very few parts of the iron-work employed in the weaving. The dyes,
too, were chiefly extracted by the women from trees, shrubs and herbs." (Dugald
Stewart's Works. Hamilton's Ed., Vol. viii., p. 327-828.)

532 Capitalist Production.

branch of production acquires empirically the form that is
technically suited to it, slowly perfects it, and, so soon as a
given degree of maturity has been reached, rapidly crystallizes
that form. The only thing, that here and there causes a
change, besides new raw material supplied by commerce, is the
gradual alteration of the instruments of labour. But their
form, too, once definitely settled by experience, petrifies, as is
proved by their being in many cases handed down in the same
form by one generation to another during thousands of years.
A characteristic feature is, that, even down into the eighteenth
century, the different trades were called " mysteries " (rnys-
teres)1; into their secrets none but those duly initiated could
penetrate. Modern Industry rent the veil that concealed from
men their own social process of production, and that turned
the various, spontaneously divided branches of production intD
so many riddles, not only to outsiders, but even to the initiated.
The principle which it pursued, of resolving each process hit)
its constituent movements, without any regard to their possible
execution by the hand of man, created the new modern science
of technology. The varied, apparently unconnected, and pet
rified forms of the industrial processes now resolved themselves
into so man conscious and systematic applications of natura.
science to the attainment of given useful effects. Technology
also discovered the few main fundamental forms of motion,
which, despite the diversity of the instruments used, are neces
sarily taken by every productive action of the human body;
just as the science of mechanics sees in the most complicated
machinery nothing but the continual repetition of the simple
mechanical powers.

, Modern Industry never looks upon and treats the existing
form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry
is therefore revolutionary, while all earlier modes of produc
tion were essentially conservative.2 By means of machinery,

1 In the celebrated "Livre des metiers" of Etienne Boileau, we find it prescribed
that a journeyman on being admitted among the masters had to swear "to love his
brethren with brotherly love, to support them in their respective trades, not wilfully
to betray the secrets of the trade, and besides, in the interests of all, not to recom
mend his own wares by calling the attention of the buyer to defects in the article*
made "by others."

* "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionizing the instru-

Machinery and Modern Industry. 533

chemical processes and other methods, it is continually causing
changes not only in the technical basis of production, but also
in the functions of the labourer, and in the social combinations
of the labour-process. At the same time, it thereby also
revolutionizes the division of labour within the society, and
incessantly launches masses of capital and of workpeople from
one branch of production to another. But if Modern Industry,
by its very nature, therefore necessitates variation of labour,
fluency of function, universal mobility of the labourer, on the
other hand, in its capitalistic form, it reproduces the old
division of labour with its ossified particularisations. We
have seen how this absolute contradiction between the techni
cal necessities of Modern Industry, and the social character
inherent in its capitalistic form, dispels all fixity and security
in the situation of the labourer; how it constantly threatens,
by taking away the instruments of labour, to snatch from his
hands his means of subsistence,1 and, by suppressing his detail-
function, to make him superfluous. We have seen, too, how
this antagonism vents its rage in the creation of that monstros
ity, an industrial reserve army, kept in misery in order to be
always at the disposal of capital; in the incessant human
sacrifices from among the working class, in the most reckless
squandering of labour-power, and in the devastation caused by
ft social anarchy which turns every economical progress into a
social calamity. This is the negative side. But if, on the one
hand, variation of work at present imposes itself after the
manner of an overpowering natural law, and with the blindly
destructive action of a natural law that meets with resist-

ments of production, and thereby the relations of production and all the social
relations. Conservation, in an unaltered form, of the old modes of production was
on the contrary the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.
Constant revolution in production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,
everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier
ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated
before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is pro
faned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions
of life, and his relations with his kind. (F. Engels and Karl Marx: Manifest der
Kommunistischen Partei. Lond, 1848, p. 6.)

*' "You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live." S

534 Capitalist Production.

a nee,1 at all points, Modern Industry, on the other hand,
through its catastrophes imposes the necessity of recognising,
as a fundamental law of production, variation of work, conse
quently fitness of the labourer for varied work, consequently
the greatest possible development of his varied aptitudes. It
becomes a question of life and death for society to adapt the
mode of production to the normal functioning of this law,
Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of
death, to replace the detail-worker of to-day, crippled by life
long repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus
reduced to the mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed
individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any
change of production, and to whom the different social func
tions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scopo
to his own natural and acquired powers.

One step already spontaneously taken towards effecting thin
revolution is the establishment of technical and agricultural
schools, and of "ecoles d'enseignement professionnel," in which
the children of the working-men receive some little instruction
in technology and in the practical handling of the various
implements of labour. Though the Factory Act, that first and
meagre concession wrung from capital, is limited to combining
elementary education with work in the factory, there can be
no doubt that when the working class comes into power, as
inevitably it must, technical instruction, both theoretical and
practical, will take its proper place in the working-class
schools. There is also no doubt that such revolutionary fer
ments, the final result of which is the abolition of the old divi
sion of labour, are diametrically opposed to the capitalist form
of production, and to the economic status of the labourer cor
responding to that form. But the historical development of

XA French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as follows: "I
never could have believed, that I was capable of working at the various occupations I
was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing
but letter-press printing. . . . Once in the midst of this world of adventurers,
who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the
others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town,
where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, &c. In consequence of
thus finding out that I am fit for any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and
more of a man." (A. Courbon. De I'enseignement professionnel, 2eme ed. p. 50.)

Machinery and Modern Industry. 535

the antagonisms, immanent in a given form of production, is
the only way in which that form of production can be dissolved
and a new form established. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam" —
this nee plus ultra of handicraft wisdom became sheer non
sense, from the moment the watchmaker Watt invented the
steam-engine, the barber Arkwright, the throstle, and the work
ing-jeweller, Fulton, the steamship.1

/ So long as Factory legislation is confined to regulating the
labour in factories, manufactories, &c., it is regarded as a
mere interference with the exploiting rights of capital. But
when it comes to regulating the so-called "home-labour,"2 it is
immediately viewed as a direct attack on the patria potestas,
on parental authority. The tender-hearted English Parlia
ment long affected to shrink from taking this step. The force
of facts, however compelled it at last to acknowledge that
modern industry, in overturning the economical foundation on
which was based the traditional family, and the family labour
corresponding to it, had also unloosened all traditional family
ties. The rights of the children had to be proclaimed. The
final report of the Ch. Empl. Comm. of 1866, states: "It is
unhappily, to a painful degree, apparent throughout the whole
of the evidence, that against no persons do the children of both
sexes so much require protection as against their parents."
The system of unlimited exploitation of children's labour in
general and the so-called home-labour in particular is "main
tained only because the parents are able, without check or con
trol, to exercise this arbitrary and mischievous power over their

young and tender offspring Parents must not

possess the absolute power of making their children mere 'ma-

1John Bellers, a very phenomenon in the history of political economy, saw most
clearly at the end of the 17th century, the necessity for abolishing the present system
of education and division of labour, which beget hypertrophy and atrophy at the
two opposite extremities of society. Amongst other things he says this: "An idle
learning being little better than the learning of idleness . . . Bodily labour,
it's a primitive institution of God . . . Labour being as proper for the bodies'
health as eating is for its living; for what pains a man saves by ease, he will find

in disease Labour adds oyl to the lamp of life, when thinking inflames

it .... A childish silly employ" (a warning this, by presentiment, against the
Basedows and their modern imitators) "leaves the children's minds silly." (Pro
posals for raising a college of industry of all useful trades and husbandry. Lond.,
1696, p. 12, 14, 18.)

* This sort of labour goes on mostly in small workshops, as we have teen in the

536 Capitalist Production.

chines to earn so much weekly wage.' .... The chil
dren and young persons, therefore, in all such cases may justi
fiably claim from the legislature, as a natural right, that an
exemption should be secured to them, from what destroys pre*
maturely their physical strength, and lowers them in the scale
of intellectual and moral beings."1 It was not, however, the
misuse of parental authority that created the capitalistic ex
ploitation, whether direct or indirect, of children's labour; but,
on the contrary, it was the capitalistic mode of exploitation
which, by sweeping away the economical basis of parental au
thority, made its exercise degenerate into a mischievous misuse
of power. However terrible and disgusting the dissolution,
under the capitalist system, of the old family ties may appear,
nevertheless, modern industry, by assigning as it does an im
portant part in the process of production, outside the domestic
sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children of both
sexes, creates a new economical foundation for a higher form
of the family and of the relations between the sexes. It is, oJ'
course, just as absurd to hold the Teutonic-christian form of
the family to be absolute and final as it would be to apply thai
character to the ancient Roman, the ancient Greek, or the East
ern forms which, moreover, taken together form a series in his
toric development. Moreover, it is obvious that the fact of the
collective working group being composed of individuals of both
sexes and all ages, must necessarily, under suitable conditions,
become a source of humane development ; although in its spon
taneously developed, brutal, capitalistic form, where the
labourer exists for the process of production, and not the proc
ess of production for the labourer, that fact is a pestiferous
source of corruption and slavery.2

The necessity for a generalization of the Factory Acts, for
transforming them from an exceptional law relating to me
chanical spinning and weaving — those first creations of ma-

lace-making and straw-plaiting tradet, and as could be shown more in detail from
the metal trades of Sheffield, Birmingham, &c.

1 Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep., p. xxv., n. 162, and II. Rep., p. xxxviii., n.
186, 289, p. xxv., xxvi., n. 191.

* "Factory labour may be as pure and as excellent as domestic labour, and perhaps
more so." (Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st October, 1866, p. 127.)

Machinery and Modern Industry. 537

chinery — into a law affecting social production as a whole,
arose, as we have seen, from the mode in which Modern Indus
try was historically developed. In the rear of that industry,
the traditional form of manufacture, of handicraft, and of
domestic industry, is entirely revolutionised ; manufactures are
constantly passing into the factory system, and handicrafts
into manufactures; and lastly, the spheres of handicraft and
of the domestic industries become, in a, comparatively speak
ing, wonderfully short time, dens of misery in which capitalis
tic exploitation obtains free play for the wildest excesses.
There are two circumstances that finally turn the scale: first,
the constantly recurring experience that capital, so soon as it
finds itself subject to legal control at one point, compensates it
self all the more recklessly at other points;1 secondly, the cry
of the capitalists for equality in the conditions of competition,
i.e., for equal restraint on all exploitation of labour.2 On
this point let us listen to two heart-broken cries. Messrs.
Cooksley of Bristol, nail and chain, &c., manufacturers, spon
taneously introduced the regulations of the Factory Act into
their business. "As the old irregular system prevails in neigh
bouring works, the Messrs. Cooksley are subject to the disad
vantage of having their boys enticed to continue their labour
elsewhere after 6 p.m. 'This/ they naturally say, 'is an unjus-
tice and loss to us, as it exhausts a portion of the boy's strength,
of which we ought to have the full benefit' "3 Mr. J. Simp
son (paper box and bagmaker, London) states before the com
missioners of the Ch. Empl. Comm. : "He would sign any
petition for it" (legislative interference) .... "As it
was, he always felt restless at night, when he had closed his
place, lest others should be working later than him and getting
away his orders."4 Summarising, the Ch. Empl. Comm. says :
"It would be unjust to the larger employers that their factories
should be placed under regulation, while the hours of labour
in the smaller places in their own branch of business were
under no legislative restriction. And to the injustice arising

1 Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1865, p. 27-82.

* Numerous instances will be found in Rep. of Insp. of Fact

* Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep., p. x., n. 35.
•Ch. Kmpl. Comm., V. Rep., p. ix., n. 28.

538 Capitalist Production.

from the unfair conditions of competition, in regard to hours,
that would be created if the smaller places of work were ex
empt, would be added the disadvantage to the larger manufac
turers, of finding their supply of juvenile and female labour
drawn off to the places of work exempt from legislation.
Further, a stimulus would be given to the multiplication of the
smaller places of work, which are almost invariably the least
favourable to the health, comfort, education, and general im
provement of the people."1

In its final report the Commission proposes to subject to the
Factory Act more than 1,400,000 children, young persons, and
women, of which number about one half are exploited in small
industries and by the so-called home-work.2 It says, "But if
it should seem fit to Parliament to place the whole of thst
large number of children, young persons and females under the
protective legislation above adverted to ... it cannot be
doubted that such legislation would have a most beneficent
effect, not only upon the young and the feeble, who are it}
more immediate objects, but upon the still larger body of adult
workers, who would in all these employments, both directly
and indirectly, come immediately under its influence. I ,
would enforce upon them regular and moderate hours; ii
would lead to their places of work being kept in a healthy and
cleanly state; it would therefore husband and improve that
store of physical strength on which their own well-being and
that of the country so much depends ; it would save the rising
generation from that over-exertion at an early age which
undermines their constitutions and leads to premature decay;

1 1. c., p. xxv., n. 165-167. As to the advantages of large scale, compared with
small scale, industries, see Ch. Empl. Comra., III. Rep., p. IS, n. 144, p. 25, n.
121, p. 26, n. 125, p. 27, n. 140, &c.

•The trades proposed to be brought under the Act were the following: Lace-
making, stocking-weaving, straw-plaiting, the manufacture of wearing apparel with
its numerous subdivisions, artificial flower-making, shoemaking, hat-making, glove-
making, tailoring, all metal works, from blast furnaces down to needleworks, &c,,
paper-mills, glass-works, tobacco factories, india-rubber works, braid-making (for
weaving), hand-carpet-making, umbrella and parasol making, the manufacture of
spindles and spools, letter-press printing, book-binding, manufacture of stationery
(including paper bags, cards, coloured paper, &c.,) rope-making, manufacture of jet
ornaments, brick-making, silk manufacture by hand, Coventry weaving, salt works,
tallow chandlers, cement works, sugar refineries, biscuit-making, various industries
connected with timber, and other mixed trades.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 539

finally, it would ensure them — at least up to the age of 13 —
the opportunity of receiving the elements of education, and
would put an end to that utter ignorance .... so faithfully
exhibited in the Reports of our Assistant Commissioners, and
which cannot be regarded without the deepest pain, and a pro
found sense of national degradation." *

The Tory Cabinet announced in the speech from the
Throne, on February 5, 1867, that it had formulated the
recommendations2 of the Industrial Commission of Inquiry in
"Bills." A new experiment of 20 years' duration at the ex
pense of the working class had been necessary to accomplish
so much. As early as 1840, a Commission of Parliament had
been appointed to inquire into the conditions of child labor.
Its report, as Senior remarks, disclosed "the most frightful
picture of avarice, selfishness and cruelty on the part of
masters and of parents, and of juvenile and infantile misery,
degradation and destruction ever presented. ... It may
be supposed that it describes the horrors of a past age. But
there is unhappily evidence that those horrors continue as in
tense as they were. A pamphlet published by Hardwicke
about 2 years ago states that the abuses complained of in
1842, are in full bloom at the present day. It is a strange
proof of the general neglect of the morals and health of the
children of the working class, that this report lay unnoticed
for 20 years, during which the children, 'bred up without the
remotest sign of comprehension as to what is meant by the
term morals, who had neither knowledge, nor religion, nor
natural affection/ were allowed to become the parents of the
present generation."8

The social conditions having undergone a change, Parlia
ment could not venture to shelve the demands of the Com-

M. c. p. xxv. n. 169.

* The Factory Acts Extension Act was passed on August 12, 1867. It regulated
all metal foundries, forges, and manufactures, including machine shops, furthermore
glass, paper, gutta-percha, caoutchouc, tobacco manufactures, printing shops, book
binderies, and finally all workshops employing more than 50 persons. — The Hours of
Labor Regulation Act was passed on August 17, 1867, and regulates the smaller
workshops and the so-called house work. — I revert to these laws, and to the new
Mining Act of 1872 in volume II.

* Senior, Social Science Congress, pp. 55—68.

540 Capitalist Production.

mission of 1862, as it had done those of the Commission of
1840. Hence in 1864, when the Commission had not yet
published more than a part of its reports, the earthenware in
dustries (including the potteries, makers of paper-hangings,
matches, cartridges, and caps, and fustian cutters were made
subject to the Acts in force in the textile industries. In the
speech from the Throne, on 5th February, 1867, the Tory
Cabinet of the day announced the introduction of Bills,
founded on the final recommendations of the Commission,
which had completed its labours in 1866.

On the 15th August, 1867, the Factory Acts Extension Act,
and on the 21st August, the Workshops' Regulation Act re
ceived the Royal Assent ; the former Act having reference to
large industries, the latter to small.

The former applies to blast-furnaces, iron and copper mil's,
foundries, machine shops, metal manufactories, gutta-percha
works, paper mills, glass works, tobacco manufactories, letter
press printing (including newspapers) book-binding, in short
to all industrial establishments of the above kind, in which 50
individuals or more are occupied simultaneously, and for not
less than 100 days during the year.

To give an idea of the extent of the sphere embraced by tho
Workshops' Regulation Act in its application, we cite from its
interpretation clause, the following passages :

"Handicraft shall mean any manual labour exercised by
way of trade, or for purposes of gain, or incidental to, the
making any article or part of an article, or in, or incidental to.
the altering, repairing, ornamenting, finishing, or otherwise
adapting for sale any article."

"Workshop shall mean any room or place whatever in the
open air or under cover, in which any handicraft is carried on
by any child, young person, or woman, and to which and over
which the person by whom such child, young person, or woman
is employed, has the right of access and control."

"Employed shall mean occupied in any handicraft, whether
for wages or not, under a master or under a parent as herein
defined."

"Parent shall mean parent, guardian, or person, having

Machinery and Modern Industry. 541

the custody of, or control over, any . . . child or young
person."

Clause 7, which imposes a penalty for employment of
children, young persons, and women, contrary to the provisions
of the Act, subjects to fines, not only the occupier of the work
shops, whether parent or not, but even "the parent of, or the
person deriving any direct benefit from the labour of, or hav
ing the control over, the child, young person or woman."

The Factory Acts Extension Act, which affects the large
establishments, derogates from the Factory Act by a crowd of
vicious exceptions and cowardly compromises with the masters.

The Workshops' Regulation Act, wretched in all its de
tails, remained a dead letter in the hands of the municipal
and local authorities who were charged with its execution.
When, in 1871, Parliament withdrew from them this power,
in order to confer it on the Factory Inspectors, to whose
province it thus added by a single stroke more than one hun
dred thousand workshops, and three hundred brickworks, care
was taken at the same time not to add more than eight as
sistants to their already undermanned staff.1

What strikes us, then, in the English legislation of 1867, is,
on the one hand, the necessity imposed on the parliament of
the ruling classes, of adopting in principle measures so extra
ordinary, and on so great a scale, against the excesses of
capitalistic exploitation ; and on the other hand, the hesitation,
the repugnance, and the bad faith, with which it lent itself to
the task of carrying those measures into practice.

The Inquiry Commission of 1862 also proposed a new regu
lation of the mining industry, an industry distinguished from
others by the exceptional characteristic that the interests of
landlord and capitalist there join hands. The antagonism of
these two interests had been favourable to Factory legislation,
while on the other hand the absence of that antagonism is
sufficient to explain the delays and chicanery of the legislation
on mines.

1 The "personnel" of this staff consisted of 2 inspectors, 8 assistant inspectors and
41 sub-inspectors. Eight additional sub-inspectors were appointed in 1871. The
total cost of administering the Acts in England, Scotland, and Ireland amounted
for the year 1871-72 to no more than £25,347, inclusive of the law expenses in
curred by prosecutions of offending masters.

542 Capitalist Production.

The Inquiry Commission of 1840 had made revelations so
terrible, so shocking, and creating such a scandal all over
Europe, that to salve its conscience Parliament passed the
Mining Act of 1842, in which it limited itself to forbidding
the employment underground in mines of children under 10
years of age and females.

Then another Act, The Mines' Inspecting Act of 1860, pro
vides that mines shall be inspected by public officers nominated
specially for that purpose, and that boys between the ages of
10 and 12 years shall not be employed, unless they have a
school certificate, or go to school for a certain number of
hours. This Act was a complete dead letter owing to iho
ridiculously small number of inspectors, the meagreness ol?
their powers, and other causes that will become apparent as we
proceed.

One of the most recent blue books on mines is the "Report
from the Select Committee on Mines, together with &c. Evi
dence, 23rd July, 1866." This Report is the work of a
Parliamentary Committee selected from members of the House
of Commons, and authorised to summon and examine wit
nesses. It is a thick folio volume in which the Report itself
occupies only five lines to this effect: that the committee has
nothing to say, and that more witnesses must be examined !

The mode of examining the witnesses reminds one of the
cross-examination of witnesses in English courts of justice,
where the advocate tries, by means of impudent, unexpected,
equivocal and involved questions, put without connection, to in
timidate, surprise, and confound the witness, and to give a
forced meaning to the answers extorted from him. In this in
quiry the members of the committee themselves are the cross-
examiners, and among them are to be found both mine owners
and mine exploiters; the witnesses are mostly working coal-
miners. The whole farce is too characteristic of the spirit of
capital, not to call for a few extracts from this Report For
the sake of conciseness I have classified them. I may also add
that every question and its answer are numbered in the English
Blue Books.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 543

I. EMPLOYMENT IN MINES OF BOYS OF 10 YEAJBS AJS'D UP-

WAKDS. — In the mines the work, inclusive of going and re
turning, usually lasts 14 or 15 hours, sometimes even from 3,
4, and 5 o'clock a.m., till 5 and 6 o'clock p.m., (n. 6., 452, 83).
The adults work in two shifts, of eight hours each ; but there
is no alteration with the boys, on account of the expense
(n. 80, 203, 204.) The younger boys are chiefly employed in
opening and shutting the ventilating doors in the various parts
of the mine ; the older ones are employed on heavier work, in
carrying coal, &c. (n. 122, 739, 1747). They work these long
hours underground until their 18th or 22nd year, when they
j.re put to miners work proper, (n. 161.) Children and
young persons are at present worse treated, and harder worked
than at any previous period (n. 1663 — 1667). And now
Hussey Vivian (himself an exploiter of mines) asks: "Would
not the opinion of the workman depend upon the poverty of
the workman's family?" Mr. Bruce: "Do you not think it
would be a very hard case, where a parent had been injured,
or where he was sickly, or where a father was dead, and there
was only a mother, to prevent a child between 12 and 14
earning Is. 7d. a day for the good of the family ? . . .
You must lay down a general rule? . . . Are you pre
pared to recommend legislation which would prevent the em
ployment of children under 12 and 14, whatever the state of
their parents might be V "Yes." (ns. 107-110). Vivian:
"Supposing that an enactment were passed preventing the em
ployment of children under the age of 14, would it not be
probable that ... the parents of children would seek
employment for their children in other directions, for instance,
in manufacture ?" "Not generally I think," (n. 174). Kin-
naird : "Some of the boys are keepers of doors ?" "Yes." "Is
there not generally a very great draught every time you open
a door or close it?" "Yes, generally there is." "It sounds
a very easy thing, but it is in fact rather a painful one?"
"He is imprisoned there just the same as if he was in a cell
of a gaol." Bourgeois Vivian : "Whenever a boy is furnished
with a lamp cannot Le read ?" "Yes, he can read, if he finds
himself in t^u\M , . . I suppose he would be found

£44 Capitalist Production.

fault with if he were discovered reading; he is there to mind
his business, he has a duty to perform, and he has to attend
to it in the first place, and I do not think it would be allowed
down the pit." (ns. 139, 141, 143, 158, 160.)

II. EDUCATION. — The working miners want a law for the
compulsory education of their children, as in factories. They
declare the clauses of the Act of 1860, which require a school
certificate to be obtained before employing boys of 10 and 12
years of age, to be quite illusory. The examination of
the witnesses on this subject is truly droll. "Is it (the Act)
required more against the masters or against the parents?"
"It is required against both I think." "You cannot say
whether it is required against one more than against the
other ?" "Xo ; I can hardly answer that question." (ns. 11£,
116.) "Does there appear to be any desire on the part of the
employers that the boys should have such hours as to enabb
them to go to school ?" "No ; the hours are never shortened
for that purpose." (n. 137.) Mr. Kinnaird: "Should you say
that the colliers generally improve their education ; have you
any instances of men who have, since they began to work,
greatly improved their education, or do they not rather go
back, and lose any advantage that they may have gained?'1
"They generally become worse: they do not improve; they
acquire bad habits ; they get on to drinking and gambling and
such like, and they go completely to wreck," (n. 211). "Do
they make any attempt of the kind (for providing instruction)
by having schools at night ?" "There are few collieries where
night schools are held, and perhaps at those collieries a few
boys do go to those schools; but they are so physically ex
hausted that it is to no purpose that they go there." (n. 454.)
"You are then," concludes the bourgeois, "against education ?"
"Most certainly not; but," &c. (n. 443.) "But are they (the
employers) not compelled to demand them" (school certifi
cates) ? "By law they are ; but I am not aware that they wre
demanded by the employers." "Then it is your opinion, tX\t
this provision of the Act as to requiring certificates, is not ge- *-
trally carried out in the collieries ?" "It is not carried out/'
(ns. 443, 444.) "Do the men take a gr*a* JnteraA in this

Machinery and Modern Industry. 545

question" (of education) ? "The majority of them do." (n.
717.) "Are they very anxious to see the law enforced?"
"The majority are." (n. 718.) "Do you think that in this
country any law that you pass . . . can really be effectual
unless the population themselves assist in putting it into opera
tion ?" "Many a man might wish to object to employing a
boy, but he would perhaps become marked by it." (n. 720.)
"Marked by whom ?" "By his employers." (n. 721.) "Do
you think that the employers would find any fault with a
man who obeyed the law. ... ?" "I believe they
would." (n. 722.) "Have you ever heard of any workman
objecting to employ a boy between 10 and 12, who could not
write or read ?" "It is not left to men's option." (n. 123.)
"Would you call for the interference of Parliament ?" "I
think that if anything effectual is to be done in the education
of the colliers' children, it will have to be made compulsory
by Act of Parliament" (n. 1634.) "Would you lay that
obligation upon the colliers only, of all the work people of
Great Britain ?" "I came to speak for the colliers." (n.
1636.) "Why should you distinguish them (colliery boys)
from other boys?" "Because I think they are an exception
to the rule." (n. 1638.) "In what respect?" "In a phys
ical respect." (n. 1639.) "Why should education be more
valuable to them than to other classes of lads ?" "I do not
know that it is more valuable; but through the over-exertion
in mines there is less chance for the boys that are employed
there to get education, either at Sunday schools, or at day
schools." (n. 1640.) "It is impossible to look at a question
of this sort absolutely by itself?" (n. 1644.) "Is there a
sufficiency of schools ?"— "No." . . . (n. 1646.) "If the
state were to require that every child should be sent to school,
would there be schools for the children to go to ?" "No ; but I
think if the circumstances were to spring up, the schools would
be forthcoming." (n. 1647.) "Some of them (the boys)
cannot read and write at all, I suppose ?" "The majority can
not. . . . The majority of the men themselves cannot"
(ns. 705, 725.)
III. EMPLOYMENT OP WOMEN. — Since 1842 women are no

2 I

546 Capitalist Production.

more employed underground, but are occupied on the surfaco
in loading the coal, &c., in drawing the tubs to the canals and
railway waggons, in sorting, &c. Their numbers have con-
siderably increased during the last three or four years, (n.
1727.) They are mostly the wives, daughters, and widows
of the working miners, and their ages range from 12 to 50 or
60 years, (ns. 645, 1779.) "What is the feeling among the
working miners as to the employment of women ?" "I think
they generally condemn it" (n. 648.) "What objection
do you see to it?" "I think it is degrading to the
sex." (n. 649.) "There is a peculiarity of dress?" "Yes
. . . it is rather a man's dress, and I believe in some
cases, it drowns all sense of decency." "Do the women
smoke ?" "Some do." "And J suppose it is very dirty
work ?" "Very dirty." "They get black and grimy ?" "As
black as those who are down the mines ... I believe that
a woman having children, (and there are plenty on the banks
that have) cannot do her duty to her children." (ns. 650-
654, 701.) "Do you think that those widows could get em
ployment anywhere else, which would bring them in as much
wages as that (from 8s. to 10s. a week) ?" "I cannot speak
to that." (n. 709.) "You would still be prepared, would
you," (flint-hearted fellow!) "to prevent their obtaining a
livelihood by these means?" "I would." (n. 710.) "What
is the general feeling in the district ... as to the em
ployment of women?" "The feeling is that it is degrading;
and we wish as miners to have more respect to the fair sex
than to see them placed on the pit bank. . . . Some part
of the work is very hard; some of these girls have raised
as much as 10 tons of stuff a day." (ns. 1715, 1717.) "Do
you think that the women employed about the collieries are
less moral than the women employed in the factories ?" "
. . the percentage of bad ones may be a little more . . .
than with the girls in the factories." (n. 1237.) "But you
are not quite satisfied with the state of morality in the
factories?" "No." (n. 1733.) "Would you prohibit the
employment of women in factories also ?" "No, I would not/'
(n. 1734.) "Why not?" "I think it a more honourable oc-

Machinery and Modern Industry. 547

cupation for them in the mills." (n. 1735.) "Still it is
injurious to their morality, you think?" "Xot so much as
working on the pit bank ; but it is more on the social position
I take it; I do not take it on its moral ground alone. The
degradation, in its social bearing on the girls, is deplorable
in the extreme. When these 400 or 500 girls become colliers'
wives, the men suffer greatly from this degradation, and it
causes them to leave their homes and drink." (n. 1736.)
"You would be obliged to stop the employment of women in
the ironworks as well, would you not, if you stopped it in the
collieries ?" "I cannot speak for any other trade." (n.
1737.) "Can you see any difference in the circumstances of
women employed in iron-works, and the circumstances of
women employed above ground in collieries ?" "I have not
ascertained anything as to that." (n. 1740.) "Can you see
anything that makes a distinction between one class and the
other ?" "I have not ascertained that, but I know from house
to house visitation, that it is a deplorable state of things in
our district. . . ." (n. 1741.) "Would you interfere in
every case with the employment of women where that em
ployment was degrading?" "It. would become injurious, I
think, in this way : the best feelings of Englishmen have been
gained from tho instruction of a mother ... (n.

1750.) "That equally applies to agricultural employments,
does it not ?" "Yes, but that is only for two seasons, and we
have work all the four seasons," (n. 1751.) " They often
work day and night, wet through to the skin, their constitu
tion undermined and their health ruined." "You have not
inquired into that subject perhaps ?" "I have certainly taken
note of it as I have gone along, and certainly I have seen
nothing parallel to the effects of the employment of women
on the pit bank. . . . It is the work of a man ... a
strong man." (ns. 1753, 1793, 1794.) "Your feeling upon
the whole subject is that the better class of colliers who desire
to raise themselves and humanise themselves, instead of de
riving help from the women, are pulled down by them?"
"Yea." (n. 1808.) After some further crooked questions
from these bourgeois, the secret of their "sympathy" for

548 Capitalist Production.

widows, poor families, &c., comes out at last. "The coal pro
prietor appoints certain gentlemen to take the oversight of
the workings, and it is their policy, in order to receive ap
probation, to place things on the most economical basis they
can, and these girls are employed at from Is. up to Is. 6d. a
day, where a man at the rate of 2s. 6d. a day would have to be
employed." (n. 1816.)

IV. CORONER'S INQUESTS. — "With regard to coroner's in
quests in your district, have the workmen confidence in the pro
ceedings at these inquests when accidents occur ?" "No ; they
have not" (n. 306.) "Why not?" "Chiefly because the
men who are generally chosen, are men who know nothing
about mines and such like." "Are not workmen summoned
at all upon the juries ?" "Never but as witnesses to my knowl
edge." "Who are the people who are generally summoned
upon these juries?" "Generally tradesmen in the neighbor
hood . . . from their circumstances they are sometimes
liable to be influenced by their employers . . . the owners
of the works. They are generally men who have no knowl
edge, and can scarcely understand the witnesses who are called
before them, and the terms which are used and such like. '
"Would you have the jury composed of persons who had been
employed in mining?" "Yes, partly . . . they (ths
workmen) think that the verdict is not in accordance with th^
evidence given generally, "(ns. 361, 36-i, 366, 368, 371, 375. )
"One great object in summoning a jury is to have an impartial
one, is it not ?" "Yes, I should think so." "Do you think that
the juries would be impartial if they were composed to a con
siderable extent of workmen ?" "I cannot see any motive
which the workmen would have to act partially . . . they
necessarily have a better knowledge of the operations in con
nection with the mine." "You do not think there would be a
tendency on the part of the workmen to return unfairly severe
verdicts?" "No, I think not." (ns. 378, 379, 380.)

V. FALSE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. — The workmen demand
to be paid weekly instead of fortnightly, and by weight in
stead of by cubical contents of the tubs ; they also demand pro
tection against the use of false weights, &c. (n. 1071.) "If

Machinery and Modern Industry. 549

the tubs were fraudulently increased, a man could discontinue
working by giving 14 days' notice ?" "But if he goes to an
other place, there is the same thing going on there." (n.
1071.) "But he can leave that place where the wrong has
been committed ?" "It is general ; wherever he goes, he has
to submit to it" (n. 1072.) "Could a man leave by giving
14 days' notice?" "Yes," (n. 1073.) And yet they are
not satisfied !

/ VI. INSPECTION OF MINES. — Casualties from explosions are
not the only things the workmen suffer from. (n. 234, sqq.)
"Our men complained very much of the bad ventilation of the
collieries . . . the ventilation is so bad in general that
the men can scarcely breathe; they are quite unfit for em
ployment of any kind after they have been for a length of
time in connection with their work; indeed, just at the part
of the mine where I am working, men have been obliged to
leave their employment and come home in consequence of that
. . . some of them have been out of work for weeks just
in consequence of the bad state of the ventilation where there
is not explosive gas . . . there is plenty of air generally
in the main courses, yet pains are not taken to get air into
the workings where men are working." "Why do you not
apply to the inspector?" "To tell the truth there are many
men who are timid on that point; there have been cases of
men being sacrificed and losing their employment in conse
quence of applying to the inspector." "Why ; is he a marked
man for having complained?" "Yes." "And he finds it
difficult to get employment in another mine ?" "Yes." "Do
you think the mines in your neighborhood are sufficiently in
spected to insure a compliance with the provisions of the
Act?" "Xo; they are not inspected at all ... the in
spector has been down just once in the pit, and it has been
going seven years. ... In the district to which I belong
there are not a sufficient number of inspectors. We have one
old man more than 70 years of age to inspect more than 130
collieries." "You wish to have a class of sub-inspectors?"
"Yes." (ns. 234, 241, 251, 254, 274, 275, 554, 276, 293.)
But do you think it would be possible for government to main-

550 Capitalist Production*

tain such an army of inspectors as would be necessary to do
all that you want them to do, without information from the
men ?" "No, I should think it would be next to impossible."
. . . "It would be desirable the inspectors should come
oftener ?" "Yes, and without being sent for." (n. 280, 277.)
"Do you not think that the effect of having these inspectors
examining the collieries so frequently would be to shift the
responsibility (!) of supplying proper ventilation from the
owners of the collieries to the Government officials ?" "No, I
do not think that, I think that they should make it their busi
ness to enforce the Acts which are already in existence." (n.
285.) "When you speak of sub-inspectors, do you mean men
at a less salary, and of an inferior stamp to the present in-
epectors ?" "I would not have them inferior, if you could
get them otherwise." (n. 294.) "Do you merely want moie
inspectors, or do you want a lower class of men as an in
spector?" "A man who would knock about, and see thst
things are kept right; a man who would not be afraid of him
self." (n. 295.) "If you obtained your wish in getting a:i
inferior class of inspectors appointed, do you think there would
be no danger from want of skill, &c. ?" "I think not, I thin i
that the Government would see after that, and have proper
men in that position." (n. 297.) This kind of examination
becomes at last too much even for the chairman of the com
mittee, and he interrupts with the observation: "You want si
class of men who would look into all the details of the mine,
and would go into all the holes and corners, and go into th<;
real facts . . . they would report to the chief inspector,
who would then bring his scientific knowledge to bear on tho
facts they have stated ?" (ns. 298, 299.) "Would it not en
tail very great expense if all these old workings were kept,
ventilated ?" "Yes, expense might be incurred, but life woulc
be at the same time protected." (n. 531.) A working niinei
objects to the 17th section of the Act of 1860 ; he says, "At
the present time, if the inspector of mines finds a part of the
mine unfit to work in, he has to report it to the mine owner
and the Home Secretary. After doing that, there is given to
the owner 20 days to look over the matter; at the end of 20

Machinery and Modern Industry. 551

days lie has the power to refuse making any alteration in the
mine; but, when he refuses, the mine owner writes to the
Home Secretary, at the same time nominating five engineers,
and from those five engineers named by the mine owner him
self, the Home Secretary appoints one, I think, as arbitrator,
or appoints arbitrators from them ; now we think in that case
the mine owner^irtually appoints his own arbitrator." (n.
581.) Bourgeois examiner, himself a mine owner: "But
. . . is this a merely speculative objection?" (n. 586.)
"Then you have a very poor opinion of the integrity of min
ing engineers ?" "It is most certainly unjust and inequi
table." (n. 588.) "Do not mining engineers possess a sort
of public character, and do not you think that they are above
making such a partial decision as you apprehend?" "I do
not wish to answer such a question as that with respect to the
personal character of those men. I believe that in many cases
they would act very partially indeed, and that it ought not to
be in their hands to do so, where men's lives are at stake." (n.
589.) This same bourgeois is not ashamed to put this ques
tion : "Do you not think that the mine owner also suffers
loss from an explosion ?" Finally, "Are not you workmen in
Lancashire able to take care of your own interests without
calling in the Government to help you ?" "No." (n. 1042.)

In the year 1865 there were 3217 coal mines in Great
Britain, and 12 inspectors. A Yorkshire mine owner himself
calculates ("Times," 26th January, 1867), that putting on
one side their office work, which absorbs all their time, each
mine can be visited but once in ten years by an inspector. No
wonder that explosions have increased progressively, both in
number and extent (sometimes with a loss of 200-300 men),
during the last ten years.

The very defective Act, passed in 1872, is the first that
regulates the hours of labour of the children employed in
mines, and makes exploiters and owners, to a certain extent,
responsible for so-called accidents.

The Royal Commission appointed in 1867, to inquire into
the employment in agriculture of children, young persons, and
women, has published some very important reports. Several

552 Capitalist Production.

attempts to apply the principles of the Factory Acts, but in a
modified form, to agriculture have been made, but have so far
resulted in complete failure. All that I wish to draw atten
tion to here is the existence of an irresistible tendency towards
the general application of those principles.

If the general extension of factory legislation to all trades
for the purpose of protecting the working class both in mind
and body has become inevitable, on the other hand, as we
have already pointed out, that extension hastens on the gen
eral conversion of numerous isolated small industries into a
few combined industries carried on upon a large scale; it
therefore accelerates the concentration of capital and the ex
clusive predominance of the factory system. It destroys both
the ancient and the transitional forms, behind which the do
minion of capital is still in part concealed, and replaces them
by the direct and open sway of capital ; but thereby it also
generalises the direct opposition to this sway. While in each
individual workshop it enforces uniformity, regularity, order,
and economy, it increases by the immense spur which the limi
tation and regulation of the working day give to technical im
provement, the anarchy and the catastrophes of capitalist pro
duction as a whole, the intensity of labour, and the compe
tition of machinery with the labourer. By the destruction of
petty and domestic industries it destroys the last resort of the
"redundant population," and with it the sole remaining safety-
valve of the whole social mechanism. By maturing the ma
terial conditions, and the combination on a social scale of the
processes of production, it matures the contradictions and
antagonisms of the capitalist form of production, and thereby
provides, along with the elements for the formation of a new
society, the forces for exploding the old one.1

1 Robert Owen, the father of Co-operative Factories and Stores, but who, as before
remarked, in no way shared the illusions of his followers with regard to the bear
ing of these isolated elements of transformation, not only practically made the fac
tory system the sole foundation of his experiments, but also declared that system
to be theoretically the starting point of the social revolution. Herr Vissering, Pro
fessor of Political Economy in the University of Leyden, appears to have a suspicion
of this when, in his "Handboek van Praktische Staatshuishoudkunde, 1860-62,"
which reproduces all the platitudes of vulgar economy, he strongly supports handi
crafts against the factory system. Note to the 4th German edition. — The new juristic
abortion created by English legislation in the mutually contradictory Factory Acts,

Machinery and Modern Industry. 553

SECTION 10. MODERN INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE*

The revolution called forth by modern industry in agricul
ture, and in the social relations of agricultural producers, will
be investigated later on. In this place we shall merely indi
cate a few results by way of anticipation. If the use of
machinery in agriculture is for the most part free from the
injurious physical effect it has on the factory operative,1 its
action in superseding the labourers is more intense, and finds
less resistance, as we shall see later in detail. In the counties
of Cambridge and Suffolk, for example, the area of cultivated
land has extended very much within the last 20 years (up to
1868), while in the same period the rural population has
diminished, not only relatively, but absolutely. In the United
States it is as yet only virtually that agricultural machines

Fatcory Extension Act, and Workshop Act, became finally unbearable, and in conse
quence, the Factory and Workshops Act of 1878 made this entire legislation into
a new code. Of course, we cannot give an exhaustive critique of the present indus
trial code of England in this place. The following notes may suffice; The Act com
prizes (1) Textile mills. Here everything remains about as it was. Working time
allowed for children over 10 years, 5J4 hours per day, or 6 hours per day and Sat
urday off. For young persons and women, 10 hours on 5 days, and no more than
QYi hours on Saturday. (2) Other than textile mills. Here the rules are more
nearly approximated to those of class (1), but still many of them permit excep
tions favoring the capitalist, which may even be extended in special cases by the
permission of the Minister of the Interior. (3) Workshops, defined about the same
as in the former act. So far as children, young persons, or women are employed
in them, workshops are placed in about the same class with other than textile mills,
but again with special favors. (4) Workshops, in which no children or young per
sons, but only persons of both sexes over 18 years are employed. This class enjoys
still other favors. (5) Domestic Workshops, in which only members of the family
are employed in the home of the family. Here the rules are still more elastic, with
the additional restriction that the inspector must not enter rooms serving at the
same time as homes without the permission of the Minister or the Judge. Finally,
the unconditional surrender of straw plating, lace making, glove making to the
family circle. Yet, with all its shortcomings, this law, and the factory laws of the
Swiss Confederation passed March 23, 1877, are by far the best on this subject.
A comparison of these two codes is particularly interesting, because it reveals the
advantages and disadvantages of the two different methods of legislation, the English,
"historical" method interfering from case to case, and the continental, more gen
eralising method built upon the traditions of the French revolution. Unfortunately,
the English code is still largely a dead letter on account of the lack of in
spectors. — F. E. —

1 A detailed description of the machinery employed in English agriculture is
found in "The Agricultural Implements and Machines of England," by Dr. W.
Hamm. Second edition, 1856. In a sketch of the evolution of English agriculture
Mr. Hamm follows too narrowly the ideas of Mr. Leonce de Lavergne. — (Note to
the 4th German edition.) — This is now obsolete, of course. — F. E. —

554 Capitalist Production.

replace labourers; in other words, they allow oi the culti
vation by the fanner of a larger surface, but do not actually
expel the labourers employed. In 1861 the number of per
sons occupied in England and Wales in the manufacture of
agricultural machines was 1034, whilst the number of agri
cultural labourers employed in the use of agricultural ma
chines and steam engines did not exceed 1205.

In the sphere of agriculture, modern industry has a more
revolutionary effect than elsewhere, for this reason, that it
annihilates the peasant, that bulwark of the old society, and
replaces him by the wage labourer. Thus the desire for social
changes, and the class antagonisms are brought to the same
level in the country as in the towns. The irrational, old fash
ioned methods of agriculture are replaced by scientific ones.
Capitalist production completely tears asunder the old bond
of union which held together agriculture and manufacture in
their infancy. But at the same time it creates the material
conditions for a higher synthesis in the future, viz., the union
of agriculture and industry on the basis of the more perfected
forms they have each acquired during their temporary separa
tion. Capitalist production, by collecting the population in
great centres, and causing an ever increasing preponderance
of town population, on tlie one hand concentrates the historical
motive-power of society ; on the other hand, it disturbs the cir
culation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., prevents the
return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form
of food and clothing ; it therefore violates the conditions neces
sary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys
at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intel
lectual life of the rural labourer.1 But while upsetting the
naturally grown conditions for the maintenance of that circu
lation of matter, it imperiously calls for its restoration as a

1 "You divide the people into two hostile camps of clownish boors and emascu
lated dwarfs. Good heavens! a nation divided into agricultural and commercial
interests, calling itself sane; nay, styling itself enlightened and civilized, not only
in spite of, but in consequence of this monstrous and unnatural division." (David
Urquhart, 1. c., p. 119.) This passage shows, at one and the same time, the
strength and the weakness of that kind of criticism which knows how to judge and
condemn the present, but not how to comprehend it.

Machinery and Modern Industry. 555

system, as a regulating law of social production, and under a
form appropriate to the full development of the human race.
In agriculture as in manufacture, the transformation of pro
duction under the sway of capital, means, at the same time,
the martyrdom of the producer; the instrument of labour be
comes the means of enslaving, exploiting, and impoverishing
the labourer; the social combination and organization of la
bour-processes is turned into an organised mode of crushing
out the workman's individual vitality, freedom, and inde
pendence. The dispersion of the rural labourers over larger
areas breaks their power of resistance while concentration
increases that of the town operatives. In modern agriculture,
as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness and
quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of
laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself.
Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress
in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the
soil ; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a
given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of
that fertility. The more a country starts its development on
the foundation of modern industry, like the United States,
£or example, the more rapid is this process of destruction.1

1 See Liebig^ "Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologic, 7.
Auflage, 1862," and especially the "Einleitung in die Naturgesetze des Feldbaus,"
in the 1st Volume. To have developed from the point of view of natural science,
the negative, i.e., destructive side of modern agriculture, is one of Liebig's immortal
merits. His summary, too, of the history of agriculture, although not free from
gross errors, contains flashes of light. It is, however, to be regretted that he ven
tures on such hap-hazard assertions as the following: "By greater pulverising and
more frequent ploughing, the circulation of air in the interior of porous soil is aided,
;md the surface exposed to the action of the atmosphere is increased and renewed;
Uit it is easily seen that the increased yield of the land cannot be proportional to
the labour spent on that land, but increases in a much smaller proportion. This
law," adds Liebig, "was first enunciated by John Stuart Mill in his 'Principles of
Pol. Econ.', Vol I., p. 17, as follows: 'That the produce of land increases, coeteris
paribus, in a diminishing ratio to the increase of the labourers employed" (Mill
here introduces in an erroneous form the law enunciated by Ricardo's school, for
since the 'decrease of the labourers employed,' kept even pace in England with the
advance of agriculture, the law discovered in, and applied to, England, could have no
application to that country, at all events), "is the universal law of agricultural in
dustry.' This is very remarkable, since Mill was ignorant of the reason for this law."
(Liebig, 1. c., Bd. I., p. 143 and Note.) Apart from Liebig's wrong interpretation of
the word "labour," by which word he understands something quite different from
what political economy does, it is, in any case, "very remarkable" that he should

556 Capitalist Production.

Capitalist production, therefore, developes technology, and the
combining together of various processes into a social whole,
only by sapping the original sources of all wealth — the soil
and the labourer.

make Mr. John Stuart Mill the first propounder of a theory which was first published
by James Anderson in A. Smith's days, and was repeated in various works down to
the beginning of the 19th century; a theory which Malthus, that master in plagiarism
(the whole of his population theory is a shameless plagiarism), appropriated to him
self in 1815; which West developed at the same time as, and independently of,
Anderson; which in the year 1817 was connected by Ricardo with the general theorr
of value, then made the round of the world as Ricardo's theory, and in 1820 wa»
vulgarised by James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill; and which, finally, wai
reproduced by John Stuart Mill and others, as a dogma already quite common-place,
and known to every school-boy. It cannot be denied that John Stuart Mill owes his
at all events, "remarkable" authority almost entirely to such quid-pro-quos.

PAET V.

THE PRODUCTION OP ABSOLUTE AND OF
EELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE.

CHAPTER XVI.

ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE.

IN considering the labour-process, we began (see Chapter
VII.) by treating it in the abstract, apart from its historical
forms, as a process between man and nature. We there stated,
p. 201: "If we examine the whole labour-process, from the
point of view of its result, it is plain that both the instruments
and the subject of labour are means of production, and that
the labour itself is productive labour." And in Note 2, same
page, we further added: "This method of determining, from
the standpoint of the labour- process alone, what is productive
labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case of the
capitalist process of production." We now proceed to the
further development of this subject.

So far as the labour-process is purely individual, one and the
same labourer unites in himself all the functions, that later on
become separated. When an individual appropriates natural
objects for his livelihood, no one controls him but himself.
Afterwards he is controlled by others. A single man cannot
operate upon nature without calling his own muscles into play
under the control of his own brain. As in the natural body
head and hand wait upon each other, so the labour-process
unites the labour of the hand with that of the head. Later on
they part company and even become deadly foes. The product

557

558 Capitalist Production.

ceases to be the direct product of the individual, and becomes
a social product, produced in common by a collective labourer,
i.e., by a combination of workmen, each of whom takes only a
part, greater or less, in the manipulation of the subject of their
labour. As the co-operative character of the labour-process
becomes more and more marked, so, as a necessary consequence,
does our notion of productive labour, and of its agent the pro
ductive labourer, become extended. In order to labour pro
ductively, it is no longer necessary for you to do manual work
yourself ; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer,
and perform one of its subordinate functions. The first defini
tion given above of productive labour, a definition deduced
from the very nature of the production of material objects,
still remains correct for the collective labourer, considered a 3
a whole. But it no longer holds good for each member taken
individually.

Oil the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour
becomes narrowed. \ Capitalist production is not merely the
production of commodities, it is essentially the production of
surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for
capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simplj
produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer
alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capi
talist, and thus works for the self -expansion of capital. If we
may take an example from outside the sphere of production of
material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer, when,
in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works
like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter
has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a
sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion
of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between
work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour,
but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that
has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the
direct means of creating surplus-value. \ To be a productive
labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune.
In Book IV. which treats of the history of the theory, it will
be more clearly seen, that the production of surplus-value has

Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value. 559

at all times been made, by classical political economists, the
distinguishing characteristic of the productive labourer. Hence
their definition of a productive labourer changes with their
comprehension of the nature of surplus-value. Thus the
Physiocrats insist that only agricultural labour is productive,
since that alone, they say, yields a surplus-value. And they
say so because, with them, surplus-value has no existence ex
cept in the form of rent.

The prolongation of the working day beyond the point at
which the labourer would have produced just an equivalent
for the value of his labour-power, and the appropriation of
that surplus-labour by capital, this is production of absolute
surplus-value. It forms the general groundwork of the capi
talist pystem, and the starting point for the production of rela
tive surplus-value. The latter presupposes that the working
day is already divided into two parts, necessary labour, and
surplus-labour. In order to prolong the surplus-labour, the
necessary labour is shortened by methods whereby the equiva
lent for the wages is produced in less time. The production
of absolute surplus-value turns exclusively upon the length of
the working day; the production of relative surplus-value,
revolutionises out and out the technical processes of labour,
and the composition of society. It therefore presupposes a
specific mode, the capitalist mode of production, a mode which,
along with its methods, means, and conditions, arises and de-
velopes itself spontaneously on the foundation afforded by the
formal subjection of labour to capital In the course of this
development, the formal subjection is replaced by the real sub
jection of labour to capital.

It will suffice merely to refer to certain intermediate forms,
in which surplus-labour is not extorted by direct compulsion
from the producer, nor the producer himself yet formally sub
jected to capital In such forms capital has not yet acquired
the direct control of the labour-process. By the side of inde
pendent producers who carry on their handicrafts and agricul
ture in the traditional old-fashioned way, there stands the
usurer or the merchant, with his usurer's capital or merchant's
capital, feeding on them like a parasite. The predominance, in

560 Capitalist Production.

a society, of this form of exploitation excludes the capitalist
mode of production ; to which mode, however, this form may
serve as a transition, as it did towards the close of the Middle
Ages. Finally, as is shown by modern "domestic industry,"
some intermediate forms are here and there reproduced in the
background of Modern Industry, though their physiognomy is
totally changed.

If, on the one hand, the mere formal subjection of labour to
capital suffices for the production of absolute surplus-value, if,
e.g., it is sufficient that handicraftsmen who previously worked
on their own account^ or as apprentices of a master, should
become wage labourers under the direct control of a capitalist :
so, on the other hand, we have seen, how the methods of pro
ducing relative surplus-value, are, at the same time, methods
of producing absolute surplus-value. Nay, more, the excessive
prolongation of the working day turned out to be the peculiar
product of Modern Industry. Generally speaking, the specifi
cally capitalist mode of production ceases to be a mere means
of producing relative surplus-value, so soon as. that mode has
conquered an entire branch of production ; and still more so,
so soon as it has conquered all the important branches. It
then becomes the general, socially predominant form of pro
duction. As a special method of producing relative surplus-
value, it remains effective only, first, in so far as it seizes upon
industries that previously were only formally subject to capital,
that is, so far as it is propagandist; secondly, in so far as the
industries that have been taken over by it, continue to be
revolutionized by changes in the methods of production.

From one standpoint, any distinction between absolute and
relative surplus-value appears illusory. Relative surplus-
value is absolute, since it compels the absolute prolongation of
the working day beyond the labour-time necessary to the exist
ence of the labourer himself Absolute surplus-value is rela
tive, since it makes necessary such a development of the pro
ductiveness of labour, as will allow of the necessary labour-
time being confined to a portion of the working day. But if
we keep in mind the behaviour of surplus-value, this appear
ance of identity vanishes. Once the capitalist mode of produc-

Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value. 561

tion established and become general, the difference between
absolute and relative surplus-value nmkes itself felt, whenever
there is a question of raising the rate of surplus-value. As
suming that labour-power is paid for at its value, we are con
fronted by this alternative : given the productiveness of labour
and its normal intensity, the rate of surplus-value can be raised
only by the actual prolongation of the working day; on the
other hand, given the length of the working day, that rise can
be effected only by a change in the relative magnitudes of the
components of the working day, viz., necessary labour and sur
plus-labour; a change, which, if the wages are not to fall be
low the value of labour-power, presupposes a change either in
the productiveness or in the intensity of the labour.

If the labourer wants all his time to produce the necessary
means of subsistence for himself and his race, he has no time
left in which to work gratis for others. Without a certain de
gree of productiveness in his labour, he has no such super
fluous time at his disposal ; without such superfluous time, no
surplus-labour, and therefore no capitalists, no slave-owners,
no feudal lords, in one word, no class of large proprietors.1

Thus we may say that surplus-value rests on a natural
basis; but this is permissible only in the very general sense,
that there is no natural obstacle absolutely preventing one man
from disburdening himself of the labour requisite for his own
existence, and burdening another with it, any more, for in
stance, than unconquerable natural obstacles prevent one man
from eating the flesh of another.2 No mystical ideas must in
any way be connected, as sometimes happens, with this his
torically developed productiveness of labour. It is only after
men have raised themselves above the rank of animals, when
therefore their labour has been to some extent socialised, that
a state of things arises in which the surplus-labour of the
one becomes a condition of existence for the other. At the

1 "The very existence of the master-capitalists, as a distinct class, is dependent on
the productiveness of industry." (Ramsay, 1. c. p. 206.) "If each man's labour
were but enough to produce his own food, there could be no property." (Raven-
stone, 1. c. p. 14, 15).

•According to a recent calculation, there are yet at least 4,000,000 cannibals in
thoic partt of the earth which have already been explored.

562 Capitalist Production.

dawn of civilisation the productiveness acquired by labour is
small, but so too are the wants which develop with and by the
means of satisfying them. Further, at that early period, the
portion of society that lives on the labour of others is infinitely
small compared with the mass of direct producers Along
with the progress in the productiveness of labour, that small
portion of society increases both absolutely and relatively.1
Besides, capital with its accompanying relations springs up
from an economic soil that is the product of a long process of
development. The productiveness of labour that serves as its
foundation and starting point, is a gift, not of nature, but of a
history embracing thousands of centuries.

Apart from the degree of development, greater or less, in the
form of social production, the productiveness of labour is fes
tered by physical conditions. These are all referable to the
constitution of man himself (race, &c.), and to surrounding
nature. The external physical conditions fall into two great
economical classes, (1) Natural wealth in means of subsist
ence, i.e., a fruitful soil, waters teeming with fish, &c., and
(2), natural wealth in the instruments of labour, such a?
waterfalls, navigable rivers, wood, metal, coal, &c. At th<;
dawn of civilisation, it is the first class that turns the scale ;
at a higher stage of development, it is the second. Compare,
for example, England with India, or in ancient times, Athenu
and Corinth with the shores of the Black Sea.

The fewer the number of natural wants imperatively calling'
for satisfaction, and the greater the natural fertility of the soi:
and the favourableness of the climate^ so much less is the
the producer. So much greater therefore can be the excess oi
labour-time necessary for the maintenance and reproduction of
his labour for others over his labour for himself. Diodorus
long ago remarked this in relation to the ancient Egyptians.
"It is altogether incredible how little trouble and expense the
bringing up of their children causes them. They cook for
them the first simple food at hand; they also give them the

* "Among the wild Indians in America, almost everything is the labourer's, 99
parts of a hundred are to be put upon the account of labour. In England, perhaps,
the labourer has not ^." (The Advantages of the East India Trade, &c. p. 7*.)

Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value. 563

lower part of the papyrus stem to eat, so far as it can be
roasted in the fire, and the roots and stalks of rnarsh plants,
some raw, some boiled and roasted. Most of the children go
without shoos and unclothed, for the air is so mild. Hence a
child, until he is grown up, costs his parents not more, on the
whole, than twenty drachmas. It is this, chiefly, which ex
plains why the population of Egypt is so numerous, and, there
fore, why so many great works can be undertaken."1 Never
theless the grand structures of ancient Egypt are less due to
the extent of its population than to the large proportion of it
that was freely disposable. Just as the individual labourer
can do more surplus-labour in proportion as his necessary
labour-time is less, so with regard to the working population.
The smaller the part of it which is required for the production
of the necessary means of subsistence, so much the greater is
the part that can be set to do other work.

Capitalist production once assumed, then, all other circum
stances remaining the same, and given the length of the work
ing day, the quantity of surplus-labour will vary with the
physical conditions of labour, especially with the fertility of
the soil. But it by no means follows from this that the most
fruitful soil is the most fitted for the growth of the capitalist
mode of production. This mode is based on the dominion of
man over nature. Where nature is too lavish, she "keeps him
in hand, like a child in leading-strings." She does not impose
upon him any necessity to develop himself.2 It is not the
tropics with their luxuriant vegetation, but the temperate
zone, that is the mother country of capital. It is not the mere
fertility of the soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the

1 Diodorus, 1. c. 1. I. c. 80.

1 "The first (natural wealth) as it is most noble and advantageous, so doth it
make the people careless, proud, and given to all excesses; whereas the second
enforceth vigilancy, literature, arts and policy." (England's Treasure by Foreign
Trade, Or the Balance of our Foreign Trade is the Rule of our Treasure. Written
by Thomas Mun of London, merchant, and now published for the common good
by his son John Mun. London, 1669, p. 181, 182.) "Nor can I conceive a greater
curse upon a body of people, than to be thrown upon a spot of land, where the
productions for subsistence and food were, in great measure, spontaneous, and the
climate required or admitted little care for raiment and covering . . . there may
'£e an extreme on the other side. A soil incapable of produce by labour is quite
as bad as a soil that produces plentifully without any labour." (An Inquiry into
the present High Price of Provisions. Lond., 1767. p. 10.)

564 Capitalist Production.

variety of its natural products, the changes of the seasons,
which form the physical basis for the social division of labour,
and which, by changes in the natural surroundings, spur man
on to the multiplication of his wants, his capabilities, his
means and modes of labour. It is the necessity of bringing a
natural force under the control of society, of economising, of
appropriating or subduing it on a large scale by the work of
man's hand, that first plays the decisive part in the history of
industry. Examples are, the irrigation works in Egypt,1
Lombardy, Holland, or India and Persia where irrigation by
means of artificial canals, not only supplies the soil with th-3
water indispensable to it, but also carries down to it, in the
shape of sediment from the hills, mineral fertilizers. Tho
secret of the flourishing state of industry in Spain and Sicily
under the dominion of the Arabs lay in their irrigation
works.2

Favourable natural conditions alone, gave us only the possi
bility, never the reality, of surplus-labour, nor, consequently,
of surplus-value and a surplus-product The result of differ
ence in the natural conditions of labour is this, that the same
quantity of labour satisfies, in different countries, a different
mass of requirements,3 consequently, that under circumstances

1 The necessity for predicting the rise and fall of the Nile created Egyptian as
tronomy, and with it the dominion of the priests, as directors of agriculture. "Le
solstice est le moment de 1'annee ou commence la crue du Nil, et celui que les
Egyptiens ont du observer avec le plus d'attention . . . C'etait cette annee
tropique qu'il leur importait de marquer pour se diriger dans leurs operations agri-
coles. Us durent done chercher dans le ciel un signe apparent de son retour."
(Cuvier: Discours sur les revolutions du globe, ed. Hoefer. Paris, 1863, p. 141.)

* One of the material bases of the power of the state over the small disconnected
producing organisms in India, was the regulation of the water supply. The Ma
hometan rulers of India understood this better than their English successors. It
is enough to recall to mind the famine of 1888, which cost the lives of more than
a million Hindoos in the district of Orissa, in the Bengal presidency.

8 There are no two countries which furnish an equal number of the necessaries of
life in equal plenty, and with the same quantity of labour. Men's wants increase
or diminish with the severity or temperateness of the climate they live in; conse
quently, the proportion of trade which the inhabitants of different countries are
obliged to carry on through necessity cannot be the same, nor is it practicable to
ascertain the degree of variation farther than by the degrees of Heat and Cold;
from whence one may make this general conclusion, that the quantity of labour
required for a certain number of people is greatest in cold climates, and least in
hot ones; for in the former men not only want more clothes, but the earth mort
cultivating than the latter." (An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural
Rate of Interest. Lond. 1750. p. 60.) The author of this epoch-making anonymous
work is J. Massey. Hume took his theory of interest from it

Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value. 565

in other respects analogous, the necessary labour-time is differ
ent. These conditions affect surplus-labour only as natural
limits, i.e., by fixing the points at which labour for others can
begin. In proportion as industry advances, these natural
limits recede. In the midst of our West European society,
where the labourer purchases the right to work for his own
livelihood only by paying for it in surplus-labour, the idea
easily takes root that it is an inherent quality of human
labour to furnish a surplus-product1 But consider, for ex
ample, an inhabitant of the eastern islands of the Asiatic
Archipelago, where sago grows wild in the forests. "When
the inhabitants have convinced themselves, by boring a hole
in the tree, that the pith is ripe, the trunk is cut down and
divided into several pieces, the pith is extracted, mixed with
water and filtered: it is then quite fit for use as sago. One
tree commonly yields 300 Ibs., and occasionally 500 to 600
Ibs. There, then, people go into the forests, and cut bread
for themselves, just as with us they cut firewood."2 Sup
pose now such an eastern bread-cutter requires 12 working
hours a week for the satisfaction of all his wants. Nature's
direct gift to him is plenty of leisure time. Before he can
apply this leisure time productively for himself, a whole series
of historical events is required ; before he spends it in surplus-
labour for strangers, compulsion is necessary. If capitalist
production were introduced, the honest fellow would perhaps
have to work six days a week, in order to appropriate to him
self the product of one working day The bounty of Nature
does not explain why he would then have to work 6 days a
week, or why he must furnish 5 days of surplus-labour. It
explains only why his necessary labour-time would be limited
to one day a week. But in no* case would his surplus-pro
duct arise from some occult quality inherent in human labour.
Thus, not only does the historically developed social pro
ductiveness of labour, but also its natural productiveness, ap
pear to be productiveness of the capital with which that labour
is incorporated.

1 "Chaque travail doit (this appears also to be part of the droits et devoirs du
citoyen) laisser un excedant." Proudhon.

3 w. Shouw: "Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch. 2 Ed. Leipz. 1854, p. 149.

566 Capitalist Production.

Ricardo never concerns himself about the origin of surplus-
value. He treats it as a thing inherent in the capitalist mode
of production, which mode, in his eyes, is the natural form of
social production. Whenever he discusses the productiveness
of labour, he seeks in it, not the cause of surplus-value, but
the cause that determines the magnitude of that value. On
the other hand, his school has openly proclaimed the produc
tiveness of labour to be the originating cause of profit (read:
Surplus-value). This at all events is a progress as against
the mercantilists who, on their side, derived the excess of tho
price over the cost of production of the product, from the act
of exchange, from the product being sold above its value.
Nevertheless, Ricardo's school simply shirked the problem,
they did not solve it. In fact these bourgeois economists in
stinctively saw, and rightly so, that it is very dangerous to
stir too deeply the burning question of the origin of surplus-
value. But what are we to think of John Stuart Mill, who,
half a century after Bicardo, solemnly claims superiority over
the mercantilists, by clumsily repeating the wretched evasions
of Ricardo's earliest vulgarisers?

Mill says: "The cause of profit is that labour produces
more than is required for its support." So far, nothing but
the old story ; but Mill wishing to add something of his own,
proceeds: "To vary the form of the theorem; the reason why
capital yields a profit, is because food, clothing, materials and
tools, last longer than the time which was required to produce
them." He here confounds the duration of labour-time with
the duration of its products. According to this view, a baker
whose product lasts only a day, could never extract from his
workpeople the same profit, as a machine maker whose prod
ucts endures for 20 years and more. Of course it is very true,
that if a bird's nest did not last longer than the time it takes
in building, birds would have to do without nests.

This fundamental truth once established, Mill establishes
his own superiority over the mercantilists. "We thus see,"
he proceeds, "that profit arises, not from the incident of ex
change, but from the productive power of labour; and the
general profit of the country is always what the productive

Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value. 567

power of labour makes it, whether any exchange takes place
or not If there were no division of employments, there would
be no buying or selling, but there would still be profit." For
Mill then, exchange, buying and selling, those general condi
tions of capitalist production, are but an incident, and there
would always be profits even without the purchase and sale
of labour-power!

"If," he continues, "the labourers of the country collectively
produce twenty per cent more than their wages, profits will be
twenty per cent, whatever prices may or may not be." This
is, on the one hand, a rare bit of tautology; for if labourers
produce a surplus-value of 20% for the- capitalist, his profit
will be to the total wages of the labourers as 20 : 100. On
the other hand, it is absolutely false to say that "profits will
be 20%." They will always be less, because they are cal
culated upon the sum total of the capital advanced. If, for
example, the capitalist have advanced £500, of which £400
is laid out in means of production and £100 in wages, and if
the rate of surplus-value be 20%, the rate of profit will be
20: 500, i.e., 4% and not 20%.

Then follows a splendid example of Mill's method of han
dling the different historical forms of social production: "I
assume, throughout, the state of things which, where the
labourers and capitalists are separate classes, prevails, with
few exceptions, universally; namely, that the capitalist ad
vances the whole expenses, including the entire remuneration
of the labourer." Strange optical illusion to see everywhere
a state of things which as yet exist only exceptionally on
our earth. But let us finish — Mill is willing to concede,
"that he should do so is not a matter of inherent necessity."
On the contrary : "the labourer might wait, until the produc
tion is complete, for all that part of his wages which exceeds
mere necessaries ; and even for the whole, if he has funds in
hand sufficient for his temporary support. But in the latter
case, the labourer is to that extent really a capitalist in the
concern, by supplying a portion of the funds necessary for
carrying it on." Mill might have gone further and have
added, that the labourer who advances to himself not only the

568 Capitalist Production.

necessaries of life but also the means of production, is in
reality nothing but his own wage-labourer. He might also
have said that the American peasant proprietor is but a serf
who does enforced labour for himself instead of for his lord.

After thus proving clearly, that even if capitalist produc
tion had no existence, still it would always exist, Mill is con
sistent enough to show, on the contrary, that it has no ex
istence, even when it does exist "And even in the former
case" (when the workman is a wage labourer to whom the
capitalist advances all the necessaries of life, he the labourer),
"may be looked upon in the same light," i.e., as a capitalist,
"since, contributing his labour at less than the market price,
(!) he may be regarded as lending the difference ( ?) to his
employer and receiving it back with interest, &C."1 In rc;-
ality, the labourer advances his labour gratuitously to ths
capitalist during, say one week, in order to receive the market
price at the end of the week, &c., and it is this which, accord
ing to Mill, transforms him into a capitalist On the level
plain, simple mounds look like hills ; and the imbecile flatness
of the present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude
of its great intellects.

CHAPTEE, XVII.

CHANGES OF MAGNITUDE IN THE PRICE OF LABOUR-POWER.
ANI> IN SURPLUS-VALUE,

THE value of labour-power is determined by the value of the
necessaries of life habitually required by the average labourer.
The quantity of these necessaries is known at any given epoch
of a given society, and can therefore be treated as a constant
magnitude. What changes, is the value of this quantity.
There are, besides, two other factors that enter into the de
termination of the value of labour-power. One, the

*J. St. Mill. Principles of PoL Econ. Lend. 1868, p. 252-68 passim.

Changes of Magnitude. 569

of developing that power, which expenses vary with the mode
of production; the other, its natural diversity, the difference
between the labour-power of men and women, of children and
adults. The employment of these different sorts of labour-
power, an employment which is, in its turn, made necessary by
the mode of production, makes a great difference in the cost of
maintaining the family of the labourer, and in the value of
the labour-power of the adult male. Both these factors, how
ever, are excluded in the following investigation.1

I assume (1) that commodities are sold at their value; (2)
that the price of labour-power rises occasionally above its
value, but never sinks below it.

On this assumption we have seen that the relative magni
tudes of surplus-value and of price of labour-power are de
termined by three circumstances; (1) the length of the work
ing day, or the extensive magnitude of labour ; ( 2 ) the normal
intensity of labour, its intensive magnitude, whereby a given
quantity of labour is expended in a given time; (3) the pro
ductiveness of labour, whereby the same quantum of labour
yields, in a given time, a greater or less quantum of product,
dependent on the degree of development in the conditions of
production. Very different combinations are clearly possible,
according as one of the three factors is constant and two vari
able, or two constant and one variable, or lastly, all three
simultaneously variable. And the number of these combina
tions is augmented by the fact that, when these factors simul
taneously vary, the amount and direction of their respective
variations may differ. In what follows the chief combinations
alone are considered.

1. Length of the working day and intensify of labour constant.
Productiveness of labour variable.

On these assumptions the value of labour-power, and the
magnitude of surplus-value, are determined by three laws.

(1.) A working day of given length always creates the same
amount of value, no matter how the productiveness of labour,

1 The case considered at pages 347-850 is here of course omitted. (Note by editor
of third edition.)

57° Capitalist Production.

and, with it, the mass of the product, and the price of each
single commodity produced, may vary.

If the value created by a working day of 12 hours be, say,
six shillings, then, although the mass of the articles produced
varies with the productiveness of labour, the only result is that
the value represented by six shillings is spread over a greater
or less number of articles.

(2.) Surplus-value and the value of labour-power vary in
opposite directions. A variation in the productiveness of
labour, its increase or diminution, causes a variation in the
opposite direction in the value of labour-power, and in the
same direction in surplus-value.

The value created by a working day of 12 hours is a con
stant quantity, say, six shillings. This constant quantity is
the sum of the surplus-value plus the value of the labour-power,
which latter value the labourer replaces by an equivalent. It
is self-evident, that if a constant quantity consist of two part},
neither of them can increase without the other diminishing.
Let the two parts at starting be equal ; 3 shillings value of la
bour-power, 3 shillings surplus-value. Then the value of the
labour- power cannot rise from three shillings to four, with
out the surplus-value falling from three shillings to two; and
the surplus-value cannot rise from three shillings to four,
without the value of labour-power falling from three shilling;}
to two. Under these circumstances, therefore, no change can
take place in the absolute magnitude, either of the surplus-
value, or of the value of labour-power, without a simultaneous
change in their relative magnitudes, i.e., relatively to eacl
other. It is impossible for them to rise or fall simultane
ously.

Further, the value of labour-power cannot fall, and con
sequently surplus-value cannot rise, without a rise in the pro
ductiveness of labour. For instance, in the above case, the
value of the labour-power cannot sink from three shillings
to two, unless an increase in the productiveness of labour
makes it possible to produce in 4 hours the same quantity of
necessaries as previously required 6 hours to produce. On
the other hand, the value of the labour-power cannot rise

Changes of Magnitude. 571

from three shillings to four, without a decrease in the pro
ductiveness of labour, whereby eight hours become requisite
to produce the same quantity of necessaries, for the production
of which six hours previously sufficed. It follows from this,
that an increase in the productivenes of labour causes a fall
in the value of labour-power and a consequent rise in surplus-
value, while, on the other hand, a decrease in such productive
ness causes a rise in the value of labour-power, and a fall in
surplus-value.

In formulating this law, Ricardo overlooked one circum
stance; although a change in the magnitude of the surplus-
value or surplus-labour causes a change in the opposite di
rection in the magnitude of the value of labour-power, or in
the quantity of necessary labour, it by no means follows that
they vary in the same proportion. They do increase or
diminish by the same quantity. But their proportional in
crease or diminution depends on their original magnitudes
before the change in the productiveness of labour took place.
If the value of the labour-power be 4 shillings, or the neces
sary labour-time 8 hours, and the surplus- value be 2 shillings,
or the surplus-labour 4 hours, and if, in consequence of an
increase in the productiveness of labour, the value of the
labour-power fall to 3 shillings, or the necessary labour to 6
hours, the surplus-value will rise to 3 shillngs, or the surplus-
labour to 6 hours. The same quantity, 1 shilling or 2 hours, is
added in one case and subtracted in the other. But the pro
portional change of magnitude is different in each case. While
the value of the labour-power falls from 4 shillings to 3, i.e., by
\ or 25%, the surplus-value rises from 2 shillings to 3, i.e.,
by \ or 50%. It therefore follows that the proportional in
crease of diminution in surplus-value, consequent on a given
change in the productiveness of labour, depends on the original
magnitude of that portion of the working day which embodies
itself in surplus-value; the smaller that portion, the greater
is the proportional change ; the greater that portion, the less
is the proportional change.

(3.) Increase or diminution in surplus-value is always con-

572 Capitalist Production.

sequent on, and never the cause of, the corresponding dimi
nution or increase in the value of labour-power.1

Since the working-day is constant in magnitude, and is
represented by a value of constant magnitude, since, to every
variation in the magnitude of surplus-value, there corresponds
an inverse variation in the value of labour-power, and since
the value of labour-power cannot change, except in consequence
of a change in the productiveness of labour, it clearly follow**,
under these conditions, that every change of magnitude in sur
plus-value arises from an inverse change of magnitude in the
value of labour-power. If, then, as we have already seen,
there can be no change of absolute magnitude in the value of
labour-power, and in surplus-value, unaccompanied by u
change in their relative magnitudes, so now it follows that no
change in their relative magnitudes is possible, without t
previous change in the absolute magnitude of the value oi
labour-power.

According to the third law, a change in the magnitude of
surplus-value, presupposes a movement in the value of labour-
power, which movement is brought about by a variation in the
productiveness of labour. The limit of this change is given
by the altered value of labour-power. Nevertheless, even
when circumstances allow the law to operate, subsidiary move
ments may occur. For example: if in consequence of the
increased productiveness of labour, the value of labour-power
fall from 4= shillings to 3, or the necessary labour-time from
8 hours to 6, the price of labour-power may possibly not fall
below 3s. Sd., 3s. 6d., or 3s. 2d., and the surplus-value conse
quently not rise above 3s. 4d., 3c. 6d., or 3s. lOd. The
amount of this fall, the lowest limit of which is 3 shillings
(the new value of labour-power), depends on the relative

1 To this third law MacCulloch has made, amongst others, this absurd addition,
that a rise in surplus value unaccompanied by a fall in the value of labour-power,
can occur through the abolition of taxes payable by the capitalist. The abolition
of such taxes makes no change whatever in the quantity of surplus-value that the
capitalist extorts at first-hand from the labourer. It alters only the proportion in
which that surplus-value is divided between himself and third persons. It conse
quently makes no alteration whatever in the relation between surplus-value and value
of labour-power. MacCulloch's exception therefore proves only his misapprehension
of the rule, a misfortune that as oftens happens to him in the vulgarisation of
Ricardo, as it does to J. B. Say in the vulgarisation of Adam Smith,

Changes of Magnitude. 573

weight, which the pressure of capital on the one side, and the
resistance of the labourer on the other, throws into the scale.

The value of labour-power is determined by the value of a
given quantity of necessaries. It is the value and not the
mass of these necessaries that varies with the productiveness
of labour. It is, however, possible that, owing to an increase
of productiveness, both the labourer, and the capitalist may
simultaneously be able .to appropriate a greater quantity of
these necessaries, without any change in the price of labour-
power or in surplus-value. If the value of labour-power be 3
shillings, and the necessary labour-time amount to 6 hours, if
the surplus-value likewise be 3 shillings, and the surplus-
labour 6 hours, then if the productiveness of labour were
doubled without altering the ratio of necessary labour to
surplus-labour, there would be no change of magnitude in
surplus-value and price of labour-power. The only result
would be that each of them would represent twice as many
use-values as before; these use-values being twice as cheap as
before. Although labour-power would be unchanged in price,
it would be above its value. If, however, the prices of labour-
power had fallen, not to Is. 6d., the lowest possible point con
sistent with its new value, but to 2s. lOd. or 2s. 6d., still this
lower price would represent an increased mass of necessaries.
In this way it is possible with an increasing productiveness of
labour, for the price of labour-power to keep on falling, and
yet this fall to be accompanied by a constant growth in the
mass of the labourer's means of subsistence. But even in such
case, the fall in the value of labour-power would cause a corre
sponding rise of surplus-value, and thus the abyss between the
labourer's position and that of the capitalist would keep
widening.1

Eicardo was the first who accurately formulated the three
laws we have above stated. But he falls into the following
errors: (1) he looks upon the special conditions under which

1 "When an alteration takes place in the productiveness of industry, and that
either more or le«s is produced by a given quantity of labour and capital, the propor
tion of wages may obviously vary, whilst the quantity, which that proportion repre
sents, remains the same, or the quantity may vary, whilst the proportion remain*
the same." ("Outlines of Political Economy," &c.. p. 67.)

574 Capitalist Production.

these laws nold good as the general and sole conditions of
capitalist production. He knows no change, either in the
length of the working day, or in the intensity of labour ; con
sequently with him there can be only one variable factor, viz.,
the productiveness of labour; (2), and this error vitiates his
analysis much more than (1), he has not, any more than have
the other economists, investigated surplus-value as such, i.e.,
independently of its particular forms, such a profit, rent, &c.
He therefore confounds together the laws of the rate of sur
plus-value and the laws of the rate of profit. The rate of
profit is, as we have already said, the ratio of the surplus-valuo
to the total capital advanced ; the rate of surplus-value is tho
ratio of the surplus-value to the variable part of that capital.
Assume that a capital C of £500 is made up of raw material,
instruments of labour, &c. (c) to the amount of £400 ; and of
wages (v) to the amount of £100; and further, that the sur
plus-value (s)— £100. Then we have rate of surplus- value
i = -*f0°0==100%. But the rate of profit J=-f£° =20%. H
is, besides, obvious that the rate of profit may depend on
circumstances that in no way affect the rate of surplus-value.
I shall show in Book III. that, with a given rate of surplus-
value, we may have any number of rates of profit, and that
various rates of surplus-value may, under given conditions,
express themselves in a single rate of profit.

II. Working-day constant. Productiveness of labour constant.
Intensity of labour variable.

Increased intensity of labour means increased expenditure
of labour in a given time. Hence a working-day of more
intense labour is embodied in more products than is one of less
intense labour, the length of each day being the same. In
creased productiveness of labour also, it is true, will supply
more products in a given working-day. But in this latter case,
the value of each single product falls, for it costs less labour
than before ; in the former case, that value remains unchanged,
for each article costs the same labour as before. Here we
have an increase in the number of products, unaccompanied

Changes of Magnitude. 575

by a fall in their individual prices : as their number increases,
so does the sum of their prices. But in the case of increased
productiveness, a given value is spread over a greater mass of
products. Hence the length of the working-day being con
stant, a day's labour of increased intensity will be incorporated
in an increased value, and, the value of money remaining un
changed, in more money. The value created varies with the
extent to which the intensity of labour deviates from its nor
mal intensity in the society. A given working-day, there
fore, no longer creates a constant, J>ut a variable value; in a
day of 12 hours of ordinary intensity, the value created is, say
6 shillings, but with increased intensity, the value created may
be 7, 8, or more shillings. It is clear that, if the value cre
ated by a day's labour increases from, say, 6 to 8 shillings,
then the two parts into which this value is divided, viz., price
of labour-power and surplus-value, may both of them increase
simultaneously, and either equally or unequally. They may
both simultaneously increase from 3 shillings to 4. Here, the
rise in the price of labour-power does not necessarily imply
that the price has risen above the value of labour-power. On
the contrary, the rise in price may be accompanied by a fall in
value. This occurs whenever the rise in the price of labour-
power does not compensate for its increased wear and tear.

We know that, with transitory exceptions, a change in the
productiveness of labour does not cause any change in the
value of labour-power, nor consequently in the magnitude of
surplus-value, unless, the products of the industries affected are
articles habitually consumed by the laborers. In the present
case this condition no longer applies. For when the variation
is either in the duration or in the intensity of labour, there is
always a corresponding change in the magnitude of the value
created, independently of the nature of the article in which
that value is embodied.

If the intensity of labour were to increase simultaneously
and equally in every branch of industry, then the new and
higher degree of intensity would become the normal degree for
the society, and would therefore cease to be taken account of.
But still, even then, the intensity of labour would be different

576 Capitalist Production.

in different countries, and would modify the international aj
plication of the law of value. The more intense working
day of one nation would be represented by a greater sum of
money than would the less intense day of another nation.1

III. Productiveness and Intensity of Labour constant. Length
of the working-day variable.

The working-day may vary in two ways. It may be made
either longer or shorter. From our present data, and within
the limits of the assumptions made on p. 569 we obtain the
following laws:

(1.) The working-day creates a greater or less amount of
value in proportion to its length — thus, a variable and not a,
constant quantity of value.

(2.) Every change in the relation between the magnitudes
of surplus value and of the value of labour-power arises from
a change in the absolute magnitude of the surplus-labour, and
consequently of the surplus-value,

(3.) The absolute value of labour-power can change only
in consequence of the reaction exercised by the prolongation of
surplus-value upon the wear and tear of labour-power. Every
change in this absolute value is therefore the effect, but nevei
the cause, of a change in the magnitude of surplus-value.

We begin with the case in which the working-day is short
ened.

(1). A shortening of the working-day under the conditions
given above, leaves the value of labour-power, and with it,_ the
necessary labour-time, unaltered. It reduces the surplus-
labour and surplus-value. Along with the absolute magnitude
of the latter, its relative magnitude also falls, i.e., its magni
tude relatively to the value of labour-power whose magni
tude remains unaltered. Only by lowering the price of la-

1 "All things being equal, the English manufacturer can turn out a considerably
larger amount of work In a given time than a foreign manufacturer, so much as to
counterbalance the difference of the working-days, between 60 hours a week here,
and 72 or 80 elsewhere." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 31st Oct. 1855, p. 65.) The
most infallible means for reducing this qualitative difference between the English
and Continental working hour would be a law shortening quantitatively the length
of the working-day in Continental factories.

Changes of Magnitude. 577

bour-power below its value could the capitalist save himself
harmless.

All the usual arguments against the shortening of the
working-day, assume that it takes place under the conditions
we have here supposed to exist; but in reality the very con
trary is the case : a change in the productiveness and intensity
of labour either precedes, or immediately follows, a shorten
ing of the working-day.1

(2). Lengthening of the working-day. Let the necessary
labour-time be 6 hours, or the value of labour-power 3 shil
lings; also let the surplus-labour be 6 hours or the surplus-
value 3 shillings. The whole working-day then amounts to 12
hours and is embodied in a value of 6 shillings. If, now,
the working-day be lengthened by 2 hours and the price of
labour-power remain unaltered, the surplus-value increases
both absolutely and relatively. Although there is no absolute
change in the value of labour-power, it suffers a relative fall.
Under the conditions assumed in I. there could not be a change
of relative magnitude in the value of labour-power without a
change in its absolute magnitude. Here, on the contrary, the
change of relative magnitude in the value of labour-power is
the result of the change of absolute magnitude in surplus-
value.

Since the value in which a day's labour is embodied, in
creases with the length of that day, it is evident that the sur
plus-value and the price of labour-power may simultaneously
increase, either by equal or unequal quantities. This simul
taneous increase is therefore possible in two cases, one, the
actual lengthening of the working-day, the other, an increase
in the intensity of labour unaccompanied by such lengthen
ing.

When the working-day is prolonged, the price of labour-
power may fall below its value, although that price be nomin
ally unchanged or even rise. The value of a day's labour-
power, is, as will be remembered, estimated from its normal
average duration, or from the normal duration of )if e among

1 "There are compensating circumstance* ... which the working of the Ten
Hours' Act has brought to light." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact, for 1st Dec. 1848, p. 7.)

578 Capitalist Production.

the labourers, and from corresponding normal transformations
of organised bodily matter into motion,2 in conformity with the
nature of man. Up to a certain point, the increased wear and
tear of labour-power, inseparable from a lengthened working-
day, may be compensated by higher wages. But beyond this
point the wear and tear increases in geometrical progression,
and every condition suitable for the normal reproduction and
functioning of labour-power is suppressed. The price of
labour-power and the degree of its exploitation cease to l»e
commensurable quantities,

IV. — Simultaneous variations in the duration^ productiveness,
and intensity of labour.

It is obvious that a large number of combinations are here
possible. Any two of the factors may vary and the third
remain constant, or all three may vary at once. They may
vary either in the same or .in different degrees, in the same
or in opposite directions, with the result that the variations
counteract one another, either wholly or in part. Neverthe
less the analysis of every possible case is easy in view of th3
results given in I., II., and III. The effect of every possibb
combination may be found by treating each factor in turn as
variable, and the other two constant for the time being. Wo
shall, therefore, notice, and that briefly, but two important
cases.

(1). Diminishing productiveness of labour with a simultaneous*
lengthening of the working-day.

In speaking of diminishing productiveness of labour, we*
here refer to diminution in those industries whose products de
termine the value of labour-power; such a diminution, for
example, as results from decreasing fertility of the soil, and
from the corresponding dearness of its products. Take the

1 "The amount of labour which a man had undergone in the course of 24 houn
might be approximately arrived at by an examination of the chymical changes which
fcnd taken place in his body, changed forms in matter indicating the anterior exer
cise of dynamic force." (Grove: "On the Correlation of Physical Force*.")

Changes of Magnitude. 579

working^day at 12 hours and the value created by it at 6
shillings, of which one half replaces the value of the labour-
power, the other forms the surplus-value. Suppose, in conse
quence of the increased dearness of the products of the soil,
that the value of labour-power rises from 3 shillings to 4, and
therefore the necessary labour-time from 6 hours to 8. If
there be no change in the length of the working-day, the sur
plus-labour would fall from 6 hours to 4, the surplus-value
from 3 shillings to 2. If the day be lengthened by 2 hours,
i.e., from 12 hours to 14, the surplus-labour remains at 6
hours, the surplus-value at 6 shillings, but the surplus-value
decreases compared with the value of labour-power, as meas
ured by the necessary labour-time. If the day be lengthened
by 4 hours, viz., from 12 hours to 16, the proportional magni
tudes of surplus-value and value of labour-power, of surplus-
labour and necessary labour, continue unchanged, but the
absolute magnitude of surplus-value rises from 3 shillings to 4,
that of the surplus-labour from 6 hours to 8, an increment of
33|%. Therefore, with diminishing productiveness of labour
and a simultaneous lengthening of the working-day, the ab
solute magnitude of surplus-value may continue unaltered, at
the same time that its relative magnitude diminishes ; its rela
tive magnitude may continue unchanged, at the same time
that its absolute magnitude increases ; and, provided the
lengthening of the day be sufficient, both may increase.

In the period between 1799 and 1815 the increasing price of
provisions led in England to a nominal rise in wages, although
the real wages, expressed in the necessaries of life, fell. From
this fact West and Ricardo drew the conclusion, that the
diminution in the productiveness of agricultural labour had
brought about a fall in the rate of surplus-value, and they
made this assumption of a fact that existed only in their
imaginations, the starting-point of important investigations
into the relative magnitudes of wages, profits, and rent. But,
as a matter of fact, surplus-value had at that time, thanks to
the increased intensity of labour, and to the prolongation of
the working-day, increased both in absolute and relative mag
nitude. This was the period in which the right to prolong

580 Capitalist Production.

the hours of labour to an outrageous extent was established;1
the period that was especially characterised by an accelerated
accumulation of capital here, by pauperism there.3

(2) Increasing intensity and productiveness of labour with
simultaneous shortening of the working-day.

Increased productiveness and greater intensity of labour,
both have a like effect. They both augment the mass of
articles produced in a given time. Both, therefore, shorten
that portion of the working-day which the labourer needs to
produce his means of subsistence or their equivalent. The
minimum length of the working-day is fixed by this necessary
but contractile portion of it. If the whole working-day were
to shrink to the length of this portion, surplus-labour would
vanish, a consummation utterly impossible under the regime
of capital. Only by suppressing the capitalist form of pro
duction could the length of the working-day be reduced to

1 "Corn and labour rarely march quite abreast; but there is an obvious limit be
yond which they cannot be separated. With regard to the unusual exertions made
by the labouring classes in periods of dearness, which produce the fall of wages
noticed in the evidence" (namely, before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry,
1814-15), "they are most meritorious in the individuals, and certainly favour the
growth of capital. But no man of humanity could wish to see them constant and
unremitted. They are most admirable as a temporary relief; but if they were con
stantly in action, effects of a similar kind would result from them, as from the
population of a country being pushed to the very extreme limits of its food."
(Malthus: "Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent," Lond., 1815, p. 48,
note.) All honour to Malthus that he lays stress on the lengthening of the hours
of labour, a fact to which he elsewhere in his pamphlet draws attention, while
Ricardo and others, in face of the most notorious facts, make invariability in the
length of the working-day the ground-work of all their investigations. But the
conservative interests, which Malthus served, prevented him from seeing that an
unlimited prolongation of the working-day, combined with an extraordinary develop
ment of machinery, and the exploitation of women and children, must inevitably
have made a great portion of the working class "supernumerary," particularly when
ever the war should have ceased, and the monopoly of England in the markets of
the world should have come to an end. It was, of course, far more convenient,
and much more in conformity with the interests of the ruling classes, whom Malthus
adored like a true priest, to explain this "over-population" by the eternal laws of
Nature, rather than by the historical laws of capitalist production.

3 " A principal cause of the increase of capital, during the war, proceeded from
the greater exertions, and perhaps the greater privations of the labouring classes,
the most numerous in every society. More women and children were compelled by
necessitous circumstances, to enter upon laborious occupations, and former work
men were, from the same cause, obliged to devote a greater portion of their time
*o increase production." (Eesays on Pol. Econ., in which are illustrated the prin-
tipal. causes of the present national distress. Lond., 1830, p. 248.)

Changes of Magnitude. 581

Ititr necessary labour -time. But, even iii that case, the latter
would extend its limits. On the one hand, because the notion
of "means of subsistence" would considerably expand, and the
labourer would lay claim to an altogether different standard
of life. On the other hand, because a part of what is now
surplus-labour, would then count as necessary labour; I mean
the labour of forming a fund for reserve and accumulation.

The more the productiveness of labour increases, the more
can the working-day be shortened ; and the more the working-
day is shortened, the more can the intensity of labour increase.
From a social point of view, the productiveness increases in
the same ratio as the economy of labour, which, in its turn,
includes not only economy of the means of production, but also
the avoidance of all useless labour. The capitalist mode of
production, while on the one hand, enforcing economy in each
individual business, on the other hand, begets, by its anarchical
system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of
labour-power and of the social means of production, not to
mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at
present indispensable, but in themselves superfluous.

The intensity and productiveness of labour being given, the
time which society is bound to devote to material production
is shorter, and as a consequence, the time at its disposal for
the free development, intellectual and social, of the individual
is greater, in proportion as the wrork is more and more evenly
divided among all the able-bodied members of society, and
as a particular class is more and more deprived of the power
to shift the natural burden of labour from its own shoulders
to those of another layer of society. In this direction, the
shortening of the working-day finds at last a limit in the
generalisation of labour. In capitalist society spare time is
acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of
the masses into labour- time.

582 Capitalist Production.

CHAPTER XVIII.

VARIOUS FORMULAE FOR THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE.

WB have seen that the rate of surplus-value is represented by
the following formula*.

T Surplus-value ( *_ \ Surplus-value Surplus-labour

Variable Capital \ v / Value of labour-power Necessary labour

The two first of these formulae represent, as a ratio of values,
that which, in the third, is represented as a ratio of the timen
during which those values are produced. These formulae,
supplementary the one to the other, are rigorously definite anc
correct. We therefore find them substantially, but not con
sciously, worked out in classical political economy. There
we meet with the following derivative formulae.

jj Surplus-labour Surplus-value Surplus-product

' Working-day ~ Value of the Product == Total Product

One and the same ratio is here expressed as a ratio of
labour-times, of the values in which those labour-times are
embodied, and of the products in which those values exist. It
is of course understood that, by "Value of the Product," is
meant only the value newly created in a working-day, the
constant part of the value of the product being excluded.

In all of these formulae (II.), tne actual degree of exploita
tion of labour, or the rate of surplus-value, is falsely expressed.
Let the working-day be 12 hours. Then, making the same
assumptions as in former instances, the real degree of ex
ploitation of labour will be represented in the following pro
portions.

6 hours surplus-labour Surplus-value of 8 sh. _ ^ r^^ Q*

6 hours necessary labour ~ " Variable Capital of 3 sh. " ~~ /

From formulae II. we get very differently,

6 hours surplus-labour Surplus-value of 8 sh. - >» QJ

Working-day of IS hours == Value created of 6 sh. — &U /°

These derivative formulae express, in reality, only the pro-

Various Formula for Rate of Surplus-Volume. 583

portion in which the working-day, or the value produced by
it, is divided between capitalist and labourer. If they are to
be treated as direct expressions of the degree of self-expansion
of capital, the following erroneous law would hold good : Sur
plus-labour or surplus-value can never reach 100%.* Since
the surplus-labour is only an aliquot part of the working-day,
or since surplus-value is only an aliquot part of the value
created, the surplus-labour must necessarily be always less
than the working-day, or the surplus-value always less than
the total value created. In order, however, to attain the
ratio of 100:100 they must be equal. In order that the
surplus-labour may absorb the whole day (i. e., an average day
of any week or year), the necessary labour must sink to zero.
But if the necessary labour vanish, so too does the surplus-
labour, since it is only a function of the former. The ratio

Surplus-labour Surplus-value .* * •» .-» •%• .,

'w^rking-day or Value created can therefore never reach the limit
pf J5J-, still less rise to10"^ x . But not so the rate of surplus-
value, the real degree of exploitation of labour. Take, e.g., the
estimate of L. de Lavergne, according to which the English
agricultural labourer gets only J, the capitalist (farmer) on the
other hand f of the product2 or of its value, apart from the
question of how the booty is subsequently divided between the

1 Thus, t.g., in "Dritter Brief an v. Kirchmann von Rodbertus. Widerlegung der
Ricardo'schen Theorie von der Grundrente und Begriindung einer neuen Renten-
theorie. Berlin, 1851." I shall return to this letter later on; in spite of its erro
neous theory of rent, it sees through the nature of capitalist production.

Note by the Editor of the 3rd Edition. It may be seen from this how favourably
Marx judged his predecessors, whenever he found in them real progress, or new and
sound ideas. The subsequent publication of Rodbertus' letters to Rud. Meyer has
shown that the above acknowledgment by Marx wants restricting to some extent.
In those letters this passage occurs: "Capital must be rescued not only from labour,
but from itself, and that will be best effected, by treating the acts of the industrial
capitalist as economical and political functions, that have been delegated to him
with his capital, and by treating his profit as a form of salary, because we still know
no other social organisation. But salaries may be regulated, and may also be re
duced if they take too much from wages. The irruption of Marx into Society, as
I may call his book, must be warded off. . . . Altogether, Marx's book is not so
much an investigation into capital, as a polemic against the present form of capital,
a form which he confounds with the concept itself of capital." (Briefe, &c., von
Dr. Rodbertus-Jagetzow, herausgg. von Dr. Rud. Meyer, Berlin, 1881, I. Bd. p. 111.,
48. Brief von Rodbertus.). To such ideological commonplaces did the bold attack
by Rodbertus in his "social letters" finally dwindle down.

* That part of the product which merely replaces the constant capital advanced, is
of course left out in this caluclation. Mr. L. de Lavergne, a blind admirer of Eng
land, is inclined to estimate the share of the capitalist too low, rather than too high.

584 Capitalist Production.

capitalist, the landlord and others. According to this, the sur
plus-labour of the English agricultural labourer is to his
necessary labour as 3 :1, which gives a rate of exploitation of
300%. "

The favourite method of treating the working-day as con
stant in magnitude became, through the use of the formulae
II., a fixed usage, because in them surplus-labour is always
compared with a working-day of given length. The same
holds good when the repartition of the value produced is ex
clusively kept in sight. The working-day that has already
been realised in a given value, must necessarily be a day of
given length.

The habit of representing surplus-value and value of labour-
power as fractions of the value created — a habit that originates
in the capitalist mode of production itself, and whose import
will hereafter be disclosed — conceals the very transaction that
characterises capital, namely the exchange of variable capital
for living labour-power, and the consequent exclusion of the
labourer from the product. Instead of the real fact, we have
the false semblance of an association, in which labourer and
capitalist divide the product in proportion to the different ele
ments which they respectively contribute towards its for
mation.1

Moreover, the formulae II. can at any time be reconverted

• . f -i T -rf f • i Surplus-labour of 6 hours

into formulae I. If, for instance, we have Working-day of i. hours
the necessary labour-time being 12 hours less the surplus-
labour of 6 hours, we get the following result,

Surplus-labour of 6 hours _ 100
Necessary-labour of 6 hours 100

There is a third formula which I have occasionally already
anticipated ; it is

TTT Surplus-value Surplus-labour Unpaid labour

Value of labour-power Necessary labour ~~ Paid labour

After the investigations we have given above, it is no longer
possible to be misled, by the formula • p^' labour^ > i

1 All well-developed forms of capitalist production being forms of co-operation,
nothing is, of course, easier, than to make abstraction from their antagonistic char-

Various Formula for Rate of Surplus-Value. 585

eluding, that the capitalist pays for labour and not for labour-
power. This formula is only a popular expression for
- The capitalist pays the value, so far as price co

incides with value, of the labour-power, and receives in ex
change the disposal of the living labour-power itself. His
usufruct is spread over two periods. During one the labourer
produces a value that is only equal to the value of his labour-
power: he produces its equivalent. Thus the capitalist re
ceives in return for his advance of the price of the labour pow
er, a product of the same price. It is the same as if he
had bought the product ready made in the market. During
the other period, the period of surplus-labour, the usufruct of
the labour-power creates a value for the capitalist, that costs
him no equivalent.1 This expenditure of labour-power
comes to him gratis. In this sense it is that surplus-labour
can be called unpaid labour.

Capital, therefore, is not only, as Adam Smith says, the
command over labour. It is essentially the command over un
paid labour. All surplus-value, whatever particular form
(profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallise into,
is in substance the materialisation of unpaid labour. The se
cret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having
the disposal of a definite quantity of other people's unpaid
labour.

acter, and to transform them by a word into some form of free association, as is
done by A. de Laborde in "De 1' Esprit de 1* Association dans tous les interets de la
communaute." Paris 1818. H. Carey, the Yankee, occasionally performs this con
juring trick with like success, even with the relations resulting from slavery.

1 Although the Physiocrats could not penetrate the mystery of surplus-value, yet
this much was clear to them, viz., that it is "une richesse independante et disponible
qu'il (the possessor) n'a point achetee et qu'il vend." (Turgot: "Reflexions sur la
Formation et la Distribution des Richesses," p. 11.)

PAET VL
WAGES.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE VALUE (AND RESPECTIVELY THB
PRICE) OF LABOUR-POWER INTO WAGES.

ON the surface of bourgeois society the wage of the la
bourer appears as the price of labour, a certain quantity
of money that is paid for a certain quantity of labour. Thus
people speak of the value of labour and call its expression in
money its necessary or natural price. On the other hand
they speak of the market prices of labour, i.e., prices oscillating
above or below its natural price.

But what is the value of a commodity ? The objective form
of the social labour expended in its production. And how do
we measure the quantity of this value ? By the quantity of
the labour contained in it How then is the value, e.g., of a
12 hours' working day to be determined ? By the 12 work
ing hours contained in a working day of 12 hours, which is
an absurd tautology.1

1 "Mr. Ricardo, ingeniously enough, avoids a difficulty which, on a first view,
threatens to encumber his doctrne, that value depends on the quantity of labour
employed in production. If this principle is rigidly adhered to, it follows that the
>alue of labour depends on the quantity of labour employed in producing it — which
is evidently absurd. By a dexterovs turn, therefore, Mr. Ricardo mak?4 the value
of labour depend on the quantity of labour required to produce wages; or, to give
him the benefit of his own language, he maintains, that the value of labour is to be
estimated by the quantity of labour required to produce wages; by which he means
the quantity of labour required to produce the money or commodities given to the
labourer. This is similar to saying, that the value of cloth is estimated, not by the
quantity of labour bestowed on its production, but by the quantity of labour be
stowed on the production of the silver, for which the cloth is exchanged." CA.
Critical Discourse on the Nature, &c.f of Value, p. 60, 51.)

586

Value of Labour-Power and Wages. 587

In order to be sold as a commodity in the market, labour
must at all events exist before it is sold. But could the
labourer give it an independent objective existence, he would
sell a commodity and not labour.1

Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of money,
i.e., of realized labour, with living labour would either do
away with the law of value which only begins to develop itself
freely on the basis of capitalist production, or do away with
capitalist production itself, which rests directly on wage-
labour. The working day of 12 hours embodies itself, e.g.,
in a money value of 6s. Either equivalents are exchanged,
and then the labourer receives 6s. for 12 hours' labour; the
price of his labour would be equal to the price of his product,
In this case he produces no surplus-value, for the buyer of
his labour, the Os. are not transformed into capital, the basis
of capitalist production vanishes. But it is on this very basis
that he sells his labour and that his labour is wage-labour.
Or else he receives for 12 hours' labour less than 6s., i.e., less'
than 12 hours' labour. Twelve hours labour are exchanged
against 10, 6, &c., hours' labour. This equalisation of un
equal quantities not merely does away with the determination
of value. Such a self-destructive contradiction cannot be in
any way even enunciated or formulated as a law.2

It is of no avail to deduce the exchange of more labour
against less, from their difference of form, the one being
realized, the other living.3 This is the more absurd as the

1 "If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first pro
duced in order to exchange, and then brought to market where it must exchange
with other commodities according to the respective quantities of each which there
may be in the market at the time; labour is created the moment it is brought to
market; nay, it is brought to market before it is created." (Observations on some
Verbal Disputes, etc., pp. 75, 76.)

2 "Treating labour as a commodity, and capital, the produce of labour, as another,
then, if the values of these two commodities were regulated by equal quantities of
labour, a given amount of labour would . . . exchange for that quantity of
capital which had been produced by the same amount of labour; antecedent labour
would . . . exchange for the same amount as present labour. But the value
of labour in relation to other commodities ... is determined not by equal
quantities of labour." (E. G. Wakefield in his edition of Adam Smith's "Wealth
of Nations," vol. i., London, 1836, p. 231, note.)

* "II a fallu convenir (a new edition of the contrat social!) que toutes leg fois
qu'il echangerait du travail fait centre du travail a faire, le dernier (le capitaliste)
aurait une valeur superieure au premier" (le travailleur). Simonde (i.e., Sismondi),
"De la Richesse Comrnercialc,"tGeneve, 1808, t 1, p. 37

588 Capitalist Production.

value of a commodity is determined not by the quantity of
labour actually realized in it, but by the quantity of living
labour necessary for its production. A commodity represents,
say 6 working hours. If an invention is made by which it
can be produced in 3 hours, the value, even of the commodity
already produced, falls by half. It represents now 3 hours
of social labour instead of the 6 formerly necessary. It is
the quantity of labour required for its production, not the
realized form of that labour, by which the amount of the
value of a commodity is determined.

That which comes directly face to face with the possessor
of money on the market, is in fact not labour, but the labourer.
What the latter sells is his labour-power. As soon as his
labour actually begins, it has already ceased to belong to him ;
it can therefore 110 longer be sold by him. Labour is tha
substance, and the immanent measure of value, but has itself
no value.1

In the expression "value of labour," the idea of value is not
only completely obliterated, but actually reversed. It is an
expression as imaginary as the value of the earth. These-
imaginary expressions, arise, however, from the relations of
production themselves. They are categories for the phe
nomenal forms of essential relations. That in their appear
ance things often represent themselves in inverted form is
pretty well known in every science except political economy.2

1 "Labour the exclusive standard of value . . . the greater of all wealth, no
commodity." Th. Hodgskin, 1. c. p. 186.

2 On the other hand, the attempt to explain such expressions as merely poetic
license only shows the impotence of the analysis. Hence, in answer to Proudhon's
phrase; "Le travail est dit valoir, non pas en tant que marchandise lui meme, mais
en vue des valeurs qu'on suppose, rcnfermees puissanciellemcnt en lui. La valeur
du travail est une expression figuree," &c., I have remarked: "Dans le travail-
marchandise qui est d'une realite effrayant, il (Proudhon) ne voit qu'une ellipse
grammaticale. Done, toute la societe actuelle fondee sur le travail-marchandise, est
desormais fondee sur une license podtique, sur une expression figuree. La socie'te
veut-elle 'e'liminer tous les inconvenients/ qui la travaillent, eh bien! qu'elle e'limine
les termes malsonnants, qu'elle change de langage, et pour cela elle n'a qu' &
s'adresser a 1' Academic pour lui demander une nouvelle idition de son dictionnaire."
(Karl Marx. "Misere de la Philosophic," p. 34, 35.) It is naturally still more
convenient to understand by value nothing at all. Then one can without difficulty
subsume everything under this category. Thus, e.g., J. B. Say; what is "valeur?"
Answer: "C'est ce qu'une chose vaut," and what is "prix?" Answer; "La valeur
d'une chose cxprime'e en monnaie." And why has "le travail de la terre . . .

Value of Labour-Power and Wages. 589

Classical political economy borrowed from every-day life
the category "price of labour" without further criticism, and
then simply asked the question, how is this price determined ?
It soon recognized that the change in the relations of demand
and supply explained in regard to the price of labour, as of all
other commodities, nothing except its changes, i.e., the oscilla
tions of the market price above or below a certain mean. If
demand and supply balance, the oscillation of prices ceases, all
other conditions remaining the same. But then demand and
supply also cease to explain anything. The price of labour, at
the moment when demand and supply are in equilibrium, is
its natural price, determined independently of the relation of
demand and supply. And how this price is determined, is
just the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the
market-price is taken, e.g., a year, and they are found to can
cel one the other, leaving a mean average quantity, a relatively
constant magnitude. This had naturally to be determined
otherwise than by its own compensating variations. This price
which always finally predominates over the accidental market-
prices of labour and regulates them, this "necessary price"
(physiocrats) or "natural price" of labour (Adam Smith) can,
as with all other commodities, be nothing else than its value
expressed in money. In this way political economy expected
to penetrate athwart the accidental prices of labour, to the
value of labour. As with other commodities, this value was
determined by the cost of production. But what is the cost of
production — of the labourer, i.e., the cost of producing or re
producing the labourer himself? This question unconsciously
substituted itself in political economy for the original one ;
for the search after the cost of production of labour as such
turned in a circle and never left the spot. What economists
therefore call value of labour, is in fact the value of labour-
power, as it exists in the personality of the labourer, which is
as different from its function, labour, as a machine is from
the work it performs. Occupied with the difference between

une valeur? Parce qu'on y met un prix." Therefore value is what a thing is
worth, and the land has its "value," because its value is "expressed in money."
This is, anyhow, a very simple way of explaining the why and the wherefore of
'Jungs.

59° Capitalist Production.

the market-price of labour and its-so-called value, with the
relation of this value to the rate of profit, and to the values
of the commodities produced by means of labour, &c., they
never discovered that the course of the analysis had led not
only from the market prices of labour to its presumed value,
but had led to the resolution of this value of labour itself
into the value of labour-power. Classical economy never ar
rived at a consciousness of the results of its own analysis ; it
accepted uncritically the categories "value of labour," "natural
price of labour," &c., as final and as adequate expressions for
the value-relation under consideration, and was thus led, us
will be seen later, into inextricable confusion and contradic
tion, while it offered to the vulgar economists a secure basis of
operations for their shallowness, which on principle worships
appearances only.

Let us next see how value (and price) of labour- power,
present themselves in this transformed condition as wages.

We know that the daily value of labour-power is calculated
upon a certain length of the labourer's life, to which, again,
corresponds a certain length of working-day. Assume tin)
habitual working-day as 12 hours, the daily value of labour-
power as 3s., the expression in money of a value that embodies
6 hours of labour. If the labourer receives 3s., then he re
ceives the value of his labour-power functioning through 12
hours. If, now, this value of a day's labour-power is ex
pressed as the value of a day's labour itself, we have the
formula : Twelve hours' labour has a value of 3s. The value
of labour-power thus determines the value of labour, or, ex
pressed in money, its necessary price. If, on the other hand,
the price of labour-power differs from its value, in like man
ner the price of labour differs from its so-called value.

As the value of labour is only an irrational expression for
the value of labour-power, it follows, of course, that the value
of labour must always be less than the value it produces, for
the capitalist always makes labour-power work longer than is
necessary for the reproduction of its own value. In the above
sample, the value of the labour-power that functions through
12 hours is 3s., a value for the reproduction of which 6 hours

Value of Labour-Pouter and Wages. 591

are required. The value which the labour-power produces is,
on the other hand, 6s., because it, in fact, functions during 12
hours, and the value it produces depends, not on its own
value, but on the length of time it is in action. Thus, we have
a result absurd at first sight — that labour which creates a value
of 6s. possesses a value of 3s.1

We see, further: The value of 3s. by which a part only of
the working day — i.e., 6 hours' labour — is paid for, appears
as the value or price of the whole working-day of 12 hours,
which thus includes 6 hours unpaid for. The wage-form thus
extinguishes every trace of the division of the working-day
into necessary labour and surplus-labour, into paid and un
paid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the
corvee, the labour of the worker for himself, and his compul
sory labour for his lord, differ in space and time in the clear
est possible way. In slave-labour, even that part of the
working-day in which the slave is only replacing the value of
his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he
works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master.
All the slave's labour appears as unpaid labour.2 In wage-
labour, on the contrary, even surplus labour, or unpaid labour,
appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the
labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation con
ceals the unrequited labour of the wage-labourer.

Hence, we may understand the decisive importance of the
transformation of value and price of labour-power into the
form of wages, or into the value and price of labour itself.
This phenomenal form, which makes tie actual relation in
visible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that relation,
forms the basis of all the juridicial notions of both labourer and
capitalist, of all the mystifications of the capitalistic mode of

1 Cf. Zur Kritik der Politischen CEkonomie, p. 40, where I state that, in the por
tion of that work that deals with Capital, this problem will be solved: "How does
production, on the basis of exchange-value determined simply by labour-time, lead
to the result that the exchange-value of labour is less than the exchange-value of
its product?"

1 The "Morning Star," a London free-trade organ, naif to silliness, protested again
mnd again during the American civil war, with all the moral indignation of which
man is capable, that the negro in the "Confederate States" worked absolutely for
nothing. It should have compared the daily cost of such a negro with that of the
free workman in the East end of London.

592 Capitalist Production.

production, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic
shifts of the vulgar economists.

If history took a long time to get at the bottom of the
mystery of wages, nothing, on the other hand, is more easy
to understand than the necessity, the raison d'etre, of this
phenomenon.

The exchange between capital and labour at first presents
itself to the mind in the same guise as the buying and selling
of all other commodities. The buyer gives a certain sum of
money, the seller an article of a nature different from money.
The jurist's consciousness recognises in this, at most, a material
difference, expressed in the juridically equivalent formalse:
"Do ut des, do ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias."

Further. Exchange-value and use-value, being intrin
sically incommensurable magnitudes, the expressions "value of
labour," "price of labour," do not seem more irrational than
the expressions "value of cotton," "price of cotton." More
over, the labourer is paid after he has given his labour. In
its function of means of payment, money realises subsequently
the value or price of the article supplied — i.e., in this par
ticular case, the value or price of the labour supplied.
Finally, the use-value supplied by the labourer to the capitalist
is not> in fact, his labour-power, but its function, some definite
useful labour, the work of tailoring, shoemaking, spinning, &c.
That this same labour is, on the other hand, the imiversal
value-creating element, and thus possesses a property by which
it differs from all other commodities, is beyond the cognisance
of the ordinary mind.

Let us put ourselves in the place of the labourer who
receives for 12 hours' labour, say the value produced by 6
hours' labour, say 3s. For him, in fact, his 12 hours' labour
is the means of buying the 3s. The value of his labour-
power may vary, with the value of his usual means of sub
sistence, from 3 to 4 shillings, or from 3 to 2 shillings; or, if
the value of his labour-power remains constant, its price may,
in consequence of changing relations of demand and supply,
rise to 4s. or fall to 2s. He always gives 12 hours of labour.
Every change in the amount of the equivalent that he receives

Value of Labour-Power and Wages. 593

appears to him, therefore, necessarily as a change in the value
or price of his 12 hours' work. This circumstance misled
Adam Smith, who treated the working-day as a constant
quantity,1 to the assertion that the value of labour is constant,
although the value of the means of subsistence may vary, and
the same working-day, therefore, may represent itself in more,
or less money for the labourer.

Let us consider, on the other hand, the capitalist. He
wishes to receive as much labour as possible for as little
money as possible. Practically, therefore, the only thing that
interests him is the difference between the price of labour-
power and the value which its function creates. But, then, he
tries to buy all commodities as cheaply as possible, and always
accounts for his profit by simple cheating, by buying under,
and selling over the value. Hence, he never comes to see that,
if such a thing as the value of labour really existed, and be
really paid this value no capital would exist, his money
would not be turned into capital.

Moreover, the actual movement of wages presents phe
nomena which seem to prove that not the value of labour-
power is paid, but the value of its function, of labour itself.
We may reduce these phenomena to two great classes: (1.)
Change of wages with the changing length of the working-
day. One might as well conclude that not the value of a
machine is paid, but that of its working, because it costs more
to hire a machine for a week than for a day. (2.) The indi
vidual difference in the wages of different labourers who do
the same kind of work. We find this individual difference,
but are not deceived by it, in the system of slavery, where,
frankly and openly, without any circumlocution, labour-power
itself is sold. Only, in the slave system, the advantage of a
labour-power above the average, and the disadvantage of a
labour-power below the average, affects the slave-owner ; in the
wage-labour system it affects the labourer himself, because his
labour-power is, in the one case, sold by himself, in the other,
by a third person.

1 Adam Smith only accidentally alludes to the variation of the working-day when
be is referring to piece-wages.

• L

594 Capitalist Production.

For the rest, in respect to the phenomenal form, "value and
price of labour," or "wages," as contrasted with the essential
relation manifested therein, viz., the value and price of labour-
power, the same difference holds that holds in respect to all
phenomena and their hidden substratum. The former appear
directly and spontaneously as current modes of thought; the
latter must first be discovered by science. Classical political
economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without,
however, consciously formulating it This it cannot so long
as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.

CHAPTER XX.

TIME-WAGES.

WAGES themselves again take many forms, a fact not recog
nizable in the ordinary economical treatises which, exclusively
interested in the material side of the question, neglect every
difference of form. An exposition of all these forms however
belongs to the special study of wage-labour, not therefore tc
this work. Still the two fundamental forms must be briefly
worked out here.

The sale of labour-power, as will be remembered, takes
place for a definite period of time. The converted form under
which the daily, weekly, &c., value of labour-power presents
itself, is hence that of time-wages, therefore day-wages, &c.

Next it is to be noted that the laws set forth, in the 17th
chapter, on the changes in the relative magnitudes of price of
labour-power and surplus-value, pass by a simple transforma
tion of form, into laws of wages. Similarly the distinction
between the exchange-value of labour-power, and the sum of
the necessaries of life into which this value is converted, now
reappears as the distinction between nominal and real wages.
It would be useless to repeat here, with regard to the phe
nomenal form, what has been already worked out in the sub-

Time-Wages. 595

stantial form. We limit ourselves therefore to a few points
characteristic of time-wages.

The sum of money1 which the labourer receives for his daily
or weekly labour, forms the amount of his nominal wages, or of
his wages estimated in value. But it is clear that according
to the length of the working-day, that is, according to the
amount of actual labour daily supplied, the same daily or
weekly wage may represent very different prices of labour, i.e.,
very different sums of money for the same quantity of labour.2
We must, therefore, in considering time-wages, again dis
tinguish between the sum total of the daily or weekly wages,
&c., and the price of labour. How then to find this price,
i.e.f the money-value of a given quantity of labour ? The aver
age price of labour is found, when the average daily value
of the labour-power is divided by the average number of hours
in the working-day. If, e.g., the daily value of labour-power
is 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 working hours,
and if the working-day is 12 hours, the price of 1 working hour
is i^- shillings = 3d. The price of the working hour thus found
serves as the unit measure for the price of labour.

It follows therefore that the daily and weekly wages, &c.,
may remain the same, although the price of labour falls con
stantly. If, e.g., the habitual working-day is 10 hours and the
daily value of the labour-power 3s., the price of the working
hour is 3f d. It falls to 3d. as soon as the working-day rises
to 12 hours, to 2f d. as soon as it rises to 15 hours. Daily or
weekly wages remain, despite all this, unchanged. On the
contrary, the daily or weekly wages may rise, although the
price of labour remains constant or even falls. If, e.g., the
working day is 10 hours, and the daily value of labour-
power 3 shillings, the price of one working hour is 3f d.
If the labourer in consequence of increase of trade works 12
hours, the price of labour remaining the same, his daily wage

1 The value of money itself is here always supposed constant.

' "The price of labour is the sum paid for a given quantity of lahour." (Sir
Edward West, "Price of Corn and Wages of Labour." London, 1836, p. 67). West
is the author of the anonymous "Essay on the Application of Capital to Land.
By a Fellow of the University College of Oxford, London, 1815." An epoch mak
ing work in the history of political economy.

596 Capitalist Production.

now rises to 3 shillings 7 J d. without any variation in the price
of labour. The same result might follow if, instead of the ex
tensive amount of labour, its intensive amount increased.1
The rise of the nominal daily or weekly wages may therefore
be accompanied by a price of labour that remains stationary
or falls. The same holds as to the income of the labourer's
family, as soon as the quantity of labour expended by the head
of the family is increased by the labour of the members of his
family. There are, therefore, methods of lowering the price
of labour independent of the reduction of the nominal daily or
weekly wages.2

As a general law it follows that, given the amount of daily,
weekly labour, £c., the daily or weekly wages depend on the
price of labour which, itself varies either with the value of
labour-power, or with the difference between its price and its
value. Given, on the other hand, the price of labour, the
daily or weekly wages depend on the quantity of the daily or
weekly labour.

The unit measure for time-wages, the price of the working-
hour, is the quotient of the value of a day's labour-power,
divided by the number of hours of the average working-day.
Let the latter be 12 hours, and the daily value of labour-power
3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 hours of labour.
Under these circumstances the price of a working-hour is 3d.,

1 "The wages of labour depend upon the price of labour and the quantity of
labour performed. ... An increase in the wages of labour does not necessarily
imply an enhancement of the price of labour. From fuller employment, and greater
exertions, the wages of labour may be considerably increased, while the price of
labour may continue the same." West, 1. c. pp. 67, 68, 112. The main question:
"How is the price of labour determined?" West, however, dismisses with mere
banalities.

* This is perceived by the fanatical representative of *he industrial bourgeoisie of
the 18th century, the author of the "Essay on Trade and Commerce" often quoted
by us, although he puts the matter in a confused way: "It is the quantity of labour
and not the price of it (he means by this the nominal dailv or weekly wages) that is
determined by the price of provisions and other necessaries: reduce the price of
necessaries very low, and of course you reduce the quantity of labour in proportion.
Master manufacturers know that there are various ways of raiding and felling the
price of labour, besides that of altering its nominal amount." (\. c. np. 48, 61.)
In his "Three Lectures on the rate of Wages," London, 1830, in which N. W.
Senior uses West's work without mentioning it, he says: "The labourer J's prin
cipally interested in the amount of wages," (p. 14.), that is to say th* labourer is
principally interested in what he receives, the nominal sum of his wages, pot »» *L%\
which he gives, the amount of labour!

Time-Wages. 597

the value produced in it is 6d. If the labourer is now em
ployed less than 12 hours (or less than 6 days in the freek),
e.g., only 6 or 8 hours, he receives, with this price of labour,
only 2s. or Is. 6d. a day.1 As on our hypothesis he must work
on the average 6 hours daily, in order to produce a day's wage
corresponding merely to the value of his labour-power, as
according to the same hypothesis he works only half of every
hour for himself, and half for the capitalist, it is clear that he
cannot obtain for himself the value of the product of 6 hours
if he is employed less than 12 hours. In previous chapters we
saw the destructive consequences of over-work; here we find
the sources of the sufferings that result to the labourer from his
insufficient employment

If the hour's wage is fixed so that the capitalist does not
bind himself to pay a day's or a week's wage, but only to pay
wages for the hours during which he chooses to employ the
labourer, he can employ him for a shorter time than that which
is originally the basis of the calculation of the hour-wage, of
the unit-measure of the price of labour. Since this unit is

., , -, , ,, ,. daily value of labour-power ., t

determined by the ratio ^ working.day of a given number >of hour9, it, of
course, loses all the meaning as soon as the working day ceases
to contain a definite number of hours. The connexion between
the paid and the unpaid labour is destroyed. The capitalist
can now wring from the labourer a certain quantity of sur
plus-labour without allowing him the labour-time necessary
for his own subsistence. He can annihilate all regularity
of employment, and according to his own convenience, caprice,
and the interest of the moment, make the most enormous
over-work alternate with relative or absolute cessation of
work. He can, under the pretence of paying "the normal
price of labour," abnormally lengthen the working-day with
out any corresponding compensation to the labourer. Hence

1 The effect of such an abnormal lessening of employment is quite different from
that of a general reduction of the working-day, enforced by law. The former has
nothing to do with the absolute length of the working-day, and may occur just a»
well in a working-day of 15, as of 6 hours. The normal price of labour is in the
first case calculated on the labourer working 15 hours, in the second case in his
working 6 hours a day on the average. The result is therefore the same if he in the
one case is employed only for 7VJ, in the other only for 8 hours.

598 Capitalist Production.

the perfectly rational revolt in 1860 of the London labourers,
employed in the building trades, against the attempt of the
capitalists to impose on them this sort of wage by the hour.
The legal limitation of the working-day puts an end to such
mischief, although not, of course, to the diminution of em
ployment caused by the competition of machinery, by changes
in the quality of the labourers employed, and by crisis partial
or general.

With an increasing daily or weekly wage the price of labour
may remain nominally constant, and yet may fall below its
normal level. This occurs every time that, the price of labour
(reckoned per working hour) remaining constant, the work
ing-day is prolonged beyond its customary length. If in
the fraction : - r ^orktng^ay"'1 " ^e denominator increases, the
numerator increases yet more rapidly. The value of labour-
power, as dependent on its wear and tear, increases with the
duration of its functioning, and in more rapid proportion than
the increase of that duration. In many branches of industry
where time-wage is the general rule without legal limits to the
working-time, the habit has, therefore, spontaneously grown
up of regarding the working-day as normal only up to a cer
tain point, e.g., up to the expiration of the tenth hour ("nor
mal working-day," "the day's work," "the regular hours of
work"). Beyond this limit the working-time is over-time, and
is, taking the hour as unit-measure, paid better ("extra pay"),
although often in a proportion ridiculously small.1 The nor
mal working-day exists here as a fraction of the actual work
ing-day, and the latter, often during the whole year, lasts
longer than the former.2 The increase in the price of labour
with the extension of the working-day beyond a certain normal

1 "The rate of payment for overtime (in lace-making) is so small, from %d. and
>£d. to 2d. per hour, that it stands in painful contrast to the amount of injury
produced to the health and stamina of the workpeople. . . The small amount
thus earned is also often obliged to be spent in extra nourishment." ("Child Erap.
Com., II. Rep.," p. xvi., n. 117.)

* E.g., in paper-staining before the recent Introduction into this trade of the Fac
tory Act. "We work on with no stoppage for meals, so that the day's work of
10 # hours is finished by 4.30 p.m., and all after that is overtime, and we seldom
leave off working before 6 p.m., so that we are really working overtime the whole
year round." (Mr. Smith's "Evidence in Child Emp. Com., I. Rep.," p. 125.)

Time-Wages. 599

limit, takes such a shape in various British industries that the
low price of labour during the so-called normal time compels
the labourer to work during the better paid over-time, if he
wishes to obtain a sufficient wage at all.1 Legal limitation of
the working-day puts an end to these amenities.2

It is a fact generally known that, the longer the working-
days, in any branch of industry, the lower are the wages.3 A.
Kedgrave, factory-inspector, illustrates this by a comparative
review of the 20 years from 1839-1859, according to which
wages rose in the factories under the 10 hours' law, whilst
they fell in the factories in which the work lasted 14 to 15
hours daily.4

From the law: "the price of labour being given, the daily
or weekly wage depends on the quantity of labour expended,"
it follows, first of all, that, the lower the price of labour, the
greater must be the quantity of labour, or the longer must be

1 E.g., in the Scotch bleaching-works. "In some parts of Scotland this trade
[before the introduction of the Factory Act in 1862] was carried on by a system of
overtime, »'.*., ten hours a day were the regular hours of work, for which a nominal
wage of Is. 2d. per day was paid to a man, there being every day overtime for
three or four hours, paid at the rate of 3d. per hour. The effect of this system
. . . a man could not earn more than 8s. per week when working the ordinary
hours . . . without overtime they could not earn a fair day's wages." ("Kept,
of Insp. of Factories," April 30th, 1863, p. 10.) "The higher wages, for getting
adult males to work longer hours, are a temptation too strong to be resisted."
("Kept of Insp. of Fact.," April 30th, 1848, p. 6.) The bookbinding trade in the
city of London employs very many young girls from 14 to 15 years old, and that
under indentures which prescribe certain definite hours of labour. Nevertheless,
they work in the last week of each month until 10, 11, 12, or 1 o'clock at night,
along with the older labourers, in a very mixed company. "The masters tempt them
by extra pay and supper," which they eat in neighboring public-houses. The great
debauchery thus produced among these 'young immortals' ("Children's Employment
Comm., V. Kept.," p. 44, n. 191) is compensated by the fact that among the rest
many Bibles and religious books are bound by them.

* See "Reports of Insp. of Fact.," 30th April, 1863, 1. c. With very accurate ap
preciation of the state of things, the London labourers employed in the building
trades declared, during the great strike and lockout of 1860, that they would only
accept wages by the hour under two conditions (1) that, with the price of the
working-hour, a normal working-day of 9 and 10 hours respectively should be fixed,
and that the price of the hour for the 10 hours' working-day should be higher than
that for the hour of the 9 hours' working-day; (2) that every hour beyond the
normal working-day should be reckoned as overtime and proportionally more highly
paid.

• "It is a very notable thing, too, that where long hours are the rule, small
wages are also so." ("Report of Insp. of Fact.," 31st Oct., 1863, p. 9.) "The
work which obtains the scanty pittance of food, is, for the most part, excessively
prolonged." ("Public Health, Sixth Report," 1864, p. 15.)

4 "Reports of Inspectors of Fact.," 30th April, 1860, pp. 81, 82.

6oo Capitalist Production.

the working-day for the labourer to secure even a miserable-
average-wage. The lowness of the price of labour acts here
as a stimulus to the extension of the labour-time.1

On the other hand, the extension of the working-time pro
duces, in its turn, a fall in the price of labour, and with this a
fall in the day's or week's wages.

The determination of the price of labour by:

daily value of labour-power
working-day of a given number of hours,

shows that a mere prolongation of the working-day lowers the
price of labour, if no compensation steps in. But the same
circumstances which allow the capitalist in the long run ix>
prolong the working-day, also allow him first, and compel him
finally, to nominally lower the price of labour, until the total
price of the increased number of hours is lowered, and, there
fore, the daily or weekly wage. Reference to two circum
stances is sufficient here. If one man does the work of 1 J or 2
men, the supply of labour increases, although the supply of
labour-power on the market remains constant. The competi
tion thus created between the labourers allows the capitalist
to beat down the price of labour, whilst the falling price of
labour allows him, on the other hand, to screw up still furthe*
the working-time.2 Soon, however, this command over abnor
mal quantities of unpaid labour, i.e., quantities in excess o:?
the average social amount, becomes a source of competitior.
amongst the capitalists themselves. A part of the price of the
commodity consists of the price of labour. The unpaid part
of the labour-price need not be reckoned in the price of the

1 The hand-nail makers in England, e.g., have, on account of the low price of
labour, to work 15 hours a day in order to hammer out their miserable weekly
wage. "It's a great many hours in a day (6 a.m. to 8 p.m.), and he has to work
hard all the time to get lid. or Is., and there is the wear of the tools, the cost
of firing, and something for waste iron to go out of this, which takes off altogether
2Hd. or 3d." ("Children's Employment Com., III. Report," p. 136, n. 671.) The
women earn by the same working-time a week's wage of only 5 shillings (1. c.,
p. 137, n. 674.

* If a factory-hand, e.g., refused to work the customary long hours, "he would
very shortly be replaced by somebody who would work any length of time, and thu»
be thrown out of employment." ("Report of Inspectors of Fact," 31st Oct., 1848.
Evidence, p. 39, n. 58.) "If one man performs the work of two . . . the rate
of profits will generally be raised ... in consequence of the additional suppijr
cf labour having diminished its price." (Senior, 1. c., p. 14.)

Time-Wages. 60 1

commodity. It may be presented to the buyer. This is the
first step to which competition leads. The second step to
which it drives, is to exclude also from the selling-price of the
commodity, at least a part of the abnormal surplus-value
created by the extension of the working-day. In this way an
abnormally low selling-price of the commodity arises, at first
sporadically, and becomes fixed by degrees; a lower selling
price which henceforward becomes the constant basis of a
miserable wage for an excessive working-time, as originally it
was the product of these very circumstances. This movement
is simply indicated here, as the analysis of competition does
not belong to this part of our subject. Nevertheless, the capi
talist may, for a moment, speak for himself. "In Birmingham
there is so much competition of masters one against another,
that many are obliged to do things as employers that they
would otherwise be ashamed of; and yet no more money is
made, but only the public gets the benefit."1 The reader will
remember the two sorts of London bakers, of whom one sold
the bread at its full price (the "full-priced" bakers), the other
below its normal price ("the underpriced," "the under-
sellers"). The "full-priced" denounced their rivals before the
Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry: "They only exist now
by first defrauding the public, and next getting 18 hours' work
out of their men for 12 hours' wages. . . . The unpaid
labour of the men was made . . . the source whereby the
competition was carried on, and continues so to this day.
. . . The competition among the master bakers is the
cause of the difficulty in getting rid of night-work. An under-
seller, who sells his bread below the cost price according to
the price of flour, must make it up by getting more out of
the labour of the men. . . . If I got only 12 hours' work
out of my men, and my neighbour got 18 or 20, he must beat
me in the selling price. If the men could insist on payment

for over-work, this would be set right A large

number of those employed by the undersellers are foreigners,

1 "Children's Employment Com., III. Rep.," Evidence, p. 66, n. 22.

6o2 Capitalist Production.

and youths, who are obliged to accept almost any wages they
can obtain."1

This jeremiad is also interesting because it shows, how
the appearance only of the relations of production mirrors
itself in the brain of the capitalist. The capitalist does not
know that the normal price of labour also includes a definite
quantity of unpaid labour, and that this very unpaid labour ifl
the normal source of his gain. The category, surplus-labour-
time, does not exist at all for him, since it is included in the
normal working-day, which he thinks he has paid for in the
day's wages. But overtime does exist for him, the prolonga
tion of the working day beyond the limits corresponding with
the usual price of labour. Face to face with his underselling
competitor, he even insists upon extra pay for this overtime.
He again does not know that this extra pay includes unpaid
labour, just as well as does the price of the customary hour of
labour. For example, the price of one hour of the 12 hours'
working-day is 3d.; say the value-product of half a working-
hour, whilst the price of the overtime working-hour is 4d., or
the value-product of f of a working-hour. In the first case
the capitalist appropriates to himself one-half, in the second,
one-third of the working-hours without paying for it.

CHAPTER XXI.

PIECE-WAGES.

WAGES by the piece are nothing else than a converted form
of wages by time, just as wages by time are a converted form
of the value or price of labour-power.

In piece-wages it seems at first sight as if the use-value

1 "Report, &c., relative to the Grievances complained of by the Journeymen
Bakers." Lond. 1862, p. 411, and ib. Evidence, notes 479, 359, 27. Anyhow the
full-priced also, as was mentioned above, and as their spokesman, Bennett, himself
admits, make their men "generally begin work at 11 p.m. . . . up to 8 o'clock
the next morning . . . they are then engaged all day long ... as late as 7
o'clock in the evening." (1. c., p. 22.)

Piece-Wages. 603

bought from the labourer was, not the function of his labour-
power, living labour, but labour already realised in the pro
duct, and as if the price of this labour was determined, not as
with time-wages, by the fraction, daily value of labor power

working day of given number of hours

but by the capacity for work of the producer.1

The confidence that trusts in this appearance ought to re
ceive a first severe shock from the fact that both forms of
wages exist side by side, simultaneously, in the same branches
of industry ; e.g., "the compositors of London, as a general
rule, work by the piece, time-work being the exception, while
those in the country work by the day, the exception being work
by the piece. The shipwrights of the port of London work
by the job or piece, while those of all other parts work by the
day."2

In the same saddlery shops of London, often for the same
work, piece-wages are paid to the French, time-wages to the
English. In the regular factories in which throughout piece-
wages predominate, particular kinds of work are unsuitable to
this form of wage, and are therefore paid by time.8 But
it is moreover self-evident that the difference of form in the
payment of wages alters in no way their essential nature,

1 "The system of piece-work illustrates an epoch in the history of the working
man; it is halfway between the position of the mere day labourer depending upon
the will of the capitalist and the co-operative artisan, who in the not distant future
promises to combine the artizan and the capitalist in his own person. Piece-workers
are in fact their own masters' even whilst working upon the capital of the employer."
(John Watts: "Trade Societies and Strikes, Machinery and Co-operative Societies."
Manchester, 1865, p. 52, 53.) I quote this little work because it is a very sink of all
long-ago-rotten, apologetic commonplaces. This same Mr. Watts earlier traded in
Owenism and published in 1842 another pamphlet: "Facts and Fictions of Political
Economists," in which among other things he declares that "property is robbery."
That is long ago.

2 T. J. Dunning: "Trade's Unions and Strikes," Lond. 1860. p. 22.

1 How the existence, side by side and simultaneously, of these two forms of wage
favours the masters' cheating: "A factory employs 400 people, the half of which
work by the piece, and have a direct interest in working longer hours. The other
200 are paid by the day, work equally long with the others, and get no more money
for their overtime. . . . The work of these 200 people for half an hour a day
is equal to one person's work for 50 hours, or $i of one person's labour in a
week, and is a positive gain to the employer." ("Reports of Insp. of Fact., Slst
Oct., 1860," p. 9.) "Overworking to a very considerable extent still prevails; and,
in most instances, with that security against detection and punishment which the
law itself affords. I have in many former reports shown ... the injury to
workpeople who are not employed on piece-work, but receive weekly wages." Leon
ard Homer in "Reports of Insp. of Fact." 30th April, 1859, pp. 8, 9.)

604 Capitalist Production.

although the one form may be more favorable to the develop
ment of capitalist production than the other.

Let the ordinary working day contain 12 hours of which 6
are paid, 6 unpaid. Let its value-product be C shillings, that
of one hour's labour therefore 6d. Let us suppose that., as the
result of experience, a labourer who works with the average
amount of intensity and skill, who, therefore, gives in fact only
the time socially necessary to the production of an article,
supplies in 12 hours 21 pieces, either distinct products or
measurable parts of a continuous whole. Then the value of
these 24 pieces, after subtraction of the portion of constant
capital contained in them, is 6 shillings, and the value of n
single piece 3d. The labourer receives l^d. per piece, anci
thus earns in 12 hours 3 shillings. Just as, with time-wages.
it does not matter whether we assume that the labourer work?
6 hours for himself and 6 hours for the capitalist, or half of
every hour for himself, and the other half for the capitalist, so
here it does not matter whether we say that each individual
piece is half paid, and half unpaid for, or that the price of 12
pieces is the equivalent only of the value of the labour-power,
whilst in the other 12 pieces surplus-value is incorporated.

The form of piece-wages is just as irrational as that of time-
wages. Whilst in our example two pieces of a commodity,
after subtraction of the value of the means of production con
sumed in them, are worth 6d. as being the product of one hour,
the labourer receives for them a price of 3d. Piece-wages
do not, in fact, distinctly express any relation of value. It is
not, therefore, a question of measuring the value of the piece
by the working time incorporated in it, but on the contrary of
measuring the working-time the labourer has expended, by the
number of pieces he has produced. In time-wages the labour
is measured by its immediate duration, in piece-wages by the
quantity of products in which the labour has embodied itself
during a given time.1 The price of labour-time itself is finally
determined by the equation ; value of a day's labours-daily

1 "Le salaire peut se mesurer dc deux manieres: ou sur la duree du travail, »u sur
son produit." ("Abrege elementairc des principes dc 1'Economic Politique."
1796, p. 32.) The author of this anonymous work: G. Gamier.

Piece-Wages. 605

value of labour-power. Piece-wage is, therefore, only a modi
fied form of time-wage.

Let us now consider a little more closely the characteristic
peculiarities of piece-wages.

The quality of the labour is here controlled by the work
itself, which must be of average perfection if the piece-price is
to be paid in full. Piece-wages become, from this point of
view, the most fruitful source of reductions of wages and capi
talistic cheating.

They furnish to the capitalist an exact measure for the
intensity of labour. Only the working-time which is em
bodied in a quantum of commodities determined beforehand
and experimentally fixed, counts as socially necessary working
time, and is paid as such. In the larger workshops of the
London tailors, therefore, a certain piece of work, a waistcoat
e.g., is called an hour, or half an hour, the hour at 6d. By
practise it is known how much is the average product of
one hour. With new fashions, repairs, etc., a contest arises
between master and labourer, whether a particular piece of
work is one hour, and so on, until here also experience decides.
Similarly in the London furniture workshops, etc. If the
labourer does not possess the average capacity, if he cannot in
consequence supply a certain minimum of work per day, he is
dismissed.1

Since the quality and intensity of the work are here con
trolled by the form of wage itself, superintendence of labour
becomes in great part superfluous. Piece-wages therefore lay
the foundation of the modern "domestic labour," described
above, as well as of a hierarchically organised system of exploi
tation and oppression. The latter has two fundamental forms.
On the one hand piece-wages facilitate the interposition of
parasites between the capitalist and the wage-labourer, the
"sub-letting of labour." The gain of these middle-men comes

1 "So much weight of cotton is delivered to him [the spinner], and h« has to
return by a certain time, in lieu of it, a given weight of twist or yarn, of a certain
degree of fineness, and he is paid so much per pound for all that he so returns.
If his work is defective in quality, the penalty falls on him, if less in quantity
than the minimum fixed for a given time, he is dismissed and an abler operatir«
procured." (Ure 1. c. p. 317.)

606 Capitalist Production.

entirely from the difference between the labour price which the
capitalist pays, and the part of that price which they actually
allow to reach the labourer.1 In England this system is char
acteristically called the "Sweating system." On the other
hand piece-wage allows the capitalist to make a contract for
so much per piece with the head labourer — in manufactures
with the chief of some group, in mines with the extractor of
the coal, in the factory with the actual machine-worker — at a
price for which the head labourer himself undertakes the en
listing and payment of his assistant workpeople. The exploi
tation of the labourer by capital is here effected through th<3
exploitation of the labourer by the labourer.2

Given piece-wage, it is naturally the personal interest of tho
labourer to strain his labour-power as intensely as possible;
this enables the capitalist to raise more easily the normal de
gree of intensity of labour.3 It is moreover now the personal
interest of the labourer to lengthen the working day, sine*',
with it his daily or weekly wages rise.4 This gradually brings

a "It Is when work passes through several hands, each of which is to take it!
share of profits, while only the last does the work, that the pay which reaches the
•work-woman is miserably disproportioned." (Child Emp. Com. II. Report, p. Ixx,
0. 484.)

3 Even Watts, the apologetic, remarks: "It would be a great improvement to the
system of piece-work, if all the men employed on a job were partners in the con
tract, each according to his abilities, instead of one man being interested in over
working his fellows for his own benefit." (1. c. p. 53.) On the vileness of this
system, cf. Child. Emp. Com. Rep. III. p. 66, n. 22, p. 11, n. 124, p. xi. n. 13,
63, 59, etc.

* This spontaneous result is often artificially helped along, e.g., in the Engineering
Trade of London, a customary trick is "the selecting of a man who possesses su
perior physical strength and quickness, as the principal of several workmen, and
paying him an additional rate, by tht quarter or otherwise, with the understanding
that he is to exert himself to the utmost to induce the others, who are only paid
the ordinary wages, to keep up to him. . . . Without any comment this will go
far to explain many of the complaint* of stinting the action, superior skill, and
working-power, made by the employers against the men" (in Trades-Unions. Dun
ning, 1. c. pp. 22, 23). As the author is himself a labourer and secretary of a
Trade's Union, this might be taken for exaggeration. But the reader may compare
the "highly respectable" Cyclopaedia of Agriculture of J. Ch. Morton, Art. "La
bourer," where this method is recommended to the farmers as an approved one.

* "All those who are paid by piece-work . . . profit by the transgression of
the legal limits of work. This observation as to the willingness to work overtime
Is especially applicable to the women employed as weavers and reelers." (Rept of
Insp. of Fact, 30th April, 1858, p, 9). "This system (piece-work), so advantageous
to the employer . . . tends directly to encourage the young potter greatJy to
overwork himself during the four or five ye*rs during which be is employed in th«
piece-work system, but at low wages. . . . This is ... another great

Piece-Wages. 607

on a reaction like that already described in time-wages, without
reckoning that the prolongation of the working day, even if
the piece-wage remains constant, includes of necessity a fall in
the price of the labour.

In time-wages, with few exceptions, the same wage holds for
the same kind of work, whilst in piece-wages, though the price
of the working time is measured by a certain quantity of
product, the day's or week's wage will vary with the indi
vidual differences of the labourers, of whom one supplies in a
given time the minimum of product only, another the average,
a third more than the average. With regard to actual receipts
there is, therefore, great variety according to the different skill,
strength, energy, staying-power, etc., of the individual la
bourers.1 Of course this does not alter the general relations be
tween capital and wage-labour. First, the individual differ
ences balance one another in the workshop as a whole, which
thus supplies in a given working-time the average product,
and the total wages paid will be the average wages of that
particular branch of industry. Second, the proportion be
tween wages and surplus-value remains unaltered, since the
mass of surplus-labour supplied by each particular labourer
corresponds with the wage received by him. But the wider
scope that piece-wage gives to individuality, tends to develop
on the one hand that individuality, and with it the sense of
liberty, independence, and self-control of the labourers, on the
other, their competition one with another. Piece-work has,
therefore, a tendency, while raising individual wages above
the average, to lower this average itself. But where a
particular rate of piece-wage has for a long time been fixed by
tradition, and its lowering, therefore, presented especial diffi
culties, the masters, in such exceptional cases, sometimes had
recourse to its compulsory transformation into time-wages.
Hence, e.g., in 1860 a great strike among the ribbon- weavers

fo wflieh tfce Dad constitutions ol tn« potters are to be attributed." (Child Empl.
Com. I. Rept, p. xiii.)

1 "Where the work in any trade is paid for by the piece at so much per job
. . . wages may very materially differ in amount, . . . But in work by the
day theiC is generally an uniform rate . . . recognized by both employer and
employed as the standard of wages for the general run of workmen in the trade."
(Dunning, 1. c. p. 17.)

608 Capitalist Production.

of Coventry.1 Piece-wage is finally one of the chief supports
of the hour-system described in the preceding chapter.2

From what has been shown so far, it follows that piece-wage
is the form of wages most in harmony with the capitalist
mode of production. Although by no means new — it figures
side by side with time- wages officially in the French and
English labour statutes of the 14th century — it only conquers
a larger field for action during the period of Manufacture,
properly so-called. In the stormy youth of Modern Industry,
especially from 1797 to 1815, it served as a lever for the
lengthening of the working day, and the lowering of wages.
Very important materials for the fluctuation of wages during
that period are to be found in the Blue-books: "Report and
Evidence from the Select Committee on Petitions respecting
the Corn Laws," (Parliamentary Session of 1813-14), and
"Report from the Lords' Committee, on the state of the
Growth, Commerce, and Consumption of Grain, and all Lawn
relating thereto," (Session of 1814-15). Here we find docu
mentary evidence of the constant lowering of the price ol?
labour from the beginning of the Anti-Jacobin War. In the
weaving industry, e.g., piece-wages had fallen so low that in

1 "Le travail dcs Compagnons-artisans sera regie a la journee ou a la piece . . .
Ces maitres-artisans savent a peu pres corabien d'ouvrage un compagnon-artisan peut
faire par jour dans chaque metier, et les payent souvent a proportion de 1'ouvrage
qu'ils font; ainsi ces compagnons travaillent autant qu'ils peuvent, pour leur propre
interet, sans autre inspection." (Cantillon, Essai sur la Nature du Commerce
en general, Amst. Ed., 1756, pp. 185 and 202. The first edition appeared in 1755.)
Cantillon, from whom Quesnay, Sir James Steuart & A. Smith have largely drawn,
already here represents piece-wage as simply a modified form of time-wage. The
French edition of Cantillon professes in its title to be a translation from the Eng
lish, but the English edition: "The analysis of Trade, Commerce, etc., by Philip
Cantillon, late of the city of London, Merchant," is not only of later date (1759),
but proves by its contents that it is a later and revised edition; e.g., in the French
edition, Hume is not yet mentioned, whilst in the English, on the other hand, Petty
hardly figures any longer. The English edition is theoretically less important, but
it contains numerous details referring specifically to English commerce, bullion
trade, etc., that are wanting in the French text. The words on the title-page of
the English edition, according to which the work is "Taken chiefly from the manu
script of a very ingenious gentleman, deceased, and adapted, etc," seem, therefore,
a pure fiction, very customary at that time.

* "Combien de fois n'avons-nous pas vu, dans certains ateliers, embaucher beaucoup
plus d'ouvriers que ne le demandait le travail a mettre en main? Souvent, dans la
prevision d'un travail aleatoire, quelquefois meme imaginaire, on admet des ouvriers:
comme on les paie aux pieces, on se dit qu'on ne court aucun risque, parceque toatea
le* pertes de temp* seront a la charge des inoccupes." (H. Gregoir: "Les Typo-
graphes devant le Tribunal eorrectkmnel de Bruxell«s," Bruxellet, 1805, p. 9.)

Piece-Wages. 609

spite of the very great lengthening of the working day, the
daily wages were then lower than before. "The real earnings
of the cotton weaver are now far less than they were; his
superiority over the common labourer, which at first was very
great, has now almost entirely ceased. Indeed . . . the
difference in the wages of skilful and common labour is far less
now than at any former period,"1 How little the increased in
tensity and extension of labour through piece-wages benefited
the agricultural proletariat, the following passage borrowed
from a work on the side of the landlords and farmers shows :
"By far the greater part of agricultural operations is done by
people, who are hired for the day or on piece-work. Their
weekly wages are about 12s.? and although it may be assumed
that a man earns on piece-work under the greater stimulus to
labour, Is. or perhaps 2s. more than on weekly wages, yet it is
found, on calculating his total income, that his loss of employ
ment, during the year, outweighs this gain . . . Fur
ther, it will generally be found that the wages of these men
bear a certain proportion to the price of the necessary means
of subsistence, so that a man with two children is able to bring
up his family without recourse to parish relief."2 Malthus at
that time remarked with reference to the facts published by
Parliament: "I confess that I see, with misgiving, the great
extension of the practice of piece-wage. Really hard work
during 12 or 14 hours of the day, or for any longer time, is
too much for any human being."8

In the workshops under the Factory Acts, piece-wage be
comes the general rule, because capital can there only increase
the efficacy of the working day by intensifying labour.4

With the changing productiveness of labour the same quan
tum of product represents a varying working time. There
fore, piece-wage also varies, for it is the money expression of a
determined working time. In our example above, 24 pieces
were produced in 12 hours, whilst the value of the product

1 Remarks on the Commercial Policy of Great Britain, London, 1815.
*A defence on the Land-owners and Farmers of Great Britain, 1814, pp. 4, 6.
' Malthus, Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, Lond., 181*.
4 "Those who are paid by piece-work . . . constitute probably four-fifths of tto
workers in the factories." "Report of Insp. of Fact., 80th April, 1858."

610 Capitalist Production.

of the 12 hours was 6s., the daily value of the labour-
power 3s., the price of the labour-hour 3d., and the wage
for one piece IJ^d. In one piece half-an-hour's labour was
absorbed. If the same working day now supplies, in conse
quence of the doubled productiveness of labour, 48 pieces
instead of 24, and all other circumstances remain unchanged,
then the piece-wage falls from IJ^d. to J^d., as every piece now
only represents J4> instead of ^2 of a working hour. 24 by \l/2 d.
=3s., and in like manner 48 by J4d.=3s. In other words,
piece-wage is lowered in the same proportion as the number of
the pieces produced in the same time rises,1 and therefore as
the working time spent on the same piece falls. This change
in piece-wage, so far purely nominal, leads to constant battle
between capitalist and labour. Either because the capitalist
uses it as a pretext for actually lowering the price of labour,
or because increased productive power of labour is accompanied
by an increased intensity of the same. Or because the labourer
takes seriously the appearance of piece-wages, viz., that h:s
product is paid for, and not his labour-power, and therefore
revolts against a lowering of wages, unaccompanied by a lower
ing in the selling price of the commodity. "The operatives
. . . . carefully watch the price _of the raw material and
the price of manufactured goods, and are thus enabled to fom
an accurate estimate of their master's profits/'1

The capitalist rightly knocks on the head such pretensions
as gross errors as to the nature of wage-labour.3 He cries out
against this usurping attempt to lay taxes on the advance of

1 "The productive power of his spinning-machine is accurately measured, and tbs
rate of pay for work done with It decreases with, though not as, the increase of its
productive power." (Ure, I. c., p. 817.) This last apologetic phrase Ure himself
again cancels. The lengthening of the mule causes some increase of labour, hr
admits. The labour does therefore not diminish in the same ratio as its productivity
increases. Further: "By this increase the productive power of the machine will
be augmented one-fifth. When this event happens the spinner will not be paid
at the same rate for work done as he was before, but as that rate will not b»
diminished in the ratio of one-fifth, the improvement will augment his money earn
ings for any given number of hours' work," but "the foregoing statement require?
a certain modification. . . . The spinner has to pay something additional for
juvenile aid out of his additional sixpence, accompanied by displacing a portion o<
adults" (1. c, p. 821), which has in no way a tendency to raise wage*.

'H. Fawcett: "The Economic Position of the British Labourer. Cambridge and
London, 1865," p. 178.

1 In the London Standard of October 26, ISfll. there is a report of

National Differences of Wages. 6? I

industry, and declares roundly that the productiveness of
labour does not concern the labourer at all.1

CHAPTER XXII.

NATIONAL DIFFERENCES OF WAGES.

IN the 17th chapter we were occupied with the manifold
combinations which may bring about a change in magnitude
of the value of labour-power — this magnitude being considered
either absolutely or relatively, i.e.,, as compared with surplus-
value ; whilst on the other hand, the quantum of the means of
subsistence in which the price of labour is realised might
again undergo fluctuations independent of, or different from,
the changes of this price.2 As has been already said, the sim
ple translation of the value or respectively of the price of
labour-power into the exoteric form of wages transforms all
these laws into laws of the fluctuations of wages. That which
appears in these fluctuations of wages within a single country
as a series of varying combinations, may appear in different
countries as contemporaneous difference of national wages.
In the comparison of the wages in different nations, we must
therefore take into account all the factors that determine

of the firm of John Bright & Co., before the Rochdale magistrates "to prosecute for
intimidation the agents of the Carpet Weavers Trades' Union. Bright's partners
had introduced new machinery which would turn out 240 yards of carpet in the
time and with the labour (!) previously required to produce 160 yards. The work
men had no claim whatever to share in the profits made by the investment of their
employer's capital in mechanical improvements. Accordingly, Messrs. Bright pro
posed to lower the rate of pay from l#d. per yard to Id., leaving the earnings of
the men exactly the same as before for the same labour. But there was a nominal
reduction, of which the operatives, it is asserted, had not fair warning before hand."

1 "Trades' Unions, in their desire to maintain wages, endeavour to share in the
benefits of improved machinery. (Quelle horreurt) . . . the demanding higher
wages, because labour is abbreviated, is in other words the endeavour to establish a
duty on mechanical improvements." ("On Combination of Trades, new ed., Londpn,
1834," p. 42.)

* "It is not accurate to say that wages" (he deals here with their money expres
sion) "are Increased, because they purchase more of a cheaper article." (David
Buchanan in his edition of Adam Smith's "Wealth," 4c., 1814, Vol. I., p. 417.
Note.)

612 CeiJiijtiiA Productia*.

changes in the amount of tho value of labour-power ; the price
and the extent of the prime necf,ssaries of life as naturally and
historically developed, the cc&t of training the labourers, the
part played by the labour of women and children, the produc
tiveness of labour, its eri/ensive and intensive magnitude.
Even the most superficial comparison requires the reduction
first of the average day-wage for the same trades, in different
countries, to a uniform working day. After this reduction to
the same terms of the day-wages, time-wage must again be
translated into piece-wage, as the latter only can be a measure
both of the productivity and the intensity of labour.

In every country there is a certain average intensity o:f
labour, below which the labour for the production of a com
modity requires more than the socially necessary time, and
therefore does not reckon as labour of normal quality. Only
a degree of intensity above the national average affects, in 2
given country, the measure of value of the mere duration of
the working time. This is not the case on the universal
market, whose integral parts are the individual countries.
The average intensity of labour changes from country to coun
try; here it is greater, there less. These national averages
form a scale, whose unit of measure is the average unit of
universal labour. The more intense national labour, therefore,
as compared with the less intense, produces in the same time
more value, which expresses itself in more money.

But the law of value in its international application is yet
more modified by this, that on the world-market the more
productive national labour reckons also as the more intense, so
long as the more productive nation is not compelled by com
petition to lower the selling price of its commodities to the
level of their value.

In proportion as capitalist production is developed in a
country, in the same proportion do the national intensity and
productivity of labour there rise above the international level.1
The different quantities of commodities of the same kind, pro
duced in different countries in the same working time, have,

•We shall inquire, in another place, what circumstance* in relation to productivity
may modify this law for individual branches of industry.

National Differences of Wages. 613

therefore, unequal international values, which are expressed in
different prices, i.e., in sums of money varying according to
international values. The relative value of money will, there
fore, be less in the nation with more developed capitalist
mode of production than in the nation with less developed.
It follows, then, that the nominal wages, the equivalent of
labour-power expressed in money, will also be higher in the
first nation than in the second ; which does not at all prove
that this holds also for the real wages, i.e., for the means of
subsistence placed at the disposal of the labourer.

But even apart from these relative differences of the value
of money in different countries, it will be found, frequently,
that the daily or weekly, &c., wage in the first nation is higher
than in the second, whilst the relative price of labour, i.e., the
price of labour as compared both with surplus-value and with
the value of the product, stands higher in the second than in
the first.1

J. W. Cowell, member of the Factory Commission of 1833,
after careful investigation of the spinning trade, came to
the conclusion that, " in England wages are virtually lower to
Ihe capitalist, though higher to the operative than on the
Continent of Europe." (tire, p. 314.) The English Factory
Inspector, Alexander Redgrave, in his Report of Oct 31st,
1866, proves by comparative statistics with Continental states,
that in spite of lower wages and much longer working-time,
Continental labour is, in proportion to the product, dearer than
English. An English manager of a cotton factory in Olden-

1 James Anderson remarks in his polemic against Adam Smith: "It deserves,
likewise, to be remarked, that although the apparent price of labour is usually lower
in poor countries, where the produce of the soil, and grain in general, is cheap; yet
it is in fact for the most part really higher than in other countries. For it is not
the wages that is given to the labourer per day that constitutes the real price of
labour, although it is its apparent price. The real price is that which a certain
quantity of work performed actually costs the employer; and considered in this light,
labour is in almost all cases cheaper in rich countries than in those that are poorer,
although the price of grain, and other provisions, is usually n:uch lower in the last
than in the first. . . . Labour estimated by the day, is much lower in Scotland
than in England. . . . Labour by the piece is generally cheaper in England."
(James Anderson, Observations on the means of exciting a spirit of National Indus
try, &c., Edin. 1777, pp. 350, 351). On the contrary, lowness of wages produces,
in its turn, dearness of labour. "Labour being dearer in Ireland than it is in
England . . . because the wages are so much lower." (N. 2079 in Royal Com
mission on Railways, Minutes, 1867.)

614 Capitalist Production.

burg, declares that the working- time there lasted from 5.30
a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays included, and that the workpeople
there, when under English overlookers, did not supply during
this time quite so much product as the English in 10 hours, but
under German overlookers much less. Wages are much lower
than in England, in many cases 50%, but the number of hands
in proportion to the machinery, was much greater, in certain
departments in the proportion of 5:3. — Mr. Eedgrave gives
very full details as to the Russian cotton factories. The data
were given him by an English manager until recently em
ployed there. On this Russian soil, so fruitful of all infamies,
the old horrors of the early days of English factories are in full
swing. The managers are, of course, English, as the native
Russian capitalist is of no use in factory business. Despito
all over-work, continued day and night, despite the most
shameful under-payment of the workpeople, Russian manu
facture manages to vegetate only by prohibition of foreign
competition. I give, in conclusion, a comparative table of Mr.
Redgrave's, on the average number of spindles per factory ana
per spinner in the different countries of Europe. He, himself
remarks that he had collected these figures a few years ago
and that since that time the size of the factories and th<
number of spindles per labourer in England has increased.
He supposes, however, an approximately equal progress in the
Continental countries mentioned, so that the numbers given
would still have their value for purposes of comparison.

AVERAGE NUMBER OF SPINDLES PER FACTORY.

England, average of spindles per factory 12,600

France, " 1,500

Prussia, 1,500

Belgium, " " 4,000

Saxony, " 4,500

Austria, " " » 7,000

Switzerland" " " 8,000

National Differences of Wages. 615

AVERAGE NUMBER OF PEBSONS EMPLOYED TO SPINDLES.

France, one person to 14 spindles

Russia, " 28 "

Prussia, 37

Bavaria, " 46 "

Austria, " 49 "

Belgium, " 50 "

Saxony, 50 "

Switzerland, 55

Smaller States of Germany, 55

Great Britain, " 74 "

" This comparison," says Mr. Redgrave, " is yet more un
favourable to Great Britain, inasmuch as there is so large a
number of factories in which weaving by power is carried on
in conjunction with spinning [whilst in the table the weavers
are not deducted], and the factories abroad are chiefly spinning
factories ; if it were possible to compare like with like, strictly,
I could find many cotton spinning factories in my district in
which mules containing 2,200 spindles are minded by one
man (the " minder ") and two assistants only, turning off daily
220 Ibs. of yarn, measuring 400 miles in length." (Reports
of Insp. of Fact, 31st Oct., 1866, p. 31-33, passim.)

It is well known that in Eastern Europe as well as in Asia,
English companies have undertaken the construction of rail
ways, and have, in making them, employed side by side with
the native labourers, a certain number of English working-
men. Compelled by practical necessity, they thus have had to
take into account the national difference in the intensity of
labour, but this has brought them no loss. Their experience
shows that even if the height of wages corresponds more or
less with the average intensity of labour, the relative price of
labour varies generally in the inverse direction.

1 "Essay on the Rate of Wages, with an Examination of the Causes of the Differ
ences in the Conditions of the Labouring Population throughout the World," Phila
delphia, 1835.

616 Capitalist Production.

In an " Essay on the Rate of Wages,"1 one of his first econo
mic writings, H. Carey tries to prove that the wages of the
different nations are directly proportional to the degree of
productiveness of the national working days, in order to draw
from this international relation, the conclusion that wages
everywhere rise and fall in proportion to the productiveness
of labour. The whole of our analysis of the production of
surplus value shows the absurdity of this conclusion, even if
Carey himself had proved his premises, instead of, after his
usual uncritical and superficial fashion, shuffling to and fro a
confused mass of statistical materials. The best of it is that
he does not assert that things actually are as they ought to 02
according to his theory. For State intervention has falsified
the natural economic relations. The different national wagen
must be reckoned, therefore, as if that part of each that goes to
the State in the form of taxes, came to the labourer himself.
Ought not Mr. Carey to consider further whether those " State
expenses " are not the " natural " fruits of capitalistic develop
ment? The reasoning is quite worthy of the man who first
declared the relations of capitalist production to be eternal laws
of nature and reason, whose free, harmonious working is only
disturbed by the intervention of the State, in order after
wards to discover that the diabolical influence of England on
the world-market (an influence which, it appears, does not
spring from the natural laws of capitalist production) necessi
tates State intervention, i.e., the protection of those laws of
nature and reason by the State, alias the System of Protection.
He discovered further, that the theorems of Ricardo and oth
ers, in which existing social antagonisms and contradictions
are formulated, are not the ideal product of the real economic
movement, but on the contrary, that the real antagonisms of
capitalist production in England and elsewhere are the result
of the theories of Ricardo and others ! Finally, he discovered
that it is, in the last resort, commerce that destroys the inborn
beauties and harmonies of the capitalist mode of production.
A step further, and he will, perhaps, discover that the one
evil in capitalist production is capital itself. Only a man

National Differences of Wages. 617

with such atrocious want of the critical faculty and such
spurious erudition deserved, in spite of his Protectionist her
esy, to become the secret source of the harmonious wisdom of a
Bastiat, and of all the other Free Trade optimists of to-day.

PART VIL
THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL.

THE conversion of a sum of money into means of production
and labour-power, is the first step taken by the quantum of
value that is going to function as capital. This conversion
takes place in the market, within the sphere of circulation.
The second step, the process cl produr'ion, ,'3 complete so soon
as the means of production have been < onverted into commodi
ties whose value exceeds t) ": o_" thei- component parts, and,
therefore, contains the capit:l ori«nnally advanced, plus a
surplus-value. These comnv .'1.1^ must the- be thrown into
circulation. They must be r 1, ^ ir value realised in money,
this money afresh converted into capital, and so over and over
again. This Circular movement, :' i which the same phases are
continually gone through in succession, forms the circulation
of capital.

The first condition of accumulation is that the capitalist
must have contrived to sell his commodities, and to reconvert
into capital the greater part of the money so received. In the
following pages we shall assume that capital circulates in its
normal way. The detailed analysis of the process will be
found in Book II.

The capitalist who produces surplus-value — i.e., who ex
tracts unpaid labour directly from the labourers, and fixes it
in commodities, is, indeed, tho first appropriato-r, but by no
means the ultimate owner, of this surplus-value. He has to
share it with capitalists, with landowners, &c., who fulfill
other functions in the complex of social production. Surplus-
value, therefore, splits up into various parts. Its fragments
fall to various categories of persons, and take various forms,

618

Simple Reproduction. 619

independent the one of the other, such as profit, interest, mer
chants' profit, rent, &c. It is only in Book III. that we can
take in hand these modified forms of surplus-value.

On the one hand, then, we assume that the Capitalist sells
at their value the commodities he has produced, without con
cerning ourselves either about the new forms that capital
assumes while in the sphere of circulation, or about the con
crete conditions of reproduction hidden under these forms.
On the other hand, we treat the capitalist producer as owner
of the entire surplus-value, or, better perhaps, as the repre
sentative of all the sharers with him in the booty. We, there
fore, first of all consider accumulation from an abstract
point of view — i.e., as a mere phase in the actual process of
production.

So far as accumulation takes place, the capitalist must have
succeeded in selling his commodities, and in reconverting the
sale-money into capital. Moreover, the breaking-up of sur
plus-value into fragments neither alters its nature nor the con
ditions unaer which it becomes an element of accumulation.
Whatever be the proportion of surplus-value which 4ke indus
trial capitalist retains for himself, or yields up to others, he is
the one who, in the first instance, appropriates it. We, there
fore, assume no more than what actually takes place. On the
other hand, the simple fundamental form of the process of
accumulation is obscured by the incident of the circulation
which brings it about, and by the splitting up of surplus-value.
An exact analysis of the process, therefore, demands that we
should, for a time, disregard all phenomena that hide the play
of ite inner mechanism.

CHAPTER XXIIL

SIMPLE REPRODUCTION.

WHATEVER the form of the process of production in a society,
it must be a continuous process, must continue to go periodi
cally through the same phases. A society can no more cease

620 Capitalist Production.

to produce than it can cease to consume. When viewed, there
fore, as a connected whole, and as flowing on with incessant
renewal, every social process of production is, at the same time,
a process of reproduction.

The conditions of production are also those of reproduction.
No society can go on producing, in other words, no society can
reproduce, unless it constantly reconverts a part of its products
into means of production, or elements of fresh products. All
other circumstances remaining the same, the only mode by
which it can reproduce its wealth, and maintain it at one level,
is by replacing the means of production — i.e., the instrument
of labour, the raw material, and the auxiliary substances con
sumed in the course of the year — by an equal quantity of the
same kind of articles ; these must be separated from the maes
of the yearly products, and thrown afresh into the process of
production. Hence, a definite portion of each year's product
belongs to the domain of production. Destined for productive
consumption from the very first, this portion exists, for tho
most part, in the shape of articles totally unfitted lor individ
ual consumption.

If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be repro
duction. Just as in the former the labour-process figures but
as a means towards the self-expansion of capital, so in the lat
ter it figures but as a means of reproducing as capital — i.e., as
self-expanding value, — the value advanced. It is only be
cause his money constantly functions as capital that the
economical guise of a capitalist attaches to a man. If, for
instance, a sum of £100 has this year been converted into capi
tal, and produced a surplus-value of £20, it must continue dur
ing next year, and subsequent years, to repeat the same opera
tion. As a periodic increment of the capital advanced, or
periodic fruit of capital in process, surplus-value acquires the
form of a revenue flowing out of capital.1

1 "Mais ces riches, qui consommcnt les produits du travail dca autres, nc peu-
vent les obtenir que par des echanges [purchases of commodities.]. S'ils donnent ce-
pendant leur richesse acquise et accumulee en retour contre ces produits nouveaux
qui sont 1'objet de leur fantaisie, ils semblent exposes a epuiser bient6t leur fonds de
reserve; ils ne travaillent point, avons-nous dit, et ils ne peuvent meme travailler;
on croirait done que chaque jour doit voir diminuer leurs vieilles richesses, et que
loraqu'il ne leur en restera plus, lien ne sera offer! en exchange aux ouvriers qui

Simple Reproduction. 6ai

If this revenue serve the capitalist only as a fund to provide
for his consumption, and be spent as periodically as it is
gained, then, cseteris paribus, simple reproduction will take
place. And although this reproduction is a mere repetition of
the process of production on the old scale, yet this mere repe
tition, or continuity, gives a new character to the process, or,
rather, causes the disappearance of some apparent character
istics which it possessed as an isolated discontinuous process.

The purchase of labour-power for a fixed period is the pre
lude to the process of production; and this prelude is con
stantly repeated when the stipulated term comes to an end,
when a definite period of production, such as a week or a
month, has elapsed. But the labourer is not paid until after
he has expended his labour-power, and realised in commodities
not only its value, but surplus-value. He has, therefore, pro
duced not only surplus-value, which we for the present regard
as a fund to meet the private consumption of the capitalist,
but he has also produced, before it flows back to him in the
shape of wages, the fund out of which he himself is paid, the
variable capital; and his employment lasts only so long as he
continues to reproduce this fund. Hence, that formula of the
economists, referred to in Chapter XVIII., which represents
wages as a share in the product itself.1 What flows back to
the labourer in the shape of wages is a portion of the product
that is continuously reproduced by him. The capitalist, it is
true, pays him in money, but this money is merely the trans
muted form of the product of his labour. While he is con
verting a portion of the means of production into products, a
portion of his former product is being turned into money. It
is his labour of last week, or of last year, that pays for his
labour-power this week or this year. The illusion begotten by

travaillent exclusivement pour cux. . . . Mais dans 1'ordre social, la richesse a
acquis la propriet^ de sc reproduirc par le travail d'autrui, et sans quc son pro-
prietaire y concoure. La richesse, comme le travail, et par le travail, donne un
fruit annuel qui peut etre detruit chaque annee sans que le riche en devienne plus
pauvre. Ce fruit est le revenu qui natt du capital." (Sismondi: Nouv. Princ.
d'Econ. Pol. Paris, 1819. t. I. pp. 81-82.)

1 "Wages as well as profits are to be considered, each of them, as really a por
tion of the finished product." (Ramsay, I.e., p. 142.) "The share of the product
which comes to the labourer in the form of wages." (J. Mill, Elements, &c. Trans
lated by Parissot. Paris, 1823. p. 84.)

622 Capitalist Production.

the intervention of money vanishes immediately, if, instead
of taking a single capitalist and a single labourer, we take the
class of capitalists and the class of labourers as a whole. The
capitalist class is constantly giving to the labouring class order-
notes, in the form of money, on a portion of the commodities
produced by the latter and appropriated by the former. The
labourers give these order-notes back just as constantly to the
capitalist class, and in this way get their share of their own
product. The transaction is veiled by the commodity-form of
the product and the money-form of the commodity.

Variable capital is therefore only a particular historical fo *ra
of appearance of the fund for providing the necessaries of life,
or the labour-fund which the labourer requires for the main
tenance of himself and family, and which, whatever be the
system of social production, he must himself produce and re
produce. If the labour-fund constantly flows to him in the
form of money that pays for his labour, it is because the pix>-
duct he has created moves constantly away from him in tie
form of capital. But all this does not alter the fact, that it is
the labourer's own labour, realised in a product, which is ad
vanced to him by the capitalist.1 Let us take a peasant liable
to do compulsory service for his lord. He works on his own
land, with his own means of production, for, say, 3 days a
week. The 3 other days he does forced work on the lord's d>
main. He constantly reproduces his own labour-fund, which
never, in his case, takes the form of a money payment for his
labour, advanced by another person. But in return, his un
paid forced labour for the lord, on its side, never acquires the
character of voluntary paid labour. If. one fine morning the
lord appropriates to himself the land, the cattle, the seed, in a
word, the means of production of this peasant, the latter will
thenceforth be obliged to sell his labour-power to the lord. Ha
will, cseteris paribus, labour 6 days a week as before, 3 for him
self, 3 for his lord, who thenceforth becomes a wages-paying
capitalist As before, he will use up the means of production

1 "When capital is employed in advancing to the workmen his wages, it add.
nothing to the funds for the maintenance of labour." (Cazenove in note to hi«
edition ox Malthus, Definitions in Pol. Econ. London, 1853, p. J2.)

Simple Reproduction. 623

as means of production, and transfer their value to the product.
As before, a definite portion of the product will be devoted to
reproduction. But from the moment that the forced labour is
changed into wage-labour, from that moment the labour-fund,
which the peasant himself continues as before to produce and
reproduce, takes the form of a capital advanced in the form of
wages by the lord. The bourgeois economist whose narrow
mind is unable to separate the form of appearance from the
thing that appears, shuts his eyes to the fact, that it is but here
and there on the face of the earth, that even now-a-days the
labour-fund crops up in the form of capital.1

Variable capital, it is true, only then loses its character of a
value advanced out of the capitalist's funds,2 when we view
the process of capitalist production in the flow of its constant
renewal. But that process must have had a beginning of some
kind. From our present stand-point it therefore seems likely
that the capitalist, once upon a time, became possessed of
money, by some accumulation that took place independently
of the unpaid labour of others, and that this was, therefore,
how he was enabled to frequent the market as a buyer of
labour-power. However this may be, the mere continuity of
the process, the simple reproduction, brings about some other
wonderful changes, which affect not only the variable, but the
total capital.

If a capital of £1000 beget yearly a surplus-value of £200,
and if this surplus-value be consumed every year, it is clear
that at the end of 5 years the surplus-value consumed will
amount to 5X£200 or the £1000 originally advanced. If
only a part, say one half, were consumed, the same result
would follow at the end of 10 years, since 10 X £100 =£1000.
General Rule : The value of lie capital advanced divided by
the surplus-value annually consumed, gives the number of
years, or reproduction periods, at the expiration of which the

1 "The wages of labour are advanced by capitalists in the case of less than one
fourth of the labourers of the earth." (Rich. Jones: Textbook of Lectures on the
Pol. Econ. of Nations. Hertford, 1852, p. 16.)

1 "Though the manufacturer" (i.e. the labourer) "has his wages advanced to him
by his master, he in reality costs him no expense, the value of these wages being
generally reserved, together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon
which his labour is bestowed." (A. Smith 1. c. Book II. ch. III. p. 811.)

624 Capitalist Production.

capital originally advanced has been consumed by the capitalist
and has disappeared. The capitalist thinks, that he is consum
ing the produce of the unpaid labour of others, i.e., the sur-
plus-value, and is keeping intact his original capital ; but what
he thinks cannot} alter facts. After the lapse of a certain
number of years the capital value he then possesses is^equal
to the sum total of the surplus-value appropriated by him
during those years, and the total value he has consumed is
equal to that of his original capital. It is true, he has in hand
a capital whose amount has not changed, and of which a part,
viz., the buildings, machinery, &c., were already there when
the work of his business began. But what we have to do with
here, is not the material elements, but the value, of that capital.
When a person gets through all his property, by taking upon
himself debts equal to the value of that property, it is clear
that his property represents nothing but the sum total of his
debts. And so it is with the capitalist; when he has con
sumed the equivalent of his original capital, the value of his
present capital represents nothing but the total amount of the
surplus-value appropriated by him without payment. Not a
single atom of the value of his old capital continues to exist.

Apart then from all accumulation, the mere continuity of
the process of production, in other words simple reproduction,
sooner or later, and of necessity, converts every capital into
accumulated capital, or capitalised surplus-value. Even if
that capital was originally acquired by the personal labour of
its employer, it sooner or later becomes value appropriated
without an equivalent, the unpaid labour of others materialised
either in money or in some other object We saw in chapter
IV. that in order to convert money into capital something more
is required than the production and circulation of commodities.
We saw that on the one side the possessor of value or money,
on the other, the possessor of the value-creating substance ; on
tho one side, the possessor of the means of production and sub
sistence, on the other, the possessor of nothing but labour-
power, must confront one another as buyer and seller. The_
separation of labour from its product, of subjective labour-
power from the objective conditions of labour, was therefore

Simple Reproduction. 625

the real foundation in f act> and the starting point of capitalist
production.^

But that which at first was but a starting point, becomes,
by the mere continuity of the process, by simple reproduction,
the peculiar result, constantly renewed and perpetuated, of
capitalist production. On the one hand, the process of pro
duction incessantly converts material wealth into capital, into
means of creating more wealth and means of enjoyment for the
capitalist. On the other hand the labourer, on quitting the
process, is what he was on entering it, a source of wealth, but
devoid of all means of making that wealth his own. Since,
before entering on the process, his own labour has already been
alienated from himself by the sale of his labour-power, has
been appropriated by the capitalist and incorporated with capi
tal, it must, during the process, be realised in a product that
does not belong to him. Since the process of production is
also the process by which the capitalist consumes labour-power,
the product of the labourer is incessantly converted, not only
into commodities, but into capital, into value that sucks up
the value-creating power, into means of subsistence that buy
the person of the labourer, into means of production that
command the producers.1 The labourer therefore constantly
produces material, objective wealth, but in the form of capital,
of an alien power that dominates and exploits him; and the
capitalist as constantly produces labour-power, but in the form
of a subjective source of wealth, separated from the objects
in and by which it can alone be realised ; in short he produces
the labourer, but as a wage-labourer.2 This incessant repro
duction, this perpetuation of the labourer, is the sine qua non
of capitalist production.

The labourer consumes in a twofold way. While producing

1 "This is a remarkably peculiar property of productive labour. Whatever is
productively consumed is capital, and it becomes capital by consumption." (James
Mill 1. c. p. 242.) James Mill, however, never got on the track of this "remarkably
peculiar property."

"It is true indeed, that the first introducing a manufacture employs many poor,
but they cease not to be so, and the continuance of it makes many." (Reasons for a
limited Exportation of Wool. London, 1677, p. 19.) "The farmer now absurdly
asserts, that he keeps the psor. They are indeed kept in misery." (Reasons for the
late increase of the Poor Rates; or a comparative view of the prices of labour and
provisions. London, 1777, p. 37.)

£N

626 Capitalist Production.

he consumes by his labour the means of production, and con
verts them into products with a higher value than that of the
capital advanced. Thisjs_his productive consumption. It is
at the same time consumption of his labour-power by the
capitalist who bought it. On the other hand, the labourer
turns the money paid to him for his labour-power, into means
of subsistence: this is his individual consumption. The la
bourer's productive consumption, and his individual consump
tion, are therefore totally distinct. In the former, he acts as
the motive power of capital, and belongs to the capitalist. In
the latter, he belongs to himself, and performs his necessary
vital functions outside the process of production. The result
of the one is, that the capitalist lives; of the other, that the
labourer lives.

When treating of the working-day, we saw that the labourer
is often compelled to make his individual consumption a mera
incident of production. In such a case, he supplies himself
with necessaries in order to maintain his labour- power, just a*
coal and water are supplied to the steam engine and oil to tho
wheel. His means of consumption, in that case> are the mere
means of consumption required by a means of production ; his
individual consumption is directly productive consumption.
This, however, appears to be an abuse not essentially apper
taining to capitalist production.1

The matter takes quite another aspect, when we contemplate,
not the single capitalist, and the single labourer, but the capi
talist class and the labouring class, not an isolated process of
production, but capitalist production in full swing, and on its
actual social scale. By converting part of his capital into
labour-power, the capitalist augments the value of his entire
capital. He kills two birds with one stone. He profits, not
only by what he receives from, but by what he gives to, the
labourer. The capital given in exchange for labour-power is
converted into necessaries, by the consumption of which the
muscles, nerves, bones, and brains of existing labourers are
reproduced, and new labourers are begotten. Within the lim-

1 Rossi would not declaim so emphatically against this, had he really penetrated
the secret of "productive consumption."

Simple Reproduction. 627

its of what IB strictly necessary, tlie individual consumption of
the working class is, therefore, the reconversion of the means
of subsistence given by capital in exchange for labour-power,
into fresh labour-power at the disposal of capital for exploita
tion. It is the production and reproduction of that means of
production so indispensible to the capitalist: the labourer him-
self. The individual consumption of the labourer, whether it
proceed within the workshop or outside it, whether it be part
of the process of production or not, forms therefore a factor of
the production and reproduction of capital; just as cleaning
machinery does, whether it be done while the machinery is
working or while it is standing. The fact that the labourer
consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and
not to please the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. The
consumption of food by a beast of burden is none the less a
necessary factor in the process of production, because the beast
enjoys what it eats. The maintenance and reproduction of the
working-class is; and must ever be, a necessary condition to the
reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave
its fulfillment to the labourer's instincts of self-preservation
and of propagation. All the capitalist cares for, is to reduce
the labourer's individual consumption as far as possible to
what is strictly necessary, and he is far away from imitating
those brutal South Americans, who force their labourers to
take the more substantial, rather than the less substantial, kind
of food.1

Hence both the capitalist and his ideological representative,
the political economist, consider that part alone of the labour
er's individual consumption to be productive, which is requi
site for the perpetuation of the class, and which therefore must
take place in order that the capitalist may have labour-power
to consume; what the labourer consumes for his own pleasure

1 "The labourers in the mines of S. America, whose daily task (the heaviest per
haps in the world) consists in bringing to the surface on their shoulders a load of
metal weighing from 180 to 200 pounds, from a depth of 450 feet, live on bread and
beans only; they themselves would prefer the bread alone for food, but their^
masters, who have found out that the men cannot work so hard on bread, treat them
like horses, and compel them to eat beans; beans, however, are relatively much
richer in bone-earth (phosphate of lime) than is bread" (Liebig, 1. c.. vol. 1. p. 1M»
note;.

628 Capitalist Production.

beyond that part, is unproductive consumption.1 If the ac
cumulation of capital were to cause a rise of wages and an
increase in the labourer's consumption, unaccompanied by
increase in the consumption of labour-power by capital, the
additional capital would be consumed unproductively.2 In
reality, the individual consumption of the labourer is unpro
ductive as regards himself, for it reproduces nothing but the
needy individual ; it is productive to the capitalist and the
State, since it is the production of the power that creates their
wealth.3

From a social point of view, therefore, the working-class,
even when not directly engaged in the labour-process, is just
as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments
of labour. Even its individual consumption is, within certain
limits, a mere factor in the process of production. That proc
ess, however, takes good care to prevent these self-conscious in
struments from leaving it in the lurch, for it removes their
product, as fast as it is made, from their pole to the opposite
pole of capital. Individual consumption provides, on the one
hand, the means for their maintenance and reproduction : on
the other hand, it secures by the annihilation of the necessaries
of life, the continued reappearance of the workman in the
labour-market. The Roman slave was held by fetters: the
wage-labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The
appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant
change of employers, and by the fictio juris of a contract.

In former times, capital resorted to legislation, whenever
necessary, to enforce its proprietary rights over the free la
bourer. For instance, down to 1815, the emigration of me
chanics employed in machine making was, in England, for
bidden, under grievous pains and penalties.

1 James Mill, 1. c., p. 888.

* "If the price of labour should rise so high that, notwithstanding the increase of
capital, no more could be employed, I should say that such increase of capital would
be still unproductively consumed." (Ricardo, 1. c., p. 163.)

1 "The only productive consumption, properly so-called, is the consumption or
destruction of wealth" (he alludes to the means of production) "by capitalists with
a view to reproduction .... The workman .... is a productive con
sumer to the person who employs him, and to the State, but not, strictly speaking,
•l himself." (Malthus' Definitions, &c., p. 80.)

Simple Reproduction. 629

The reproduction of the working class carries with it the X
accumulation of skill, that is handed down from one genera- ^^
tion to another.1 To what extent the capitalist reckons the
existence of such a skilled class among the factors of produc
tion that belong to him by right, and to what extent he actu
ally regards it as the reality of his variable capital, is seen so
soon as a crisis threatens him with its loss In consequence of
the civil war in the United States and of the accompanying
cotton famine, the majority of the cotton operatives in Lanca
shire were, as is well known, thrown out of work. Both from
the working-class itself, and from other ranks of society, there
arose a cry for State aid, or for voluntary national subscrip
tions, in order to enable the "superfluous" hands to emigrate to
the colonies or to the United States. Thereupon, the "Times"
published on the 24th March, 1863, a letter from Edmund
Potter, a former president of the Manchester Chamber of
Commerce. This letter was rightly called in the House of
Commons, the manufacturers' manifesto.2 We cull here a
few characteristic passages, in which the proprietary rights of
capital over labour-power are unblushingly asserted.

"He" (the man out of work) "may be told the supply of
cotton-workers is too large .... and .... must .... in
fact be reduced by a third, perhaps, and that then there will be
a healthy demand for the remaining two-thirds .... Public
opinion .... urges emigration .... The master cannot
willingly see his labour supply being removed ; he may think,
and perhaps justly, that it is both wrong and unsound ....
But if the public funds are to be devoted to assist emigration,
he has a right to be heard, and perhaps to protest." Mr.
Potter then shows how useful the cotton trade is, how the
"trade has undoubtedly drawn the surplus-population from
Ireland and from the agricultural districts," how immense is
its extent, how in the year 1860 it yielded -& ths of the total

1 "The only thing, of which one can say, that it is stored up and prepared before
hand, is the skill of the labourer .... The accumulation and storage of skilled
labour, that most important operation, is, as regards the great mass of labourers,
accomplished without any capital whatever." (Tho. Hodgskin: Labour Defended,
&c, p. 13.)

1 "That letter might be looked upon as the manifesto of the manufacturers."
(Ferrand: Motion on the Cotton Famine, H. o. C, 27th April, 18«8.)

630 Capitalist Production.

English exports, how, after a few years, it will aga^n expand
by the extension of the market, particularly of the Indian mar
ket, and by calling forth a plentiful supply of cotton at 6d.
per Ib. He then continues: "Some time . . . , one, two, or
three years, it may be, will produce the quantity .... The
question I would put then is this — Is the trade worth retain
ing? Is it worth while to keep the machinery (he means the
living labour machines) in order, and is it not the greatest
folly to think of parting with that? I think it is. I allow
that the workers are not a property, not the property of Lanca
shire and the masters ; but they are the strength of both ; they
are the mental and trained power which cannot be replaced
for a generation ; the mere machinery which they work might
much of it be beneficially replaced, nay improved, in a twelve
month.1 Encourage or allow ( !) the working-power to emi
grate, and what of the capitalist ? a . . . Take away the
cream of the workers, and fixed capital will depreciate in a
great degree, and the floating will not subject itself to a strag
gle with the short supply of inferior labour We

are told the workers wish it" (emigration). "Very natural it
is that they should do so .... Reduce, compress the
cotton trade by taking away its working power and reducing
their wages expenditure, say one-fifth, or five millions, and
what then would happen to the class above, the small shopkeep
ers; and what of the rents, the cottage rents .... Trace
out the effects upward to the small farmer, the better house
holder, and .... the landowner, and say if there could be
any suggestion more suicidal to all classes of the country than
by enfeebling a nation by exporting the best of its manufac
turing population, and destroying the value of some of its most

1 It will not be forgotten that this same capital sings quite another song, under-
ordinary circumstances, when there is a question of reducing wages. Then the
masters exclaim with one voice: "The factory operatives should keep in wholesome
remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species of skilled labour; and that
there is none which is more easily acquired, or of its quality more amply remuner
ated, or which, by a short training of the least expert, can be more quickly, as well
as abundantly, acquired .... The master's machinery" (which we now learn
can be replaced with advantage in 12 months) "really plays a far more important
part in the business of production than the labour and skill of the operative" (who
cannot now be replaced under 30 years), "which six months' education can teach,
and a common labourer can learn." (See ante, p. 423.)

Simple Reproduction. 631

productive capital and enrichment .... I advise a loan
(of five or six millions sterling), . . . extending it may be
over two or three years, administered by special commission
ers added to the Boards of Guardians in the cotton districts,
under special legislative regulations, enforcing some occupa
tion or labour, as a means of keeping up at least the moral
standard of the recipients of the loan .... can anything be
worse for landowners or masters than parting with the best of
the workers, and demoralising and disappointing the rest by
an extended depletive emigration, a depletion of capital and
value in an entire province ?"

Potter, the chosen mouthpiece of the manufacturers, distin
guishes two sorts of "machinery, " each of which belongs to the
capitalist, and of which one stands in his factory, the other at
night-time and on Sundays is housed outside the factory, in
cottages. The one is inanimate, the other living. The inani- / x^
mate machinery not only wears out and depreciates from day v^
to day, but a great part of it becomes so quickly super-annu-
ated, by constant technical progress, that it can be replaced
with advantage by new machinery after a few months. The
living machinery, on the contrary, gets better the longer it
lasts, and in proportion as the skill, handed from one genera
tion to another, accumulates. The "Times" answered the
cotton lord as follows:

"Mr. Edmund Potter is so impressed with the exceptional
and supreme importance of the cotton masters that, in order
to preserve this class and perpetuate their profession, he would
keep half a million of the labouring class confined in a great
moral workhouse against their will. 'Is the trade worth re
taining ?' asks Mr. Potter. 'Certainly by all honest means it
is/ we answer. 'Is it worth while keeping the machinery in
order?' again asks Mr. Potter. Here we hesitate. By the
'machinery' Mr. Potter means the human machinery, for he
goes on to protest that he does not mean to use them as an
absolute property. We must confess that we do not think it
'worth while/ or even possible, to keep the human machinery
in order — that is to shut it up and keep it oiled till it is
wanted. Human machinery wiU rust under inaction, oil and

632 Capitalist Production.

rub it as you may. Moreover, the human machinery will, as
we have just seen, get the steam up of its own accord, and
burst or run a muck in our great towns. It might, as Mr.
Potter says, require some time to reproduce the workers, but,
having machinists and capitalists at hand, we could always
find thrifty, hard, industrious men wherewith to improvise
more master manufacturers than we can ever want. Mr. Pot
ter talks of the trade reviving 'in one, two, or three years/ and
he asks us not 'to encourage or allow ( !) the working power to
emigrate.' He says that it is very natural the workers should
wish to emigrate; but he thinks that in spite of their desire,
the nation ought to keep this half million of workers with
their 700,000 dependents, shut up in the cotton districts; and
as a necessary consequence, he must of course think that the
nation ought to keep down their discontent by force, and sus
tain them by alms — and upon the chance that the cotton mas
ters may some day want them . . . The time is come when
the great public opinion of these islands must operate to sa?e
this 'working power' from those who would deal with it as
they would deal with iron, and coal, and cotton."

The "Times' " article was only a jeu d'esprit. The "great
public opinion" was, in fact, of Mr. Potter's opinion, that th<3
factory operatives are part of the movable fittings of a factory.
Their emigration was prevented.1 They were locked up in
that "moral workhouse," the cotton districts, and they form
as before, "the strength" of the cotton manufacturers of Lan
cashire.

Capitalist production, therefore, of itself reproduces the
separation between labour-power and the means of labour. It
thereby reproduces and perpetuates the condition for exploit
ing the labourer. It incessantly forces him, to sell his labour-

1 Parliament did not vote a single farthing in aid of emigration, but simply passed
some Acts empowering the municipal corporations to keep the operatives In a half-
starved state, i.e., to exploit them at less than the normal wages. On the other
hand, when 3 years later, the cattle disease broke out, Parliament broke wildly
through its usages and voted, straight off, millions for indemnifying the millionaire
landlords, whose farmers in any event came -off without loss, owing to the rise in the
price of meat. The bull-like bellow of the landed proprietors at the opening of Par
liament, in 1866, showed that a man can worship the cow Sabala without being a
Hindoo, and can change himself into an ox without being a Jupiter,

Simple Reproduction. 633

power in order to live, and enables the capitalist to purchase
labour-power in order that he may enrich himself.1 It is no
longer a mere accident, that capitalist and labourer confront
each other in the market as buyer and seller. It is the process
itself that incessantly hurls back the labourer on to the market
as a vendor of his labour-power, and that incessantly converts
his own product into a means by which another man can pur
chase him. In reality, the labourer belongs to capital before
he has sold himself to capital. His economical bondage2 is
both brought about and concealed by the periodic sale of him
self, by his change of masters, and by the oscillations in the
market price of labour-power.8

Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a con
tinuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, pro
duces not only commodities, not only surplus-value, but it also
produces and reproduces the capitalist relation ; on the one
side the capitalist, on the other the wage-labourer.4

1 "L'ouvricr demandait de la subsistence pour vivre, le chef demandait du travail
pour gagner." (Sismondi, 1. c., p. 91.)

1 A boorishly clumsy form of this bondage exists in the county of Durham. This
is one of the few counties, in which circumstances do not secure to the farmer
undisputed proprietary rights over the agricultural labourer. The mining industry
allows the latter some choice. In this county, the farmer, contrary to the custom
elsewhere, rents only such farms as have on them labourers' cottages. The rent of
the cottage is a part of the wages. These cottages are known as "hinds' houses."
They are let to the labourers in consideration of certain feudal services, under a con
tract called "bondage," which, amongst other things, binds the labourer during the
time he is employed elsewhere, to leave some one, say his daughter, &c., to supply his
place. The labourer himself is called a "bondsman." The relationship here set up
also shows how individual consumption by the labourer becomes consumption on be
half of capital — or productive consumption — from quite a new point of view: "It is
curious to observe that the very dung of the hind and bondsman is the perquisite of
the calculating lord . . . and the lord will allow no privy but his own to exist
in the neighbourhood, and will rather give a bit of manure here and there for a
garden than bate any part of his seigneurial right." (Public Health, Report VII.,
1864, p. 188.)

' It will not be forgotten, that, with respect to the labour of children, &c., even
the formality of a voluntary sale disappears.

4 "Capital pre-supposes wage-labour, and wage-labour pre-supposes capital. One
is a necessary condition to the existence of the other; they mutually call each other
into existence. Does an operative in a cotton-factory produce nothing but cotton
goods? No, he produces capital. He produces values that give fresh command over
his labour, and that, by means of such command, create fresh values." (Karl Marx:
Lohnarbeit und Kapital, in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 266, 7th April, 1849.)
The articles published under the above title in the N. Rh. Z. are parts of some
lectures given by me on that subject, in 1847, in the German "Arbeiter-Verein" at
Brussels, the publication of which was interrupted by the revolution of February.

634 Capitalist Production.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CONVERSION OF SURPLUS- VALUE INTO CAPITAL.

SECTION I. CAPITALIST PRODUCTION ON A PROGRESSIVELY

INCREASING SCALE. TRANSITION OF THE LAWS OF PROP
ERTY THAT CHARACTERISE PRODUCTION OF COMMODITIES
INTO LAWS OF CAPITALIST APPROPRIATION.

HITHERTO we have investigated how surplus-value emanateH
from capital; we have now to see how capital arises froir
surplus-value. Employing surplus-value as capital, reconver
ting it into capital, is called accumulation of capital.1

First let us consider this transaction from the standpoint of
the individual capitalist. Suppose a spinner to have advanced
a capital of £10,000, of which four-fifths (£8000) are laid out
in cotton, machinery, &c., and one-fifth (£2000) in wages.
Let him produce 240,000 Ibs. of yarn annually, having a value
of £12,000. The rate of surplus-value being 100 %, the sur
plus-value lies in the surplus or net product of 40,000 Ibs. of
yarn, one sixth of the gross product, with a value of £2000
which will be realized by a sale. £2000 is £2000. We can
neither see nor smell in this sum of money a trace of surplus-
value. When we know that a given value is surplus-value, we
know how its owner came by it; but that does not alter the
nature either of value or of money.

In order to convert this additional sum of £2000 into cap
ital, the master spinner will, all circumstances remaining as
before, advance four-fifths of it (£1600) in the purchase of
cotton, &c., and one-fifth (£400) in the purchase of additional
spinners, who will find in the market the necessaries of life
whose value the master has advanced to them. Then the new

1 "Accumulation of capita! ; the employment of a portion of revenue as capital."
(Malthus: Definitions, &c., ed. Cazenove p. 11.) "Conversion of revenue into capL
taL" Malthus: Princ. of Pol. Econ., 2nd Ed., Lond., 1886, p. 819.)

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 633

capital of £2000 functions in the spinning mill, and brings
in, in its turn, a surplus-value of £400.

The capital-value was originally advanced in the money
form. The surplus-value on the contrary is, originally, the
value of a definite portion of the gross product. If this gross
product be sold, converted into money, the capital-value re
gains its original form. Froni this moment the capital-
value and the surplus-value are both of them sums of money,
and their reconversion into capital takes place in precisely
the same way. The one, as well as the other, is laid out by
the capitalist in the purchase of commodities that place him
in a position to begin afresh the fabrication of his goods,
and this time, on an extended scale. But in order to be ablej
to buy those commodities, he must find them ready in the \
market.

His own yarns circulate, only because he brings his annual
product to market, as all other capitalists likewise do with
their commodities. But these commodities, before coming to
market, were part of the general annual product, part of the
total mass of objects of every kind, into which the sum of the
individual capitals, i.e., the total capital of society, had been
converted in the course of the year, and of which each capi
talist had in hand only an aliquot part. The transactions in
the marke^ effeclnalfi- only the interchange of the individual
components^ojLthis^annual^ product, transfer them from one
hand to another, but can neither augment the total annual
production, nor alter the nature of the objects produced.
Hence the use that can be made of the total annual product,
depends entirely upon its own composition, but in no way
upon circulation.

The annual production must in the first place furnish all
those objects (use-values) from which the material components
of capital, used up in the course of the year, have to be re
placed. Deducting these there remains the net or surplus-
product, in which the surplus-value lies. And of what does
this surplus-product consist? Only of things destined to sat
isfy the wants and desires of the capitalist class, things which,
consequently, enter into the consumption fund of the capital-

636 Capitalist Production.

ists? Were that the case, the cup of surplus-value would be
draired to the very dregs, and nothing but simple reproduc
tion would ever take place.

% accumulate it is necessary to convert a portion of the
surplus-product into capital. But we cannot, except by a
miracle, convert into capital anything but mich articles as can
be employed in the labour-process (i.e., means of production),
and such further articles as are suitable for the sustenance of
the labourer, (i.e., means of subsistence.) Consequently, a
part of the annual surplus-labour must have been applied to
the production of additional means of production and subsist*
ence, over and above the quantity of these things required t<i
replace the capital advanced. In one word, surplus-value is
convertible into capital solely because the surplus-product,
whose value it is, already comprises the material elements of
new capital.1

Now in order to Allow of these elements actually function
ing as capital, the capitalist class requires additional labour.
If the exploitation of the labourers already employed do not
increase, either extensively or intensively, then additional
labour-power must be found. For this the mechanism of
capitalist production provides beforehand, by converting the
working class into a class dependent on wages, a class whose
ordinary wages suffice, not only for its maintenance, but for its
increase. It is only necessary for capital to incorporate this
additional labour-power, annually supplied by the working
class in the shape of labourers of all ages, with the surplus
means of production comprised in the annual produce, and
the conversion of surplus-value into capital is complete.
From a concrete point of view, accumulation resolves itself
into the reproduction of capital on a progressively increasing
acale. The circle in which simple reproduction moves, alters

1 We here take no account of export trade, by means of which a nation can change
articles of luxury either into means of production or means of subsistence, and vice
• ,ers<l. In order to examine the object of our investigation in its integrity, free from
all disturbing subsidiary circumstances, we must treat the whole world as one nation,
and assume that capitalist production is everywhere established and has possessed
of every branch of industry.

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 637

its form, and, to use Sismoodi's expression, changes into a
spiral.1

Let us now return to our illustration. It is the old story:
Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on. The
original capital of £10,000 brings in a surplus-value of £2000,
which is capitalised. The new capital of £2000 brings in a
surplus-value of £400, and this, too, is capitalised, converted
into a second additional capital, which, in its turn, produces
a further surplus-value of £80. And so the ball rolls on.

We here leave out of consideration the portion of the sur
plus-value consumed by the capitalist. Just as little does it
concern us, for the moment, whether the additional capital is
joined on to the original capital, or is separated from it to
function independently ; whether the same capitalist, who
accumulated it, employs it, or whether he hands it over to
another. This only we must not forget, that by the side of
the newly-formed capital, the original capital continues to re
produce itself, and to produce surplus-value, and that this is
also true of all accumulated capital, and the additional capital
engendered by it.

The original capital was formed by the advance of £10,000.
How did the owner become possessed of it? "By his own
labour and that of his forefathers," answer unanimously the
spokesmen of political economy.2 And, in fact, their supposi
tion appears the only one consonant with the laws of the pro
duction of commodities.

But it is quite otherwise with regard to the additional
capital of £2000. How that originated we know perfectly
well There is not one single atom of its value that does not
owe its existence to unpaid labour. The means of production,
with which the additional labour-power is incorporated, as well
as the necessaries with which the labourers are sustained, are
nothing but component parts of the surplus product, of the
tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capi-

1 Sismondi's analysis of accumulation suffers from the great defect, that he con*
tents himself, to too great an extent* with the phrase "conversion of revenue into
capital," without fathoming the material conditions of this operation.

' "Le travail primitif auquel son capital a du sa naiwance." Sismondt, L c., e<L
P»r», t. I., p. 109.

638 Capitalist Production.

talist class. Though the latter with a portion of that tribute
purchases the additional labour-power even at its full price, BO
that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the transac
tion is for all that only the old dodge of eve.ry conquerer who
buys commodities from the conquered with the money he
has robbed them of.

If the additional capital employs the person who produced
it, this producer must not only continue to augment the value
of the original capital, but must buy back the fruits of his
previous labour with more labour than they cost. When
viewed as a transaction between the capitalist class and tho
working class, it makes no difference that additional labourers
are employed by means of the unpaid labour of the previously
employed labourers. The capitalist may even convert the
additional capital into a machine that throws the producers of
that capital out of work, and that replaces them by a few
children. In every case the working class creates by the sur
plus-labour of one year the capital destined to employ addi
tional labour in the following year.1 And this is what is
called : creating capital out of capital.

The accumulation of the first additional capital of £2000
presupposes a value of £10,000 belonging to the capitalist by
virtue of his "primitive labour," and advanced by him. The
second additional capital of £400 presupposes, on the con
trary, only the previous accumulation of the £2000, of which
the £400 is the surplus-value capitalised. The ownership of
past unpaid labour is thenceforth the sole condition for the
appropriation of living unpaid labour on a constantly increas
ing scale. The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more
is he able to accumulate.

In so far as the surplus-value, of which the additional
capital, Xo. 1, consists, is the result of the purchase of labour-
power with part of the original capital, a purchase that con
formed to the laws of the exchange of commodities, and that,
from a legal stand-point, presupposes nothing beyond the free
disposal, on the part of the labourer, of his own capacities, and

* "Labour creates capital before capital employs labour." E. G. Wakefield,
Sand and America. Lond., 1833, Vol. II., p. 110.

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 639

tm the pfcrt of the owner of money or commodities, of the values
that belong to him ; in so far as the additional capital, No. 2,
&c., is the mere result of No. 1, and, therefore, a consequence
of the above condition; in so far as each single transaction
invariably conforms to the laws of the exchange of commodi
ties, the capitalist buying labour-power, the labourer selling it,
and we will assume at its real value; in so far as all this is
true, it is evident that the laws of appropriation or of private
property, laws that are based on the production and circula
tion of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable
dialectic changed into their very opposite.1 The exchange of
equivalents, the original operation with which we started,
now become turned round in such a way that there is only an
apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the
capital which is exchanged for labour-power is itself but a
portion of the product of others' labour appropriated without
an equivalent; and, secondly, that this capital must not only
be replaced by its producer, but replaced together with an
added surplus. The relation of exchange subsisting between
capitalist and labourer becomes a mere semblance appertaining
to the process of circulation, a mere form, foreign to the real
nature of the transaction, and only mystify it. The ever re
peated purchase and sale of labour-power is now the mere
form ; what really takes place is this — the capitalist again and
again appropriates, without equivalent, a portion of the pre
viously materialised labour of others, and exchanges it for a
greater quantity of living labour. At first the rights of prop-
erty seemed to us to be based on aTinan's own labour. At
least, some such assumption was necessary since only com
modity owners with equal rights confronted each other, and
the sole means by which a man could become possessed of the
commodities of others, was by alienating his own commodities ;
and these could be replaced by labour alone. Now, however,

*Just as at a given stage in its development, commodity production necessarily
passes into capitalistic commodity production (in fact, it is only on the basis of
capitalistic production that products take the general and predominant form of com
modities), so the laws of property that are based on commodity production, neces
sarily turn into the laws of capitalist appropriation. We may well, therefore, fe*l
astonished at the cleverness of Proudhon, who would abolish capitalistic property by
enforcing the eternal laws of property that are based on commodity production I

640 Capitalist Production.

property turns out to be the right, on the part of tW
ist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product
and to be the impossibility, on the part of the lh Dourer, of ap
propriating his own product. The separation of property
from labour has become the necessary consequence of a law
that apparently originated in their identity.1

No matter how severely the capivalist mode of appropriation
may seem to slap the face of the fundamental laws of the pro
duction of commodities, it does not arise from a violation, but
from an application of these laws. A brief retrospect upon
the succession of phases, whose climax the capitalist accumu
lation is, may serve once more to make this clear.

We have seen, in the first place, that the original transfor
mation of a certain quantity of values into capital proceeded
strictly according to the laws of exchange. One of the con
tracting parties sells his labour-power, the other buys it. The
rst receives the exchange-value of his commodity, while
its use-value, labour, passes into the possession of the other.
This second party then converts means of production belong
ing to him into a new product belonging to him by right
through the instrumentality of labour also belonging to him.

The value of this product comprizes, in the first place, the
value of the consumed means of production. Useful labour
cannot consume these means of production without trans
ferring their value to the new product But in order to be
saleable labour-power must be able to furnish useful labour in
that line of industry in which it is to be employed.

The value of the new product comprizes, furthermore, the
equivalent of the value of labour-power and a surplus-value.
It does so for the reason that the labour-power sold for a cer
tain length of time, such as a day, a week, etc., has less value
than is produced by its employment during that time. The
labourer, however, has received the exchange-value of his la-

J The property of the capitalist in the product of the labour of others "is a strict
consequence of the law of appropriation, the fundamental principle of which was, on
the contrary, the exclusive title of every labourer to the product of his own labour."
(Cherbulier, Riche ou Pauvre. Paris, 1841, p. 58, where, however, the dialectical
reversal is not properly developed.)

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 641

bour-power and given up its use-value in return, as happens
in every sale and purchase.

The fact that this particular commodity labour-power has
the peculiar use-value of supplying labour and creating value
cannot affect the general law of the production of commodi
ties. Hence, if the sum of values advanced in wages is not
merely reproduce in the product, but also increased by a
surplus-value, this is not due to an advantage gained over the
seller, who received the value of his commodity, but simply
to the consumption of this commodity by the buyer.

The law of exchange requires equality only for the exchange-
values of the commodities passed from hand to hand. But

it requires at the outset a disparity of their use-values, and
has nothing to do with their consumption, which does not
begin until after the trade has been made.

The original transformation of money into capital pro
ceeds, therefore, in strict compliance with the economic laws
of the production of commodities and with the property right
derived therefrom. Nevertheless it has the following results :

(1) That the product belongs to the capitalist, not to the
labourer ;

(2) That the value of this product comprizes a surplus-
value over and above the value of the advanced capital.
This surplus-value has cost tht» labourer labour, but the capi
talist nothing, yet it becomes tbe lawful property of the capi
talist;

(3) That the labourer has reproduced his labour-power
and can sell it once more, if he fluds a buyer for it.

Simple reproduction is but a periodical repetition of this
first operation. Money is thereby transformed again and
again into capital. The general law is not violated thereby,
but rather finds an opportunity to manifest itself permanently.
"Several successive exchangee have merely made of the last
a representative of the first" (Sismondi, 1. c,, p. 70.)

aSTevertheless we have seen that this simple reproduction
suffices to impregnate this first operation, so far as it was
considered an isolated transaction, with a totally different

character. "Of those, who divide the national revenue

642 Capitalist Production.

among themselves, some (the labourers) acquire each year a
new title to it by new labour, while others (the capitalists)
have previously acquired a permanent title to it by primitive
work." (Sismondi, 1. c., p. 111.) The domain of labour is
evidently not the only one in which primogeniture accom
plishes wonders.

It does not alter matters any, if simple reproduction 13
replaced by reproduction on an enlarged scale, by accumula
tion. In the first instance the capitalist consumes the entire
surplus-value, in the second he demonstrates his civic virtuo
by consuming only a part of it and converting the remainder
into money.

The surplus-value is his property, it has never belonged to
anybody else. If he advances it to production, he makes ad
vances from his own. funds just as he did on the day when
he first came «>n the market. That this fund in the present
case comes from the unpaid labour of his labourers, does not
alter the matter in the least. If labourer B is employed with
surplus-values produced by labourer A, then, in the first place,
A supplied this surplus-value without having the just price
of his commodity reduced by one farthing, and, in the sec
ond place, this transaction is none of B's concern. What B
demands and has a right to demand is that the capitalist
should pay him the value of his labour-power. "Both sides
are gainers; the labourer, by having the fruit of his labour
advanced to him" (that is, the fruit of the unpaid labour of
others) "before he has performed any labour" (that is, be
fore his own labour has borne any fruit) ; "the master, be
cause the labour of this labourer was worth more than his
wages" (that is, produced a value greater than that of hia
wages). (Sismondi, 1. c., p. 135.)

True, the matter assumes an entirely different aspect when
we look upon capitalist production in the uninterrupted flow
<>f its reproduction, and when we consider the capitalist class
as a whole and its antagonist, the working class, instead of
the individual capitalist and the individual labourer. But
in so doing we should be applying a standard which is totally
foreign to the production of commodities.

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 643

In the production of commodities only sellers and buyers,
independent of one another, meet Their mutual relations
cease with the termination of their mutual contract. If the
transaction is repeated, it is done by a new contract, which
has nothing to do with the former one, and only an accident
brings the same seller once more together with the same buyer.

Hence, if the production of commodities, or a transaction
belonging to it, is to be judged by its own economic laws, we
must consider each act of exchange by itself, outside of all
connection with the act of exchange preceding it and following
it. And since purchases and sales are transacted between in
dividuals, it will not do to seek therein relations between en
tire classes of society.

No matter how long may be the series of periodical repro
ductions and former accumulations through which the capital
now invested may have passed, it always retains its primal
virginity. So long as the laws of exchange are observed in
every act of exchange, individually considered, the mode of
appropriation may be completely revolutionised without in
the least affecting the property right bestowed by the produc
tion of commodities. The same right remains in force,
whether it be at a time when the product belonged to the pro
ducer, and when this producer, exchanging equivalent for
equivalent, could enrich himself only by his own labour, or
whether it be under capitalism, where the social wealth be
comes in an ever increasing degree the property of those,
who are in a position to appropriate to themselves again and
again the unpaid labour of others.

This result becomes inevitable, as soon as labour-power is
sold as a commodity by the "free" labourer himself. It is
from that time on that the production of commodities becomes
universal arid a typical form of production. Henceforth
every product is intended at the outset for sale, and all pro
duced wealth passes through the circulation. The produc
tion of commodities jdoes not impose itself upon the whole
society, until wage-labour becomes its basis. And only then
does it unfold all its powers. To say that the intervention
of wage labour adulterates the production of commoditie*

644 Capitalist Production.

means to say that the production of commodities must not
develop, if it wishes to remain unadulterated. To the same
extent that it continues to develop by its own inherent laws
into a capitalist production, the property laws of the produc
tion of commodities are converted into the laws of capitalistic
appropriation.1

We have seen that even in the case of simple reproduction,
all capital, whatever its original source, becomes converted in
to accumulated capital, capitalised surplus-value. But in the
flood of production all the capital originally advanced becomes
a vanishing qiiantity (magmtudo evanescens, in the mathema
tical sense), compared with the directly accumulated capital,
i.e., with the surplus-value or surplus product that is recon
verted into capital, whether it function in the hands of its
accumulator, or in those of others. Hence, political economy
describes capital in general as "accumulated wealth" (con
verted surplus-value or revenue), "that is employed over
again in the production of surplus-value," 2 and the capitalist
as "the owner of surplus-value." 3 It is merely another way
of expressing the same thing to say that all existing capital is
accumulated or capitalised interest, for interest is a nnre
fragment of surplus-value.4

SECTION 2. ERRONEOUS CONCEPTION BY POLITICAL ECONO:\fY

OF REPRODUCTION ON A PROGRESSIVELY IN
CREASING SCALE.

Before we further investigate accumulation or the reconver
sion of surplus-value into capital, we must brush on one side
an ambiguity introduced by the classical economists.

1 Admire, therefore, the craftiness of Proudhon who wishes to abolish capitalist
property by enforcing against it — the eternal property laws of the production of
commodities.

* "Capital, viz., accumulated wealth employed with a view to profit." (Malt! u«,
1. c.) "Capital .... consists of wealth saved from revenue, and used *ith
a view to profit." (R. Jones: An Introductory Lecture on Polit. Econ., Lond., 16J3,
p. 16.)

* 'The possessors of surplus produce or capital." (The Source and Remedy of the
National Difficulties. A Letter to Lord John Russell. Lond., 1821.)

* "Capital, with compound Interest on every portion of capital saved, is so all
engrossing that all the wealth in the world from which income is derived, hat leaf
•CO become the interest on capital.** (London Economist, Ittk July, 1809.)

Conversion of Surplus- Value into Capital. 645

Just as little as the commodities that the capitalist buys
with a part of the surplus-value for his own consumption,
serve the purpose of production and of creation of value, so
little is the labour that he buys for the satisfaction of his
natural and social requirements, productive labour. Instead
of converting surplus-value into capital, he, on the contrary, by
the purchase of those commodities and that labour, consumes
or expends it as revenue. In the face of the habitual mode of
life of the old feudal nobility, which, as Hegel rightly says,
"consists in consuming what is in hand," and more especially
displays itself in the luxury of personal retainers, it was ex
tremely important for bourgeois economy to promulgate the
doctrine that accumulation of capital is the first duty of every
citizen, and to preach without ceasing, that a man cannot ac
cumulate, if he eats up all his revenue, instead of spending a
good part of it in the acquisition of additional productive la
bourers, who bring in more than they cost. On the other hand
the economists had to contend against the popular prejudice,
that confuses capitalist production with hoarding,1 and fancies
that accumulated wealth is either wealth that is rescued from
being destroyed in its existing form, i.e., from being con
sumed, or wealth that is withdrawn from circulation. Exclu
sion of money from circulation would also exclude ataolutely
its self-expansion as capital, while accumulation of a hoard in
the shape of commodities would be sheer tomfoolery.2 The
accumulation of commodities in great masses is the result
either of overproduction or of a stoppage of circulation.3 It
is true that the popular mind is impressed by the sight, on the
one hand, of the mass of goods that are stored up for gradual
consumption by the rich,4 and on the other hand, by the for-

1 "No political economist of the present day can by saving mean mere hoarding:
and beyond this contracted and insufficient proceeding, no use of the term in refer
ence to the national wealth can well be imagined, but that which must arise front
a different application of what is saved, founded upon a real distinction between
the different kinds of labour maintained by it." (Malthus, I. c., p. 38, 39.)

1 Thus for instance, Balzac, who so thoroughly studied every shade of avarice,
represents the old usurer Gobsec as in his second childhood when he begins to heap
up a hoard of commodities.

* "Accumulation of stocks . . . non-exchange . . . over-production." (Th.
Corbet 1. c., p. 14.)

* In this sense Necker speaks of the "objets de faste et de somptuositeV' of which

646 Capitalist Production.

mation of reserve stocks ; the latter, a phenomenon that is com
mon to all modes of production, and on which we shall dwell
for a moment, when we come to analyse circulation. Classical .
economy is therefore quite right, when it maintains that the
consumption of surplus-products by productive, instead of by
unproductive labourers, is a characteristic feature of the
process of accumulation. But at this point the mistakes also
begin. Adam Smith has made it the fashion, to represent
accumulation as nothing more than consumption of surplus-
products by productive labourers, which amounts to saying,
that the capitalising of surplus-value consists in merely turn
ing surplus-value into labour-power. Let us see what Ricardo
e.g., says: "It must be understood that all the productions
of a country are consumed; but it makes the greatest differ
ence imaginable whether they are consumed by those who
reproduce, or by those who do not reproduce another valuo.
When we say that revenue is saved, and added to capital, wht.t
we mean is, that the portion of revenue, so said to be added
to capital, is consumed by productive instead of unproductive
labourers. There can be no greater error than in supposing
that capital is increased by non-consumption." l There can
be no greater error than that which Ricardo and all subsequent
economists repeat after A. Smith, viz., that "the part of rev
enue, of which it is said, it has been added to capital, is con
sumed by productive labourers." According to this, all sur
plus-value that is changed into capital becomes variable cap
ital. So far from this being the case, the surplus-value, like
the original capital, divides itself into constant capital anc
variable capital, into means of production and labour-power.
Labour-power is the form under which variable capital exists
during the process of production. In this process the labour-
power is itself consumed by the capitalist while the means of
production are consumed by the labour-power in the exercise of
its function, labour. At the same time, the money paid for
the purchase of the labour-power, is converted into necessaries,

"le temps a grossi 1'accumulation," and which "lea lois de propriete ont rassemblet
dans une seule classe de la societe." (Oeuvres de M. Necker, Paris and Lausauue,
1789, t ti. p. 291. )
1 Ricaxdo, 1. c., p. 108, note.

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 647

that are consumed, not by "productive labour/7 but by the
"productive labourer." Adam Smith, by a fundamentally
perverted analysis, arrives at the absurd conclusion, that even
though each individual capital is divided into a constant and
a variable part, the capital of society resolves itself only into
variable capital, i.e., is laid out exclusively in payment of
wages. For instance, suppose a cloth manufacturer converts
£2000 into capital. One portion he lays out in buying
weavers, the other in woollen yarn, machinery, &c. But the
people, from whom he buys the yarn and the machinery, pay
for labour with a part of the purchase money, and so on until
the whole £2000 are spent in the payment of wages, i.e., un
til the entire product represented by the £2000 has been con
sumed by productive labourers. It is evident that the whole
gist of this argument lies in the words "and so on/' which
send us from pillar to post. In truth, Adam Smith breaks
his investigation off, just where its difficulties begin.1

The annual process of reproduction is easily understood, so
long as we keep in view merely the sum total of the year's
production. But every single component of this product must
be brought into the market as a commodity, and there the diffi
culty begins. The movements of the individual capitals, and
of the personal revenues, cross and intermingle and are lost in
the general change of places, in the circulation of the wealth of
society; this dazes the sight, and propounds very complicated
problems for solution. In the third part of Book II. I shall
give the analysis of the real bearings of the facts. It is one of
the great merits of the Physiocrats, that in their Tableau
economiqiLe they were the first to attempt to depict the annual
production in the shape in which it is presented to us after
passing through the process of circulation.2

1 In spite of his "Logic," John St. Mill never detects even such faulty analysis as
this when made by his predecessors, an analysis which, even from the bourgeois stand
point of the science, cries out for rectification. In every case he registers with the
dogmatism of a disciple, the confusio i of his master's thoughts. So here: "The
capital itself in the long run becomes entirely wages, and when replaced by the sale
of produce becomes wages again."

* In his description of the process of reproduction, and of accumulation, Adam
Smith, in many ways, not only made no advance, but even lost considerable ground,
compared with bis predecessors, especially the Physiocrats. Connected with the

648 Capitalist Production.

For the rest, it is a matter of course, that political economy,
acting in the interests of the capitalist class, has not failed to
exploit the doctrine of Adam Smith, viz., that the whole of
that part of the; surplus product which is converted into
capital, is consumed by the working class.

SECTION 3. SEPARATION OF SURPLUS-VALUE INTO CAPITAL,

AND REVENUE. THE ABSTINENCE THEORY.

In the last preceding chapter, we treated surplus-value (or
the surplus product) solely as a fund for supplying the in
dividual consumption of the capitalist. In this chapter we
have, so far treated it solely as a fund for accumulation. It
is, however, neither the one nor the other, but is both to
gether. One portion is consumed by the capitalist as rev
enue,1 the other is employed as capital, is accumulated.

Given the mass of surplus-value, then, the larger the one of
these parts, the smaller is the other. Cseteris paribus, the
ratio of these parts determines the magnitude of the ac
cumulation. But it is by the owner of the surplus- value, by
the capitalist alone, that the division is made. It is his de
liberate act That part of the tribute exacted by him which
he accumulates, is said to be saved by him, because he does
not eat it, i.e., because he performs the function of a capitalist,
and enriches himself.

Except as personified capital, the capitalist has no historical
value, and no right to that historical existence, which, to use
an expression of the witty Lichnowsky, "hasn't got no date,"

illusion mentioned in the text, is the really wonderful dogma, left by him as an in
heritance to political economy, the dogma, that the price of commodities is made up
of wages, profit (interest) and rent, i.e., of wages and surplus-value. Starting from
this basis, Storch naively confesses, "II est impossible de r^soudre le prix necessaire
dans ses elements les plus simples." (Storch, 1. c. Petersb. Edit. 1815, t. i. p. 140,
note.) A fine science of economy this, which declares it impossible to resolve the
price of a commodity into its simplest elements! This point will be further inves
tigated in the seventh part of Book iii.

1 The reader will notice, that the word revenue is used in a double sense: first, to
designate surplus-value so far as it is the fruit periodically yielded by capital;
secondly, to designate the part of that fruit which is periodically consumed by the
capitalist, or added to the fund that supplies his private consumption. I have retained
this double meaning because it harmonises with the language of the English and
French economists.

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 649

And so far only is the necessity for his own transitory ex
istence implied in the transitory necessity for the capitalist
mode of production. But, so far as he is personified capital,
it is not values in use and the enjoyment of them, but exchange-
value and its augmentation, that spur him into action. Fan
atically bent on making value expand itself, he ruthlessly
forces the human race to produce for production's sake; he
thus forces the development of the productive powers of so
ciety, and creates those material conditions, which alone can
form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in
which the full and free development of every individual forms
the ruling principle. Only as personified capital is the
capitalist respectable. As such, he shares with the miser the
passion for wealth as wealth. But that which in the miser
is a mere idiosyncrasy, is, in the capitalist, the effect of the
social mechanism, of which he is but one of the wheels. More
over, the development of capitalist production makes it con
stantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of the capital
laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition
makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt
by each individual capitalist, as external coercive )aws. It
compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order
to preserve it, but extend it he cannot, except by means of
progressive accumulation.

So far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of
capital — endowed as capital is, in his person, with conscious
ness and a will — his own private consumption is a robbery
perpetrated on accumulation, just as in book-keeping by double
entry, the private expenditure of the capitalist is placed
on the debtor side of his account against his capital. To
accumulate, is to conquer the world of social wealth, to in
crease the mass of human beings exploited by him, and thus
to extend both the direct and the indirect sway of the capital
ist.1

1 Taking the usurer, that old-fashioned but ever renewed specimen of the capitalist
for his text, Luther shows very aptly that the love of power is an element in the
desire to get rich. "The heathen were able, by the light of reason, to conclude that
a usurer is a double-dyed thief and murderer. We Christians, however, hold them in
such honour, that we fairly worship them for the sake of their money . . , .

650 Capitalist Production.

But original sin is at work everywhere. As capitalist pro
duction, accumulation, and wealth, become developed, the
capitalist ceases to be the mere incarnation of capital. He has
a fellow-feeling for his .own Adam, and his education gradu
ally enables him to smile at the rage for asceticism, as a mere
prejudice of the old-fashioned miser. While the capitalist of
the classical type brands individual consumption as a sin
against his function, and as "abstinence" from accumulating,
the modernised capitalist is capable of looking upon accumula
tion as "abstinence" from pleasure.

" Two souls, alas, do dwell within his breast ;
The one is ever parting from the other." *

At the historical dawn of capitalist production, — and every
capitalist upstart has personally to go through this historical
stage — avarice, and desire to get rich, are the ruling passions.

Whoever eats up, robs, and steals the nourishment of another, that man commits a»
great a murder (so far as in him lies) as he who starves a man or utterly undoes
him. Such does a usurer, and sits the while safe on his stool, when he ought rath:r
to be hanging on the gallows, and be eaten by as many ravens as he has stolen
guilders, if only there were so much flesh on him, that so many ravens could stick
their beaks in and share it. Meanwhile, we hang the small thieves . . . Litt e
thieves are put in the stocks, great thieves go flaunting in gold and silk ....
Therefore is there, on this earth, no greater enemy of man (after the devil) thai
a gripe-money, and usurer, for he wants to be God over all men. Turks, soldier:.,
and tyrants are also bad men, yet must they let the people live, and confess that the/
are bad, and enemies, and do, nay, must, now and then show pity to .come. But i
usurer and money-glutton, such a one would have the whole world perish of hunge-
and thirst, misery and want, so far as in him lies, so that he may have a'! to him
self, and every one may receive from him as from a G' \, and be his serf f >r ever.
To wear fine cloaks, golden chains, rings, to wipe his mouth, to be deemed and takci
for a worthy, pious man . . . Usury is a great huge monster, like were-wolf
who lays waste all, more than any Cacus, Gerion or Antus. And : t decks himsell
out, and would be thought pious, so that people may not see where fhe oxen have
gone, that he drags backwards into his den. But Hercules shall hear the cry of the
oxen and of his prisoners, and shall seek Cacus even in cliffs and among rocks, L id
shall set the oxen loose again from the villain. For Cacus means the villain that
is a pious usurer, and steals, robs, eats everything. And will not own that he has
done it, and thinks no one will find him out, because the oxen, drawn backwards
into his den, make it seem, from their foot-prints, that they have been let out. So
the usurer would deceive the world, as though he were of use and gave the world
oxen, while he, however, rends, and eats all alone . . . And since we break on
the wheel, and behead highwaymen, murderers and housebreakers, how much more
ought we to break on the wheel and kill, . . . hunt down, curse and behead
all usurers." (Martin Luther, 1. c.)
»See Goethe's Faust.

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 651

But the progress of capitalist production not only creates a
world of delights; r, lays open, in speculation and the credit
system, a thousand sources of sudden enrichment. When a *•<
certain stage of development has been reached, a conventional
degree of prodigality, which is also an exhibition of wealth,
and consequently a source of credit, becomes a business neces
sity to the "unfortunate" capitalist. Luxury enters into'
capital's expenses of representation. Moreover, the capitalisT
gets rich, not like the miser, in proportion to his personal
labour and restricted consumption, but at the same rate as he
squeezes out the labour-power of others, and enforces on the
labourer abstinence from all life's enjoyments, p&fthough,'
therefore, the prodigality of the capitalist never possesses the
bona-fide character of the open-handed feudal lord's prodigal
ity, but, on the contrary, has always lurking behind it the most
sordid avarice and the most anxious calculation, yet his ex
penditure grows with his accumulation, without the one neces
sarily restricting the other. But along with this growth, there
is at the same time developed in his breast, a Faustian con
flict between the passion for accumulation, and the desire for
enjoyment.

Dr. Aikin says in a work published in 1795 : "The trade of
Manchester may be divided into four periods. First, when
manufacturers were obliged to work hard for their livelihood."
They enriched themselves chiefly by robbing the parents,
whose children were bound as apprentices to them : the parents
paid a high premium, while the apprentices were starved. On
the other hand, the average profits were low, and to ac
cumulate, extreme parsimony was requisite. They lived like
misers, and were far from consuming even the interest on their
capital. "The second period, when they had begun to acquire
little fortunes, but worked as hard as before," — for direct ex
ploitation of labour costs labour, as every slave-driver knows
— "and lived in as plain a manner as before. . . . The
third, when luxury began, and the trade was pushed by send
ing out riders for orders into every market town in the King
dom. . . . It ia probable that few or no capitals of
£3000 to £4000 acquired by trade existed here before 1690.

652 Capitalist Production.

However, about that time, or a little later, the traders had got
money beforehand, and began to build modern brick houses,
instead of those of wood and plaster." Even in the early part
of the 18th century, a Manchester manufacturer, who placed
a pint of foreign wine before his guests, exposed himself to
the remarks and headshakings of all his neighbors. Before
the rise of machinery, a manufacturer's evening expenditure at
the public-house where they all met, never exceeded sixpence
for a glass of punch, and a penny for a screw of tobacco. It
was not till 1758, and this marks an epoch, that a person
actually engaged in business was seen with an equipage of
his own. "The fourth period," the last 30 years of the 18th
century, "is that in which expense and luxury have mado
great progress, and was supported by a trade extended by
means of riders and factors through every part of Europe."1
What would the good Dr. Aikin say if he could rise from hi?t
grave and see the Manchester of to-day ?

Accumulate, accumulate ! That is Moses and the prophets !
"Industry furnishes the material which saving accumulates."1
Therefore, save, save, i.e., reconvert the greatest possible por
tion of surplus-value, or surplus-product into capital ! Ac
cumulation for accumulation's sake, production for produc
tion's sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the
historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single
instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth.3 But
what avails lamentation in the face of historical necessity?
If to classical economy, the proletarian is but a machine for
the production of surplus-value ; on the other hand, the capital
ist is in its eyes only a machine for the conversion of this
surplus-value into additional capital. Political economy takes
the historical function of the capitalist in bitter earnest. In
order to charm out of his bosom the awful conflict between

1 Dr. Aikin: Description of the country from 30 to 40 milet round Mancheiter.
Lond., 1795, p. 182, sqq.

«A. Smith: 1. c., bk. iii., ch. iii.

•Even J. B. Say says: "Les ipargnes des riches «e font aux dlpens des paurre*."

"The Roman proletarian lived almost entirely at the expense of society

It can almost be said that modern society lives at the expense of the proletarians, on
what it keeps out of the remuneration of labour." (Sismondi: Etudes, &c.t t. L,
p. 94.)

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 653 '

the desire for enjoyment and the chase after riches, Malthus,
about the year 1820, advocated a division of labour, which.
assigns to the capitalist actually engaged in production, the
business of accumulating, and to the other sharers in surplus-
value, to the landlords, the place-men, the beneficed clergy,
&c., the business of spending. It is of the highest importance,
he says, "to keep separate the passion for expenditure and
the passion for accumulation."1 The capitalists having long
been good livers and men of the world, uttered loud cries.
What, exclaimed one of their spokesmen, a disciple of
Ricardo, Mr. Malthus preaches high rents, heavy taxes, &c.,
so that the pressure of the spur may constantly be kept on
the industrious by unproductive consumers! By all means,
production, production on a constantly increasing scale, runs
the shibboleth ; but "production will, by such a process, be far
more curbed in than spurred on. Xor is it quite fair thus to
maintain in idleness a number of persons, only to pinch others,
who are likely, from their characters, if you can force them to
work, to work with success."2 Unfair as he finds it to spur
on the industrial capitalist, by depriving his bread of its
butter, j[et he thinks it necessary to reduce the labourer's «A
.wages to a minimum "to keep him industrious." Nor does —
he for a moment conceal the fact, that the appropriation of un
paid labour is the secret of surplus-value. "Increased de
mand on the part of the labourers means nothing more than
their willingness to take less of their own product for them
selves, and leave a greater part of it to their employer ; and if
it be said, that this begets glut, by lessening consumption"
(on the part of the labourers), "I can only reply that glut
is synonymous with large profits." 3

The learned disputation, how the booty pumped out of the
labourer may be divided, with most advantage to accumulation,
between the industrial capitalist and the rich idler, was
hushed in face of the revolution of July. Shortly after
wards, the town proletariat at Lyons sounded tLe tocsin of

* Malthus, 1. c., p. 319, 320.

• An Inquiry into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand, &c., p. fl7.
•1. c., p. 60.

654 Capitalist Production.

revolution, and the country proletariat in England began to
set fire to farmyards and cornstacks. On this side of the
Channel Owenism began to spread ; on the other side, St.
Simonism and Fourierism. The hour of vulgar economy had
struck. Exactly a year before Nassau W. Senior discovered
at Manchester, that the profit (including interest) of capital
is the product of the last hour of the twelve, he had an
nounced to the world another discovery. "I substitute," he
proudly says, "for the word capital, considered as an in
strument of production, the word abstinence."1 An un
paralleled sample this, of the discoveries of vulgar economy!
It substitutes for an economic category, a sycophantic phrase
-^volia tout. "When the savage," says Senior, "maTFes bows,"
he exerciseiTan industry, but he does not practice abstinence."
This explains how and why, in the earlier states of society,
the implements of labour were fabricated without abstinence
on the part of the capitalist. "The more society progresses,
the more abstinence is demanded,"2 namely, from those who
ply the industry of appropriating the fruits of others' in
dustry. All the conditions for carrying on the labour-process
are suddenly converted into so many acts of abstinence on
the part of the capitalist If the corn is not all eaten, but
part of it also sown — abstinence of the capitalist. If the
wine gets time to mature — abstinence of the capitalist.3 The

1 (Senior, Principes fondamentaux de 1'Econ. Pol. trad. Arrivabeue. Paris, 1836,
p. 308). This was rather too much for the adherents of the old classical school.
"Mr. Senior has substituted for it" (the expression, labour and profit) "the expres
sion Labour and Abstinence. He who converts bis revenue abstains from the
enjoyment which its expenditure would afford him. It is not the capital, but the
use of the capital productively, which is the cause of profits." (John Cazenove, 1. c.
p. 130, Note.) John St. Mill, on the contrary, accepts on the one hand Ricardo's
theory of profit, and annexes on the other hand Senior's "remuneration of absti
nence." He is as much at home in absurd contradictions, as he feels at sea in the
Hegelian contradiction, the source of all dialectic. It has never occurred to the
vulgar economist to make the simple reflexion, that every human action may be
viewed, as "abstinence" from its opposite. Eating is abstinence from fasting, walk
ing, abstinence from standing still, working, abstinence from fdling, idling absti
nence from working, &c. These gentlemen would do well, to ponder, once in a way,
over Spinbza's: "Determinatio est Negatio."

* Senior, 1. c. p. 342.

1 "No one . . . will sow his wheat, for instance, and allow it to remain •
twelve-month in the ground, or leave his wine in a cellar for years, instead of con
suming these things or their equivalent at once . . . unless he expects to acquire
additional value, &c." (Scropr, Polit. Econ. edit, by A. Potter, New York, 1141,
p. 1S3-1S4.)

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 655

capitalist robs his own self, whenever he "lends (!) the in
struments of production to the labourer," that is, whenever
by incorporating labour-power with them, he uses them to ex
tract surplus-value out of that labour-power, instead of eating
them up, steam-engines, cotton, railways, manure, horses, and
all; or as the vulgar economist childishly puts it, instead of
dissipating "their value" in luxuries and other articles of con
sumption.1 How the capitalist as a class are to perform that
feat, is a secret that vulgar economy has hitherto obstinately
refused to divulge. Enough, that the world still jogs on.
solely through the self-chastisement of this modern penitent
of Vishnu, the capitalist. Not only accumulation, but the
simple "conservation of a capital requires a constant effort to
resist the temptation of consuming it."2 The simple dictates
of humanity therefore plainly enjoin the release of the capital
ist from this martyrdom and temptation, in the same way
that the Georgian slave-owner was lately delivered, by the
abolition of slavery, from the painful dilemma, whether to
squander the surplus-product lashed out of his niggers, en
tirely in champagne, or whether to reconvert a part of it,
into more niggers and more land.

In economic forms of society of the most different kinds,
there occurs, not only simple reproduction, but, in varying de
grees, reproduction on a progressively increasing scale. By
degrees more is produced and more consumed, and conse
quently more products have to be converted into ,means of
production. This process, however, does not present itself as
accumulation of capital, nor as the function of a capitalist,
so long as the labourer's means of production, and with them,
his product and means of subsistence, do not confront him in
the shape of capital.3 Richard Jones, who died a few years
ago, and was the successor of Malthus in the chair of po-

* "La privation que s'impose le capitaliste, en pretant (this euphemism used, for
the purpose of identifying, according to the approved method of vulgar economy,
the labourer who is exploited, with the industrial capitalist who exploits, and to
whom other capitalists lend money) ses instruments de production au travailleur,
au lieu d'en consacrer la valeur a son propre usage, en la transforment en objets
d'utilite ou d'agrement." (G. de Molinari, 1. c. p. 49.)

1 "La conservation d'un capital exige . . un effort constant pour resister a la
tentation de le consommer." (Courcelles-Seneuil, 1. c. p. 57.)

•"The particular classes of income which yieM the most abundantly to the

656 Capitalist Production.

litical economy at Hailejbury College, discusses this point
well in the light of two important facts. Since the great mass
of the Hindoo population are peasants cultivating their land
themselves, their products, their instruments of labour and
means of subsistence never take "the shape of a fund saved
from revenue, which fund has, therefore, gone through a
previous process of accumulation." 1 On the other hand, the
non-agricultural labourers in those provinces where the Eng
lish rule has least disturbed the old system, are directly em
ployed by the magnates, to whom a portion of the agricultural
surplus-product is rendered in the shape of tribute or rent.
One portion of this product is consumed by the magnates in
kind, another is converted, for their use, by the labourers, into
articles of luxury and such like things; while the rest forms
the wages of the labourers, who own their implements of
labour. Here, production and reproduction on a progressively
increasing scale, go on their way without any intervention
from that queer saint, that knight of the woeful countenance,
the capitalist "abstainer.'"

SECTION 4. CIRCUMSTANCES THAT, INDEPENDENTLY OF TH 2

DIVISION OF SURPLUS- VALUE INTO CAPITAL AND REVENUE,
DETERMINE THE AMOUNT OF ACCUMULATION. DEGREE O:f
EXPLOITATION OF LABOUR-POWER. PRODUCTIVITY OF
LABOUR. GROWING DIFFERENCE IN AMOUNT BETWEEN
CAPITAL EMPLOYED AND CAPITAL CONSUMED, MAGNI
TUDE OF CAPITAL ADVANCED.

The proportion in which surplus-value breaks up into
capital and revenue being given, the magnitude of the capital
accumulated clearly depends on the absolute magnitude of the
surplus-value. Suppose that 80 per cent, were capitalised

ress of national capital, change at different stages of their progress, and are, there
fore, entirely different in nations occupying different positions in that progress
. . . Profits . . . unimportant source of accumulation, compared with wages
and rents, in the earlier stages of society . . . When a considerable advance in
the powers of national industry has actually taken place, profits rise into comparative
importance as a source of accumulation." (Richard Jones. Textbook, &c., p. 16. 21.)
1 L c. p. 86, sq.— Note to the 4th German edition. — This must be a mistake. Thi»
passage has not been located. F. E. —

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 657

and 20 per cent, eaten up, the accumulated capital will be
£2,400 or £1,200, according as the total surplus-value has
amounted to £3,000 or £1,500. Hence all the circumstances
that determine the mass of surplus-value, operate to determine
the magnitude of the accumulation. We sum them up once
again, but only in so far as they afford new points of view in
regard to accumulation.

It will be remembered that the rate of surplus-value de
pends, in the first place, on the degree of exploitation of
labour-power. Political economy values this fact so highly,
that it occasionally identifies the acceleration of accumulation
due Jo^increased productiveness of ^labour, with its acceleration
dut to increased exploitation of the labourer.1 In the chapters
on the production oi' surplus-value it was constantly presup
posed that wages are at least equal to the value of labour-
power. Forcible reduction of wages below this value plays,
however, in practice too important a part, for us not to pause
upon it for a moment It, in fact, transforms, within certain
limits, the labourer's necessary consumption-fund into a fund
for the accumulation of capital.

"Wages," says John Stuart Mill, "have no productive
power; they are the price of productive-power. Wages do
not contribute, along with labour, to the production of com
modities, no more than the price of tools contributes along
with the tools themselves. If labour could be had without
purchase, wages! might be dispensed with."2 But if the
labourers could live on air they could not be bought at any
price. The zero of their cost is therefore a limit in a mathe
matical sense, always beyond reach, although we can always

1 "Ricardo says: 'In different stages of society the accumulation of capital or of the
means of employing" (i.e., exploiting) "labour is more or less rapid, and must in all
cases depend on the productive powers of labour. The productive powers of labour
are generally greatest where there is an abundance of fertile land.' If, in the first
sentence, the productive powers of labour mean the smallness of that aliquot part of
any produce that goes to those whose manual labor produced it, the sentence is
nearly identical, because the remaining aliquot part is the fund whence capital can,
if the owner pleases, be accumulated. But then this does not generally happen, where
there is most fertile land." ("Observations on certain verbal disputes, &c.," pp.
74, 75.)

* J. Stuart Mill: "Essays on some unsettled questions of Political Economy Lond.,
1849," p. 90.

658 Capitalist Production.

approximate more and more nearly to it. The constant
tendency of capital is to force the cost of labour back towards
this zero. A writer of the 18th century, often quoted already,
the author of the "Essay on Trade and Commerce," only be
trays the innermost secret soul of English capitalism, when
he declares the historic mission of England to be the forcing
down of English wages to the level of the French and the
Dutch.1 With other things he says naively: "But if our
poor" (technical term for labourers) "will live luxuriously
. . . then labour must, of course, be dear. . . . When
it is considered what luxuries the manufacturing populace
consume, such as brandy, gin, tea, sugar, foreign fruit, strong
beer, printed linens, snuff, tobacco, &c."2 He quotes the
work of a Northamptonshire manufacturer, who, with eyes
squinting heavenward, moans : "Labour is one-third cheaper in
France than in England ; for their poor work hard, and fare
hard, as to their food and clothing. Their chief diet is bread,
fruit, herbs, roots, and dried fish ; for they very seldom eat
flesh ; and when wheat is dear, they eat very little bread."8
"To which may be added," our essayist goes on, "that their
drink is either water or other small liquors, so that they spend
very little money. . . . These things are very difficult to
be brought about; but they are not impracticable, since they
have been effected both in France and in Holland."4 Twenty

1 "An Essay on Trade and Commerce, Lond., 1770," p. 44. The "Times" of
December, 1866, and January, 1867, in like manner published certain outpourings of
the heart of the English mineowner, in which the happy lot of the Belgian miners
was pictured, who asked and received no more than was strictly necessary for them
to live for their "masters." The Belgian labourers have to suffer much, but to
figure in the "Times" as model labourers! In the beginning of February, 1867, came
the answer: strike of the Belgian miners at Marchienne, put down by powder and
lead.

1 1. c., pp. 44, 46.

* The Northamptonshire manufacturer commits a pious fraud, pardonable in one
whose heart is so full. He nominally compares the life of the English and French
manufacturing labourer, but in the words just quoted he is painting, as he himself
confesses in his confused way, the French agricultural labourers.

4 1. c., p. 70, 71. Note to the 3rd edition: Today, thanks to the competition on the
world-market, established since then, we have advanced much further. "If China,"
says Mr. Stapleton, M. P., to his constituents, "should become a great manufacturing
country, I do not see how the manufacturing population of Europe could sustain the
contest without descending to the level of their competitors." ("Time*," Sept. 9,
1873, p. 8.) The wished-f»r goal of English capital is no longer Continental wage*
but Chinese.

Conversion of Surplus-Valise into Capital. 659

years later, an American humbug, the baronised Yankee, Ben
jamin Thompson (alias Count Rumford) followed the same
line of philanthropy to the great satisfaction of God and man.
His "Essays" are a cookery book with receipts of all kinds for
replacing by some succedaneum the ordinary dear food of the
labourer. The following is a particularly successful receipt
of this wonderful philosopher: "5 Ibs. of barley meal, 7^d. ;
5 Ibs. of Indian corn, 6 jd. ; 3d. worth of red herring, Id.
salt, Id. vinegar, 2d. pepper and sweet herbs, in all 20Jd. ;
make a soup for 64 men, and at the medium price of barley
and of Indian corn . . . this soup may be provided at
£d, the portion of 20 ounces."1 With the advance of capital
istic production, the adulteration of food rendered Thomp
son's ideal superfluous.2 At the end of the 18th and during
the first ten years of the 19th century, the English farmers
and landlords enforced the absolute minimum of wage, by
paying the agricultural labourers less than the minimum in
the form of wages, and the remainder in the shape of pa
rochial relief. An example of the waggish way in which the
English Dogberries acted in their "legal" fixing of a wages
tariff: "The squires of Norfolk had dined, says Mr. Burke,
when they fixed the rate of wages; the squires of Berks evi
dently thought the labourers ought not to do so, when they
fixed the rate of wages at Speenhamland, 1795. . . .
There they decide that 'income (weekly) should be 3s. for a

1 Benjamin Thompson: Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, &c., 3
vols., Lond., 1796-1802, vol. i., p. 288. In his "The State of the Poor, or an History
of the Labouring Classes in England, &c.," Sir F. M. Eden strongly recommends the
Rumfordian beggar-soup to workhouse overseers, and reproachfully warns the English
labourers that "many poor people, particularly in Scotland, live, and that very com
fortably, for months together, upon oat-meal and barley-meal, mixed with only water
and salt." (1. c., vol. i., book i., ch. 2., p. 603.) The same sort of hints in the 19th
century. "The most wholesome mixture* of flour having been refused (by the
English agricultural labourer) .... in Scotland, where education is better,
this prejudice is, probably, unknown." (Charles H. Parry, M.D. : The question of
the necessity of the existing Corn Laws considered. London, 1816, p. 69.) Thii
same Parry, however, complains that the English labourer is now (1815) in a much
worse condition than in Eden's time (1787).

* From the reports of the last Parliamentary Commission on adulteration of meaat
of subsistence, it will be seen that the adulteration even of medicines is the rule, not
the exception of England. E.g., the examination of 34 specimens of opium, pur
chased of as many different chemists in London, showed that 31 were adulterated
with poppy heads, wheat-flour, gum, clay, sand, 4c. Several did not contain an atom
of morphia.

66o Capitalist Production.

man,' when the gallon or half -peck loaf of 8 Ibs. 11 oz. i&
at Is., and increase regularly till bread is Is. 5d. ; when it is
above that sura, decrease regularly till it be at 2s., and then
his food slwuld be £th less."1 Before the Committee of In
quiry of the House of Lords, 1814, a certain A. Bennett, a
large farmer, magistrate, poor-law guardian, and wage-regu
lator, was asked: "Has any proportion of the value of daily
labour been made up to the labourers out of the poors' rat€ ?"
Answer: "Yes, it has; the weekly income of every family is
made up to the gallon loaf (8 Ibs. 11 oz.), and 3d. per head!
The gallon loaf per week is what we suppose suffi
cient for the maintenance of every person in the family for
the week; and the 3d. is for clothes, and if the parish thi.ik
proper to find clothes, the 3d. is deducted. This practice gees
through all the western part of Wiltshire, and, I believe,
throughout the country."2 "For years," exclaims a bourgeois
author of that time, "they (the farmers) have degraded a re
spectable class of their countrymen, by forcing them to ha^e
recourse to the workhouse . . . the farmer, while in
creasing his own gains, has prevented any accumulation on the
part of his labouring dependants."3 The part played in our
days by the direct robbery from the labourer's necessary con
sumption-fund in the formation of surplus-value, and, there
fore, of the accumulation fund of capital, the so-called do
mestic industry has served to show. (Ch. xv., sect 8, c.)
Further facts on this subject will be given later.

Although in all branches of industry that part of tfoa
constant capital consisting of instruments of labour must bs
sufficient for a certain number of labourers (determined by
the magnitude of the undertaking), it by no meats alwayu
necessarily increases in the same proportion as the quantity
of labour employed. In a factory, suppose that 100 labourer*

1 G. B. Newnham (barristcr-at-law) : "A Review of the Evidence before the Com
mittee of the two Houses of Parliament on the Corn Laws. Lond., 1815," p. 99,
note.

•1. c., pp. 19, 20.

• C. H. Parry, I. c., pp. 77, 69. The landlords, on their side, not only "indemni
fied" themselves for the Anti-jacobin war, which they waged in the name of Eng
land, but enriched themselves enormously. Their rents doubled, trebled, quadrupled,
"and in one instance, increased sixfold in eighteen years." (1. c., pp. 100, 101.)

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 66 1

•working 8 hours a day yield 800 working-hours. If the
capitalist wishes to raise this sum by one half, he can em
ploy 50 more workers; but then he must also advance more Vx
capital, not merely for wages, but for instruments of labour.
But he might also let the 100 labourers work 12 hours in-
tftead of 8, and then the instruments of labour already on hand
would be enough. These would them simply be more rapidly
consumed. Thus additional labour, begotten of the greater
tension of labour-power, can augment surplus-product and sur
plus-value (i.e., the subject matter of accumulation), without
corresponding augmentation in the constant part of capital.

In the extractive industries, mines, &c., the raw materials
form no part of the capital advanced. The subject of labour
is in this case not a product of previous labour, but is furn
ished by Nature gratis, as in the case of metals, minerals, coal,
stone, &c. In these cases the constant capital consists almost
exclusively of instruments of labour, which can very well ab
sorb an increased quantity of labour (day and night shifts
of labourers, e.g.). All other things being equal, the mass
and value of the product will rise in direct proportion to the
labour expended. As on the first day of production, the
original produce-formers, now turned into the creators of the
material elements of capital — man and Nature — still work to
gether. Thanks to the elasticity of labour-power, the domain
of accumulation has extended without any previous enlarge
ment of constant capital.

In agriculture the land under cultivation cannot be in
creased without the advance of more seed and manure. But .
this advance once made, the purely mechanical working of
the soil itself produces a marvellous effect on the amount of
the product. A greater quantity of labour, done by the same
number of labourers as before, thus increases the fertility,
without requiring any new advance in the instruments of
labour. It is once again the direct action of man on Nature
which becomes an immediate source of greater accumulation,
without the intervention of any new capital.

Finally, in what is called manufacturing industry, every
additional expenditure of labour presupposes a corresponding

662 Capitalist Production.

J additional expenditure of raw materials, but not necessarily
of instruments of labour. And as extractive industry and
agriculture supply manufacturing industry with its raw ma
terials and those of its instruments of labour, the additional
product the former have created without additional advance
v of capital, tells also in favour of the latter.

General result : by incorporating with itself the two primary
creators of wealth, labour-power and the land, capital acquires
a power of expansion that permits it to augument the elements
of its accumulation beyond the limits apparently fixed by its
own magnitude, or by the value and the mass of the means of
production, already produced, in which it has its being.

Another important factor in the accumulation of capital is
the degree of productivity of social labour.

With the productive power of labour increases the mass of
the products, in which a certain value, and therefore, a sur
plus-value of a given magnitude, is embodied. The rate ol?
surplus-value remaining the same or e en falling,' so long a*
it only falls more slowly, than the productive power of laboui
rises, the mass of the surplus-product increases. The division
of this product into revenue and additional capital remaining
the same, the consumption of the capitalist may, therefore, in
crease without any decrease in the fund of accumulation. The
relative magnitude of the accumulation fund may even in
crease at the expense of the consumption fund, whilst the
cheapening of commodities places at the disposal of the capital
ist as many means of enjoyment as formerly, or even more
than formerly. But hand-in-hand with the increasing pro
ductivity of labour, goes, as we have seen, the cheapening of
the labourer, therefore a higher rate of surplus-value, even,
when_t]i£_real wages are rising. .The latter never rise pro-
"""portionally to the productive power of labour. The same
value in variable capital therefore sets in movement more
labour-power, and, therefore, more labour. The same value
in constant capital is embodied in more means of production,
i.e., in more instruments of labour, materials of labour and
auxiliary materials; it therefore also supplies more elements
for the production both of use-value and of value, and with

Conversion of Surplus-lvalue into Capital. 663

these more absorbers of labour. The value of the additional
capital, therefore, remaining the same or even diminishing,
accelerated accumulation still takes place. Not only does the
scale of reproduction materially extend, but the production
of surplus-value increases more rapidly than the value of the
additional capital.

The development of the productive power of labour reacts
also on the original capital already engaged in the process of
production. A part of the functioning constant capital con
sists of instruments of labour such as machinery, £c., which
are not consumed, and therefore not reproduced, or replaced
by new ones of the same kind, until after long periods of time.
But every year a part of these instruments of labour perishes
or reaches the limit of its productive function. It reaches,
therefore, in that year, the time for its periodical reproduc
tion, for its replacement by new ones of the same kind. If the
productiveness of labour has, during the using up of these in
struments of labour, increased (and it developes continually
with the uninterrupted advance of science and technology),
more efficient and (considering their increased efficiency),
cheaper machines, tools, apparatus, &c., replace the old. The
old capital is reproduced in a more productive form, apart
from the constant detail improvements in the instruments of
labour already in use. The other part of the constant capital,
raw material and auxiliary substances, is constantly repro
duced in lees than a year; those produced by agriculture, for
the most part annually. Every introduction of improved
methods, therefore, works almost simultaneously on the new
capital and on that already in action. Every advance in
Chemistry not only multiplies the number of useful materials
and the useful applications of those already known, thus ex
tending with the growth of capital its sphere of investment.
It teaches at the same time how to throw the excrements of
the processes of production and consumption back again into
the circle of the process of reproduction, and thus, without
any previous outlay of capital, creates new matter for capital.
Like the increased exploitation of natural wealth by the mere V J
increase in the tension of labour-power, science and technology *^

664 Capitalist Production.

/give capital a power of expansion independent of the given
magnitude of the capital actually functioning. They react at
the same time on that part of the original capital which has en
tered upon its stage of renewal. This, in passing into its new
shape, incorporates gratis the social advance made while its
old shape was being used up. Of course, this development
of productive power is accompanied by a partial depreciation
of functioning capital. So far as this depreciation makes
itself acutely felt in competition, Jhe burden falls jon the

^labourer, in the increased exploitation of whom the capitalist
looks for his indemnification.

Labour transmits to its product the value of the means of
production consumed by it. On the other hand, the value and
mass of the means of production set in motion by a giver
quantity of labour increase as the labour becomes more pra
ductive. Though the same quantity of labour adds always to
its products only the same ^sum of new value, still the old
capital-value, transmitted by the labour to the products, in
creases with the growing productivity of labour.

An English and Chinese spinner, e.g., may work the same
number of hours with the same intensity ; then they will both
in a week create equal values. But in spite of this equality,
an immense difference Trill obtain between the value of the
week's product of the Englishman, who works with a mighty
automaton, and that of the Chinaman, who has but a spinning
wheel. In the same time as the Chinaman spins one pound of
cotton, the Englishman spins several hundreds of pounds. A
Mini, many hundred times as great> of old values swells the
value of his product, in which those reappear in a new, useful
form, and can thus function anew as capital. "In 1782," as
Frederick Engels teaches us, "all the wool crop in England of
the three preceding years, lay untouched for want of labour
ers, and so it must have lain, if newly invented machinery had
not come to its aid and dpun it"1 Labour embodied in the
form of machinery of course did not directly force inte life
a single man, but it made it possible for a smaller number of
labourers, with the addition of relatively less living labour,

1 Frederick Engels, "Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England," o. 80,

Conversion of Surplus-Vain* into Capital. 665

not only to consume the wool productively, and put into it
new value, but to preserve in the form of yarn, &c., its old
value. At the same time, it caused and stimulated increased
reproduction of wool. It is the natural property of living
labour, to transmit old value, whilst it creates new. Hence,
with the increase in efficacy, extent and value of its means
of production, consequently with the accumulation that ac
companies the development of its productive power, labour
keeps up and eternises an always increasing capital-value in
a form>ever new.1 This natural power of labour takes the

1 Classic economy has, on account of a deficient analysis of the labour-process, and
of the process of creating value, never properly grasped this weighty element of re
production, as may be seen in Ricardo; he says, e.g., whatever the change in pro
ductive power, "a million men always produce in manufactures the same value."
-This is accurate, if the extension and degree of intensity of their labour are given.
But it does not prevent (this Ricardo overlooks in certain conclusions he draws) a
million men with different powers of productivity in their labour, turning into
products very different masses of the means of production, and therefore preserving
in their products very different masses of value; in consequence of which the values
of the products yielded may vary considerably. Ricardo has, it may be noted in
passing, tried in vain to make clear to J. B. Say, by that very example, the difference
between use-value (which he here calls wealth or material riches) and exchange-
value. Say answers: "Quant a la difficulte qu'eleve Mr. Ricardo en disant que, par
des precedes mieux entendus, un million de personnes peuvent produire deux fois,
trois fois autant de richesses, sans produire plus de valeurs, cette difficulte n'est pas
une lorsque Ton considere, ainsi qu'on le doit, la production comme un echange dans
lequel on donne les services productifs de son travail, de sa terre, et de ses capitaux,
pour obtenir des produits. C'est par le moyen de ces services productifs, que nous
acquerons tous les produits qui sont au monde. Or .... nous sommes
d'autant plus riches nos services productifs ont d'autant plus de valeur qu'ils obtiennent
dans 1'echange appele production une plus grande quantite de choses utiles." (J.
B. Say; "Lettres a M. Malthus, Paris, 1820," pp. 168, 169.) The "difficulte"— it
exists for him, not for Ricardo — that Say means to clear up is this: Why does
not the exchange-value of the use-values increase, when their quantity increases in
consequence of increased productive power of labour? Answer;^ the difficulty is
met by calling use-value, exchange-value, if you please. Exchange^value inrthlllg
that fiTToiiiiecTed oHf waji of another with" exchange. If therefore production is
called an exchange of labour and means of production against the product, it is
clear as day that you obtain more exchange-value in proportion as the production
yields more use-value. In other words, the more use-values, e.g., stockings, a working
day yields to the stocking-manufacturer, the richer is he in stockings. Suddenly,
however, Say recollects that "with a greater quantity" of stockings their "price"
(which of course has nothing to do with their exchange-value!) falls "parce que la
concurrence les (les producteurs) oblige a donner les produits pour ce qu'ils leur
coutent." But whence does the profit come, if the capitalist sells the commodities
at cost price? Never mind! Say declares that, in consequence of increased pro
ductivity, every one now receives in return for a given equivalent two pairs of stock
ings instead of one as before. The result he arrives at, is precisely that proposition
of Ricardo that he aimed at disproving. After this mighty effort of thought, he
triumphantly apottrophises Malthus in the words: "Telle est, monsieur, la doctrint
bi«n liee, sans laquelle il est impossible, je le declare, d'expliquer les plus grandes

666 Capitalist Production.

appearance of an intrinsic property of capital, in which it ia
incorporated, just as the productive forces of social labour
take the appearance of inherent properties of capital, and
as the constant appropriation of surplus-labour by the capital
ists, takes that of a constant self-expansion of capital.

With the increase of capital, the difference between the
capital employed and the capital consumed increases. In
other words, there is increase in the value and the material
mass of the instruments of labour, such as buildings, ma
chinery, drain-pipes, working-cattle, apparatus of every kind
that function for a longer or shorter time in processes of pro
duction constantly repeated, or that serve for the attain
ment of particular useful effects, whilst they themselves only
gradually wear out, therefore only lose their value piece
meal, therefore transfer that value of the product only bit by
bit. In the same proportion as these instruments of labour
serve as product-formers without adding value to the product,
i.e., in the same proportion as they are wholly employed
but only partly consumed, they perform, as we saw earlier,
the same gratuitous service as the natural forces, water, steam,
air, electricity, etc. This gratuitous serviec of past labour,
when seized and filled with a soul by living labour, increases
with the advancing stages of accumulation.

Since past labour always disguises itself as capital, i.e.,
since the passive of the labour of A, B, C, etc., takes the form
of the active of th# non-labourer X, bourgeois and political
economists are full of praises of the services of dead and gone
labour, which, according to the Scotch genius M'Culloch,
ought to receive a special remuneration in the shape of in-

difficultes de 1'economie politique, et notamment, comment il se pcut qu'une nation
soil plus riche lorsque scs produits diminuent de valeur, quoique la richesse soil de la
valeur." (1. c. p. 170.) An English economist remarks upon the conjuring tricks of
the same nature that appear in Say's "Lettres": "Those affected ways of talking
make up in general that which M. Say is pleased to call his doctrine and which he
earnestly urges Malthus to teach at Hertford, as it is already taught 'dans plusieurs
parties de 1' Europe.' He says, 'Si vous trouvez une physionomie de paradoxe a
toutes ces propositions, voyez les choses qu'elles expriment, et j'ose croire qu'elles
vous paraitront fort simples et fort raisonnables.' Doubtless, and in consequence of
the same process, they will appear everything else, except original." (An Inquiry
into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand, ice., p. 116, 110.)

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 667

tereet, profit, etc.1 The powerful and ever-increasing as
sistance given by past labour to the living labour process under
the form of means of production, is therefore, attributed to
that form of past labour in which it is alienated, as unpaid
labour, from the worker himself, i.e., to its capitalistic form.
The practical agents of capitalistic production and their petti
fogging ideologists are as unable to think of the means of
production as separate from the antagonistic social mask they
wear to-day, as a slave-owner to think of the worker himself
as distinct from his character as a slave.

With a given degree of exploitation of labour-power, the
mass of the surplus-value produced is determined by the num
ber of workers simultaneously exploited ; and this corresponds,
although in varying proportions, with the magnitude of the
capital. The more, therefore, capital increases by means of
successive accumulations, the more does the sum of the value
increase that is divided into consumption-fund and accumu
lation-fund. The capitalist can therefore, live a more jolly
life, and at the same time show more "abstinence." And,
finally, all the springs of production act with greater elasticity,
the more its scale extends with the mass of the capital ad
vanced.

BBoraoir 5. — TIIB SO-CALLED LABOUR nnn>.

It has been shown in the course of this inquiry that capital
is not a fixed magnitude, but is a part of social wealth, elastic
and constantly fluctuating with the division of fresh sur
plus-value into revenue and additional capital. It has been
seen further that, even with a given magnitude of function
ing capital, the labour-power, the science, and the land (by
which are to be understood, economically, all conditions of
labour furnished by Nature independently of man), embodied
in it, from elastic powers of capital, allowing it, within cer
tain limits, a field of action independent of its own magnitude.
In this inquiry we have neglected all effects of the process of
circulation, effects which may produce very different degrees

*M'Culloch took out a patent for "wages of paat labour," long before Senior did
lor "wages of abstinence."

668 Capitalist Production.

of efficiency in the same mass of capital. And as we pre
supposed the limits set by capitalist production, that is to say,
pre-supposed the process of social production in a form de
veloped by purely spontaneous growth, we neglected any moro
rational combination, directly and systematically practicable
with the means of production, and the mass of labour-power
at present disposable. Classical economy always loved to con
ceive social capital as a fixed magnitude of a fixed degree of
efficiency. But this prejudice was first established as a dogma
by the arch-Philistine, Jeremy Bentham, that insipid, pe
dantic, leather-tongued oracle of the ordinary bourgeois in
telligence of the 19th century.1 Bentham is among philoso
phers what Martin Tupper is among poets. Both could only
have been manufactured in England.2 In the light of his
dogma the commonest phenomena of the process of production,
as, e.g., its sudden expansions and contractions, nay, even
accumulation itself, become perfectly inconceivable.3 The

Compare among others, Jeremy Bentham: "Theorie des Peines et des Recom
penses, traduct. d'Et. Dumont, Seme e"dit. Paris, 1826," p. II., L. IV., ch. II.

1 Bentham is a purely English phenomenon. Not even excepting our philosopher,
Christian Wolf, in no time and in no country has the most homespun common-place
ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no dis
covery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvetius and
other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful
for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced
from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all
human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal
with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each
historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it With the dryest naivete he
takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man.
Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful.
This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian
religion, e.g., is "useful," because it forbids in the name of religion the same faults
that the penal code condemns in the name of the law. Artistic criticism is "harm
ful," because it disturbs worthy people in their enjoyment of Martin Tupper, etc.
With such rubbish has the brave fellow, with his motto, "null adies sine linea," piled
up mountains of books. Had I the courage of my friend, Heinrich Heine, I should
call Mr. Jeremy a genius in the way of bourgeois stupidity.

• "Political economists are too apt to consider a certain quantity of capital and a
certain number of labourers as productive instruments of uniform power, or operating
with a certain uniform intensity . . . Those . . . who maintain . . .
that commodities are the sole agents of production . . . prove that production
could never be enlarged, for it requires as an indispensable condition to such an en
largement that food, raw materials, and tools should be previously augmented; which
is in fact maintaining that no increase of production can take place without »
previous increase, or, in other words, that an increase is impossible." (S. Bailey:
"Money and its vicissitude*," pp. 26 and 70.) Bailey criticises the dogma mainly
from the point of view of the process of circulation.

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 669

dogma was used by Bentham himself, as well as by Malthus,
James Mill, M'Culloch, etc., for an apologetic purpose, and
especially in order to represent one part of capital, namely,
variable capital, or that part convertible into labour-power, as
a fixed magnitude. The material of variable capital, i.e., the
mass of the means of subsistence it represents for the labourer,
or the so-called labour fund, was fabled as a separate part of
social wealth, fixed by natural laws and unchangeable. To set
in motion the part- of social wealth which is to function as con
stant capital, or, to express it in a material form, as means
of production, a definite mass of living labour is required.
This mass is given technologically. But neither is the num
ber of labourers required to render fluid this mass of labour-
power given (it changes with the degree of exploitation of the
individual labour-power), nor is the price of this labour-power
given, but only its minimum limit, which is moreover very
variable. The facts that lie at the bottom of this dogma are
these : on the one hand, the labourer has no right to interfere
in the division of social wealth into means of enjoyment for
the non-labourer and means of production.1 On the other
hand, only in favourable and exceptional cases, has he the
power to enlarge the so-called labour-fund at the expense of
the "revenue" of the wealthy.

What silly tautology results from the attempt to represent
the capitalistic limits of the labour-fund as its natural and
social limits may be seen, e.g., in Professor Fawcett.2 "The
circulating capital of a country," he says, "is its wage-fund.
Hence, if we desire to calculate the average money wages re
ceived by each labourer, we have simply to divide the amount

1 John Stuart Mill, in his "Principle* of Political Economy," §ays: "The really
exhausting and the really repulsive labours instead of being better paid than others,
are almost invariably paid the worst of all . . . The more revolting the occupa
tion, the more certain it is to receive the minimum of remuneration . . . The
hardships and the earnings, instead of being directly proportional, as in any just
arrangements of society they would be, are generally in an inverse ratio to one an
other." To avoid misunderstanding, let me say that although men like John Stuart
Mill are to blame for the contradiction between their traditional economic dogma*
and their modern tendencies, it would be very wrong to class them with the herd
of vulgar economic apologists.

»H. Fawcett, Profeseor of Political Economy at Cambridge. "The Economic Posi
tion of the British Labourer." London, 1865, p. 120.

670 Capitalist Production.

of this capital by the number of the labouring population."1
That is to say we first add together the individual wages
actually paid, and then we affirm that the sum thus obtained,
forms the total value of tlie "labour-fund" determined and
vouchsafed to us by God and Nature. Lastly, we divide the
sum thus obtained by the number of labourers to find out
again how much may come to each on the average^ An un
commonly knowing dodge this. It did not prevent Mr. Faw-
cett saying in the same breath: "The aggregate wealth which
is annually saved in England, is divided Into two portions;
one portion is employed as capital to maintain our industry,
and the other portion is exported to foreign countries. . . .
Only a portion, and perhaps, noti a large portion of the
wealth which is annually saved in this country, is invested
in our own industry."2

The greater part of the yearly accruing surplus-product,
embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent,
from the English labourer, is thus used as capital, not in
England, but in foreign countries. But with the additional
capital thus exported, a part of the "labour-fund" invented by
God and Bentham is also exported.8

1 1 must here remind the reader that the categories, "variable and constant capital,"
were first used by me. Political Economy since the time of Adam Smith has con
fusedly mixed up the essential distinctions involved in these categories, with the
mere formal differences, arising out of the process of circulation, of fixed and
circulating capital. For further details on this point, see Book II., Part II.

2 Fawcett, 1. c. pp. 122, 123.

' It might be said that not only capital, but also labourers, in the shape of emi
grants, are annually exported from England. In the text, however, there is no ques
tion of the peculium of the emigrants, who are in great part not labourers. The
•ons of farmers make up a great part of them. The additional capital annually trans
ported abroad to be put out at interest is in much greater proportion to the annual
accumulation than the yearly emigration is to the yearly increase of population.

The General Laiv of Capitalist Accumulation. 671

CHAPTER XXV.

THE GENERAL LAW OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION.

SECTION 1. THE INCREASED DEMAND FOE LABOUR-POWER

THAT ACCOMPANIES ACCUMULATION, THE COMPOSITION OF
CAPITAL REMAINING THE SAME,

IN this chapter we consider the influence of the growth of
capital on the lot of the labouring class. The most important
factor in this inquiry, is the composition jof capital and the
changes it undergoes in the opurse of the process of accumu
lation.

The composition of capital is to be understood in a two
fold sense. On the side of value, it is determined by the pro
portion in which it is divided into constant capital or value of
the means of production, and variable capital or value of
labour-power, the sum total of wages. On the side of ma
terial, as it functions in the process of production, all capital
is divided into means of production and living labour-power.
This latter composition is determined by the relation between
the mass of the means of production employed, on the one
hand, and the mass of labour necessary for their employment
on the other. I call the former the valiM-composition, the
latter the technical composition of capital. Between the two
there is a strict correlation. To express this, I call the value-
composition of capital, in so far as it is determined by its
technical composition and mirrors the changes of the latter,
the orgamic composition of capital. Wherever I refer to the
composition of capital, without further qualification, its or
ganic composition is always understood.

The many individual capitals invested in a particular
branch of production have, one with another, more or less
different compositions. The average of their individual
compositions gives us the composition of the total capital in
this branch of production. Lastly, the average of these

672 Capitalist Production.

averages, in all branches of production, gives us the composi
tion of the total social capital of a country, and with this alone
are we, in the last resort, concerned in the following in
vestigation.

Growth of capital involves growth of its variable constituent
or of the part invested in labour-power. A part of the sur
plus-value turned into additional capital must always be re-
transformed into variable capital, or additional labour-fund.
If we suppose that, all other circumstances remaining the
same, the composition of capital also remains constant (i.e.,
that a definite mass of means of production constantly needs
the same mass of labour- power to set in motion,) then the
demand for labour and the subsistence-fund of the labourers
clearly increase in the same proportion as the capital, a ad
the more rapidly, the more rapidly the capital increase.
Since the capital produces yearly a surplus-value, of which
one part is yearly added to the original capital; since this
increment itself grows yearly along with the augumentation
of the capital already functioning; since lastly, under special
stimulus to enrichment, such as the opening of new marke:s,
or of new spheres for the outlay of capital in consequence of
newly developed social wants, &c,, the scale of accumulation
may be sud^enly^elftendeTrT^erely by a change in the division
of the surplus-value or surplus-product into capital and
revenue, the requirements of accumulating capital may exceed
the increase of labour-power or of the number of labourers;
the demand for labourers may exceed the supply, and, there
fore, wages may rise. This must, indeed, ultimately be the
case if the conditions supposed above continue. For since :n
each year more labourers are employed than in its predecessor,
sooner or later a point must be reached, at which the require
ments of accumulation begin to surpass the customary supp'y
of labour, and, therefore, a rise of wages takes place. A
lamentation on this score was heard in England during the
whole of the fifteenth, and the first half of the eighteenth
centuries. The more or less favourable circumstances in
which the wage-working class supports and multiplies itself
in no way alter the fundamental character of capitalist pro

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 673

duction. As simple reproduction constantly reproduces the
capital-relation itself, i.e.., the relation of capitalists on the one
hand, and wage-workers on the other, so reproduction on a
progressive scale, i.e., accumulation, reproduces the capital
relation on a progressive scale, more capitalists or larger
capitalists at this pole, more wage-workers at that. The re
production of a mass of labour-power, which must incessantly
re-incorporate itself with capital for that capital's self-expan
sion ; which cannot get free from capital, and whose enslave
ment to capital is only concealed by the variety of individual
capitalists to whom it sells itself, this reproduction of labour-
power forms, in fact, an essential of the reproduction of
capital itself. Accumulation of capital is, therefore, increase
of the proletariat.1

Classical economy grasped this fact so thoroughly that
Adam Smith, Bicardo, &c., as mentioned earlier, inaccurately
identified accumulation with the consumption, by the pro
ductive labourers, of all the capitalised part of the surplus-
product, or with its transformation into additional wage-
labourers. As early as 1696 John Bellers says: "For if one
had a hundred thousand acres of land and as many pounds of
money, and as many cattle, without a labourer, what would
the rich man be, but a labourer ? And as the labourers make
men rich, so the more labourers, there will be the more rich
men . . . the labour of the poor being the mines of the
rich."2 So also Bernard de Mandeville at the beginning of
the eighteenth century: "It would be easier, where property

1 Karl Marx, 1. c. "A egalit£ d'oppression des masses, plus un pays a de prole-
taires et plus il est riche." (Colins. L'Economie politique, Source des Revolutions
et des Utopies pretendues Socialistes. Paris, 1857, t. III. p. 331.) Our "prole
tarian" is economically none other than the wage-labourer, who produces and in
creases capital, and is thrown out on the streets, as soon as he is superfluous for the
needs of aggrandisement of "Monsieur capital," as Pecqueur calls this person. "The
sickly proletarian of the primitive forest," is a pretty Roscherian fancy. The
primitive forester is owner of the primitive forest, and uses the primitive forest as
his property with the freedom of an orang-utang. He is not, therefore, a prole
tarian. This would only be the case, if the primitive forest exploited him, instead of
being exploited by him. As far as his health is concerned, such a man would
well bear comparison, not only with the modern proletarian, but also with the
syphilitic and scrofulous upper classes. But, no doubt, Herr Wilhelm Roscher,
by "primitive forest" means his native heath of Luneburg.

'John Bellers, 1. c. p. 2.

674 Capitalist Production.

is well secured, to live without money than without poor; for
who would do the work ? . . . Ae they [the poor] ought
to be kept from starving, so they should receive nothing worth
saving. If here and there one of the lowest class by uncom
mon industry, and pinching his belly, lifts himself above the
condition he was brought up in, nobody ought to hinder him;
nay, it is undeniably the wisest course for every person in the
society, and for every private family to be frugal; but k is
the interest of all rich nations, that the greatest part of the
poor should almost never be idle, and yet continually sp<md
what they get. . . . Those that get their living by tteir
daily labour . . . have nothing to stir them up to be
serviceable but their wants which it is prudence to relieve,
but folly to cure. The only thing then that can render the
labouring man industrious, is a moderate quantity of money,
for as too little will, according as his temper is, either dispirit
or make him desperate, so too much will moke him insolent
and lazy. . . . From what has been said, it is manifest,
that, in a free nation, where slaves are not allowed of, •:h&
surest wealth consists in a multitude of laborious poor; :*or
besides, that they are the never- failing nursery of fleets and
armies, without them there could be no enjoyment, and no
product of any country could be valuable. To make the so
ciety" [which of course consists of non-workers] "happy and
people easier under the meanest circumstances, it is requisite
that great numbers of them should be ignorant as well as poor;
knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our desires, and the
fewer things a man wishes for, the more easily his necessities
may be supplied."1 What Mandeville, an honest, clear
headed man, had not yet seen, is that the mechanism of the
process of accumulation itself increases, along with the capital,
the mass of "labouring poor," i.e., the wage-labourers, who
turn their labour-power into an increasing power of

1 Bernard dc Mandeville: "The Fable of the Bees," 5th edition, London, 1738.
Remarks, pp. 212, 213, 828. "Temperate living and constant emnloyment is the
direct road, for the poor, to rational happiness" [by which he most probably me ins
long working days and little means of subsistence], "and to riches and strength for
the state" (vir., for the landlords, capitalists, and their political dignitaries ind
•gents). (An Essay on Trade and Commerce, London, 1170, p» 54.)

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 675

pansion of the growing capital, and even by doing so must
eternize their dependent relation on their own product, as
personified in the capitalists. In reference to this relation
of dependence, Sir F. M. Eden in his "The State of the Poor,
an History of the Labouring Classes in England," says "the
natural produce of our soil is certainly not fully adequate to
our subsistence ; we can neither be clothed, lodged nor fed but
in consequence of some previous labour. A portion at least
of the society must be indefatigably employed. . . .
There are others who, though they 'neither toil nor spin/ can
yet command the produce of industry, but who owe their ex-
emption from labour solely to civilisation and order. . . .
They are peculiarly the creatures of civil institutions,1 which
have recognised that individuals may acquire property by
various other means besides the exertion of labour. . . .
Persons of independent fortune . . . owe their superior
advantages by no means to any superior abilities of their own,
but almost entirely ... to the industry of others. It is
not the possession of land, or of money, but the command of
labour which distinguishes the opulent from the labouring
part of the community. . . . This [scheme approved by
Eden] would give the people of property sufficient (but by no
means too much) influence and authority over those who
fr . . work for them ; and it would place such labourers,
not in an abject or servile condition, but in such a state of
easy and liberal dependence as all who know human nature,
and its history, will allow to be necessary for their own com
fort."2 Sir F. M. Eden; it may be remarked in passing, is
the only disciple of Adam Smith during the eighteenth cen
tury that produced any work of importance.3

1 Et*en should have ar-ked, whose creatures then are "the civil institutions?"
From his standpoint of juridical illusion, he does not regard the law as a product of
the material relations of production, but conversely the relations of production as
products of the law. Linguet overthrew Montesquieu's illusory "Esprit des lois"
with one word: "L* esprit des lois, c'est la propriite."

* Eden 1. c. Vol. I, book I. chapter I. pp. 1, 2, and preface, p. xx.

8 If the reader reminds me of Malthus, whose "Essay on Population" appeared
in 1798, I remind him the* this work in its first form is nothing more than a
schoolbofifb, superficial plagiary of De Foe, Sir James Steuart, Townsend, Franklin,
Wallace, *c., and does not contain a single sentence thought out by himself. Th«
great sr*i*tioa this pamphlet caused, was doe soldy to party interest. The French

676 Capitalist Production.

Under the conditions of accumulation supposed thus far,
which conditions are those most favourable to the labourers,
their relation of dependence upon capital takes on a form en
durable, or, as Eden says : "easy and liberal." Instead of be
coming more intensive with the growth of capital, this relation

Revolution had found passionate defenders in the United Kingdom; the "principle
of population," slowly worked-out in the eighteenth century, and then, in the micst
of a great social crisis, proclaimed with drums and trumpets as the infallible antidote
to the teachings of Condorcet, &c., was greeted with jubilance by the English
oligarchy as the great destroyer of all hankerings after human developmert.
Malthus, hugely astonished at his success, gave himself to stuffing into his book ma
terials superficially compiled, and adding to it new matter, not discovered but an
nexed by him. Note further: Although Malthus was a parson of the English Sta e
Church, he had taken the monastic vow of celibacy — one of the conditions of hoM-
ing a Fellowship in Protestant Cambridge University: "Socios collegiorum maritos
esse non permittimus, sed statim postquam quis uxorem duxerit, socius collegii desim.t
esse." (Reports of Cambridge University Commission, p. 172.) This circumstance
favourably distinguishes Malthus from the other Protestant parsons, who have
shuffled off the command enjoining celibacy of the priesthood and have taker,
"Be fruitful and multiply," as their special Biblical mission in such a degree thct
they generally contribute to the increase of population to a really unbecoming extem,
•whilst they preach at the same time to the labourers the "principle of population. '
It is characteristic that the economic fall of man, the Adam's apple, the urgent
appetite, "the checks which tend to blunt the shafts of Cupid," as Parson Townsen-i
waggishly puts it, that this delicate question was and is monopolised by the Reverend i
of Protestant Theology, or rather of the Protestant Church. With the exceptioi
of the Venetian monk, Ortes, an original and clever writer, most of the population
theory teachers are Protestant parsons. For instance, Bruckner, "Theorie du System*
animal," Leyden, 1767, in which the whole subject of the modern population theorj
in exhausted, and to which the passing quarrel between Quesnay and his pupil, the
elder Mirabeau, furnished ideas on the same topic; then Parson Wallace, Parser
Townsend, Parson Malthus and his pupil, the arch-Parson Thomas Chalmers, to sa>
nothing of lesser reverend scribblers in this line. Originally, political economy was
studied by philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Hume; by business men and statesmen,
like Thomas More, Temple, Sully, De Witt, North, Law, Vanderlint, Cantillon,
Franklin; and especially, and with the greatest success, by medical men like Petty,
Barbon, Mandeville, Quesnay. Even in the middle of the eighteenth century, the
Rev. Mr. Tucker, a notable economist of his time, excused himself for meddling with
the things of Mammon. Later on, and in truth with this very "principle of popu
lation," struck the hour of the Protestant parsons. Petty, who regarded the
population as the basis of wealth, and was, like Adam Smith, an outspoken foe to
parsons, says, as if he had a presentiment of their bungling interference, "that
Religion best flourishes when the Priests are most mortified, as was before said of the
Law, which best flourisheth when lawyers have least to do." He advises the Protestant
priests, therefore if they once for all, will not follow the Apostle Paul and "mortify"
themselves by celibacy, "not to breed more Churchmen than the Benefices, as they
now stand shared out, will receive, that is to say, if there be places for about twelve
thousand in England and Wales, it will not be safe to breed up 24,000 ministers, for
then the twelve thousand which are unprovided for, will seek ways bow to get them-
telves a livelihood, which they cannot do more easily then by persuading the people
*bat the twelve thousand incumbents do poison or starve their souls, and misguid*
them in their way to Heaven." (Petty; "A Treatise on Taxes and Contributions,
London, 1667," p. 57.) Adam Smith's position with the Protestant priesthood <rf

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 677

of dependence only becomes more extensive, i.e., the sphere of
capital's exploitation and rule merely extends with its own
dimensions and the number of its subjects. A larger part of
their own surplus-product, always increasing and continually
transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the
shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle
of their enjoyments; can make some additions to their con
sumption-fund of clothes, furniture, &c., and can lay by small
reserve-funds of money. But just as little as better clothing,
food, and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the
exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the
wage-worker. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence
of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length
and weight of the golden chain the wage-worker has already
forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it.
In the controversies on this subject the chief fact has generally

his time is shown by the following. In "A Letter to A. Smith, L.L.D. On the
Life, Death and Philosophy of his Friend, David Hume. By one of the People
called Christians, 4th Edition, Oxford, 1784," Dr. Home, Bishop of Norwich, re
proves Adam Smith, because in a published letter to Mr. Strahan, he "embalmed
his friend David" (sc. Hume) ; because he told the world how "Hume amused him
self on his deathbed with Lucian and Whist," and because he even had the impu
dence to write of Hume: "I have always considered him, both in his life-time and since
his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man,
as, perhaps, the nature of human frailty will permit." The bishop cries out, in a
passion: "Is it right in you, Sir, to hold up to our view as 'perfectly wise and
virtuous,' the character and conduct of one, who seems to have been possessed with
an incurable antipathy to all that is called Religion; and who strained every nerve
to explode, suppress and extirpate the spirit of it among men, that it's very name, if
he could effect it, might no more be had in remembrance?" (1. c. p. 8). "But let
not the lovers of truth be discouraged. Atheism cannot be of long continuance."
(p. 17.) Adam Smith, "had the atrocious wickedness to propagate atheism through
the land (viz. by his "Theory of moral sentiments.") Upon the whole, Doctor, your
meaning is good; but I think you will not succeed this time. You would persuade ut,
by the example of David Hume, Esq., that atheism is the only cordial for low spirits,
and the proper antidote against the fear of death . . . You may smile over
Babylon in ruins and congratulate the hardened Pharaoh on his overthrow in the Red
Sea." (1. c. pp. 21, 22.) One orthodox individual, amongst Adam Smith's college
friends, writes after his death: "Smith's well-placed affection for Hume . . .
hindered him from being a 'Christian . . . When he met with honest men whom
he liked ... he would believe almost anything they said. Had he been a
friend of the worthy ingenious Horrox he would have believed that the moon some
times disappeared in a clear sky without the interposition of a cloud. . . . He ap
proached to republicanism in his political principles." (The Bee. By James Ander
son, 18 Vols., Vol. 3, pp. 165, 164, Edinburgh, 1791-93.) Parson Thomas Chalmers
has his suspicions as to Adam Smith having invented the category of "unproductive
labourers," solely for the Protestant parsons, in spite of their blessed work in the
vineyard of the Lord.

678 Capitalist Production.

been overlooked, viz., the differentia specified of capitalistic
production. Labour-power is sold to-day, not with a view of
satisfying, by its service or by its product, the personal needs
of the buyer. His aim is augmentation of his capital, produc
tion of commodities containing more laboui than he pays for,
containing therefore a portion of value that costs him nothing,
and that is nevertheless realised when the commodities are
sold. Production of surplus-value is the absolute law of this
mode of production. f Labour-power is only saleable so far as
it preserves the means oij production in their capacity of
capital, reproduces its own value as capital, and yields in un
paid labour a source of additional capital.1 *»The conditiors
of its sale, whether more or less favourable to the laboure:-,
include therefore the necessity of its constant re-selling, and
the constantly extended reproduction of all wealth in the shape
of capital. Wages, as we have seen, by their very nature, al
ways imply the performance of a certain quantity of unpail
labour on the part of the labourer. Altogether, irrespective
of the case of a rise of wages with a falling price of labour,
&c., such an increase only means at best a quantitative diminu
tion of the unpaid labour that the worker has to supply. This
diminution can never reach the point at which it would
threaten the system itself. Apart from violent conflicts as to
the rate of wages (and Adam Smith has already shown that
in such a conflict, taken on the whole, the master is alway i
master), a rise in the price of labour resulting from ac
cumulation of capital implies the following alternative:

•Either the price of labour keeps on rising, because its rise
does not interfere with the progress of accumulation. In thi*>
there is nothing wonderful, for, says Adam Smith, "after these
(profits) are diminished, stock may not only continue to in
crease, but to increase much faster than before. ... A
great stock, though with small profits, generally increases

»"The limit, however, to the employment of both the operative and the labourer
is the same; namely, the possibility of the employer realising a profit on the produce
of their industry. If the rate of wages is such as to reduce the master's gains below
the average profit of capital, he will cease to employ them, or he will only emplo7
them on condition of submission to a reduction of wages." (John Wade, 1. 0*
p. 841.)

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 679

faster than a small stock with great profits." (1. c, ii., p.
189.) In this case it is evident that a diminution in the un
paid labour in no way interferes with the extension of the
domain of capital. — Or, on the other hand, accumulation
slackens in consequence of the rise in the price of labour, be
cause the stimulus of gain is blunted. * The rate of accumula
tion lessens ; but with its lessening, the primary cause of that
lessening vanishes, i.e., the disproportion between capital and
exploitable labour-power. The mechanism of the process of
capitalist production removes the very obstacles that it tempo
rarily creates. The price of labour falls again to a level cor
responding with the needs of the self-expansion of capital,
whether the level be below, the same as, or above the one
which was normal before the rise of wages took place. We
see thus: In the first case, it is not the diminished rate either
of the absolute, or of the proportional, increase in labour-
power, or labouring population, which causes capital to be in
excess, but conversely the excess of capital that makes ex
ploitable labour-power insufficient. In the second case, it is
not the increased rate either of the absolute, or of the pro
portional, increase in labour-power, or labouring population,
that makes capital insufficient ; but, conversely, the relative
diminution of capital that causes the exploitable labour-
power, or rather its price, to be in excess. It is these absolute
movements of the accumulation of capital which are reflected
as relative movements of the mass of exploitable labour-
power, and therefore seem produced by the latter's own in
dependent movement To put it mathematically: the rate of
accumulation is the independent not the dependent, variable ;
the rate of wages, the dependent, not the independent, vari
able. Thus, when the industrial cycle is in the phase of
crisis, a general fall in the price of commodities is expressed
as a rise in the value of money, and, in the phase of prosperity,
a general rise in the price of commodities, as a fall in the value
of money. The so-called currency school concludes from this
that with high prices too little, with low prices too much
tnoney is in circulation. Their ignorance and complete mia-

68o Capitalist Production.

understanding of facts1 are worthily paralleled by the econo
mists, who interpret the above phenomena of accumulation by
saying that there are now too few, now too many wage
labourers.

The law of capitalist production, that is at the bottom of
the pretended "natural law of population," reduces itself
simply to this: The correlation between accumulation of
capital and rate of wages is nothing else than the correlation
between the unpaid labour transformed into capital, and the
additional paid labour necessary for the setting in motion of
this additional capital. It is therefore in no way a relation
between two magnitudes, independent one of the other: on the
one hand, the magnitude of the capital; on the other, tie
number of the labouring population ; it is rather, at bottom,
only the relation between the unpaid and the paid labour of
the same labouring population. If the quantity of unpa:d
labour supplied by the working-class, and accumulated by the
capitalist class, increases so rapidly that its conversion inlo
capital requires an extraordinary addition of paid labou*,
then wages rise, and, all other circumstances remaining equal,
the unpaid labour diminishes in proportion. But as soon as
this diminution touches the point at which the surplus-labour
that nourishes capital is no longer supplied in normal quan
tity, a reaction sets in : a smaller part of revenue is capitalised,
accumulation lags, and the movement of rise in wages receiver
a check. The rise of wages therefore is confined within limit*
that not only leave intact the foundations of the capitalistic
system, but also secure its reproduction on a progressive scale.
The law of capitalistic accumulation, metamorphosed by econo
mists into a pretended law of nature, in reality merely states
that the very nature of accumulation excludes every diminu
tion in the degree of exploitation of labour, and every rise in
the price of labour, which could seriously imperil the con
tinual reproduction, on an ever enlarging scale, of the capital
istic relation. It cannot be otherwise in a mode of produc
tion in which the labourer exists to satisfy the needs of self-
expansion of existing values, instead of on the contrary, ma~

*Cf. Karl Marx: Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie, pp. 1C6, »eq.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 681

terial wealth existing to satisfy the needs of development on
the part of the labourer. As, in religion, man is governed by
the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production,
he is governed by the products of his own hand.1

SECTION 2. RELATIVE DIMINUTION OF THE VARIABLE PART OF

CAPITAL SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH THE PROGRESS OF AC
CUMULATION AND OF THE CONCENTRATION THAT AC
COMPANIES IT.

According to the economists themselves, it is neither the
actual extent of social wealth, nor the magnitude of the capital
already functioning, that lead to a rise of wages, but only the
constant growth of accumulation and the degree of rapidity of
1 that growth. (Adam Smith, Book I., chapter 8.) So far, we
have only considered one special phase of this process, that in
which the increase of capital occurs along with a constant
technical composition of capital. But the process goes beyond
this phase.

Once given the general basis of the capitalistic system, then,
in the course of accumulation, a point is reached at which the
development of the productivity of social labour becomes the
most powerful lever of accumulation. "The same cause," says
Adam, Smith, "which raises the wages of labour, the increase
of stock, tends to increase its productive powers, and to make a
smaller quantity of labour produce a greater quantity of
work."

Apart from natural conditions, such as fertility of the soil,
&c., and from the skill of independent and isolated producers
(shown rather qualitatively in the goodness than quantitatively
in the mass of their products), the degree of productivity of
labour, in a given society, is expressed in the relative extent
of the means of production that one labourer, during a given

1 "If we now return to our first inquiry, wherein it was shown that capital itself

is only the result of human labour it seems quite incomprehensible

that man can have fallen under the denomination of capital, his own product; can
be subordinated to it; and as in reality this is beyond dispute the case, involuntarily
the question arises: How has the labourer been able to pass from being master of
capital — as its creator — to being its slave?" (Von Thunen. "Der isolirte Staat."
Part ii., Section i-i. Rostock, 1863, pp. 5, 6.) It is Thunen's merit to have asked
this question. His answer is simply childish.

682 Capitalist Production.

time, with the same tension of labour-power, turns into pro
ducts. The mass of the means of production which he thus
transforms, increases with the productiveness of his lab
But those means of production play a double part The in-/
crease of some is a consequence, that of the others a condition
of the increasing productivity of labour. E.g., with the divi
sion of labour in manufacture, and with the use of machinery,
more raw material is worked up in the same time, and, there
fore, a greater mass of raw material and auxiliary substances
enter into the labour-process. That is the consequence of the
increasing productivity of labour. On the other hand, the
mass of machinery, beasts of burden, mineral manures, drair-
pipes, &c., is a condition of the increasing productivity of
labour. So also is it with the means of production concen
trated in buildings, furnaces, means of transport, &c. But
whether condition or consequence, the growing extent of tho
means of production, as compared with the labour-power in
corporated with them, is an expression of the growing produc
tiveness of labour. The increase of the latter appears, there
fore, in the diminution of the mass of labour in proportion to
the mass of means of production moved by it, or in the dimi
nution of the subjective factor of the labour process as com
pared with the objective factor.

( This change in the technical composition of capitalj2\this
growth in the mass of means of production, as compared with
the mass of the labour-power that vivifies them, is reflected
again in its value-composition, by the increase of the constant
constituent of capital at the expense of its variable constitu
ent. J^/There may be, e.g., originally 50 per cent, of a capital
laid out in means of production, and 50 per cent, in the
labour-power; later on, with the development of the product
ivity of labour, 80 per cent, in nigans of production, 20 per
cent, in labour-power, and so on. j This law of the progressive
increase in constant capital, in proportion to the variable, is
confirmed at every step (as already shown) by the comparative
analysis of the prices of commodities, whether we compare dif
ferent economic epochs or different nations in the same epoch.
The relative magnitude of the .element of price, which repre-

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 683

gents the value of the means of production only, or the con
stant part of capital consumed, is in direct, the relative magni
tude of the other element of price that pays labour (the vari
able part of capital) is in inverse proportion to the advance
of accumulation.

This diminution in the variable part of capital as compared
with the constant, or the altered value-composition of the
capital, however, only shows approximately the change in the
composition of its material constituents. If, e.g., the capital-
value employed to-day in spinning is J constant and -J vari
able, whilst at the beginning of the 18th century it was \ con
stant and -J variable, on the other hand, the mass of raw ma
terial, instruments of labour, &c., that a certain quantity of
spinning labour consumes productively to-day, is many hun
dred times greater than at the beginning of the 18th century.
The reason is simply that, with the increasing productivity of
labour, not only does the mass of the means of production con
sumed by it increase, but their value compared with their mass
diminishes. Their value therefore rises absolutely, but not in
proportion to their mass. The increase of the difference be
tween constant and variable capital is, therefore, much less
than that of the difference between the mass of the means of
production into which the constant, and the mass of the
labour-power into which the variable, capital is converted.
The former difference increases with the latter, but in a
smaller degree.

But, if the progress of accumulation lessens the relative
magnitude of the variable part of capital, it by no means, in
doing this, excludes the possibility of a rise in its absolute
magnitude. Suppose that a capital-value at first is divided
into 50 per cent of constant and 50 per cent, of variable
capital; later into 80 per cent of constant and 20 per cent,
of variable. If in the meantime the original capital, say
£6,000, has increased to £18,000, its variable constituent has
also increased. It was £3,000, it is now £3,600. But where
as formerly an increase of capital by 20 per cent, would have
sufficed to raise the demand for labour 20 per cent., now this
latter rise requires a tripling of the original capital.

684 Capitalist Production.

In Part IV. it was shown, how the development of the
productiveness of social labour presupposes co-operation on
a large scale; how it is only upon this supposition that divi
sion and combination of labour can "be organised, and the
means of production economised by concentration on a vast
scale; how instruments of labour which, from their very
nature, are only fit for use in common, such as a system of
machinery, can be called into being; how huge natural forces
can be pressed into the service of production; and how the
transformation can be effected of the process of production
into a technological application of science. On the basis of
the production of commodities, where the means of produc
tion are the property of private persons, and where the artisan
therefore either produces commodities, isolated from and ir-
dependent of others, or sells his labour-power as a commodity,
because he lacks the means for independent industry, co-operr-
tion on a large scale can realise itself only in the increase of
individual capitals, only in proportion as the means of social
production and the means of subsistence are transformed into
the private property of capitalists. The basis of the pro
duction of commodities can admit ^reproduction on a large;
scale in the capitalistic form alone. r A certain accumulatioi
of capital, in the hands of indivicmal producers of com-
modities, forms therefore the necessary preliminary of the
specifically capitalistic mode of production/] We had, there
fore, to assume that this occurs duringTHe transition from
handicraft to capitalistic industry. It may be called primi
tive accumulation, because it is the historic basis, instead of
the historic result of specifically capitalist production. How
it itself originates, we need not here inquire as yet. It is
enough that it forms the starting-point. But all methods for
raising the social productive power of labour that are de
veloped on this basis, are at the same times methods for the
increased production of surplus-value or surplus-product
which in its turn is the formative element of accumulation.
They are, therefore, at the same time methods of the produc
tion of capital by capital, or methods of its accelerated ac
cumulation. The continual re-transformation of surplus-

The Getieral Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 685

value into capital now appears in the shape of the increasing
magnitude of the capital that enters into the process of pro
duction. This in turn is the basis of an extended scale of
production, of the methods for raising the productive power
of labour that accompany it, and of accelerated production of
surplus-value. If, therefore, a certain degree of accumula
tion of capital appears as a condition of the specifically capital
ist mode of production, the latter causes conversely an ac
celerated accumulation of capital. With the accumulation of

capital, therefore, the specifically capitalistic mode of pro
duction developes, and with the capitalist mode of production
the accumulation of capital. Both these economic factors
bring about, in the compound ratio of the impluses they reci
procally give one another, that change in the technical compo
sition of capital by which the variable constituent becomes al
ways smaller and smaller as compared with the constant.

Every individual capital is a larger or smaller concentration
of means of production, with a corresponding command over a
larger or smaller labour-army. Every accumulation becomes
the means of new accumulation. With the increasing mass of
wealth which functions as capital, accumulation increases the
concentration of that wealth in the hands of individual capital
ists, and thereby widens the basis of production on a large
scale and of the specific methods of capitalist production.
The growth of social capital is effected by the growth of many
individual capitals. All other circumstances remaining the
same, individual capitals, and with them the concentration of
the means of production, increases in such proportion as they
form aliquot parts of the total social capital. At the same
time portions of the original capitals disengage themselves and
function as new independent capitals. Besides other causes,
the division of property, within capitalist families, plays a
great part in this. With the accumulation of capital, there
fore, the number of capitalists grows to a greater or less ex
tent. Two points characterise this kind of concentration
which grows directly out of, or rather is identical with, ac
cumulation. First : The increasing concentration of the social
means of production in the hands of individual capitalists is.

686 Capitalist Production.

other things remaining equal, limited by the degree of increase
of social wealth. Second : The part of social capital domiciled
in each particular sphere of production is divided among
many capitalists who face one another as independent com
modity-producers competing with each other. Accumulation
and the concentration accompanying it are, therefore, not only
scattered over many points, but the increase of each function
ing capital is thwarted by the formation of new and the sub
division of old capitals. Accumulation, therefore, presents
itself on the one hand as increasing concentration of the means
of production, and of the command over labour; on the other,
as repulsion of many individual capitals one from another.

This splitting-up of the total social capital into many iii-
dividual capitals or the repulsion of its fractions one from ar-
other, is counteracted by their attraction. This last does net
mean that simple concentration of the means of production
and of the command over labour, which is identical with ac
cumulation. It is concentration of capitals already formed,
destruction of their individual independence, expropriation of
capitalist by capitalist, transformation of many small into few
large capitals. This process differs from the former in this,
that it only presupposes a change in the distribution of capital
already to hand, and functioning; its field of action is there
fore not limited by the absolute growth of social wealth, by
the absolute limits of accumulation. Capital grows in one
place to a huge mass in a single hand, because it has in an
other place been lost by many. This is centralisation proper,
as distinct from accumulation and concentration.

The laws of this centralisation of capitals, or of the attrac
tion of capital by capital, cannot be developed here. A brief
hint at a few facts must suffice. The battle of cempetition is
fought by cheapening of commodities. The cheapness of
commodities depends, cceteris paribus, on the productiveness «f
labour, and this again on the scale of production. Therefore,
the larger capitals beat the smaller. It will further be re
membered that, with the development of the capitalist mode
of production, there is an increase in the minimum amount of
individual capital necessary to carry on a business under its

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 687

normal conditions. The smaller capitals, therefore, crowd
into spheres of production which Modern Industry has only
sporadically or incompletely got hold of. Here competition
rages in direct proportion to the number, and in inverse pro
portion to the magnitudes, of the antagonistic capitals. It
always ends in the ruin of many small capitalists, whose
capitals partly pass into the hand of their conquerors, partly
vanish. Apart from this, with capitalist production an al
together new force comes into play — the credit system.

In ite beginnings, the credit system sneaks in as a modest
helper of accumulation and draws by invisible threads the
money resources scattered all over the surface of society into
the hands of individual or associated capitalists. But soon it
becomes a new and formidable weapon in the competitive
struggle, and finally it transforms itself into an immense so
cial mechanism for the centralisation of capitals.

Competition and credit, the two most powerful levers of
competition, develop in proportion as capitalist production and
accumulation do. At the same time the progress of ac
cumulation increases the matter subject to centralisation, that
is, -the individual capitals, while the expansion of capitalist
production creates the social demand here, the technical re
quirements there, for those gigantic industrial enterprises,
which depend for their realisation on a previous centralisation
of capitals. Nowadays, then, the mutual attraction of in
dividual capitals and the tendency to centralisation are
stronger than ever before. However, while the relative ex
pansion and energy of the centralisation movement is de
termined to a certain degree by the superiority of the economic
mechanism, yet the progress of centralisation is by no means
dependent upon the positive growth of the volume of social
capital. This is the particular distinction between central
isation and concentration, the latter being but another expres
sion for reproduction on an enlarged scale. Centralisation
may take place by a mere change in the distribution of al
ready existing capitals, a simple change in the quantitative ar
rangement of the components of social capital. Capital may
in that case accumulate in one hand in large masses by with-

683 Capitalist Production.

drawing it from many individual hands. Centralisation in a
certain line of industry would have reached its extreme limit,
if all the individual capitals invested in it would have been
amalgamated into one single capital.1

This limit would not be reached in any particular society
until the entire social capital would be united, either in the
hands of one single capitalist, or in those of one single cor
poration.

Centralisation supplements the work of accumulation, by
enabling the industrial capitalists to expand the scale of their
operations. The economic result remains the same, whether
this consummation is brought about by accumulation or cen
tralisation, whether centralisation is accomplished .by the vio
lent means of annexation, by which some capitals become such
overwhelming centers of gravitation for others as to break
their individual cohesion and attracting the scattered frag
ments, or whether the amalgamation of a number of capitals,
which already exist or are in process of formation, proceeds by
the smoother road of forming stock companies. The in
creased volume of industrial establishments forms everywhere
the point of departure for a more comprehensive organisation
of the co-operative labor of many, for a wider development of
their material powers, that is, for the progressive transfor
mation of isolated processes of production carried on in ac
customed ways into socially combined and scientifically man
aged processes of production.

It is evident, however, that accumulation, the gradual prop
agation of capital by a reproduction passing from a circular
into a spiral form, is a very slow process as compared with
centralisation, which needs but to alter the quantitative
grouping of the integral parts of social capital. The world
would still be without railroads, if it had been obliged to wait
until accumulation should have enabled a few individual
capitals to undertake the construction of a railroad. Central
isation, on the other hand, accomplished this by a turn of the

1 Note to the 4th German edition — The latest English and American "trusts" are
aiming to accomplish this by trying to unite at least all the large establishments of
a certain line of industry into one great stock company with a practical monopoly. —
F. E.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 689

hand through stock companies. Centralisation, by thus ac
celerating and intensifying the effects of accumulation, ex
tends and hastens at the same time the revolutions in the
technical composition of capital, which increase its constant
part at the expense of its variables part and thereby reduce
the relative demand for labor.

The masses of capital amalgamated over night by central
isation reproduce and augment themselves like the others, only
faster, and thus become new and powerful levers of social ac:
cumulation. Hence, if the progress of social accumulation
is mentioned nowadays, it comprizes as a matter of course the
effects of centralisation. The additional capitals formed in
the course of normal accumulation (see chapter XXW, 1.)
serve mainly as vehicles for the exploitation of new inven
tions and discoveries, or of industrial improvements in gen
eral. However, the old capital likewise arrives in due time
at the moment when it must renew its head and limbs, when
it casts off its old skin and is likewise born again in its per
fected industrial form, in which a smaller quantity of labor
suffices to set in motion a larger quantity of machinery and
raw materials. The absolute decrease of the demand for
labor necessarily following therefrom will naturally be so
much greater, the more these capitals going through the pro
cess of rejuvenation have become accumulated in masses by
means of the movement of centralisation.

On the one hand, therefore, the additional capital formed
in the course of accumulation attracts fewer and fewer la
bourers in proportion to its magnitude. On the other hand,
the old capitaj periodically reproduced with change of compo
sition, repels more and more of the labourers formerly em
ployed by it.

8ECTION 3. PROGRESSIVE PRODUCTION OF A RELATIVE SUR
PLUS-POPULATION OR INDUSTRIAL RESERVE ARMY.

The accumulation of capital, though originally appearing as
its quantitative extension only, is effected, as we have seen,
under a progressive qualitative change in its composition,

690 Capitalist Production.

under a constant increase of its constant, at the expense of its
variable con stitu tent.1

The specifically capitalist mode of production, the develop
ment of the productive power of labour corresponding to it,
and the change thence resulting in the organic composition of
capital, do not merely keep pace with the advance of accumu
lation, or with the growth of social wealth. They develop at
a much quicker rate, because mere accumulation, the absolute
increase of the total social capital, is accompanied by the cen
tralisation of the individual capitals of which that total is
made up ; and because the change in the technological com
position of the additional capital goes hand in hand with a
similar change in the technological composition of. the original
capital. With the advance of accumulation, therefore, the
proportion of constant to variable capital changes. It it wss
originally say 1 :1, it now becomes successively 2 :1, 3 :1, 4 :1,
5 :1, 7 :1, &c., so that, as the capital increases, instead of £ of
its total value, only -J, £, £, -J, -J, &c., is transformed into la
bour-power, and, on the other hand, §, J, £, f, J into means
of production. Since the demand for labour is determined
not by the amount of capital as a whole, but by its variabla
constituent alone, that demand falls progressively with the in
crease of the total capital, instead of, as previously assumed,
rising in proportion to it It falls relatively to the magni
tude of the total capital, and at an accelerated rate, as thin
magnitude increases. With the growth of the total capital, itn
variable constituent or the labour incorporated in it, also
does increase, but in a constantly diminishing proportion
The intermediate pauses are shortened, in which accumu
lation works as simple extension of production, on a given
technical basis. It is not merely that an accelerated accumu
lation of total capital, accelerated in a constantly growing
progression, is needed to absorb an additional number of
labourers, or even, on account of the constant metamorphosis

1 Note to the 8rd edition. In Marx's copy there is here the marginal note: "Here
note for working out later; if the extension is only quantitative, then for a greater
and a smaller capital in the same branch of business the profits are as the magnitudes
of the capitals advanced. If the quantitative extension induces qualitative change,
then the rate of profit on the larger capital rises simultaneously."

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 691

of old capital, to keep employed those already functioning.
In its turn, this increasing accumulation and centralisation
becomes a source of new changes in the composition of capital,
of a more accelerated diminution of its variable, as compared
with its constant constituent This accelerated relative
diminution of the variable constituent, that goes along with
the accelerated increase of the total capital, and moves more
rapidly than this increase, takes the inverse form, at the other
pole, of an apparently absolute increase of the labouring pop
ulation, an increase always moving more rapidly than that of
the variable capital or the means of employment But in fact,
it is capitalistic accumulation itself that constantly produces,
and produces in the direct ratio of its own energy and ex
tent, a relatively redundant population of labourers, i.e., a
population of greater extent than suffices for the average needs
of the self-expansion of capital, and therefore a surplus-pop
ulation.

Considering the social capital in its totality, the movement
of its accumulation now causes periodical changes, affecting
it more or less as a whole, now distributes its various phases
simultaneously over the different spheres of production. In
some spheres a change in the composition of capital occurs
without increase of its absolute magnitude, as a consequence
of simple centralisation; in others the absolute growth of
capital is connected with absolute diminution of its variable
constituent, or of the labour-power absorbed by it; in others
again, capital continues growing for a time on its given tech
nical basis, and attracts additional labour-power in proportion
to its increase, while a.t other times it undergoes organic
change, and lessens its variable constituent; in all spheres,
the increase of the variable part of capital, and therefore of
the number of labourers employed by it, is always connected
with violent fluctuations and transitory production of sur
plus-population, whether this takes the more striking form of
the repulsion of labourers already employed, or the less evi
dent but not less real form of the more difficult absorption of
the additional labouring population through the usual chan-

692 Capitalist Production.

nels.1 With the magnitude of social capital already function
ing, and the degree of its increase, with the extension of the
scale of production, and the mass of the labourers set in mo
tion,, with the development of the productiveness of their
labour, with the greater breadth and fulness of all sources of
wealth, there is also an extension of the scale on which greater
attraction of labourers by capital is accompanied by their
greater repulsion ; the rapidity of the change in the organic
composition of capital, and in its technical form increases,
and an increasing number of spheres of production becomes
involved in this change, now simultaneously, now alternately.
The labouring population therefore produces, along with the
accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which
itself is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative
surplus population ; and it does this to an always increasing
extent.2 This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist

1 The census of England and Wales shows: all persons employed in agriculture
(landlords, farmers, gardeners, shepherds, &c., included): 1851, 2,011,447: 1861,
1,924,110. Fall, 87,337. Worsted manufacture: 1851, 102,714 persons: 1861,
79,242. Silk weaving: 1851, 111,940: 1861, 101,678. Calico-printing: 1851,
12,098: 1861, 12,556. A small rise that, in the face of the enormous
extension of this industry and implying a great fall proportionally in the
number of labourers employed. Hat-making: 1851, 15,957: 1861, 13,814. Straw-
hat and bonnet-making: 1851, 20,393: 1861, 18,176. Malting: 1851, 10,566: 1861,
10,677. Chandlery, 1851, 4949: 1861, 4686. This fall is due, besides other causes,
to the increase in lighting by gas. Comb-making: 1851, 2,038: 1861, 1,478. Sawyers:
1851, 30,552: 1861, 31,647 — a small rise in consequence of the increase of sewing-
machines. Nail-making: 1851, 26,940: 1861, 26,130 — fall in consequence pf the
competition of machinery. Tin and copper-mining: 1851, 31,360: 1861, 32,041. On
the other hand: Cotton-spinning and weaving: 1851, 371,777: 1861, 456,646. Coal
mining: 1851, 183,389: 1861, 246, 613. "The increase of labourers is generally
greatest, since 1851, in such branches of industry in which machinery has not up
to the present been employed with success." (Census of England and Wales for
1862. Vol. III. London, 1863, p. 36.)

1 The law of the progressive decrease of the relative size of the variable capital,
and of its effects on the condition of the wage-working class, has been more intui
tively felt than actually comprehended by some excellent economists of the classic
school. The greatest honor in this respect is due to John Barton, although he,
like all the others, jumbles together J'ie constant with the fixed capital and the
circulating with the variable capital. He says: "The demand for labour depends on
the increase of circulating, and i >t of fixed capital. Were it true that the propor
tion between these two sorts cf capital is the same at all times, and in all circum
stances, then, indeed, it follows that the number of labourers employed is in pro
portion to the wealth of the state. But such a proposition has not the semblance of
probability.. As arts are cultivated, and civilization is extended, fixed capital bears
a larger and larger proportion to circulating capital. The amount of fixed capital
employed in the production of a piece of British muslin is at least a hundred,
probably a thousand times greater than that employed in a similar piece of India*

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 693

mode of production; and in fact every special historic mode
of production has its own special laws of population, his
torically valid within its limits alone. An abstract law of
population exists for plants and animals only, and only in so
far as man has not interfered with them.

But if a surplus labouring population is a necessary pro
duct of accumulation or of the development of wealth on a
capitalist basis, this surplus population becomes, conversely,
the lever of capitalistic accumulation, nay, a condition of ex
istence of the capitalist mode of production. It forms a dis
posable industrial reserve ajrmv, that belongs to capital quite
as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost. In
dependently of the limits of the actual increase of population,
it creates, for the changing needs of the self-expansion of
capital, a mass of human material always ready for ex
ploitation. With accumulation, and the development of the
productiveness of labour that accompanies it, the power of
sudden expansion of capital grows also; it grows, not merely
because the elasticity of the capital already functioning in
creases, not merely because the absolute wealth of society ex
pands, of which capital only forms an elastic part, not merely
because credit, under every special stimulus, at once places
an unusual part of this wealth at the disposal of production
in the form of additional capital; it grows, also, because the
technical Conditions of the process of production themselves —
machinery, means of transport, &c. — now admit of the rapid-

muslin. And the proportion of circulating capital is a hundred or thousand times
less . . . the whole of the annual savings, added to the fixed capital, would
have no effect in increasing the demand for labour." (John Barton. "Observations
on the Circumstances which Influence the Condition of the Labouring Classes of
Society." London, 1817, pp. 16, 17.) "The same cause which may increase the
net revenue of the country may at the same time render the population redundant,
and deteriorate the condition of the labourer." (Ricardo, 1. c., p. 469.) With in
crease of capital, "the demand [for labour] will be in a diminishing ratio." (ibid.
p. 480, Note.) "The amount of capital devoted to the maintenance of labour may
vary, independently of any changes, in the whole amount of capital. . . .
Great fluctuations in the amount of employment, and great suffering may become
more frequent as capital itself becomes more plentiful." (Richard Jones. "An
Introductory Lecture on Pol. Econ., Lond. 1833," p. 13.) "Demand [for labour]
will rise . . . not in proportion to the accumulation of the general capital.
. . . Ev«ry augmentation, therefore, in the national stock destined for reproduc
tion, comes, in the progress of society, to have less and less influence upon the
condition of the labourer." (Ramsay, 1. c., pp. 90, 91.)

694 Capitalist Production.

est transformation of masses of surplus product into addi
tional means of production. The mass of social wealth, over
flowing with the advance of accumulation, and transformable
into additional capital, thrusts itself frantically into old
branches of production, whose market suddenly expands, or
into newly formed branches, such as railways, &c., the need
for which grows out of the development of the old ones. In
all such cases, there must be the possibility of throwing great
masses of men suddenly on the decisive points without injury
to the scale of production in other spheres. Over-populatio a
supplifis^jthese_niasses._ The course characteristic of moden
industry, viz., a decennial cycle (interrupted by smaller oscil
lations), of periods of average activity, production at high
pressure, crisis and stagnation, depends on the constant for
mation, the greater or less absorption, and the re-formation
of the industrial reserve army of surplus population. In
their turn, the varying phases of the industrial cycle recruk
the surplus population, and become one of the most energetic
agents of its reproduction. This peculiar course of modern
industry, which occurs in no earlier period of human history,
was also impossible in the childhood of capitalist production.
The composition of capital changed, but very slowly. With
its accumulation, therefore, there kept pace, on the whole, a
corresponding growth in the demand for labour. Slow as
was the advance of accumulation compared with that of more
modern times, it found a check in the natural limits of the
exploitable labouring population, limits which could only be
got rid of by forcible means to be mentioned later. The ex
pansion by fits and starts of the scale of production is the
preliminary to its equally sudden contraction ; the latter again
evokes the former, but the former is impossible without dis
posable human material, without an increase in the number
of labourers independently * of the absolute growth of the
population. This increase is effected by the simple process
that constantly "sets free" a part of the labourers ; by methods
which lessen the number of labourers employed in proportion
to the increased production. The whole form of the move
ment of modern industry depends, therefore, upon the constant

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. ^695

transformation of a part of the labouring population into un
employed or half-employed hands. The superficiality of Po
litical Economy shows itself in the fact that it looks upon
the expansion and contraction of credit, which is a~mere symp
tom of the periodic changes of the industrial cycle, as their
cause. As the heavenly bodies, once thrown into a certain
definite motion, always repeat this, so is it with social pro-'
duction as soon as it is once thrown into this movement of
alternate expansion and contraction. Effects, in their turn,
become causes, and the varying accidents of the whole process,
which always reproduces its own conditions, take on the form
of periodicity. When this periodicity is once consolidated,
even Political Economy then sees that the production of a
relative surplus population — i.e., surplus with regard to the
average needs of the self-expansion of capital — is a necessary
condition of modern industry.

"Suppose," says H. Marivale, formerly Professor of Po
litical Economy at Oxford, subsequently employed in the Eng
lish Colonial Office, "suppose that, on the occasion of some
of these crises, the nation were to rouse itself to the effort of
getting rid by emigration of some hundreds of thousands of
superfluous arms, what would be the consequence ? That, at
the first returning demand for labour, there would be a de
ficiency. However rapid reproduction may be, it takes, at all
events, the space of a generation to replace the loss of adult
labour. Now, the profits of our manufacturers depend mainly
on the power of making use of the prosperous moment when
demand is brisk, and thus compensating themselves for the
interval during which it is slack. This power is secured to
them only by the command of machinery and of manual la
bour. They must have hands ready by them, they must be
able to increase the activity of their operations when required,
and to slacken it again, according to the state of the market,
or they cannot possibly maintain the pre-eminence in the race
of competition on which the wealth of the country is found
ed."1 Even Malthus recognises over-population as a neces
sity of modern industry, though, after his narrow fashion, he

*H. Merivale: Lecture* on Colonization and Colonies, 1841." Vol. I., p. 14«.

696 Capitalist Production.

explains it by the absolute over-growth of the labouring pop
ulation, not by their becoming relatively supernumerary. He
says: "Prudential habits with regard to marriage, carried to
a considerable extent among the labouring class of a country
mainly depending upon manufactures and commerce, might
injure it. ... From the nature of a population, an in
crease of labourers cannot be brought into market in conse
quence of a particular demand till after the lapse of 16 or 18
years, and the conversion of revenue into capital, by saving,
may take place much more rapidly ; a country is always liable
to an increase in the quantity of the funds for the maintenarce
of labour faster than the increase of population."-1 After Po
litical Economy has thus demonstrated the constant predic
tion of a relative surplus-population of labourers to be a
necessity of capitalistic accumulation, she very aptly, in fie
guise of an old maid, puts in the mouth of her "beau ideal" of
a capitalist the following words addressed to those supern i-
meraries thrown on the streets by their own creation of al-
ditional capital: — "We manufacturers do what we can for
you, whilst we are increasing that capital on which you must
subsist, and you must do the rest by accommodating your
numbers to the means of subsistence." 2

Capitalist production can by no means content itself wit i
the quantity of disposable labour-power which the natural
increase of population yields. It requires for its free play an
industrial reserve army independent of these natural limits.

Up to this point it has been assumed that the increase o*
diminution of the variable capital corresponds rigidly with
the increase or diminution of the number of labourers em
ployed.

The number of labourers commanded by capital may remain
the same, or even fall, wjnle_jthe variable capital increases..
This is the case if the individual labourer yields moreTlaBour,

1Malthus. "Principles of Political Economy," pp. 254, 319, 820. In this work,
Malthus finally discovers, with the help of Sismondi, the beautiful Trinity of capital-
!/ istic production: over-production, over-population, over-consumption — three very deli-
t cate monsters, indeed. Cf. F. Engels. "Umrisse zu einer Kritik der National-
Oekonomie," 1. c., p. 107, et seq.
* Harriet Martineau. "The Manchester Strike," 1842, p. 101.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 697

n,nd therefore his wages increase and this although the price of
labour remains the same or even falls, only more slowly than
the mass of labour rises. Increase of variable capital, in
this case, becomes an index of more labour, but not of more
labourers employed. It is the absolute interest of every
capitalist to press a given quantity of labour out of a smaller,
rather than a greater number of labourers, if the cost is about
the same. In the latter case, the outlay of constant capital
increases in proportion to the mass of labour set in action ; in
the former that increase is much smaller. The more ex
tended the scale of production, the stronger this motive. Its
force increases with the accumulation of capital.

We have seen that the development of the capitalist mode
of production and of the productive power of labour — at once
the cause and effect of accumulation — enables the capitalist,
with the same outlay of variable capital, to set in action more
labour by greater exploitation (extensive or intensive) of each
individual labour-power. We have further seen that the
capitalist buys with the same capital a greater mass of labour-
powrer, as he progressively replaces skilled labourers by less
skilled, mature labour-power by immature, male by female,
that of adults by that of young persons or children.

On the one hand, therefore, with the progress of accumula
tion, a larger variable capital sets more labour in action with
out enlisting more labourers; on the other, a variable capital
of the same magnitude sets in action more labour with the
same mass of labour-power ; and, finally, a greater number of
inferior labour-power by displacement of higher.

The production of a relative surplus-population, or the set
ting free of labourers, goes on therefore yet .more rapidly than
the technical revolution of the process of production that ac
companies, and is accelerated by, the advances of accumula
tion ; and more rapidly than the corresponding diminution of
the variable part of capital as compared with the constant.
If the means of production, as they increase in extent and
effective power, become to a less extent means of employment
of labourers, this state of things is again modified by the fact
that in proportion as the productiveness of labour increases,

698 Capitalist Production.

capital increases its supply of labour more quickly than ita de
mand for labourers. The over-work of the employed part of
the working1 class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst con
versely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition
exerts on the former, forces these to submit to over-work and
to subjugation under the dictates of capital. The condemna
tion of one part of the working-class to enforced idleness by
the over-work of the other part, and the converse, becomes a
means of enriching the individual capitalists,1 and accelerates
at the same time the production of the industrial reserve army
on a scale corresponding with the advance of social accumu
lation. How important is this element in the formation of
the relative surplus-population, is shown by the example of
England. Her technical means for saving labour are colossal.
Nevertheless, if to-morrow morning labour generally were re
duced to a rational amount^ and proportioned to the different
sections of the working-class according to age and sex, the
working population to hand would be absolutely insufficient,
for the carrying on of national production on its present scale.
The great majority of the labourers now "unproductive"
would have to be turned into "productive" ones.

1 Even in the cotton famine of 1863 we find, in a pamphlet of the operative cot
ton-spinners of Blackburn, fierce denunciations of overwork, which, in consequence
of the Factory Acts, of course only affected adult male labourers. "The adult op
eratives at this mill have been asked to work from 12 to 13 hours per day, while
there are hundreds who are compelled to be idle who would willingly work partial
time, in order to maintain their families and save their brethren from a premature
grave through being overworked . . . We," it goes on to say, "would ask if
the practice of working overtime by a number of hands, is likely to create a good
feeling between masters and servants. Those who are worked overtime feel the
injustice equally with those who are condemned to forced idleness. There is in
the district almost sufficient work to give to all partial employment if fairly dis
tributed. We are only asking what is right in requesting the masters generally to
pursue a system of short hours, particularly until a better state of things begins
to dawn upon us, rather than to work a portion of the hands overtime, while others,
for want of work, are compelled to exist upon charity." (Reports of Insp. of
Fact., Oct. 31, 1863, p. 8.) The author of the "Essay on Trade and Commerce" grasp*
the effect of a relative surplus-population on the employed labourers with his usual
unerring bourgeois instinct. "Another cause of idleness in this kingdom is the want
of a sufficient number of labouring hands .... Whenever from an extraor
dinary demand for manufacturers, labour grows scarce, the labourers feel their own
consequence, and will make their masters feel it likewise — it is amazing; but so de
praved are the dispositions of these people, that in such cases a set of workmen have
combined to distress the employer, by idling a whole day together." (Essay, &c-
pp. 27, 28.) The fellows in fact were hankering after a rise in waxes.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 699

Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages
are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of
the industrial reserve army, and these again correspond to the
periodic changes of the industrial cycle. They are, therefore,
not determined by the variations of the absolute number of
the working population, but by the varying proportions in
which the working class is divided into active and reserve
army, by the increase of diminution in the relative amount of
the surplus-population, by the extent to which it is now ab
sorbed, now set free. For Modern Industry with its decen
nial cycles and periodic phases, which, moreover, as accumu
lation advances, are complicated by irregular oscillations fol
lowing each other more and more quickly, that would indeed
be a beautiful law, which pretends to make the action of
capital dependent on the absolute variation of the population,
instead of regulating the demand and supply of labour by the
alternate expansion and contraction of capital, the labour-
market now appearing relatively under-full, because capital is
expanding, now again over-full, because it is contracting. Yet
this is the dogma of the economists. According to them,
wages rise in consequence of accumulation of capital. The
higher wages stimulate the working population to more rapid
multiplication, and this goes on until the labour-market be
comes too full, and therefore capital, relatively to the supply
of labour, becomes insufficient. Wages fall, and now we have
the reverse of the medal. The working population is little by
little decimated as- the result of the fall in wages, so that
capital is again in excess relatively to them, or, as others ex
plain it, falling wages and the corresponding increase in the
exploitation of the labourer again accelerates accumulation,
whilst, at the same time, the lower wages hold the increase of
the working-class in check. Then comes again the time, when
the supply of labour is less than the demand, wages rise, and
so on. A beautiful mode of motion this for developed capital
ist production ! Before, in consequence of the rise of wages,
any positive increase of the population really fit for work
could occur, the time would have been passed again and again,

700 Capitalist Production.

during which the industrial campaign must have been carried
through, the battle fought and won.

Between 1849 and 1859, a rise of wages practically in
significant, though accompanied by falling prices of corn, took
place in the English agricultural districts. In Wiltshire, e.g.,
the weekly wages rose from 7s. to 8s. ; in Dorsetshire from 7s.
or 8s., to 9s., &c. This was the result of an unusual exodus
of the agricultural surplus-population caused by the demands
of war, the vast extension of railroads, factories, mines, &e.
The lower the wages, the higher is the proportion in which ever
so insignificant a rise of them expresses itself. If the weekly
wage, e.g., is 20s. and it rises to 22s., that is a rise of 10 per
cent. ; but if it is only 7s. and it rises to 9s., that is a rise of
28 f per cent, which sounds very fine. Everywhere the farir-
era were howling, and the "London Economist,'7 with refer
ence to these starvation-wages, prattled quite seriously of "a
general and substantial advance."1 What did the farmers do
now ? Did they wait until, in consequence of this brilliant re
muneration, the agricultural labourers, had so increased anc
multiplied that their wages must fall again, as prescribed bj
the dogmatic economic brain ? They introduced more ma
chinery, and in a moment the labourers were redundant again
in a proportion satisfactory even to the farmers. There was
now "more capital" laid out in agriculture than before, and
in a more productive form. With this the demand for labour
fell, not only relatively, but absolutely.

The above economic fiction confuses the laws that regulate
the general movement of wages, or the ratio between the
working-class — i.e., the total labour-power — and the total so
cial capital, writh the laws that distribute the working popu
lation over the different spheres of production. If, e.g., in
consequence of favourable circumstances, accumulation in a
particular sphere of production becomes especially active, and
profits in it, being greater than the average profits, attract
additional capital, of course the demand for labour rises and
wages also rise. The higher wages draw a larger part of the
working population into the more favoured sphere, until it is

1 Economist. Jan. 21. 1860.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 701

glutted with labour- power, and wages at length fall again to
their average level or below it, if the pressure is too great.
Then, not only does the immigration of labourers into the
branch of industry in question cease; it gives place to their
emigration. Here the political economist thinks he sees the
why and wherefore of an absolute increase of workers accom
panying an increase of wages, and of a diminution of wages
accompanying an absolute increase of labourers. But he sees
really only the local oscillation of the labour-market in a par
ticular sphere of production — he sees only the phenomena ac
companying the distribution of the working population into
the different spheres of outlay of capital, according to its vary
ing needs.

The industrial reserve army, during the periods of stagna
tion and average prosperity, weighs down the active labour-
army ; during the periods of over-production and paroxysm, it
holds its pretensions in check. Relative surplus-population
is therefore the pivot upon which the law of demand and
supply of labour works. It confines the field of action of this
law within the limits absolutely convenient to the activity of
exploitation and to the domination of capital.

This is the place to return to one of the grand exploits of
economic apologetics. It will be remembered that if through
the introduction of new, or the extension of old, machinery, a
portion of variable capital is transformed into constant, the
economic apologist interprets this operation which "fixes"
capital and by that very act set labourers "free," in exactly
the opposite way, pretending that it sets free capital for the
labourers. Only now can one fully understand the effrontery
of these apologists. What are set free are not only the la
bourers immediately turned out by the machines, but also
their future substitutes in the rising generation, and the addi
tional contingent, that with the usual extension of trade on
the old basis would be regularly absorbed. They are now
all "set free," and every new bit of capital looking out for
employment can dispose of them. Whether it attracts them
or others, the effect on the general labour demand will be nil,
if this capital is just sufficient to take out of the market as

702 Capitalist Production.

many labourers as the machines threw upon it. If it employs
a smaller number, that of the supernumeraries increases; if it
employs a greater, the general demand for labour only in
creases to the extent of the excess of the employed over those
"set free." The impulse that additional capital, seeking an
outlet, would otherwise have given to the general demand for
labour, is therefore in every case neutralised to the extent of
the labourers thrown out of employment by the machine.
That is to say, the mechanism of capitalistic production so
manages matters that the absolute increase of capital is ac
companied by no corresponding rise in the general demand
for labour. And this the apologist calls a compensation for
the misery, the sufferings, the possible death of the displaced
labourers during the transition period that banishes them into
the industrial reserve army ! The demand for labour is not
identical with increase of capital, nor supply of labour with
increase of the working class. It is not a case of two inde
pendent forces working on one another. Les des sont pipes.
Capital works on both sides at the same time. If its accumu
lation, on the one hand, increases the demand for labour, it in
creases on the other the supply of labourers by the "setting
free of them, whilst at the same time the pressure of the un
employed compels those that are employed to furnish mo:*e
labour, and therefore makes the supply of labour, to a certain
extent, independent of the supply of labourers. The action of
the law of supply and demand of labour on this basis com
pletes the despotism of capital. As soon, therefore, as the
labourers learn the secret, how it comes to pass that in the
same measure as they work more, as they produce more wealti
for others, and as the productive power of their labour ir-
creases, so in the same measure even their function as a means
of the self -expansion of capital becomes more and more pre
carious for them ; as soon as they discover that the degree of in
tensity of the competition among themselves depends wholly
on the pressure of the relative surplus-population ; as sooi
as, by Trades' Unions, &c., they try to organise a regular co
operation between employed and unemployed in order te
destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.

of capitalistic production on their class, so soon capital and its
sycophant, political economy, cry out at the infringement of
the "eternal" and so to say "sacred" law of supply and de
mand. Every combination of employed and unemployed dis
turbs the "harmonious" action of this law. But, on the other
hand, as soon as (in the colonies, e.g.,) adverse circumstances
prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army and, with
it, the absolute dependence of the working class upon the
capitalist class, capital, along with its commonplace Sancho
Panza, rebels against the "sacred" law of supply and demand,
and tries to check its inconvenient action by forcible means
and State interference.

SECTION 4. DIFFERENT FORMS OF THE RELATIVE SURPLUS-
POPULATION. THE GENERAL LAW OF CAPITALISTIC AC
CUMULATION.

The relative surplus population exists in every possible
form. Every labourer belongs to it during the time when he
is only partially employed or wholly unemployed. Not tak
ing into account the great periodically recurring forms- that
the changing phases of the industrial cycle impress on it, now
an acute form during the crisis, then again a chronic form
during dull times — it has always three forms, the floating,
the latent, the stagnant

In the centres of modern industry — factories, manufactur
ers, ironworks, mines, &c. — the labourers are sometimes re
pelled, sometimes attracted again in greater masses, the num
ber of those employed increasing on the whole, although in a
constantly decreasing proportion to the scale of production.
Here the surplus population exists in the floating form.

In the automatic factories, as in all the great workshops,
where machinery enters as a factor, or where only the modern
divisions of labour is carried out, large numbers of boys are
employed up to the age of maturity. When this term is
once reached, only a very small number continue to find em
ployment in the same branches of industry, whilst the ma
jority are regularly discharged. This majority forms an ele-

704 Capitalist Production.

rnent of the floating surplus-population, growing with the
extension of those branches of industry. ' Part of them emi
grates, following in fact capital that has emigrated. One
consequence is that the female population grows more rapidly
than the male, teste England. That the natural increase of
the number of labourers does not satisfy the requirements of
the accumulation of capital, and yet all the time is in excoss
of them, is a contradiction inherent to the movement of capital
it-self. It wants larger numbers* of youthful labourers, a
smaller number of adults. The contradiction is not more
glaring than that other one that there is a complaint of the
want of hands, while at the same time many thousands are
out of work, because the division of labour chains them to a
particular branch of industry.1

The consumption of labour-power by capital is, besides, «o
rapid that the labourer, half-way through his life, has already
more or less completely lived himself out. He falls into tie
ranks of the supernumeraries, or is thrust down from a higher
to a lower step in the scale. It is precisely among the work
people of modern industry that we meet with the shortest
duration of life. Dr. Lee, Medical Officer of Health for Mar-
chester, stated "that the average age at death of the Man
chester . . . upper middle class was 38 years, while th-3
average age at death of the labouring class was 17; while au,
Liverpool those figures were represented as 35 against 15. I ">
thus appeared that the well-to-do classes had a lease of lift-
which was more than double the value of that which fell tc
the lot of the less favoured citizens." 2 In order to conform
to these circumstances, the absolute increase of this section
of the proletariat must take places under conditions that shall
swell their numbers, although the individual dements are

1 Whilst during the last six months of 1866, 80-90,000 working people in London
were thrown out of work, the Factory Report for that same half year says: "It
does not appear absolutely true to say that demand will always produce supply just
at the moment when it is needed. It has not done so with labour, for much ma
chinery has been idle last year for want of hands." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st
Oct., 1866, p. 81.)

•Opening address to the Sanitary Conference, Birmingham, January 15th, 1875,
fcy J. Chamberlain, Mayor of the town, now (1883) President of the Board of
Ltftd*.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 705

used up rapidly. Hence, rapid renewal of the generations of
labourers (this law does not hold for the other classes of tLo
population). This social need is met by early marriages, a
necessary consequence of the conditions in which the labourers
of modern industry live, and by the premium that the ex
ploitation of children sets on their production.

As soon as capitalist production takes possession of agri
culture, and in proportion to the extent to which it does so,
the demand for an agricultural labouring population falls
absolutely, while the accumulation of the capital employed in
agriculture advances, without this repulsion being, as in non- \ /
agricultural industries, compensated by a greater attraction.
Part of the agricultural population is therefore constantly on
the point of passing over into an urban or manufacturing
proletariat, and on the look-out for circumstances favourable
to this transformation. (Manufacture is used here in the
sense of all non-agricultural industries).1 This source of
relative surplus-population is thus constantly flowing. But
the constant flow towards the towns presupposes, in the coun
try itself, a constant latent surplus-population, the extent of
which becomes evident only when its channels of outlet open
to exceptional width. The agricultural labourer is therefore
reduced to the minimum of wages, and always stands with
one foot already in the swamp of pauperism.

The third category of the relative surplus-population, the
stagnant, forms a part of the active labour army, but with
extremely irregular employment. Hence it furnishes to
capital an inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labour-power.
Its conditions of life sink below the average normal level of
the working class; this makes it at once the broad basis of
special branches of capitalist exploitation. It is character-

1 781 Towns given in the census for 1861 for England and Wales "contained
10,960,998 inhabitants, while the villages and country parishes contained 9,105,226.
In 1851, 580 towns were distinguished, and the population in them and in the sur
rounding country wa? nearly equal. But while in the subsequent ten years the
copulation in the villages and the country increased half a million, the population
iu the 680 towns increased by a million and a half (1,554,067). The increase of
the population of the country parishes is 6.5 per cent., and of the towns 17.3 per
cent. The difference in the rates of increase is due to the migration from country
to town. Three-fourths of the total increase of population has taken place in the
towns. (Census, &c., pp. 11 and 12.)

§8

706 Capitalist Production.

ized by maximum of working time, and minimum of wages.
We have learnt to know its chief form under the rubric of
"domestic industry." It recruits itself constantly from the
supernumerary forces of modern industry and agriculture,
and specially from those decaying branches of industry where
handicraft is yielding to manufacture, manufacture to ma
chinery. Its extent grows, as with the extent and energy of
accumulation, the creation of a surplus population advances.
But it forms at the same time a self-reproducing and self-per
petuating element of the working class, taking a proportionally
greater part in the general increase of that class than the
other elements. In fact, not only the number of births and
deaths, but the absolute size i c the families stand in invert
proportion to the height of wages, ;... I therefore to the amount
of means of subsistence of which the differc-it categories c-f
labourers dispose. This law of capitalistic society would
sound absurd to savages, or even civilized colonists. It calls
to mind the boundless reproduction of animals individually
weak and constantly hunted down.1

The lowest sediment of the relative surplus-population
finally dwells in the sphere of pauperism. Exclusive ot vaga
bonds, criminals, prostitutes, in a word, the ''dangerous"
classes, this layer of society consists of three categories.
First, those able to work One need only glance superficially
at the statistics of English pauperism to find that the quantity
of paupers increases with every crisis, and diminishes
with every revival of trade. Second, orphans and pauper
children. These are candidates for the industrial reserve-
army, and are, in times of great prosperity, as 1860, e.g.,
speedily and in large numbers enrolled in the active army of
labourers. Third, the demoralized and ragged, and those un
able to work, chiefly people who succumb to their incapacity

1 Poverty seems favourable to generation." (A. Smith.) This is even a spe
cially wise arrangement of God, according to the gallant and witty Abbe" Gali— •*
"Iddio af che gli uomini che esercitano mestieri di prima utiliia nascono abbondante.
mente." (Galiani, 1. c., p. 78.) "Misery up to the extreme point of famine and"
pestilence, instead of checking, tends to increase population." (S. Laing:
National Distress, 1844, p. 69.) After Laing has illustrated this by statistic*, he
continues: "If the people were all in easy circumstances, the world would soon be
depopulated."

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 707

for adaptation, due to the division of labour ; people who have
passed the normal age of the labourer ; the victims of industry,
whose number increases with the increase of dangerous ma
chinery, of mines, chemical works, &c., the mutilated, the
sickly, the widows, &c. Pauperism is the hospital of the
active labour-army and the dead weight of the industrial re
serve-army. Its production is included in that of the relative
surplus-population, its necessity in theirs; along with the sur
plus-population, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist
production, and of the capitalist development of wealth. It
enters into the faux frafa of capitalist production ; but capital
knows how to throw these, for the 'most part, from its own
shoulders on to those of the working-class and the lower mid
dle class.

The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the
extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the ab
solute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its
labour, the greater is the industrial reserve-army. The same \ •
causes which develop the expansive power of capital, developes L^
also the labour-power at its disposal. The relative mass of
the industrial reserve-army increases therefore with the po
tential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve-army
in proportion to the active labour-army, the greater is the
mass of a consolidated surplus-population, whose misery is in
inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive,
finally, the lazurus-layers of the working-class, and the. in
dustrial reserve-army, the greater is official pauperism. This
is the absolute general Law of capitalist accumulation. Like
all other laws it is modified in its working by many circum
stances, the analysis of which does not concern us here.

The folly is now patent of the economic wisdom that
preaches to the labourers the accommodation of their num
ber to the requirements of capital. The mechanism of capital
ist production and accuraulation constantly effects this adjust
ment. The first word of this adaptation is the creation of a
relative surplus-population, or industrial reserve-army. Its
last word is the misery of constantly extending strata of the
active army of labour, and the dead weight of pauperism.

708 Capitalist Production.

The law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means
of production, thanks to the advance in the productiveness of
social labour, may be set in movement by a progressively
diminishing expenditure of human power, this law, in a
capitalist society — where the labourer does not employ the
means of production, but the means of production employ the
labourer — undergoes a complete inversion and is expressed
thus: the higher the productiveness of labour, the greater is
the pressure of the labourers on the means of employment, the
more precarious, therefore, becomes their condition of ex
istence, viz., the sale of their own labour-power for the in
creasing of another's wealth, or for the self-expansion of
capital. The fact that the means of production, and the pro
ductiveness of labour, increase more rapidly than the pro
ductive population, expresses itself, therefore, capitalistically
in the inverse form that the labouring population always in
creases more rapidly than the conditions under which capital
can employ this increase for its own self-expansion.

We saw in Part IV., when analysing the production of rela
tive surplus-value: within the capitalist system all methods
for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought
about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means 1'or
the development of production transform themselves ir.to
means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers ;
they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade
him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every
remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil;
they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of tie
labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorpor
ated in it as an independant power; they distort the condi
tions under which he works, subject him during the labour-
process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness ; thoy
transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife
and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capitsl,
But all methods for the production of surplus value are at the
same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of
accumulation becomes again a meajis for the development of.
those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion *3

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 709

capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment
high or low, must grow worse. The law, finally, that always
equilibrates the relative surplus-population, or industrial re
serve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law
rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of
Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an ac
cumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of
capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at
the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery,
ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole,
i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in
the form of capital.

This antagonistic character of capitalistic accumulation1 is
enunciated in various forms by political economists, although
by them it is confounded with phenomena, certainly to some
extent analogous, but nevertheless essentially distinct, and be
longing to precapitalist^ modes of production.

The Venetian monk Ortes, one of the great economic writers
of the 18th century, regards the antagonism of capitalist pro
duction as a general natural law of social wealth. "In the
economy of a nation, advantages and evils always balance one
another (il bene ed il male economico in una nazione sempre
all, istessa misura) : the abundance of wealth with some peo
ple, is always equal to the want of it with others (la copia dei
beni in alcuni sempre eguale alia mancanza di essi in altri) :
the great riches of a small number are always accompanied by
the absolute privation of the first necessaries of life for many
others. The wealth of a nation corresponds with its popu
lation, and its misery corresponds with its wealth. Diligence
in some compels idleness- in others. The poor and idle are a
necessary consequence of the rich and active," &c.2 In a

1 "Dc jour en jour il dcvient done plus clair que les rapports de production dans
lesquels sc racut la bourgeoisie n'ont pas un caractere un, uncaractere simple, mais
un caractere de duplicate ; que dans les memes rapports dans lesquels se produit la
richesse, la misere se produit aussi; que dans Ics memes rapports dans lesquels il y a
dcveloppcment des forces productives, il y a une force productive de repression; que
ces rapports ne produisent la richesse bourgeoise, c'est-a-dire la richesse de la classe
bourgeoise, qu'en aneantissant continuellement la richesse des membres integrants de
cette classe et en produisant un proletariat toujours croissant" (Karl Marx:
Misere de la Philosophic, p. 116.)

*G. Ortes: Delia Economia Nazionale libri sei, 1777, in Custodi, Part* Moderns.

Capitalist Production.

thoroughly brutal way about 10 years after Ortes, the Church
of England parson, Townsend, glorified misery as a neces
sary condition of wealth. "Legal constraint (to labour) is
attended with too much trouble, violence, and noise, . .
whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted
pressure, but at the most natural motive to industry tnd
labour, it calls forth the most powerful exertions." Every
thing therefore depends upon making hunger perman«3nt
among the working class, and for this, according to Town-
send, the principle of population, especially active among the
poor, provides. "It seems to be a law of nature that the poor
should be to a certain degree improvident." [i.e., so improvi
dent as to be born without a silver spoon in the mouth], "tl at
there may always be some to fulfil the most servile, the moat
sordid, and the most ignoble offices in the community. The
stock of human happiness is thereby much increased, whi st
the more delicate are not only relieved from drudgery . . .
but are left at liberty without interruption to pursue those
callings which are suited to their various dispositions .
it [the Poor Law] tends to destroy the harmony and beauty,
the symmetry and order of that system which God and Nature
have established in the world."1 If the \renetian monk four.d
in the fatal destiny that makes misery eternal, the raiscn
d'etre of Christian charity, celibacy, monasteries and holy
houses, the Protestant prebendary finds in it a pretext fcr
condemning the laws in virtue of which the poor possessed a
right to a miserable relief.

t. xxi. pp. 6, 9, 22, 25, etc. Ortes says, 1. c., p. 32: "In luoco di progettar sistemi
inutili per la felicita de'popoli, mi limitero a investigare la ragione della loro in-
felicita."

1 A Dissertation on the Poor Laws. By a Well-wisher of Mankind. (The Rev. ','.
Townsend) 1786, republished Lond. 1817, pp. 15, 39, 41. This "delicate" parsor ,
from whose work just quoted, as well as from his "Journey through Spain, '
Malthus often copies whole pages himself borrowed the greater part of his doctrine
from 9ir James Steuart, whom he however alters in the borrowing. E.g., when
Steuart says: "Here, in slavery, was a forcible method of making mankind diligent,"
[for the non-workers] . . . "Men were then forced to work" [i.e. to work
gratis for others], "because they were slaves of others; men are now forced to
work" [t.^., to work gratis for non-workers] because they are the slaves of theii
necessities," he does not thence conclude, like the fat holder of benefices, that the
wage-labourer must always go fasting. He wishes, on the contrary, to increase
their wants and to make the increasing number of their wants a stimulous to theii
labour for the "more delicate."

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 711

"The progress of social wealth," says Storch, "begets this
useful class of society . '. . which performs the most weari
some, the vilest, the most disgusting functions, which takes, in
a word, on its shoulders all that is disagreeable and servile in
life, and procures thus for other classes leisure, serenity of
mind and conventional [c'est bon!] dignity of character."1
Storch asks himself in what then really consist the progress
of this capitalistic civilization with its misery and its degrada
tion of the masses, as compared with barbarism. He finds
but one answer : security !

"Thanks to the advance of industry and science," says
Sismondi, "every labourer can produce every day much more
than his consumption requires. But at the same time, whilst
his labour produces wealth, that wealth would, were he called
on to consume it himself, make him less fit for labour." Ac
cording to him, "men," [i.e., non- workers] "would probably
prefer to do without all artistic perfection, and all the enjoy
ments that manufacturers procure for us, if it were necessary
that all should buy them by constant toil like that of the
labourer. . . . Exertion to-day is separated from its re
compense ; it is not the same man that first works, and then
reposes; but it is because the one works that the other rests.
|T . . The indefinite multiplication of the productive pow
ers of labour can then only have for result the increase of lux
ury and enjoyment of the idle rich." 2

Finally Destutt de Tracy, the fish-blooded bourgeois
doctrinaire, blurts out brutally : "In poor nations the people
are comfortable, in rich nations they are generally poor."

SECTION 5. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE GENERAL LAW OF CAP
ITALIST ACCUMULATION.

(a.) England from 1846-1866.

!N"o period of modern society is so favourable for the study
of capitalist accumulation as the period of the last 20 years.

Storch, 1. c. t. Hi., p. 223.
* Sismondi 1. c. pp. 79, 80, 85.

•Destutt de Tracy, 1. c. p. 231: "Les nations pauvres, c'est 14 ou le peuple ett *
•on aise; et les nations riches, c'est la ou il est ordinairement pauvre."

712 Capitalist Production.

It is as if this period had found Fortunatus' purse. But of all
countries England again furnishes the classical example, be*
cause it holds the foremost place in the world-market, because
capitalist production is here alone completely developed, and
lastly, because the introduction of the Free Trade millennium
since 1846 has cut off the last retreat of vulgar economy.
The titanic advance of production — the latter half of the 20
years period again far surpassing the former — has been al
ready pointed out sufficiently in Part IV.

Although the absolute increase of the English population in
the last half century was very great, the relative increase or
rate of growth fell constantly, as the following table borrowed
from the census shows.

Annual increase per cent of the population of England and
Wales in decimal numbers:

1811-1821 1.533 per cent

1821-1831 1.446 „

1831-1841 1.326 „

1841-1851 1.216 „

1851-1861 1.141

Let us now, on the other hand, consider the increase of
wealth. Here the movement of profit, rent of land, £c., that
come under the income tax, furnishes the surest basis. The
increase of profits liable to income tax (farmers and some other
categories not included) in Great Britain from 1853 to 1864
amounted to 50.47% or 4.58% as the annual average,1 that of
the population during the same period to about 12%. The
augmentation of the rent of land subject to taxation (including
houses, railways, mines, fisheries, &c.), amounted for 1853 to
1864 to 38% or 3&% annually. Under this head the follow
ing categories show the greatest increase :

Houses, 38.60% 3.50%

Quarries, 84.76% 7.70%

Mines, 68.85% 6.26%

1 Tenth Report of the Commissioners of H.M. Inland Revenue. Lond. 1886,
p. 88.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 713

Iron-works, 39.92% 3.63%

Fisheries, 57.37% 5.21%

Gasworks, 126.02% 11.45%
Railways, 83.29% 7.57% 1

If we compa/t the years from 1853 to 1864 in three sets of
ftur consecutive years each, the rate of augmentation of the
income increases constantly. It is, e.g., for that arising from
profits between 1853 to 1857, 1.73% yearly; 1857-1861,
2.74%, and for 1861-64, 9.30% yearly. The sum of the in
comes of the United Kingdom that come under the income
tax was in 1856 £307,068,898; in 1859, £328,127,416; in
1862, £351,745,241; in 1863, £359,142,897; in 1864, £362,-
462,279; in 1865, £385,530,020.2

The accumulaton of capital was attended at the same time
by its concentration and centralisation. Although no official
statistics of agriculture existed for England (they did for Ire
land), they were voluntarily given in 10 counties. These sta
tistics gave the result that from 1851 to 1861 the number of
farms of less than 100 acres had fallen from 31,583 to 26,597,
so that 5016 had been thrown together into larger farms.3
From 1815 to 1825 no personal estate of more than £1,000,-
000 came under the succession duty; from 1825 to 1855, how
ever, 8 did; and 4 from 1856 to June, 1859), i.e., in 4£ years.4
The centralisation will, however, be best seen from a short
analysis of the Income Tax Schedule D (profits, exclusive of
farms, &c.), in the years 1864 and 1865. I note beforehand
that incomes from this source pay income tax on everything
over £60. These incomes liable to taxation in England,

1 Ibidem.

1 These figures are sufficient for comparison, but, taken absolutely, are raise, since,
perhaps, £100,000,000 of income are annually not declared. The complaints of the
Inland Revenue Commissioners of systematic fraud, especially on the part of the
commercial and industrial classes, are repeated in each of their reports. So e.g., "A
Joint-stock company returns £6000 as assessable profits, the surveyor raises the
amount to £88,000, and upon that sum duty is ultimately paid. Another company
which returns £190,000 is finally compelled to admit that the true return should
be £250,000." (Ibid., p. 42.)

3 Census, &c., 1. c., p. 29. John Slight's assertion that 150 landlords own half of
England, and 12 half the Scotch soil, has never been refuted.

• Fourth Report, &c., of Inland Revenue. Lond., 1860, p. 17,

714

Capitalist Production.

Wales, and Scotland, amounted in 1864 to £95,844,222, in
1865 to £105,435,579.* The number of persons taxed were
in 1864, 308,416, out of a population of 23,891,009; in 1865,
332,431 out of a population of 24,127,003. The following
table shows the distribution of these incomes in the two years :

YEAE ENDING APBIL 5TH, 1864. YEAB ENDING APRIL STH, 1865.

INCOME FBOM PROFITS.

PERSONS.

INCOME FROM PROFITS.

PERSONS.

Total Income £95,844,222

308,416

Total Income £105,435,738

332,4^1

of these 57,028,289

23,334

of these 64,554,297

24,265

36,415,225

3,619

„ 42,535,576

4,021

22,809,781
8,744,762

832

„ 27,555,313
11,077,238

973
107

In 1855 there were produced in the United Kingdom 61,-
453,079 tons of coal, of value £16,113,167; in 1864, 92,787.-
873 tons, of value £23,197,968 ; in 1855, 3,218,154 tons of
pig-iron, of value £8,045,385 ; 1864, 4,767,951 tons, of valu-3
£11,919,877. In 1854 the length of the railroads worked in
the United Kingdom was 8054 miles, with a paid-up capital
of £286,068,794; in 1864 the length was 12,789 miles, witL
capital paid up of £425,719,613. In 1854 the total sum of
the exports and imports of the United Kingdom was £268,-
210,145 ; in 1865, £489,923,285. The following table show*
the movement of the exports :

1846
1849
1856
1860
1865
1866

£58,842,377
63,596,052
115,826,948
135,842,817
165,862,402
188,917,5632

1 These are the net incomes after certain legally authorized abatements.
1 At this moment, March, 1867, the Indian and Chinese market is again over
stocked by the consignments of the British cotton manufacturers. In 1866 a re-

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 7*5

After these few examples one understands the cry of tri
umph of the Registrar-General of the British people: "Rap
idly as the population has increased, it has not kept pace with
the progress of industry and wealth." l

Let us turn now to the direct agents of this industry, or the
producers of this wealth, to the working cass. "It is one of
the most melancholy features in the social state of this coun
try," says Gladstone, "that while there was a decrease in the
consuming powers of the people, and while there was an in
crease in the privations and distress of the labouring class and
operatives, there was at the same time a constant accumula
tion of wealth in the upper classes, and a constant increase of
capital."2 Thus spake this unctuous minister in the House of
Commons on February 13th, 1843. On April 16th, 1863, 20
years later, in the speech in which he introduced his Budget:
"From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country in-
creased by 6 per cent .... In the 8 years from 1853
to 1861 it had increased from the basis taken in 1853 by 20
per cent ! The fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible
.... this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power
.... entirely confined to classes of property .... must be
of indirect benefit to the labouring population, because it
cheapens the commodities of general consumption. While the
rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less
poor. At any-rate, whether the extremes of poverty are less,
I do not presume to say." 3 How lame an anti-climax ! If the
working-class has remained "poor," only "less poor" in propor
tion as it produces for the wealthy class "an intoxicating aug-

duction in wages of 5 per cent, took place amongst the cotton operatives. In 1867,
as consequence of a similar operation, there was a strike of 20,000 men at Preston.
Note to the 4th German edition. — This was a prelude to the crisis, which broke out
soon afterwards. — F. E.

Census, &c., 1. c., p. 11.

1 Gladstone in the House of Commons, Feb. 13th, 1843. "Times," Feb. 14th, 1848.
— "It is one of the most melancholy features in the social state of this country that
we see, beyond the possibility of denial, that while there is at this moment a de
crease in the consuming powers of the people, an increase of the pressure of priva
tions and distress; there is at the same time a constant accumulation of wealth in the
upper classes, an increase of the luxuriousness of their habits, and of their means
of enjoyment." (Hansard, 13th Feb.)

* Gladstone in the House of Commons, April 16th, 1863. "Morning Star,"
April 17th.

71 6 Capitalist Production.

mentation of wealth and power," then it has remained rela
tively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not les
sened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth
have. As to the cheapening of the means of subsistence, the
official statistics, e.g., the accounts of the London Orphan Asy
lum, show an increase in price of 20% for the average of the
three years 1860-1862, compared with 1851-1853. In the
following three years, 1863-1865, there was a progressive rise
in the price of meat, butter, milk, sugar, salt, coals, and a
number of other necessary means of subsistence.1 Gladstone's
next Budget speech of April 7th, 1864, is a Pindaric dithj-
rambus on the advance of surplus-value-making and the hap
piness of the people tempered by "poverty." He speaks of
masses "on the border" of pauperism, of branches of trade in
which "wages have not increased," and finally sums up tho
happiness of the working class in the words: "human life i;5
but, in nine cases out of ten, a struggle for existence." 2 Pro
fessor Fawcett, not bound like Gladstone by official considera
tions, declares roundly : "I do not, of course, deny that money
wages have been augmented by this increase of capital (in the
last ten years), but this apparent advantage is to a great ex
tent lost, because many of the necessaries of life are becoming
dearer" (he believes because of the fall in value of the precious
metals) .... "the rich grow rapidly richer, whilst there is
no perceptible advance in the comfort enjoyed by the indus-

1 See the official accounts in the Blue Book: "Miscellaneous statistics of the United
Kingdom," Part vi., London, 1866, pp. 260-273, passim. Instead of the statistics
of orphan asylums, &c.r the declamations of the ministerial journals in recommend
ing dowries for the Royal children might also serve. The greater dearness of the
means of subsistence is never forgotten there.

8 Gladstone, House of Commons, 7th April, 1864. — "The Hansard version runs:
"Again, and yet more at large — what is human life, but, in the majority of cases, a
struggle for existence." The continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's Budget
speeches of 1863 and 1864 were characterised by an English writer by the following
quotation from Moliere:

"Voila 1'homme en effet. II va du blanc au noir,
II condamne au matin ses sentiments du soir.
Importun a tout autre, a soi-meme incommode,
II change a tout moment d'esprit comme de mode."

(The Theory of Exchange*, &c., London, 1864, p. 186.)

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 717

trial classes .... They (the labourers) become almost
the slaves of the tradesman, to whom they owe money."1

In the chapters on the "working day" and "machinery," the
reader has seen under what circumstances the British working-
class created an "intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power" for the propertied classes. There we were chiefly
concerned with the social functioning of the labourer. But
for a full elucidation of the law of accumulation, his condition
outside the workshop must also be looked at, his condition as
to food and dwelling. The limits of this book compel us to
concern ourselves chiefly with the worst paid part of the
industrial proletariat, and with the agricultural labourers,
who together form the majority of the working-class.

But first, one word on official pauperism, or on that part of
the working-class which has forfeited its condition of existence
(the sale of labour-power), and vegetates upon public alms.
The official list of paupers numbered in England2 851,369 per
sons; in 1856, 977,767; in 1865, 971,433. In consequence
of the cotton famine, it grew in the years 1863 and 1864 to
1,079,382 and 1,014,978. The crisis of 1866, which fell most
heavily on London, created in this centre of the world-market,
more populous than the kingdom of Scotland, an increase of
pauperism for the year 1866 of 19.5% compared with 1865,
and of 24.4% compared with 1864, and a still greater increase
for the first months of 1867 as compared with 1866. From
the analysis of the statistics of pauperism, two points are to be
taken. On the one hand, the fluctuation up and down of the
number of paupers, reflects the periodic changes of the indus
trial cycle. On the other, the official statistics become more
and more misleading as to die actual extent of pauperism in
proportion as, with the accumulation of capital, the class-
struggle, and, therefore, the class-consciousness of the work
ing-men, develope. E.g., the barbarity in the treatment of
the paupers, at which the English Press (The Times, Pall
Mall Gazette, etc.) have cried out so loudly during the last

1 H. Fawcett, 1. c., pp. 67-82. As to the increasing dependence of labourers on
the retail shopkeepers, this is the consequence of the frequent oscillations and in
terruptions of their employment.

* Wales here is always included in England.

718 Capitalist Production.

two years, is of ancient date. F. Engels showed in 1844 ex
actly the same horrors, exactly the same transient canting out
cries of "sensational literature." But frightful increase of
"deaths by starvation" in London during the last ten years
proves beyond doubt the growing horror in which the work
ing-people hold the slavery of the workhouse, that place cf
punishment for misery.1

(b). The badly paid Strata of the British Industrial Class.

During the Cotton famine of 1862, Dr. Smith was charged
by the Privy Council with an inquiry into the conditions o:?
nourishment of the distressed operatives in Lancashire and
Cheshire. His observations during many preceding years hac
led him to the conclusion that "to avert starvation diseases,'''
the daily food of an average woman ought to contain at least
3,900 grains of carbon with 180 grains of nitrogen; the daily
food of an average man, at least 4,300 grains of carbon with
200 grains of nitrogen ; for women, about the same quantity of
nutritive elements as are contained in 2 Ibs of good wheaten
bread, for men 1-9 more ; for the weekly average of adult men
and women, at least 28,600 grains of carbon and 1,330 grains
of nitrogen. His calculation was practically confirmed in a
surprising manner by its agreement with the miserable quan
tity of nourishment to which want had forced down the con
sumption of the cotton operatives. This was, in December,
1862, 29,211 grains of carbon, and 1,295 grains of nitrogen
weekly.

In the year 1863, the Privy Council ordered an inquiry into
the state of distress of the worst-nourished part of the English
working-class. Dr. Simon, medical officer to the Privy Coun
cil, chose for this work the above-mentioned Dr. Smith. His
inquiry ranges on the one hand over the agricultural labourers,
on the other, over silk-weavers, needle-women, kid-glovers,

1 A peculiar light is thrown on the advance made since the time of Adam Smith,
by the fact that by him the word "workhouse" is still occasionally used as synony
mous with "manufactory;" e.g., the opening of his chapter on the division of
labour; "those employed in every different branch of the work can often be col-
Jccted into the same workhouse."

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 719

stocking-weavers, glove-weavers, and shoe-makers. The latter
categories are, with the exception of the stocking-weavers,
exclusively town-dwellers. It was made a rule in the inquiry
to select in each category the most healthy families, and those
comparatively in the best circumstances.

As a general result it was found that ain only one of the
examined classes of in-door operatives did the average nitrogen-
supply just exceed, while in another it nearly reached, the
estimated standard of bare sufficiency [i.e., sufficient to avert
starvation diseases], and that in two classes there was defect —
in one a very large defect — of both nitrogen and carbon.
Moreover, as regards the examined families of the agricultural
population, it appeared that more than a fifth were with less
than the estimated sufficiency of carbonaceous food, that more
than one third were with less than the estimated sufficiency of
nitrogeneous food, and that in three counties (Berkshire, Ox
fordshire, and Somersetshire), insufficiency of nitrogenous
food was the average local diet."1 Among the Agricultural
labourers, those of England, the wealthiest part of the United
Kingdom, were the worst fed.2 The insufficiency of food
among the agricultural labourers, fell, as a rule, chiefly on the
women and children, for "the man must eat to do his work."
Still greater penury ravaged the town-workers examined.
"They are so ill fed that assuredly among them there must be
many cases of severe and injurious privation." 8 ("Privation"
of the capitalist all this ! i.e., "abstinence" from paying for the
means of subsistence absolutely necessary for the mere vegeta
tion of his hands.")

The following table shows the conditions of nourishment
of the above-named categories of purely town-dwelling work
people, as compared with the minimum assumed by Dr. Smith,
and with the food-allowance of the cotton operatives during
the time of their greatest distress:

1 Public Health. Sixth Report, 1864, p. IS.
•1. c. p. 17.
•L c. p. 13.

Capitalist Production.

BOTH SEXES.

AVERAGE
WEEKLY
CARBON.

AVERAGE
WEEKLY
NITROGEN.

Five in-door occupations -

28,876 grains

1,192 grains

Unemployed Lancashire Operatives

28,211 „

1,295 „

Minimum quantity to be allowed
to the Lancashire Operatives,
equal number of males and
females, ....

28,600 „

1,330 ,,i

One half, or y6^- of the industrial labour categories investi*
gated, had absolutely no beer, 28% no milk. The weekly aver
age of the liquid means of nourishment, in the families variei
from seven ounces in the needle-women to 24f ounces in the
stocking-makers. The majority of those who did not obtain
milk were needle-women in London. The quantity of bread-
stuffs consumed weekly varied from 7f Ibs for the needle-women
to 11^ Ibs for the shoemakers, and gave a total average of 99
Ibs. per adult weekly. Sugar (treacle, etc.) varied from 4
ounces weekly for the kid-glovers to 11 ounces for the stocking
makers ; and the total average per week for all categories waf
8 ounces per adult weekly. Total weekly average of buttei
(fat, etc.) 5 ounces per adult. The weekly average of meat
(bacon, etc.) varied from 7J ounces for the silk-weavers, to
18 J ounces for the kid-glovers; total average for the differ
ent categories 13.6 ounces. The weekly cost of food per adult,
gave the following average figures ; silk- weavers 2s 2|d.,
needle-women 2s. 7d., kid-glovers 2s. 9|d., shoemakers 2s 7|d.,
stocking weavers 2s. 6Jd. For the silk-weavers of Maccles-
field the average was only Is. 8 Jd. The worst categories were
the needle- women, silk- weavers and kid-glovers.2 Of these
facts, Dr. Simon in his General Health Report says': "That
cases are innumerable in which defective diet is the cause or
the aggravator of disease, can be affirmed by any one who ia
conversant with poor law medical practice, or with the ward*

•1. c., Appendix p. 239.
•L c. pp. 232, 283.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 721

and out-patient rooms of hospitals. . . . Yet in this point
of view, there is, in my opinion, a very important sanitary
context to be added. It must be remembered that privation
of food is very reluctantly borne, and that as a rule great poor
ness of diet will only come when other privations have pre
ceded it. Long before insufficiency cf diet is a matter of
hygienic concern, long before the physiologist would think of
counting the grains of nitrogen and carbon which intervene
between life and starvation, the household will have been
utterly destitute of material comfort; clothing and fuel will
have been even scantier than food — against inclemencies of
weather there will have been no adequate protection — dwelling
space will have been stinted to the degree in which over
crowding produces or increases disease ; of household utensils
and furniture there will have been scarcely any — even cleanli
ness will have been found costly or difficult, and if there still
be self-respectful endeavours to maintain it, every such en
deavour will represent additional pangs of hunger. The home,
too, will be where shelter can be cheapest bought; in quarters
where commonly there is least fruit of sanitary supervision,
least drainage, least scavenging, least suppression of public
nuisances, least or worst water supply, and, if in town, least
light and air. Such are the sanitary dangers to which poverty
is almost certainly exposed, when it is poverty enough to im
ply scantiness of food. And while the sum of them is of
terrible magnitude against life, the mere scantiness of food is

in itself of very serious moment These are

painful reflections, especially when it is remembered that the
poverty to which they advert is not the deserved poverty of
idleness. In all cases it is the poverty of working popula
tions. Indeed, as regards the indoor operatives, the work
which obtains the scanty pittance of food, is for the most part
excessively prolonged. Yet evidently it is only in a qualified

sense that the work can be deemed self-supporting

And on a very large scale the nominal self-support can be only
a circuit, longer or shorter, to pauperism."1

The intimate connexion between the pangs of hunger of the

M. C. pp. 14, 16.

722 Capitalist Production.

most industrious layers of the working class, and the extrava
gant consumption, coarse or refined, of the rich, for which
capitalist accumulation is the basis, reveals itself only when the
economic laws are known. It is otherwise with the "housing
of the poor." Every unprejudiced observer sees that the
greater the centralisation of the means of production, the
greater is the corresponding heaping together of the labourers,
within a given space; that therefore the swifter capitalistic
accumulation, the more miserable are the dwellings of the
working-people. "Improvements" of towns, accompanying
the increase of wealth, by the demolition of badly built quar
ters, the erection of palaces for banks, warehouses, &c., the
widening of streets for business traffic, for the carriages of lux
ury, and for the introduction of tramways, &c., drive away the
poor into even worse and more crowded hiding places. Or.
the other hand, every one knows that the dearness of dwellings
is in inverse ratio to their excellence, and that the mines of
misery are exploited by house speculators with more profit or
less cost than ever were the mines of Potosi. The antagonistic
character of capitalist accumulation, and therefore of the cap
italistic relations of property generally,1 is here so evident,
that even the official English reports on this subject teem with
heterodox onslaughts on "property and its rights."- With the
development of industry, with the accumulation of capital,
with the growth and "improvement of towns, the evil makes
such progress that the mere fear of contagious diseases which
do not spare even "respectability," brought into existence from
1847 to 1864 no less than 10 Acts of Parliament on sanitation,
and that the frightened bourgeois in some towns, as Liverpool,
Glasgow, &c., took strenuous measures through their munici
palities. Nevertheless Dr. Simon, in his report of 1865, says:
"Speaking generally it may be said that the evils are uncon
trolled in England." By order of the Privy Council in 1864,
an inquiry was made into the conditions of the housing of the

1 "In no particular have the rights of persons been so avowedly and shamefully
sacrificed to the rights of property as in regard to the lodging of the labouring class.
Every large <own may be looked upon as a place of human sacrifice, a shrine where
thousands p jss yearly through the fire as offerings to the moloch of avarice." S.
Laing, 1. c p. 150.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 723

agricultural labourers, in 1865 of the poorer classes in the
towns. The results of the admirable work of Dr. Julian
Hunter are to be found in the seventh (1865) and eighth
(1866) reports on "Public Health." To the agricultural la
bourers, I shall come later. On the condition of town dwell
ings, I quote, as preliminary, a general remark of Dr. Simon.
"Although my official point of view," he says, "is one ex
clusively physical, common humanity requires that the other
aspect of this evil should not be ignored. ... In its
higher degrees it [i.e., overcrowding] almost necessarily in
volves such negation of all delicacy, such unclean confusion of
bodies and bodily functions, such exposure of animal and
sexual nakedness, as is rather bestial than human., To be sub
ject to these influences is a degradation which must become
deeper and deeper for those on whom it continues to work.
To children who are born under its curse, it must often be a
very baptism into infamy. And beyond all measure hopeless is
the wish that persons thus circumstanced should ever in other
respects aspire to that atmosphere of civilization which has its
essence in physical and moral cleanliness."1

London takes the first place in overcrowded habitations,
absolutely unfit for human beings, "He feels clear," says Dr.
Hunter, "on two points; first, that there are about 20 large
colonies in London, of about 10,000 persons each, whose miser
able condition exceeds almost anything he has seen elsewhere
in England, and is almost entirely the result of their bad house
accommodation ; and second, that the crowded and delapidated
condition of the houses of these colonies is much worse than
was the case 20 years ago."2 "It is not too much to say that
life in parts of London and Newcastle is infernal."3

Further, the better-off part of the working class, together

1 Public Health, eighth report, 1865, p. 14, note.

•1. c. p. 89. With reference to the children in these colonies, Dr. Hunter says:
"People are not now alive to tell us how children were brought up before this age of
dense agglomerations of poor began, and he would be a rash prophet who should tell
us what future behaviour is to be expected from the present growth of children, who,
under circumstances probably never before paralleled in this country, are now com
pleting their education for future practice, as "dangerous classes" by sitting up
half the night with persons of every age, half naked, drunken, obscene, and quar
relsome." (1. c. p. 66.)

•L c. p. 62.

724 Capitalist Production.

with the small shopkeepers and other elements of the lower
middle class, falls in London more and more under the curse
of these vile conditions of dwelling, in proportion as "improve
ments," and with them the demolition of old streets and houses,
advance, as factories and the afflux of human beings grow in
the metropolis, and finally as house rents rise with the ground
rents. "Rents have become so heavy that few labouring men
can afford more than one room."1 There is almost no house-
property in London that is not overburdened with a number of
middlemen. For the price of land in London is always very
high in comparison with its yearly revenue, and therefore
every buyer speculates on getting rid of it again at a jury
price (the expropriation valuation fixed by jurymen), or o.i
pocketing an extraordinary increase of value arising from th3
neighbourhood of some large establishment. As a consequence
of this there is a regular trade in the purchase of "fag-ends of
leases." Gentlemen in this business may be fairly expected
to do as they do — get all they can from the tenants while they
have them, and leave as little as they can for their successors."11
The rents are weekly, and these gentlemen run no risk. Ir
consequence of the making of railroads in the City, "the
spectacle has lately been seen in the East of London of a
number of families wandering about some Saturday night with
their scanty worldly goods on their backs, without any resting
place but the workhouse."8 The workhouses are already over
crowded, and the "improvements" already sanctioned by Par
liament are only just begun. If labourers are driven away by
the demolition of their old houses, they do not leave their old
parish, or at most they settle down on its borders, as near as
they can get to it. "They try, of course, to remain as near as
possible to their workshops. The inhabitants do not go beyond
the same or the next parish, parting their two-room tenements
into single rooms, and crowding even those. . . . Even at
an advanced rent, the people who are displaced will hardly be
able to get an accommodation so good as the meagre one they

1 Report of the Officer of Health of St. Martins-in-the-Fields, 1865.
•Public Health, eighth report, 1865, p. 91.
•1. c. p. 88.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 725

have left. . . . Half the workmen ... of the
Strand . . . walked two miles to their work."1 This
same Strand, a main thoroughfare which gives strangers an
imposing idea of the wealth of London, may serve as an exam
ple of the packing together of human beings in that town. In
one of its parishes, the Officer of Health reckoned 581 persons
per acre, although half the width of the Thames was reckoned
in. It will be self-understood that every sanitary measure,
which, as has been the case Mtherto in London, hunts the la
bourers from one quarter, by demolishing uninhabitable
houses, serves only to crowd them together yet more closely in
another. "Either," says Dr. Hunter, "the whole proceeding
will of necessity stop as an absurdity, or the public compas
sion (!) be effectually aroused to the obligation which may
now be without exaggeration called national, of supplying
cover to those who by reason of their naving no capital, can
not provide it for themselves, though they can by periodical
payments reward those who will provide it for them."2 Ad
mire this capitalistic justice ! The owner of land, of houses,
the business man, when expropriated by "improvements" such
as railroads, the building of new streets, &c., not only receives
full indemnity. He must, according to law, human and di
vine, be comforted for his enforced "abstinence" over and
above this by a thumping profit The labourer, with his wife
and child and chattels, is thrown out into the street, and — •
if he crowds in too large numbers towards quarters of the
town where the vestries insist on decency, he is prosecuted in
the name of sanitation !

Except London, there was at the beginning of the 19th
century no single town in England of 100,000 inhabitants.
Only five had more than 50,000. Now there are 28 towns
with more than 50,000 inhabitants. "The result of this
change is not only that the class of town people is enormously
increased, but the old close-packed little towns are now centres,
built round on every side, open nowhere to air, and being no
longer agreeable to the rich are abandoned by them for the
pleasanter outskirts. The successors of these rich are occupy-

M. c. p. 88, »L c. p. 8«.

726 Capitalist Production.

ing the larger houses at the rate of a family to each room
[. . . and find accommodation for two or three lodgers
.] and a population, for which the houses were not
intended, and quite unfit, has been created, whose surround
ings are truly degrading to the adults and ruinous to the chil
dren/'1 The more rapidly capital accumulates in an indus
trial or commercial town, the more rapidly flows the stream
of exploitable human material, the more miserable are the im
provised dwellings of the labourers.

Xewcastle-on-Tyne, as the centre of a coal and iron district
of growing productiveness, takes the next place after London
in the housing inferno. Xot less than 34,000 persons Iiv3
there in single rooms. Because of their absolute danger to
the community, houses in great numbers have lately been de
stroyed by the authorities in Newcastle and Gateshead. Tho
building of new houses progresses very slowly, business very
quickly. The town was, therefore, in 1865, more full than
ever. Scarcely a room was to let. Dr. Embleton, of the New
castle Fever Hospital, says : "There can be little doubt that
the great cause of the continuance and spread of the typhus has
been the overcrowding of human beings, and the uncleanliness
of their dwellings. The rooms, in which labourers in many
cases live, are situated in confined and unwholesome yards or
courts, and for space, light, air, and cleanliness, are models of
insufficiency and insalubrity, and a disgrace to any civilised
community ; in them men, women, and children lie at night
huddled together ; and as regards the men, the night-shift suc
ceed the day-shift, and the day-shift the night-shift in un
broken series for some time together, the beds having scarcely
time to cool; the whole house badly supplied with water, and
worse with privies; dirty, unventilated, and pestiferous."2
The price per week of such lodgings ranges from S-l. to 3s.
"The town of Newcastle-on-Tyne," says Dr. Hunter, "contains
a sample of the finest tribe of our countrymen, often sirnk by
external circumstances of house and street into an almosf
age degradation."3

»65 and 56. 2 1. c. p. 149. • 1. c. p. 5*

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 727

As result of the ebbing and flowing of capital and labour,
the state of the dwellings of an industrial town may to-day be
bearable, to-morrow hideous. Or the sedileship of the town
may have pulled itself together for the removal of the most
shocking abuses. To-morrow, like a swarm of locusts, come
crowding in masses of ragged Irishmen or decayed English
agricultural labourers. They are stowed away in cellars and
lofts, or the hitherto respectable labourer's dwelling is trans
formed into a lodging-house, whose personnel changes as
quickly as the billets in the 30 years' war. Example: Brad
ford (Yorkshire). There the municipal philistine was just
busied with urban improvements. Besides, there were still in
Bradford, in 1861, 1751 uninhabited houses. But now comes
that revival of trade which the mildly liberal Mr. Forster, the
negro's friend, recently crowed over with so much grace.
With the revival of trade came of course an overflow from the
waves of the ever fluctuating "reserve-army" or "relative sur
plus population." The frightful cellar habitations and rooms
registered in the list,1 which Dr. Hunter obtained from the
agent of an Insurance Company, were for the most part in
habited by well-paid labourers. They declared that they
would willingly pay for better dwellings if they were to bo
Meanwhile, they become degraded, they fall ill, one and

1 COLLECTING AGENTS' LIST (BRADFORD).

Houses.

Vulcan Street, No. 122 1 room 16 persons

Lumley Street, No. 13 1 ' 11

Bower Street, No. 41 1 " 11 "

Portland Street, No. 113 1 " 10 "

Hardy Street, No. 17 1 ' 10

North Street, No. 18 1 ' 16

North Street, No. 17 1 " 13

Wymer Street, No. 191 1 " 8 adults

Jowett Street, No. 56 1 " 12 persons

George Street, No. 150 1 " 3 families

Rifle Court Marygate, No. JJ 1 room 11 persons

Marshall Street, No. 28 1 ' 10

Marshall Street, No. 28 3 ' 3 families

George Street, No. 128 1 ' 18 persons

George Street, No. 139 1 " 16

Edward Street, No. 4 1 " 17

Gwrge Street, No. 49 1 2 famflie*

Vork Street, No. 34 1 ' 2

Salt Pie Street (bottom) 2 " 26 persons

728 Capitalist Production.

all, whilst the mildly liberal Forster, M.P., sheds tears over
the blessings of free-trade, and the profits of the eminent men
of Bradford who deal in worsted. In the Report of Septem
ber, 1865, Dr. Bell, one of the poor law doctors of Bradford,
ascribes the frightful mortality of fever-patients in his district
to the nature of their dwellings. "In one small cellar meas
uring 1500 cubic feet . . . there are ten persons. . . .
Vincent Street, Green Aire Place, and the Leys include 223
houses having 1.450 inhabitants, 435 beds, and 36 privies.
The beds — and in that term I include any roll of
dirty old rags, or an armful of shavings — have an average of
3.3 person to each, many have 5 and 6 persons to each, and
some people, I am told, are absolutely without beds1; they sleep
in their ordinary clothes, on the bare boards — young men anc
women, married and unmarried, all together. I need scarceh
add that many of these dwellings are dark, damp, dirty, stink
ing holes, utterly unfit for human habitations; they are the
centres from which disease and death are distributed amongst
those in better circumstances, who have allowed them to fester
in our midst."1

Bristol takes the third place after London in the misery of
its dwellings. "Bristol, where the blankest poverty and
domestic misery abound in the wealthiest town of Europe."2

c. The Nomad Population.

We turn now to a class of people whose origin is agricul
tural, but whose occupation is in great part industrial. They
are the light infantry of capital, thrown by it, according to its
needs, now to this point, now to that. When they are not un
the march, they "camp." Nomad labour is used for various

Ctllars.

Regent Square 1 cellar 8 persons

Acre Street 1 " 7 "

33 Roberts Court 1 " 7 "
Back Pratt Street, used as a

braiier's shop. 1 " 7 "

27 Ebenezer Street I " 0 " 1. c, p. HI

H. c. p. 114.
M. c. p. 50.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 729

operation of building and draining, brick-making, lime-burn
ing, railway-making, &<;. A flying column of pestilence, it
carries into the places in whose neighbourhood it pitches its
camp, small-pox, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, &C.1 In under
takings that involve much capital outlay, such as railways, &c.,
the contractor himself generally provides his army with
wooden huts and the like, thus improvising villages without
any sanitary provisions, outside the control of the local boards,
very profitable to the contractor, who exploits the labourers in
two-fold fashion — as soldiers of industry and as tenants. Ac
cording as the wooden hut contains 1, 2, or 3 holes, its inhab
itant, navvy, or whatever he may be, has to pay 1, 3, or 4
shillings weekly.2 One example will suffice. In September,
18G4, Dr. Simon reports that the Chairman of the Nuisances
Removal Committee of the parish of Sevenoaks sent the fol
lowing denunciation to Sir George Grey, Home Secretary: —
"Small-pox cases were rarely heard of in this parish until
about twelve months ago. Shortly before that time, the works
for a railway from Lewisham to Tunbridge were commenced
here, and, in addition to the principal works being in the im
mediate neighbourhood of this town, here was also established
the depot for the whole of the works, so that a large number
of persons was of necessity employed here. As cottage ac
commodation could not be obtained for them all, huts were
built in several places along the line of the works by the con
tractor, Mr. Jay, for their especial occupation. These huts
possessed no ventilation nor drainage, and, besides, were neces
sarily overcrowded, because each occupant had to accommodate
lodgers, whatever the number in his own family might be,
although there were only two rooms to each tenement. The
consequences were, according to the medical report we re
ceived, that in the night-time these poor people were com
pelled to endure all the horror of suffocation to avoid the
pestiferous smells arising from the filthy, stagnant water, and
the privies close under the windows. Complaints were at
length made to the Nuisances Removal Committee by a medi
cal gentleman who had occasion to visit these huts, and he spoke

» Public Health. Seventh Report. 1864, p. 18. *l c. p. 165.

730 Capitalist Production.

of their condition as dwellings in the most severe terms, and he
expressed his fears that some very serious consequence? might
ensue, unless some sanitary measures were adopted. About
a year ago, Mr. Jay promised to appropriate a hut> to which
persons in his employ, who were suffering from contagious
diseases, might at once be removed. He repeated that prom
ise on the 23rd July last, but although since the date of the
last promise there have been several cases of small-pox in
his huts, and two deaths from the same disease, yet he has
taken no steps whatever to carry out his promise. On the 9th
September instant, Mr. Kelson, surgeon, reported to me further
cases of small-j>ox in the same huts, and he described their
condition as most disgraceful. I should add, for your (the
Home Secretary's information that) an isolated house, called
the Pest-house, which is set apart for parishioners who might
be suffering from infectious diseases, has been continually
occupied by such patients for many months past, and is also
now occupied ; that in one family five children died from small
pox and fever; that from the 1st April to the 1st September
this year, a period of five months, there have been no fewer
than ten deaths from small-pox in the parish, four of them
being in the huts already referred to ; that it is impossible to
ascertain the exact number of persons who have suffered from
that disease, although they are known to be many, from the
fact of the families keeping it as private as possible."1

The labourers in coal and other mines belong to the best paid
categories of the British proletariat. The price at which they
buy their wages was shown on an earlier page.2 Here I
merely cast a hurried glance over the conditions of their dwell-

1 1. c., p. 18, Note. — The Relieving Officer of the Chapel-en-le-Frith Union
reported to the Registrar-General as follows: — "At Doveholes, a number of small
excavations have been made into a large hillock of lime ashes (the refuse of lime
kilns), and which are used as dwellings, and occupied by labourers and others em
ployed in the construction of a railway now in course of construction through that
neighbourhood. The excavations are small and damp, and have no drains or privies
about them, and not the slightest means of ventilation except up a hole pulled
through the top, and used for a chimney. In consequence of this defect, small-pox
has been raging for some time, and some deaths [amongst the troglodytes] have been
caused by them." (1. c., note 2.)

1 The details given at the end of Part IV. refer especially to the labourers in
coal mines. On the still worse condition in metal mines, see the very conscientious
Report of the Royal Commission of 1864.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 731

ings. As a rule, the exploiter of a mine, whether its owner or
his tenant, builds a number of cottages for his hands. They
receive cottages and coal for firing afor nothing" — i.e., these
form part of their wages, paid in kind. Those who are not
lodged in this way receive in compensation £4 per annum.
The mining districts attract with rapidity a large population,
made up of the miners themselves, and the artisans, shop
keepers, &c., that group themselves around them. The ground-
rents are high, as they are generally where population is dense.
The master tries, therefore, to run up, within the smallest
space possible at the mouth of the pit, just so many cottages as
are necessary to pack together his hands and their families.
If new mines are opened in the neighbourhood, or old ones are
again set working, the pressure increases. In the construction
of the cottages, only one point of view is of moment, the
"abstinence" of the capitalist from all expenditure that is not
absolutely unavoidable. "The lodging which is obtained by
the pitmen and other labourers connected with the collieries of
Northumberland and Durban 5," says Dr. Julian Hunter, "is
perhaps, on the whole, the worst and the dearest of which any
large specimens can be found in England, the similar parishes
of Monmouthshire excepted. . . . The extreme badness is
in the high number of men found in one room, in the smallnesa
of the ground-plot on which a great number of houses are
thrust, the want of water, the absence of privies, and the fre
quent placing of one house on the top of another, or distribu
tion into flats, . . . the lessee acts as if the whole colony
were encamped, not resident."1

"In pursuance of my instructions," says Dr. Stevens, "I
visited most of the large colliery villages in the Durham
Union. . . . With very few exceptions, the general state
ment that no means are taken to secure the health of the in
habitants would be true of all of them. . . . All colliers
are bound ['bound/ an expression which, like bondage, dates
from the age of serfdom] to the colliery lessee or owner for
twelve months. ... If the colliers express discontent, or
5n any way annoy the Viewer,' a mark or memorandum is

• i. c., pp. 180, 182.

732 Capitalist Production.

made against their names, and, at the annual 'binding,' such
men are turned off. ... It appears to me that no part
of the 'truck system* could be worse than what obtains in these
densely-populated districts. The collier is bound to take a^
part of his hiring a house surrounded with pestiferous influ
ences ; he cannot help himself, and it appears doubtful whether
anyone else can help him except his proprietor (he is, to all
intents and purposes, a serf), and his proprietor first consults
his balance-sheet, and the result is tolerably certain. The col
lier is also often supplied with water by the proprietor, which,
whether it be good or bad, he has to pay for, or rather he
suffers a deduction for from his wages."1

In conflict with "public opinion," or even with the Officers
of Health, capital makes no difficulty about "justifying" the
conditions partly dangerous, partly degrading, to which it con
fines the working and domestic life of the labourer, on the
ground that they are necessary for profit. It is the same thing
when capital "abstains" from protective measures against
dangerous machinery in the factory, from appliances for ven
tilation and for safety in mines, &c. It is the same here with
the housing of the miners. Dr. Simon, medical officer of the
Privy Council, in his official Report says: "In apology for
the wretched household accommodation . . . it is alleged
that mines are commonly worked on lease; that the duration
of the lessee's interest (which in collieries is commonly for 21
years), is not so long that he should deem it worth his while
to create good accommodation for his labourers, and for the
tradespeople and others whom the work attracts; that even
if he were disposed to act liberally in the matter, this disposi
tion would commonly be defeated by his landlord's tendency
to fix on him, as ground rent, an exorbitant additional charge
for the privilege of having on the surface of the ground the
decent and comfortable village which the labourers of the sub
terranean property ought to inhabit, and that prohibitory
price (if not actual prohibition) equally excludes others who
might desire to build. It would be foreign to the purpose of
this report to enter upon any discussion of the merits of the

ll c., pp. 615, 617.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation 733

above apology. Xor here is it even needful to consider where
it would be that, if decent accommodation were provided, the
cost . . . would eventually fall — whether on landlord, or
lessee, or labourer, or public. But in presence of such shame
ful facts as are vouched for in the annexed reports [those
of Dr. Hunter, Dr. Stevens, &c.] a remedy may well be
claimed. . . . Claims of landlordship are being so used
as to do great public wrong. The landlord in his capacity of
mine-owner invites an industrial colony to labour on his estate,
and then in his capacity of surface-owner makes it impossible
that the labourers whom he collects, should find proper lodging
where they must live. The lessee [the capitalist exploiter]
meanwhile has no pecuniary motive for resisting that division
of the bargain ; well knowing that if its latter conditions be
exorbitant, the consequences fall, not on him, that his labourers
on whom they fall have not education enough to know the
value of their sanitary rights, that neither obscenest lodging
nor foulest drinking water will be appreciable inducements
towards a 'strike.'"1

(d). Effect of Crises on ihe best paid part of the Working

Class.

Before I turn to the regular agricultural labourers, I may be
allowed to show, by one example, how industrial revulsions
affect even the best-paid, the aristocracy, of the working-class.
It will be remembered that the year 1857 brought one of the
great crises with which the industrial cycle periodically ends.
The next termination of the cycle was due in 1866. Already
discounted in the regular factory districts by the cotton famine,
which threw much capital from its wonted sphere into the
great centres of the money-market, the crisis assumed, at this
time, an especially financial character. Its outbreak in 1866
was signalised by the failure of a gigantic London Bank, im
mediately followed by the collapse of countless swindling com
panies. One of the great London branches of industry in
volved in the catastrophe was iron shipbuilding. The mag-

M. c., p. 18.

734 Capitalist Production.

nates of this trade had not only over-produced beyond all
measure during the overtrading time, but they had, besides,
engaged in enormous contracts on the speculation that credit
would be forthcoming to an equivalent extent. Now, a ter
rible reaction set in, that even at this hour (the end of March,
18G7) continues in this and other London industries.1 To
show the condition of the labourers, I quote the following from
the circumstantial report of a correspondent of the "Morning
Star," who, at the end of 1866, and beginning of 1867, visited
the chief centres of distress: "In the East End districts of
Poplar, Millwall, Greenwich, Deptford, Limehouse and Can
ning Town, at least 15,000 workmen and their families were
in a state of utter destitution, and 3000 skilled mechanics were
breaking stones in the workhouse yard (after distress of over
half a year's duration). ... I had great difficulty in
reaching the workhouse door, for a hungry crowd besieged it
They were waiting for their tickets, but the time had
not yet arrived for the distribution. The yard was a great
square place with an open shed running all round it, and sev
eral large heaps of snow covered the paving-stones in the mid
dle. In the middle, also, were little wicker-fenced spaces, like
sheep pens, where in finer weather the men worked ; but on
the day of my visit the pens were so snowed up that nobody
could sit in them. Men wrere busy, however, in the open
shed breaking paving-stones into macadam. Each man had
a big paving-stone for a seat, and he chipped away at the
rime-covered granite with a big hammer until he had broken
up, and think ! five bushels of it, and then he had done his'
day's work, and got his day's pay — threepence and an allow-

1 "Wholesale starvation of the London Poor. . . . Within the last few days
the walls of London have been placarded with large posters, bearing the following
remarkable announcement:— -'Fat oxen! Starving menl The fat oxen from their
palace of glass have gone to feed the rich in their luxurious abode, while the starving
men are left to rot and die in their wrecked dens.' The placards bearing these
ominous words are put up at certain intervals. No sooner has one set been defaced
or covered over, than a fresh set is placarded in the former, or some equally public

place This . . . reminds one of the secret revolutionary associations

which prepared the French people for the events of 1789 At this mo
ment, while English workmen with their wives and children are dying of cold and
hunger, there are millions of English gold — the produce of English labour — being
invested in Russian, Spanish, Italian, and other foreign enterprises." — "Reynold*1
Newspaper," January 20th, 1867.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 735

ance of food. In another part of the yard was a rickety little
wooden house, and when we opened the door of it, we found
it filled with men who were huddled together shoulder to
shoulder, for the warmth of one another's bodies and breath.
They were picking oakum and disputing the while as to which
could work the longest on a given quantity of food — for en
durance was the point of honour. Seven thousand . . .
in this one workhouse . . . were recipients of relief
. . . many hundreds of them . . . it appeared, were,
six or eight months ago, earning the highest wages paid to
artisans. . . . Their number would be more than doubled
by the count of those who, having exhausted all their savings,
still refuse to apply to the parish, because they have a little
left to pawn. Leaving the workhouse, I took a walk through
the streets, mostly of little one-storey houses, that abound in
the neighbourhood of Poplar. My guide was a member of the
Committee of the Unemployed. . . . My first call was on
an ironworker who had been seven and twenty weeks out of
employment. I found the man with his family sitting in a
little back room. The room was not bare of furniture, and
there was a fire in it. This was necessary to keep the naked
feet of the young children from getting frost bitten, for it was
a bitterly cold day. On a tray in front of the fire lay a quan
tity of oakum, which the wife and children were picking in
return for their allowance from the parish. The man worked
in the stone yard of the workhouse for a certain ratio of food,
and three pence per day. He had now come home to dinner
quite hungry, as he told us with a melancholy smile, and his
dinner consisted of a couple of slices of bread and dripping,
and a cup of milkless tea. . . . The next door at which
we knocked was opened by a middle-aged woman, who, with
out saying a word, led us into a little back parlour, in which
sat all her family, silent and fixedly staring at a rapidly dying
fire. Such desolation, such hopelessness was about these peo
ple and their little room, as I should not care to witness again.
'Nothing have they done, sir,' said the woman, pointing to
ber boys, 'for six and twenty weeks ; and all our money gone —
all the twenty pounds that me and father saved when timea

736 Capitalist Production.

were better, thinking it would yield a little to k-sep u^ when
we got past work. Look at it/ she said, almost fiercely, bring
ing out a bank book with all its well-kept entries of money
paid in, and money taken out, so that we could see how the
little fortune had begun with the first five shilling deposit,
and had grown by little and little to be twenty pounds, and
how it had melted down again till the sum in hand got from
pounds to shillings, and the last entry made the book as worth
less as a blank sheet. This family received relief from the
workhouse, and it furnished. them with just one scanty meal
per day. . . . Our next visit was to an iron labourer's
wife, whose husband had worked in the yards. We found her
ill from want of food, lying on a mattress in her 'clothes, and
just covered with a strip of carpet, for all the bedding had been
pawned. Two wretched children were tending her, themselves
looking as much in need of nursing as their mother. Nineteen
weeks of enforced idleness had brought them to this pass, and
while the mother told the history of that bitter past, she
moaned as if all her faith in a future that should atone for it
were dead. ... On getting outside a young fellow came
running after us; and asked us to step inside his house and see
if anything could be done for him. A young wife, two prettv
children, a cluster of pawn-tickets, and a bare room were all
he had to show."

On the after pains of the crisis of 1866, the following extract
from a Tory newspaper. It must not be forgotten that tho
East-end of London, which is here dealt with, is not only tho
seat of the iron shipbuilding mentioned above, but also o::
a so-called "home- industry" always underpaid. "A frightful
spectacle was to be seen yesterday in one part of the metro
polis. Although the unemployed thousands i*f the East Enc
did not parade with their black flags en maxse, the humar
torrent was imposing enough. Let us remember what thes*
people suffer. They are dying of hunger. Thai is the simpk
and terrible fact. There are 40,000 of them. ... ID
our presence, in one quarter of this wonderful metropolis, are
packed — next door to the most enormous accumulation of
wealth the world ever saw — cheek by jowel with this are

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 737

40,000 helpless, starving people. These thousands are now
breaking in upon the other quarters, always half-starring, they
cry their misery in our ears, they cry to Heaven, they tell
us from their miserable dwellings, that it is impossible for
them to find work, and useless for them to beg. The local
ratepayers themselves are driven by the parochial charges to
the verge of pauperism." — ("Standard," 5th April, 1866.)

As it is the fashion amongst English capitalists to quote
Belgium as the Paradise of the labourer becauses "freedom of
labour," or what is the same thing, "freedom of capital," is
there limited neither by the despotism of Trade's Unions, nor
by Factory Acts, a word or two on the "happiness" of the
Belgian labourer. Assuredly no one was more thoroughly
initiated in the mysteries of this happiness than the late M.
Ducpetiaux, inspector-general of Belgian prisons and chari
table institutions, and member of the central commission of
Belgian statistics. Let us take his work: "Budgets econo-
miques des classes ouvrieres de la Belgique, Bruxelles, 1855."
Here we find among other matters, a normal Belgian labourer's
family, whose yearly income and expenditure he calculates
on very exact data, and whose conditions of nourishment are
then compared with those of the soldier, sailor, and prisoner.
The family "consists of father, mother, and four children."
Of these 6 persons "four may be usefully employed the whole
year through." It is assumed that "there is no sick person
nor one incapable of work, among them," nor are there "ex
penses for religious, moral, and intellectual purposes, except
a very small sum for church sittings," nor "contributions to
savings banks or benefit societies," nor "expenses due to luxury
or the result of improvidence." The father and eldest son,
however, allow themselves "the use of tobacco," and on Sun
days "go to the cabaret/' for which a whole 86 centimes a
week are reckoned. "From a general compilation of wages
allowed to the labourers in different trades, it follows that
the highest average of daily wage is 1 franc 56c., for men,
89 centimes for women, 56 centimes for boys, and 55 centimes
for girls. Calculated at this rate, the resource- of the family
would amount, at the maximum, to 1068 francs a-year.

738 Capitalist Production.

. . . In the family . . . taken as typical we have
calculated all possible resources. But in ascribing wages to
the mother of the family we raise the question of the direc
tion of the household. How will its internal economy be
cared for ? Who will look after the young children ? Who
will get ready the meals, do the washing and mending? This
is the dilemma incessantly presented to the labourers."
According to this the budget of the family is:

The father 300 working days at fr. 1-56 ...

„ mother „ „ „ „ 89 ...

„ „ „ „ 56 .. ,

55 ...

Total fr. 1,068

The annual expenditure of the family would cause a deficit
upon the hypothesis that the labourer has the food of :

The man of war's man fr. 1828 . . . . Deficit fr. 760
„ soldier „ 1473 .... „ „ 405

„ prisoner „ 1112 .... „ „ 44

<rWe see that few labouring families can reach, we will net
say the average of the sailor or soldier, but even that of the
prisoner. The general average (of the cost of each prisoner
in the different prisons during the period 1847-1849), has
been 63 centimes for all prisons. This figure, compared witi
that of the daily maintenance of the labourer, shows a dif
ference of 13 centimes. It must be remarked further, that
if in the prisons it is necessary to set down in the account th?
expenses of administration and surveillance on the other hand,
the prisoners have not to pay for their lodging; that the pur
chases they make at the canteens are not included in the ex
penses of maintenance, and that these expenses are greatly
lowered in consequence of the large number of persons tha<-
make up the establishments, and of contracting for or buying1
wholesale, the food and other things that enter into their

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 739

gumption. . . . How comes it, however, that a great
number, we might say, a great majority, of labourers, live in
a more economical way ? It is ... by adopting ex
pedients, the secret of which only the labourer knows ; by re
ducing his daily rations ; by substituting rye-bread for wheat ;
by eating less meat> or even none at all, and the same with
butter and condiments ; by contenting themselves with one or
two rooms where the family is crammed together, where boys
and girls sleep side by side, often on the same pallet; by
economy of clothing, washing, decency; by giving up the
Sunday diversions; by, in short, resigning themselves to the
most painful privations. Once arrived at this extreme limit,
the least rise in the price of food, stoppage of work, illness,
increases the labourer's distress and determines his complete
ruin; debts accumulate, credit fails, the most necessary clothes
and* furniture are pawned, and finally, the family asks to be
enrolled on the list of paupers." (Ducpetiaux, 1. c., pp. 151,
154, 155.) In fact, in this "Paradise of capitalists" there
follows, on the smallest change in the price of the most es
sential means of subsistence, a change in the number of
deaths and crimes! (See Manifesto of the Maatschappij :
Dfe Vlamingen Vooruit! Brussels, 1860, pp. 15, 16.) In all
Belgium are 930,000 families, of whom, according to the
official statistics, 90,000 are wealthy and on the list of voters
=450,000 persons; 190,000 families of the lower middle-
class in towns and villages, the greater part of them con
stantly sinking into the proletariat,— 1,950,000 persons.
Finally, 450,000 working-ckss families=2,250,000 persons
of whom the model ones enjoy the happiness depicted by
Ducpetiaux. Of the 450,000 working-class families, over
200,000 are on the pauper list

(e.) The British Agricultural Proletariat.

Nowhere does the antagonistic character of capitalistic pro
duction and accumulation assert itself more brutally than in
the progress of English agriculture (including cattle-breeding)
and the retrogression of the English agricultural labourer.
Before I turn to his precent situation, a rapid retrospect:

740 Capitalist Production,

Modern agriculture dates in England from the middle of the
18th century, although the revolution in landed property, from
which tlie changed mode of production starts as a basis, has
a much earlier date.

If we take the statements of Arthur Young, a careful ob
server, though a superficial thinker, as to the agricultural
labourer of 1771, the latter plays a very pitiable part com
pared with his predecessor of the end of the 14th century,
"when the labourer . . . could live in plenty, and ac
cumulate wealth,"1 not to speak of the 15th century, "the
golden age of the English labourer in town and country."
We need not, however, go back so far. In a very instructive
work of the year 1777 we read: "The great farmer is nearly
mounted to a level with him [the genttleman] ; while the
poor labourer is depressed almost to the earth. His un
fortunate situation will fully appear, by taking a comparative
view of it, only forty years ago, and at present . .
Landlord and tenant . . . have both gone hand in hand
in keeping the labourer down."2 It is then proved in de
tail that the real agricultural wages between 1737 and 1777
fell nearly £ or 25 per cent. "Modern policy," says Dr.
Richard Price also, "is, indeed, more favourable to the higher
classes of people; and the consequences may in time prove
that the whole kingdom will consist of only gentry and bej*-
gars, or of grandees and slaves."3

Nevertheless, the position of the English agricultural la
bourer from 1770 to 1780, with regard to his food and dwel-

1 Jamci E. Thorold Rogers. (Prof, of Polit. Econ. in the University of Oxford)
A History of Agriculture and Prices in England. Oxford, 1866, v. I... p. 690. Th s
work, the fruit of patient and diligent labour, contains in the two volumes that have
so far appeared, only the period 1250 to 1400. The second volume contains
simply statistics. It is the first authentic "History of Prices" of the time that we
possess.

* Reasons for the late increase of the Poor-Rates, or a comparative view of the
price of labour and provisions. Lond., 1777, pp. 5, 11.

•Dr. Richard Price: Observations on Reversionary Payments, 6th Ed. By W.
Morgan, Lond., 1803, v. II., pp. 158, 159. Price remarks on p. 159: "The nominal
price of day-labour is at present no more than about four times, or, at most, fiv«r
times higher than it was in the year 1514. But the price of corn is seven times, ant!
of flesh-meat and raiment about fifteen times higher. So far, therefore, has th<
price of labour been even from advancing in proportion to the increase in the ex
peases of living, that it does not appear that it bears now half the proportion to tbost
•xpentes that it did bear."

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 741

ing, as well as to his self-respect, amusements, &c., is an ideal
never attained again since that time. His average wage ex
pressed in pints of what was from 1770 to 1771, 90 pints, in
Eden's time (1797) only 65, in 1808 but 60.1

The state of the agricultural labourer at the end of the
Anti-Jacobin war, during which landed proprietors, farmers,
manufacturers, merchants, bankers, stockbrokers, army-con
tractors, &c., enriched themselves so extraordinarily, has been
already indicated above. The nominal wages rose in con
sequence partly of the bank-note depreciation, partly of a
rise in the price of the primary means of subsistence inde
pendent of this depreciation. But the actual wage-variation
can be evidenced in a very simple way, without entering into
details that are here unnecessary. The Poor Law and its ad
ministration were in 1795 and 1814 the same. It will be
remembered how this law was carried out in the country dis
tricts: in the form of alms the parish made up the nominal
wage to the nominal sum required for the simple vegetation
of the labourer. The ratio between the wages paid by the
farmer, and the wage-deficit made good by the parish, shows
us two things. First, the falling of wages below their mini
mum ; second, the degree in which the agricultural labourer
was a compound of wage-labourer and pauper, or the degree
in which he had been turned into a serf of his parish. Let
us take one county that represents the average condition of
things in all counties. In Northamptonshire, in 1795, the
average weekly wage was 7s. 6d. ; the total yearly expenditure
of a family of 6 persons, £36 12s. 5d. ; their total income,
£29 18s. ; deficit made good by the parish, £6 14s. 5d. In
1814, in the same county, the weekly wage was 12s. 2d. ; the
total yearly expenditure of a family of 5 persons, £54 18s.
4d. ; their total income, £36 2s. ; deficit made good by the
parish, £18 6s. 4d.2 In 1795 the deficit was less than i the
wage, in 1814, more than half. It is self-evident that, under
these circumstances, the meagre comforts that Eden still
found in the cottage of the agricultural labourer, had van-

1 Barton, 1. c,, p. 2fl. For the end of the 18th century cf. Eden, 1. c.
* Hirry. 1. c., p. 86.

742 Capitalist Production,

ished by 1814. l Of all the animals kept by the farmer, the
labourer, the instrumentkun vocale, was, thenceforth, the most
oppressed, the worst nourished, the most brutally treated.

The same state of things went on quietly until "the Swing
riots, in 1830, revealed to us [i.e., the ruling classes] by the
light of blazing corn-stacks, that misery and black mutinous
discontent smouldered quite as fiercely under the surface of
agricultural as of manufacturing England."2 At this time,
Sadler, in the House of Commons, christened the agricultural
labourers "white slaves," and a Bishop echoed the epithet in
the Upper House. The most notable political economist of
that period — E. G. Wakefield — says: "The peasant of the
South of England ... is not a freeman, nor is he a
slave; he is a pauper."3

The time just before the repeal of the Corn Laws threw new
light on the condition of the agricultural labourers. On the
one hand, it was to the interest of the middle-class agitators to
prove how little the Corn Laws protected the actual producers
of the corn. On the other hand, the industrial bourgeoisie
foamed with sullen rage at the denunciations of the factor/
system by the landed aristocracy, at the pretended sympathy
with the woes of the factory operatives, of those utterly
corrupt, heartless, and genteel loafers, and at their "diplomatic
zeal" for factory legislation. It is an old English proverb
that "when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own,"
and, in fact, the noisy, passionate quarrel between the two
fractions of the ruling class about the question, which of tho
two exploited the labourers the more shamefully, was on eacl:
hand the midwife of the truth. Earl Shaftesbury, thec
Lord Ashley, was commander-in-chief in the aristocratic, phil
anthropic, anti-factory campaign. He was, therefore, in
1845, a favourite subject in the revelations of the "Morning
Chronicle" on the condition of the agricultural labourers.
This journal, then the most important Liberal organ, sent
special commissioners into the agricultural districts, wno did
not content themselves with mere general descriptions and

Md., p. 213. JS. Laing. 1. c., p. 62.

« England and America. Lond., 1833. Vol. I., p. 47.

The General Law of (,'afitvlist Accumulation. 743

statistics, but published £ho names both uf the labouring fam
ilies examined and <>£ their landlords. The following list
gives the wages paid >n three villages in the neighborhood of
Blanford, Wimbourae, and Poole. The villages are the prop
erty of Mr. G. Bankes and of the Earl of Shaftesbury. It
will be noted that, just like Bankes, this "low church pope,"
this head of English pietists, pockets a great part of the
miserable wages of the labourers under the pretext of house-
rent: —

FIRST VILLAGE.

£°

.^ w

>. u

h£ O "*"*

1 ^

*> "*" r?

3-2 g

2 o — •« ,/

3^.

"rt rt 3 <u
c ^U&

«j »

« ° S

> S—

> S ^

> s

^ s S

l|£

^^ Cfl

"^ rt^

^ 0 ^jj

5^(^

'Si! « c

S. 3-^

§£

^£

^-5

O* qj .*-| Q

s. d.

S. d.

s. d.

8 0

—

8 0

2 0

6 0

1 6

8 0

—

8 0

1 6

6 6

1 3J

8 0

—

8 0

1 0

7 0

1 9

8 0

—

8 0

1 0

7 0

1 9

7 0

1 -, 1 6,

10 6

2 0

8 6

1 Oi

7 0

1-.2-

7 0

1 4

5 8

1 1^

SECOND VILLAGE.

s. d.
7 0

1 -, 1 6,

s. d.
10 0

s. d.
1 6

3. d.
8 6

s. d.

1 03

7 0

1 ., 1 6,

7 0

1 3}

5 8J

0 8£

7 0

1 3*

5 8J

0 7

7 0

—

7 0

1 6£

5 5}

0 11

7 0

—

7 0

1 6i

5 5J

1 1

744

Capitalist Production.

THIED VILLAGE.

(a) Children.

(£) Number of
Members in
Family.

>vS

2 ~ .

|og

£&3
^ «

£!=•

^ _ o

£ °-o
< <u2

^ U'2

s|o

>**- 0

•321*
1^1

S*l£

j>»

la
> w

Or) Total
weekly wage
after deduc
tion of Rent.

S-Js

s. d.

7 0

—

7 0

1 0

6 0

1 0

7 0

1 -, 2 -,

11 6

0 10

10 8

2 IK

5 0

1 -, 2 6,

5 0

1 0

4 0

2 0 *

The repeal of the Corn Laws gave a marvellous impulse tc
English agriculture.2 Drainage on the most extensive scale,
new methods of stall-feeding, and of the artificial cultivation
of green crops, introduction of mechanical manuring appa
ratus, new treatment of clay soils, increased use of mineral
manures, employment of the steam-engine, and of all kinds
of new machinery, more intensive cultivation generally,
characterised this epoch. Mr. Pusey, Chairman of the Royal
Agricultural Society, declares that the (relative) expenses of
farming have been reduced nearly one-half by the introduction
of new machinery. On the other hand; the actual return of
the soil rose rapidly. Greater outlay of capital per acre,
and, as a consequence, more rapid concentration of farms,
were essential conditions of the new method.3 At the same

1 London Economist, March 29th, 1845, p. 290.

J The landed aristocracy advanced themselves to this end, of course per Parliament,
funds from the State Treasury, at a very low rate of interest, which the farmers
have to make good at a much higher rate.

3 The decrease of the middle-class farmers can be seen especially in the census
category: "Farmer's son, grandson, brother, nephew, daughter, grand-daughter, sister,
niece"; in a word, the members of his own family, employed by the farmer. This
category numbered, in 1851, 216,851 persons; in 1861, only 176,151. From 1851 to
1871, the farms under 20 acres fell by more than 900 in number; those between 60
and 75 acres fell from 8,253 to 6,370; the same thing occurred with all other farms
under JOO acres. On the other hand, during the same twenty years, the number of
large farms increased; those of 300-500 acres rose from 7,771 to 8,410, those of more
than 500 acres from 2.755 to 3,914, those of more than 1,000 acres from 492 to
682.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 745

time, the area under cultivation increased, from 1846 to
1856, by 464,119 acres, without reckoning the great area in
the Eastern Counties which was transformed from rabbit war
rens and poor pastures into magnificent cornfields. It has
already been seen that, at the same time, the total nurnbe"
of persons employed in agriculture fell. As far as the actual
agricultural labourers of both sexes and of all ages are con
cerned, their number fell from 1,241,396, in 1851, to 1,163,-
217 in 1861. * If the English Registrar-General, therefore,
rightly remarks : "The increase of farmers and farm-labourers,
since 1801, bears no kind of proportion ... to the in
crease of agricultural produce,"2 this disproportion obtains
much more for the last period, when a positive decrease of the
agricultural population went hand in hand with increase of the
area under cultivation, with more intensive cultivation, un
heard-of accumulation of the capital incorporated with the
soil, and devoted to its working, an augmentation in the prod
ucts of the soil without parallel in the history of English
agriculture, plethoric rent-rolls of landlords, and growing
wealth of the capitalist farmers. If we take this, together
with the swift, unbroken extension of the markets, viz., the
towns, and the reign of Free Trade, then the agricultural la
borer was at last, post tot discrvmvna rerum, placed in circum
stances that ought, secundum artem, to have made him drunk
with happiness.

But Professor Rogers comes to the conclusion that the lot of
the English agricultural labourer of to-day, not to speak of his
predecessor in the last half on the 14th and in the 15th cen
tury, but only compared with his predecessor from 1770 to
1780, has changed for the worse to an extraordinary extent,
that "the peasant has again become a serf," and a serf worse
fed and worse clothed.3 Dr. Julian Hunter, in his epoch-
making report on the dwellings of the agricultural labourers,
says: "The cost of the hind" (a name for the agricultural
labourer, inherited from time of serfdom) "is fixed at the

1 The number of shepherds increased from 12,517 to 25,559.
1 Census. 1. c., p. 86.

' Rogers. 1. c. p. 693, p. 10. Mr. Rogers belongs to the Liberal School, -is a per
sonal friend of Cobden and Bright, and therefore no laudator temporis acti.

746 Capitalist Production.

lowest possible amount on which he can live . , . the
supplies of wages and shelter are not calculated on the profit
to be derived from him. He is a zero an fanning calcula
tions.1 . . . The means [of subsistence] being always
supposed to be a fixed quantity.3 As to any further reduction
of his income, he may say, nihil habeo nihil euro. He has
no fears for the future, because he has now only the spare
supply necessary to keep him. He has reached the zero from
which are dated the calculations of the farmer. Come what
will, he has no share either in prosperity or adversity."3

In the year 1863, an official inquiry took place into the con
ditions of nourishment and labour of the criminals condemned
to transportation and penal servitude. The results are re
corded in two voluminous blue books. Among other things it
is said : "From an elaborate comparison between the diet of
convicts in the convict prisons in England, and that of paupers
in workhouses and of free labourers in the same country
it certainly appears that the former are much better
fed than either of the two other classes/'4 whilst "the amount
of labour required from an ordinary convict under penal
servitude is about one half of what would be done by an
ordinary day labourer. "5 A few characteristic depositions o::
witnesses : John Smith, governor of the Edinburgh prison, de
poses: No. 5056. "The diet of the English prisons [is]
superior to that of ordinary labourers in England." No. 50.
"It is the fact . . . that the ordinary agricultural la
bourers in Scotland very seldom get any meat at all." An
swer No. 3047. "Is there anything that you are aware of to
account for the necessity of feeding them very much better
than ordinary labourers ? — Certainly not." No. 3048. "Do
you think that further experiments ought to be made in order

1 Public Health. Seventh Report, 1864, p. 242. It is therefore nothing unusual
either for the landlord to raise a labourer's rent as soon as he hears that he is
earning a little more, or for the farmer to lower the wage of the labourer, "because
hit wife has found a tade," 1. c.

M. c. p. 135. »1. c. p. 134.

4 Report of the Commissioners .... relating to transportation and penal
servitude, Lond. 1863, pp. 42, 60.

• L c. p. 77. Memorandum by the Lord Chief Justice.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 747

to ascertain whether a dietary might not be hit upon for
prisoners employed on public works nearly approaching to the
dietary of free labourers?1 . . . "He [the agricultural
labourer] might say: 'I work hard, and have not enough to
eat, and when in prison I did not work harder where I had
plenty to eat, and therefore it is better for me to be in prison
again than here/ "2 From the tables appended to the first
volume of the Report I have compiled the annexed comparative
summary.

WEEKLY AMOUNT OF NUTRIMENT.

Quantity
of Nitro
genous In
gredients.

Quantity of
Non-Nitro
genous In
gredients.

Quantity of
Mineral
Matter.

Total.

Ounces

Portland ( convict

28-95

150-06

4-68

103:69

Sailor in the Navy

29-63

152-91

4:52

187-06

Soldier

25-55

114-49

3-94

14-98

Working Coachmaker

24-53

162-06

4-23

190-82

Compositor

21-24

100-83

3-12

125^19

Agricultural labourer

17-73

118-06

3-29

139-083

The general result of the inquiry by the medical commission
of 1863, on the food of the lowest fed classes, is already known
to the reader. He will remember that the diet of a great part
of the agricultural labourer's families is below the minimum
necessary "to arrest starvation diseases." This is especially
the case in all the purely rural districts of Cornwall, Devon,
Somerset, Wilts, Stafford, Oxford, Berks, and Herts. "The
nourishment obtained by the labourer himself," says Dr. E.
Smith, "is larger than the average quantity indicates, since he
eats a larger share . . . necessary to enable him to per-

M. c. Vol. II. Minutes of Evidence.
»1. c. Vol. I. Appendix p. 280.
•L c. pp. 274, 275.

748 Capitalist Production.

form his labour ... of food than the other members of
the family, including in the poorer districts nearly all the meat
and bacon. . . . The quantity of food obtained by the
wife and also by the children at the period of rapid growth, ia
in many cases, in almost every county, deficient, and particu
larly in nitrogen/'1 The male and female servants living wi:h
the farmers themselves are sufficiently nourished. Their num
ber fell from 288,277 in 1851, to 204,962 in 1861. "The la*
bour of women in the fields," says Dr. Smith, "whatever may
be its disadvantages, ... is under present circumstances
of great advantage to the family, since it adds that amount cf
income which . . . provides shoes and clothing and pays
the rent, and thus enables the family to be better fed."2 One
of the most remarkable results of the inquiry was that th.3
agricultural labourer of England, as compared with other parts
of the United Kingdom, "is considerably the worst fed," as tho
appended table shows :

Quantities of Carbon and Nitrogen weekly consumed by aii
average agricultural adult.

Carbon, grains. Nitrogen, grains.
England 46 -673 1 -594

Wales 48 -354 2 -031

Scotland 48 -980 2 -348

Ireland 43-366 2-434.8

1 Public Health. Sixth Report, 1868, pp. 288, 249, 981, 882.

M. c. p. 262.

1 1. c. p. 17. The English agricultural labourer receives onlj $4 as siach miHi
and *A as much bread as the Irish. Arthur Young in his "Tour through Ireland/'
At the beginning of this century, already noticed the better nourishment of the latter.
The reason is simply this, that poor Irish farmer is incomparably mor« human*
than the rich English. As regards Wales, that which is said in the text holds only
for the south-west. All the doctors there agree that the increase of the deathrate
through tuberculosis, scrofula, etc., increases in intensity with the deterioration vi
the physical condition of the population, and all ascribe this deterioration to pov
erty. "His (the farm labourer's) keep is reckoned at about five pence a day, but in
many districts it was said to be of much less cost to the farmer," [himself very
poor]. ... "A morsel of the salt meat or bacon, . . . salted and dried to
the texture of mahogany, and hardly worth the difficult process of assimilation
. . . . is used to flavour a large quantity of broth or gruel, of meal and leek*,
and day after day this is the labourer's dinner." The advance of industry resulted
for him, in this harsh and damp climate, in "the abandonment of the solid home
spun clothing in favour of the cheap and so-called cotton goods," and of stronger

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 749

"To the insufficient quantity and miserable quality of the
house accommodation generally had," says Dr. Simon, in his
official Health Report, <fby our agricultural labourers, almost
every page of Dr. Hunter's report bears testimony. And
gradually, for many years past, the state of the labourer in
these respects has been deteriorating, house-room being now
greatly more difficult for him to find, and, when found, greatly
less suitable to his needs than, perhaps, for centuries had been
the case. Especially within the last twenty or thirty years,
the evil has been in very rapid increase, and the household cir
cumstances of the labourer are now in the highest degree de
plorable. Except in so far as they whom his labour enriches,
see fit to treat him with a kind of pitiful indulgence, he is
quite peculiarly helpless in the matter. Whether he shall find
house-room on the land which he contributes to till, whether
the house-room which he gets shall be human or swineish,

drinks for so-called tea. "The agriculturist, after several hours' exposure to wind
and rain, gains his cottage to sit by a fire of peat or of balls of clay and small
coal kneaded together, from which volumes of carbonic and sulphurous acids are
poured forth. His walls are of mud and stones, his floor the bare earth which was
there before the hut was built, his roof a mass of loose and sodden thatch. Every
crevice is stopped to maintain warmth, and in an atmosphere of diabolic odour, with
a mud floor, with his only clothes drying on his back, he often sups and sleeps with
his wife and children. Obstetricians who have passed parts of the night in such
cabins have described how they found their feet sinking in the mud of the floor, and
they were forced (easy task) to drill a hole through the wall to effect a little private
respiration. It was attested by numerous witnesses in various grades of life, that to
these insanitary influences, and many more, the underfed peasant was nightly ex
posed, and of the result, a debilitated and scrofulous people, there was no want of

evidence The statements of the relieving officers of Carmarthenshire and

Cardiganshire show in a striking way the same state of things. There is besides
"a plague more horrible still, the great number of idiots." Now a word on the
climatic conditions. "A strong south-west wind blows over the whole country for
8 or 9 months in the year, bringing with it torrents of rain, which discharge prin
cipally upon the western slopes of the hills. Trees are rare, except in sheltered
places, and where not protected, are blown out of all shape. The cottages generally
crouch under some bank, or often in a ravine or quarry, and none but the smallest
sheep and native cattle can live on the pastures The young people mi
grate to the eastern mining districts of Glamorgan and Monmouth. Carmarthenshire
is the breeding ground of the mining population and their hospital. The population
can therefore barely maintain its numbers." Thus in Cardiganshire:

1851. 1861.

Males 45,165 44,440

Females 62,459 62,955

97,814 97,401

J*« Hunter's Report in Public Health, Seventh Report. 1864. pp. 498-602 passim.

750 Capitalist Production.

whether he shall have the little space of garden that so vastly
lessens the pressure of his poverty — all this does not depend
on his willingness and ability to pay reasonable rent for the
decent accommodation he requires, but depends on the use
which others may see fit to make of their 'right to do as they
will with their own/ However large may be a farm, there
is no law that a certain proportion of labourers' dwellings
(much less of decent dwellings) shall be upon it; nor does any
law reserve for the labourer ever so little right in that soil :o
which his industry is as needful as sun and rain. . . . An
extraneous element weighs the balance heavily against him
the influence of the Poor Law in its provisions con
cerning settlement and chargeability.1 Under this influence,
each parish has a pecuniary interest in reducing to a minimun
the number of its resident labourers : — for, unhappily, agricul
tural labour instead of implying a safe and permanent in
dependence for the hard-working labourer and his family, im
plies for the most part only a longer or shorter circuit to
eventual pauperism — a pauperism which, during the whole cir
cuit, is so near, that any illness or temporary failure of occu
pation necessitates immediate recourse to parochial relief—
and thus all residence of agricultural population in a parish is
glaringly an addition to its poor rates. . . . Large pro
prietors2 . . . have but to resolve that there shall be no
labourers' dwellings on their estates, and their estates will
thenceforth be virtually free from half their responsibility for
the poor. How far it has been intended, in the English con
stitution and law, that this kind of unconditional property in
land should be acquirable, and that a landlord, 'doing as he
wills with his own,' should be able to treat the cultivators
of the soil as aliens, whom he may expel from his territory, is
a question which I do not pretend to discuss. . . . For
that (power) of eviction . . . does not exist only in

1 In 1865 this law was improved to some extent I? wilt scon be learnt from
experience that tinkering of this sort is of no use.

1 In order to understand that which follows, we mttst reteeirbe'- *h^t "Close
Villages" are those whose owners are one or two large landlords. "Open villages,"
those whose soil belongs to many smaller landlords. It is in the latter that building
speculators can build cottages and lodging-houses.

The General 'Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 751

theory. Oii a very large scale it prevails in practice — prevails
. . . as a main governing condition in the household cir
cumstances of agricultural labour. ... As regards the
extent of the evil, it may suffice to refer to the evidence which
Dr. Hunter has compiled from tho last census, that destruc
tion of houses, notwithstanding increased local demands for
them, had, during the last ten years, been in progress in 821
separate parishes or townships of England, so that irrespec
tively of persons who had been forced to become non-resident
(that is in the parishes in which they work), these parishes
and townships were receiving in 1861, as compared with 1851,
a population 5J per cent greater, into house-room 4J per
cent. less. . . . When the process of depopulation has
completed itself, the result, says Dr. Hunter, is a show-
village where the cottages have been reduced to a few, and
where none but persons who are needed as shepherds, garden
ers, or game-keepers, are allowed to live ; regular servants who
receive the good treatment usual to their class.1 But the land
requires cultivation, and it will be found that the labourers
employed upon it are not the tenants of the owner, but that
they come from a neighboring open village, perhaps three
miles off, where a numerous small proprietary had received
them when their cottages were destroyed in the close villages
around. Where things are tending to the above result, often
the cottages which stand, testify, in their unrepaired and
wretched condition, to the extinction to which they are doomed.
They are seen standing in the various stages of natural decay.
While the shelter holds together, the labourer is permitted to
rent it, and glad enough he will often be to do so, even at the
price of decent lodging. But no repair, no improvement shall
it receive, except such as its penniless occupants can supply.
And when at last it becomes quite uninhabitable — uninhabit-

1 A show village of this kind looks very nice, but is as unreal as the villages that
Catherine II. saw on her journey to the Crimea. In recent times the shepherd also
has often been banished from the show villages; e.g., near Market Harboro' is a
sheep-farm of about 500 acres, which only employs the labour of one man. To
reduce the long trudges over these wide plains, the beautiful pastures of Leicester and
Northampton, the shepherd used to get a cottage on the farm. Now they give him
a thirteenth shilling a week for lodging, that he must find far away in an open
village.

752 Capitalist Production.

able even to the humblest standard of serfdom — it will be
but one more destroyed cottage, and future poor-rates will be
somewhat lightened. While great owners are thus escaping
from poor-rates through the depopulation of lands over which
they have control, the nearest town or open village receive the
evicted labourers: the nearest, I say, but this "nearest" may
mean three or four miles distant from the farm where the la
bourer has his daily toil. To that daily toil there will thon
have to be added, as though it were nothing, the daily need of
walking six or eight miles for power of earning his bread.
And whatever farm-work is done by his wrife and children, is
done at the same disadvantage. Nor is this nearly all the toil
which the distance occasions him. In the open village, cot
tage-speculators bus scraps of land, which they throng as
densely as they can with the cheapest of all possible hovels.
And into those wretched habitations (which, even if they ad
join the open country, have some of the worst features of tho
worst town residences) crowd the agricultural labourers or"
England.1 . . . Xor on the other hand must it be sup
posed that even when the labourer is housed upon the land*
which he cultivates, his household circumstances are generally
such as his life of productive industry would seem to deserve.
Even on princely estates ... his cottage . . . may

1 "The labourers' houses (in the open villages, which, of course, are always over-
crowded) are usually in rows, built with their backs against the extreme edge of the
plot of land which the builder could call his, and on this account are not allowed
light and air, except from the front." (Dr. Hunter's Report, I. c. ,p. 135.) Very
often the beerseller or grocer of the village is at the same time the letter of its
houses. In this case the agricultural labourer finds in him a second master, besides
the farmer. He must be his customer as well as his tenant. "The hind with his
10s. a week, minus a rent of £4 a year .... is obliged to buy at th* seller's
own terms, his modicum of tea, sugar, flour, soap, candles, and beer." (1. c,, p.
132.) These open villages form, in fact, the "penal settlements" of the English
agricultural proletariat Many of the cottages are simply lodging-houses, through
which all the rabble of the neighbourhood passes. The country labourer and his
family who had often, in a way truly wonderful, preserved, under the foulest condi
tions, a thoroughness and purity of character, go, in these, utterly to the devil,
it is, of course, the fashion amongst the aristocratic shylocks to shrug their shoulder!
pharisaically at the building speculators, the small landlords, and the open villages.
They know well enough that their "close villages" and "show villages" are the birth-
places of the open villages, and could not exist without them. "The labourer!
. . . . were it not for the small owners, would, for by far the most part, have
to sleep under the trees of the farms on which they work." (1. c., p. 135.) Th«
system of "open" and "closed" villages obtains in all the Midland counties and
throughout the East of England.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 753

be of the meanest description. There are landlords who deem
any style good enough for their labourer and his family, and
who yet do not disdain to drive with him the hardest pos
sible bargain for rent1 It may be but a ruinous one-bed-
roomed hut, having no fire-grate, no privy, no opening window,
no water supply but the ditch, no garden — but the labourer is
helpless against the wrong. . . . And the Nuisances Re
moval Acts . . . are ... a mere dead letter
L; . . in great part dependent for their working on such
cottage owners as the one from whom his (the labourer's)
hovel is rented. . . . From brighter, but exceptional
scenes, it is requisite in the interests of justice, that attention
should again be drawn to the overwhelming preponderance of
facts which, are a reproach to the civilization of England.
Lamentable indeed, must be the case, when, notwithstanding
all that is evident with regard to the quality of the present
accommodation, it is the common conclusion of competent ob
servers that even the general badness of dwellings is an evil
infinitely less urgent than their mere numerical insufficiency.
For years the overcrowding of rural labourer's dwellings has
been a matter of deep concern, not only to persons who care
for sanitary good, but to persons who care for decent and
moral life. For again and again in phrases so uniform that
they seem stereotyped, reporters on the spread of epidemic
disease in rural districts, have insisted on the extreme im
portance of that over-crowding, as an influence which renders
it a quite hopeless task, to attempt the limiting of any infection
which is introduced. And again and again it has been
pointed out that, notwithstanding the many salubrious in
fluences which there are in country life, the crowding which

1 "The employer .... is .... directly or indirectly securing to him
self the profit on a man employed at 10s. a week, and receiving from this poor
bind £4 or £5 annual rent for houses not worth £20 in a really free market, but
maintained at their artificial value by the power of the owner to say 'Use my house,
or go seek a hiring elsewhere, without a character from me.' .... Does a man
wish to better himself, to go as a plate-layer on the railway, or to begin quarry-
work, the same power is ready with 'Work for me at this low rate of wages, or be
gone at a week's notice; take your pig with you, and get what you can for the
potatoes growing in your garden.' Should his interest appear to be better served by
it, an enhanced rent is sometimes preferred in these cases by the owner (t.». the
farmer) as the penalty for leaving his service." (Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 182.)

754 Capitalist Production.

so favours the extension of contagious disease, also favours the
origination of disease which is not contagious. And those
who have denounced the over-crowded state of our rural popu
lation have not been silent as to a further mischief. Even
where their primary concern has been only with the injury to
health, often almost perforce they have referred to other rela
tions on the subject. In showing how frequently it happens
that adult persons of both sexes, married and unmarried, are
huddled together in single small sleeping rooms, their reports
have carried the conviction that, under the circumstances they
describe, decency must always be outraged, and morality al
most of necessity must suffer.1 Thus, for instance, in the
appendix of my last annual report, Dr. Ord, reporting on a:i
outbreak of fever at Wing, in Buckinghamshire, mentions how
a young man who had come thither from Wingrave with fever,
"in the first days of his illness slept in a room with nine other
persons. Within a fortnight several of these persons were at
tacked, and in the course of a few weeks five out of the nino
had fever, and one died." . . . From Dr. Harvey, of St
George's Hospital, who, on private professional business,
visited Wing during the time of the epidemic, I received in
formation exactly in the sense of the above report. .
"A young woman having fever, lay at night in a room occupied
by her father and mother, her bastard child, two young men
(her brothers), and her two sisters, each with a bastard
child — 10 persons in all. A few weeks ago 13 persons slept
in it."2

Dr. Hunter investigated 5,375 cottages of agricultural lab
ourers, not only in the purely agricultural districts, but in all
counties of England. Of these, 2,195 had only one bed-

1 "New married couples are no edifying study for grown-up brothers and sisters;
and though instances must not be recorded, sufficient data are remembered to war
rant the remark, that great depression and sometimes death are the lot of the
female participator in the offence of incest." (Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 137.) A mem
ber of the rural police who had for many years been a detective in the worst
quarters of London, says of the girls of his village: "their boldness and shameless-
ness I never saw equalled during some years of police life and detective duty in

the worst parts of London They live like pigs, great boys and girls,

mothers and fathers, all sleeping in one room, in many instances." (Child. EmpL
Com. Sixth Report, 1867, p. 77 sq. 155.)

"Public Health. Seventh Report, 1864, pp. 9, 14 passim.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 755

room (often at the same time used as living-room), 2,930
only two, and 250, more than two. I will give a few speci
mens culled from a dozen counties.

(1.) BEDFORDSHIRE.

Wrestling worth. Bedrooms about 12 feet long and 10
broad, although many are smaller than this. The small,
one-storied cots are often divided by partitions into two bed
rooms, one bed frequently in a kitchen, 5 feet 6 inches in
height Rent, £-3 a year. The tenants have to make their
own privies, the landlord only supplies a hole. As soon as
one has made a privy, it is made use of by the whole neigh
borhood. One house, belonging to a family called Richard
son, was of quite unapproachable beauty. "Its plaster walls
bulged very like a lady's dress in a curtsey. One gable end
was convex, the other concave, and on this last, unfortunately,
stood the chimney, a curved tube of clay and wood like an
elephant's trunk. A long stick served as prop to prevent
the chimney from falling. The doorway and window were
rhomboidal." Of 17 houses visited, only 4 had more than
one bedroom, and those four overcrowded. The cots with one
bedroom sheltered 3 adults and 3 children, a married couple
with 6 children, &c.

Dunton. High rents, from £4 to £5 ; weekly wages of the
man, 10s. They hope to pay the rent by the straws-plaiting of
the family. The higher the rent, the greater the number
that must work together to pay it. Six adults, living with
4* children in one sleeping apartment, pay £3 10s. for it
The cheapest house in Dunton, 15 feet long externally, 10
broad, let for £3. Only one of the houses investigated had
2 bedrooms. A little outside the village, a house whose
"tenants dunged against the house-side," the lower 9 inches
of the door eaten away through sheer rottenness ; the door
way, a single opening closed at night by a few bricks, in
geniously pushed up after shutting and covered with some
matting. Half a window, with glass and frame, had gone
the way of all flesh. Here, without furniture, huddled to-

756 Capitalist Production.

gether, were 3 adults and 5 children. Dunton is not -worse
than the rest of Biggleswade Union.

(2.) BERKSHIRE.

Beenham* In June, 1864, a man, his wife and 4 children
lived in a cot (one-storied cottage). A daughter came home
from service with scarlet fever. She died. One child sick
ened and died. The mother and one child were down with
typhus when Dr. Hunter was called in. The father and cne
child slept outside, but the difficulty of securing isolation was
seen here, for in the crowded market of the miserable vil
lage lay the linen of the fever-stricken household, waiting ior
the wash. The rent of IL's house, Is. a v/eek ; one bedroom
for man, wife, and 6 children. One house let for 8d. a-
week, 14 feet 6 inches long, 7 feet broad; kitchen, 6 feet
high ; the bedroom without window, fire-place, door, or open
ing, except into the lobby ; no garden. A man lived here for
a little while, with two grown-up daughters and one grown
up son; father and son slept on the bed, the girls in the pas
sage. Each of the latter had a child while the family wss
living here, but one went to the workhouse for her cot-
finement and then came home.

(3.) BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.

30 cottages — on 1,000 acres of land — contained here abou:
130-140 persons. The parish of Bradenham comprises 1,000
acres; it numbered, in 1851, 36 houses and a population of
84 males and 54 females. This inequality of the sexes was
partly remedied in 1861, when they numbered 98 males and
87 females; increase in 10 years of 14 men and 33 women.
Meanwhile, the number of houses was one less.

Winslow. Great part of this newly built in good style; de
mand for houses appears very marked, since very miserable
cots let at Is. to Is. 3d. per week.

Water Eaton. Here the landlords, in view of the increas
ing population, have destroyed about 20 per cent, of the ex
isting houses. A poor labourer, who had to go about 4 mile*

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 757

to his work, answered the question, whether he could not
find a cot nearer : "No ; they know better than to take a man
in with my large family."

Tinker's End, near Winslow. A bedroom in which were 4
adults and 4 children; 11 feet long, 9 feet broad, 6 feet 5
inches high at its highest part; another 11 feet 3 inches by 9
feet, 5 feet 10 inches high, sheltered 6 persons. Each of
these families had less space than is considered necessary
for a convict No house had more than one bedroom, not
one of them a back-door ; water very scarce ; weekly rent from
Is. 4d. to 2s. In 16 of the houses visited, only 1 man that
earned 10s. a week. The quantity of -air for each person under
the circumstances just described corresponds to that which he
would have if he were shut up in a box of 4 feet measuring
each way, the whole night But then, the ancient dens af
forded a certain amount of unintentional ventilation.

( 4. ) C AMBRIDGESHIKE,

Gnmblingwy belongs to several landlords. It contains the
wretchedest cots to be found anywhere. Much straw-plait
ing. "A deadly lassitude, a hopeless surrendering up to
filth," reigns in Gamblingay. The neglect in its centre, be
comes mortification at its extremities, north and south, where
the houses are rotting to pieces. The absentee landlords
bleed this poor rookery too freely. The rents are very high;
8 or 9 persons packed in one sleeping apartment, in 2 case*
6 adults, each with 1 or 2 children in one small bedroom.

(5.) ESSEX.

In this county, diminutions in the number of persons and
of cottages go, in many parishes, hand in hand. In not less
than 22 parishes, however, the destruction of houses has not
prevented increase of population, or has not brought about
that expulsion which, under the name "migration to towns,"
generally occurs. In Fingringhoe, a parish of 3443 acres,
were in 1851, 145 houses; in 1861, only 110. But the people
did not wish to go away, and managed even to increase undef

758 Capitalist Production.

these circumstances. In 1851, 252 persons inhabited 61
houses, but in 1861, 262 persons were squeezed into 49 houses.
In Basilden, in 1851, 157 persons lived on 1827 acres, in 35
houses; at the end of ten years, 180 persons in 27 houses. In
the parishes of Fingringhoe, South Farnbridge, Widford,
Basilden, and Ramsden Crags, in 1851, 1392 persons were
living on 8449 acres in 316 houses; in 1861, on the same area,
1473 persons in 249 houses.

(6.) HKREFOKDSHIEE.

This little county has suffered more from the "eviction-
spirit" than any other in England. At Nadby, over-crowded
cottages generally, with only 2 bedrooms, belonging for the
most part to the farmers. They easily let them for £3 or £4
a-year, and paid a weekly wage of 9s.

(7.) HUNTINGDON.

Hartford had, in 1851, 87 houses; shortly after this, 19
cottages were destroyed in this small parish of 1720 acres;
population in 1831, 452 ; in 1852, 832 ; and in 1861, 341. 14
cottages, each with 1 bedroom, were visited. In one, a mar
ried couple, 3 grown-up sons, 1 grown-up daughter, 4 chil
dren — in all 10 ; in another, 3 adults, 6 children. One o:?
these rooms, in which 8 people slept, was 12 feet 10 inches
long, 12 feet 2 inches broad, 6 feet 9 inches high: the average
without making any deduction for projections into the apart
ment, gave about 130 cubic feet per head. In the 14 sleep
ing rooms, 34 adults and 33 children. These cottages are
seldom provided with gardens, but many of the inmates are
able to farm small allotments at 10s. or 12s, per rood. These
allotments are at a distance from the houses, which are with
out privies. The family "must either go to the allotment to
deposit their ordures," or, as happens in this place, saving
your presence, "use a closet with a trough set like a drawer
in a chest of drawers, and drawn out weekly and conveyed to
the allotment to be emptied where its contents were wanted."
In Japan, the circle of life-conditions moves more decently
than this.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 759

(8.) LINCOLNSHIRE.

Langioft. A man lives here, in Wright's house, with his
wife, her mother, and 5 children; the house has a front kit
chen, scullery, bedroom over the front kitchen; front kitchen
and bedroom, 12 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches; the whole
ground floor, 21 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches. The bed
room is a garret; the walls run together into the roof like a
sugar-loaf, a dormer-window opening in front "Why did
he live here ? On account of the garden ? No ; it is very
small. Rent? High, Is. 3d. per week. Near his work?
No; 6 miles away, so that he walks daily, to and fro, 12 miles.
He lived there, because it was a tenantable cot," and because
he wanted to have a cot for himself alone, anywhere, at any
price, and in any conditions. The following are the statistics
of 12 houses in Langtoft, with 12 bedrooms, 38 adults, and 36
children.

TWELVE HOUSES IN LANGTOFT.

i/j

o .

u, <«

•

, OT

•
3
o
£

•o

Adults.

U
u

2
.5
U

Numbe
person

ffi

Adults.

Childre

Numbe
person

No.l.

No. 7.

.. 2.

i. 8.

>. 3.

» 9.

„ 4.

,,io.

,. 5.

,. U.

M 6.

,, LA.

(9.) KENT.

Kenningion, very seriously over-populated in 1859, when
diphtheria appeared, and the parish doctor instituted a med-

760 Capitalist Production.

ical inquiry into the condition of the poorer classes. He
found that in this locality, where much labour is employed,
various cots had been destroyed and no new ones built. In
one district stood four houses, named birdcages; each had 4
rooms of the following dimensions in feet and inches:

Kitchen; 9 ft. by 58 ft. 11 by 6 ft. 6
Scullery : 8 ft. 6 by 4 ft 6 by 6 ft. 6.
Bedroom : 8 ft 5 by 5 ft 10 by 6 ft 3.
Bedroom : 8 ft 3 by 8 ft 4 by 6 ft 3.

(10.) NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.

Brinworih, Pick ford and Floore: in these villages in the
winter 20 — 30 men were lounging about the streets from want
of work. The farmers do not always till sufficiently the com
and turnip lands, and the landlord has found it best to throw
all his farms together into 2 or 3. Hence want of employ
ment. Whilst on one side of the wall, the land calls for labou:*,
on the other side the defrauded labourers are casting at :t
longing glances. Feverishly overworked in summer, and hah-
starved in winter, it is no wonder if they say in their peculiar
dialect, "the parson and gentlefolk seem frit to death at
them."

At Floore, instances, in one bedroom of the smallest size, o:£
couples with 4, 5, 6 children; 3 adults with 5 children; a
couple with grandfather and 6 children down with scarlet;
fever, &c. ; in two houses with two bedrooms, two families of
8 and 9 adults respectively.

(11.) WILTSHIRE.

Stratton. 31 houses visited, 8 with only one bedroom,
Pentill, in the same parish : a cot let at Is. 3d. weekly with 4
adults and 4 children, had nothing good about it, except the
walls, from the floor of rough-hewn pieces of stones to the
roof of worn-out thatch.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 761

(12.) WOECESTEBSHIRTS.

House-destruction here not quite so excessive; yet from
1851 to 1861, the number of inhabitants to each house on the
average, has risen from 4 '2 to 4 '6.

Badsey. Many cots and little gardens here. Some of the
farmers declare that the cots are "a great nuisance here, be
cause they bring the poor." On the statement of one gentle
man: "The poor are none the better for them; if you build
500 they will let fast enough, in fact, the more you build, the
more they want," (according to him the houses give birth to
the inhabitants, who then by a law of Nature press on "the
means of housing"). Dr. Hunter remarks: "Now these poor
must come from somewhere, and as there is no particular at
traction, such as doles, at Badsey, it must be repulsion from
some other unfit place, which will send them here. If each
could find an allotment near his work, he would not prefer
Badsey, where he pays for his scrap of ground twice as much
as the farmer pays for his."

The continual emigration to the towns, the continual forma
tion of surplus-population in the country through the concen
tration of farms, conversion of arable land into pasture, ma
chinery, &c., and the continual eviction of the agricultural
population by the destruction of their cottages, go hand in
hand. The more empty the district is of men, the greater is
its "relative surplus-population," the greater is their pressure
on the means of employment, the greater is the absolute ex
cess of the agricultural population over the means for hous
ing it, the greater, therefore, in the villages is the local sur
plus-population and the most pestilential packing together of
human beings. The packing together of knots of men in scat
tered little villages and small country towns corresponds to the
forcible draining of men from the surface of the land. The
continuous superseding of the agricultural labourers, in spite
of their diminishing number and the increasing mass of their
products, gives birth to their pauperism. Their pauperism
is ultimately a motive to their eviction and the chief source
of their miserable housing which breaks down their last power

762 Capitalist Production.

of resistance, and makes them mere slaves of the landed pro
prietors and the farmers.1 Thus the minimum of wages be
comes a law of Nature to them. On the other hand, the land,
in spite of its constant "relative surplus-population," is at the
same time under-populated. This is seen, not only locally
at the points where the efflux of men to towns, mines, railroad-
making, &c., is most marked. It is to be seen everywhere, in
harvest-time as well as in spring and summer, at those fre
quently recurring times when English agriculture, so care
ful and intensive, wants extra hands. There are always too
many agricultural labourers for the ordinary, and always too
few for the exceptional or temporary needs of the cultivation
of the soil.2 Hence we find in the official documents contra
dictory complaints from the same places of deficiency and ex
cess of labour simultaneously. The temporary or local want
of labour brings about no rise in wages, but a forcing cf
the women and children into the fields, and exploitation at a a
age constantly lowered. As soon as the exploitation of tha

1 "The heaven-born employment of the hind gives dignity even to this position .
He is not a slave, but a soldier of peace, and deserves his place in married men s
quarters to be provided by the landlord, who has claimed a power of enforced labour
similar to that the country demands of the soldier. He no more receives marktt
price for his work than does the soldier. Like the soldier he is caught young,
ignorant, knowing only his own trade, and his own locality. Early marriage an<l
the operation of the various laws of settlement affect the one as enlistment and th;
Mutiny Act affect the other." (Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 132.) Sometimes an excep
tionally soft-hearted landlord relents at the solitude he has created. "It is ;t
melancholy thing to stand alone in one's country," said Lord Leicester, when com
plimented on the completion of Hookham. "I look around and not a house is ti>
be seen but mine. I am the giant of Giant Castle, and have eat up all ray neigh
bours."

8 A similar movement is seen during the last ten years in France; in proportion as
capitalist production there takes possession of agriculture, it drives the "surplus"
agricultural population into the towns. Here also we find deterioration in the
housing and other conditions at the source of the surplus-population. On the special
"proletariat foncier," to which this system of parcelling out the land has given r;se,
see, among others, the . work of Colins, already quoted, and Karl Marx "Der
Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte." 2nd edition. Hamburg, 1869, pp. 56,
&c. In 1846, the town population in France was represented by 24.42, the agri
cultural by 75.58; in 1861, the town by 28.86, the agricultural by 71.4 per cent.
During the last 5 years, the diminution of the agricultural percentage of the popu
lation has been yet more marked. As early as 1846, Pierre Dupont in his "Ouvriers"

Mai vetus, loges dans des trous,
Sous les combles, dans les decombres.
Nous vivons avec les hiboux
Et les larrons, amis des ombres.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 763

women and children takes place on a larger scale, it becomes
in turn a new means of making a surplus-population of the
male agricultural labourer and of keeping down his wage. In
the east of England thrives a beautiful fruit of this vicious
circle — the so-called gang-system, to which I must briefly re
turn here.1

The gang-system obtains almost exclusively in the counties
of Lincoln, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Nottingham, here and there in the neighbouring counties of
Northampton, Bedford, and Rutland. Lincolnshire will serve
us as an example. A large part of this country is new land,
marsh formerly, or even, as in others of the eastern counties
just named, won lately from the sea. The steam-engine has
worked wonders in the way of drainage. What were once
fens and sandbanks, bear now a luxuriant sea of corn and the
highest of rents. The same thing holds of the alluvial lands
won by human endeavor, as in the island of Axholme and
other parishes on the banks of the Trent In proportion as
the new farms arose, not only were no new cottages built: old
ones were demolished, and the supply of labour had to come
from open villages, miles away, by long roads that wound
along the sides of the hills. There alone had the population
formerly found shelter from the incessant floods of the winter
time. The labourers that dwell on the farms of 400 — 1000
acres (they are called "confined labourers") are solely em
ployed on such kinds of agricultural work as is permanent,
difficult, and carried on by aid of horses. For every 100
acres there is, on an average, scarcely one cottage. A fen
farmer, e.g., gave evidence before the Commission of In
quiry: "I farm 320 acres, all arable land. I have not one
cottage on my farm. I have only one labourer on my farm
now. I have four horsemen lodging about. We get light
work done by gangs."2 The soil requires much light field
labour, such as weeding, hoeing, certain processes of manur
ing, removing of stones, &c. This is done by the gangs, or or
ganised bands that dwell in the open villages.

1 "Sixth and last Report of the Children's Employment Commission," published
at the end of March, 1867. It deals solely with the agricultural.
'"Child. Empl. Comm., VI. Report." Evidence 173, p. 37.

764 Capitalist Production.

The gang consists of 10 to 40 or 50 persons, women, youn&
persons of both sexes (13-18 years of age, although the boys
are for the most part eliminated at the age of 13), and chil
dren of both sexes (6-13 years of age). At the head is the
gang-master, always an ordinary agricultural labourer, gen
erally what is called a bad lot, a scapegrace, unsteady,
drunken, but with a dash of enterprise and savior faire. He
is the recruiting-sergeant for the gang, which works under
him, not under the farmer. He generally arranges with the
latter for piece-work, and his income, which on the average
is not very much above that of an ordinary agricultural la
bourer,1 depends almost entirely upon the dexterity with
which he manages to extract within the shortest time the
greatest possible amount of labour from his gang. The
farmers have discovered that women work steadily only under
/he direction of men, but that women and children, once set
going, impetuously spend their life-force — as Fourier knew
— while the adult male labourer is shrewd enough to economise
his as much as he can. The gang-master goes from one farm
to another, and thus employs his gang from 6 to 8 months in
the year. Employment by him is, therefore, much mom
lucrative and more certain for the labouring families, thar
employment by the individual farmer, who only employs chil
dren occasionally. This circumstance so completely rivets
his influence in the open villages that children are generally
only to be hired through his instrumentality. The lending
out of these individually, independently of the gang, is his
second trade.

The "drawbacks" of the system are the over-work of the
children and young persons, the enormous marches that they
make daily to and from the farms, 5, 6, and sometimes 7 miles
distant, finally, the demoralisation of the gang. Although the
gangmaster, who, in some districts is called "the driver," is
armed with a long stick, he uses it but seldom, and complaints
of brutal treatment are exceptional. He is a democratic em
peror, or a kind of Pied Piper of Hamelin. He must there:

1 SHHK gangmastcrs, however, have worked themselves up to the position of
farmers of 500 acres, or proprietors of whole rows of houses.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 765

lure be popular with his subjects, and he binds them to him
self by the charms of the gipsy life under his direction.
Coarse freedom, a noisy jollity, and obscenest impudence give
attractions to the gang. Generally the gangmaster pays up
in a public house; then he returns home at the head of the
procession reeling drunk, propped up right and left by a
stalwart virago, while children and young persons bring up
the rear, boisterous, and singing chaffing and bawdy songs.
On the return journey what Fourier calls "phanerogamic," is
the order of the day. The getting with child of girls of 13
and 14 by their male companions of the same age, is common.
The open villages which supply the contingent of the gang,
become Sodoms and Gomorrahs,1 and have twice as high a
rate of illegitimate births as the rest of the kingdom. The
moral character of girls bred in these schools, when married
women, was shown above. Their children, when opium does
not give them the finishing stroke, are born recruits of the
gang.

The gang in its classical form just described, is called the
public, common, or tramping gang. For there are also private
gangs. These are made up in the same way as the common
gang, but count fewer members, and work, not under a gang-
master, but under some old farm servant, whom the farmer
does not know how to employ in any better way. The gipsy
fun has vanished here, but according to all witnesses, the pay
ment and treatment of the children is worse:

The gang-system, which during the last years has steadily
increased,2 clearly does not exist for the sake of the gang-
master. It exists for the enrichment of the large farmers,3
and indirectly of the landlords.4 For the farmer there is no

* "Half the girls of Ludford have been mined by going out" (in gangs). 1. c.
p. 6, 8 32.

'"They (gangs) have greatly increased of late years. In some places they are
said to have been introduced at comparatively late dates; in others where gangs
.... have been known for many years .... more and younger children
are employed in them." 0- c., p. 79, § 174.)

' "Small farmers never employ gangs." "It is not on poor land, but on land
which affords rent of from 40 to 50 shillings, that women and children are em
ployed in the greatest numbers." (1. c., pp. 17, 14.)

*To one of these gentlemen the taste of his rent waa so grateful that he in
dignantly declared to the Commiesion of Inquiry that the whole hubbub was only

766 Capitalist Production.

more ingenious method of keeping his labourers well below
the normal level, and yet of always having an extra hand
ready for extra work, of extracting the greatest possible
amount of labour with the least possible amount of money/
and of making adult male labour "redundant." From the
exposition already made, it will be understood why, on the
one hand, a greater or less lack of employment for the
agricultural labourer is admitted, while on the other, the
gang-system is at the same time declared "necessary" on ac
count of the want of adult male labour and its migration to
the towns.2 The cleanly weeded land, and the uncleanly hu
man weeds, of Lincolnshire, are pole and counterpole of
capitalistic production.3

due to the name of the system. If instead of "gang" it were called "the Agricul
tural Juvenile Industrial Self-supporting Association," everything would be all right.
1 "Gang work is cheaper than other work; that is why they are employed," says ;i
former gangmaster (1. c., p. 17, § 14). "The gang-system is decidedly the cheap
est for the farmer, and decidedly the worst for the children," says a farmer. (1. c..
p. 16, § S.)

* "Undoubtedly much of the work now done by children in gangs used to be done
by men and women. More men are out of work now where children and womer
are employed than formerly." (1. c., p. 43, n. 202.) On the other hand, "th<
labour question in some agricultural districts, particularly the arable, is becoming s<
serious in consequence of emigration, and the facility afforded by railways for get
ting to large towns that I (the "I" is the steward of a great lord) think the service?
of children are most indispensable." (1. c., p. 80, n. 180.) For the "labour ques
tion" in English agricultural districts, differently from the rest of the civilised
world, means the landlords' and farmers' question, viz., how it is possible, despite
an always increasing exodus of the agricultural folk, to keep up a sufficient relative
surplus-population in the country, and by means of it keep the wages of the agri
cultural labourer at a minimum?

* The "Public Health Report," where in dealing with the subject of children's
mortality, the gang-system is treated in passing, remains unknown to the press, and,
therefore, to the English public. On the other hand, the last report of the "Child.
Empl. Comm." afforded the press sensational copy always welcome. Whilst the
Liberal press asked how the fine gentlemen and ladies, and the well-paid clergy of
the State Church, with whom Lincolnshire swarms, could allow such a system to
arise on their estates, under their very eyes, they who send out expressly missions
to the Antipodes, "for the improvement of the morals of South Sea Islanders" — the
more refined press confined itself to reflections on the coarse degradation of the agri
cultural population who are capable of selling their children into such slavery!
Under the accursed conditions to which these "delicate" people condemn the agri
cultural labourer, it would not be surprising if he ate his own children. What is
really wonderful is the healthy integrity of character, he has, in great part, retained.
The official reports prove that the parents, even in the gang districts, loathe the
gang-system. "There is much in the evidence that show that the parents of the
children would, in many instances, be glad to be aided by the requirements of a legal
obligation, to resist the pressure and the temptations to which they are often sub
ject They are liable to be urged at times by the parish officers, at times by e»

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 767

(/.) IRELAND.

In concluding this section, we must travel for a moment
(o Ireland. First, the main facts of the case.

The population of Ireland had, in 1841, reached 8,222,664;
in 1851, it had dwindled to 6,623,985 ; in 1861, to 5,850,309 ;
in 1866, to 5£ millions, nearly to its level in 1801. The
diminution began with the famine year, 1846, so that Ireland,
in less than twenty years, lost more than^-ths of its people.1

Table A.

LIVE STOCK.

HORSES.

CATTLE.

Year.

Total

Number.

Decrease.

Total
Number.

Decrease.

Increase.

1860

619,811

3,606,374

1861

614,232

5,993

3,471,688

138,316

1862

602,894

11,338

3,254,890

216,798

1863

579,978

22,916

3,144,231

110,695

1864

562,158

17,820

3,262,294

118,063

1865

547,867

14,291

3,493,414

231,120

ployers, under threats of being themselves discharged, to be taken to work at an age
when . . . school attendance . . . would be manifestly to their greater ad
vantage. .... All that time and strength wasted; all the suffering from extra
and unprofitable fatigue produced to the labourer and to his children; every instance
in which the parent may have traced the moral ruin of bis child to the under
mining of delicacy by the overcrowding of cottages, or to the contaminating in
fluences of the public gang, must have been so many incentives to feelings in the
minds of the labouring poor which can be well understood, and which it would b«
needless to particularise. They must be conscious that much bodily and mental pain
has thus been inflicted upon them from causes for which they were in no way
answerable; to which, had it b.cn in their power, they would have in no way
consented; and against which they were powerless to struggle," (1. c., p. xx., § 82,
and xxiii., n. 96.)

1 Population of Ireland, 1801, 8,819,867 persons; 1811, 6,084,996; 1821, 6,869.544?
J331, 7,828,347; 1841, 8,222,664.

768

Capitalist Production.

Its total emigration from May, 1851, to July, 1865, numbered
1,591,487: the emigration during the years 1861-1865 was
ircre than half-a-million. The number of inhabitated houses
fell, from 1851-1861, by 52,990. From 1851-1861, the
number of holdings of 15 to 30 acres increased 61,000, that
of holdings over 30 acres, 109,000, whilst the total number
of all farms fell 120,000, a fall, therefore, solely due to the
suppression of farms under 15 acres — i.e., to their central
isation.

SHEEP.

PIGS.

Year.

Total
Number.

Decrease.

Increase.

Total
Number.

Decrease.

Increase.

1860

3,542,080

1,271,072

1861

3,556,050

13,970

1,102,042

169,030

1862

3,456,132

99,918

1,154,324

52,282

1863

3,308,204

147,982

1,067,458

86,866

1864

3,366,941

58,737

1,058,480

8,978

1865

3,688,742

321,801

1,299,893

241,413

The decrease of the population was naturally accompanied
by a decrease in the mass of products. For our purpose, it
suffices to consider the 5 years from 1861-1865 during which
over half-a-million emigrated, and the absolute number of
people sank by more than ^ of a million.

From the above tables it results: —

HORSES.

CATTLE.

SHEEP.

PIGS.

Absolute
Decrease.

Absolute
Increase.

72,358

116,626

146,608

28,819 i

-•fhe result would be found yet more unfavourable if we went further back.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 769

Let us now turn to agriculture, which yields the means of
subsistence for cattle and for men. In the following table is
calculated the decrease or increase for each separate year, as
compared with its immediate predecessor. The Cereal Crops
include wheat, oats, barley, rye, beans and peas; the Green
Crops, potatoes, turnips, mangolds, beet-root, cabbages, car
rots, parsnips, vetches, &c.

Table B.

INCREASE OB DECREASE IN THE AREA UNDER CROPS AND
GRASS IN ACERAGE.

0
. ><

Cereal
Crops.

Green Crops.

Grass and
Clover.

Flax.

Total Cultivated
Land.

Decrease.

Increase.

Decrease.

Increase.

Decrease.

Increase,

Decrease.

Increase.

Acres.

Acres

Acres.

Acres

Acres.

1861

15,701

86,974

47,969

19,271

81,873

1862

72,734

74,785

8,623

2,055

138,841

1863

144,719

10,358

7,724

63,922

92,431

1864

122,437

2,317

47,486

87,761

10,493

1865

72,450

25,241

68,970

50,159

28,218

1861-66

438,041

107,984

82,834

122,860

330,860

In the year 1865, 127,470 additional acres came under the
heading "grass land," chiefly because the area under the head
ing of "bog and waste unoccupied/' decreased by 101,543
acres. If we compare 1865 with 1864, there is a decrease in
cereals of 246,667 qrs., of which 48,999 were wheat, 160,605
oats, 29,892 barley, &c. : the decrease in potatoes was 446,398
tons, although the area of their cultivation increased in 1865.

From the movement of population and the agricultural pro
duce of Ireland, we pass to the movement in the purse of its

Sheep in 1866, 8,6*8,742, but in 1856, 8,694,294.
to 1858, 1,409,888.

3 W

Pigs in 1865, 1.239,838, but

770

Capitalist Production.

Total Product.

(Increase or De
crease, 1865.

e/i - . . cri .. +*

i i i s is § i

$ § 8* ~ 1 1 s"

^ C « rt » AO§
a— **.« r.£e> S

"^ ^ t «i* O^J^%.Q^

£ i> 3 rt get »

^rsra*

I***5iel

5iT8o»28

<ii^=!s:-s

I Hi

383

H i g gi 1 i s s 1 i

,,lThe data of the text are put together from the materials of the "Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, Genera
1m, Jor the years 1860, et seq., and " Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, Tables showing the estimated average pro<
HJ6. These statistics are official, and laid before Parliament annually. [Note to 2nd edition. The official stat
2 show, as compared with 1871, a decrease in area under cultivation of 134,915 acres. An increase occurre
tion of green crops, turnips, mangold-wurzel, and the like; a decrease in the area under cultivation for wheat
OAte, 14,000; barley and rye, 4,000; potatoes, 66,638; flax, 34,667; grass, clover, vetches, rape-seed, 30,000. The a
tion for wneat shows for the last 5 years the following stages of decrease:— 1868, 285,000 acres: 186ft. 9«n onn
1871, 244,000; 1372. 828.000. Fnr IRTO -.- <=r.d, in rou-J i.um'uci*, au increase ot 2,600 horses, 80,000 horn
•uccy, »«<i a decrease of 286,000 pigs.]

1 § g — 1 § S 1 § §

t-- «o eo- «-

• .

°g. 1 1 §1 1 1 g g 1 1

K> jp" «-T »o »* o»" t- t- t- 'j t-"

b- Q «5 ^i-t r i «0 -^ C6 tO Q
00 CD t- 18 9 ^4 M S '

t-~ •*" eo" w"

Increase or
Decrease.
1865

CO O tO to if O

b ^ -* o 6 o>

e* o -r — w

b ^4 w — o

«T

I
£

S3 jj 3 is *° °* 2 S S *^

eo <-• o» -* >S i^ eo >o eo C4 «o
w ej ^ «3o •* <=> 2 * S ^

r S : : = I
> t : : : £ , .- S .-

s- - I .i fss 5 i

1 1 1 u 1 § IN s &

> O CQ ccai d4 H S u fc ffi

Increase or De
crease, 1865.

i. 1 ~ 3 1

« 8 S

1 § 1 I § i

' - 8 -" 8

Acres of Cultivated
Land.

SIS § 8 3 8 I S 1

1 § S" - I I s" 8' g |

8. I 1 I g i i s 1 §
g § S " | S a « S §

] U 1 i i j i J M

| 5 1 ssi 1 I | 1 S 3

^QcacaftiaHXuEB

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 771

landlords, larger farmers, and industrial capitalists. It is
reflected in the rise and fall of the Income-tax. It may be
remembered that Schedule D (profits with the exception oi"
those of farmers), includes also the so-called, "professional"
profits — i.e., the incomes of lawyers, doctors, &c. ; and the
Schedules C. and E., in which no special details are given,
include the incomes of employes, officers, State sinecurists,
State fundholders, &c.

Table. D.

THE INCOME-TAX ON THE SUBJOINED INCOMES IN
POUNDS STERLING.

1860.

1861.

1862.

1863.

1864

1865,

SCHEDULE A.

Rent of Land

13,893,829

13,003,554

13,398,938

13,494,091

13,470,700

13,801,616

SCHEDULE B.

Farmrs'. Pfts.

2,765,387

2,773,644

2,937,899

2,938,823

2,930,874

2,946,072

SCHEDULE D.

Industrial, &c.
Profits

4,891,652

4,836,203

4,858,800

4,846,497

4,546,147

4,850,199

Total Schcdls.
A. to E....

22,962,885

22,998,394

23,597,574

23,658,631

23,236,298

23,930,3401

Under Schedule D. the average annual increase of income
from 1853-1864 was only Og93 ; whilst, in the same period, in
Great Britain, it was 4-58. Table E, p. 772, shows the dis
tribution of the profits (with the exception of those of farm
ers) for the years 1864 and 1865.

England, a country with fully developed capitalist produc
tion, and pre-eminently industrial, would have bled to death
with such a drain of population as Ireland has suffered. But
Ireland is at present only an agricultural district of England,
marked off by a wide channel from the country to which it
yields corn, wool, cattle, industrial and military recruits.

1 Tenth Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. Lond. 1864.

Capitalist Production.

Table E.

SCHEDULE D. INCOME FROM PROFITS (OVER £60) IN
IRELAND.

1864.
£.

1865.
£.

Total yearly income
of

4,368,610 divided among
17,467 persons.

238,626 „ 5,015 „

4,669,979 divided among
18,081 persons.

222,575 „ 4,703 „

Yearly income over
£60 and under £100

Of the yearly total
income

1,979,066
2,150,818

„ 11,321 „
» 1,131 „

2,028,471
2,418,933

„ 12,184 „
„ 1,194 „

Remainder of the to
tal yearly income

1,083,906

,, 910 „

1,097,937

„ 1,044 „

Of these -

1,066,912
430,535
646,377

„ 121 „
105 „
26 „

1,320,996
584,458
736,448

„ 186 „
., 122 „
» 28 „

•

262,610

3 „

264,528

3 ,,i

The depopulation of Ireland has thrown much of the land
out of cultivation, has greatly diminished the produce of tie
soil,2 and, in spite of the greater area devoted to cattle breed
ing, has brought about, in some of its branches, an absolute
diminution, in others, an advance scarcely worthy of mention,
and constantly interrupted by retrogressions. Xeverthelea?,
with the fall in numbers of the population, rents and farmer,?'
profits rose, although the latter not as steadily as the forme:*.

1 The total yearly income under Schedule D. is different in this style from thit
which appears in the preceding ones, because of certain deductions allowed by law.

* If the product also diminishes relatively per acre, it must not be forgotten tint
ior a century and a half England has indirectly exported the soil of Ireland, wit *• '
»ut as much as allowing its cultivators the means for making up the constituents < f
th« soil that had been exhausted.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulatio-. 773

The reason of this is easily comprehensible. On the one hand,
with the throwing of small holdings into large ones, and the
change of arable into pasture land, a larger part of the whole
produce was transformed into surplus produce. The surplus
produce increased, although the total produce, of which it
formed a fraction, decreased. On the other hand, the money-
value of this surplus produce increased yet more rapidly than
its mass, in consequence of the rise in the English market-
price of meat, wool, &c., during the last 20, and especially
during the last 10, years.

The scattered means of production that serve the producers
themselves as means of employment and subsistence, without
expanding their own value by the incorporation of the labour
of others, are no more capital than a product consumed by its
own producer is a commodity. If, with the mass of the popu
lation, that of the means of production employed in agricul
tural also diminished, the mass of the capital employed in
agriculture increased, because a part of the means of produc
tion that were formerly scattered, was concentrated and
turned into capital.

The total capital of Ireland outside agriculture, employed
in industry and trade, accumulated during the last two de
cades slowly, and with great and constantly recurring
fluctuations; so much the more rapidly did the concentration
of its individual constituents develop. And, however small
its absolute increase, in proportion to the dwindling popu
lation it had increased largely.

Here, then, under our own eyes and on a large scale, a pro
cess is revealed, than which nothing more excellent could be
wished for by orthodox economy for the support of its dogma :
that misery springs from absolute surplus-population, and
that equilibrium is re-established by depopulation. This is
a far more important experiment than was the plague in the
middle of the 14th century so belauded of Malthusians. Note
further: If only the naivete of the schoolmaster could apply,
to the conditions of production and population of the nine
teenth century, the standard of the 14th, this naivete, into the
bargain, overlooked the fact that whilst, after the plague and

774 Capitalist Production.

the decimation that accompanied it, followed on this side of
the channel, in England, enfranchisement and enrichment of
the agricultural population, on that side, in France, followed
greater servitude and more misery.1

The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 peo
ple, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the coun
try it did not the slightest damage. The exodus of the next
20 years, an exodus still constantly increasing did not, as, e.g.,
the thirty years' war, decimate, along with the human beings,
their means of production. Irish genius discovered an al
together new way of spiriting a poor people thousands of
miles away from the scene of its misery. The exiles trans
planted to the United States, send home sums of money every
year as travelling expenses for those left behind. Every
troop that emigrates one year, draws another after it the
next Thus, instead of costing Ireland anything, emigration
forms one of the most lucrative branches of its export trade.
Finally, it is a systematic process, which does not simply \
make a passing gap in the population, but sucks out of ;t
every year more people than are replaced by the births, so
that the absolute level of the population falls year by year.2

What were the consequences for the Irish labourers left b<i-
hind and freed from the surplus-population ? That the rela
tive surplus-population is to-day as great as before 1846; that
wages are just as low, that the oppression of the labourers'
has increased, that misery is forcing the country towards i
new crisis. The facts are simple. The revolution in agri
culture has kept pace with emigration. The production of
relative surplus population has more than kept pace with tha
absolute depopulation. A glance at table C shows that thi
change of arable to pasture land must work yet more acutelv
in Ireland than in England. In England the cultivation o!
green crops increases with the breeding of cattle; in Irelandk

1 As Ireland is regarded as the promised land of the "principle of population, '
A. Sadler, before the publication of his work on population, issued his famous bool.
"Ireland, its evils and their remedies. 2nd edition, London, 1829." Here, by coir
parison of the statistics of the individual provinces, and of vh»4 individual counties ii1
each province, he proves that the misery there is not, as Malthus -would have it, ii; -
proportion to the number of the population, but in inverse ratio to this.

• Between 1851 and 1874, the total number ot emigrants amounted to 2,325,922.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation 775

it decreases. Whilst large number of acres, that were for
merly tilled, lie idle or are turned permanently into grass
land, a great part of the waste land and peat bogs that were
unused formerly, become of service for the extension of cat
tle-breeding. The smaller and medium farmers — I reckon
among these all who do not cultivate more than 100 acres —
still make up about y^-ths of the whole number.1 They are,
one after the other, and with a degree of force unknown be
fore, crushed by the competition of an agriculture managed by
capital, and therefore they continually furnish new recruits to
the class of wage-labourers. The one great industry of Ire
land, linen-manufacture, requires relatively few adult men
and only employs altogether, in spite of its expansion since
the price of cotton rose in 1861-1866, a comparatively insig
nificant part of the population. Like all the other great mod
ern industries, it constantly produces, by incessant fluctuations,
a relative surplus-population within its own sphere, even with
an absolute increase in the mass of human beings absorbed
by it. The misery of the agricultural population forms the
pedestal for gigantic shirt-factories, whose armies of labourers
are, for the most part, scattered over the country. Here, we
encounter again the system described above of domestic in
dustry, which in under-payment and over-work, possesses its
own systematic means for creating supernumerary labourers.
Finally, although the depopulation has not such destructive
consequences as would result in a country with fully developed
capitalistic production, it does not go on without constant re
action upon the home-market. The gap which emigration
causes here, limits not only the local demand for labour, but
also the incomes of small shopkeepers, artisans, tradespeople
generally. Hence the diminution in incomes between £60 and
£100 in table E.

A clear statement of the condition of the agricultural la
bourers in Ireland is to be found in the Heports of the Irish
Poor Law Inspectors (1870).2 Officials of a government

1 According to a table in Murphy's "Ireland industrial, political and social," 1870,
H.6 per cert, of the holdings do not reach 100 acres, 5.4 exceed 100 acres.
* "Pev<~TV) fr">m the Poor Law Inspectors on the wages of Agricultural Labourers

Capitalist Production.

which is maintained only by bayonets and by a state of siege,
now open, now disguised, they have to observe all the pre
cautions of language that their colleagues in England disdain.
In spite of this, however, they do not let their government
cradle itself in illusions. According to them the rate of
wages in the country, still very low, has within the last 20
years risen 50-60 per cent, and stands now, on the average, at
6s. to 9s. per week. But behind this apparent rise, is hidden
an actual fall in wages, for it does not correspond at all to tta
rise in price of the necessary means of subsistence that han
taken place in the meantime. For proof, the following ex
tract from the official accounts of an Irish workhouse.

AVERAGE WEEKLY COST PER HEAD.

Year ended

Provisions and
Necessaries.

Clothing.

Total.

29th Sept. 1849

Is. 3Jd.

3d.

Is. 6|d.

1869

2s. 7Jd.

6d.

3s. lid.

The price of the necessary means of subsistence is therefore
fully twice, and that of clothing exactly twice, as much as
they were 20 years before.

Even apart from this disproportion, the mere comparison of
the rate of wages expressed in gold would give a result far
from accurate. Before the famine, the great mass of agricul
tural wages were paid in kind, only the smallest part in
money ; to-day, payment in money is the rule. Prom this
it follows that, whatever the amount of the real wage, its
money rate must rise. "Previous to the famine, the labourer
enjoyed his cabin . . . with a rood, or half-acre or acre

in Dublin, 1870." See also "Agricultural Labourers (Ireland) Return, etc..
March 1862, London 1862."

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 777

ti< land, and facilities for ... a crop of potatoes. He
was able to read his pig and keep fowl. . . . But they
now have to buy bread, and they have no refuse upon which
they can feed a pig or fowl, and they have consequently no
benefit from the sale of a pig, fowl, or eggs."1 In fact, for
merly, the agricultural labourers were but the smallest of the
small farmers, and formed for the most part a kind of rear
guard of the medium and large farms on which they found
employment Only since the catastrophe of 1846 have they
begun to form a fraction of the class of purely wage-la
bourers, a special class, connected with its wage-masters only
by monetary relations.

We know what were the conditions of their dwellings in
1846. Since then they have grown yet worse. A part of the
agricultural labourers, which, however, grows less day by day,
dwells still on the holdings of the fanners in over-crowded
huts, whose hideousness far surpasses the worst that the
English agricultural labourers offered us in this way. And
this holds generally with the exception of certain tracts of
Ulster; in the south, in the counties of Cork, Limerick, Kil
kenny, &c. ; in the east, in Wicklow, Wexford, &c. ; in the
centre of Ireland, in King's and Queen's County, Dublin, &c. ;
in the west, in Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway, &c. "The
agricultural labourers' huts," an inspector cries out, "are a
disgrace to the Christianity and to the civilisation of this
country."2 In order to increase the attractions of these holes
for the labourers, the pieces of land belonging thereto from
time immemorial, are systematically confiscated. "The mere
sense that they exist subject to this species of ban, on the
part of the landlords and their agents, has . . . given
birth in the minds of the labourers to corresponding senti
ments of antagonism and dissatisfaction towards those by
whom they are thus led to regard themselves are being treated
as ... a proscribed race."3

The first act of the agricultural revolution was to sweep
away the huts situated on the field of labour. This was done
on the largest scale, and as if in obedience to a command from

>L c. pp. 29, 1. «1. c. p. 12. •!. c. p. 12.

778 Capitalist Production.

on high. Thus many labourers were compelled to seek shelter
in villages and towns. There they were thrown like refuse
into garrets, holes, cellars and corners, in the worst back slums.
Thousands of Irish families, who according to the testimony
of the English, eaten up as these are with national prejudice,
are notable for their rare attachment to the domestic hearth,
for their gaiety and the purity of their home-life, found them
selves suddenly transplanted into hotbeds of vice. The men
are now obliged to seek work of the neighboring farmers
and are only hired by the day, and therefore under the mo*;t
precarious forms of wage. Hence "they sometimes have Ion*
distances to go to and from work, often get wet, and suffer
much hardship, not unfrequently ending in sickness, disease
and want."1

"The towns have had to receive from year to year what
was deemed to be the surplus-labour of the rural division ; "2
and then people still wonder "there is still a surplus of labour
in the towns and villages, and either a scarcity or a threatened
scarcity in some of the country divisions."3 The truth is that
this want only becomes perceptible "in harvest- time, or during
spring, or at such times as agricultural operations are carried
on with activity ; at other periods of the year many hands are
idle ;"4 that "from the digging out of the main crop of potatoes
in October until the early spring following . . . there is
no employment for them ;"5 and further, that during the ac
tive times they " are subject to broken days and to all kinds of
interruptions."6

These results of the agricultural revolution — i.e., the change
of arable into pasture land, the use of machinery, the most
rigorous economy of labour, &c., are still further aggravated
by the model landlords, who, instead of spending their rents
in other countries, condescend to live in Ireland on their de
mesnes. In order that the law of supply and demand may not
be broken, these gentlemen draw their "labour-supply . .
chiefly from their small tenants, who are obliged to attend
when required to do the landlord's work, at rates of wages, in

M. c. p. 25. M. c. p. 25. • 1. c. pp. 31, 32.

»i. c. p. 27. «1. c. p. 1. 8L c. p. 26.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 779

many instances, considerably under the current rates paid to
ordinary labourers, and without regard to the inconvenience
or loss to the tenant of being obliged to neglect his own business
at critical periods of sowing or reaping."1

The uncertainty and irregularity of employment, the con
stant return and long duration of gluts of labour, all these
symptoms of a relative surplus-population, figure therefore in
the reports of the Poor Law administration, as so many hard
ships of the agricultural proletariat. It will be remembered
that we met, in the English agricultural proletariat, with a
similar spectacle. But the difference is that in England, an
industrial country, the industrial reserve recruits itself from
the country districts, whilst in Ireland, an agricultural coun
try, the agricultural reserve recruits itself from the towns, the
cities of refuge of the expelled agricultural labourers. In the
former, the supernumeraries of agriculture are transformed
into factory-operatives; in the latter, those forced into the
towns, whilst at the same time they press on the wages in
towns, remain agricultural labourers, and are constantly sent
back to the country districts in search of work.

The official inspectors sum up the material condition of the
agricultural labourer as follows: "Though living with the
strictest frugality, his own wages are barely sufficient to pro
vide food for an ordinary family and pay his rent, and he de
pends upon other sources for the means of clothing himself, his
wife, and children. . . The atmosphere of these cabins,
combined with the other privations they are subjected to, has
made this class particularly susceptible to low fever and pul
monary consumption."2 After this, it is no wonder that, ac
cording to the unanimous testimony of the inspectors, a sombre
discontent runs through the ranks of this class, that they long
for the return of the past, loathe the present, despair of the fu
ture, give themselves up to "to the evil influence of agita
tors," and have only one fixed idea, to emigrate to America.
This is the land of Cockaigne, into which the great Malthu-
sian panacea, depopulation, has transformed green Erin.

What a happy life the Irish factory operative leads, one

»L c. p. 80 «!. c. pp. 21. 13.

780 Capitalist Production.

example will show: "On my recent visit to the North of
Ireland," says the English Factory Inspector, Robert Baker,
"I met with the following evidence of effort in an Irish skill
ed workman to afford education to his children; and I give
his evidence verbatim, as I took it from his mouth. That he
was a skilled factory hand, may be understood when I say that
he was employed on goods for the Manchester market. 'John
son. — I am a beetler and work from 6 in the morning till 11
at night, from Monday till Friday. Saturday we leave off
at 6 p.m,. and get three hours of it (for meals and rest). I
have five children in all. For this work I get 10s. 6d. a week ;
my wife works here also, and gets 5s* a week. The oldest
girl who is 12, minds the house. She is also cook, and all the
servant we have. She gets the young ones ready for school.
A girl going past the house wakes me at, half past five in the
morning. My wife gets up and goes along with me. We get
nothing (to eat) before we come to work. The child of 12
takes care of the little children all the day, and we get noth
ing till breakfast at eight. At eight we go home. We get
tea once a week; at other times we get stirabout, sometimes
of oatmeal, sometimes of Indian meal, as we are able to get
it. In the winter we get a little sugar and water to our Indian
meal. In the summer we get a few potatoes, planting a
small patch ourselves; and when they are done we get back to
stirabout. Sometimes we get a little milk as it may be. So
we go on from day to day, Sunday and week day, always the
same the year round. I am always very much tired when I
have done at night We may see a bit of flesh meat sometimes,
but very seldom. Three of our children attend school, for
whom we pay Id. a week a head. Our rent is 9d. a week.
Peat for firing costs Is. 6d. a fortnight at the very lowest."1
Such are Irish wages, such is Irish life !

In fact the misery of Ireland is again the topic of the day in
England. At the end of 1866 and the beginning of 1867, one
of the Irish land magnates, Lord Dufferin, set about its solu
tion in the "Times." - "Wie menschlich von solch grcwsem
Herrn!"

1 Kept, of Insp. of Fact. 31st Oct., 1860, p. 96.

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 781

From Table E. we saw that, during 1864, of £4,368,610 of
total profits, three surplus-value makers pocketed only
£262,610; that in 1865, however, out of £4,669,979 total
profits, the same three virtuosi of "abstinence" pocketed
£274,448; in 1864, 26 surplus-value makers reached to
£646,377; in 1865, 28 surplus-value makers reached to
£736,448; in 18C4, 121 surplus-value makers, £1,066,912; in
1865, 186 surplus-value makers, £1,320,996; in 1864, 1131
surplus-value makers £2,150,818, nearly half of the total an
nual profit; in 1865, 1194 surplus-value makers £2,418,933,
more than half of the total annual profit. But the lion's
share, which an inconceivably small number of land magnates
in England, Scotland and Ireland swallow up of the yearly
national rental, is so monstrous that the wisdom of the English
state does not think fit to afford the same statistical materials
about the distribution of rents as about the distribution of
profits. Lord Dufferin is one of those land magnates. That
rent-rolls and profits can ever be "excessive," or that their
plethora is in any way connected with plethora of the people's
misery is, an idea as "disreputable" as "unsound." He keeps
to facts. The fact is that, as the Irish population diminishes,
the Irish rent-rolls swell; that depopulation benefits the land
lords, therefore also benefits the soil, and, therefore the people,
that were accessory of the soil. He declares, therefore, that
Ireland is still over-populated, and the stream of emigration
still flows too lazily. To be perfectly happy, Ireland must
get rid of at least one-third of a million of labouring men.
Let no man imagine that this lord, poetic into the bargain,
is a physician of the school of Sangrado, who as often as he
did not find his patient better, ordered phlebotomy and again
phlebotomy, until the patient lost his sickness at the same
time as his blood. Lord Dufferin demands a new blood-letting
of one-third of a million only, instead of about two millions ;
in fact, without the getting rid of these, the millennium in
Erin is not to be. The proof is easily given.

Centralisation has from 1851 to 1861 destroyed principally
farms of the first three categories, under 1 and not over 15
aares. These above all must disappear. This gives 307,058

782

Capitalist Production.

AND EXTENT OF FAHMS IN IRELAND IN 1864.

(1) Farms not over
1 acre.

(2) Farms over 1, not
over 5 acres.

(3) Farms over 5, not
over 15 acres.

(4) Farms over 15, no!
over 30 acres.

No.

Acres.

No.

Acres.

No.

Acres.

No.

Acres.

48,653

25,394

82,037

288,916

178,368

1,836,310

136,578

8,051,348

(5) Farms over 30, not
over 50 acres.

(6) Farms over 50, not
over 100 acres.

(7) Farms over 100
acres.

(8) Total area.

No.
71,961

Acres.
2,908,274

No.
54,247

Acres.
3,983,880

No.
81,927

Acres.

8,227,807

Acres.

28,319,9241

"supernumerary" farmers, and reckoning the families the low
average of 4 persons 1,228,232 persons. On the extravagant
supposition that, after the agricultural revolution is complete,
one-fourth of these are again absorbable, there remain for emi
gration 921,174 persons. Categories, 4, 5, 6, of over 15 and
not over 100 acres, are, as was known long since in England,
too small for capitalistic cultivation of corn, and for sheep-
breeding are almost vanishing quantities. On the same sup
position as before, therefore, there are further 788,761 persons
to emigrate; total, 1,709,532. And as 1'appetit vient en
mangeant, Rent-roll's eyes will soon discover that Ireland, with
3% millions, is still always miserable because she is over-
populated. Therefore her depopulation must go yet further,
that thus she may fulfill her true destiny, that of an English
slheep walk and cattle-pasture.2

1 The total area includes also peat, bogs, and waste land.

1 How the famine and its consequences have been deliberately made the most of,
both by the individual landlords and by the English legislature, to forcibly carry out
the agricultural revolution and to thin the population of Ireland down to the propor
tion satisfactory to the landlords, I shall show more fully in Vol. III. of this work,
in the section on landed property. There also I return to the condition of the small
farmers and the agricultural labourers. At present, only one quotation. Nassau W.
Senior says, with other things, in his posthumous work, "Journals, Conversations
and Essays, relating to Ireland." 2 vols. London 1868; Vol. II., p. 282. "Well,"
•aid Dr. G., "we have got our Poor Law and it is a great instrument for giving tb«

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 783

Like all good things in this bad world, this profitable method
has its drawbacks. With the accumulation of rents in Ireland,
the accumulation of the Irish in America keeps pace. The
Irishman, banished by sheep and ox, reappears on the other
side of the ocean as a Fenian; and face to face with the old
queen of the sea rises, threatening and more threatening, the
young giant Republic:

Acerba fata Romanos agunt
Scelusque fraternse necis.

victory to the landlords. Another, and a still more powerful instrument is emigra
tion . . . No friend to Ireland can wish the war to be prolonged [between the
landlords and the small Celtic farmers] — still less, that it should end by the victory
of the tenants. The sooner it is over — the sooner Ireland becomes a grazing country,
with the comparatively thin population which a grazing country requires, the better
for all classes." The English Corn Laws of 1815 secured Ireland the monopoly of
the free importation of corn into Great Britain. They favoured artificially, therefore,
the cultivation of corn. With the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846, this monopoly
was suddenly removed. Apart from all other circumstances, this event alone was
sufficient to give a great impulse to the turning of Irish arable into pasture land,
to the concentration of farms, and to the eviction of small cultivators. After the
fruitfulness of the Irish soil had been praised from 1815 to 1846, and proclaimed
loudly as by Nature herself destined for the cultivation of wheat, English agrono
mists, economists, politicians, discover suddenly that it is good for nothing but to
produce forage. M. L6once de Lavergne has hastened to repeat this on the other
side of the Channel. It takes a "serious" man, a La Lavergne, to be caught by such
childishness.

PART vm.

THE SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMC LATION.
CHAPTER XXVI.

THE SECRET OF PRIMITIVE AOCTJMULATIOtf.

WE have seen how money is changed into capital; how
through capital surplus-value is made^ and; from surplus-
value more capital. But the accumulation of capital pre
supposes surplusrvalue ; surplus-value presupposes capital
istic production ;['capitalistic production presupposes the pre- *

istence of considerable masses of capital and of labour-pow- —
in the hands of producers of commoditie^T The whole H
movement, therefore, seems to turn in a vicious circle, out of
which we can only get by supposing a primitive accumulation
(previous accumulation of Adam Smith) preceding capital
istic accumulation ; an accumulation not the result of the capi
talist mode of production, but its starting point.

This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy
'about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the
apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is
supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the
past In times long gone by there were two sorts of people;
one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the
other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in
riotous living. The legend of tho -logical original sin tells us
certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in
the sweat of his brow; l>ut the history of economic original sin
reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means
essential. Never mind ! Thus it came w pass that the former

784

The Secret of Primitive Accumulation. 785

sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing
to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin
dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its
labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth
of the few that increases constantly although they have long
ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day
preached to us in the defence of property. M. Thiers, e.g.,
had the assurance to repeat it with all tlu solemnity of a states
man, to the French people, once so spirituel. But as soon as
the question of property crops up, it becomes a sacred duty
to proclaim the intellectual food of the infant as the one
thing fit for all ages and for all stages of development. In
actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, rob
bery, murder, briefly force, play the great part. In the tender
annals of Political Economy, the idyllic reigns from time im
memorial. Right and "labour" were from all time the sole
means of enrichment, the present year of course always ex-
cepted. As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumu- _
lation are anything but idyllic.

In themselves, money and commodities are no more capital
than are the means of production and of subsistence. They
want transforming into capital. But this transformation it
self can only take place under certain circumstances that
centre in this, viz., that two very different kinds of commodity-
possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the
one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means
of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sum of values
they possess, by buying other people's labour-power; on the
other hand, free labourers, the sellers of their own labour-pow
er, and therefore the sellers of labour. Free labourers, in the ^
double sense that neither they themselves form part and parcel .
of the means of production, as in the case of slaves, bondsmen,-
&c., nor do the means of production belong to them, as in .-
the case of peasant-proprietors; they are, therefore, free i
from, unencumbered by, any means of production of their •-
own. With this polarisation of the market for commodities,
the fundamental conditions of capitalist production are
given. The capitalist system presupposes the complete sep- »

2 X

786 Capitalist Production.

uration of the labourers from all property in the means by

. which they can realise their labour. As soon as capitalist

production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this

separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale.

The process, therefore, that clears the way for the capitalist:

system, can be none other than the process which takes away

from the labourer the possession of his means of production ; a

process that transforms, on the one hand, the social means

of subsistence and of production into capital, on the other,

/ the immediate producers into wage-labourers. /The so-called

L/Tprimitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the

^/historical process of divorcing the producer from the means

\ of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms

v the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of produo

v/ tion corresponding with it.

The economic structure of capitalistic society has grown out
of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution
of the latter set free the elements of the former.

The immediate producer, the labourer, could only dispose
of his own person after he had ceased to be attached to the
soil and ceased to be the slave, serf, or bondman of another.
To become a free seller of labour-power, who carries his com
modity wherever he finds a market, he must further have
escaped from the regime of the guilds, their rules for appren
tices and journeymen, and the impediments of their labour
regulations. Hence, the historical movement which changes
the producers into wage-workers, appears, on the one hand,
as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters
of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois histor
ians. But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sell
ers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their
own means of production, and of all the guarantees of ex
istence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the
history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals
of mankind in letters of blood and fire.

The industrial capitalists, these new potentates, had on their
part not only to displace the guild masters of handicrafts, but
also the feudal lords, the possessors of the sources of wealth*

The Secret of Primitive Accumulation. 787

In this respect their conquest of social power appears as the
fruit of a victorious struggle both against feudal lordship" and
its revolting prerogatives, and against the guilds and the fetters
they laid on the free development of production and the free
exploitation of man by man. The chevaliers d' Industrie, how
ever, only succeed in supplanting the chevaliers of the sword
by making use of events of which they themselves were wholly
innocent. They have risen by means as vile as those by which
the Roman freed-man once on a time made himself the master
of his patronus.

The starting-point of the development that gave rise to the
wage-labourer as well as to the capitalist, was the servitude of
the labourer. The advance consisted in a change of form of
this servitude, in the transformation of feudal exploitation in
to capitalist exploitation. To understand its march, we need
not go back very far. Although we come across the first be
ginnings of capitalist production as early as the 14th or 15th
century, sporadically, in certain towns of the Mediterranean,
the capitalistic era dates from the 16th century. Wherever
it appears, the abolition of serfdom has been long effected, and
the highest development of the middle ages, the existence
sovereign towne, has been long on the wane.

In the history of primitive accumulation, all revolutions are
epoch-making that act as levers for the capitalist class in
course of formation ; but, above all, those moments when great
masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their
means of subsistence, and hurled as free and "unattached"
proletarians on the labour market. The expropriation of the
agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis
of the whole process. The history of this expropriation, in
different countries, assumes different aspects, and runs through
its various phases in different orders of succession, and at
different periods. In England alone, which we take as our/
example, has it the classic form.1

1 In Italy, where capitalistic production developed earliest, the dissolution of
serfdom also took place earlier than elsewhere. The serf was emancipated in that
country before he had acquired any prescriptive right to the soil. His emancipation
at once transformed him into a free proletarian, who, moreover, found his master
ready waiting for him in the towns, for the most part handed down as legacies from

788 Capitalist Production.

CHAPTER XXVIL

EXPROPRIATION OF THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION FROM

THE LAND.

\/ IN England, serfdom had practically disappeared in the last
.part of the 14th century. The immense majority of the
population1 consisted then, and to a still larger extent, in the
15th century, of free peasant proprietors, whatever was tte
feudal title under which their right of property was hidden.
In the larger seignorial domains, the old bailiff, himself a serf,
was displaced by the free farmer. The wage-labourers of
agriculture consisted partly of pejjSants, who utilised Hieir
leisure time by working on the large estates, partly of an
independent special class of wage-labourers, relatively and
absolutely few in numbers. The latter also were practically
at the same time peasant farmers, since, besides their wages,
they had alloted to them arable land to the extent of 4 or more
acres, together with their cottages. Besides they, with the
rest of the peasants, enjoyed the usufruct of the common
land, which gave pasture to their cattle, furnished them with
timber, fire-wood, turf, &c.2 In all countries of Europe,

the Roman time. When the revolution of the world-market, about the end of the
15th century, annihilated Northern Italy's commercial supremacy, a movement in
the reverse direction set in. The labourers of the towns were driven en masse into
the country, and gave an impulse, never before seen, to the petite culture, carried on
in the form of gardening.

1 "The petty proprietors who cultivated their own fields with their own hands, and
enjoyed a modest competence .... then formed a much more important part
of the nation than at present. If we may trust the best statistical writers of that
age, not less than 160,000 proprietors who, with their families, must have made up
more than a seventh of the whole population, derived their subsistence from little
freehold estates. The average income of these small landlords .... was esti
mated at between £60 and £70 a year. It was computed that the number of per
sons who tilled their own land was greater than the number of those who farmed
the land of others." Macaulay: History of England, 10th ed., 1854, I. p. 333,334
Even in the last third of the 17th century, f$ of the English people were agricul-
ural. (1. c., p. 413.) I quote Macaulay, because as systematic falsifier of history he
minimises as much as possible facts of this kind.

* We must never forget that even the serf was not only the owner, if but a
tribute-paying owner, of the piece of land attached to his house, but also a co-
possessor of the common land. "Le paysan y (in Silesia, under Frederick II.) esi

Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 789

feudal production is characterised by division of the soil
amongst the greatest possible number of sub-feudatories. The
might of the feudal lord, like that of the sovereign, depended
not on the length of his rent roll, but on the number of his
subjects, and the latter depended on the number of peasant
proprietors.1 Although, therefore, the English land, after the
Norman conquest, was distributed in gigantic baronies, one of
which often included some 900 of the old Anglo-Saxon lord
ships, it was bestrewn with small peasant properties, only here
and there interspersed with great seignorial domains. Such
conditions, together with the prosperity of the towns so charac
teristic of the 15th century, allowed of that wealth of the
people which Chancellor Fortescue so eloquently paints in his
"Laudes legum Angliae;" but it excluded the possibility of
capitalistic wealth.

The prelude of the revolution that laid the foundation of
the capitalist mode of production, was played in the last third!
of the 15th, and the first decade of the 16th century. A mass\
of free proletarians was hurled on the _ labour-market by the /
breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers, who, as Sir Jarnes /
Steuart well says, "everywhere uselessly filled house and
castle." Although the royal power, itself a product of bour
geois development, in its strife after absolute sovereignty for
cibly hastened on the dissolution of these bands of retainers,
it was by no means the sole cause of it. In insolent conflict-
with king and parliament, the great feudal lords created an ^
incomparably larger proletariat by the forcible driving of the ^\

C//

__ the land^to winch the latter Fad the same

feudal right as thelor^Thimself, and by the usurpation of the
common lands. The rapid rise of the Flemish wool manufac-- I
tures, and the corresponding rise in the price of wool in Eng- ••*
land, gave the direct impulse to these evictions. The old nobil-

serf." Nevertheless, these serfs possess common lands. "On n* a pas pu encore
engager les Silesiens au partage des communes, tandis que dans la Nouvelle Marche,
il n'y a guere de village ou ce partage ne soit execute avec le plus grand succes."
(Mirabeau: De la Monarchic Prussienne. Londres, 1788, t. ii., pp. 125, 126.)

1 Japan, with its purely feudal organisation of landed property and its developed
f>etite culture, gives a much truer picture of the European middle ages than all our
history books, dictated as these are, for the most part, by bourgeois prejudices. It
is very convenient to be "liberal" at the expense of the middle ages,

790 Capitalist Production.

ity had been devoured by the great feudal wars. The new
nobility was the child of its time, for which money was the
power of all powers. Transformation of arable land into
sheep-walks was, therefore, its cry. Harrison, in his "Descrip
tion of England, prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicle," describes
how the expropriation of small peasants is ruining the country.
"What care our great eucroachers ?" The dwellings of the
peasants and the cottages of the labourers were razed to the
ground or doomed to decay. "If," says Harrison, "the old
records of euerie manour be sought .... it will soon
appear that in some manour seventeene, eighteene, or twentie
houses are shrunk .... that England was neuer less fur
nished with people than at the present. ... Of cities and
townes either utterly decaied or more than a quarter or half
diminished, though some one be a little increased here or there ;
of townes pulled downe for sheepe- walks, and no more but the
lordships now standing in them .... I could saie some
what" The complaints of these old chroniclers are always
exaggerated, but they reflect faithfully the impression made
on contemporaries by the revolution in the conditions of prod
uction. A comparison of the writings of Chancellor Fortescue
and Thomas More reveals the gulf between the 15th and 16th
century. As Thornton rightly has it, the English working-
class was precipitated without any transition from its golden
into its iron age.

Legislation was terrified at this revolution. It did not yet
stand on that height of civilisation where the "wealth of the
nation" (i.e., the formation of capital, and the reckless ex
ploitation and impoverishing of the mass of the people) figure
as the ultima Tlmle of all state-craft. ~ In his history of
Henry VII., Bacon says: "Inclosures at that time (1489)
began to be more frequent, whereby arable land (which could

^ not be manured without people and families) was turned into
pasture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen ; and tenan-

vcies for years, lives, and at will (whereupon much of the yeo
manry lived) were turned into demenses. This bred a decay
of people, and (by consequence) a decay of towns, churches,
tithes, and the like In remedying of this inconvenience

Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 791

the king's wisdom was admirable, and the parliament at that
time .... they took a course to take away depopulating in-
closures, and depopulating pasturage." An Act of Henry
VII., 1489, cap. 19, forbad the destruction of all "houses of
husbandry" to which at least 20 acres of land belonged. ** By
an Act, 25 Henry VIII., the same law was renewed. It re
cites, among other tilings, that many farms and large flocks of
cattle, especially of sheep, are concentrated in the hands of a
few men, whereby the rent of land has much risen and tillage
has fallen off, churches and houses have been pulled down, and
marvellous numbers of people have been deprived of the means
wherewith to maintain themselves and their families. The
Act, therefore, ordains the rebuilding of the decayed farm
steads, and fixes a proportion between corn land and pasture
land, &c, rAn Act of 1533 recites that some owners possess
24,000 sheep, and limits the number to be owned to 2000. *
The cry of the people and the legislation directed, for 150 *&*»
years after Henry VII., against the appropriation of the J^;
small farmers and peasants, were alike fruitless. * The secret ^ ^^^
of their inefficiency Bacon, without knowing it, reveals to us.
"The device of King Henry VII.," says Bacon, in his "Essaysy
Civil and Moral," Essay 29, "was profound and admirable, v
in making farms and houses of husbandry of a standard ; that *
is, maintained with such a proportion of land unto them as
may breed a subject to live in convenient plenty, and no ser
vile condition, and to keep the plough in the hands of the
owners and not mere hirelings."2 What the capital system V

1 In his "Utopia," Thomas More says, that in England "your shepe that were
wont to be so tneke and tame, and so smal eaters, now, as I heare saye, be become so
great devourers and so wylde that they eate up, and swallow downe, the very men
themselfcs." "Utopia," transl. by Robinson., ed. Arber, Lond., 1869, p. 41.

2 Bacon shows the connexion between a free, well-to-do peasantry and good in
fantry. "This did wonderfully concern the might and mannerhood of the kingdom
to have farms as it were of a standard sufficient to maintain an able body out of
penury, and did in effect amortize a great part of the lands of the kingdom unto
the hold and occupation of the yeomanry or middle people, of a condition between

gentlemen, and cottagers and peasants For it hath been held by the

general opinion of men of best judgment in the wars .... that the principal
strength of an army consisteth in the infantry or foot. And to make good infantry
it requireth men bred, not in a servile or indigent fashion, but in some free and
plentiful manner. Therefore, if a state run most to noblemen and gentlemen, and
that the husbandmen and ploughmen be but as their workfolk and labourers, or

792 Capitalist Production.

vx/' demanded was, on the other hand, a degraded and almost
^servile condition of the mass of the people, the transformation
%of them into mercenaries, and of their means of labour into
-T capital. During this rtansformation period, legislation also
strove to retain the 4 acres of land by the cottage of the ag
ricultural wage-labourer, and forbad him to take lodgers into
his cottage. In the reign of James I. 1627, Roger Crocker of
Front Mill, was condemned for having built a cottage on
the manor of Front Mill wit-hot.. 4 acres of land attached to
the same in perpetuity. As late as Charles I.'s reign, 1638,
a royal commission was appointed to enforce the carrying out
of the old laws, especially that referring to the 4 acres of
land. Even in Cromwell's time, the building of a house with
in 4 miles of London was forbidden unless it was endowed
with 4 acres of land. As late as the first half of the 18th
century complaint is made if the cottage of the agricultural
labourer has not an adjunct of one or two acres of land. Now
adays he is lucky if it is furnished with a little garden, or
if he may rent, far away from his cottage, a few roods,
"Landlords and fanners," says Dr. Hunter, "work here hand
in hand. A few acres to the cottage would make the labourers
too independent."1

The process of forcible expropriation of the people received
./ in the 16th century a new and frightful impulse from the
K/eformation, and from the consequent colossal spoliation
of the church property. The Catholic church was, at the
time of the Reformation, feudal proprietor of a great part of
the English land. The suppression of the monasteries, &c.,
hurled their inmates into the proletariat. The estates of
the church were to a large extent given away to rapacious

else mere cottages (which are but hous'd beggars), you may have a good cavalry,
but never good stable bands of foot .... And this is to be seen in France,
and Italy, and some other parts abroad, where in effect r'l ;s noblesse or peasantry
insomuch that they ?re inforced to employ mercenary bands of Switrers
and the like, for their battalions of foot; whereby also it comes to pass that those
nations have much people and few soldiers." ("The Reign of Henry VII." Ver
batim reprint from Rennet's England. Ed. 1719. Lond., 1870, p. 308.)

1 Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 134. "The quantity of land assigned (in the old laws)
would now be judged too great for labourers, and rather as likely to convert them
into small farmers." (George Roberts: "The Social History of the People of the
Southern Counties of England in past centuries." Lond,, 1866, pp. 184-186.)

Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 793

royal favourites, or sold at a nominal price to speculating a
farmers and citizens, who drove out, en masse, the hereditary
sub-tenants and threw their holdings into one. The legally
guaranteed property of the poorer folk in a part of the church's
tithes was tacitly confiscated.1 "Pauper ubique jacet," cried
Queen Elizabeth, after a journey through England. In the
43rd year of her reign the nation was obliged to recognise
pauperism officially by the introduction of a poor-rate. "The
authors of this law seem to have been ashamed to state the
grounds of it, for [contrary to traditional usage] it has no pre
amble whatever."2 By the 16th of Charles L, ch. 4, it was
declared perpetual, and in fact only in 1834 did it take a new
and harsher form.3 These immediate results of the Reforma
tion were not its most lasting ones. The property of the

1 "The right of the poor to share in the tithe, is established by the tenour of an
cient statutes." (Tuckett, 1. c., Vol. II., pp. 804-805.)

•William Cobbett: "A History of the Protestant Reformation," § 471.

8 The "spirit" of Protestantism may be* seen from the following, among other
things. In the south of England certain landed proprietors and well-to-do farmers
put their heads together and propounded ten questions as to the right interpretation
of the poor-law of Elizabeth. These they laid before a celebrated jurist of that
time, Sergeant Snigge (later a judge under James I.) for his opinion. "Question
9 — Some of the more wealthy farmers in the parish have devised a skilful mode by
which all the trouble of executing this Act (the 43rd of Elizabeth) might be avoided.
They have proposed that we shall erect a prison in the parish, and then give notice
to the neighbourhood, that if any persons are disposed to farm the poor of this
parish, they do give in sealed proposals, on a certain day, of the lowest price at
which they will take them off our hands; and that they will be authorised to refuse
to any one unless he be shut up in the aforesaid prison. The proposers of this plan
conceive that there will be found in the adjoining counties, persons, who, being un
willing to labour and not possessing substance or credit to take a farm or ship, so
as to live without labour, may be induced to make a very advantageous offer to the
parish. If any of the poor perish under the contractor's care, the sin will lie at
his door, as the parish will have done its duty by them. We are, however, apprehen
sive that the present Act (43rd of Elizabeth) will not warrant a prudential measure
of this kind; but you are to learn that the rest of the freeholders of the county,
and of the adjoining county of B, will very readily join in instructing their members
to propose an Act to enable the parish to contract with a person to lock up and
work the poor; and to declare that if any person shall refuse to be so locked up
and worked, he shall be entitled to no relief. This, it is hoped, will prevent per
sons in distress from wanting relief, and be the means of keeping down parishes."
(R. Blakey: "The History of Political Literature from the earliest Times." Lond.,
1855, Vol. II., pp. 84-85.) In Scotland, the abolition of serfdom took place some
centuries later than in England. Even in 1698, Fletcher of Saltoun, declared in the
Scotch parliament "The number of beggars in Scotland is reckoned at not less than
200,000. The only remedy that I, a republican on principle can suggest, is to restore
the old state of serfdom, to make slaves of all those who are unable to provide for
their own subsistence." Eden, 1. c., Book I., ch. 1, pp. 60-61, says, "The decrease of
Tillenage seems necessarily to have been the era of the origin of the poor. Manu-

794 Capitalist Production.

church formed the religious bulwark of the traditional condi
tions of landed property. With its fall these were no longer
tenable.1

Even in the last decade of the 17th century, the yeomanry,
the class of independent peasants, were more numerous than
the class of farmers. They had formed the backbone of Crom-
welPs strength, and, even according to the confession of
Macaulay, stood in favourable contrast to the drunken squires
and to their servants, the country clergy, who had to marry
their master's cast-off mistresses. About 1750, the yeomanry^
had disappeared,2 and so had, in the last decade of the 18th
century, the last trace of the common land of the agricultural /
labourer. We leave on one side here the purely economic
causes of the agricultural revolution. We deal only with the
forcible means employed.

>v/ After the restoration of the Stuarts, the landed proprietors
t carried, by legal means, an act of usurpation, effected every
where on the Continent without any legal formality. They
abolished the feudal tenure of land, i.e., they got rid of all
its obligations to the State, "indemnified" the State by taxes
on the peasantry and the rest of the mass of the people, vindi
cated for themselves the rights of modern private property in

\/ estates to which they had only a feudal title, and, finally,
passed those laws of settlement, which, mutatis mutandis, had
the same effect on the English agricultural labourer, as the

factures and commerce are the two parents of our national poor." Eden, like our
Scotch republican on principle, errs only in this: not the abolition of villenage, but
the abolition of the property of the agricultural labourer in the soil made him a
proletarian, and eventually a pauper. In France, where the expropriation was
effected in another way, the ordonnance of Moulins, 1571, and the Edict of 1656,
correspond to the English poor-laws.

1 Professor Rogers, although formerly Professor of Political Economy in the Uni
versity of Oxford, the hotbed of Protestant orthodoxy, in his preface to the "History
of Agriculture" lays stress on the fact of the pauperisation of the mass of the people
by the Reformation.

2 A letter to Sir T. C. Banbury, Bart., on the High Price of Provisions. By a
Suffolk Gentleman. Ipswich, 1795, p. 4. Even the fanatical advocate of the system
of large farms, the author of the "Inquiry into the connection of large farms, etc.,
London, 1773," p. 133, says: "I most lament the loss of our yeomanry, that set of
men who really kept up the independence of this nation; and sorry I am to see their
lands now in the hands of monopolizing lords, tenanted out to small farmers, who
hold their leases on such conditions as to be little better than vassals ready to attend
a summons on every mischievous occasion."

Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 795

edict of the Tartar Boris Godunof on the Russian peasantry.
The "glorious Revolution" brought into power, along with
William of Orange, the landlord and capitalist appropriators
of surplus-value.1 They inaugurated the new era by practis
ing on a colossal scale thefts of state lands, thefts that had been ^
hitherto managed more modestly. These estates were given ^ lr
away, sold at a ridiculous figure, or even annexed to private es-1-
tates by direct seizure.2 All this happened without the slight- ^
est observation of legal etiquette. The crown lands thus '"
fraudulently appropriated, together with the robbery of the ^
Church estates, as far as these had not been lost again during x
the republican revolution, form the basis of the to-day princely ^
domains of the English oligarchy.3 *• The bourgeois capitalists '^
favoured the operation with the view, among others, to pro
moting free trade in land, to extending the domain of modern
agriculture on the large farm-system, and to increasing their
supply of the free agricultural proletarians ready to hand. *
Besides, the new landed aristocracy was the natural ally of
the new bankocracy, of the newly-hatched haute finance, and
of the large manufacturers, then depending on protective
duties. The English bourgeoisie acted for its own interest
quite as wisely as did the Swedish bourgeoisie who, reversing
the process, hand in hand with their economic allies, the
peasantry, helped the kings in the forcible resumption of the
Crown lands from the oligarchy. This happened since 1604
under Charles X. and Charles XI.

Communal property — always distinct from the State prop-

1 On the private moral character of this bourgeois hero, among other things:
"The large grant of lands in Ireland to Lady Orkney, in 1695, is a public instance of
the king's affection, and the lady's influence. . . . Lady Orkney's endearing
offices are supposed to have been — foeda labiorum ministeria." (In the Sloane Manu
script Collection, at the British Museum, No. 4224. The Manuscript :s entitled:
"The charakter and behaviour of King William, Sunderland, etc., as represented in
Original Letters to the Duke of Shrewsbury, from Somers Halifax, Oxford, Secre
tary Vernon, etc." It is full of curiosa.)

* "The illegal alienation of the Crown Estates, partly by sale and partly by gift, is
a scandalous chapter in English history ... a gigantic fraud on the nation."
(F. W. Newman, Lectures on Political Economy. London, 1851, pp. 129, 130.)
[For details as to how the present large landed proprietors of England came into
their possessions see "Our Old Nobility. By Noblesse Oblige." London, 1879.— Ed.]

' Read e.g., E. Burke's Pamphlet on the ducal house of Bedford, whose offshooi
was Lord John Russell, the "tomtit of Liberalism."

796 Capitalist Production.

erty just dealt with — was an old Teutonic institution which
lived on under cover of feudalism. We have seen how the
forcible usurpation of this, generally accompanied by the turn
ing of arable into pasture land, begins at the end of the 15th
and extends into the 16th century. But, at that time, the
process was carried on by means of individual acts of violence
against which legislation, for a hundred and fifty years, fought
in vain. The advance made by the 18th century shows itself
in this, that the law itself becomes now the instrument of
the theft of the people's land, although the large farmers mako
use of their little independent methods as well.1 The parlia
mentary form of the robbery is that of Acts for enclosures oi
Commons, in other words, decrees by which the landlords
grant themselves the people's land as private property, decrees
of expropriation of the people. Sir F. M. Eden refutes his
own crafty special pleading, in which he tries to represent com
munal property as the private property of the great landlords
who have taken the place of the feudal lords, when he, him
self, demands a "general "Act of Parliament for the enclosure
of Commons," (admitting thereby that a parliamentary coup
d'etat is necessary for its transformation into private prop
erty), and moreover calls on the legislature for the indemnifi
cation for the expropriated poor.2

Whilst the place of the independent yeoman was taken by
tenants at will, small farmers on yearly leases, a servile rabble
dependent on the pleasure of the landlords, the systematic
robbery of the Communal lands helped especially, next to
v the theft of the State domains, to swell those large farms, that
..? were called in the 18th century capital farms3 or merchant
farms,4 and to "set free" the agricultural populations as prole
tarians for manufacturing industry.

1 "The farmers forbid cottagers to keep any living creatures besides themselves
and children, under the pretence that if they keep any beasts or poultry, they will
steal from the farmers' barns for their support; they also say, keep the cottagers poor
and you will keep them industrious, &c., but the real fact, I believe, is that the
fanners may have the whole right of common to themselves." (A Political Inquiry
into the consequences of enclosing Waste Lands. London, 1785 p. 75.)

* Eden, 1. c. preface.

• "Capital Farms." Two letters on the Flour Trade and the Dearness of Corn.
By a person in business. London, 1767, pp. 19, 20.

4 "Merchant Farms." An inquiry into the present High Prices of Provisions.

Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 797

The 18th century, however, did not yet recognise as fully as
the 19th, the identity between national wealth and the poverty
of the people. Hence the most vigorous polemic, in the eco
nomic literature of that time, on the "enclosure of commons."
From the mass of materials that lie before me, I give a few
extracts that will throw a strong light on the circumstances
of the time. "In several parishes of Hertfordshire," writes.
one indignant person, "24 farms, numbering on the average ) ^
50-150 acres, have been melted up into three farms."1 "In/
Northamptonshire and Leicestershire the enclosure of common
lands has taken place on a very large scale, and most of the
new lordships, resulting from the enclosure, have been turned
into pasturage, in consequence of which many lordships have
not now 50 acres ploughed yearly, in which 1500 were
ploughed formerly. The ruins of former dwelling-houses,
barns, stables, &c.," are the sole traces of the former inhabi
tants. "An hundred houses and families have in some open
field villages .... dwindled to eight or ten .... The land-
holders in most parishes that have been enclosed only 15 or 20
years, are very few in comparison of the numbers who occupied
them in their open-field state. It is no uncommon thing for 4
or 5 wealthy graziers to engross a large enclosed lorship which
was befor? in the hands' of 20 or 30 farmers, and as many
smaller tenants and proprietors. All these are hereby thrown
out of their livings with their families and many other families
who were chiefly employed and supported by them."2 c It was
not only the land that lay waste, but often land cultivated
either in. common or held under a definite rent paid ,to the
community, tliat was annexed by the neighbouring landlords
under pretext of enclosure. "I have here in view enclosures
of open fields and lands already improved. It is acknowledged >,
by even the writers in defence of enclosures that these di- ) \/
minished villages increase the monopolies of farms, raise the /

London, 1767, p. 11. Note.— This excellent work, that was published anonymously,
is by tb« Rev. Nathaniel Forster.

1 Thomas Wright : A short address to the public on the monopoly of large farms,
1779, pp. 3, 8.

'Rev. Addington: Inquiry into the reasons for or against enclosing op«a
London, 1772, pp. S7, 43 passim.

798 Capitalist Production.

//prices of provisions, and produce depopulation .... and
V\ even tue enclosure of waste lands (as now carried on) bears
\ hard on the poor, by depriving them of a part of their subsist
ence, und only goes towards increasing farms already too
\/large.r "When," says Dr. Price, "this land gets into the
hands of a few great farmers, the consequence must be that the
little farmers" (earlier designated by him "a multitude of lit-
tie proprietors and tenants, who maintain themselves and
families by the produce of the ground they occupy by sheep
kept on a common, by poultry, hogs, &c., and who therefore
have little occasion to purchase any of the means of subsist
ence") "will be converted into a body of men who earn their
subsistence by working for others, and who will be under a ne
cessity of going to market for all they want .... There will,
perhaps, be more labour, because there will be more compulsion
to it .... Towns and manufacturers will increase, because
'more will be driven to them in quest of places and employment
This is the way in which the engrossing of farms naturally
operates. And this is the way in which, for many years, it
has been actually operating in this kingdom.2 He sums up the
effect of the enclosures thus: "Upon the whole, the circum
stances of the lower ranks of men are altered in almost every
respect for the worse. From little occupiers of land, they are
// reduced to the state of day-labourers and hirelings ; and, at the
I same time, their subsistence in that state has become more dif-
- ficult"8 In fact, usurpation of the common lands and the

1 Dr. R. Price, 1. c., v. ii., p. 155, Forster, Addington, Kent, Price, and James
Anderson, should be read and compared with the miserable prattle of Sycophant
MacCulloch in his catalogue: The Literature of Political Economy, London, 1845.

'Price, L c., p. 147.

1 Price, L c., p. 159. We are reminded of ancient Rome, "The rich had got pos
session of the greater part of the undivided land. They trusted in the conditions
of the time, that these possessions would not be again taken from them, and bought,
therefcre, some of the pieces of land lying near theirs, and belonging to the poor,
with the acquiescence of their owners, and took some by force, so that they now
were cultivating widely extended domains, instead of isolated fields. Then they
employed slaves in agriculture and cattle-breeding, because freemen would have been
taken from labour for military service. The possession of slaves brought them great
gain, inasmuch as these, on account of their immunity from military service, could
fr«ely multiply and have a multitude of children. Thus the powerful men drew all
wealth to themselves, and all the land swarmed with slaves. The Italians, on the
other hand, were always decreasing in number, destroyed as they were by poverty,
tax**, and military service. Even when times of peace came, they were doomed to

Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 799

revolution in agriculture accompanying this, told so acutely on
the agricultural labourers that, even according to Eden, be
tween 1765 and 1780, their wages began to fall below the mini
mum, and to be supplemented by official poor-law relief.
Their wages, he says, "were not more than enough for the abso
lute necessaries of life."

Let us hear for a moment a defender of enclosures and an
opponent of Dr. Price. "Nor is it a consequence that there
must be depopulation, because men are not seen wasting their
labour in the open field .... If, by converting the little
farmers into a body of men who must work for others, more
labour is produced, it is an advantage which the nation" (to
which, of course, the "converted" ones do not belong) "should
wish for .... the produce being greater when their joint
labours are employed on one farm, there will be a surplus for
manufactures, and by this means manufactures, one of the
mines of the nation, will increase, in proportion to the quantity
of corn produced."1

The stoical peace of mind with which the political economist
regards the most shameless violation of the "sacred rights of
property" and the grossest acts of violence to persons, as soon
as they are necessary to lay the foundations of the capitalistic
mode of production, is shown by-JSir. F. M. Eden, philanthro
pist and tory, to boot. -'The whole series of thefts, outrages,
and popular misery, that accompanied the forcible expropria
tion of the people, from the last third of the 15th to the end of
the 18th century, lead him merely to the comfortable conclu
sion: "The due proportion between arable land and pasture
had to be established. During the whole of the 14th and the
greater part of the 15th century, there was one acre of pasture

complete inactivity, because the rich were in possession of the soil, and used slaves
instead of free men in the tilling of it." (Appian: Civil Wars, I. 7.) This pas
sage refers to the time before the Licinian rogations. Military service, which has
tened to so great an extent the ruin of the Roman plebeians, was also the chief
means by which, as in a forcing-house, Charlemagne brought about the transforma
tion of free German peasants into serfs and bondsmen.

1 An Inquiry into the Connection between the Present Prices of Provisions, &c,, p.
•*24, 129. To the like effect, but with an opposite tendency: "Working-men are
driven from their cottages and forced into the towns to seek for employment; but
then -a larger surplus is obtained, and thus capital is augmented." (The Perils of
the Nation, 2nd ed. London. 1843, p. 14.)

8oo Capitalist Production.

to 2, 3 and even 4 of arable land. About the middle of the
16th century the proportion was changed to 2 acres of pasture
to 2, later on, of 2 acres of pasture to one of arable, until at
last the just proportion of 3 acres of pasture to one of arable
land was attained."^-

In the 19th century, the very memory of the connexion
between the agricultural labourer and the communal property
had, of course, vanished. To say nothing of more recent times,
have the agricultural population received a farthing of com
pensation for the 3,511,770 acres of common land which l)e-
tween 1801 and 1831 were stolen from them and by parl:a-
mentary devices presented to the landlords by the landlords ?

The last process of wholesale expropriation of the agricul-
' tural population from the soil is, finally, the so-called clearing
of estates, i.e., the sweeping men off them. All the English
methods hitherto considered culminated in "clearing." As
we saw in the picture of modern conditions given in a former
chapter, where there are no more independent peasants to get
rid of, the "clearing" of cottages begins; so that the agricul
tural labourers do not find on the soil cultivated by them even
the spot necessary for their own housing. But what "clearir g
of estates" really and properly signifies, we learn only in tl e
promised land of modern romance, the Highlands of Scotland.
There the process is distinguished by its systematic characte*,
by the magnitude of the scale on which it is carried out at one
blow (in Ireland landlords have gone to the length of sweeping
away several villages at once; in Scotland areas as large as
German principalities are dealt with), finally by the peci-
liar form of property, under which the embezzled lands were
held.

The Highland Celts were organised in clans, each of which
was the owner of the land on which it was settled. Th?
representative of the clan, its chief or "great roan," was only

»the titular owner of this property, just as the Queen of Eng
land is the titular owner of all the national soil. When tho
English government succeeded in suppressing the intestine1-
wars of these "great men," and their constant incursions into
the Lowland plains, the chiefs of the clans by no means gavr

Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 801

\ up their time-honoured trade as robbers ; they only changed its
\f orm. On their own authority they transformed their nominal V
right into a right of private property, and as this brought/
them into collision with their clansmen, resolved to drive them/
out by open force. "A king of England might as well claim v
to drive his subjects into the sea," says Professor Newman.1
This revolution, which began in Scotland after the last rising
of the followers of the Pretender, can be followed through its
first phases in the writings of Sir James Steuart2 and James
Anderson.3 In the 18th century the hunted-out Gaels were
forbidden to emigrate from the country, with a view to driv
ing them by force to Glasgow and other manufacturing towns.4
As an example of the method5 obtaining in the 19th century,
the "clearing" made by the Duchess of Sutherland will suf
fice here. This person, well instructed in economy, resolved,

M. c., p. 132.

* Steuart says: "If you compare the rent of these lands" (he erroneously includes
in this economic category the tribute of the taskmen to the clan-chief) "with the
extent, it appears very small. If you compare it with the numbers fed upon the
farm, you will find that an estate in the Highlands maintains, perhaps, ten times
as many people as another of the same value in a good and fertile province." (1. c.,
vol. i., ch. xvi., p. 104.)

'James Anderson: Observations on the means of exciting a spirit of National
Industry, &c. Edinburgh, 1777.

4 In 1860 the people expropriated by force were exported to Canada under false
pretences. Some fled to the mountains and neighbouring islands. They were fol
lowed by the police, came to blows with them and escaped.

5 "In the Highlands of Scotland," says Buchanan, the commentator on Adam
Smith, 1814, "the ancient state of property is daily subverted. . . . The land
lord, without regard to the hereditary tenant (a category used in error here), now
offers his land to the highest bidder, who, if he is an improver, instantly adopts a new
system of cultivation. The land, formerly overspread with small tenants or labourers,
was peopled in proportion to its produce, but under the new system of improved
cultivation and increased rents, the largest possible produce is obtained at the least
possible expense: and the useless hands being, with this view, removed, the popula
tion is reduced, not to what the land will maintain, but to what it will employ. The
dispossessed tenants either seek a subsistence in the neighbouring towns," &c.
(David Buchanan: Observations on, &c., A. Smith's Wealth of Nations. Edinburgh,
1814, vol. iv., p. 144.) "The Scotch grandees dispossessed families as they would
grub up coppice-wood, and they treated villages and their people as Indians harassed
with wild beasts do, in their vengeance, a jungle with tigers. . . . Man is bar
tered for a fleece or a carcase of mutton, nay, held cheaper. . . . Why, how
much worse is it than the intention of the Moguls, who, when they had broken
into the northern provinces of China, proposed in council to exterminate the in
habitants, and convert the land into pasture. This proposal many Highland pro
prietors have effected in their own country against their own countrymen." (George
Ensor: An inquiry concerning fee population of nations. Lond., 1818, pp. 215,

2 Y

&O2 Capitalist Production.

on entering upon her government, to effect a radical cure, and
to turn the whole country, whose population had already been,
by earlier processes of the like kind, reduced to 15,000, into
a sheep-walk. a From 1811 to 1820 these 15,000 inhabitants,
about 3000 families, were systematically hunted and rooted
out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their
v fields turned into pasturage. British soldiers enforced this
^---eviction, and came to blows with the inhabitants. One old
woman was burnt to death in the flames of the hut, which
she refused to leave. Thus this fine lady appropriated 791,-

> 000 acres of land that had from time immemorial belonged
to the clan. She assigned to the expelled inhabitants about

L\5 6000 acres on the sea-shore — 2 acres per family. The 6000
acres had until this time lain waste, and brought in no ia-
come to their owners. The Duchess, in the nobility of her
heart, actually went so far as to let these at an average rent
of 2s. 6d. per acre to the clansmen, who for centuries had
shed their blood for her family. The whole of the stolen
clan-land she divided into 29 great sheep farms, each inhabited
by a single family, for the most part imported English fanr-
servants. In the year 1835 the 15,000 Gaels were already
replaced by 131,000 sheep. The remnant of the aborigines
flung on the sea-shore, tried to live by catching fish. They
became amphibious and lived, as an English author says, half
on land and half on water, and withal only half on both.1

But the brave Gaels must expiate yet more bitterly theb
idolatry, romantic and of the mountains, for the "great men"
of the clan. The smell of their fish rose to the noses of tho
great men. They scented some profit in it, and let the sea
shore to the great fishmongers of London. For the second
time the Gaels were hunted out.2

1 When the present Duchess of Sutherland entertained Mrs. Beecher Stowe, au
thoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," with great magnificence in London, to show her
sympathy for the negro slaves of the American republic — a sympathy that she pru
dently forgot, with her fellow-aristocrats, during the civil war, in which every
"noble" English heart beat for the slave-owner — I gave in the "New York Tribune"
the facts about the Guiherland slaves. (Epitomised in part by Carey in The Slave
Trade. London, 1853, p. 202, 203.) My article was reprinted in a Scotch news
paper, and led to a pretty polemic between the latter and the sycophants of the
Sutherlands.

3 Interesting details on this fish trade will be found in Mr. D«vi4 Urquhart'f

of Agricultural Population. 803

But, finally, part of the sheep-walks are turned into deer
preserves. Every one knows that there are no real forests
in England. The deer in the parks of the great are demurely
domestic cattle, fat as London aldermen. Scotland is there
fore the last refuge of the "noble passion." "In the High
lands," says Somers in 1848, "new forests are springing up
like mushrooms. Here, on one side of Gaick, you have the
new forest of Glenfeshie ; and there on the other you have the
new forest of Ardverikie. In the same line you have the
Black Mount, an immense waste also recently erected. From
east to west — from the neighbourhood of Aberdeen to the
crags of Oban — you have now a continuous line of forests;
while in other parts of the Highlands there are the new for
ests of Loch Archaig, Glengarry, Glenmoriston, &c. Sheep
were introduced into glens which had been the seats of com
munities of small farmers ; and the latter were driven to seek
subsistence on coarser and more sterile tracks of soil. !Row
deer are supplanting sheep; and these are once more dispos
sessing the small tenants, who will necessarily be driven down
upon still coarser land and to more grinding penury. Deer
forests1 and the people cannot co-exist. One or other of the
two must yield. Let the forests be increased in number and
extent during the next quarter of a century, as they have been
in the last, and the Gaels will perish from their native soil.
-* . . . This movement among the Highland proprietors is
with some a matter of ambition. . . . with some love of
sport. . . . while others, of a more practical cast, follow
the trade in deer with an eye solely to profit. For it is a fact,
that a mountain range laid out in forest is, in many cases,
more profitable to the proprietor than when let as a sheep walk.
. . . The huntsman who wants a deer-forest limits his
offers by no other calculation than the extent of his purse.
. . . Sufferings have been inflicted in the Highlands

Portfolio, new series. — Nassau VV. Senior, in his posthumous work, already quoted,
terms "the proceedings in Sutherlandshire one of the most beneficent clearings since
the memory of man." (1. c.)

1 The deer-forests of Scotland contain not a single tree. The sheep are driven
from, and then the deer driven to, the naked hills, and then it is called a defc.
forest. Not even timber-planting and real forest culture.

804 Capitalist Production.

scarcely less severe than those occasioned by the policy of the
Norman kings. Deer have received extended ranges, while
y men have been hunted within a narrower and still narrowefl
,• circle. . . . One after one the liberties of the people have
been cloven down. . . . And the oppressions are daily our
the increase. . . . The clearance and dispersion of thl
people is pursued by the proprietors as a settled principle, as
an agricultural necessity, just as trees arid brushwood are
cleared from the wastes of America or Australia; and the op
eration goes on in a quiet, business-like way, &C."1

1 Robert Somers: Letters from the Highlands: or the Famine of 1847. London
1848, pp. 12-LJ passim. These letters originally appeared in the "Times." The Etg-
lish economists t-f course explained the famine of the Gaels in 1847, by their over
population. At all events, they "were pressing on their food-supply." The "cle; ,r-
ing of estates," or as it is called in Germany "Bauernlegen," occurred in Germany
especially after the 30 years' war, and led to peasant-revolts as late as 1790 inv
Kursachsen. It obtained especially in East Germany. In most of the Prussian
provinces, Frederick II. for the first time secured right of property f >r the peasants.
After the conquest of Silesia he forced the landlords to rebuild the huts, bams, eti .,
and to provide the peasants with cattle and implements. He wanted soldiers for his
army and tax-payers for his treasury. For the rest, the pleasant II fc that the peasant
led under Frederick's system of finance and hodge-podge rule of despotism, burea i-
cracy and feudalism, may be seen from the following quotation from Lis admire .
Mirabcau: "Le lin fait done une des grandes ricbesses du cultivateur dans le Nor!
de 1'Allemagne. Malheureusemcnt pour 1'espece humaine, ce n'est qu'une ressour«.e
contre la misere et non un moyen de bien-etre. Les impots directs, Ics corvees, 1* s
servitudes de tout genre, ecrasent le cultivateur allemand, qui paie encore dcs impot*
indirects dans tout ce qu'il achete . . . et poure comble de ruine, il n'ose pa
vendre ses productions ou et comme il le veut; il n'ose pas achter ce dont il a besoin
•ux marchands qui pourraient le lui livrer au meilleur prix. Toutes ces causes 1 •
ruincnt insensiblement, et il se trouverait hors d'etat dc payer les impots directs ;-
1'e'cheance sans la filerie; elle lui ofTre une ressource, en occupant utilement sa femnie
scs enfants, ses servants, ses valets, et lui-meme; mais quelle penible vie, meme aidet
de ce secours. En etc, il travaille comme un format au labourage et a la recolte;
il se couche a 9 heures et se leve a deux, pour suffire aux travaux; en hiver il devrait
reparer ses forces par un plus grand repos; mais il manquera de grains pour le pain
et les semailles, s'il se defait des denrees qu'il faudrait vendre pour payer les impots.
II faut done filer pour suppleer a ce vide il faut y apporter la plus grande

assiduitc. Aussi le paysan se couche-t-il en hiver a minuit, une heure, et se leve i
cinq ou six; ou bien il se couche a neuf, et se leve a deux, et cela tous les jours dc
la vie si ce n'est le dimanche. Ces execs de veille et de travail usent la nature
humaine. et de la vient qu' hommes et femmes vieillissent beaucoup plutot dans les
campagnes que dans les villes. (Mirabeau, 1. c. t. III., pp. 212 sqq.)

N'ote to the second edition. In April 1866. 18 years after the publication of the
work of Robert Somers quoted above, Professor Leone Levi gave a lecture before the
Society of Arts on the transformation of sheep walks into deer-forests, in which be
depicts the advance in the devastation of the Scottish Highlands. He says, with
other things: "Depopulation and transformation into sheep-walk» were the most
convenient means for getting an income without expenditure. ... A deer forest
in place of a sheep-walk was a common change in the Highlands. The landowners
««ned out the sheep as they once turned out the men from their estates, and wel-

r\
v

Legislation Against the Expropriated. ^ 805 v

The spoliation of the churche's property, the fraudulent '
lienatkrn of the State domains, the robbery of the common *'
ands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and iteV
ransfonn&tion into modern private property under circum- '
tances of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic meth-v
»ds of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for\
apitalistic agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of cap- ~
tal, and created for the town industries the necessary supply
>f a "free" and outlawed proletariat.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

BLOODY LEGISLATION AGOINST THE EXPROPRIATED. FROM THE

END OF THE-15TH CENTURY. FORCING DOWN OF WAGES \
BY ACTS OF PARLIAMENT.

THE proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of
feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the peo-

comed the new tenants — the wild beasts and the feathered birds. . . . One can
walk from the Earl of Dalhousie's estates iti Forfr,r>hire to John o' Groats, without
ever leaving forest land. ... In many of these woods the fox. the wild cat,
the marten, the polecat, the weasel and the Alpine hare are common; whilst the
rabbit, the squirrel and the rat have lately made their way into the country. Im
mense tracts of land, much of which is described in the statistical account of Scot
land as having a pasturage in richness and extern 01 very superior description, are
thus shut out from all cultivation and improvement, and are solely devoted to the
sport of a few persons for a very brief period of the >eur." Tkt Lcndon Economist
of June 2, 1S66, says, "Amongst the items of news in a Scotch paper of last week.
we read. . . . 'One of the finest sheep farms in Sotherlandshire. for which a
rent of £1,200 a year was recently offered, on the expiry of the" existing lease this
year, is to be converted into a deer forest.' Here we see tiie modern instincts of
feudalism . . . operating pretty much as they did when the Norman Conqueror
. . . destroyed 36 villages to create the New Forest. . . . Two millions of
acres . . . totally laid waste, embracing within their arei some of the most
fertile lands of Scotland. The natural grass of Glen Tilt was among the most
nutritive in the county of Perth. The deer forest of Ben Aulder was by far the best
grazing ground in the wide district of Badenoch; a part of the Black Mount forest
was the best pasture for black-faced sheep in Scotland. Some idea of the ground
laid waste for purely sporting purposes in Scotland may be formed Jrora the fact
that it embraced an area larger than the whole county of Perth. The resources
of the forest of Ben Aulder might give some idea of the loss sustained from the
forced desolations. The ground would pasture 15,000 sheep, and as it Has not more
than one-thirtieth part of the old forest ground in Scotland ... it might, &c.,
. . . All that forest land is as totally unproductive. ... It might thus as
well have been submerged under the waters of the German Ocean. . . . Such
extemporized wildernesses or deserts ought to be put down by the decided inter
ference of the Legislature."

806 Capitalist Production.

j pie from the soil, this "free" proletariat could not possibly be
absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown
upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly
'dragged from their wanted mode of life, could not as suddenly
adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition.
"They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds,

J partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circuin-
stances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the whole
of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe a bl->ody

y legislation against vagabondage. The fathers of the prrsent
working-class were chastised for their enforced transforma
tion into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them
Vas "voluntary" criminals, and assumed that it depended en;
: their own goodwill to go on working under the old conditions!

\J that no longer existed.
J In England this legislation began under Henry VII.

Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work receive
a beggar's licence. On the other hand, whipping and impris
onment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to the can-
tail and whipped until the blood streams from their bodies,
then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace or to wher3
they have lived the last three years and to "put themselves
to labour." What grim irony ! In 27 Henry VIII. the for
mer statute is repeated, but strengthened with new clause.
For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping is to bo
repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the third relapso
the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal and
enemy of the common weal.

Edward VI. : A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547,
ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemnec
as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler.
The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth
and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to
force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip
and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is con
demned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or
back with the letter S ; if he runs away thrice, he is to be exe
cuted as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let

Legislation Against the Expropriated. 807

him out on hire as a &lave, just as any other personal chattel or
cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters,
they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on informa
tion, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vaga
bond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to
his birthplace, branded with a redhot iron with the letter V
on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at
some other labour. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace,
he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its in
habitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an S. All
persons have the right to take away the children of the vaga
bonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the
24th year, the girls until the 20th. If they run away, they
are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who
can put them in irons, whip them, &c., if they like. Every
master may put an iron ring round the neck, arms or legs of his
slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain
of him.1 The last part of the statute provides, that certain
poor people may be employed by a place or by persons, who are
willing to give them food and drink and to find them work.
This kind of parish-slaves was kept up in England until far
into the 19th century under the name of "roundsmen."

Elizabeth, 1572 : Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age
are to be severely flogged and branded on the left ear unless
some one will take them into service for two years ; in case of a
repetition of the offence, if they are over 18, they are to be
executed, unless some one will take them into service for two
years ; but for the third offence they are to be executed without
mercy as felons. Similar statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and
another of 1597.

James I : Any one wandering about and begging is declared
a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty ses
sions are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the
first offence to imprison them for 6 months, for the second for
2 years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much

1 The author of the Essay on Trade, etc., 1770, says, "In the reign of Edward VI.
Indeed the English seem to have set, in good earnest, about encouraging manufac
tures and employing the poor. This we learn from a remarkable statute which runs
thus: That all vagrants shall be branded, &c.,' " 1. c., p. 5.

8o8 Capitalist Production.

and as often as the justices of the peace think fit ... Incor
rigible and dangerous rogues are to he branded with an R on
the left shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught
begging again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes,
legally binding until the beginning of the 18th century, were
only repealed by 12 Ann, c. 23. 1

Similar laws in France, where bv the middle of the 17th

' V

century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established
in Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVL's reign (Or
dinance of July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from
16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence an<J net
practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the sams
nature are the statute of Charles V. for the Netherlands (Oc
tober, 1537), the first edict of the States and Towns of Hol
land (March 10, 1614), the "Plakaat" of the United Province*
(June 26, 1649), &c.

Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropri

1 In France, the regisseur, steward, collector of dues for the feudal lords during
cormaraunte and very plage of his native contrey maye compasse aboute and inclost
many thousand akers of grounde together within one pale or hedge, the husbandmen
be thrust owte of their owne, or els either by coneyne and fraude, or by violent op
pression they be put besydes it, or by wrongs and iniuries thei be so weried that
they be compelled to sell all: by one meanes, therfore, or by other, either by hooke
or crooke they muste needes departe awaye, poore, selye, wretched soules, men,
women, husbands, wiues, fatherlesse children, widowes, wofull mothers with their
yonge babes, and their whole household smal in substance, and muche in numbre, as
husbandrye requireth many handes. Awaye thei trudge, I say, owte of their
knowen accustomed houses, fyndynge no place to reste in. All their householde
stuffe, which is very little woorthe, thoughe it might well abide the sale: yet beeynge
sodainely thruste owte, they be constrayned to sell it for a thing of nought. And
when they haue wandered abrode tyll that be spent, what can they then els doe but
steale, and then iustly pardy be hanged, or els go about beggyng. And yet then
also they be caste in prison as vagabondes, because theey go aboute and worke not;
whom no man wyl set a worke though thei neuer so willyngly profre themselues
therto." Of these poor fugitives of whom Thomas More says that they were forced
to thieve, "7200 great and petty thieves were put to death," in the reign of Henry
VIII. (Hollinshed, description of England, Vol. 1., p. 186.) In Elizabeth's time,
"rogues were trussed up apace, and that there was not one year commonly wherein
three or four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the gallowes." (Strype's
Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, and other Various Occur
rences in the Church of England during Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign. Second
ed., 1725, Vol. 2.) According to this same Strype, in Somersetshire, in one year,
40 persons were executed, 35 robbers burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 dis
charged as "incorrigible vagabonds." Nevertheless, he is of opinion that this large
number of prisoners does not comprise even a fifth of the actual criminals, thanks
to the negligence of the justices and the foolish compassion of the people; and the
other counties of England were not better off in this respect than Somersetshire,
while some were even worse.

. Legislation Against the Expropriated. 809

ated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vaga
bonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws gro
tesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage
system.

It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concen
trated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at the one pole of
society, while at the other are grouped masses of men, who
have nothing to* sell but their, labour-power. Neither is it
enough that they are ••compelled to sell it voluntarily. (The
advance of capitalist production develops a working-class,
which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions
of that mode of production is self-evident laws of nature.
The organization of the capitalist process of production, once
fully developed, breaks down all resistance. The constant
generation of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of
supply and demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in
a rut that corresponds with the wants of capital. The dull
compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of
the labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic
conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally. In
the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to the
"natural laws of production," i.e., to his dependence on capital,
a dependence springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by,
the conditions of production themselves. } It is otherwise dur
ing the historic genesis of capitalist production. The bourv'
geoisie, at its rise, wants and uses the power of the state to
"regulate" wages, i.e., to force them within the limits suitable
for surplus-value making, to lengthen the working-day and to
keep the labourer himself in the normal degree of dependence^1 /
This is an essential element of the so-called primitive accumu-v
lation.

The class of wage-labourers, which arose in the latter half of-;1
the 14th century, formed then and in the following century \y
only a very small part of the population, well protected in its -
position by the independent peasant proprietary in the coun
try and the guild-organization in the town. In country and
town master and workman stood close together socially. The-/
subordination of labour to capital was only formal — i.e., the J

8io Capitalist Production.

mode of production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic
character. Variable capital preponderated greatly over con- J
stank The demand for wage-labour grew, therefore, rapidly
with every accumulation of capital, whilst the supply of wage-
labour followed but slowly. A large part of the national pro
duct, changed later into a fund of capitalist accumulation, then
still entered into the consumption fund of the labourer.

Legislation on wage-labour, (from the first, aimed at the ex
ploitation of the labourer and, as it advanced, always equally
hostile to him),1 is started in England by the Statute of La
bourers, of Edward III., 1349. The ordinance of 1350 in
France, issued in the name of King John, corresponds with it.
English and French legislation run parallel and are identical
in purport So far as the labour-statutes aim at compulsory
extension of the working-day, I do not return to them, as this
point was treated earlier (Chap. X., Section 5).

The Statute of Labourers was passed at the urgent instance
of the House of Commons. A Tory says naively : "Formerly
the poor demanded such high wages as to threaten industry
and wealth. Xext, their wages are so low as to threaten in
dustry and wealth equally and perhaps more, but in another
way."2 A tariff of wages was fixed by law for town and coun
try, for piece-work and day-work. The agricultural labourers
were to hire themselves out by the year, the town ones "in open
market. " It was forbidden, under pain of imprisonment, to
pay higher wages than those fixed by the statute, but the tak
ing of higher wages was more severely punished than the giv
ing them. [So also in Sections 18 and 19 of the Staute of
Apprentices of Elizabeth, ten days' imprisonment is decreed
for him that pays the higher wages, but twenty-one days for
him that receives them.] A statute of 1360 increased the
penalties and authorised the masters to extort labour at the
legal rate of wages by corporal punishment. All combina-

1 "Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters
and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters," says A. Smith. "L'esprit
des lois, c'est la propriete," says Linguet.

1 "Sophisms of Free Trade." By a Barrister. Lond., 1850, p. 53. He adds
maliciously: "We were ready enough to interfere for the employer, can nothing
now be done for the employed?"

Legislation Against the Expropriatea. 811

tions, contracts, oaths, &c., by which masons and carpenters re
ciprocally bound themselves, were declared null and void. /
Coalition of the labourers is treated as a heinous crime from/
the 14th century to 1825, the year of the repeal of the laws
against Trades' Unions. The spirit of the Statute of Labour
ers of 1349 and of its offshoots, comes out clearly in the fact,

that indeed a maximum of wages is dictated by the State, ,
on no account a minimum.

In the 16th century, the condition of the labourers had, as
we know, become much worse. The money wage rose, but not Ji
in proportion to the depreciation -of rforiey and the correspond
ing rise in the prices of commodities. Wages, therefore, in
reality fell. Nevertheless, the laws for keeping them down
remained in force, together with the ear-clipping and branding
of those "whom no one was willing to take into service." Bv
the Statute of Apprentices 5 Elizabeth, c. 3, the justices of the
peace were empowered to fix certain wages and to modify them
according to the time of the year and the price of commodities.
James I. extended these regulations of labour also to weavers,
spinners, and all possible categories of workers.1 George II.
extended the laws against coalitions of labourers to manufac
tures. In the manufacturing period par excellence, the capi
talist mode of production had become sufficiently strong to ren
der legal regulation of wages as impracticable as it was
unnecessary ; but the ruling classes were unwilling in case of

1 From a clause of Statute 2 James I., c. 6, we see that certain cloth-makers took
upon themselves to dictate, in their capacity of justices of the peace, the official tariff
of wages in their own shops. In Germany, especially after the Thirty Years' War,
statutes for keeping down wages were general. "The want of servants and labour
ers was very troublesome to the landed proprietors in the depopulated districts.
All villagers were forbidden to let rooms to single men and women; all the latter
were to be reported to the authorities and cast into prison if they were unwilling to
become servants, even if they were employed at any other work, such as sowing seeds
for the peasants at a dai'y wage, or even buying and selling corn. (Imperial privi
leges and sanctions for Silesia, I., 25.) For a whole century in the decrees of the
small German potentates a bitter cry goes up again and again about the wicked and
impertinent rabble that will not reconcile itself to its hard lot, will not be content
with the legal wage; the individual landed proprietors are forbidden to pay more
than the State had fixed by a tariff. And yet the conditions of service were at times
better after the war than 100 years later; the farm servants of Silesia had, in 1652,
meat twice a week, whilst even in our century, districts are known where they have
it only three times a year. Further, wages after the war were higher than in the
following century." (G. Freitag.)

Si 2 Capitalist Production.

necessity to be without the weapons of the old arsenal. Still,
8 George II. forbade a higher day's wage than 2s. 7£d. for
journeymen tailors in and around London, except in cases of
general mourning; still 13 George Hi., c. 68, gave the regula
tion of the wages of ^srlk-weavers to the justices of the peace;
still, in 1706, 8it required two judgments of the higher courts
to decide, whether the mandates of justices of the peace as to
wages held good also for non-agricultural labourers; still, in
1799, an art of Parliament ordered that the wages of the
Scotch miners should continue to be regulated by a statute of
Elizabeth and two Scotch acts of 1661 and 1671. How com
pletely in the meantime circumstances had changed, is prove-d
by an occurrence unheard-of before in the English Lower
House. In that place, where for more than 400 years laws
had been made for the maximum, beyond ^vhich wages abso-
x-i lutely must not rise, Whitbread in 1796 proposed a legal mini
mum wage for agricultural labourers. Pitt opposed this, but
confessed that the "condition of the poor was cruel. " Finally,
in 1813, the laws for the regulation of wages were repealed.
They were an absurd anomaly, since the capitalist regulated
his factory by his private legislation, and could by the poor-
rates make up the wage of the agricultural labourer to tho
indispensable minimum. The provisions of the labour stat
utes as to contracts between master and workman, as to giving
notice and the like, which only allows of a civil action againsr,
the contract-breaking master, but on the contrary permit £
criminal action against the contract-breaking workman, are tc
this hour (1873) in full force. The barbarous laws against
Trades' Unions fell in 1825 before the threatening bearing of
the proletariat Despite this, they fell only in part. Certain
beautiful fragments of the old statute vanished only in 1859.
Finally, the act of Parliament of June 29, 1871, made a pre
tence of removing the last traces of this class of legislation by
legal recognition of Trades Unions. But an act of Parlia
ment of the same date (an act to amend the criminal law relat-
. ing to violence, threats, and molestation), re-established, in
point of fact, the former state of things in a new shape. By
this Parliamentary escamotage the means which the labourers

Legislation Against the Expropriated. 813

could use in a strike or lock-out were withdrawn from the laws
common to all citizens, and placed under exceptional penal leg
islation, the interpretation of which fell to the masters them
selves in their capacity as justices of the peace. Two years
earlier, the same House of Commons and the same Mr. Glad
stone in the well-known straightforward fashion brought in a
bill for the abolition of all exceptional penal legislation against
the working-class. But this was never allowed to go beyond
the second reading, and the matter was thus protracted until
at last the "great Liberal party," by an alliance with the Tor
ies, found courage to turn against the very proletariat that had
carried it into power. Not content with this treachery, the
"great Liberal party" allowed the English judges, ever com
plaisant in the service of the ruling classes, to dig up again
the earlier laws against "conspiracy," and to apply them to
coalitions of labourers. We see that only against its will and '
under the pressure of the masses did the English Parliament
give up the laws against Strikes and Trades' Unions, after it v
had itself, for 500 years, held, with shameless egoism, the posi
tion of a permanent Trades' Union of the capitalists against
the labourers.

During the very first storms of the revolution, the French
bourgeoisie dared to take away from the workers the right of
association but just acquired. By a decree of June 14, 1791,
they declared all coalition of the workers as "an attempt
agunst liberty and the declaration of the rights of man," pun
ishable by a fine of 500 livres, together with deprivation of the
rights of an active citizen for one year.1 This law which, by
means of State compulsion, confined the struggle between capi
tal and labour within limits comfortable for capital, has out
lived revolutions and changes of dynasties. Even the Reign
of Terror left it untouched. It was but quite recently struck
out of the Penal Code. Nothing is more characteristic than
the pretext for this bourgeois coup d'etat. "Granting," says
Chapclier, the reporter of the Select Committee on this law,
"that wages ought to be a little higher than they are, . . .
that they ought to be high enough for him that receives them,

• Article I. of this law runs: "L" aneantissement de toute cspece de corporations

814 Capitalist Production.

to be free from that state of absolute dependence due to the
want of the necessaries of life, and which is almost that of slav
ery," yet the workers must not be allowed to come to any
understanding about their own interests, nor to act in common
and thereby lessen their "absolute dependence, which is almost
that of slavery ;" because, forsooth, in doing this they injure
"the freedom of their cidevant masters, the present entrepre
neurs," and because a coalition against the despotism of the
quondam masters of the corporations is — guess what! — is a
restoration of the corporations abolished by the French consti
tution.1

CHAPTER XXIX.

^ ( GENESIS OF THE CAPITALIST FARMEB.

Now that we have considered the forcible creation of a class of

outlawed proletarians, the bloody discipline that turned them

into wage-labourers, the disgraceful action of the state which

employed the police to accelerate the accumulation of capital

by increasing the degree of exploitation of labour, the ques-

A tion remains: whence came the capitalists originally? For

Wthe expropriation of the agricultural population creates,

N» directly, none by great landed proprietors. As far, however,

as concerns the genesis of the farmer, we can, so to say, put our

hand on it, because it is a slow process evolving through many

centuries. The serfs, as well as the free small proprietors,

held land under very different tenures, and were therefore

emancipated under very different economic conditions. In

England the first form of the farmer is the bailiff, himself a

du meme etat et profession etant 1'une des bases fondamentales de la constitution
frangaise, il cst defendu de les retablir de fait sous quelque pretexte et sous quelque
forme que ce soit." Article IV. declares, that if "des citoyens attaches aux memes
professions, arts et metiers prenaient des deliberations, faisaient entre eux des con
ventions tendantes a refuser de concert ou a n'accorder qu'a un prix determine 2*
secours de leur industne ou de leurs travaux, les dites deliberations et conventions
. . . seront declarees inconstitutionnelles, attentatoires a la liberte et a la declara
tion des droits de l'homme, &c.": felony, therefore, as in the old labour-statute*.
("Revolutions de Paris." Paris, 1791, t. III., p. 523.)
lBucher et Roux: "Histoire Parlementaire," t. x., p. 195.

Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer. 815

serf. His position is similar to that of the old Roman villicus,
only in a more limited sphere of action. During the second
half of the 14th century he is replaced by a farmer, whom the
landlord provides with seed, cattle and implements. His con
dition is not very different from that of the peasant Only he
exploits more wage-labour. Soon he becomes a metayer, a
half-farmer. He advances one part of the agricultural stock,
the landlord the other. The two divide the total product in
proportions determined by contract. This form quickly disap
pears in England, to give place to the farmer proper, who -
makes his own capital breed by employing wage-labourers, and ''
pays a part of the surplus product, in money or in kind, to the-/
landlord as rent. So long, during the 15th century, as the
independent peasant and the farm-labourer working for him
self as well as for wages, enriched themselves by their own la-x
bour, the circumstances of the farmer, and his field of produc
tion, were equally mediocre. The agricultural revolution
which commenced in the last third of the 15th century, and
continued during almost the whole of the 16th (excepting, how
ever, its last decade), enriched him just as speedily as it im
poverished the mass of the agriciiltural people.1

The usurpation of the common lands allowed him to aug-s'
ment greatly his stock of cattle, almost without cost, whilst
they yielded him a richer supply of manure for the tillage of '
the soil. To this, was added in the 16th century, a very im
portant element. At that time the contracts for farms ran for
a long time, often for 99 years. The progressive fall in the
value of the precious metals, and therefore of money, brought
the farmers golden fruit. Apart from all the other circum
stances discussed above, it lowered wages. A portion of the
latter was now added to the profits of the farm. The con
tinuous rise in the price of corn, wool, meat, in a word of all
agricultural produce, swelled the money capital of the fanner
without any action on his part, whilst the rent he paid, (being

1 Harrison in his 'Description of England,' says "although peradventure four*
pounds of old rent be improved to fortie, toward the end of his term, if he have
not *ix or seven years rent lieng by him, fiftie or a hundred pounds, yet will the
farmer thinke his gaines verie small."

816 Capitalist Production.

calculated on the old value of money) diminished in reality. *
Thus they grew rich at the expense both of their labourers and
„ their landlords. JSTo wonder therefore, that England, at tho
end of the 16th century, had a class of capitalist farmers, rich?
considering the circumstances of the time.2

1 On the influence of the depreciation of money in the 16th century, on the
different classes of society, see "A Compendious or Briefe Examination of Certayne
Ordinary complaints of Diverse of our Countrymen in these our days." By W. S.,
Gentleman. (London 1581). The dialogue form of this work led people for a long
time to ascribe it to Shakespeare, and even in 1751, it was published under his
name. Its author is William Stafford. In one place the knight reasons as follows:

Knight: "You, my neighbour, the husbandman, you Maister Mercer, and you
Goodman Cooper, with other artificers, may save yourselves metely well. For as
much as all things are deerer than they were, so much do you arise in the pryce of
your wares and occupations that ye sell agayne. B,.t ve have nothing to sell where
by we might advance ye price there of, to countervaile those things that we must buy
cgayne." In another place the knight asks the doctor: "I pray you, what be those
sorts that ye meane. And first, r f those that ye thinke should have no losse
thereby? — Doctor: I mean all those that live by buying and selling, for as they buy
deare, they sell thereafter. Knight: What is the next sort that ye say would win
by it? Doctor: Marry, all such as have takings or fearmes in their owne manurance
[cultivation] at the old rent, for where they pay after the olde rate they sell after
the newe — that is, they paye for theire landc good cheape, and sell all things grow
ing thereof deare. Knight: What sorte is that which, ye sayde should have greater
losse hereby, than these men had profit? Doctor: It is all noblemen, gentlemen,
and all other that live either by a stinted rent or stypend, or do not manure [cultiva
tion] the ground, or doe occupy no buying and selling."

* In France, the rcgisseur, steward, collector of dues for the feudal lords during
the earlier part of the middle ages, soon became an homme d'affaires, who by extor
tion, cheating, &c., swindled himself into a capitalist. These regisseurs themselves
were sometimes noblemen. E. g. C'est li compte que messire Jacques de Thoraine,
chevalier chastelain sor Besanc.on rent es-seigneur tenant les comptes a Dijon pour
monseigneur le due et comte de Bourgoigne, des rentes appartenant a la dite chas-
tellenie, depuis xxve jour de decembre MCCCLIX jusqu* au xxviiie jour de decem-
bre MCCCLX. (Alexis Monteil: Histoire des Materiaux manuscrits, etc., p. 244.)
Already it is evident here how 'in all spheres of social life the lion's share falls to the
middleman. In the economic domain, e.g., financiers, stock-exchange speculators,
merchants, shopkeepers skim the cream; in civil matters, the lawyer fleeces his
clients; in politics the representative is of more importance than the voters, the
minister than the sovereign; in religion God is pushed into the background by the
"Mediator," and the latter again is shoved back by the priests, the inevitable
middlemen between the good shepherd and his sheep. In France, as in England,
the great feudal territories were divided into inumerable small homesteads, but
under conditions incomparably more unfavourable for the people. During the 14th
century arose the farms or terriers. Their number grew constantly, far beyond
100,000. They paid rents varying from ^ to M of the product in money or in
kind. These farms were fiefs, sub-fiefs, &c., according to the value and extent
of the domains, many of them only containing a few ; cres. But these farmers
had rights of jurisdiction in some degree over the dwellers on the soil; there were
four grades. The oppression of the agricultural population under all these petty
tyrants will be understood. Monteil says that there were once in France 160,000
judges, where today 4000 tribunals, including justices of the peace, suffice.

Reaction of Agricultural Revolution. 817

CHAPTER XXX

)

REACTION OF THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION ON INDUSTRY. '
ON CREATION OF THE HOME MARKET FOR INDUSTRIAL CAPI- j

TAL.

-AA>^fcu^OM*Al

THE expropriation and expulsion of the agricultural popula
tion, intermittent but renewed again and again, supplied, as -
we saw, the town industries with a mass of proletarians, en-w^
tirely unconnected with the corporate guilds and unfettered
by them ; a fortunate circumstance that makes old A. Ander
son (not to be confounded with James Anderson) in his "His
tory of Commerce," believe in the direct intervention of
Providence. We must still pause a moment on this element of
primitive accumulation. The thinning-out of the independent,^
self-supporting peasants not only brought about the crowding
together of the industrial proletariat, in the way that Geoffroy
Saint Hilaire explained the condensation of cosmical matter at
one place, by its rarefaction at another.1 In spite of the v.
smaller numbers of its cultivators, the soil brought forth as .
much or more produce, after as before, because the revolution ^
in the conditions of landed property was accompanied by im- «•
proved methods of culture, greater co-operation, concentration
of the means of production, &c., and because not only were .
the agricultural wage-labourers put on the strain more in
tensely,2 but the field of production on which they worked for
themselves, became more and more contracted. With the set- -
ting free of a part of the agricultural population, therefore, -
their former means of nourishment were also set free. They
were now transformed into material elements of variable capi- "
tal. The peasant, expropriated and cast adrift, must buy "
their value in the form of wages, from his new master, the in- u
dustrial capitalist. That which holds good of the means of -
subsistence holds with the raw materials of industiy dependent

1 In his Notions de Philosophic Naturelle. Paris, 1838.
'A i>oint that Sir James Stewart emphasises.
2Z

8i8 Capitalist Production.

upon home agriculture. They were transformed into an ele
ment of constant capital. Suppose, e.g., a part of the West-
phalian peasants, who, at the time of Frederic II., all span
flax, forcibly expropriated and hunted from the soil; and the
ether part that remained, turned into day-labourers of large
farmers. At the same time arise large establishments for flax-
spinning and weaving, in which the men "set free" now work
wages. The flax looks exactly as before. Not a fibre of
is changed, but a new social soul has popped into its body
'it forms now a part of the constant capital of the master man-
^'ufacturer. Formerly divided among a number of small pro
ducers, who cultivated it themselves and with their families
spun it in retail fashion, it is now concentrated in the hand of
one capitalist, who sets others to spin and weave it for him.
The extra labour expended in flax-spinning realised itself
formerly in extra income to numerous peasant families, or
maybe, in Frederic II.'s time, in taxes pour le roi de Prusse.
K/ It realises itself now in profit for a few capitalists. The spin
dles and looms, formerly scattered over the face of the country,
are now crowded together in a few great labour-barracks, to
gether with the labourers and the raw material. " And spindles,
/looms, raw material, are now transformed, from means of in
dependent existence for the spinners and weavers, into means
for commanding them and sucking out of them unpaid labour.1
. One does not perceive, when looking at the large manufactories
y and the large farms, that they have originated from the throw
ing into one of many small centres of production, and have
been built up by the expropriation of many small independent
producers. Nevertheless, the popular intuition was not at
fault. In the time of Mirabeau, the lion of the Revolution,
V the great manufactories were still called manufactures reunies,
^/workshops thrown into one, as we speak of fields thrown into
one. Says Mirabeau: "We are only paying attention to the
grand manufactories, in which hundreds of men work under
a director and which are commonly called manufactures re-

1 "Je permettrai," says the capitalist, "que vous ayez 1'honneur de me servir. 4
condition que vous me donnez le peu qui vous reste pour la peine que je prends de
vous commander." (J. .T. Rousseau: Discours sur 1'Economie Politique.)

Reaction of Agricultural Revolution. 819

times. Those where a very large number of labourers work,
each separately and on his own account, are hardly considered ;
they are placed at an infinite distance from the others. This
is a great error, as the latter alone make a really important
object of national prosperity . . . The large workshop (manu
facture rcunie) will enrich prodigiously one or two entrepren
eurs, but the l?bourers will only be journeymen, paid more
or less, and will not have any share in the success of the under
taking. In the discrete workshop (manufacture separee,) on ^
the contrary, no one will become rich, but many labourers will ^
be comfortable; the saving and the industrious will be able-
to amass a little capital, to put by a little for a birth of a •/
child, for an illness, for themselves or their belongings. The
number of saving and industrious labourers will increase, be
cause they will see in good conduct, in activity, a means of
essentially bettering their condition, and not of obtaining a
small rise of wages that can never be of any importance for the
future, and whose sole result is to place men in the position to
live a little better, but only from day to day . . . The large
workshops, undertakings of certain private persons who pay
labourers from day to day to work for their gain, may be able
to put these private individuals at their ease, but they will
never be an object worth the attention of governments. Dis
crete workshops, for the most part combined with cultivation
of small holdings, are the only free ones."1 The expropriation
and eviction of a part of the agricultural population notvx
only set free for industrial capital, the labourers, their means
of subsistence, and material for labour; it also created

home market,

In fact, the ^vents that transformed the small peasants into
wage-labourers, and their means of subsistence and of labour
into material elements of capital, created, at the same time, a
home-market for the latter. Formerly, the peasant family
produced the means of subsistence and the raw materials, which
they themselves, for the most part, consumed. These raw

'Mirabeau, 1. c. t. Ill, pp. 20-109 passim. That Mirabeau considers the separate
workshops more economic and productive than the "combined," and sees in the
iiatter merely artificial exotics under government cultivation, *is explained by the
position at that time of a great part of the continental manufactures.

- x£h
^

82O / Capitalist Production.

^materials and means of subsistence have now become com-
^"modities ; the large farmer sells them, he finds his market in
manufactures. Yarn, linen, coarse woollen stuffs — things
whose raw materials had been within the reach of every
peasant family, had been apun and woven by it for its own
use — were now transformed into articles of manufacture, to
»X^ which the country districts at once served for markets. The
many scattered customers, whom stray artizans until now had
found in the numerous small producers working on their own
account, concentrate themselves now into one great market
• provided for by industrial capital.1 Thus, hand in hand with
expropriation of the self-supporting peasants, with their
separation from their means of production, goes the destruc-
vfion, of rural domestic industry, the process of separation be-
^Jtween manufactiire and agriculture. And only the destruc
tion of rural domestic industry can give the internal market
v/of a country that extension and consistence which the capitalist
mode of production requires. Still the manufacturing period,
properly so-called, does not succeed in carrying out this trans-
vxformation radically and completely. It will be remembered
v that manufacture, properly so-called, conquers but partially
', the domain of national production, and always rests on the
^handicrafts of the town and the domestic industry of the rural
, districts as its ultimate basis. If it destroys these in one form,
v in particular branches, at certain points, it calls them up again
1 -elsewhere, because it needs them for the preparation of raw
u*naterial up to a certain point. It produces, therefore, a new
v class of small villagers who, while following the cultivation of
. the soil as an accessory calling, find their chief occupation in
j industrial labour, the products of which they sell to the manu
facturers directly, or through the medium of merchants. This
is one, though not the chief, cause of a phenomenon which, at

1 "Twenty pounds of wool converted unobtrusively into the yearly clothing of a
labourer's family by its own industry in the intervals of other work — this makes no
show; but bring it to market, send it to the factory, thence to the broker, thence to
the dealer, and you will have great commercial operations, and nominal capital en
gaged to the amount of twenty times its value. . . . The working class is thus
emerced to support a wretched factory population, a parasitical shop-keeping class,
and a fictitious commercial, monetary, and financial system. (David Urquhart, 1. c-.
p. 120.)

Reaction of Agricultural Revolution. 821

first, puzzles the student of English, history. From the last
third of the 15th century he finds continually complaints, only
interrupted at certain invervals, about the encroachment of
capitalist farming in the country districts, and the progressive
destruction of the peasantry. On the other hand, he always
finds this peasantry turning up again, although in diminished
number, and always under worse conditions.1 The chief rea
son is : England is at one time chiefly a cultivator of corn, at
another chiefly a breeder of cattle, in alternate periods, and
with these the extent of peasant cultivation fluctuates. Mod
ern Industry alone, and finally, supplies, in machinery, the
lasting basis of capitalistic agriculture, expropriates radically
the enormous majority of the agricultural population, and
completes the separation between agriculture and rural domes
tic industry, whose roots — spinning and weaving — it tears
up.2 It therefore also, for the first time, conquers for indus
trial capital the entire home market.3

1 Cromwell's time forms an exception. So long as the Republic lasted, the mass
of the English people of all grades rose from the degradation into which they had
sunk under the Tudors.

1 Tuckett is aware that the modern woollen industry has sprung, with the intro
duction of machinery, from manufacture proper and from the destruction of rural
and domestic industries. "The plough, the yoke, were 'the invention of gods, and
the occupation of heroes;' are the loom, the spindle, the distaff, of less noble parent
age. You sever the distaff and the plough, the spindle and the yoke, and you get
factories and poorhouses, credit and panics, two hostile nations, agricultural and
commercial." (David Urquhart, 1. c., p. 122.) But now comes Carey, and cries
out upon England, surely not with unreason, that it is trying to turn every other
country into a mere agricultural nation, whose manufacturer is to be England. He
pretends that in this way Turkey has been ruined, because "the owners and occu
pants of land have never been permitted by England to strengthen themselves by
the formation of that natural alliance between the plough and the loom, the ham
mer and the harrow." (The Slave Trade, p. 125.) According to him, Urquhart
himself is one of the chief agents in the ruin of Turkey, where he had made free
trade propaganda in the English interest. The best of it is that Carey, a great
Russophile by the way, wants to prevent the process of separation by that very
system of protection which accelerates it.

* Philanthropic English economists, like Mill, Rogers, Goldwin, Smith, Fawcett,
&c., and liberal manufacturers like John Bright & Co., ask the English landed
proprietors, as God asked Cain after Abel, Where are our thousands of freeholders
gone? But where do you come from, then? From the destruction of those free
holders. Why don't you ask further, where are the independent weavers, spinneri,
tad *rtizans gone?

822 Capitalist Production,

CHAPTER XXXI.

GENESIri OP THE INDUSTRIAL . CAPITALIST.

genesis of the industrial1 capitalist did not proceed in
a gradual way as that of the farmer. Doubtless many
small guild-masters, and yet more independent small artisans,
or even wage-labourers, transformed themselves into small
capitalists, and (by gradually extending exploitation of wage-
labour and corresponding accumulation) into full-blown capi
talists. In the infancy of capitalist production, things often
Happened as in the infancy of mediaeval towns, where the
question, which of the escaped serfs should be master and
which servant, was in great part decided by the earlier or later
date of their flight. The snaiFs-pace of this method corre
sponded in no wise with the commercial requirements of the
new wrorld-market that the great discoveries of the end of the
15th century created. But the middle age had handed down
two distinct forms of capital, which mature in the most differ
ent economic social formations, and which, before the era of
the capitalist mode of production, are considered as capital
quand meme — usher's capital and merchant's capital.

"At present, all the wealth of society goes first into the pos
session of the capitalist .... he pays the landowner his rent,
the labourer his wages, the tax and tithe gatherer their claims,
and keeps a large, indeed the largest, and a continually aug
menting share, of the annual produce of labour for himself.
NjThe capitalist may now be said to be the first owner of all the
^wealth of the community, though no law has conferred on him
M:he right to this property .... this change has been effected
by the taking of interest on capital .... and it is not a little
curious that all the lawgivers of Europe endeavoured to pre
vent this by statutes, viz., statutes against usurjr. • \ • • • The
power of the capitalist over all the wealth of the country is a

1 Industrial here in contradistinction to agricultural. In the "categoric" cense th«
farmer is an industrial capitalist as much as the manufacturer.

Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist. 823

complete change in the right of property, and by what law, or
series of laws, was it effected ? " l The author should have re
membered that revolutions are not made by laws.

The money capital formed by means of usury and commerce * -
was prevented from turning into industrial capital, in the >
country by the feudal constitution, in the towns by the guild j
organization.2 These fetters vanished with the dissolution of '
feudal society, with the expropriation and partial eviction of **
the country population. The new manufacturers were estab
lished at sea-ports, or in inland points beyond the control of
the old municipalities and their guilds. Hence in England an
embittered struggle of the corporate towns against these new
industrial nurseries.

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpa
tion, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal
population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the
East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the com- V£P*^
mercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of u
the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings
are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their
heels treads the commercial war of the European nations,
with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of
the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in Eng
land's anti-jacobin war, and is still going on in the opium wars
against China, &c.

The different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute ^
themselves now, more or less in chronological order, partic
ularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England.
In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a
systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national w
debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist sys- ^
tern. These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the \^
colonial system. But they all employ the power of the State, u<-
the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, •

1 "The Natural and Artificial Rights of Property Contrasted." Lond., 1832, pp.
9S-99. Author of the anonymous work: "Th. Hodgskin."

'Even as late as 1794, the small cloth-makers of Leeds sent a deputation to Par-
liament, with a petition for a law to forbid any merchant from becoming a manu
facturer. (Dr. Aikin, 1. c.)

824 Capitalist Production.

^hothouse fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal
v/mode of promotion into the, capitalist mode, and to shorten the
^ransition. J^JTorce is the midwife of every old society pregnant
V with a new one. It is itself an economic powerT"}

Of the Christian colonial system, \V. Howitt, a man who
makes a specialty of Christianity, says : "The barbarities and
desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout
every region of the world, and upon every people they have
been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of axy
other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however
reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth." *
The history of the colonial administration of Holland — and
Holland was the head capitalistic nation of the 17th century
• — "is one of the most extraordinary relations of treachery,
bribery, massacre, and meanness." 2 Nothing is more charac
teristic than their system of stealing men, to get slaves for
Java. The men stealers were trained for this purpose. Tho
thief, the interpreter, and the seller, were the chief agents in
this trade, native princes the chief sellers. The young people;
stolen, were thrown into the secret dungeons of Celebes, unti.
they were ready for sending to the slave-ships. An official re
port says : "This one town of Macassar, e.g., is full of secret
prisons, one more horrible than the other, crammed with un
fortunates, victims of greed and tyranny fettered in chains,
forcibly torn from their families." To secure Malacca, the
Dutch corrupted the Portuguese governor. He let them into
the town in 1641. They hurried at once to his house and
assassinated him, to "abstain" from the payment of £21,875,
the price of his treason. Wherever they set foot, devastation
and depopulation followed. Banjuwangi, a province of Java,
in 1750 numbered over 80,000 inhabitants, in 1811 only 18,-
000. Sweet commerce!

1 William Howitt: "Colonisation and Christianity: A Popular History of the
Treatment of the Natives by the Europeans in all their Colonies." London, 1838,
p. 9. On the treatment of the slaves there is a good compilation in Charles Comte,
Trait6 de la Legislation. 3me £d. Bruxelles, 1837. This subject one must study
in detail, to see what the bourgeoisie makes of itself and of the labourer, wherever
it can, without restraint, model the world after its own image.

'Thomas Stamford Raffles, late Lieut.-Gov. of that island: "History of Java
and its dependencies." Lond., 1817.

Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist. 825

The English East India Company, as is well known, ob
tained, besides the political rule in India, the exclusive monop
oly of the tea-trade, as well as of the Chinese trade in general,
and of the transport of goods to and from Europe. But the
coasting trade of India and between the islands, as well as the
internal trade of India, were the monopoly of the higher em
ployes of the company. The monopolies of salt, opium, betel
and other commodities, were inexhaustible mines of wealth.
The employes themselves fixed the price and plundered at will
the unhappy Hindus. The Governor-General took part in this
private traffic. His favourites received contracts under con
ditions whereby they, cleverer than the alchemists, made gold
out of nothing. Great fortunes sprang up like mushrooms in L
a day; primitive accumulation went on without the advance u
of a shilling. The trial cxf Warren Hastings swarms with such
cases. Here is an instance. A contract for opium was given
to a certain Sullivan at the moment of his departure on an
official mission to a part of India far removed from the opium
district. Sullivan sold his contract to one Binn for £40,000;
Binn sold it the same day for £60,000, and the ultimate pur
chaser who carried out the contract declared that after all he
realised an enormous gain. According to one of the lists laid
before Parliament, the Company and its employes from 1757-
1766 got £6,000,000 from the Indians as gifts. Between 1769
and 1770, the English manufactured a famine by buying up
all the rice and refusing to sell it again, except at fabulous
prices.1

The treatment of the aborigines was, naturally, most fright
ful in plantation-colonies destined for export trade only, such
as the West Indies, and in rich and well-populated countries,
such as Mexico and India, that were given over to plunder.
But even in the colonies properly so-called, the Christian
character of primitive accumulation did not belie itself. Those
sober virtuosi of Protestantism, the Puritans of ISTew England,
in 1703, by decrees of their assembly set a premium of £40 on

1 In the year 1866 more than a million Hindus died of hunger in the province of
O'issa alone. Nevertheless, the attempt was made to enrich the Indian treasury by
tie price at which the necessaries of life were sold to the starving people.

826 Capitalist Production.

every Indian scalp and every captured red-skin: in 1720 a
premium of £100 on every scalp; in 1744, after Massachusetts-
Bay had proclaimed a certain tribe as rebels, the following
prices: for a male scalp of 12 years and upwards £100 (new
currency), for a male prisoner £105, for women and children
prisoners £50, for scalps of women and children £50. Some
decades later, the colonial system took its revenge on the d<3-
scendants of the pious pilgrim fathers, who had grown sedi
tious in the meantime. At English instigation and for Eng
lish pay they were tomahawked by red-skins. The British
Parliament, proclaimed blood-hounds and scalping as "mean?
that God and Xature had given into its hand."

The colonial system ripened, like a hot-house, trade and
navigation. The "societies Monopolia" of Luther were power -

/ f ul levers for concentration of capital. The colonies secured i.

/ market for the budding manufactures, and, through the mo-

... nopoly of the market, an increased accumulation. The treas
ures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslave
ment, and murder, floated back to the mother-country and
were there turned into capital. Holland, which first fully
developed the colonial system, in 1648 stood already in the
acme of its commercial greatness. It was "in almost exclu
sive possession of the East Indian trade and the commerce be
tween the south-east and north-west of Europe. Its fisheries,
marine, manufactures, surpassed those of any other country.
The total capital of the Republic was probably more important
than that of all the rest of Europe put together." Giilich for
gets to add that by 1648, the people of Holland were more
overworked, poorer and more brutally oppressed than those of
all the rest of Europe put together.

To-day industrial supremacy implies commercial supremacy,
/ In the period of manufacture properly so-called, it is, on the

^ other hand, the commercial supremacy that gives industrial

V predominance. Hence the preponderant role that the colonial

system plays at that time. It was "the strange God" who

perched himself on the altar cheek by jowl with the old Gods

of Europe, and one fine day with a shove and a kick chucked

Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist. 827

them all of a heap. It proclaimed surplus-value making as
the sole end and aim of humanity.

The system of public credit, i.e. of national debts, whose ix
origin we discover in Genoa and Venice as early as the middle
ages, took possession of Europe generally during the manu- ^/
f acturing period. The colonial system with its maritime trade .
and commercial wars served as a forcing-house for it. Thus it
first took root in Holland. National debts, i.e., the alienation
of the state — whether despotic, constitutional^- republican-
marked with its stamp the capitalistic era. ppie only part "of ^
the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the col
lective possessions of modern peoples is — their national debt.1
Hence, as a necessary consequence, the modern doctrine that a
nation becomes the richer the more deeply it is in debt.
Public credit •beco'mes the credo of capital. And with the
rise of national debt-making, want of faith in the national
debt takes the place of the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,

which may not be forgiven. ,

The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of iX
primitive accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter's *-
wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and
thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing
itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employ
ment in industry or even in usury. The state-creditors actu
ally give nothing away, for the sum lent is transformed into
public bonds, easily negotiable, which go on functioning in
their hands just as so much hard cash would. But further,
apart from the class of lazy annuitants thus created, and from
the improvised wealth of the financiers, middlemen between
the government and the nation — as also apart from the tax-
farmers, merchants, private manufacturers, to whom a good
part of every national loan renders the service of a capital
fallen from heaven — the national debt has given rise to joint-
stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds,
and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the
modern bankocraey.

1 William Cobbett remarks that in England all public institutions are designated
"royal;" as compensation for this, however, there is the "national" debt.

/VAt
[ /Jtitles

828 Capitalist Production.

their birth the great banks, decorated with national
, were only associations of private speculators, who placed
,^iiemselves by the side of governments, and, thanks to the
/privileges they received; were in a position to advance money
xto the state. Hence the accumulation of the national debt has
no more infallible measure than the successive rise in the stock
of these banks, whose full development dates from the found
ing of the Bank of England in 1691. The Bank of England
began with lending its money to the Government at 8% ; at
the same time it was empowered by Parliament to coin money
out of the same capital, by lending it again to the public in
the form of bank-notes. It was allowed to use these notes for
discounting bills, making advances on commodities, and for
buying the precious metals. It was not long ere this credit-
money, made by the bank itself, became the coin in which the
Bank of England made its loans to the state, and paid, on ac
count of the state, the interest on the public debt. It was not
enough that the bank gave with one hand arid took back more
with the other; it remained, even whilst receiving, the eternal
creditor of the nation down to the last shilling advanced.
Gradually it became inevitably the receptacle of the metallic
hoard of the country, and the centre of gravity of all com
mercial credit. What effect was produced on their contem
poraries by the sudden uprising of this brood of bankocrats,
financiers, rentiers, brokers, stock-jobbers, &c., is proved by the
writings of that time, e.g., by Bolingbroke's.1

With the national debt arose an international credit system,
which often conceals one of the sources of primitive accumula
tion in this or that people. Thus the villanies of the Venetian
thieving system formed one of the secret bases of the capital-
wealth of Holland to whom Venice in her decadence lent large
sums of money. So also was it with Holland and England.
By the beginning of the 18th century the Dutch manufac
tures were far outstripped. Holland had ceased to be the
nation preponderant in commerce and industry. One. of its

1 "Si les Tartares inondaient 1'Europe aujourd'hui, il faudrait bien des affaires
pour leur faire entendre ce que c'est qu'un financier parmi nous." Montesquieu
Esprit des lois, t. iv. p. 83, ed. Londres, 1769.

Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist. 829

main lines of business, therefore, from 1701-1776, is the lend
ing out of enormous amounts of capital, especially to its great
rival England. The same thing is going on to-day between
England and the United States. A great deal of capital,
which appears to-day in the United States without any certi
ficate of birth, was yesterday, in England, the capitalised blood
of children.

As the national debt finds its support in the public revenue, \-/
•which must cover the yearly payments for interest, &c., the *-
modern system of taxation was the necessary complement of ^
the system of national loans. The loans enable the govern---
ment to meet extraordinary expenses, without the tax-payers ~
feeling it immediately, but they necessitate, as a consequence, ^
increased taxes. On the other hand, the raising of taxation^
caused by the accumulation of debts contracted one after an
other, compels the government always to have recourse to new
loans for new extraordinary expenses. Modern fiscality, whose
pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary means of sub
sistence (thereby increasing their price), thus contains within
itself the germ of automatic progression. Over-taxation is not
an incident, but rather a principle. In Holland, therefore^
where this system was first inaugurated, the great patriot, De
Witt, has in his "Maxims" extolled it as the best system for
making the wage-labourer submissive, frugal, industrious, and
overburdened with labour. The destructive influence that it •<-
exercises on the condition of the wage-labourer concerns us *
less however, here, than the forcible expropriation; resulting •-
from it, of peasants, artisans, and in a word, all elements of v-
the lower middle-class. On this there are not two opinions,
even among the bourgeois economists. Its expropriating effi- ^
cacy is still further heightened by the system of protection,^
which forms one of its integral parts.

The great part that the public debt, and the fiscal system -
corresponding with it, has played in the capitalisation of *
wealth and the expropriation of the masses, has led many
writers, like Cobbett, Doubleday and others, to seek in this,
incorrectly, the fundamental cause of the misery of the modern
peoples.

830 Capitalist Production.

The system of protection was an artificial means of manufac
turing manufacturers, of expropriating independent labourers,
of capitalising the national means of production and subsist
ence, of forcibly abbreviating the transition from the mediaeval
to the modern mode of production. The European states toro
one another to pieces about the patent of this invention, and,
once entered into the service of the surplus-value makers, did
not merely lay under contribution in the pursuit of this pur
pose their own people, indirectly through protective duties, di
rectly through export premiums. They also forcibly rootec
out, in their dependent countries, all industry, as, e.g., England
did with the Irish woollen manufacture. On the continent of
Europe, after Colbert's example, the process was much simpli
fied. The primitive industrial capital, here, came in part
directly out of the state treasury. "Why," cries Mirabeau,
"why go so far to seek the cause of the manufacturing glory of
Saxony before the war? 180,000,000 of debts contracted by
the sovereigns I"1

Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, com
mercial wars, &c., these children of the true manufacturing
period, increase gigantically during the infancy of Modern
Industry. The birth of the latter is heralded by a great
slaughter of the innocents. Like the royal navy, the factories
were recruited by means of the press-gang. Blase as Sir F.
M. Eden is as to the horrors of the expropriation of the agricul
tural population from the soil, from the last third of the 15th
century to his own time; with all the self-satisfaction with
which he rejoices in this process, "essential" for establishing
capitalistic agriculture and "the due proportion between arable
• and pasture land" — he does not show, however, the same eco-
.[, nomic insight in respect to the necessity of child-stealing and
•^child-slavery for the transformation of manufacturing exploi
tation into factory exploitation, and the establishment of the
"true relation" between capital and labour-power. He says:
"It may, perhaps, be worthy the attention of the public to
consider, whether any manufacture, which, in order to be
carried on successfully, requires that cottages and workhouses

1 Mirabeau, 1. c., t. vi.t p. 101.

Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist. 831

should be ransacked for poor children; that they should be
employed by turns during the greater part of the night and
robbed of that rest which, though indispensable to all, is most
required by the young; and that numbers of both sexes, of
different ages and dispositions, should be collected together in
such a manner that the contagion of example cannot but lead
to profligacy and debauchery ; will add to the sum of individ
ual or national felicity?"1

"In the counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and more
particularly in Lancashire/' says Fielden, "the newly-invented
machinery was used in large factories built on the sides of
streams capable of turning the water-wheel. Thousands of
hands were suddenly required in these places, remote from
towns; and Lancashire, in particular, being, till then, com
paratively thinly populated and barren, a population was all
that she now wanted. The small and nimble fingers of little
children being by very far the most in request, the custom
instantly sprang up of procuring apprentices from the different
parish workhouses of London, Birmingham, and elsewhere.
Many, many thousands of these little, hapless creatures were
sent down into the north, being from the age of 7 to the age of
13 or 14 years old. The custom was for the master to clothe
his apprentices and to feed and lodge them in an "appren
tice house" near the factory; overseers were appointed to see
to the works, whose interest it was to work the children to
the utmost, because their pay was in proportion to the quantity
of work that they could exact. Cruelty was, of course, the
consequence. . . In many of the manufacturing districts, but
particularly, I am afraid, in the guilty county to which I
belong [Lancashire], cruelties the most heart-rending were
practised upon the unoffending and friendless creatures who
were thus consigned to the charge of master manufacturers;
they were harassed to the brink of death by excess of labour
. . . were flogged, fettered and tortured in the most exquisite
refinement of cruelty; . . . they were in many cases starved
to the bone while flogged to their work and .... even in
some instances . . . were driven to commit suicede . . . The

' Eden, I. c., Vol. I., Book II., Ch. I., p. 421.

832 Capitalist Production.

beautiful and romantic valleys of Derbyshire, Nottingham
shire and Lancashire, secluded from the public eye, became the
dismal solitudes of torture, and of many a murder. The
profits of manufactures were enormous ; but this only whetted
the appetite that it should have satisfied, and therefore the
manufacturers had recourse to an expedient that seemed to
secure to them those profits without any possibility of limit;
they began the practice of what is termed anight-working,"
that is, having tired one set of hands, by working them
throughout the day, they had another set ready to go on
working throughout the night; the day-set getting into the
beds that the night-set had just quitted, and in their turn
again, the night-set getting into the beds that the day-s-jt,
quitted in the morning. It is a common tradition in Lanca
shire, that the beds never get cold."1

With the development of capitalist production during the
manufacturing period, the public opinion of Europe had loe t
the last remnant of shame and conscience. The nations
bragged cynically of every infamy that served them as a means
to capitalistic accumulation. Read, e.g., the naive Annals of
Commerce of the worthy A. Anderson. Here it is trumpetted
forth as a triumph of English statecraft that at the Peace o:'
Utrecht, England extorted from the Spaniards by the Asiento
Treaty the privilege of being allowed to ply the negro-trade,
until then only carried on between Africa and the Englisl

*John Fielden, I. c. pp. 6, 6. On the earlier infamies of the factory system, cf
Dr. Aikin (1795) 1. c. p. 219, and Gisborne: Enquiry into the Duties of Men, 1795,
Vol. II. When the steam-engine transplanted the factories from the country water
falls to the middle of towns, the "abstemious" surplus-value maker found the child-
material ready to his hand, without being forced to seek slaves from the workhouses.
When Sir R. Peel, (father of the "minister of plausibility"), brought in his bill for
the protection of children, in 1815, Francis Horner, lumen of the Bullion Committee
and intimate friend of Ricardo, said in the House of Commons: "It is notorious,
that with a bankrupt's effects, a gang, if he might use the word, of these children
had been put up to sale, and were advertised publicly as part of the property. A
most atrocious instance had been brought before the Court of King's Bench two
years before, in which a number of these boys, apprenticed by a parish in London
to one manufacturer, had been transferred to another, and had been found by some
benevolent persons in a state of absolute famine. Another case more horrible bad
come to his knowledge while on a [Parliamentary] Committee . . . that not
many years ago, an agreement had been made between a London parish and *
Lancashire manufacturer, by which it was stipulated, that with every 20 sound chil
dren one idiot should be taken."

Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist. 833

West Indies, between Africa and Spanish America as well.
England thereby acquired the right of supplying Spanish
America until 1743 with 4800 negroes yearly. This threw, at
the same time, an official cloak over British smuggling.
Liverpool waxed fat on the slave-trade. This was its method "
of primitive accumulation. And, even to the present day, ~*
Liverpool "respectability" is the Pindar of the slave-trade
which — compare the work of Aikin [1795] already quoted —
"has coincided with that spirit of bold adventure which has
characterised the trade of Liverpool and rapidly carried it to its
present state of prosperity; has occasioned vast employment
for shipping and sailors, and greatly augmented the demand
for the manufactures of the country" (p. 339). Liverpool em
ployed in the slave trade, in 1730, 15 ships; in 1751, 53; in
1760, 74; in 1770, 96; and in 1792, 132.

Whilst the cotton industry introduced child-slavery in
England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the trans
formation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a
system of commercial exploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery
of the wage-earners in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery
pure and simple in the new world.1

Tantse molis erat, to establish the "eternal laws of
Nature" of the capitalist mode of production, to complete
the process of separation between labourers and conditions
of labour, to transform, at one pole, the social means of
production and subsistence into capital, at the opposite pole,
the mass of the population into wage-labourers, into "free
labouring poor," that artificial product of modern society.2 If

1 In 1790, there were in the English West Indies ten slaves for one free man, in
the French fourteen for one, in the Dutch twenty-three for one. (Henry Brougham:
An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers. Edin. 1803, voL II.
p. 74.)

* The phrase, "labouring poor," is found in English legislation from the moment
when the class of wage-labourers becomes noticeable. This term is used in oppo
sition, on the one hand, to the "idle poor," beggars, etc,, on the other to those
labourers, who, pigeons not yet plucked, are still possessors of their own means of
labour. From the Statute Book it passed into political economy, and was handed
down by Culpeper, J. Child, etc., to Adam Smith and Eden. After this, one
can judge of the good faith of the "execrable political cant-monger," Edmund Burke,
when he called the expression, "labouring poor,"— "execrable political cant." This
•ycophant who, in the pay of the English oligarchy, played the romantic laudator
teinporis «cti against the French Revolution, jtwt as, in the pay of the North Am«4-

3 A

834 Capitalist Production.

money, according to Augier,1 "comes into the world witx? a
congenital blood-stain on one cheek," capital comes drippirg
from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.2

CHAPTER XXXII.

HISTORICAL TENDENCY OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION.

WHAT does the primitive accumulation of capital, i.e., its his
torical genesis, resolve itself into ? In so far as it is not im
„ mediate transformation of slaves and serfs into wage-labourers,
J and therefore a mere change of form, it only means the expro-
, priation of the immediate producers, i.e., the dissolution of
private property based on the labour of its owner. Private
property, as the antithesis to social, collective property, exists
only where the means of labour and the external conditions of
labour belong to private individuals. But according as these
private individuals are labourers or not labourers, private
property has a different character. The numberless shades,
that it at first sight presents, correspond to the intermediate
stages lying between these two extremes. The private prop-

can Colonies, at the beginning of the American troubles, he had played the Liberal
against the English oligarchy, was an out and out vulgar bourgeois. "The laws of
commerce are the laws of Nature, and therefore the laws of God." (E. Burke,
1. c., pp. 31, 32.) No wonder that, true to the laws of God and of Nature, he
always sold himself in the best market. A very good portrait of this Edmund Burke,
during his liberal time, is to be found in the writings of the Rev. Mr. Tucker.
Tucker was a parson and a Tory, but, for the rest, an honourable man and a com
petent political economist. In face of the infamous cowardice of character that
reigns to-day, and believes most devoutly in "the laws of commerce," it is our
bounden duty again and again to brand the Burkes, who only differ from their suc
cessors in one thing — talent.

1 Marie Augier: Du Credit Public. Paris, 1842.

2 "Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and strife, and to
be timid, which is" very true; but this is very incompletely stating the question.
Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to
abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent,
will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent, certain will produce eagerness;
50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent, will make it ready to trample on all
human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a
risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence
and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the
slave-trade have amply pro ;ed all that is here stated." (P. J. Dunning, L c., p. «5.)

Historical Tendency of Accumulation. 835

erty of tlm 1p.hmirp.r ir^ hi a means of production ic fl^p l™ir^?.
tion of petty industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing
or both ; petty industry, again, is an essential condition for the
development of social production and of the free individuality
of the labourer himself. Of course, this petty mode of pro
duction exists also under slavery, serfdom, and other states
of dependence. But it flourishes, it lets loose its whole energy,
it attains its adequate classical form, only where the labourer
is the private owner of his own means of labour set in action
by himself: the peasant of the land which he cultivates, the
artizan of the tool which he handles as a virtuoso. This mode
of prod VLCiipTi pra-sii ppq afflLjff jgg] j jng^ of th ft soil, and scatter
ing of the other means of production. As it excludes the con
centration of these means of production, so also it excludes co
operation, division of labour within each separate process of
production, the control over, and the productive application
of the forces of Nature by society, and the free development
of the social productive powers. It is compatible only with
a system of production, and a society, moving within narrow
and more or less primitive bounds. To perpetuate it would
be, as Pecqueur rightly says, "to decree universal mediocrity."
At a certain stage of development it brings forth the material
agencies for its own dissolution. From that moment new forces
and new. passions spring up in the bosom of society; but the
old social organization fetters them . ajnd keeps Ibeni dowjk — It
must be "annihilated ; ^"is^ajinihilated. Its annihilation, the
transformation of the individuaTiseTt" and scattered means of
production into socially concentrated ones, of the pigmy prop
erty of the many into the huge property of the few, the ex
propriation of the great mass of the people from the soil,
from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labour,
this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of the peo
ple forms the prelude to the history of capital. It comprises
a series of forcible methods, of which we have passed in re
view only those that have been epoch-making as methods of
the primitive accumulation of capital The expropriation of
the imm^diatej^rpducers was accomplished with merciless Van-
thP atimnhis of passions tJm most infamOlM.

836 Capitalist Production.

the most sordid, the pettiest,, the most meanly odious. Self-
earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing
together of the isolated, independent labouring-individual with
the conditions of his labour, is supplanted by capitalistic pri
vate property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally
free labour of others, i.e., on wages-labour.1

As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently de

composed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as

the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of

labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of produc

tion stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation or

labour and further transformation of the land and other means;

of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common

means of production, as well as the further expropriation oi

^private proprietors, takes a new form. 'Ehflt which k now

J to hr__£,Tprnprintrd in no Inn^rr the labourer, '

/spl'-F^

italist exploiting many labourers. This ex
propriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws
.of capitalistic production itself, by

tgl. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with
this centralisation, or this expropriation of many capitalists
by few, develop, on an ever extending scale, the co-operative
form of the labour-process, the conscious technical application
of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the trans
formation of the instruments of labour into instruments of
labour only usable in common, the economising of all means
of production by their use as the means of production of com
bined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the
net of the world-market, and this, the international character
of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly dimin
ishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and
monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation,
grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, ex
ploitation ; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-
class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined,

* "Nous sommes dans une condition tout-a-fait nouvclle de la sode'te . . . nou»
tendons a s^parer toute espece dc proprie'te' d'avec toute eapece de travail." (Si»-
tnondi: JNouveatu Prrncipes de 1'Econ. Pollt. t. II. , p. 484.)

Historical Tendency of Accumulation. 837

united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of
capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes ••/
a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up -
and flourished along with, and under it Centralisation of the
means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach -
a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist v
integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell
of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are ; i
expropriated.

The capitaHs^in^ple_jci£-a^prjD£nMion, the result of the capi
talist mode .Q£-pr^duction,-pfe4ftces€apItaligjt private property.
This is the first negation of-iadividual private property, as
founded onjjafij^boui irMho proprietor. But capitalist pro-"
duction begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its
own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does notv
re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him
individual property based on the acquisitions of the capitalist
era : i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the
land and of the means of production.

The transformation of scattered prjvate property, arising
from individupl 'lahn11^ '"t^ ^ pi fa II fit private £ropertv is,

TI sturdily^ a pr^pga, JT^niparably TnQre^protracte?, violent,
and difficult, thaji^tke-^rarisformation of capitalistic private
property, already practically resting on socialised production,
into socialised property. In the former case, we had the ex
propriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in
the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the
mass of the people.1

1 The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces
the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combina
tion, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from
under its feet, the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropri
ates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore, produces, above all, are its own
grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
. . . Of all the classes, that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie to-day, the
proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes perish and dis
appear in the face of Modern Industry, the proletariat is its special and essential
product. . . . The lower middle-classes, the small manufacturers, the shop keep
ers, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from
extinction their existence as fractions of the middle-class . . . they are reac
tionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. "Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels, Manifest der Komniunistischen Partei," London, 1847, pp. 911,

838 Capitalist Production.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE MODEKN TIIEOKY OF COLONISATION.1

,/ POLITICAL economy confuses on principle two very different
j kinds of private property, of which one rests on the producers'
' own labour, the other on the employment of the labour of
others. It forgets that the latter not only is the direct anti
thesis of the former, but absolutely grows on its tomb only.
In Western Europe, the home of political economy, the process
of primitive accumulation is more or less accomplished. Here
the capitalist regime has either directly conquered the whole
donmiiL_pf national production, or, wnere economic conditions
are less developed, it, as least, indirectly controls those strata of
society which, though belonging to the antiquated mode of pro
duction, continue to exist side by side with it in gradual decay.
To this ready-made world of capital, the political economist
applies the notions of law and of property inherited from a pre-
capitalistic world with all the more anxious zeal and all the
greater unction, the more loudly the facts cry out in the face
of his idealogy. It is otherwise in jthe_cqlpnies. There, the
na pi talist, regime woiy^Vigyp f^™^ into collision with_ the
resistance_of t.y, producer, whoL as owner of his own condi
tions of labour, rnnpl^yn that labour to enrich himselfvjnstead
of .the jcapitalist. ^JTbe ^n t.r a rl * pf T* ou ntifa***. two diametrically
"ETPfiff^ ftftnnmmV systems, manifestsitseh^rej^r^g^ally in
a struggle befweenJ;hcm. Where the capitalist has at his back
the power of the mother-country, he tries fr> rip an i>n| ^^1>a
wav_ by force, the modes of production and appropriation,
base3 on E7s ind&T^HffP* 1°bfrnr ^flhe producer] TEe same
interest which compels the sycophant of capital, the political
economist, in the mother-country, to proclaim the theoretical

1 We treat here of real Colonies, virgin soils, colonised by free immigrants. The
United States are, speaking economically, still only a Colony of Europe. Besides,
to this category belong also such old plantations as those in which the abolition of
•Uvery has completely altered the earlier conditions.

The Modern Theory of Colonisation. 839

identity of the capitalist mode of production with its con
trary, that same interest compels him in the colonies to make a
clean breast of it, and to proclaim aloud the antagonism of
the two modes of production. Tfrtlw-eBdJia^proves how the
development of the social productive power of labour, co
operation, rlivigTrrn n-f InKr^]^ jige pf machinery on a large
scale, &c., are impossible without thlT expropTialiuir-of the
labourers, And the corresponding transformation ot tJieif means
of production into capital. In the interest ~oT the^sO-called •
national wealthy he Seeks for artificial means to ensure the ,
poverty of the people. Here his apologetic armour crumbles
off, bit by bit, like rotten touchwood. It is the great merit
of E. G. w-jjjjpfj^1rl to have discovered, not anything new
about the Colonies,1 but to have discovered in the Colonies the
truth as to the conditions of capitalist production in the mother-
to ?^Q^v^v>tuTp nnp^oliats artificially in the mother-country,
so Wakefield*s colonisation flippy, wliich England tried lor a
time to enforce bv A/*fg of "ParlunnjMi^ nttgmprprrirr^-flWt the

to in the Ooloiiic3. — This he calls

"sjstematre-^knrrsation."

-J Mrs* /vF all, Wqkp,fifi]rl rHscovernd that in the Colonies prop
erty in money, means of subsistence. machinesandl)ther means
of production,doei^not as yet stamj^a_man_^ a capitalist if
Qtiner tfie correla

there be wanting^ the correlative — -the wage-worFer, the other
man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free-will.
He discovered that capital i« Tint, a thing, fyit a social relation ^ .
between persons, established by the instrumentality of things.3 ••
Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan
River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of produc-

1 Wakefield's few glimpses on the subject of Modern Colonisation are fully antici
pated by Mirabeau Pere, the physiocrat, and even much earlier by English econo
mists.

* Later, it became a temporary necessity in the international competitive struggle.
But, whatever its motive, the consequences remain the same.

* A negro is a negro. In certain circumstances he becomes a slave. A mule is a
machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain circumstances does it become
capital. Outside these circumstances, it is no more capital than gold is intrinsically
money, or sugar is the price of sugar. . . . Capital is a social relation of pro
duction. It is a historical relation of production. (Karl Marx, "Lohnarbeit und
Kapital." N. Rh. Z. No. 266, April 7, 1849.)

840 Capitalist Production.

tion to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to
bring with him, besides, 3000 persons of the working-class,
men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination,
"Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch
him water from the river."1 Unhappy Mr. Peel who pro
vided for everything except the export of English modes of
production to Swan River ! ,

For the understanding of the following discoveries of Wake-
field, two preliminary remarks: We know that the rneana of
pn/^ \vVn1p t.lipy remain the property oi'

e p
bec

th^ -immpidjateji-oducer, are not capital. They become capi-

y'tal, only under circumstances in which they serve at the same

v.time as means of exploitation and subjection of the labourer.

But this capitalist soul of theirs is so intimately wedded, in

the head of the political economist, to their material substance^

that he christens them capital undpt-» alJLcircumsj

when they are its exact opposite. ^Xhus is it with WakefieL

, Further: the? splitting IIP of the means of production into the

indi'ndrifll pyr>pprty of many independent labourers, working

j on t£eir_own account, he calls equal j^yiaion of capital?" It is

witE the political economist as with the feudal jurist The

latter stuck on to pure monetary relations the labels supplied

by feudal law.

"If," says Wakefield, "all the members of the society are
supposed to possess equal portions of capital ... no man
would have a motive for accumulating more capital than he
could use with his own hands. This is to some extent the
case in new American settlements, where a passion for owning
land prevents the existence of a class of labourers for hire."2
So long, therefore, as the labourer can accumulate for him-
' self — and this he can do so long as he remains possessor of
/Ma means of production — capitalist accumulation and the cap
italistic mode of production are impossible. The class of
wage-labourers, essential to. these,- is wanting. How, then, in
old Europe, was the expropriation of the labourer from his
conditions of labour, i.e., the co-existence of capital and wage-

1 E. G. Wakefield: England and America, vol. il., p. 88.
»L c.. p. 17.

The Modern Theory of Colonisation. 841

, brought about? By a social contract of a quite orig-
If hid. "Mankind have adopted a ... simple con
trivance lor promoting the accumulation of capital," which, of
course, since the time of Adam, floated in their imagination as
the sole and final end of their existence: "they have divided
themselves into owners of capital and owners of labour.
. . . This division was the result of concert and combina
tion."1 In o/ie word: the mass of mankind expropriated it
self in honour of the "accumulation of capital." Now, one
would think, that this instinct of self-denying fanaticism
would give itself full flingv especially in the Colonies, where
alone exist the men and conditions that could turn a social
contract from a dream to a reality. But why, then, should
"systematic colonisation" be called in to replace its opposite,
spontaneous, unregulated colonisation ? But — but — "In the
Northern States of the American Union, it may be doubted
whether so many as a tenth of the people would fall under the
description of hired labourers. ... In England . . .
the labouring class compose the bulk of the people."2 Nay,
the impulse to self-expropriation, on the part of labouring
humanity, for the glory of capital, exists so little, that slavery,
according to Wakefield himself, is the sole natural basis of
Colonial wealth. His systematic colonisation is a mere pis
aller, since he unfortunately has to do with free men, not
with slaves. "The first Spanish settlers in Saint Domingo did
not obtain labourers from Spain. But, without labourers,
their capital must have perished, or, at least, must soon have
been diminished to that small amount which each individual
could employ with his own hands. This has actually occurred
in the last Colony founded by Englishmen — the Swan River
Settlement — where a great mass of capital, of seeds, imple
ments, and cattle, has perished for want of labourers to use it,
and where no settler has preserved much more capital than he
can employ with his own hands."3

We have seen that the expropriation of the mass of the peo
ple from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of pro
duction. The essence of a free colony, on the contrary, con-

M. c., vol. i., p. 18. M. c., pp. 42, 48, 44. • 1. c., vol. it, p. 6.

842 Capitalist Production.

gists in this — that. the bulk of the soil is still public property,
and every settler cm it. fhp.rrfnrr r^Ti tnm pirt nf it into his
private property and individual means of prorhip.tmn, Wvthom.
hindering the later settlers in thp CQ^>^ "p™*flti^Ti 1 This is
the secret both of the prosperity of the colonies and of their
inveterate vice — opposition to the establishment of capital.
" Where land is very cheap and all men are free, where one
who so pleases can easily obtain a piece of land for himself,
not only is labour very dear, as respects the labourer's share
of the produce, but the difficulty is to obtain combined labour
at any price."2

As in the colonies the separation of the labourer from the
conditions of labour and {heir mn^ tV>A oni^ rj^ nr»t yet exis^
or only sporadically, or on too limited a scale, so neither 'does
the separat^nr> n-f qgrinnlHir^ jVm industry exist, nor-the de
struction of the household industry of the peasantry. Whence
then is to come the internal market for capital? "NcTpart of
the population 6F America is exclusively agricultural, exceptr
ing slaves and their employers who combine capital and labour
in particular works. Free Americans, who cultivate the soil,
follow many other occupations. Some portion of the furniture
and tools which they use is commonly made by themselves.
They frequently build their own houses, and carry to market,
at whatever distance, the produce of their own industry.
They are spinners and weavers ; they make soap and candles,
as well as, in many cases, shoes and clothes for their own use.
In America the cultivation of land is often the secondary pur
suit of a blacksmith, a miller or a shopkeeper."3 With such
queer people as these, where is the "field of abstinence" for
the capitalists ?

The great beauty of capitalist production consists in this —
that it not only constantly reproduces the wage-worker aa
wage- worker, but produces always, in proportion to the ac
cumulation of capital, a relative surplus population of wage-

workers. Thus the law^ of supply and demand of labour is

— • .

1 "Land, to be an element of colonization, must not only be waste, but it must be
public property, Hable to be converted into private property." (1. c. Vol. II., p. 126.)
•1. c. Vol. I. p. 24V M. c. pp. 21, 22.

The Modern Theory of Colonisation. 843

kept in the right rut, the oscillation of wages is penned within
limits satisfactory to capitalist exploitation, and lastly, the so
cial dependence of the labourer on the capitalist, that indis
pensable requisite, is secured; an unmistakeable relation of
dependence, which the smug political economist, at home, in
the mother country, can transmogrify into one of free contract
between buyer and seller, between equally independent own
ers of commodities, the owner of the commodity capital and
the owner of the commodity labour. But in the colonies this
pretty fancy is torn asunder. The absolute population here
increases miich mo™ qninTcly tharT^ fop mnfliPr-nr^Titry be-
cause many labourers enter this world ^ ready-™ a florin Us,
and' yet tha4abam_ marketis always understocked. Tha>law
of the supply and demand of labour falls to pieces. On the
one hand, the old world constantly throws in capital, thirst
ing after exploitation and "abstinence;" on the other, the
regular reproduction of the wage-laboiirer as wage-labourer
comes into collision with impediments the most impertinent
and in part invincible. What becomes of the production of
wage-labourers, supernumerary in proportion to the accumula
tion of capital ? The wage-worker of to-day is to-morrow an
independent peasant, or artisan, working for himself. He
vanishes from the labour-market, but not into the workhouse.
This constant transformation of the wage-labourers into inde
pendent producers, who work for themselves instead of for
capital, and enrich themselves instead of the capitalist gentry,
reacts in its turn very perversely on the conditions of the la
bour-market. Not only does the degree of exploitation of the
wage-labourer remain indecently low. The wage-labourer
loses into the bargain, along with the relation of dependence,
also the sentiment of dependence on the abstemious capitalist.
Hence all the inconveniences that our E. G. Wakefield pic
tures so doughtily, so eloquently, so pathetically.

The supply of wage-labour, he complains, is neither con
stant, nor regular, nor sufficient. "The supply of labour is
always, not only small, but uncertain."1 "Though the produce
divided between the capitalist and the labourer be large the

M. c., Vol. II., p. 116.

844 Capitalist Production.

labourer takes so great a share that he soon becomes a capital
ist, . . . Few, even of those whose lives are unusually
long, can accumulate great masses of wealth."1 The labourers
most Hjfft.inpft.lv declines to allow the capitalist to abstain from
the payment of the greater part of their labour, Tt fty^iiaTn'm
nothing if he is so cunning as t^irnport^f^m-O^np^ with
Tiift-Tfrnm papito]j Tijfl own wage-workers. They soon "cease
. to be labourers for hire ; they . . . become in
dependent landowners, if not competitors with their former
masters in the labour market"*3 Think of the horror! The
excellent capitalist has imported bodily from Europe, with his
own good money, his own competitors ! The end of the world
has come! No wonder Wakefield laments the absence of all
dependence and of all sentiment of dependence on the part
of the wage-workers in the colonies. On account of the high
wages, says his disciple, Merivale, there is in the colonies "the
urgent desire for cheaper and more subservient labourers —
for a class to whom the capitalist might dictate terms, in
stead of being dictated to by them. ... In ancient civi
lized countries the labourer, though free, is by law of nature
dependent on capitalists; in colonies this dependence must bo
created by artificial means."3

What is now, according to Wakefield, the consequence of

M. c., Vol. I., p. 131 *1. c., Vol. II., p. 5.

1 Merivale, 1. c., Vol. II., pp. 235-814 passim. Even the mild, free-trade, vulgar
economist, Molinari, says: "Dans lea colonies ou 1'esclavage a et6 aboli sans que le
travail force se trouvait remplace par une quantite equivalents de travail libre, on a
vu s'operer la contre-partie du fait qui se realise tous les jours sous nos yeux. On a
vu les simples travailleurs exploiter a leur tour les entrepreneurs d'industrie, exiger
d'eux des salaires hors de toute proportion avec la part legitime qui leur revenait dans
le produit. Les planteurs, ne pouvant obtenir de leurs sucres un prix suffisant pour
couvrir la hausse de salaire, ont et£ obliges de fournir 1'excedant, d'abord sur leurs
profits, ensuite sur leurs capitaux memes. Une foule de planteurs ont £te mines de la
sorte, d'autres ont ferme leurs ateliers pour £chapper a une ruine imminente.
Sans doute, il vaut mieux voir pe>ir des accumulations de capitaux que des gen6ra-
tions d'hommes [how generous of Mr. Molinari!]: mais ne vaudrait-il pas mieux que
ni les uns ni les autres p6rissent?" (Molinari 1. c. pp. 51, 52.) Mr. Molinari, Mr.
Molinari! What then becomes of the ten commandments, of Moses and the prophets,
of the law of supply and demand, if in Europe the "entrepreneur" can cut down
the labourer's legitimate part, and in the West Indies, the labourer can cut down
the entrepreneur's? And what, if you please, is this "legitimate part," which on
your own showing the capitalist in Europe daily neglects to pay? Over yonder, in
the colonies where the labourers are so "simple" as to "exploit" the capitalist, Mr.
Molinari feels a strong itching to set the law of supply and demand, that works
elsewhere automatically, on the right road by means of the police.

The Modern Theory of Colonisation. 845

this unfortunate state of things in the colonies ? A "barbaris-
ing tendency of dispersion" of producers and national wealth.1
The parcelling-out of the means of production among in
numerable owners, working on their own account, annihilates,
along with the centralisation of capital, all the foundations of >
combined labour. Every long-winded undertaking, extend
ing over several years and demanding outlay of fixed capital,
is prevented from being carried out. In Europe^ capital
invests without hesitating a moment^ for the working-class
constitutes its living appurtenance, always in excess, always
at disposal. But in the colonies ! Wakefield tells an ex
tremely doleful anecdote. He was talking with some capital
ists of Canada and the state of New York, where the immi
grant wave often becomes stagnant and deposits a sediment of
"supernumerary" labourers. "Our capital," says one of the
characters in the melodrama, "was ready for many operations
which require a considerable period of time for their com
pletion ; but we could not begin such operations with labour
which, we knew, would soon leave us. If we. had been sure of
retaining the labour of such emigrants, we should have been
glad to have engaged it at once, and for a high price: and
we should have engaged it, even though we had been sure it
would leave us, provided we had been sure of a fresh supply
whenever we might need it."2

After Wakefield has contrasted the English capitalist agri
culture and its "combined" labour with the scattered cultiva
tion of American peasants, he unwittingly gives us a glimpse
at the reverse of the medal. He depicts the mass of the
American people as well-to-do, independent, enterprising and
comparatively cultured, whilst "the English agricultural la
bourer is a miserable wretch, a pauper. ... In what
country, except North America and some new colonies, do the
wages of free labour employed in agriculture, much exceed a
bare subsistence for the labourer ? . . . Undoubtedly,
farm-horses in England, being a valuable property, are better
fed than English peasants."3 But, never mind, national

> Wakefield, 1. c., Vol. II., p. 62. » 1. c. pp. 191, 192.

• L c.. Vol. I., pp. 47, 248.

846 Capitalist Production.

wealth is, once again, by its very nature, identical with misery

of the people.

. How, then, to heal the

v/ies jT" If men were~willing, at a blow, to turn all the soil
from public into private property, they would destroy cer
tainly the root of the evil, but also — the colonies. The trick

x- is how to kill two birds with one stone. I^t the Government

pivtHttp^n thfi virgin soil an artificial price, independent of the

law of supply and demand^ a price that compeTstne immigrant

^x/to jyorinr long Hme for wages before he can eanT"enough

x money to buy land, and turn himself into an independent
peasant1 The funds resulting from the sale of land at a price
relatively prohibitory for the wage-workers, this fund of
money extorted from the wages of labour by violation of the
sacred law of supply and demand, the Government is to em
ploy, on the other hand, in proportion as it grows, to import
have-nothings from Europe into the colonies, and thus keep
the wage-labour market full for the capitalists. Under these
circumstances, tout sera pour le mieux dans le meilleur des
mondes possibles. This is the great secret of "systematic col
onisation." By* this plan, Wakefield cries in triumph, "the

/ supply of labour must be constant and regular, because, first,
as_ nojabqurer wouldJaa-able to procure land until he had
worked .for, money, all immigrant labourers, working for a time
for wagfig_and in combination, would produce fflp^ "far the
employment of more labourers; secondly, ^because every lab
ourer who left off working for wages and became a landowner,
would, by purchasing land, provide a fund for bringing fresh
labour to the colony."2 Thn pnVfjrf. thp fmil impmrrl fry |hr

State milfft, of fcmrn V>n. * "Hiifflfu^nf. rip^-^r' * J flojlj11 "&S

to prevent the labourers from becoming independent landown-

1 "C'cst, ajoutez-vous, grace a 1'appropriation du sol et des capitaux que 1'homrae,
qui n' a que ses bras, trouve de 1'occupation, et se fait un revenu . . . c'est au
contraire, grace a 1'appropriation individuelle du sol qu'il se trouve des hommes
n'ayant que leurs bras. . . . Quand vous mettez un homme dans le vide, vous
vous emparez de 1'atmosphere. Ainsi faites-vous, quand vous vous emparex du toL
. . . C'est le mettre dans le vide de richesses, pour ne le laisser vivre qu'A votre
volonte." (Colins, 1. c., t. III., pp. 268-271, passim.)

•Wakefield, 1. c., Vol. II., p. 192.

The Modern Theory of Colonisation. 847

era .until others had followed totake their place."1 This "suffi
cient price^or the land" is notEmg but a euphemistic circum- ^
locution for the ransom which the labourer pays to the j[j
capitalist for leave to retire from the wage-labour market to
the land. First, he must create for the capitalist ''capital,"
with which the latter may be able to exploit more labourers;
then he must place, at his own expense, a locum tenens on the
labour market, whom the Government forwards across the sea
for the benefit of his old master, the capitalist.

It is very characteristic that the English Government for
years practised this method of "primitive accumulation," pre- >/
scribed by Mr. Wakefield expressly for the use of the colonies.
The fiasco was, of course, as complete as that of Sir Robert
Peel's Bank Act. The stream of emigration was only diverted
from the English colonies to the United States. Meanwhile,
the advance of capitalistic production in Europe, accompanied
by increasing Government pressure, has rendered Wakefield's
recipe superfluous. On the one hand, the enormous and cease
less stream of men, year after year driven upon America,
leaves behind a stationary sediment in the east of the United
States, the wave of immigration from Europe throwing men
on the labour market there more rapidly than the wave of emi
gration westwards can wash them away. On the other hand,
the American Civil War brought in its train a colossal national
debt, and, with it, pressure of taxes, the rise of the vilest
financial aristocracy, the squandering of a huge part of the
public land on speculative companies for the exploitation of
railways, mines, &c., in brief, the most rapid centralisation of
capital. The great republic has, therefore, ceased to be the
promised land for emigrant labourers. Capitalistic produc
tion advances there with giant strides, even though the low
ering of wages and the dependence of the wage-worker are
yet far from being brought down to the normal European level.
The shameless lavishing of uncultivated colonial land on aristi-
crats and capitalists by the Government, so loudly denounced
even by Wakefield, has produced, especially in Australia,2 in

M. c., p. 45.

1 As soon as Australia became her own law-giver, she passed, of course, laws

848 Capitalist Production.

conjunction with the stream of men that the gold-diggings at
tract, and with the competition that the importation of Eng
lish commodities causes even to the smallest artisan, an ample
"relative surplus labouring population," so that almost every
mail brings the Job's news of a "glut of the Australian labour-
market," and prostitution in some places there flourishes as
wantonly as in the London Haymarket ,

However, we are not concerned here with the condition of

the colonies. The only thing that interests us is the secret

discovered in the new world by the pK)liticaFeconomy~of the

old world, and proclaimed on the house-tops: that the capitalist

mode of production and accumulation, and therefore capitalist

- private property, have for their fundamental condition the

^annihilation of self-earned private property; in other words,

jthe_expropriation^f the labourer^

favourable to the settlers, but the squandering of the land, already accomplished by
the English Government, stands in the way. "The first and main object at which
the new Land Act of 1862 aims is to give increased facilities for the settlement of
the people." (The Land Law of Victoria, by the Hon. O. G. Duffy, Minister of
Public Lands, Lond. 1862.)

WOEKS AND AUTHORS QUOTED IN "CAPITAL"

Author. Work. Date.

ABEL, K.,and Meck
lenburg, F. A...Arbeiten der Kaiserlich Russischen

Cesandtschaft zu Pekin tiber China.Berlin, 1858.
ADDINOTON, Steph..Enquiry into the Reasons for or

against enclosing Open Fields .... London, 1772.
«< ABREGE Ele'mentaire des Principes

d'ficonomie Politique. (Bee under

Anonymous )

*• ADVANTAGES of the East Indian

Trade. (See under Anonymous) .

AIKIN, Dr Description of the country from

thirty to forty miles round Man
chester London, 1795.

ANONYMOUS ABREGE £le"mentaire des Principes

de 1' ficonomie Politique. (See

Gamier, G.) Paris, 1796.

" ADVANTAGES of the East Indian

Trade to England London, 1720.

« CASE, The, of our English Wool, etc.^ondon, 1685.
«« COMBINATION, On, of Trades London, 1834.

* CONSIDERATIONS concerning taking

off the bounty on Corn exported .. London, 1753.

«« CURRENCY QUESTION, The London, 1847.

«« CUBRENCY QUESTION reviewed, The.

A Letter to the Scotch People. By

a Banker in England London, 1845.

«* DEFENCE, A, of the Landowners and

Farmers of Great Britain London, 1814.

« DISCOURSE concerning Trade, that in

particular of the East Indies .... London, 1689

* DISCOURSE, A, on the general no

tions of Money, Trade, and Ex
change as they stand in relation to

each other. By a merchant London, 1695.

" DISCOURSE, A, on the Necessity of

encouraging Mechanick Industry .. London, 1690

* DISSERTATION, A critical, on the

Nature, Measure, and Causes of

Value, etc. (See Bailey S.) London, 1825.

* DISSERTATION on the Poor Laws.

By A Well-wisher of Mankind.
(See Townsend) London, 1786 (re-
pub. 1817.)
849

850 Capitalist Production.

Author. Work. Date,

ANONYMOUS EAST India Trade, The, a most pro
fitable Trade London, 1606.

ECONOMY, Public, concentrated Carlisle, 1833.

" ENQUIRY into the connection between

the high price of Provisions and
the size of Farms. By a Farmer. . .London, 1773.

** ENQUIRY into the present high price

of Provisions London, 1767.

M ENQUIRY into the causes of the pres
ent high price of Provisions. (See
Forster, Nathaniel) London, 1773.

* ENQUIRY into those principles re

specting the nature of Demand as

lately advocated by Mr. Malthus. . .London, 1821.

* ENQUIRY, A political, into the conse

quences of enclosing Waste Lands. London, 1785.

** ESSAY, An, on the Governing Causes
of the Natural rate of Interest
(See J. Massey) London, 1750.

•* ESSAY, a prize, on the Comparative
merits of Competition and Co
operation London, 1834.

* ESSAY on Credit and the Bankrupt

Act London, 1707.

ESSAY on the Political Economy of

Nations London, 1821.

ESSAY on Public Credit London, 1710.

* ESSAY on Trade and Commerce. .. .London, 1770.
" ESSAYS on Political Economy in

which are illustrated the principal
causes of the present National
Distress London, 1830.

* FARMS, Capital, Two Letters on the

Flour Trade, and the dearness of

Corn. By a Person in Business. . .London, 1767.

* INDUSTRY of Nations, The London, 1855.

M INQUIRY. (See Enquiry)

* KRANKHEITEN, Die. Welche ver-

schiednen Stiinden, Altern und
Geschlechtern eigenthiimlich sind..Ulra, 1860.
** LABOUR DEFENDED against Capital,

by T. H. (See Hodgskin) London, 1825.

* LETTER, A, to Sir J. C. Banbury,

Bt, On the high Price of Provi
sions. By a Suffolk Gentleman .... Ipswich, 1795.

" MONEY and its Vicissitudes. (See

S. Bailey) London, 1837.

" OUTLINES of Political Economy .... London, 1832.

" OBSERVATIONS on certain verbal dis
putes in Political Economy London, 1821.

PERILS, The, of the Nation London, 1843.

" PRINCIPLES, Essential, of the Wealth

of Nations London, 1797.

* REASONS for the late Increase of the

Poor Rate London, 1777.

Works and Authors quoted in "Capital." 851

Author. 'Work. Date.

ANONYMOUS REASONS for a limited Exportation

of Wool London, 1677.

" REMARKS on the Commercial Policy

of Great Britain London, 1815.

* S. W. A Compendious and Briefe

Examination of certayne ordinary
complaints of diverse of our coun
trymen in these our days. (See

William Stafford) London, 1581.

** SOPHISMS of Free Trade. By a

Barrister Reprint, 1870. London, 1850.

* SOURCE, The, and Remedies of the

National Difficulties. A letter to

Lord John Russell London, 1821.

u THEORY, The, of the Exchanges.

The Bank Charter Act of 1844.
The abuse of the Metallic Principle

to Depreciation London, 1864.

" THOUGHTS, Some, on the interest of
money in general, and particularly
in the English Funds London, 1870.

APPIAW De bellis Civilibus

ASHLEY, Anth.,The Ten Hours' Factory Bill, Speech

Lord. of the 15th March London, 1844.

ARISTOTLE De Republica

AUOIER, Marie.... Du credit public et de son Histoire
depuis les temps anciens jus qu' &
nos jours Paris, 1842.

BAILEY, 8 A Critical Dissertation, etc., chiefly

in reference to the writings of Mr.

Ricardo London, 1825.

BAILEY, S Money and its Vicissitudes. (Pub
lished Anon.) London, 1837.

BABBAOE, Charles. On the Economy of Machinery London, 1832.

BACON Life of Henry VII. (Rennet's Eng
land) London, 1817.

" BANK ACTS. (See Parliamentary
Papers)

BANKER, A The Currency Question reviewed.

A letter to the Scotch people by

a Banker in England London, 1845.

BARBON, Nicola* . . A Discourse on coining the new
money lighter, in answer to Mr.
Locke's Considerations London, 1696.

BARTON, John .... Observations on the circumstances
which influence the condition of the
Labouring Classes of Society London, 1817.

BARRISTER, A Sophisms of Free Trade. ( See

under Anonymous )

BECCARIA. CESABE . Elementi di Economia Pubblica.

Custodi's ed. of Italian Economists. Milano, 1803.

BELLERS, John .... Essays about the Poor, Manuf actur-

852 Capitalist Production.

Author. Work. Date.

ers, Trade, Plantations, and Im
morality London, 1699.

BENGAL HUBKABU. (See under
Newspapers )

BENTHAM, Jeremy. Theorie des peines et des recom
penses (d'aprfcs des manuscrits
merits, ed. by E. Dumont) Londres, 1811.

BERKELEY, George.The Querist London, 1750.

BIDAUT, J. N Du Monopole qui s'elablit dans les

arts industriels et le Commerce ... Paris, 1828.

BIESE, F Die Philosophic des Aristo teles Berlin, 1842.

BLAKEY, Robert... The History of Political Literature

from the earliest times London, 1855.

BLANQUI, J. A... Des Classes OuvriSres en France
pendant 1 anne>, 1848.
Ceurs d'£conomie industrielle Paris, 1835-39.

BOISGUILLEBEBT . . Dissertation sur la nature des rich-
esses, de Pargent et des tribute.
(Ed. Daire) Paris, 1843.

BOXHORN Institutiones politic* Leyden, 1663.

BOYLEAU, Etienne.Livres des metiers. (Collection de

documents in£dits) Paris, 1835.

BBOADHUBST, J. . .Political Economy London, 1842.

BROUGHAM, Henry.An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy

of the European Powers Edinburgh, 1803.

BBUCKNEB, Theorie du systeme animal Leyden, 1767.

BUCHANAN, David. Inquiry into the Taxation and Com
mercial Policy of Great Britain ... Edinburgh, 1844.
Smith's Wealth of Nations. With
notes and an additional volume. . .London, 1814.

BUCHEZ et Roux . . Histoire Parlementaire de la Revo
lution Franchise Paris, 1834-38.

BUBKE, Edmund. .Thoughts and details on Scarcity. . .London, 1800.
A Letter from the Right Hon. Ed.
Burke, to a noble lord, on the at
tacks made upon him and his pen
sion in the House of Lords by the
Duke of Bedford, etc Philadephia, 1795

BUTLEB Hudibras. ( ?)

CAIRNES, J. E The Slave Power London, 1862.

CAMPBELL, George.Modern India London, 1852.

CANTILLON, Phihp.Essai sur la nature du Commerce

en g£ne"ral Amsterdam, 1756.

The Analysis of Trade, Commerce,

etc. (English translation) London, 1759.

CARD, Ronard de. .Falsification des substances sacra-

mentelles

CABEY, H. C The Slave Trade Philadelphia, 1853.

" Essay on the Rate of Wages London, 1834.

CABLI, Q. R Notes in his edition of Verri. (Sec

Verri) Milano, 1803.

Works and Authors quoted in "Capital." 853

Author. Work. Date.

CIZENOVE, John.. .Notes in his edition of Malthus' De
finitions in Political Economy .... London, 1853.
CENSUS. (See Parliamentary Pa
pers)

CHALMERS, Th . . . .On Political Economy Glasgow, 1832.

CHAMBERLAIN, Jos. Speech at Sanitary Congress, Bir
mingham. (Times, 15th Jan.,

1875.)

CHEBBULIEZ, A. E.Riche ou pauvre Paris, 1841.

COBBETT, William. A History of the Protestant Refor
mation Dublin, 1868.

COLINS, H L'ficonomie Politique Paris, 1857.

" Combination (On) of Trades. (See

Anon. ) London, 1834.

COMMISSIONS. (Children's Employ
ment, on Railways, etc. (See

Parl. Papers)

CONGRESS. (International Statis
tic). Compte rendu Paris.

CONDHXAC Le Commerce et le Gouvernement .. Paris, 1776.

Reprinted in:

Melanges de 1' ficonomie Politique.

(Ed. Daire et Molinari) Paris, 1847.

CONSIDERATIONS concerning taking
off the Bounty on Corn exported.

(See Anonymous) London, 1763.

CORBET. Th An Inquiry into the Causes and

Modes of the Wealth of Individuals . London, 1841.

COBBON, C. A De Penseignement professionnel Paris, 1858.

COURCELLE - SEN-Traite" theoriaue et pratique des en-

EUIL, J. G treprises industrielles Paris, 1857.

CURRENCY Question, The. (See

Anon. ) London, 1847.

CURRENCY Question, reviewed, The

( See Anon. ) London, 1845.

CUVIEB, J. L. C . . . Discoura sur les Revolutions du

Globe. (Ed. Hoefer) .Paris, 1863.

DAILY TELEGRAPH. (See News
papers).

DABWIN, Charlea. .Origin of Species London, 1859.

Defence, A, of the landlords and
farmers of Great Britain. (See

Anon.) London, 1814.

DE QUINCEY, Th..The Logic of Political Economy London, 1844.

DESCARTES, Rene". .Discours de la MSthode Paris, 1668.

DEUTSCH - FRANZ^SISCHE JAHB-
BUCHEB (See Marx and Ruge) ....
DISCOURSE concerning Trade, etc.Paris, 1844.

DIODOBUS SicrjLUS.Bibliotheca Historica

(See Anonymous) London, 1689.

DISCOURSE on the General Notions
of Money, etc. (See Anon.) London, 1695.

854 Capitalist Production.

Author. Work. Date.

DISCOURSE on the necessity of en
couraging Mechanick Industry,

(See Anon.) London, 1690.

DISSERTATION on the Poor Laws,

etc. (See Anon.) London, 1786.

DUNNING, T. J. . . .Trades' Unions and Strikes London, 1860.

DUPONT, Pierre . . .Chansons Paris, 1846.

EAST INDIAN TRADE, etc., (See

Anon. ) London, 1696.

ECONOMY, Public, Concentrated,

(see Anon.) Carlisle, 1833.

ECONOMIST (see under Newspapers) .

EDEN, F. M The State of the Poor London, 1797.

EMPIRICUS, Sextua.Opera

ENGELS, Friedrich.Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in Eng
land Leipzig, 1845.

" Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Na-

tionaloekononiie ( Deutsch-Franzft-

sische Jahrbticher) Paris, 1844.

" Die Englische Zehn - Stunden - Bill

(Neue Rheinische Zeitung April

number) Hamburg, 1850.

ENGETJS, F. A Marx,Manifest der Kommunistischen Par-

K. tei London, 1847.

ENQUIRY into, etc. (see under

Anonymous )

ESSAY, etc. (see under Anonymous.)
ENSOB, George.... An Inquiry concerning the Popula
tion of Nations London, 1818.

FACTORY ACTS, Reports of Inspec
tors, (see Parl. Papers)

FARMER, A Enquiry into the Connection, etc.,

(see Enquiry under Anonymous) . .London, 1773.
FARMS, Capital, etc., (see under
Anonymous) London, 1767.

FAWCETT, Henry.. The Economic Position of the Brit
ish Labourer London, 1865.

FERGUSON, A A History of Civil Society, Reprinted.London, 1850.

FERRAND Speech in House of Commons, (see

Hansard )

FERRIER, F. L. A. .Le gouvernement conside"re" dans ses

rapports avec le commerce Paris, 1822.

FIELDEN, J The Curse of the Factory System. .London, 1836.

FLEETWOOD,Bishop.Chronicon pretiosum London, 1707.

FONTEROL, A. L...Hygi£ne physique et morale de

Fouvrier, etc Paris, 1858.

FOBBONNAIS, V. de.Elements du Commerce, Nouvelle

Edition Leyde, 1766.

Works and Authors quoted in " Capital?' 855
Author. Work. Date.

FORSTER, Rev. Na-An enquiry into the Causes of the
thaniel present high price of Provisions. .London, 1773.

FRANKLIN, Benja
min Works, ( Edited by Sparks ) , Boston, 1 830-36-40.

FULLARTON, John. Regulation of Currencies London, 1844.

GALIANI, F Delia Moneta, (Custodi Ed.) Milano, 1803.

GANILH, Charles .. Des systemes de Pe"conomie politique.Paris, 1821.
GARNIER, G Abrgge" e"le"mentaire des principes de

Pe'eonomie politique (published

anonymously ) Paris, 1796.

GASKELL, P The Manufacturing Population of

England London, 1833.

GENTLEMAN, A Suf-Letter to Sir J. C. Banbury on the

folk high price of provisions London, 1795.

GENOVESI, A Lezioni di Economia civile (Custodi

Ed.) Milano, 1803.

GISBOURNE Enquiry into the Duties of Man ... London, 1795.

GLADSTONE, W. E . See Hansard

GREQOIR, H Les Typographies devant le Tribunal

Correctionnel de Bruxelles Bruxelles, 1865

GREG, R. H The Factory question and the Ten

Hours' Bill London, 1837.

GROVE, W. R On the Correlation of Physical

Forces London, 1846.

HALLER, C. L. Von.Restauration der Staatswissenschaf-

ten Wintherthur, 1820-

1834.

HAAIM, W Die Landwirthschaftlichen Gterathe

und Maschinen Englands Braunschweig, 1856.

HANSARD Parliamentary Debates. Speech of

Mr. Ferrand, April 27th, 1863. .. .London, 1863.
" Parliamentary Debates. Speech of
Mr. Gladstone on the Budget, Feb.
14th, 1843 London, 1843.

HANSARD Parliamentary Debates. Speech of

Mr. Gladstone on the Budget,

April 16th, 1863 London, 1863.

« Parliamentary Debates. Speech of

Mr. Gladstone, April 7th, 1864. London, 1864.

HARRis,James,Earl

of Malmesbury. . Dialogue concerning Happiness (re-
published in "Three Treatises,"
1765 ) London, 1741.

HASSALL, Dr. H. H.Adulterations detected London, 1857.

HEGEL, G. W. F. . .WERKE Berlin, 1832-40.

HiLAiRE,GeoffroiSt.Notions de Philosophie Naturelle Paris, 1838.

HOBBES, Th Leviathan. (Works) London, 1839-44.

HODGSKIN, Th Labour Defended against Capital.

By T. H. (See under Anon.) London, 1825.

856 Capitalist Production.

Author. Work. Dat*.

HODGSKIN, Th Natural and Artificial Rights, The,

of Property Contrasted. (Anony
mous) London, 1832.

HOLLINSHED Description of England

HOMER Iliad and Odyssey

HOPKINS, Th On Rent of Land London, 1828.

HORNE, Geo A Letter to Adam Smith, LL.D., On

the Life, Death and Philosophy of

his Friend, David Hume Oxford, 1784.

HORNER, Leonard. .A Letter to Mr. Senior, etc London, 1837.

HOUGHTON, John .. Husbandry and Trade Improved ... London, 1727.

HOWITT, William. . Colonization and Christianity London, 1838.

BUTTON, C Course of Mathematics Reprint, London,

1841-43.
I.

INDUSTRY of Nations. (See Anony
mous) London, 1855.

INQUIRY. ( See Enquiry under Anon. )

INTERNATIONAL Statistic Congress,

Compte rendu Paris.

ISOCRATES Orationes et Epistolae

JONES, Richard ... An Essay on the Distribution of

Wealth. Part I., On Rent London, 1831.

" An Introductory Lecture on Polit
ical Economy London, 1833.

" Text Book of Lectures on the Po
litical Economy of Nations Hertford, 1852.

JOURNAL of the Society of Arts.
( See under newspapers )

KRANKHEITEN, Die welche verschie-
denen Standen, Altern und Qe-
schlechtern eigenthlimlich sind .... Ulm, 1860.

LABORDE, A. de. . .De 1'esprit de ^association dans tous

les interns de la communaute". .. .Paris, 1818.
LABOUR defended. (See Hodgskin) .
LABOURERS, (Agricultural) Ireland.

(See Parliamentary Papers)

LAING, S National Distress, etc London, 1844.

LANCELLOTTI, Abb.Farfalloni de gli Antichi Historic!. . Venetia, 1636.
LASSAJLLE, Ferdin.Die Philosophic des Herakleitos ... Berlin, 1858.
LAVERONE, L&mce

de Essai sur Peconomie rurale de 1'An-

gleterre Paris, 1858.

, J Considerations sur le numeraire et

sur le Commerce. (Ed. Daire) ...Paris, 1843.

Works and Authors quoted in f( Capital/" 857

Work. Date.

LETTEB, A, to Sir J. C. Banbury,
etc. By a Suffolk gentleman.
(See Anonymous) Ipswich, 1795.

LE TROSNE De rinteret Social. (Ed. Daire) . . Paris, 1846.

LEVI, Leone Lecture before the Society of Arts,

April, 1866. (See Newspapers) . .London, 1866.

LIEBIG, J. von Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf

Agrikultur Braunschweig,1862

Ueber Theorie und Praxis in der
Landwirthsehaft Braunschweig,18S6

LINGUET, N Th6orie des loix civiles Londres, 1767.

LOCKE, John Some Considerations on the Conse
quences of the Lowering of Inter
est. (Works, Vol. H.) London, 1777.

LORDS (House of) Committee on
Bank Acts. (See Parliamentary
Papers)

LUCRETIUS De Kerum Natura

LUTHEB, Martin... An die Pfarherrn, wider den

Wucher zu predigen Wittenberg, 1540.

MACAULAY,Thos.B. History of England. 10th Edit London, 1864.

MACLABEN, James . History of the Currency London, 1858.

MACLEOD, H. D... Theory and Practice of Banking ... London, 1855.
M'CuixocH, J. R. . A Dictionary, Practical, &c., of Com
merce London, 1847.

The Literature of Political Economy. London, 1845.
Principles of Political Economy. .. .London, 1830.
MALTHUS, T. R. . .Definitions in Political Economy ... London, 1827,
Inquiry into the Nature and Prog
ress of Rent London, 1815.

MALTHUS, T. R. . .Principles of Political Economy ... London, 1836.

MANDEVILLE, B. de.Fable of the Bees London, 1728.

MARTINEAU, Har
riet The Manchester Strike (?) 1842.

MARX, Karl, and

Engels, F Manifest der Kommunistischen Par-

tei London, 1847

MARX, Karl, and

Ruge, A Deutsch-franzosische Jahrbticher Paris, 1844.

MARX, Karl Lohnarbeit und Kapital. (Neue

Rheinische Zeitung, 7th April.) . .Koln, 1849.
" MisSre de la philosophic: Reponse

a la philosophic de la Misere de M.

Proudhon Paris, 1847,

" Zur Kritik der Politischen CEkon-

omie Berlin, 1859.

MASSEY, J An Essay on the Governing Causes

of the Natural Rate of Interest.

( Pub. Anon. ) London, 1750.

MASTER SPINNERS and Manufactur-

Geschichte der Fronhb"fe

MAUSER Geschichte der Fronhftfe Erlangen, 1862

858 Capitalist Production.

Author. Work. Date.

MAUEB Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark-

verfassung Mtinchen, 1854.

MERCIER de la Ri-
vi^rc ( See Ri viere. )

MERCHANT, A .... A Discourse on the General Notions
of Money, etc. (See under Anony
mous ) London* 1695.

MEBIVALE, H Lectures on Colonization and Colo
nies London, 1841.

MILL, James Article "Colony," Supplement of

Encyclopaedia Britannica Edinburgh, 1£ Jl.

Elements of Political Economy London, 1821.

MILL, John Stuart.Essays on some Unsettled Questions

of Political Economy London, 1844.

Principles of Political Economy. .. .London, 1848.

MIBABEAU DC la Monarchic Prussienne Lond/es, 1788.

MOLINABI, G. de.. Etudes £conomiques Paris, 1846.

MOMMSEN, Th Romische Geschichte Berlin, 1856.

Money and its Vicissitudes. (See

S. Bailey. Pub. Anon.) London, 1837.

MONTEIL, Alexis. . .Histoire des Materiaux manuscripts,

&c Paris, 1835.

MONTESQUIEU Esprit des Lois. CEuvres Londres, 1767.

MORE, Thomas Utopia

MORNING STAR. (See under News
papers)

MORTON, J. C Article LABOURER in Cyclopaedia of

Agriculture

Paper read before the Society of

Arts Jan. 18G1

MORNING STAR. (See under News
papers)

MUN, Th England's Treasure by Foreign

Trade 'London, 1669.

MURPHY Ireland, Industrial, Political, and

Social London, 1870.

MURRAY, Hugh, Historic and descriptive account of
WILSON, etc British India Edinburgh, 1832.

NASMTTH Speech at Trades' Union Commis
sion, 1851 London, 1851.

NEWMAN, S. P.. . .Elements of Political Economy .... New York, 1835.

NEWMAN, W. F... Lectures on Political Economy London, 1851.

NEWNHAM, G. B. .A Review of the Evidence before the
Committee of the two Houses of
Parliament on the Corn Laws .... London, 1815.

NEWSPAPERS NEWSPAPERS and journals, etc.

BENGAL HURKARU. Bi-monthly Over
land Summary of news, July 22nd . . Calcutta ( ? ) 1861.

DAILY TELEGRAPH, Jan. 7th London, 1860.

ECONOMIST, July 19th London, 1859.

Janr., 21st London, 1860.

June, 2nd London, 1866.

Works and Authors quoted in " Capital/ 859
Author. Work. Date.

JOURNAL of the Society of Arts .... London.

" January, 18(il

" January, 1872

April, 1866, etc

MORNING STAB, April 17th London, 1863.

" June 23rd London, 1863.

OBSERVER, April 24th London, 1864.

REVOLUTIONS DE PARIS Paris, 1789-94.

REYNOLDS' NEWSPAPER, Jan London, 1860.

Feb London, 1866.

Jan. 20th.. London, 1867.

SPECTATOR, June London, 1866 (?)

STANDARD London, 1865 (?)

Oct. 26th London, 1861.

TIMES, Nov. 5th London, 1861.

Nov. 26th London, 1862.

Nov. 29th London, 1862.

" March 24tn London, 1863.

Sept. 9th London, 1873.

WORKMAN'S Advocate, Jan. 1866. . .London, 1866.

NIEBUHB, O. B Romische Geschichte (reprinted) . .Berlin, 1853.

NORTH, Sir Dudley. Discourses upon Trade London, 1691.

OLMSTED, F,
OPDYKE, G.,
ORTES, G

OTWAY, J. H..
, Robert..

OBSERVATIONS on certain verbal dis
putes. (See Anonymous) London, 1821.

OBSERVER. (See Newspapers).

. . Sea board Slave States New York, 1856.

. .A treatise on Political Economy. . . .New York, 1851.
..Delia Economia libri sei (Ed. Cus-

todi) Milano, 1803.

..Judgment of T. H. Otway, Hilary

Sessions, Bdfast

. . Observations on the Effects of the

Manufacturing System London, 1817.

[, L. A .... Saggio sopra il giusto pregio delle

cose. (Ed. Custodi ) Milano, 1803.

PARLIAMENTARY AGRICULTURAL Labourers, (Ireland)

PAPERS 1862

CENSUS for Great Britain, Ireland

and Wales, 1863, etc

CHILDREN'S Employment Commission

Factory Regulation Acts, 1859....
HOUSE OF COMMONS Committee,

1826.
HOUSE OF LORDS Committee on

Bank Acts, 1848

REPORTS on Bank Acts, 1857

of Select Committee on Bank Acts,

1858

86o Capitalist Production.

Author. Work.

REPORTS of Select Committee on

Mines, 1866

REPORTS of Commissioners of H. M.'»
Inland Revenue. ( Fourth & Tenth ) .
REPORTS of Commissioners relating
to Transportation and Penal Servi
tude. ( 1863

REPORTS of Foreign Office. (How
ard de Welden)

REPORTS of Ispeetors of Factories..
REPORTS of Royal Commission on
the Grievances of the Journeymen

Bakers. ( 1862 )

REPORTS from the Poor Law Inspec
tors on the Wages of Agricultural
Labourers in Dublin. ( 1870) ....

REPORTS on Public Health

REPORTS of the Registrar General..
REPORTS of H. M. Secretaries of
Embassies and Legations on Manu
factures. (1863)

STATISTICAL Abstract fcp« ±"or United

Kingdom. ( 1861 and l*v^)

STATISTICS (Miscellaneoi! ) i ; the

United Kingdom. ( 18 6)

PARRY, C. H The Question of the Necessity of the

Existing Corn Laws Considered ... London, 1816.
PERSON in Busi
ness, A Capital Farms. (See under Anon.) . London, 1767.

PETTY, William . . . Political Anatomy of Ireland and

Verburn Sapienti London, 1691.

Quantulumcunque concerning money. London, 1695.
" A Treatise on Taxes and Contribu
tions London, 1662.

" Verbum Sapienti. (See Political

Anatomy of Ireland)

PINTO, Isaac Traite" de la Circulation et du Credit . Amsterdam, 1771.

PLATO De Republica

POSTLETHWAYT,M. First Preliminary Discourse London.

PRICE, Richard. ... Observations on Reversionary Pay
ments London, 1803.

" Universal Dictionary of Trade and

Commerce London.

* Great Britain's Commercial Interest

Explained London, 1755.

PROUDHON Oeuvres Paris.

Q-

QUICSN AY, Dr. F. . .Dialogue sur le Commerce. (Ed.

Daire) Paris, 1846.

Maximes G£n£rales. (Ed. Daire) .Paris, 1846.

Works and Authors quoted in "Capital" 861
Author. Work. Date.

RAFFLES, Th. Stam
ford History of Java London, 1817.

RAMAZZINI De morbis artificum (1713). French

translation in " Encyclopedic des

Sciences Meclicales." Paris, 1841.

RAMSAY, G An Essay on the Distribution of

Wealth Edinburgh, 1830.

RAVENSTONE, P... Thoughts on the Funding System

and its Effects London, 1824.

READ, George . . . .History of Baking London, 1848.

REDGRAVE, A Report of Speech in Journal of the

Society of Arts. (Jan., 1872)..,

REGNAULT, E Histoire politique et sociale des

Principaute's Danubiennes Paris, 1855.

REICH, Eduard . . . . Ueber die Entartung des Menschen..Erlangen, 1868.
REPORT of the Committee of the
Master Spinners and Manufactur
ers Defence Fund Manchester, 1854.

REPORT of Social Science Congress,

Edinburgh, Oct., 1863

REPORTS (Inspectors of Factories,
Health, etc. See under Parlia
mentary Papers. )

RESOLUTION of Working Men of

Dunkirk New York, 1866.

REVOLUTIONS de Paris. (See under

Newspapers )

REYNOLDS' Newspapers. ( See under

Newspapers )

RICARDO, David . . . Principles of Political Economy London, 1821.

RICHARDSON, B. W.Work and Overwork. (Social Sci
ence Review, July, 1863 ) London, 1863.

RTVTEBE, Mercier

de la (See Mercier)

RODBERTUS-JAGET-

zow, C Soziale Briefe an Kirchmann Berlin, 1850.

Brief e, etc., Edited by Dr. R. Meyer . Berlin, 1881.

ROGERS, James E.
Thorold A History of Agriculture and Prices . Oxford, 1866.

ROSCHER, W Grundlagen der Nationalcekonomie. . Berlin, 1858.

Rossi, P Cours dxconomie Politinue Bnixelles, 1842.

ROUSSEAU, Jean-
Jacques Discours sur l*£conomie Politique. . Genfive, 1765.

Roux et Buchez. . (See Buchez)

S A i v T - HTI.ATKE,

Geoffroi Notions de Philosophie Naturelle. . Paris, 1838.

SAY, J. B Lettres a M. Malthus Paris, 1820.

" Traits de I'ficonomie Politique Paris, 1841.

SCHOUW, F Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch.Leipzig, 1854.

SCJTULZ, Wilhelm. . Die Bewegung der Production •. Zttrich, 1846.

862 Capitalist Production.

Author. Work. Date.

bCBOPE, G. P Political Economy (Edited by A.

Potter) New York, 1541.

SENIOR, William

Nassau Journals, Conversations and Essays

relating to Ireland London, 1868,

Letters on tbo Factory Acts London, 1837.

" Principes Fondamcntaux de 1'ficono-

mie Politique (French translation

by Arrivabene) Paris, 1836.

" Three Lectures ou the R .te of Wages . London, 1830.

SHAKESPEABE, Wm. Works

SISMONDI, Simonde

d« Etudes d'ficonomie Politique Paris, 1837.

" Nouveaux Principes de Pficonomie

Politique Paris, 1819.

" De la Richesse Commerciale Genftve, 1803.

SKABBEK, F The"orie des Richesses Sociales Paris, 1829.

SMITH, Adam Wealth of Nations Aberdeen, 1848.

SOCIAL SCIENCE Congress. (See

under Report )

SOCIETY of Arts, Journal of. (See

under Newspapers)

SOCIETY of Arts, Commission of In
quiry into Industrial Pathology..
SOMERS, Robert. . .Letters from the Highlands, on the

Famine of 1847 London, 1848.

SOPHOCLES Antigone

SPECTATOB. ( See under Newspapers ) .
STAFFORD, William.A Compendius and Briefe Examina
tion of certayne ordinary com
plaints of diverse of our countrymen
in these our days (Publ. Anon.) . .London, 1581.
STANDABD. ( See under Newspapers ) .
STATISTICS. (See under Parlia
mentary Papers)

STATUTES, General, of Massachu
setts

STATUTES, Revised of Rhode Island.
STATUTE, Decree of Philippe de Va-

lois, 1346

STEUABT, Sir Jas. Principles of Political Economy. .. Dublin, 1770.

" Works London, 1805.

STEW AST, Dugald.. Works. (Edited by Sir William

Hamilton ) Edinburgh, 1855.

STOLBEBG, Christian Gedichte aus dem Griechischen ....Hamburg, 1782.

STOBCH, H. F Cours d'ficonomie Politique St. Petersburg, 18 15.

STBYPE Annals of the Reformation London, 1725.

TIMES. (See under Newspapers) ..

TRIERS, Adolphe . . De la proprie"te" Paris, 1848

THOMPSON, Benj . . Essays, Political, Economical, and

Philosophical, etc. London, 1796-1802.

Works and Authors quoted in "Capital" 863
Author. Work. Date.

THOMPSON, W An Inquiry into the principles of

the distribution of Wealth London, 1824.

THORNTON, W. T. .Over-population and its Remedy ... London,, 1864.

THUCIDY DES De Bello Peloponnesiaco

THUNEN, J. H. von.Der isolirte Staat Rostock, 1863.

TOOKE, Thos History of Prices ( partly Ed. by W.

Newmarch) London, 1853-57.

TOBBENS, R An Essay on tne External Corn

Trade London, 1815.

An Essay on the Production of

Wealth London, 1821,

On Wages and Combinations London, 1834.

TOWNSEND, W. .. .Dissertation on the Poor Laws, etc.

(See under Anonymous) . . ) London, 1817.

TRACY, Destutt de.Traite de la Volonte" et de ses Effets. Paris, 1826.
TRADES' Union Commission

TUCKETT, J. D .... A History of the Past and Present

State of the Labouring Population.. London, 1846.

TuROOT Reflexions sur la formation et la dis
tribution des richesses Paris, 1844.

USE, Andrew Philosophy of Manufacturs London, 1835.

UBQUHABT, David. Familiar Words London, 1858

" Portfolio, New Series, (see under
Newspapers )

VANDERLINT, Jas.. Money answers all things London, 1734.

VERRJ, Pietro Meditazioni sulla Economia politica,

(Ed. Custodi) Milano, 1803.

VISSERING, S Handboek van pratische Staatshuis-

houdkunde Amsterdam, 1860-

62.

WADE, John History of the Middle and Working

Classes London, 1833.

WAKEFIELD, E. G.. England and America London, 1833.

" Notes in his ed. of Smith's Wealth

of Nations London, 1835.

w A view of the Art of Colonization . . London, 1849.

WARD, John History of the Borough of Stoke-

upon Trent London, 1843.

WATSON, 8 (See under Society of Arts)

WATTS, John Facts and Fictions of Political Econ
omists Manchester, 1842.

«« Trade Societies and Strikes Manchester, 1865.

WATLAND, F Elements of Political Economy London, 1856.

WEST, Edward .... Price of Corn and Wages of Labour . London, 1826.

WILKS, Mark Historical Sketches of the South of

India London, 1810-17.

864 Capitalist Production.

Author. Work. Date.

WORKMAN'S ADVOCATE, (see under

Newspapers )

WEIGHT, Thomas.. Short Address to the Public on the

Monopoly of large Farms London, 1779.

Xenophon Cyropeedia

Y.
YOUNG, Arthur.... Political Arithmetic London, 1774.

INDEX.

A* breast, 651 ; not interested in value, but

Abstinence, two kinds of, 650. ?&!&****• 851? in the laboi"proc-

Absurdities of vulgar economy, 180 205 Capitalist,' industrial, his genesis, 822; a

note, 241 note, 249, 352, 489, 653, 654, lover of force 824 826

655, 666, 669 701,. 839,. 841. Capitalist Accumulation its phases re-

Accumulation of caoital, its concept, 634; viewed, 640; its historical tendencies,

not identical with hoarding, 645; at a 834-837

faster rate than increase of population Capitalist Argument, to conceal true na-

increases wages, 673; means increase of ture of labor process, 213; against ten

proletariat, 674; means concentration of hours' day 240

capital and labourers, 685; causes a Capitalist Co-operation differs from an-

;£rarm°;r&trabi±niLrs cJ±s.r2r«Ei« ™

law 707- its eeneral law illustrated i, PT «!** *r- u& uegmumg, iot.

', , - ~ j inuaimicu, Capitalist View of production of com-

lll~717-' .&*"£** the Dourer, 727- tnodities individualistic, 642.

733; primitive, its secret, 784; promoted Capitalist Production, a production of

by public debt, 827; see also Capitalist surplus-value, 558; based on man's do-

Accumulation. minion over nature, 563 ; begets class-
Additions to the text of the fourth Ger- struggle, 633; means anarchy in social

man edition of "Capital/' 32. division of labor and despotism in the

Adulteration of commodities, 194, 274, workshop, 391.

. 277. Capitalists, denouncing one another, 601;

Agricultural laborers misery IH England, preventing one another from obeying

719, 739-773, 779. laws, 637?

Agricultural revolution in England, 778, Centralisation, its difference from con-

788—805; its reaction on industry, 817. centration 686

American Civil War centralised capital, Changes in the original plan of "Capital,"

847; stimulated improvements in cotton 7, 8,

machinery 473. Child 'Labor in England, 268, 284-289,

Animals and plants transformed by a con- 530 511

tinuous process of labor, 202. Circulation, sweating money, 127; not a

Antagonism between capitalists and labor- source of surplus-value, 177.

ers, 363. Classic Economy never understood the

Aristotle lacked a concept of value, 69. process of reproduction, 665, note; see

also Political Economy.

B. Class-Struggles between creditors and

Barter, direct, its development, 100. r debtors in antiquity, 152.

Bentham's dogma of a Ixed wage fund, gSUUSTB modern theory, 838; in-

Burke's observation of condensation of dependent labor its obstacle, 840; on a

differences in co-operative labor, 854. ffgf ^n^eT^^of^pSS

Q accumulation, 848.

v" Commodities, defined, 41; their fetishism,

"Capital," the Bible of the working class, 81; their exchange, 96; explaining their

30. own nature, 95; their relation to their

Capital, first money-capital, 163; Its cir- owners, 97; their circulation, 106: their

culation without limits, 170; contradic- metamorphosis, 116; differentiated from

tions in its general formula, 173; mer- gold, 117; in love with money, 121;

chant's and money-lender's does not their complete metamorphosis, 125.

create any new value, 188; problem of Condition of Political Economy in 1848,

its production posed, 184; its creation 17—19.

accomplished, 217: constant, 232; varia- Constant Capital, see Capital.

ble, 233; dead labor sucking living la- Co-operation, based on division of labor

bor, 257; squanders labor-power, 581; typical of manufacturing period, 869;

means command over unpaid labor, 585; implies concentration of labor and capi-

not increased by non-consumption, 646; tal, 362; in antiquity, 366; of machm-

its technical and organic composition, ery, 414; under capitalism develops des-

672; see also Value. potism, 364.

Capitalist, creates no surplus-value, 6&8; Co-operative t Labor different in effect

his individual consumption robs accu- from individual labor, 857.

raulation. 649; Faastian conflict in his Corvee, abase of, 261.

866

Index.

Cost-Price, 589.

Cotton Industry, promoted slave breeding
industry, 485.

Credit-System, helps centralisation, 687;
grows with national debt, 828.

Crises, cycle of, 31; see also Over-Popu
lation, Accumulation, Money, Machin
ery, Stock Exchange Gambling.

Crusoe, Robinson, in political economy,
88.

Death from' over-work, 280.

Death Rate increased by capitalist pro
duction, 282, 434, 435, 510.

Debt, Public, a lever of primitive accu
mulation, 827:

Degeneration of laborer, 270.

Degradation of laborer by capitalism, 727,
729, 731, 733, 736, 737, 832.

Difference between English and American
edition of "Capital, 9.

Diseases caused by capitalist exploitation,
270, 510, 611, 721, 727, 729, 731.

Division of Labor, necessary for produc
tion of commodities. 49; not based on
production of commodities, 49; under
manufacture explained, 371; in manu
facture and society compared, 385; fatal
to free citizenship, 389; in guilds, 394;
its stupefying effect on the laborer,
397; increases capitalist authority, 891;
in Indian communities, 393; makes
automaton of laborer, 396.

Domestic Industry, Modern, 509; em
ploys women and children, 510, 511;
cause of overcrowding, 512; an indus
trial reserve force, 524.

Economy in constant capital through co
operative labor, 356.

Emigration of laborers meets opposition
of masters, 629.

Engels, his additional work on "Capital,"
32; his ridicule of Malthus, 696.

Epochs, Economic, distinguished by tools,
200.

Equivalent, see Value.

Exchange, illustrated, 118; a double proc
ess, 122.

Exchange Value denned and explained,
43; see also Production and Value.

Excrements of production, 663.

Experiments, made to intensify labor, 449;
in labor legislation made at the expense
of the laborers, 539.

Exports refute wage fund theory, 670.

Extinction of English handloom weavers,
471.

Factory, modern, described, 457-466.

Factory Acts, hasten industrial revolu
tion, 514, 519, 521, 522; circumvented,
265; a curb on the greed for surplus-
labor, 263; their effect on sanitation
and education in England, 526; re
garded as an interference with the
rights of capital, f>9<»; histcn concen
tration of capital, 552.

Factory Acts Extension Acts, sphere em
braced fey them, 540; spoil Factory
Acts, 641.

Factory System, ruining handicrafts and
manufacture, 492-493; its effect on
English cotton industry, 497-501; it*
enormous power of expansion, 495; iti
reaction on handicrafts, manufacture,
and d9mestic industries, 502—505.

Family, its transformation under capitalist
production, 511-514.

Farmer, Capitalist, his genesis, 814.

Force, an element in primitive accumula
tion, 809; the midwife of social revolu
tion, 824.

Forecast of events by averages, 227.

Freedom, Equality, and Bentham, 196.

French revolution abolished laborer's right
of association, 813.

Gladstone, his contradictory speech, 716.

Gold and Silver, natural money, 102;
differences in mining, 160 note; their
different weight as a standard of price
and medium of circulation, 141; see
also Metal.

Guilds, medieval, tried to prevent trade
masters from becoming capitalists, 837.

Handicraft, skill an obstacle to capitalist
discipline, 403; revolutionised by mod
ern industry, see Machinery.

Hegel's dialectics inverted by Marx, 25,
26; law of transformation of quantity
into quality, 338.

Hoarding, see Money.

Home-Market, conquered by modern in
dustry, 821.

Ideas reflexes of the real world. 91.

Industrial Reserve Army, caused by accu
mulation of capital, 691; a necessary
condition of capitalist production, 693;
a regulator of wages, 699; a check upon
the emancipation of labor, 701.

Industry, Modern, revolutionises agricul
ture, 553, 778, 788-805; revolutionises
handicrafts and manufacture, see Ma
chinery and Accumulation; annihilates
peasant, 554; breaks power of resist
ance of agricultural laborer, 555; in
creases public debts and taxation, 830.

Interest, not analyzed in volume I; see
volume III.

International spread of "Capital," 30.

Internationalism of capitalist production,
see World Market

Invention causes more invention, 419.

Inventions of handicraft period, 382.

June Insurrection in France, its effect on
ruling class of England, 313.

Justice of capitalism illustrated, 725.

Justification of the phrase "value of la
bor," 592.

Labor, the common property of commodi
ties, 44; its twofold character, 48; sim
ple average labor in the abstract 61;
skilled, reduced to simple average labor.

Index.

867

81, 52; the cause of the fetishism of
commodities, 83; its social character,
84; homogeneous, the secret of social
production, 85; in free communities, 90;
its property transformed into capitalist
property, 140; skilled rnd unskilled,
their difference in value, 220; neces
sary, 240; has no value, 583; separated
from property, C tO ; co-operative, see
Co-Operation; surplus, see Surplus-La
bor.

Labor Fund, its relation to capital, 622.

Labor Laws in England, from the 14th to
the 17th century, 290-304; from 1833-
1864, 304-330.

Labor-Power, general property of labor-
process, 67; bought and sold, 185; a
commodity, 186; its value determined,
189; minimum limit of its value, 302;
advanced to the capitalist, 193; pro
duces more value than it has itself,
216; its value determined by average
necessities of life, 568; three laws of
determining its value, 569.

Labor-Process, explained, 203; a produc
tive process, 557.

Labor Time, a, standard measure of value,
45; socially necessary, 46- its assertion
as a social law, 86; regulated by com
petition, 379.

Laborer, the free, 187; his demand for a
normal use of his labor-power, 258; a
specialised implement in division of la
bor, 372; the collective, 383; feeds him
self and the capitalist, 621; his pro
ductive and individual consumption,
626-628.

Land, first used as money in the 17th
century, 101.

Law, concerning issue of paper money,
143; of population explained, 681; of
value in its international application,
612; of value in general, see value.

Legislation against expropriated in Eng
land, 805-808, 810-814; in France,
808, 813.

Leisure, nature's gift to primitive man,
,565.

Limits of Compensation of rate and mass
of surplus-value, 333; see also Surplus-
Value.

Machine, collective, 415; a product of
modern industry, 418.

Machinery, its difference from tools, 405;
not a means of shortening labor time
under capitalism, 405; uses more tools
than man, 408; the starting point of
industrial revolution, 410; more exact
than skilled labor, 420; its giant power,
421 ; differences in its wear and tear,
423; its capacity for speed, 425; its
productivity, 427; substituted for half-
time laborers, 429; increases female
and child labor, 431 ; develops slave
trade in white children, 432; increases
death rate among laborers, 434; under
mines morality, 435, 436; prevents edu
cation of children, 437-439; prolongs
working day, 440; its twofold wear and
tear, 441; its moral depreciation, 442;
increases relative surplus-value, 443;
reduces variable capital relatively, 444;
Intensifies contradictions of capitalist

production, 445; in antiquity lightened
labor, 446; intensifies exploitation, 447;
fought by laborers, 467; its use for
bidden by law, 467-468; increases
profits, 476; does not compensate work
ing people for loss of employment, 479,
481; lowers consumption of commodi
ties, 480; under capitalism and in a
free society compared, 482; in one in
dustry increases production in another,
484; animate and inanimate, 631.

Malthus, his queer division of labor be
tween accumulating and spending ex
ploiters, 654 ; his " Essay on Popula
tion," 675; his "Principles of Political
Lconomy, G96.

Malthusianism exploded, 676, note.

Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, 674.

Manufacture, its twofold rise, 369, 370;
its two fundamental forms, 375; its
narrow technical basis, 404; modern,
in operation, 506-509; ruined by ma
chinery, see Machinery.

Mass, of profit, see Profit; of surplus-
value, see Surplus-Value.

Market, see Home-Market and World-
Market.

Marx's method explained by himself, 12.
15, 21, 22, 24, 25; method of quotation,
30, 33; quotation from Gladstone vin
dicated, 34-39.

Materialist Conception of History, 15, 22.

Means of Production, necessary for re
production, 620; see also Constant Cap
ital.

Mercantilists and Free Traders, their mis
conception of value, 70.

Metal; its weight in silver and copper
arbitrarily fixed by law, 142; see also
Gold, Silver, and Money.

Mill, John Stuart, his superiority over the
mercantilists, 566; his misinterpretation
of profits, 567; his excessive generalisa
tions, 567; an apologist of the wage
fund theory, 669.

Mind, Human, operating on materials
after the fact, 87.

Mines' Inspection Act, a dead letter, 542;
farce of questioning witnesses, 543—551.

Misery of British industrial proletariat,
718.

Modern Industry, see Industry, Machin
ery, and Accumulation.

Money, the universal equivalent, 99; its
magic, 105; a measure of value, 106;
wild theories of, 108; its two functions
as a measure of value and a standard
of price, 109; historical origin of its
names, 112; its currency, 128; keeps up
the continuity of circulation, 130; its
change of place in simple circulation,
131; effect of its rise or fall on the
prices of commodities, 132; its quantity
in circulation determined by volume of
production, 134; its currency a reflex
of circulation of commodities, 132; its
quantity determined by sum of prices
and velocity of exchange, 137; mutual
compensation of factprs in its currency,
138; erroneous opinion concerning de
termination of its quantity in circula
tion, 139; paper, symbolising gold and
silver, 144; replaced by tokens/ 145;
hoarding of, 146; buried by Hindoos,
147; its power, 148J bounds of its effi
cacy, 149; a means of payment, 161*

868

Index.

development of special institutions for
its payment, 154; its contradictory
character expressed through crises, 155;
its rise as a means of credit, 156; uni
versal, 159; reserve, 161; its trans
formation into capital, 163 ; the be
ginning and end of value, 172: ita in
ternational value, 613; probable form
of its primitive accumulation, 623.
Moore, Samuel, and Aveling, Edward,
translators of the first volume of "Cap-

Morafity, of capitalism illustrated, 265,
273, 274, 278, 279, 287, 292, 294, 302,
811, 319, 321, 389, 896, 446, 725;
of working people destroyed by capi
talism, 283, 432, 433, 435, 436, 501, 607,
508.

Mysteries of trades, 532.

National Debt, see Debt.

Natural forces cost capital nothing, 422.

Nature, the basis of the labor-process,

199, 201, 227, 230; its two economic

classes, 562; and labor-power primary

wealth creators, 662.
Night Work opposed by laborers, 277.
Nomad Races the first to develop the

money form, 101.

Original Plan of "Capital," 7.

Over-Crowding of laborer by capitalism,
728, 729. 731.

Over-Population, Relative, caused by ac
cumulation of capital, 691; its different
forms, 708.

Over- Production, see Over-Population,
Accumulation, Industrial Reserve Army,
and Machinery.

Over-Time paid extra, 598.

Over-Work shortening life, 270, 272, 275,
279.

Pauperism a form of relative over-popu
lation, 706.

Physiocrats, consider only agricultural la
bor as productive, 559; their Tableau
Economique, 647.

Piece Wages, a converted form of time
wages, 602; irrationality of their form,
604; their characteristic peculiarities,
605; a form of the sweating system,
606; compared with time wages, 607;
in vogue since the 14th century, 608;
the general rule under the Factory
Acts, 609; lowered in proportion as
the number of prices increases, 610;
see also Wages.

Plato's Republic on division of labor, 402.

Political Economy, as a science a product
of manufacturing period, 400; in an
tiquity dwells most on use-value and
quality, 401: classic, could not explain
price or value, 589, 590; stuck in its
bourgeois skin, 594; its condition in
1848, 17. 19; vulgar, see Absurdities.

Precious Metals, their increase accom
panied by a fall in prices. 133; see also
Metal, Money, Gold, and Silver.

Price, the money-form of commodities,

107; its fluctuations explained, 111; th«
money-name of labor, 114; without
value, 115; affected by changes in labor
time, 120: of products of handicrafts
and machinery compared, 426.

Productivity, its effect on value, 53; de
pends on proficiency of laborer and
perfection of tools, 374; declared to be
no concern of the laborer's, 611.

Production and Reproduction without
"abstinence," 656.

Production of commodities converted into
capitalist production, 643.

Production of use-value and exchange
value compared, 218; see also Exchange
Value and Use- Value.

Profit, according to classic economy, 525;
not analyzed in volume I, see volume

Property, its different forms, 89.

Protective Legislation for children bene
fits also the adult, 538.

Protestantism changed holidays into work
ing days, 303 note.

Public Auction of children. 433.

Public Debt, see Debt.

Public Opinion a tool of capitalists, 682.

Purchase, the second metamorphosis of
commodities, 123.

Quesnay's Riddle for vulgar economists,
361.

Railway System encourages short orders,
523.

Rate of Profit, not analysed in volume I;
see volume III.

Rate of Surplus- Value, see Surplus- Value.

Raw Materials supplied by nature are not
capital, 661.

Reception of "Capital" in Germany, 20.

Reduction of labor time under capitalism
produces intensification of exploitation,
456.

Relay System. 282.

Religion a reflex of the real world, 91.

Rent, not analysed in volume I; see vol
ume III.

Reproduction, see Capitalist Production.

Reserve Army, Industrial, created by
modern industry, 633; see also Indus
trial Reserve Army, Accumulation, and
Machinery.

Revolution, see Capitalist Production, Ag
ricultural Revolution, Factory System,
and Industry.

Ricardo, his insufficient analysis of value,
92, 566; his three laws of value, 569-
573; his errors, 674.

Rodbertus, his own detractor, 683.

Roman Empire, its failure to collect all
t ^ntributions in money, 157.

Roscher's nursery economics, 355, note.

Rum ford's receipts for cheap living, 659.

Sale, the first metamorphosis of com-

modities, 119.

Schools, technical and agricultural, 6S4.
Self-earned Money of capitalists, 637.
Sentimentality in economics, 1W.

Index.

869

filver, see Gold, Metai, and Money,
lave Labor is unpaid labor, 591.

Smith, Adam, contended that additional
capital is consumed by laborer, 646;
supposed that social capital was only
variable capital, 647.

Social Laws, mistaken by bourgeois for
natural laws, 93, 709; evolved by nat
ural processes, 373.

Soul of Capital, surplus-value, 257.

Speculation, see Stock Exchange Gam
bling.

Stock Companies a means of centralisa
tion, 68.

Stock Exchange Gambling promoted by
public debt, 827.

Sunday Work, 278; double standard of
justice in regard to it, 291, note.

Superintendence creates no value, 215.

Supply and Demand no explanation for
value or price, 589; used and abused
by capitalists, 702.

Surplus-Labor, 241; not invented by capi
tal, 259; its intermediate forms, 559:
its natural basis, 561; appears as paid
labor, 691.

Surplus-Product, its concept, 685; be
comes property of capitalist by virtue
of laws of commodity production, 642.

Surplus-Value, absolute, its concept, 345,
559; its production, 197; the end of
capitalist production, 207; its rate, 235:
calculation of its rate, 242; produced
only by variable capital, 237; its rate
and mass, 331 ; its mass varies in direct
proportion to the variable capital, 335;
relative, its concept, 342, 345, 559;
explained in detail, 347; three laws de
termining its magnitude, 669; its nature
concealed by capitalist production, 585;
converted into capital, 636; divided into
capital and revenue, 648.

Survival of the Fittest among agricul
tural laborers of England, 296.

Symbols of money and commodities, 103.

Tableau Economique, see Physiocrats.

Taxation a product of national loans,
829.

Taxes payable in kind a means of pre
serving the old order, 158.

Terminology of "Capital" explained, 29.

Time Wages, 594; see also Wages.

Trade Unions desire to share benefits of
improved machinery, 611, note.

Traffic in human flesh, 294.

Transition from manufacture to machine
production, its different forms, 517.

Unemployed, parade in London, 736; see

also Over-Population and Machinery.
Unproductive Laborers, their increase,

Ure, denouncing law for reduction of

labor time as a retrogression, 299.
Use- Value, defined and explained, 42;

without exchange value. 47, 48; as
quality compared to exchange-value aa
quantity, 62, 53; see also Value and
Production.

Value, its substance and form, 41-96;
crystallised human labor, 45; by labor
time illustrated, 47; as a relation and
an equivalent, 56; equivalent form illus
trated, 58; relative and absolute com
pared, 63; its elementary form, 71;
its expanded relative form, 72; its par
ticular equivalent form, 73; defects of
its expanded form, 74; its general
form, 75; interdependent development
of its forms, 78; its transition from the
general to the money form, 79; its
creation explained, 2*08; how trans
ferred to the product in production,
222; of constant capital transferred to
the product, 234; represented by differ
ent parts of the product, 245; of com
modities in inverse ratio to produc
tivity, 350; surplus, see Surplus- Value;
in use, see Use- Value; exchange, see
Exchange Value.

Variable Capital, see Capital.

Vulgar Economy, see Absurdities.

Wage Laborer, his incessant reproduction
the indispensable condition ot capitalist
production, 625.

/ages, the price of labor-power, 586;
nominal rise may be actual fall, 579;
not equal to full value of product,
587; their variations, 595; lower with
longer working hours, 599; compared
internationally, 614, 615; do not rise
or fall in proportion as productivity
varies, 616; their forcible reduction a
means of accumulation, 657; their gen
eral movement regulated by industrial
reserve army, 699; regulated by laws
of distribution of population. 700; see
also Piece Wages, Time Wages, and
Variable Capital.

Wage Fund, according to Bentham, 668;
according to Fawcett, 669.

Water and Wind as motive powers, 411.

Watt's genius shown by proclaiming the
universality of the steam engine, 412.

Wealth, National, measured by relative
magnitude of surplus produce, 254; its
primary creators labor-power and land,
662.

Work, unsanitary, a source of disease,
271.

Working Day, indeterminate, 256: capi
talist idea of, 290; summary of its two
historical stages in England, 326—330.

World-Market, 823-834.

Xenophon's bourfeeois instinct shown by
his idea of division of labor, 409.

pi
Was

9 1981

202507319039

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

501
1-^8E5
1908
v.l
cop. 3

Sig Sam

Marx , Karl
Caital

51GMUND S

LitfilAll*

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Capital; a critique of political economy"

See other formats