Capital : a critical analysis of capitalist production

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CAPITAL:

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CAPITALIST
PRODUCTION

By KARL MAEX

TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION, BY
SAMUEL MOORE AND EDWARD AVELING

AND EDITED BY

FREDERICK ENGELS

VOL. I.

LONDON:

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWEEY, & CO.,

PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

1887.

8. Cowan <fc Co., Strathmore Printing Works, Perth.

CONTENTS.

Editor's Preface,
Author's Prefaces-

-I. To the First Edition,
II. To the Second Edition,

PAGE

ix

XV

xxi

PART I.

commodities and MONET.

Chapter I.— Commodities, . . . . . .1

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

Substance of Value and the Magnitude of Value), . . .1

Section 2. — The Twofold Character of the Labour embodied in Commodities, 8

Section 3. — The Form of Value, or Exchange Value, . . .14

A. Elementary or Accidental Form of Value, . . .16

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

Equivalent Form, . . . . .16

2. The Relative Form of Value, . . . .17

[a. ) The Nature and Import of this Form, . . .17

(6. ) Quantitative Determination of Relative Value, . . 21

3. The Equivalent Form of Value, . . . .24

4. The Elementary Form of Value considered as a Whole, . 29

B. Total or Expanded Form of Value, . . . .32

1. The Expanded Relative Form of Value, . . .32

2. The Particular Equivalent Form, . . . . 33

3. Defects of the Total or Expanded Form of Value, . . 34
a The General Form of Value, . . . , .35

1. The altered Character of the Form of Value, . . .35

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

and of the Equivalent Form, . . . .38

3. Transition from the General Form to the Money Form, . 39
D. The Money Form, ...... 40

Section 4. — The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof, . , 41

Chapter II. — Exchange, . . . . . .56

Chapter III, — Money, or the Circulation of Commodities, , . 66

Section 1. — The Measure of Value, . . . . .66

Section 2. — The Medium of Circulation, . . . . 76

a. The Metamorphosis of Commodities, . . .76

6. The Currency of Money, . . . . 88

c. Coin, and symbols of Value, . , . . 100

Section 3. — Money, . . . , . . 105

a. Hoarding, . . . , . . 106

6. Means of Payment, ..... Ill

c. Universal Money, . . . , . ] 19

PART II.

THE transformation OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL.

Chapter IV.— The General Formula for Capital, . 123

Chapter V. — Contradictions in the General Formula of Capital, . . 133

Chapter VI. -The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power, . . 145

VI

Contents.

PART III.

THE PRODUCTION OP ABSOLUTE SURPLUS-VALUE.

PAOB

Chapter VII. — The Labour Process and the Process of producing Surplus-
Value, ....... 156

Section 1. — The Labour Process or the Production of Us3-Value, . . 156

Section 2. — The Production of Surplus- Value, .... 166

Chapter VIIL— Constant Capital and Variable Capital, . . 180

Chapter IX.— The Eate of Surplus-Value, . . . .194

Section 1. — The Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power, . . 194

Section 2. — The Representation of the Components of the Value of the Pro-
duct by corresponding proportional Parts of the Product itself, . 203
Sections.— Senior's "Last Hour," . . . . .207

Section 4. — Surplus-Produce, ..... 213

Chapter X.— The Working-Day, . . . . .214

Section 1. — The Limits of the Working-Day, .... 214

Section 2. — The Greed for Surplus-Labour. Manufacturer and Boyard, . 218
Section 3. — Branches of English Industry without Legal Limits to Exploita-
tion, . . . . . . .227

Section 4.— Day and Night Work. The Relay System, . . .241

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, . . . . .249

Section 6. — The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Compulsory Limita-
tion by Law of the Working-Time. The English Factory Acts, 1833 to
1864, . . . . . . .263

Section 7. — The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Re-action of the

English Factory Acts on Other Countries, . . . 284

Chapter XL— Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value, . . .289

PART IV.

PRODUCTION OF RELATIVE SURPLUS -VALUE.

Chapter XII.— The Concept of Relative Surplus- Value, . . .300

Chapter XIII.— Co-Opera tion, . . . . .311

Chapter XIV. — Division of Labour and ^Manufacture, . . . 327

Section l.*=-Twofold Origin of Manufacture, .... 327
Section 2.— The Detail Labourer and his Implements, . . . 330

Sections. — The two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture: Heterogeneous

Manufacture, Serial Manufacture, .... 333

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

Society, . . . . . . .343

Section 5.— The Capitalistic Character of Manufacture, . . 353

VOL. II.

Chapter XV.— Machinery and Modern Industry,

Section 1.— The Development of Machinery,

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

365
365
382

Contents. vli

Section 3.— The Proximate Effects of Machinery on the Workman, . 391

a. Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-Power by Capital.

The Employment of Women and Children. , . 391

6. Prolongation of the Working-Day, . . . 400

c. Intensification of Labour, .... 407

Section 4.— The Factory, . . . . . .418

Section 5. — The Strife between Workman and Machinery, . . 427

Section 6. — ^The Theory of Compensation as regards the Workpeople dis-
placed by Machinery, ...... 438

Section 7. — Repulsion and Attraction of Workpeople by the Factory System.

Crises of the Cotton Trade, . . . . .449

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

Industry by Modern Industry, ..... 462

a. Overthrow of Co-Operation based on Handicraft aud on Divi-
sion of Labour, . . . . . 462

6. Re-action of the Factory System on Manufacture and Domes-
tic Industries, ..... 464

c. Modern Manufacture, ..... 466

d. Modern Domestic Industry, .... 469
€. Passage of Modern Manufacture and Domestic Industry into

Modern Mechanical Industry. The Hastening of this Re-
volution by the Application of the Factory Acts to those In-
dustries, ...... 474

Section 9. — The Factory Acts. Sanitary and Eductional Clauses of the same.

Their general Extension in England, . . . 485

Section 10. — Modern Industry and Agriculture, . , . 512

PART. V.

THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE AND OF RELATIVE SURPLUS VALUE.
OhapterXVI.— Absolute and Relative Surplus- Value, . . . 516

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

Surplus-Value, . . . . . .527

I. Length of the Working Day and Intensity of Labour constant. Pro-

ductiveness of Labour variable, .... 528

II. Working Day constant. Productiveness of Labour constant. In-

tensity of Labour variable, .... 533

III. — Productiveness and Intensity of Labour constant. Length of the

Working Day variable, ..... 535
IV. Simultaneous Variations in the Duration, Productiveness, and In-
tensity of Labour, ..... 537
(1.) Diminishing Productiveness of Labour with a simultaneous

Lengthening of the Working Day, . . . 537

(2.) Increasing Intensity and Productiveness of Labour with simul-
taneous Shortening of the Working Day, . . 539
Chapter XVIII. — Various Formulae for the Rate of Surplus -Value, . 541

PART VI.

wages.
Chapter XEX. — ^The Transformation of the Value (and respectively the Price)

of Labour- Power into Wages, . . . . 545

Chapter XX.— Time-Wages, ..... 553

Chapter XXI.— Piece-Wages, ..... 561

Chapter XXII.— National Differences of Wages, . . .570

VIU

Contents

PART VII.

THE ACCUMULATION OP CAPITAL.

Chapter XXIII.— Simple Reproduction, . . . .

Chapter XXIV. — Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital,

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,

Section 2. — Erroneous Conception, by Political Economy, of Reproduction
on a progressively increasing Scale,

Section 3. — Separation of Surplus-Value into Capital and Revenue. The
Abstinence Theory, .....

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

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

Chapter XXV. — The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation,

Section 1. - The increased Demand for Labour-Power that accompanies
Accumulation, the Composition of Capital remaining the same,

Section 2. — Relative Diminution of the Variable Part of Capital simul
taneously with the Progress of Accumulation and of the Concen
tration that accompanies it, .

Section 3. — Progressive Production of a Relative Surplus-Population, oi
Industrial Reserve Army, ....

Section 4. — Different Forms of the Relative Surplus-Population. The General
Law of Capitalistic Accumulation, .

Section 5. — Illustrations of the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation,
a. England from 1846 to 1866,
6. The badly paid Strata of the British Industrial Class

c. The Nomad Population,

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

e. The British Agricultural Proletariat,

/. Ireland, .....

PAQB

577
592

592
598

610
621
625

625

635

642

655
664
664
670
681
685
691
719

PART VIIL

THE SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION.

Chapter XXVL— The Secret of Primitive Accumulation, . . 736
Chapter XXVII. — Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the

Land, ...... 740

Chapter XXVIII. Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated from the
End of the 15th Century. Forcing down of "Wages by Acts of

Parliament, ...... 758

Chapter XXIX.— Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer, . . .766
Chapter XXX. — Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. Crea-
tion of the Home Market for Industrial Capital, . . 769
Chapter XXXL— Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist, . . . 774
Chapter XXXII. — Historical Tendency of Capitalistic Accumulation, . 786
Chapter XXXIIL— The Modern Theory of Colonization, . . 790
"Worksand Authors quoted in "Capital." . . , 801

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

THE 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 advocated in this book have been constantly
referred to, attacked and defended, interpreted and mis-
interpreted, in the periodical press and the current
literature of both England and America.

When, soon after the author's death in 1883, it be-
came evident that an English edition of the work was
really required, 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 be-
fore the public. It was understood that I should com-
pare 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 occupa-
tions 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

X Editors Preface,

the numerous passages taken from English authors and
Bluebooks and translated by Marx into German. This
has been done throughout, with but a few unavoidable
exceptions.

The following portions of the book have been trans-
lated by Dr. Aveling : (Ij Chap' ^rs X. (The Working
Day), and XI. (Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value) ; (2)
Part VI. (Wages, comprising Chapters XIX. to XXII.) ;
(3) from Chapter XXIV, Section 4 (Circumstances that
&c.) to tiie end of the book, comprising the latter part
of Chapter XXIV., Chapter XXV., and the whole of
Part VIII. (Chapters XXVL 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 trans-
lators 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.^ The alterations thus
effected in the text of the second edition generally coin-
cided 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

1 "Le Capital," par Karl Marx. Traduction de M. J. Roy, enti^re-
ment revisee par I'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.

Editors Preface, xi

than tlie 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 difiiculties. In the same way, the French text has
been referred to in most of the difficult passages, as an
indicator of what the author himself was prepared to
sacrifice wherever something of the full 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 compound 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
expressed by those terms. Thus, though perfectly aware
that both profits and rent are but sub- divisions, frag-
ments of that unpaid part of the product which the
labourer has to supply to his employer (its first appro-
priator, though not its ultimate exclusive owner), yet
even classical Political Economy never went beyond
the received notions of profits and rents, never examined
this unpaid part of the product (called by Marx surplus-
product) in its integrity as a whole, and therefore never
arrived at a clear comprehension, either of its origin and
nature, or of the laws that regulate the subsequent distri-
bution of its value. Similarly all industry, not agricultural

xii Edito7'''s Preface,

or handicraft, is indiscriminately comprised in the term of
manufacture, and thereby the distinction is obliterated be-
tween two great and essentially diJfferent periods of econ-
omic history: the period of manufacture proper, based oa
the division of manual labour, and the period of modern
industry based on machinery. It is, however, self-evi-
dent that a theory which views modem capitalist pro-
duction as a mere passing stage in the economic history
of mankind, must make use of terms different from those
habitual to writers who look upon that form of produc-
tion 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 evi-
dence 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 im-
portance 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 inde-
pendent work. The second book, edited in German
by me, in 1883, is decidedly incomplete without the third,
which cannot be published 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.

Editor's Preface, xiii

** Das Kapital " is often called, on the Continent,
" the Bible of the working class." That the conclusions
arrived at in this work are daily more and more becoming
the fundamental principles of the great working class
movement, not only in Germany and Switzerland, but in
France, in Holland and Belgium, in America, and even
in Italy and Spain ; that everywhere 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
moment, exercise a powerful influence upon the socialist
movement 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 examination of England's economic position
will impose itself as an irresistible national necessity. The
working of the industrial system of this country, impos-
sible without a constant and rapid extension of pro-
duction, and therefore of markets, is coming to a dead
stop. Free trade has exhausted its resources ; even
Manchester doubts this its quondam economic gospel.^
Foreign industry, rapidly developing, stares English pro-
duction 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
geometric, the extension of markets proceeds at best in
an arithmetic ratio. The decennial cycle of stagnation,

1 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 position."
The resolution was rejected by a majority of one only, the figures being
21 for, and 22 against. — Evening Standard, Nov. 1, 1886.

xiv Editor s Preface.

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 per-
manent and chronic depression. The sighed-for period
of prosperity will not come ; as often as we seem to per-
ceive 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 their own hands. Surely, at such
a moment, the voice 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 England, and whom
that study led to the conclusion that, at least in Europe,
England is the only country where the inevitable social
revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and
legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he
hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit,
without a " pro-slavery rebellion," to this peaceful and
legal revolution.

FREDERICK ENGELS.

November 5, 1886.

AUTHOR'S PREFACES.

I.- — T O THE FIRST EDITION.

THE work, the first volume of wbicli I now submit
to the public, forms the continuation of my '' Zur
Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie " (A contribution to
the criticism of Political Economy) published in 1859.
The long pause between the first part and the continu-
ation 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
contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, pre-
sent the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more

xvi Authors Prefaces.

especially the analysis of the substance of value and the
magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible,
popularised/ 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 organic
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
labour — or the value-form of the commodity — is the
economic cell-form. To the superficial 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,
therefore, this volume cannot stand accused on the score
of difficulty. I pre-suppose, of course, a reader who is
willing to learn something new and therefore to think
for himself.

The physicist either observes physical phenomena

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

Author's Prefaces, xvii

where they occur in their most typical form and most
free from disturbing influence, or, wherever possible, he
makes experiments under conditions that assure the
occurrence of the phenomenon in its normality. In this
work I have to examine the capitalist mode of produc-
tion, and the conditions of production and exchange cor-
responding to that mode. Up to the present time, their
classic ground is England. That is the reason why Eng-
land is used as the chief illustration in the development
of my theoretical ideas. If, however, the German reader
shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the English in-
dustrial and agricultural labourers, or in optimist fashion
comforts himself with the thought that in Germany
things are not nearly so bad ; I must plainly tell him,
^' De te fabula narratur ! "

Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or
lower degree of development of the social antagonisms
that result from the natural laws of capitalist production.
It is a question of these laws themselves, of these
tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevit-
able results. The country that is more developed indus-
trially only shows, to the less developed, 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 development. Alongside of
modem evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress
us, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes
of production, with their inevitable train of social and

xviii Author s Prefaces,

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 Con-
tinental Western Europe are, in comparison with those
of England, wretchedly compiled. But they raise the
veil just enough 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 periodically commissions of en-
quiry into economic conditions; if these commissions were
armed with the same plenary powers to get at the trath ;
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 reporters
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.

Let us not deceive ourselves on this. As in the 18th
century, the American war of independence sounded the
tocsin for the European middle-class, so in the 19 th century,
the American civil war sounded it for the European
working-class. In England the progress of social dis-
integration 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, according to the
degree of develop ment 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 remov-
able hindrances to the free development of the working
class. For this reason, as well as others, I have given

Author s Prefaces. xix

so large a space in this volume to the history, the de-
tails, 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 dis-
coverv of the natural laws of its movement — and it is the
ultimate aim of this work, to lay l^are the economic law
of motion of modern society — it can neither clear by
bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactmejits, the obstacles
offered by the successive phases of its normal develop-
ment. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.

To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I
paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur-
de rose. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far
as they are the personifications of economic categories,
embodiments of particular 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 creature 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 malignant passions of the human
breast, the Furies of private interest. The English Estab-
lished Church, e.g.^ will more readily pardon an attack
on 38 of its 39 articles than on A of its income. Now-
adays atheism itself is culpa levis, as compared with
criticism of existing property relations. Nevertheless,
there is an unmistakable advance. I refer, e.g., to the
bluebook published within the last few weeks : '* Corre-
spondence with Her Majesty's Missions Abroad, regard-

XX Authors Prefaces.

ing Industrial 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 labour is as evident and
inevitable as in England. At the same time, on the
other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade, vice-presi-
dent of the United States, declared in public meetings
that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of
the relations of 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 pro-
cess of the circulation of capital^ (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.

"• On p. 570 the author explains what he comprises under this head.

Author s Prefaces, xxi

n. TO THE SECOND EDITION.

To the present moment Political Economy, in Ger-
many, is a foreign science. Gustav von Glilich in his
" Historical description of Commerce, Industry," &c., ^
especially in the two first volumes published in 1830,
has examined at length. the historical circumstances that
prevented, in Germany, the development of the capitalist
mode of production, and consequently the development,
in that country, of modern bourgeois society. Thus the
soil whence Political Economy springs was 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 col-
lection of dogmas, interpreted by them in terms of the
petty trading world around them, and therefore mis-
interpreted. The feeling of scientific impotence, a
feeling not wholly to be repressed, and the uneasy con-
sciousness of having to touch a subject in reality foreign
to them, was but imperfectly concealed, either under a
parade of literary and historical erudition, or by an
admixture of extraneous material, borrowed from the so-
called " Kameral " sciences, a medley of smatterings,
through whose purgatory the hopeless candidate for the
German bureaucracy has to pass.

Since 1848 capitalist production has developed rapidly
in Germany, and at the present time it is in the full
bloom of speculation and swindling. But fate is still
unpropitious to our professional economists. At the
time when they were able to deal with Political Economy
■in a straightforward fashion, modem economic conditions

'' Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Acker-
baus, &c., von Gustav von Giilich. 5 vols., Jena, 1830-45.

xxii Authors Prefaces,

did not actually exist in Germany. And as soon as these
conditions did come into existence, they did so under cir-
cumstances that no longer allowed 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 capita-
list regime is looked upon as the absolutely final form of
social production, instead of as a passing historical phase
of its evolution, Political Economy can remain a science
only so long as the class -struggle is latent or manifests
itself only in isolated and sporadic phenomena.

Let us take England. Its political economy belongs
to the period in which the class-struggle was as yet un-
developed. Its last great representative, Ricardo, in
the end, consciously makes the antagonism of class-
interests, of wages and profits, of profits and rent, the
starting-point of his investigations, naively taking this
antagonism for a social law of nature. But by this
start the science of bourgeois economy had reached the
limits beyond which it could not pass. Already in the
lifetime of Ricardo, and in opposition to him, it was met
by criticism, in the person of Sismondi.^

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, because the polemic
is for the most part scattered through articles in reviews,
occasional literature and pamphlets. The unprejudiced
character of this polemic — ^^although the theory of

T See my work *' Zur Kritik, &c.," p. 39.

Author s Pre/aces, xxiii

Ricardo already serves, ia exceptional cases, as a weapon
of attack upon bourgeois economy — ^is explained by the
circumstances 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- struo^de
between capital and labour 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 bour-
geoisie 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 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 con-
quered 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 bourgeois 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, politically 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^

xxiv Author^s Prefaces,

deluged the world, have a historic interest, if no scientific
one, on account of their polemic against the landed aris-
tocracy. But siace 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 re-
action in England. Men who still claimed some scien-
tific standing and aspired to be something more than
mere sophists and sycophants 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 bank-
ruptcy 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 produc-
tion came to a head, after its antagonistic character had
already, in France and England, shown itself in a fierce
strife of classes. And meanwhile, moreover, the German
proletariat had attained a much more clear class-con-
sciousness than the German bourgeoisie. Thus, at the
very moment when a bourgeois 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 irreconcilables.
Just as in the classical time of bourgeois economy, so

Author's Prefaces. xxv

also in the time of its decline, the Germans remained
mere schoolboys, imitators and followers, petty retailers
and hawkers in the service of the great foreign whole-
sale concern.

The peculiar historic development of German society
therefore 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
bourgeoisie 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 fited in
with the conditions of the time, they wrote, under pretence
of criticising my book, prescriptions '' for the tranquillisa-
tion of the bourgeois mind." But they found in the
workers' press — see, e.g,^ Joseph Dietzgen's articles in
the " Volksstaat " — antagonists stronger than themselves,
Ko whom (down to this very day) they owe a reply. ^

An excellent Eussian translation of " Das Kapital " ap-

'' The mealy-mouthed babblers of German vulgar economy fell foul of
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 connection
one English and one Russian notice. The " Saturday Review," always
hostile to my views, said in its notice of the first edition : " The presenta-
tion of the subject invests the driest economic questions with a certain
peculiar charm." The '* St. Petersburg Journal " (Sankt-Peterburgskie
Viedomosti), in its issue of April 20, 1872, says : " The presentation of
the subject, with the exception of one or two exceptionally special parts,
is distinguished by its comprehensibility by fche general reader, its clear-
ness, 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 cracked by it."

xxvi Author s Prefaces,

peared in the spring of 1872. The edition of 3000
copies is already neariy exhausted. As early as 1871,
A. Sieber, Professor of Political Economy in the Univer-
sity 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 " D^s Kapital " has
been little understood, is shown by the various concep-
tions, contradictory one to another, that have been
formed of it.

Thus the Paris Revue Posiviste 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
receipts (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 economists." M. Block
— "Les theoriciens du socialisme en Allemagne, Extrait
du Journal des Economistes, Juillet et AoM 1872 " —
makes the discovery that my method is analytic and
says : ^' Par cet ouvrage M. Marx se classe parmi les
esprits analytiques les plus 6minents." German reviews,
of course, shriek out at " Hegelian sophistics." The
European Messenger of St. Petersburg, in an article deal-
ing exclusively with the method of ** Das Kapital"
(May number, 1872, pp. 427-436), finds my method of
enquiry severely realistic, but my method of presentation,

Author s Prefaces, xxvii

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 realistic 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 " Criticism
of Political Economy," Berlin, 1859, pp. 4-7, where I dis-
cuss 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, ^.^., 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 scientific investigation, the necessity of successive
determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish,
as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for
fundamental starting points. For this it is quite enough,
if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of
the present order of things, and the necessity of another
order into which the first must inevitably pass over ;
and this all the same, whether men believe or do not

xxviii Author's Prefaces,

believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of
it. Marx treats the social movement as a process
of natural history, governed by laws not only indepen-
dent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but
rather, on the contrary, determining that will, conscious-
ness and intelligence. . . . If in the history of civilisa-
tion the conscious element plays a part so subordinate,
then it is self-evident that a critical* inquiry whose sub-
ject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else,
have for its basis any form of, or any result of, conscious-
ness. 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 con-
frontation 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 accur-
ately as possible, and that they actually form, each with
respect to the other, diiFerent momenta 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 dijfferent stages of such an evolution pre-
sent themselves. But it will be said, the general laws
of economic life are one and the same, no matter
whether they are applied to the present or the past.
This Marx directly denies. According to him, such
abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his
opinion every historical period has laws of Its own. . . .
As soon as society has outlived a given period of develop-
ment, and is passing over from one given stage to another,
it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word,
economic life offers ns 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

Author s Prefaces.

XXIX

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,
i&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 investiga-
tion 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, development, death
of a given social organism and its replacement by
another and higher one. And it is this value that, in
point of fact, Marxs book has."

Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be
actually my method, in this striking and [as far as con-
cerns 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 material in detail, to analyse its different forms of
development, 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

XXX Author's Prefaces.

mirror, then it may appear as if we liad before us a
mere a priori construction.

My dialectic method is not only different from the
Hegeliara, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the
life-process of the human brain, Le,^ the process of
thinking, which, under the name of *' the Idea," he
even transforms into an independent 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 trans-
lated 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 ETnyoi/ot who now talk large
in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as
the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time treated
Spinoza, i.e.^ as a "dead dog." I therefore 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 con-
scious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It
must be turned right side up again, if you would dis-
cover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.

In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in
Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify
the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a
scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doc-
trinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehen-

Autkor^s Prefaces, xxxi

sion and affirmative 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 historically developed social form
as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account
its transient nature not less than its momentary exist-
ence ; 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 universal 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.

BOOK I.

CAPITALIST PRODUCTION.

PART I.
COMMODITIES AND MONEY,

CHAPTER I.

COMMODITIES.

SECTION 1. — THE TWO FACTORS OF A COMMODITY : USE- VALUE AND VALUE
(the substance of value and THE MAGNITUDE OF VALUE).

THE wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode
of production prevails, presents itself as "an immense
accumulation of commodities,"^ 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 dififer-

1 Karl Marx ** Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie." Berlin, 1859, p. 4.

A

2 Capitalist Production,

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

1 " Desire implies want ; it is the appetite of the mind, and as natural as hunger to
the body. . . . The greatest number (of things) have their value from supplying
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.

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

3 " The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities,
or serve the conveniencies of human life." (John Locke, "Some considerations on
the consequences of the lowering of interest, 1691," in Works Edit. Lond., 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.

■* In bourgeois societies the economical fictio juris prevails that every one, as a
buyer, possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of commodities.

Commodities, 3

stitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may he 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,^ 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, ^.e., an exchange value that is
inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a
contradiction in terms.^ Let us consider the matter a little
more closely.

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

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

1 " La valeur consiste dans le rapport d'echange qui se trouve entre telle chose et
telle autre, entre telle mesure d'une production, et telle mesure d'une autre. " (Le
Trosne : De 1' Int^r^t Social. Physiocrates, Ed. Daire. Paris, 1845. P. 889.)

2 "Nothing can have an intrinsick value." (N. Barbon, l.c., p. 6) ; or as Butler
says —

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

4 Capitalist Production.

fore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor
the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must
therefore be reducible to this third.

A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear. In
order to ca,lculate 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 abstrstction 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."^ As use-values,
commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as ex-
change values they are merely different quantities, and conse-
quently 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,

1 N. Barbon, 1. c. p. 53 and 7.

Commodities, 5

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

Let us now consider the residue of each of these products ;
it consists of the same unsubstantijj[_reality in each, a mere
congelation of^miogeneous human labour, of labour-power ex-
pended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. AIL
that these things now tell us is, that human labour-power has
been expended in their production, that human labour 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-
l ent of their use-value. But if we abstract from their use- value, \
<; there remains their Value as defined above. Therefore, the ^
common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value
of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value.
The progress of our investigation will show that exchange
value is the only form in which the value of commodities can
manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we
have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its
form.
^ A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because S
/ human labour in the abstract has been embodied or material- Z
^ ised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be -
measured ? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating
substance, the labour, contained in the article. The quantity
of labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour-
time in its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and hours.

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

r

L

6 Capitalist Production.

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

We see then that that which determines the magnitude of
the value of any article is the amount of labour socially neces-
sary, or the labour-time socially necessary for its production.*
Each individual commodity, in this connexion, is to be con-
sidered as an average sample of its class.^ 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
n necessary for the production of ihe other. " As values, all com-
modities are only definite masses of congealed labour-time."^ -

/

1 "The value of them (the necessaries of life), when they are exchanged the one for
another, is regulated by the quantity of labour necessarily required, and commonly
taken in producing them." (Some Thoughts on the Interest of Money in general, and
particularly in the Publick Funds, &c. Lond., p. 36.) This remarkable anonymous
work, written in the last century, bears no date. It is clear, however, from internal
evidence, that it appeared in the reign of George II. about 1739 or 1740.

^ '* Toutes les productions d'un meme genre ne forraent proprement qu'une masse,
dont le prix se determine en general et sans egard aux circonstances particulieres."
(Le Trosne, 1. c. p. 893. 3 K. Marx. 1. c. p. 6.

Commodities. 7

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 vice versd, 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

/

i

8 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 LABOUR EMBODIED IN

COMMODITIES.

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

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

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

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

Commodities, 9

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

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

To resume, then : In the use-value of each commodity there
is contained useful labour, i.e., productive activity of a definite
kind and exercised with a definite aim. Use-values cannot
confront each other as commodities, unless the useful labour/
embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them.
In a community, the produce of which in general takes the'
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. Nor is the
relation between the coat and the labour that produced it
altered by the circumstance that tailoring may have become a
special trade, an independent branch of the social division of
labour. Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the
human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a
single man becoming a tailor. But coats and linen, like every
other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous
produce of nature, must invariably owe their existence to a

lo Capitalist Prodtiction.

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

The use-values, coat, linen, &;c., i.e., the bodies of commodi-
ties, are combinations of two elements — matter and labour.
If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a
material substratum is always left, which is furnished by
Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only
as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter.^ 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

^ Tutti i fenomeni dell' universe, sieno essi prodotti della mano dell' uomo, ovvero
delle universali leggi della fisica, non ci danno idea di attuale creazione, ma unica-
mente di una modificazione della materia. Accostare e separare sono gli unici ele-
menti che I'ingegno umano ritrova analizzando I'idea della riproduzione : e tanto d ri-
produzione di valore (value in use, although Verri in this passage of his controversy
with the Physiocrats is not himself quite certain of the kind of value he is speaking
of) e di ricchezze se la terra I'aria e I'acqua ne' campi si trasmutino in grano, come se
coUa mano dell' uomo il glutine di un insctto si trasmuti in velluto owero alcuni pez-
zetti di metallo si organizzino a formare una ripetizione." — Pietro Verri. " Medita-
zioni suUa Economia Politica " [first printed in 1773] in Custodi's edition of the
Italian Economists, Parte Moderna, t. xv. p. 22.

Commodities. 1 1

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

1 Oomp. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts. Berlin, 1840. P. 250 § 190.

12 Capitalist Production.

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

Just as, therefore, in viewing the coat and linen as values,
we abstract from their difierent use-values, so it is with the
labour represented hy 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
undifferentiated 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 difierent 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
necessary for the production of the former.

While, therefore, with reference to use-value, the labour con-

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 commodity in which
that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that, as yet, has no existence
at the present stage of our investigation.

Commodities, 1 3

tained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with refer-
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.

H 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 coats 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
quantity of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous
fall in the magnitude of its value. This antagonistic move-
ment has its origin in the two-fold character of labour.
Productive power has reference, of course, only to labour of
some useful concrete form ; the efficacy of any special produc-
tive activity during a given time being dependent on its
productiveness. Useful labour becomes, therefore, a more or
less abundant source of products, in proportion to the rise or
fall of its productiveness. On the other hand, no change in this
productiveness affects the labour represented by value. Since
productive power is an attribute of the concrete useful forms
of labour, of course it can no longer have any bearing on that
labour, so soon as we make abstraction from those concrete
useful forms. However then productive power may vary, the
same labour, exercised during equal periods of time, always

^

(

14 Capitalist Production

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

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

SECTION 3. — THE FORM OP VALUE OR EXCHANGE VALUE.

Commodities come into the world in the shape of use- values,
articles, or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &ic. This is their

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 compared,
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) con-
fuses 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 at the same time the normal activity of living
beings. But then, he has the modern wage-labourer in his eye. Much more aptly,
the anonymous predecessor of Adam Smith, quoted above in Note i, p. 6, says "one man
has employed himself a week in j)roviding this necessary of life . . . and he that
gives him some other in exchange, cannot make a better estimate of what is a pro-
per equivalent, than by computing what cost him just as much labour and time;
which in effect is no more than exchanging one man's labour in one thing for a time
certain, for another man's labour in another thing for the same time." (1. c. p. 39.)
[The English language has the advantage of possessing different words for the two
aspects of labour here considered. The labour which creates Use-Value, and counts
qualitatively, is Work, as distinguished from Labour ; that which creates Value and
counts quantitatively, is Labour as distinguished from Work. — Ed.]

Commodities, 1 5

plain, homely, bodily form. They are, however, commodities,
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 mate-
riality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its 1
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 realit}^, and that
they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions
or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human
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 attempted
by bourgeois economy, the task of tracing the genesis of this
money form, of developing the expression of value implied 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.

1 6 Capitalist Production,

A. Elementary or Accidental Form of Value.

X commodity A = y commodity B, or
X commodity A is worth y commodity B.

20 yards of linen == 1 coat, or

20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat.

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

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

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

The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimately
connected, mutually dependent and inseparable elements of the
expression of value ; but, at the same time, are mutually
exclusive, antagonistic extremes — i.e.y poles of the same
expression. 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. 1 7

the material in which the value of the first commodity is
expressed.

No doubt, the expression 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or 20
yards of linen are worth 1 coat, implies the opposite relation : 1
coat = 20 yards of linen, or 1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen.
But, in that case, I must reverse the equation, in order to
express 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 Low 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.^

Whether 20 yards of linen = 1 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, because, under
the coarse influence of the practical bourgeois, they exclusively give their attention to
the quantitative aspect of the question. "The command of quantity ...
constitutes value." ("Money and its Vicissitudes." London, 1837. p. 11. By S..
Bailey.)

B

1 8 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 of
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
ihe 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
iinen. But the act of equating it to the weaving, reduces the

Commodities. 1 9

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.^

There is, however, something else required beyond the
expression 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
tlirough 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, &c., edited by Sparks. Boston,
1836, Vol. II., p. 267.) Franklin is unconscious that by estimating the value of
everything in labour, he makes abstraction from any difference in the sorts of labour
exchanged, and thus reduces them all to equal human labour. But although
ignorant of this, yet he says it. He speaks first of "the one labour," then of "the
other labour," and finally of "labour " without further qualification, as the substance
of the value of everytliing.

1

20 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, ail 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, 2 1

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

By means, therefore, of the value relation expressed in our
equation, the bodily form of commodity B becomes the value
form of commodity A, or the body of commodity B acts as a
mirror to the value of commodity A.^ By putting itself in re-
lation with commodity B, as value in jjroprid persond, 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
lbs. of coffee. And a given quantity of any commodity con-
tains a definite quantity of human labour. 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 = 1 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 himself with Paul as being
•f like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he stands in his Pauline personality, be-
comes to Peter the type of the genus homo.

22 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
valine.

I. Let the value of the linen vary/ that of the coat remaining
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 = 1 coat, we should
have 20 yards of linen =: 2 coats, since 1 coat would now con-
tain only half the labour time embodied in 20 yards of linen.
If, on the other hand, in consequence, say, of improved looms,
this labour time be reduced by one half, the value of the linen
would fall by one half. Consequently, we should have 20
yards of linen = J coat. The relative value of commodity A,
^.^., its value expressed in commodity B, rises and falls directly
as the value of A, the value of B being supposed constant.

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

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

HI. Let the quantities of labour time respectively neces-

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

Commodities. 23

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 proportion,
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 This incongruity between the magnitude of value and its relative expression has,
with customary ingenuity, been exploited by vulgar economists. For example —
"Once admit that A falls, because B, with which it is exchanged, rises, while no less
labour is bestowed in the meantime on A, and your general principle of value falls to
the ground. . . . If he [Ricardo] allowed that when A rises in value relatively to
B, B falls in value relatively to A, he cut away the ground on which he rested his
grand proi^osition, that the value of a commodity is ever determined by the labour
embodied in it ; for if a change in the cost of A alters not only its own value in rela-
tion 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 which asserts that the quantity of labour
bestowed on an article regulates its value, but also that which affirms the cost of an
article to regulate its value." (J. Broadhurst: Political Economy, London, 1842, p. 11
and 14.)

Mr. Broadhurst might just as well say : consider the fractions \%^ i^, -{^^^ &c.,
the number 10 remains unchanged, and yet its proportional magnitude, its magnitude

24 Capitalist Production,

3. The Equivalent form of value.

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

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

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

relatively to the mimbers 20, 50, 100, &c., continually diminishes. Therefore the
great principle that the magnitude of a whole number, such as 10, is " regulated " by
the number of times unity is contained in it, falls to the ground. — [The author ex-
plains in section 4 of this chapter, p. 62, note 2, what he understands by "Vulgar
Economy."— Ed.]

Com modules. 2 5

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
vseeing, in the expression of value, merely a quantitative relation.
The truth being, that when a commodity acts as equivalent,
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 accept
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 material
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

26 Capitalist Prodtiction.

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 ex-
pression of the weight of the sugar-loaf, represents a natural pro-
perty common to both bodies, namely their weight; but the coat,
in the expression of value of the linen, represents a non-natural
property of both, something purely social, namely, their value.

Since the relative form of value of a commodity — the linen,
for example — expresses the value of that commodity, as being
something wholly different from its substance and properties,
as being, for instance, coat-like, we see that this expression
itself indicates that some social relation lies at the bottom of
it. With the equivalent form it is just the contrary. The very
essence of this form is that the material commodity itself — the
coat — ^just as it is, expresses value, and is endowed with the
form of value by Nature itself. Of course this holds good only
so long as the value relation exists, in which the coat stands in
the position of equivalent to the linen.^ 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 plaj^ed the part of equivalent. He has

1 Such expressions of relations in general, called by Hegel reflex-categories, form a
very curious class. For instance, one man is king only because other men stand in
the relation of subjects to him. They, on the contrary, imagine that they are sub-
jects because he is king.

Commodities. 27

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 materialisation 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.

28 Capitalist Production.

But befjause this concrete labour, tailoring in our case, ranks
as, and is directly identified with, undifferentiated human
labour, it also ranks as identical with any other sort of labour,
and therefore with that embodied in the 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.y of the expression of the value of one com-
modity in some other commodity taken at random ; for he says —
5 beds = 1 house {>t\hcti T^n ktri oUtas) is not to be

distinguished from
5 beds = so much money.

{xXiven 'Tivrt 6.vtI . . . ofou aX Tivrt KXlvai')

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, Avithout such
an equalisation, these two clearly different things could not be
compared with each other as commensurable quantities. " Ex-
change," he says, "cannot take place without equality, and
equality not without commensurability " (oiir itrerni /^h oiitrns
evfjt.fjurp'ias). Hcrc, howcvcr, he comes to a stop, and gives
up the further analysis of the form of value. " It is,
however, in reality, impossible (rl^ f^h olv aXnhU a.'^vvarov), that
such unlike things can be commensurable " — i.e., qualita-
tively equal. Such an equalisation can only be something
foreign to their real nature, consequently only " a make-shift
for practical purposes."

Commodities, 29

Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us, what barred the way to
his further analysis ; it was the absence of anj' 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 fovm of value considered as a whole.

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

30 Capitalist Prodtiction.

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 of 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 revivors,
Ferrier, Ganilh,^ and others, as also of their antipodes, the
modern bagmen of Free Trade, such as Bastiat. The mercan-
tilists lay special stress on the qualitative aspect of the
expression of value, and consequently on the equivalent form
of commodities, which attains its full perfection in money.
The modern hawkers of Free Trade, who must get rid of their
article at any price, on the other hand, lay most stress on the
quantitative aspect of the relative form of value. For them
there consequently exists neither value, nor magnitude of
value, anywhere except in its expression by means of the
exchange relation of commodities, that is, in the daily list of
prices current. MacLeod, who has taken upon himself to
dress up the confused ideas of Lombard Street in the most
learned finery, is a successful cross between the superstitious
mercantilists, and the enlightened Free Trade bagmen.

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

1 F. L. A. Ferrier, sous-inspecteur des douanes, "Du gouvernement consider^ dans
ses rapports avec le commerce," Paris, 1805; and Charles Ganilh, "Des Systdmes
d'Economie politique," 2nd ed., Paris, 1821.

Commodities. 31

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 a product becomes a commodity, viz.,
at the epoch when the labour spent on the production of a
useful article becomes expressed as one of the objective
qualities of that article, i.e., as its value. It therefore follows
that the elementary value-form is also the primitive form
under which a product of labour appears historically as a
-commodity, and that the gradual transformation of such
products into commodities, proceeds pari passu with the
development of the value form.

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

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

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

32 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, com^
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.^ The number
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 valite.

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 lb tea or=40 lb coffee or=

1 quarter corn or=2 ounces gold or=| ton iron or=&c.)

1. The Expanded Relative form of value.

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

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

2 For this reason, we can speak of the coat-value of the linen when its value is ex-
pressed 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 si^eak of it as . . . corn-value, cloth-value, according to the commodity with
which it is compared ; and hence there are a tliousand 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, Measure 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 Opinions." London, 1825, p. 39). S.
Bailey, the author of this anonymous work, a work which in its day created much
stir in England, fancied that, by thus pointing out the various relative expressions of
one and the same value, he had proved the impossibility of any determination of the
concept of value. However 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. 33

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
useful kinds of labour, embodied in these different commodities,,
rank now as so many different forms of the realisation, or mani-^
festation, of undifferentiated human labour.

0

34 Capitalist Production.

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

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

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

20 yards of linen = 1 coat

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

Each of these implies the corresponding inverted equation,
1 coat = 20 yards of linen
10 lbs. 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, it necessarily follows, that the various owners of
the latter exchange them for the linen, and consequently express

Commodities, 35

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 := 1 coat or = 10 lbs. of tea, etc., that is to say,
if we give expression to the converse relation already implied
in the series, we get,

(7. The General form of value,
1 coat

10 lbs. of tea
40 lbs. of coffee

1 quarter of corn )> — 20 yards of linen

2 ounces of gold
•i- a ton of iron
X com. A., etc.

1. l^he altered cliaracter of the form of value.

All commodities now express their value (1) in an elementary
form, because in a single commodity; (2) with unity, because 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 following : —
1 coat = 20 yards of linen, 10 lbs. 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
difierent 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 manner
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
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

36 Capitalist Production,

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 ol
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 inta
relation with one another as values, or made to appear as-
exchange values.

The two earlier forms either express the value of each com-
modity in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or
in a series of many such commodities. In both cases, it is, so-
to say, the special business of each single commodity to find an
expression for its value, and this it does without the help of
the others. These others, with respect to the former, play the
passive parts of equivalents. The general form of value, C,.
results from the joint action of the whole world of commodities
and from that alone. A commodity can acquire a general expres-
sion of its value only by all other commodities, simultaneously
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 eqiiated to linen now appear not only
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.

Co77imodities, 37

For instance, 10 lbs. of tea = 20 yards of linen, and 40 lbs. of
•coffee = 20 yards of linen. Therefore, 10 lbs. of tea == 40 lbs.
of coffee. In other words, there is contained in 1 lb. of coffee
only one-fourth as much substance of value — labour — as is con-
tained in 1 lb. 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
values of ail 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 resum^ of the
world of commodities. That form consequently makes it
indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the
character possessed by all labour of being human labour
constitutes its specific- social character.

o

8 Capitalist Production.

2. The interdependent development of the Relative fovvfi of valuer
and of the Equivalent form.

The degree of development of the relative form of value
corresponds to that of the equivalent form. But we must bear
in mind that the development of the latter is only the expres-
sion and result of the development of the former.

The primary or isolated relative form of value of one
commodity converts some other commodity into an isolated
equivalent. The expanded form of relative value, which is the
expression of the value of one commodity in terms of all other
commodities, endows those other commodities with the character
of particular equivalents differing in kind. And lastly, a
particular kind of commodity acquires the character of
universal equivalent, because all other commodities make it the
material in which they uniformly express their value.

The antagonism between the relative form of value and the
equivalent form, the two poles of the value form, is developed
concurrently with that form itself.

The first form, 20 yds. of linen = one coat, already contains
this antagonism, without as yet fixing it. According as we
read this equation forwards or backwards, the parts played by
the linen and the coat are different. In the one case the-
relative value of the linen is expressed in the coat, in the>
other case the relative value of the coat is expressed in the
linen. In this first form of value, therefore, it is difficult to
grasp the polar contrast.

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

Finally, the form C gives to the world of commodities a
general social relative form of value, because, and in so far as,,
thereby all commodities, with the exception of one, are excluded

Commodities, 39

from the equivalent form. A single commodity, the linen,
appears therefore to have acquired the character of direct ex-
changeability with every other commodity because, and in so
far as, this character is denied to every other commodity.^

The commodity that figures as universal equivalent, is, on
the other hand, excluded from the relative value form. If the
linen, or any other commodity serving as universal equivalent,
were, at the same time, to share in the relative form of value,
it would have to serve as its own equivalent. We should then
have 20 yds. of linen = 20 yds. of linen ; this tautology ex-
presses neither value, nor magnitude of value. In order to
express the relative value of the universal equivalent, we must
rather reverse the form C. This equivalent has no relative
form of value in common with other commodities, but its value
is relatively expressed by a never ending series of other com-
modities. Thus, the expanded form of relative value, or form
B, now shows itself as the specific form of relative value for the
equivalent commodity.

8. Transition from the General form of value to the
Money form.

The universal equivalent form is a form of value in general.
It can, therefore, be assumed by any commodity. On the
other hand, if a commodity be found to have assumed the
universal equivalent form (form C), this is only because and

^ It is by no means self-evident that this character of direct and universal ex-
changeability is, so to speak, a polar one, and as intimately connected with its opposite
pole, the absence of direct exchangeability, as the positive pole of the magnet is with
its negative counterpart. It may therefore be imagined that all commodities can
simultaneously have this character impressed upon them, just as it can be imagined
that all Catholics can be popes together. It is, of course, highly desirable in the eyes
of the petit bourgeois, for whom the production of commodities is the ne plus ultra
of human freedom and individual independence, that the inconveniences resulting
from this character of commodities not being directly exchangeable, should be re-
moved. Proudhon's socialism is a working out of this Philistine Utopia, a form of
socialism which, as I have elsewhere shown, does not possess even the merit of origin-
ality. Long before his time, the task was attempted with much better success by
Gray, Bray, and others. But, for all that, wisdom of this kind flourishes even now
in certain circles under the name of ** science." Never has any school played more
tricks with the word science, than that of Proudhon, for

" wo Begriffe fehlen
Da stellt zur rechten Zeit ein Wort sich ein. "

40 Capitalist Production,

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 K) ot tea =

40 lb of cofi-ee = V g ounces of gold

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.

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

Commodities, 41

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 queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and
theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is
nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the
point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying
human wants, or from the point that those properties are the
product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day, that man,
by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished
by nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The
form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of
it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common,

42 Capitalist Prodziction,

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 pro-
ductive activities, may be, it is a physiological fact, that they
are functions of the human organism, and that each such func-
tion, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the ex-
penditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, &c. Secondly, with
regard to that which forms the ground-work for the quantitative
determination of value, namely, the duration of that expendi-
ture, or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear that there is a
jmlpable difference between its quantity and quality. In all
states of society, the labour-time that it costs to produce the
means of subsistence, must necessarily be an object of interest
to mankind, though not of equal interest in different stages of
development.^ And lastly, from the moment that men in any
way work for one another, their labour assumes a social form.

Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product
of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities ?
Clearly from this form itself. The equality of all sorts of
human labour is expressed objectively by their products all
being equally values; the measure of the expenditure of labour-
T30wer by the duration of that expenditure, takes the form of
the quantity of value of the products of labour; and finally,
the mutual relations of the producers, within which the social
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

1 Among the ancient Germans the unit for measuring land was what could be
harvested in a day, and was called Tagwerk, Tagwanne (jurnale, or terra jurnalis, or
diornalis), Mannsmaad, &c. (See G. L. von Maurer Einleitung zur Geschichte dei;
Mark—, &c. Verfassung, Miinchen, 1859, p. 129-59.)

Commodities. 43

objective character stamped upon the product o£ that labour;,
because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their
own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing-
not between themselves, but between the products of their
labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become
commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time
perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way
the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective
excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of
something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing^
there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing
to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a
physical relation between physical things. But it is different
with commodities. There, the existence of the things qua
commodities, and the value relation between the products of
labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no
connection with their physical properties and with the material
relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social rela-
tion between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic
form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find:
an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions
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 attaches itself
to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as com-
modities, and which is therefore inseparable from the produc-
tion 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 individuals
or groups of individuals who carry on their work independently
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

44 Capitalist Production,

they exchange their products, the specific social character of
each producer's labour does not show itself except in the act of
exchange. In other words, the labour of the individual asserts
itself as a part of the labour of society, only by means of the
relations which tbe act of exchange establishes directly between
the products, and indirectly, through them, between the pro-
ducers. To the latter, therefore, the relations connecting the
labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as
direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what
they reallj^ are, material relations between persons and social
relations between things. It is only by being exchanged that
the products of labour acquire, as values, one uniform social
status, distinct from their varied forms of existence as objects
of utility. This division of a product into a useful thing and
a value becomes practically important, only when exchange
has acquired such an extension that useful articles are produced
for the purpose of being exchanged, and their character as
values has therefore to be taken into account, beforehand,
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 equalisation of the
most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an
abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to
their common denominator, viz., expenditure of human labour \
power or human labour in the abstract. The two-fold social
•character of the labour of the individual appears to him, when
Teflected 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 condition,

Commodities. 45

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 products
of labour, have one common quality, viz., that of having value.
Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into rela-

^ tion with each other as values, it is not because we see in these
articles the material receptacles of homogeneous human labour.
Quite the contrary : whenever, by an exchange, we equate as
values our different products, by that very act, we also equate,
as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon
them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it.^
Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing
what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product
into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the
hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social pro-
ducts ; for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as
much a social product as language. The recent scientific dis-
covery, that the products of labour, so far as they are values,

\ are but material expressions of the human labour spent in
their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in the history of the
development of the human race, but, by no means, dissipates
the mist through which the social character of labour appears
to us to be an objective character of the products themselves.
The fact, that in the particular form of production with which
we are dealing, viz., the production of commodities, the specific
social character of private labour carried on independently,
consists in the equality of every kind of that labour, by virtue
of its being human labour, which character, therefore, assumes
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

J remained unaltered.
What, first of all, practically concerns producers when the}^

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

46 Capitalist Prodtcction.

make an exchan|:^e, is the question, how much of some other
product they get for their own? in what proportions the pro-
ducts are exchangeable ? When these proportions have, by
-custom, attained a certain stability, they appear to result from
the nature of the products, so that, for instance, one ton of iron
and two ounces of gold appear as naturally to be of equal value
as a pound of gold and a pound of iron in spite of their
different physical and chemical qualities appear to be of equal
Aveight. The character of having value, when once impressed
upon products, obtains fixity only by reason of their acting and
re-acting upon each other as quantities of value. These
quantities vary continually, independently of the will, fore-
sight and action of the producers. To them, their own social
action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the
producers instead of being ruled by them. It requires a fully
developed production of commodities before, from accumulated
•experience alone, the scientific conviction springs up, that all
the different kinds of private labour, which are carried on in-
dependently of each other, and yet as spontaneously de^veloped
branches of the social division of labour, are continually being
reduced to the quantitative proportions in which society re-
quires them. And why ? Because, in the midst of all the
accidental and ever fluctuating exchange-relations between
the products, the labour-time socially necessary for their pro-
duction forcibly asserts itself like an over-riding law of nature.
The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about
our ears.^ The determination of the magnitude of value b^^
labour-time is therefore a secret, hidden under the apparent
fluctuations in the relative values of commodities. Its dis-
covery, while removing all appearance of mere accidentality
from the determination of the magnitude of the values of
products, yet in no way alters the mode in which that
determination takes place.

Man's reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently,

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 zu einer Kritik
der Nation 4okonomie," in the " Deutsch-franzosische Jahrblicher," edited by Arnold
Ruge and Karl Marx. Paris, 1844.)

Commodities.

47

also, his scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly
opposite to that of their actual historical development. He
begins, post festum, with the results of the process of develop-
ment ready to hand before him. The characters that stamp
products as commodities, and whose establishment is a necessary
preliminary to the circulation of commodities, have already
acquired the stability of natural, self-understood forms of social
life, before man seeks to decipher, not their historical character,
for in his eyes they are immutable, but their meaning.
Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities
that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value,
and it was the common expression of all commodities in money
that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values.
It is, however, just this ultimate money form of the world of
€ommodities that actually conceals, instead of disclosing, the
social character of piivate labour, and the social relations
between the individual producers. When I state that coats or
boots stand in a relation to linen, because it is the universal
incarnation of abstract human labour, the absurdity of the
statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, when the producers of
coats and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is
the same thing, with gold or silver, as the universal equivalent,
they express the relation between their own private labour and
the collective labour of society in the same absurd form.

The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like
forms. They are forms of thought expressing with social
validity the conditions and relations of a definite, historically
determined mode of production, viz., the production of com-
modities. The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic
and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour as long-
as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so
soon as we come to other forms of production.

Since Robinson Crusoe's experiences are a favourite theme
with political economists,^ let us take a look at him on his

1 Even Rjcardo has his stories k 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 calcula-
tion, so far as their implements have to be taken into account, the annuity tables in

48 Capitalist Production.

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, fishing
and hunting. Of his prayers and the like we take no account,
since they are a source of pleasure to him, and he looks upon
them as so much recreation. In spite of the variety of hia
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 time accurately
between his different kinds of work. Whether one kind
occupies a greater space in his general activity than another,
depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the case may be,
to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimed at. This
our friend Eobinson soon learns by experience, and having
rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck,
commences, like a true-born Briton, to keep a set of books.
His stock-book contains a list of the objects of utility that
belong to him, of the operations necessary for their production •
and lastly, of the labour time that definite quantities of those
objects have, on an average, cost him. All the relations
between Robinson and the objects that form this wealth of his
own creation, are here so simple and clear as to be intelligible
without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those
relations contain all that is essential to the determination 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 everyone
dependent, serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, laymen 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 groundwork
of society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to

current use on the London Exchange in the year 1817. * The parallelograms of Mr.
Owen ' appear to be the only form of society, besides the bourgeois form, with which
he was acquainted." (Karl Marx : "Zur Kritik," &c., p. 38, 39.)

Commodities. 49

assume a fantastic form different from tlieir reality. They
take the shape, in the transactions of society, of services in kind
and payments in kind. Here the particular and natural form
of labour, and not, as in a society based on production of com-
modities, 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
quantit}^ of his own personal labour-power. The tithe to be
rendcxed 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 themseWes in this society; the social
relations between individuals in the performance of their
labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal rela-
tions, 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.^ 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 different
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,
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 commodities,
possesses a spontaneously developed system of division of
labour. The distribution of the work within the family, and

■^ "A ridiculous presumption has latterly got abroad that common j)roperty 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. " Zur Kritik," &c., p. 10.)

D

50 Capitalist Production.

the regulation of the labour- time of the several members,
depend as well upon differences of age and sex as upon natural
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 individual labour-
power by its duration, appears here by its very nature as a
social character of their labour.

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

Commodities. 5 1

The reliofious world is but the reflex of the real world. i.nd
for a society based upon the production of commodities, in
which the producers in general enter into social relations with
one another by treating their products as commodities and
values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour to
the standard of homogeneous human labour — for such a society,
(Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more especially 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 conversion of
products into commodities, and therefore the conversion of men
into producers of commodities, holds a subordinate 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 society. Those ancient social
organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois
society, extremely simple and transparent. But they are
founded either on the immature development of man in-
dividually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that
unites him with his fellow men in a primitive tribal com-
munity, or upon direct relations of subjection. 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 narrowness 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, when the practical re-
lations of everyday life ofler to man none but perfectly in-
telligible and reasonable relations with regard 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.

52 Capitalist Pivduction.

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, ' 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 and labour
time by the magnitude of that value.^ These formulae, which

1 The insufficiency of Ricardo's analysis of the magnitude of value, and his analysis
is by far the best, will appear from the 3rd and 4th books of this work. As regards
value in general, it is the weak point of the classical school of political economy that
it nowhere, expressly and with full consciousness, distinguishes between labour, as it
appears in the value of a product and the same labour, as it appears 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 qualita-
tive 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 imj^lied. 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 em-
ployment of those faculties, labour of some kind, is our only original treasure, audit 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. " (Kicardo,
The Principles of Pol. Econ. 3 Ed. Lond. 1821, p. 334). We would here only point
out, that Kicardo puts his own more profound interpretation upon the words of Des-
tutt. 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 ac-
quire their " two different values " (use-value and exchange-value) from "the value
of labour." He thus falls into the commonplace error of the vulgar economists, who
assume the value of one commodity (in this case labour) in order to determine the
values of the rest. But Kicardo reads him as if he had said, that labour (not the
value of labour) is embodied both in use-value and exchange-value. Nevertheless,
Kicardo 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
Kiches, Their Distinctive Properties," to a laborious examination 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.

2 It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never succeeded, by
means of its analysis of commodities, and, in particular, of their value, in discover-
ing that form under which value becomes exchange-value. Even Adam Smith and
Kicardo, 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 entirely absorbed in the
analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value form of the product

Commodities. 5 3

bear stamped upon them in unmistakeable letters, that they
belong to a state of society, in which the process of production
has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled 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 bourgeoisie in much the
same way as the Fathers of the Church treated pre-Christian
religions.^

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 develop-
ments, 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 contradictory ideas of money, the perfected form of the
general equivalent. This is seen in a striking manner when they treat of banking,
where the commonplace 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 bour-
geois society, in contradistinction to vulgar economy, which deals with appearances
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 systematizing in a pedantic
way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the trite ideas held by the self -compla-
cent bourgeoisie with regard to their own world, to them the best of all possible
worlds.

1 ' ' Les economistes ont une singuliere maniere de proceder. II n'y a pour eux que
deux sortes d'institutions, celles de I'art et celles de la nature. Les institutions de
la feodalite sont des institutions artificielles, celles de la bourgeoisie sont des institu-
tions naturelles. lis ressemblent en ceci aux theologiens, qui eux aussi etablissent
deux sortes de religions. Toute religion qui n'est pas la leur, est une invention des
hommes, tandis que leur propre religion est une emanation de Dieu — Ainsi il
y a eu de I'histoire, mais il n'y en a plus." (Karl Marx. Misere de la Philosophic.
Reponse a la Philosophie de la Misere par M. Proudhon, 1847 p. 113.) 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 that even Greeks and Romans had some process of production,
consequently, an economy, which just as much constituted the material basis of their
world, as bourgeois economy constitutes that of our modern world. Or perhaps Bas-
tiat means, that a mode of production based on slavery is based on a system of plun-
der. In that case he treads on dangerous ground. If a giant thinker like Aristotle
erred in his appreciation of slave labour, why should a dwarf economist like Bastiat
be right in his appreciation of wage labour ?— I seize this opportunity of shortly

54 Capitalist Production,

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

The mode of pioduction 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 production.
It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history,
though not in the same predominating and characteristic
manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is com-
paratively 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 system ?
To it gold and silver, when serving as money, did not repre-
sent a social relation between producers, but were natural
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, when-
ever it treats of capital ? How long is it since economy dis-
carded the physiocratic illusion, that rents grow out of the
soil and not out of society ?

answering an objection taken by a German paper in America, to my work, " Zur
Kritik der Pol. Oekonomie, 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 in-
tellectual 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 ex-
plains why here politics, and there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest,
it requires but a slight acquaintance with the history of the Koman republic, for
example, to be aware that its secret history, is the history of its landed projjerty.
On the other hand, Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining
that knight errantry was compatible with all economical forms of society.

Commodities. 55

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

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

2 S. Bailey, 1. c, p. 165.

3 The author of " Observations " and S. Bailey accuse Eicardo of converting ex-
change value from something relative into something absolute. The opposite is the
fact. He has explained the apparent relation between objects, such as diamonds and
pearls, in which relation they appear as exchange values, and disclosed the true rela-
tion hidden behind the appearances, namely, their relation to each other as mere
expressions of human labour. If the followers of Ricardo answer Bailey somewhat
rudely, and by no means convincingly, the reason is to be sought in this, that they
were unable to find in Ricardo's own works any key to the hidden relations existing
between value and its form, exchange value.

56 Capitalist Production,

\

I

CHAPTER 11.

EXCHANGE.

It is plain that commodities cannot go to market and make
exchanges of their own account. We mast, 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.^ In order that
these objects may enter into i elation with each other as
commodities, their guardians must place themselves in relation
to one another, as persons whose will resides in those objects,
and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate
the commodity of the other, and part with his own, except by
means of an act done hy mutual consent. They must, there-
fore, mutually recognise in each other the rights of private
proprietors. This juridical relation, which thus expresses itself
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.^ The persons exist for
one another merely as representatives of, and, therefore, as

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

2 Proudhon begins by taking his ideal of justice, of "justice eternelle," from
the juridical relations that correspond to the production of commodities : thereby,
it may be noted, he proves, to the consolation of all good citizens, that the
production of commodities is a form of ijroduction 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. 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
•lecomposition of matter by means of the "eternal ideas," of "naturalite" and
"affinite?" Do we really know any more about " usury," when we say it contra-
dicts "justice eternelle," "equit6 eternelle," " mutualite eternelle," and other
" verites eternelles " than the fathers of the church did when they said it was incom-
patible with " grS,ce eternelle," " foi eternelle," and " la volonte eternelle de Dieu ?"

Exchange. 57

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 repulsive
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 im-
mediate use- value. Otherwise, he woul.d 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.^ 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, aud use- values for their non-owners.
Consequently, they must all change hands. But this change
of hands is what constitutes their exchange, and the latter
puts them in relation with each other as values, and realises
them as values. Hence commodities must be realised as values
before they can be realised as use-values.

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

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 exchange-
able. 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 Eep., 1. i. c. 9.)

58 Capitalist Production,

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

Exchange. 59

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.^

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.^
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
happens 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
men, by a tacit understanding, to treat each other as private
owners of those alienable objects, and by implication fas 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 Peruvian

1 From this we may form an estimate of the shrewdness of the petit-bourgeoi»
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, " Zur Kritik der Pol. Oekon.," p. 61, s.q.

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

6o Capitalist Production.

Inca State. The exchange of commodities, therefore, first
begins on the boundaries of such communities, at their points
of contact with other similar communities, or with members of
the latter. So soon, however, as products once become com-
modities in the external relations of a community, they also,
by reaction, become so in its internal intercourse. The pro-
yjortions in which they are exchangeable are at first quite a
matter of chance. What makes them exchangeable is the
mutual desire of their owners to alienate them. Meantime the
need for foreign objects of utility gradually establishes itself
"The constant repetition of exchange makes it a normal social
:act. In the course of time, therefore, some portion at least of
^the products of labour must be produced with a special view
to exchanofe. From that moment the distinction becomes
firmly established between the utility of an object for the pur-
poses of consumption, and its utility for the purposes of ex-
change. Its use- value becomes distinguished from its exchange
value. On the other hand, the quantitative proportion in
which the articles are exchangeable, becomes dependent on
their production itself. Custom stamps them as values with
definite magnitudes.

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

Exchange, 6i

into life. In turns and transiently it attaches itself first to this
and then to that commodity. But with the development oi
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 natural
forms in which the exchange-value of home products finds ex-
pression ; 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 moveable objects
and are therefore directly alienable ; and because their mode of
life, by continually bringing them into contact with foreign com-
munities, solicits the exchange of products. Man has often
made man himself, under the form of slaves, serve as the pri-
mitive 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
silver," ^ is shown by the fitness of the physical properties of
these metals for the functions of money.^ Up to this point,
however, we are acquainted only with one function of mone}^

1 Karl Marx. 1. c. p. 135. " I metalli. . . naturalmente moneta," (Galiani.
** Delia moneta " in Custodi's Collection : Parte Moderna t. iii.).

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

62 Capitalist Production.

namely, to serve as the form of manifestation of the value of
commodities, or as the material in which the magnitudes of
their values are socially expressed. An adequate form of
manifestation of value, a fit embodiment of abstract, undiffer-
entiated, and therefore equal human labour, that material
alone can be whose every sample exhibits the same uniform
qualities. On the other hand, since the difference between the
magnitudes of value is purely quantitative, the money com-
modity must be susceptible of merely quantitative differences,
must therefore be divisible at will, and equally capable of being
re-united. Gold and silver possess these properties by nature.

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

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

We have seen that the money-form is but the reflex, thrown
upon one single commodity, of the value relations between all the
rest. That money is a commodity^ is therefore a new discovery
only for those who, when they analyse it, start from its fully
developed shape. The act of exchange gives to the commodity
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 imagi-

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

2 " Silver and gold themselves (which we may call by the general name of bullion),
are . . . commodities . . . rising and falling in . . . value. . . Bullion, then, may
be reckoned to be of higher value where the smaller weight will purchase the greater
quantity of the product or manufacture of the countrey," &c. ("A Discourse of the
General Notions of Money, Trade, and Exchange, as they stand in relations to each
other." By a Merchant. Lond., 1695, p. 7). " Silver and gold, coined or uncoined,
though they are used for a measure of all other things, are no less a commodity than
wine, oyl, tobacco, cloth, or stuffs." ("A Discourse concerning Trade, and that in
j)articular of the East Indies," &c. London, 1689, p. 2). " The stock and riches of
the kingdom cannot properly be confined to money, nor ought gold and silver to be
excluded from being merchandize." ("A Treatise concerning the East India Trade
being a most profitable Trade." London, 1680, Keprint 1096, p. 4).

Exchange. 63

nary.^ 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 tha,t object, but is simply the form under
which certain social relations manifest themselves. 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.^ 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 sanc-
tioned by the so-called universal consent of mankind. This

1 " L'oro e I'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 : "Silver was
exchanged in proportion to the value in use it possessed, consequently in isroportion to
its real value. By its adoption as money it received an additional value (une valeur
additionnelle) " (Jean Law: "Considerations sur le numeraire et le commerce" in
E. Daire's Edit, of '* Economistes Financiers du XVIII. siecle.," p. 470).

2 " L'Argent en (des denrees) est le signe." (V. de Forbonnais : " Elements du Com-
merce, Nouv. Edit. Leyde, 1776," t. II., p. 143). " Comme signe il est attir^ par les
denrees." (I.e., p. 155). " L'argent est im signe d' une chose et la repr^sente." (Mon-
tesquieu : " 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
6quivaut." (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 tradi-
tions 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 k nous et £l notre majesty royale n' appartiennent
seulement . . . le mestier, le fait, I'^tat, la provision et toute I'ordonnanee des
monnaies, de donner tel cours, et pour tel prix comme il nous plait et bon nous
semble." It was a maxim of the Roman Law that the value of money was fixed by
decree of the emperor. It was expressly forbidden to treat money as a commodity.
" Petunias vero nulli emere fas erit, nam in usu publico constitutas oportet non esse
mercem." Some good work on this question has been done by G. F. Pagnini :
"Saggiosopiailgiusto pregio delle cose, 1751 " ; Custodi "Parte Moderna," t. II.
In the second part of his work Pagnini directs his polemics especially against the
lawyers.

64 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, people
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 lbs.
for instance, of gold is worth. Money, like every other com-
modity, 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
amout of labour-time.^ Such quantitative determination of its
relative value takes place at the source of its production by
means of barter. Wlien it steps into circulation as money, its
value is already given. In the last decades of the 17th
century 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.^

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

2 The learned Professor Eoscher, after first informing us that "the false definitions
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 cata-
logue of works on the nature of money, from which it appears that he has 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 commodities " (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 Eoscher : " Die
Grundlagen der Nationaloekonomie, " 3rd Edn., 1858, pp. 277-210.) More! less!
not sufficiently ! so far ! not altogether ! Wliat clearness and precision of ideas and
language ! And such eclectic professorial twaddle is modestly baptised by Mr.
Eoscher, "the anatomico-physiological method " of political economy ! One discovery
however, he must have credit for, namely, that money is " a pleasant commodity."

Exchange, 65

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

66 ' Capitalist Prod^iction.

CHAPTER III.

MONEY, OR THE CIRCULATION OF COMMODITIES.

SECTION 1. — THE MEASURE OF VALUES.

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

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

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

The expression of the value of a commodity in gold — x
commodity A = y money-commodity — is its money-form or

1 The question — Why does not money directly represent labour-time, so that a
piece of paper may represent, for instance, x hour's labour, is at bottom the same as
the question why, given the production of commodities, must products take the form
of commodities ? This is evident, since their taking the form of commodities implies
their differentiation into commodities and money. Or, why cannot private labour —
labour for the account of private individuals — be treated as its opposite, 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 inconsistent with the produc-
tion 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 conditions of that production.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 6y

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 become 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.^ Since the ex-
pression of the value of commodities in gold is a merely ideal

1 Savages and half -civilised races use the tongue 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 Keport 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 advertising recipes
for reducing the superfluous fat of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy.

68 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.^ But,,
although the money that performs the functions of a measure
of value is only ideal money, price depends entirel}'- upon the
actual substance that is money. The value, or in other words,
the quantity of human labour contained in a ton of iron, 'y^
expressed in imagination by such a quantity of the money-
commodity as contains the same amount of labour as the iron.
According, therefore, as the measure of value is gold, silver, or
copper, the value of the ton of iron will be expressed by very
different prices, or will be represented by very different quan-
tities of those metals respectively.

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

^ See Karl Marx: Zur Kritik, &c. "Theorien von der Masseinheit des Geldes,"
p. 53, seq.

^ "Wherever gold and silver have by law been made to j)erform the function of
money or of a measure of value side by side, it has always been tried, but in vain, to
treat them as one and the same material. To assume that there is an invariable
ratio between the quantities of gold and silver in which a given quantity of labour-time
is incorporated, is to assume, in fact, that gold and silver are of one and the same
material, and that a given mass of the less valuable metal, silver, is a constant
fraction of a given mass of gold. From the reign of Edward III. to the time of
George II., the history of money in England consists of one long series of per-
turbations caused by the clashing of the legally fixed ratio between the values of
gold and silver, with the fluctuations in their real values. At one time gold was too
high, at another, silver. The metal that for the time being was estimated below its
value, was withdrawn from circulation, melted and exported. The ratio between
the two metals was then again altered by law, but the new nominal ratio soon came

Moneyy or the Circulation of Commodities. 69

Commodities with definite prices present themselves under
the form : a commodity A = x gold ; b commodity B = z gold;
<} 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
-quantities 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.^ 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.

into conflict again with the real one. In our own 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 expulsion from circulation by gold. During
the years 1855, 1856 and 1857, the excess in France of gold-imports over gold-
exports amounted to £41,580,000, while the excess of silver-exports over silver-
imports was £14,704,000. In fact, in those countries in which both metals are
legally measures of value, and therefore both legal tender, so that everyone has the
■option of paying in either metal, the metal that rises in value is at a premium, and,
like every other commodity, measures its price in the over-estimated metal which
alone serves in reality as the standard of value. The result of all experience and
history with regard to this question is simply that, where two commodities perform
by law the functions of a measure of value, in practice one alone maintains that
position." (Karl Marx, 1. c. pp. 52, 53.)

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 employ-
ment 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.

70 Capitalist Prodtcction,

As measure of value and as standard of price, money has two
entirely distinct functions to perform. It is the measure
of value inasmuch as it is the socially recognised incarnation
of human labour ; it is the standard of price inasmuch as it is
a fixed weight of metal. As the measure of value it serves to*
convert the values of all the manifold commodities into prices,
into imaginary quantities of gold ; as the standard of price it
measures those quantities of gold. The measure of values
measures commodities considered as values ; the standard of
price measures, on the contrary, quantities of gold by a unit
quantity of gold, not the value of one quantity of gold by the
weight of another. In order to make gold a standard of price,
a certain weight must be fixed upon as the unit. In this case,
as in all cases of measuring quantities of the same denomina-
tion, the establishment of an unvarying unit of measure is all-
important. Hence, the less the unit is subject to variation, so
much the better does the standard of price fulfil 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.^

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

In the second place, a change in the value of gold does not
interfere with its functions as a measure of value. The change
affects all commodities simultaneously, and, therefore, coeteris
paribus, leaves their relative values inter se, unaltered, although

1 With English writers the confusion between measure of value and standard of
price (standard of value) is indescribable. Their functions, as well as their names,.
are constantly intercharged.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 71

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

Just as when we estimate the value of any commodit}^ 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 elementarj^ 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 tlie 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
example, 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
liistorical causes, among which the chief are : — (1) The im-
portation of foreign money into an imperfectly developed
community. This happened in Kome in its early days, where
gold and silver coins circulated at first as foreign commodities.

72 Capitalist Production.

The names of these foreign coins never coincide with those ot
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. ^ 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. ''^ (8) The debasing of nioney 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. 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
bestowed names, such as pound, dollar, &c. These aliquot
parts, which thenceforth serve as units of money, are then sub-
divided into other aliquot parts with legal names, such as
shilling, penny, &c. ^ 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.

2 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 niaravedi, less than 1-lOOOth ; and the Portuguese rei a still
smaller fraction.

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

4 David Urquhart remarks in his "Familiar Words " on the monstrosity (!) that
now-a-days a pound (sterling), which is the unit of the English standard of money, is
equal to about a quarter of an ounce of gold. "This is falsifying 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. J2>

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. ^

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. ^ 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. ^

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

2 " 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. lO^d. may signify on the one hand an ounce weight of gold, and
ovi 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-distinction 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. 52. )

3 See " Theorien von der Masseinheit des Geldes " in *' Zur Kritik der Pol. Oekon.
&c.,"p. 53, seq. 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 notions, at least in those
cases in which they aim, not at clumsy financial operations against creditors, both
jDublic 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, 1G82," 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 proclamation, it were strange that
such proclamations have not long since been made by our Governors." (1. c, p. 36.)

74

Capitalist Production.

r

I'

■J\.

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/
just as in general the expression of the relative value of a
commodity is a statement of the equivalence of two commodities.
But although price, being the exponent of the magnitude of a
commodity's value, is the exponent of its exchange-ratio with
money, it does not follow that the exponent of this exchange-
ratio IS necessarily the exponent of the magnitude of the com-
modity's value. Suppose two equal quantities of socially
necessary labour to be respectively represented by 1 quarter
of wheat and £2 (nearly J oz. of gold), £2 is the expression in
money of the magnitude of the value of the quarter of wheat,
or is its price. If now circumstances allow of this price being
raised to £3, or compel it to be reduced to £1, then although
£1 and £3 may be too small or too great properly to express
the magnitude of the wheat's value, nevertheless they are its
prices, for they are, in the first place, the form under which its
value appears, i.e., money ; and in the second place, the ex-
ponents of its exchange-ratio with money. If the conditions
of production, in other words, if the productive power of labour
remain constant, the same amount of social labour-time must,
both before and after the change in price, be expended in the
reproduction of a quarter of wheat. This circumstance de- j
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 ^ dire qn'une valeur d'un million en argent vaut plus
qu'une valeur egale en marcliandises " (Le Trosne 1. c. p. 919), which amounts to
saying " qu'une valeur vaut plus qu'une valeur egale."

Money y or the Circulation of Commodities, 75,

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
possibilit}^ 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 v3
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 holders, and
of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities.
Hence an object may have a price without having value. The
price in that case is imaginary, like certain quantities in mathe- ^ ^
matics. On the other hand, the imaginary price-form may O
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 incorporated 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 commo- •
dity such transubstantiation may be more difficult than to the
Hegelian " concept," the transition from " necessity " to " free-
dom," or to a lobster the casting of his shell, or to Saint Jerome
the putting off of the old Adam.^ Though a commodity may,

^ Jerome had to wrestle hard, not only in his youth with the bodily flesh, as is
shown by his fight in the desert with the handsome women of his imagination, but
also in his old age with the spiritual flesh. *' I thought," he says, "I was in the
spirit before the Judge of the Universe." "Who art thou ? " asked a voice. " I am
a Christian." "Thou liest," thundered back the great Judge, "thou art nought but
a Ciceronian."

76 Capitalist Production.

side by side with its actual form (iron, for instance), 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
sulfices 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 e trascorsa

D'esta moneta gik 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 Metamorphosis of Commodities.

"We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of commodi-
ties implies contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions.
The differentiation of commodities into commodities and money
does not sweep away these inconsistencies, but developes
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
hands in which they become use- values, it is a social circula-
tion of matter. The product of one form of useful labour

Money, or the Ciradation of Com7nodities. yy

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 thata 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-
sions of relative value in which it stands face to face with all
other commodities, the sum of whose uses makes up the sum

78 Capitalist Production,

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.^ 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 difierent utility.
In like manner he procures his other means of subsistence and
means of production. From his point of view, the whole process
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 followino^ chancres in their form.

Commodity — Money — Commodity.
C M C.

The result of the whole process is, so far as concerns the

* " Ix S^ TflO -yTvpos dvTOtfjCiifiiff^oci 'ffa.itru^ (pyja-lv o 'HptxxXitrot:, xa,l <^up

^•rdvTaiv, wff-xnp ^pvffov ^p'/i[M>t,ro!. xa) ^pn[jt.a.Tuv ;t;pi'a*oj." (F. Lassalle : Die Philosophie
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, 79

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.

G — 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, although
the commodity itself is not harmed, its owner decidedly is.
The social division of labour causes his labour to be as one-sided
as his wants are many-sided. This is precisely the reason why
tne product of his labour serves him solely as exchange value.
But it cannot acquire the properties of a socially recognised
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 commodity
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 creating 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 independent commodity.
The circumstances may or may not be ripe for such a separation.
To-day the product satisfies asocial want. To-morrow the article
may, either altogether or partially, be superseded by some other
appropriate product. Moreover, although our weaver's labour
may be a recognised branch of the social division of labour,
yet that fact is by no means sufficient to guarantee the utility
of his 20 yards of linen. If the community's want of linen, and
such a want has a limit like every other want, should already

8o Capitalist Production,

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 already anticipated
in the price of the article, in the exponent of the magnitude of
its value. We leave out of consideration here 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 necessary to
the production of a yard of linen, ceases to be so to-day, a fact
which the owner of the money is only too eager to prove from
the prices quoted by our friend's competitors. Unluckily 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 efiect is the same as if
each individual weaver had expended more labour- time upon
his particular product than is socially necessar}^ 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 definite and socially fixed quantity of homo-
geneous human labour.

We see then, commodities are in love with money, but " the
course of true love never did run smooth." The quantitative

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities, 8i

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
producers, 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 ot 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 althougli 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-
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-

82 Capitalist Production,

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.^

Up to this point we have considered men in only one econo-
mical 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.
From that moment it always represents the realised price of
some commodity.^ 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.^ 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 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

1 "Toute vente est achat." (Dr. Quesnay : "Dialogues sur le Commerce et les
Travaux ties Artisans.'.' Physiocrates ed. Daire I. Partie, Paris, 184G, j). 170), or as
■Quesnay in his " Maximes generales " puts it, " Vendre est acheter."

2 " Le prix d'une marchandise ne isouvant etre paye que par le i^rix d'une autre mar-
•chandise." (Mercier de la Riviere : *' L'Ordre naturel et essentiel des societes poli-
tiques." Physiocrates, ed. Daire II. Partie, p. 554).

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

Money ^ or the Circulation of Commodities, 8

J

owe their creation, in order to transform themselves into the
uniform, socially recognised incarnation of homogeneous human
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 tliat 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.
C — M (linen — money), which is the first phase of C — M — C
(linen — money — Bible), is also M — C (money — linen), the last
])hase of another movement C — M — C (wheat — money — linen).
The first metamorphosis of one commodity, its transforma-
tion from a commodity into money, is therefore also invariably
the second metamorphosis of some other commodity, the re-
transformation of the latter from money into a commodity.^

M — (7, or jpwrchase. The second a7id concluding metamor-
phosis of a comnm^odity.

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,
define the limits of its convertibility, by pointing to its quantity.
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.

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.

84 Capitalist Production.

Representing on the one hand a sold commodity, it represents
on the other a commodity to be bought/

M — C, a purchase, is, at the same time, C — M, a sale ; the con-
chiding metamorphosis of one commodity is the first metamor-
phosis of another. With regard to our weaver, the life of his
commodity ends with the Bible, into which he has reconverted
his £2. But suppose the seller of the Bible turns the £2 set
free by the weaver into brandy. M — 0, 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 producer of a par-
ticular 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 meta-
morphosis 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 pait
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
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.

1 " Si I'argent represente, dans nos mains, les choses que nous pouvons desirer
d'acheter, il y represente aussi les choses que nous avons vendues pour cet ardent "
(Mercier de la Rividre 1. c. p. 586.)

Money ^ or the Circulation of Commodities, 85

The complete metamorphosis of a commodity, in its simjjlest
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 al
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.^

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, tlie 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 otlier
commodities. One and the same commodity, the linen, opens the
series of its own metamorphoses, and completes the metamor-
phosis of another (the wheat). In the first phase or sale, the linen
plays these two parts in its own person. But, then, changed
into gold, it completes its own second and final metamorphosis,
and helps at the same time to accomplish the first metamor-
phosis of a third commodity. Hence the circuit made by one
commodity in the course of its metamorphoses is inextricably
mixed up with the circuits of other commodities. The total

^ "II y a done . . . quatre termes et trois contractants, dont I'un intervient deux
fois." (Le Trosne 1. c. p. 909.)

86 Capitalist Prodtcction.

of all the different circuits constitutes the circulation of com-
modities.

The circulation of commodities differs from the direct ex-
change of products (barter), not onl}'' 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 prefers
something to warm his inside, no more thought of exchanging
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 labour ; and
on the other hand, how it develops a whole network of social
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-vie, 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
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 circulation, and
again money takes its place. When one commodity replaces
another, the money commodity always sticks to the hands of

Money^ or the Circulation of Commodities. 87

some third person. ^ 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 -owner 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
opposite 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
therefore be bought by the owner of the money. That identity
further implies that the exchange, if it do 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, ^.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
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-

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

88 Capitalist Production.

mentary phases of the complete metamorphosis of a commodity
become too great, if the split between the sale and the purchase
become too pronounced, the intimate connexion between them,
their oneness, asserts itself by producing — a crisis. The
antithesis, use- value and value; the contradictions that private
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 these
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 commodity.
These modes therefore imply the possibility, and no more than
the possibility, of crises. The conversion of this mere possibility
into a reality is the result of a long series of relations, that,
from our present standpoint of simple circulation, have as yet
no existence. ^

h The cwn^ency'^ of money.

The change of form, C — M — C, by which the circulation of
the material products of labour is brought about, requires that
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

1 See my observations on James Mill in ''Zur Kritik, &c.," p. 74-76. 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 barter of
products, by simple abstraction from their points of difference ; the second is, the
attempt to explain away the contradictions of capitalist production, by reducing the
relations between the persons engaged in that mode of production, to the simple rela-
tions arising out of the circulation of commodities. The production and circulation
of commodities are, however, phenomena that occur to a greater or less extent in
modes of production the most diverse. If we are acquainted with nothing but the
abstract categories of circulation, which are common to all these modes of production,
we cannot possibly know anything of the specific points of difference of those modes,
nor pronounce any judgment upon them. In no science is such a big fuss made with
commonplace truisms as in political economy. For instance, J. B. Say sets himself
up as a judge of crises, because, forsooth, he knows that a commodity is a product.

2 Translator's note. — This word is here used in its original signification of the
course or track pursued by money as it changes from hand to hand, a course which
essentially differs from circulation.

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 89

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, sell 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 a 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 alwaj^s 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
money's motion arises out of the two-sided character of the
commodity's motion, is a circumstance that is veiled over. 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-

90 Capitalist Production.

modity changes place with the money. Thereupon the com-
modity, under its aspect of a useful object, falls out of
circulation into consumption.^ 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 hy 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.^

Again, money functions as a means of circulation, only
because in it the values of commodities have independent
realit}^ 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 visible
in the currency of money. The twofold change of form in a

1 Even when the commodity is sold over and over again, a phenomenon that at
I>resent 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 as means of
subsistence or means of production.

2 " II (I'argent) n'a d'autre mouvement que celui qui lui est imprimS par les pro-
ductions." (Le Trosne I.e. p. 885.)

Money ^ or the Circulation of Commodities. 9 1

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 commo-
dity, the Bible. But each of these changes of form is accom-
plished 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 metamorphosis
puts them into the weaver's pocket, the second draws them out
of it. The two inverse changes undergone by the same com-
modity 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
in it. The question therefore arises, how much money this
sphere constantly absorbs ?

In a given country there take place every day at the same
time, but in diflferent 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

92 Capitalist Production.

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, and
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 the money itself, yet not in virtue of its function
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 replaced
by silver as the measure of value, or if, instead of the value of
silver rising, gold were to thrust silver out from being 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
value of the material of money, i.e., the value of the com-
modity that serves as the measure of value, would have under-
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

Money ^ or the Circulation of Commodities. 93

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 detei-
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 g,s
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
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
costs £2, 100 quarters will cost £200, 200 quarters £400, and
so on, that consequently the quantity of money that changes

94 Capitalist Production.

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 of
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 means
requisite that the prices of all commodities should rise or fall
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 actual
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 difierent localities : say, one
<|uarter of wheat, 20 yards of linen, one Bible, and 4 gallons of
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 in
money must go into circulation. If, on the other hand, these
same articles are links in the following chain of metamorphoses :
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 difierent 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 in form
of the commodities, to their motion in opposite directions
through two stages of circulation, and to the interlacing of the
metamorphoses of diflferent commodities.^ These antithetic and
complementary phases, of which the process of metamorphosis

^ "Ce sont les productions qui le (I'argent) mettent en mouvement et le font
circular ... La celerite de son mouvement (sc. de I'argent) supplee d, sa quantite
Lorsqu'il en est besoin, il ne fait que glisser d'une main dans I'autre sans s'arreter un
instant." (Le Trosne 1. c. pp. 915, 916.)

Money, or the Circulation of Com7nodities. 95

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 articles 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
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 rea-
lised. 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

96 Capitalist Pj'odztction.

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
abstract 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 cii^culation,
naturally attribute this retardation to a quantitative deficiency
in the circulating medium.^

1 Money being. . . the common measure of buying and selling, every body who
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 peoi)le 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 ?...(!) 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

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 97

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

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

abroad by transportation. . . ; or (3) The consumption fails, as when men, by reason
of poverty, do not spend so much in their houses as formerly they did ; wherefore it
is not the increase of specific money, which would at all advance the farmer's goods,
but the removal of any of these three causes, which do truly keep down the market.
. . . The merchant and shoiDkeeper 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.) Herren-
schwand's fanciful notions amount merely to this, that the antagonism, which has-
its origin in the nature of commodities, and is reproduced in their circulation, can be
removed by increasing the circulating medium. But if, on the one hand, it is a popu-
lar delusion to ascribe stagnation in production and circulation to insuflSciency 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.

G

98 Capitalist Prcduction.

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 quantity
of the circulating medium may decrease, owing to the number
of commodities decreasing more rapidly ; or to the velocity 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 proportionally 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
instability, the sum of the prices to be realised and the quantity
of money in circulation remains constant; consequently, we
find, especially if we take long periods into consideration, that
the deviations from the average level, of the quantity of money
current in any country, are much smaller than we should at
first sight expect, apart of course from excessive perturbations
periodically arising from industrial and commercial crises, or,
less frequently, from fluctuations in the value of money.

The law, that the quantity of the circulating medium is
determined by the sum of the prices of the commodities
circulating, and the average velocity of currency ^ 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 silver
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 com-
merce is to be taken from the number of people, the frequency of their 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] requisite in our trade,
is to be likewise taken from the frequency of commutations, and from the bigness of
the payments." (William Petty. " A Treatise on Taxes and Contributions." Lond.
1662, p. 17.) The Theory of Hume was defended against the attacks of J. Steuart and
others, by A. Young, in his "Political Arithmetic," Lond. 1774, in which work there
is a special chapter entitled "Prices depend on quantity of money," at p. 112, sqq.
J have stated in "Zur Kritik, &c.," p. 149: "He (Adam Smith) passes over

Money^ or the Circulation of Commodities, 99

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
based by those who first held 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. ^

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 Nations." Bk. IV., ch. I.) In like manner, ex officio, he opens
his work with an apotheosis on the division of labour. Afterwards, in the last book
which treats of the sources of public revenue, he occasionally repeats the denunciations
of the division of labour made by his teacher, A. Ferguson.

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 decrease
in any nation, the prices of all things must fall proportionably to such decrease of
money." (Jacob Vanderlint : "Money answers all Things." Lond. 1734, p. 5.) A
careful coniparison of this book with Hume's "Essays," proves to my mind without
doubt that Hume was acquainted with and made use of Vanderlint'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 nation 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 increases amongst them. And . . .
our manufactures, and everything else, will soon become so moderate as to turn the
balance of trade in our favour, and thereby fetch the money back again." (1. c,
pp. 43, 44.)

2 That the price of each single kind of commodity forms a part of the sum of the
prices of all the commodities in circulation, is a self-evident proposition. But how
use-values, which are incommensurable with regard to each other, are to be ex-
changed, en masse, for the total sum of gold and silver in a country, is quite incom-
prehensible. If we start from the notion that all commodities together form one
single commodity, of which each is but an aliquot part, we get the following beautiful
result : The total commodity = x c wt. of gold ; commodity A = an aliquot part of the

lOO Capitalist Prodttdion,

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
the other.^ But no sooner does coin leave the mint, than it

total commodity = the same aliquot part of x cwt. of gold. This is stated in all
seriousness by Montesquieu : "Si I'on compare la masse de I'or et de I'argent qui est
dans le monde avec la somme des marchandises qui y sont, il est certain que chaque
denree ou marchandise, en j)articulier, pourra 6tre compar^e fi une certaine portion
de le masse entiere. Supposons qu'il n'y ait qu'une seule denree ou marchandise dans le
monde, ou qu'il n'y ait qu'une seule qui s'achete, et qu'elle se divise comme I'argent :
Cette partie de cette marchandise repondra sL une partie de la masse de I'argent ; la
moiti6 du total de I'une h, la moiti6 du total de I'autre, &c. . . . I'etablissemeut
du prix des choses depend toujours fondamentalement de la raison du total des choses
au total des signes." (Montesquieu 1. c. t III., pp. 12, 13.) As to the further devel-
opment of this theory by Ricardo and his disciples, James Mill, Lord Overstone, and
others, see "Zur KrJtik," &c., pp. 140-146, and p. 150, sqq. John Stuart Mill, with
his usual eclectic logic, understands how to hold at the same time the view of his
father, James Mill, and the opposite view. On a comparison of the text of his
compendium, ''Principles of Pol. Econ.," with his preface to the first adition, in
which preface he announces himself as the Adam Smith of his day — we do not know
whether to admire more the simplicity of the man, or that of the public, who took
him, in good faith, for the Adam Smith he announced himself to be, although he bears
about as much resemblance to Adam Smith as say General Williams, of Kars, to the
Duke of Wellington. The original researches of Mr. J. S. Mill, which are neither
extensive nor profound, in the domain of political economy, will be found mustered
in rank and file in his little work, " Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy,"
which appeared in 1844. Locke asserts point blank the connexion 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 intrinsick value, regarded in these metals, is nothing but the quantity."
("Some considerations, "&c., 1691, AVorks Ed. 1777, vol. IL, p. 15.)

1 It lies, of course, entirely beyond my purpose to take into consideration such
details as the seigniorage on minting. I will, however, cite for the benefit of the
romantic sycophant, Adam BluUer, who admires the "generous liberality" with

Money, or the Ciradation of Commodities. loi

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
j^rices, 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 lonojer leojal 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
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

which the English Government coins gratuitously, the following opinion of Sir
Dudley North: "Silver and gold, like other commodities, have their ebbings and
Sowings. 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
fiilver 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.

I02 Capitalist Prodtution.

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 arc
subject 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 permanent^ 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
beinor changed into tokens. ^

o o

The weight of metal in the silver and copper tokens is^
arbitrarily fixed by law. When in currency, they wear away
even more rapidly than gold coins. Hence their functions arc
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 que le premier pas qui
coute.

We allude here only to inconvertible paper money issued by
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

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 of gold in
the main payments necessarily implies also its use in the retail trade : those who
have gold coin ojffering them for small purchases, and receiving with the commodity
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 dispersed into general
circulation. But if there is as much silver as will transact the small payments in-
dependent of gold, the retail trader must then receive silver for small purchases ;
and it must of necessity accumulate in his hands." (David Buchanan. " Inquiry inta
the Taxation and Commercial Policy of Great Britain." Edinburgh, 1844, pp. 248, 249. >

Money y or the Circulation of Commodities, 103

standpoint of the simple circulation of commodities, are as yet
totally unknown to us. But we may affirm this much, that
just as true paper money takes its rise in the function of money
as the circulating medium, so money based upon credit takes
root spontaneously in the function of money as the means of
payment.^

The State puts in circulation bits of paper on which their
various denominations, say £1, £5, &ic., 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
liuctuates about a given level. Still, the mass of the circulating
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-
tion. It can therefore be replaced by paper symbols. If, on
the other hand, all the conduits of circulation were to-day filled
with paper money to the full extent of their capacity for

1 The mandarin Wan-mao-in, the Chinese Chancellor of the Exchequer, took it into
his head one day to lay before the Son of Heaven a proposal that secretly aimed at
converting the assignats of the empire into convertible bank notes. The assignats
Committee, in its report of April, 1854, gives him a severe snubbing. 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 pro-
posal and finds that it is entirely in favour of the merchants, and that no advantage
will result to the crown." (Arbeiten der Kaiserlich Russischen Gcsandtschaft zu
Peking iiber China. Aus dem Eussischen 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 during currency : " Every year a fresh class of
sovereigns becomes too light. The class which one year passes with full weight,
loses enougli by wear and tear to draw the scales next year against it." (House of
Lords' Committee, 1848, n. 429.)

T04 Capitalist Production.

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 in gold coins of
the like denomination that can actually be current, it would,
apart from the danger of falling into general disrepute, re-
present only that quantity of gold, which, in accordance with
the laws of the circulation of commodities, is required, and is
alone capable of being represented by paper. If the quantity
of paper money issued be double what it ought to be, then, as
a matter of fact, £1 would be the money-name not of \ of an
ounce, but of \ of an ounce of gold. The eftect 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. ^

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-
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

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 functions :
"That, as far as concerns our domestic exchanges, all the monetary functions 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 conven-
tional 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, provided only the quantity
of issues be kept under due limitation." (Fullarton: " Regulation of Currencies,"
London, 1844, p. 21.) Because the commodity that serves as money is capable
of being replaced in circulation by mere symbols of value, therefore its functions as
a measure of value and a standard of prices are declared to be superfluous !

Money ^ or the Circulation of Commodities. 105

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 actually
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 ex-
clusively for that purpose. Its movement therefore represents
nothing but the continued alternation of the inverse phases of
the metamorphosis C — M — C, phases in which commodities con-
front their value-forms, only to disappear again immediately.
The independent existence of the exchange value of a com-
modity 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. ^ 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.

SECTION 3. — MONEY.

The commodity that functions as a measure of value, and,

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 currency of the money
that men regard in bargaining, and not the quantity of silver . . . 'Tis tlie
public authority upon the metal that makes it money." (N. Barbon, 1. c, pp. 29, 30,
25.)

io6 Capitalist Production.

cither 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. ^ 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-
tionally alienable form, or as its merely transient money-form.

1 " Une richesse en argent n'est que . . . richesse en productions, converties
en argent." (Mercier de la Eiviere, 1. c.) "Une valeur en productions n'a fait que
changer de forme." (Id., p. 486.)

Money ^ or the Circulation of Commodities, loj

The money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller
becomes a hoarder of monej^-.

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. Vanderlint,
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, the}^ buried 150 millions of pounds sterling
of silver, which originally came from America to Europe.^ 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 developes, every
producer of commodities is compelled to make sure of the
nexus rerum or the social pledge.^ 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).^ And subsequent sales, by other

1 " 'Tis by this practice they keep all their goods and manufactures at such low-
rates." (Vanderlint, 1. c, p. 96.)

'-* "Money . . . is a pledge." { John Bellers : " Essays about the Poor, Manufacturers,
Trade, Plantations, and Immorality," Lond., 1699, p. 13.)

3 A purchase, in a " categorical " sense, implies that gold and silver are already the
converted form of commodities, or the product of a sale.

io8 Capitalist Production,

producers, unfoUowed by purchases, merely bring about the
distribution of the newly produced precious metals among all
the owners of commodities. In this way, all along the line of
exchange, hoards of gold and silver of varied extent are ac-
cumulated. With the possibility of holding and storing up
exchange value in the shape of a particular commodity, arises
also the greed for gold. Along with the extension of circula-
tion, increases the power of money, that absolutely social form
of wealth ever ready for use. " Gold is a wonderful thing !
Whoever possesses it is lord of all he wants. By means of
gold one can even get souls into Paradise." (Columbus in his
letter from Jamaica, 1503.) Since gold does not disclose what
has been transformed into it, everj^thing, 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 aga^in as a gold-
crystal. Not even are the bones of saints, and still less are
more delicate res sacrosanctse extra commercium hominum
able to withstand this alchemy.^ 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.^ But money itself is a commodity,

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

2 " 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 -Athers.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities, 109

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.^ Modern society, which, soon after its birth, pulled
Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth, ^
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 values 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 convertible
into any other commodity. But, at the same time, every actual
sum of money is limited in amount, and, therefore, as a means

^ " Ol'^sv yctf av^puTOKTiv elov apyvpos

Kkkov vofjcifffAU i^Xuffri'ToVTO xal -roXn;
Ilophi, ToV eiv'^pas i^avia-rfj'rtv 'h'ofjt.uv.
ToV ixhthxTKii xkI •Ttt.ptt.XXdfftni (ppivas
Xp*i(rrcis 'Tpos alff^pcL avdpuTon ix*'*i
Kal ^avTOi ^pyev ^vctr'sfiiieiv it^ivai.'''

(Sophocles, Antigone).

' " 'EX-ri^ova-rif riji ^Xiovt^ias dvd^nv Ix, rav f/.v^uv rrji yijs avrov rov Uy.ovruvct"

(Athen. Deipnos.)

no Capitalist Prodtiction.

of purchasing, has only a limited efficacy. This antagonism
between the quantitative limits of money and its qualitative
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. ^

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 conditions
to which the currency of gold and silver coins is subject. 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 expansion
and contraction. At one time money must be attracted in
order to act as circulating coin, at another, circulating coin must
be repelled in order to act again as more or less stagnant money.

1 "Accrescere quanto piu si puo il numero de' venditori d'ogni merce, diminuere
quanto pid si puo il numero dei compratori, questi sono i cardini sui quail si raggirano
tutte le operazioni di economia politica." (Verri, l.c. p. 52.)

Money ^ or the Circulation of Commodities, 1 1 1

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

h. Means of Payment

In the simple form of the circulation of commodities hitherto
•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, another
^ 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. Commodity-
owner No. 1, may therefore be ready to sell, before No. 2 is
ready to buy. When the same transactions are continually

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 circum-
stances 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 oflBcial of the East India Company, confirms the fact that in India silver orna-
ments 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 import of gold and silver in 1863 exceeded
the export by £19,367,764. During the 8 years immediately preceding 1864, the
excess of imports over exports of the precious metals amounted to £109,652,917.
During this century far more than £200,000,000 has been coined in India.

112 Capitalist Production.

repeated between the same persons, the conditions of sale are
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 there-
fore buys it before he pays for it. The vendor sells an exist-
ing commodity, the purchaser buys as the mere representative
of money, or rather of future money. The vendor becomes a
creditor, the purchaser becomes a debtor. Since the metamor-
phosis of commodities, or the development of their value-form,
appears here under a new aspect, money also acquires a fresh
function ; it becomes the means of payment.

The character of creditor, or of debtor, results here from the
simple circulation. The change in the form of that circulation
stamps buyer and seller with this new die. At first, therefore,
these new parts are just as transient and alternating as those of
seller and buyer, and are in turns played by the same actors.
But the opposition is not nearly so pleasant, and is far more
capable of crystallization.^ The same characters can, however,
be assumed independently of the circulation of commodities.
The class-struggles of the ancient world took the form chiefly
of a contest between debtors and creditors, which in Rome
ended in the ruin of the plebeian debtors. They were dis-
placed by slaves. In the middle-ages the contest ended with
the ruin of the feudal debtors, who lost their political 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 conditions of
existence of the classes in question.

Let us return to the circulation of commodities. The
appearance of the two equivalents, commodities and money, at
the two poles of the process of sale, has ceased to be simulta-

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, 113

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

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

1 It will be seen from the following quotation from my book which appeared ia
1859, why I take no notice in the text of an opposite form : * 'Contrariwise, in the pro-
cess 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 EnglisL

H

114 Capitalist Pi^oduciion.

The obligations falling due within a given period, represent
the sum of the prices of the commodities, the sale of which
gave rise to those obligations. The quantity of gold necessary
to realise this sum, depends, in the first instance, on the
rapidity of currency of the means of payment. That quantity
is conditioned by two circumstances : first the relations be-
tween debtors and creditors form a sort of chain, in such a way
that A, when he receives money from his debtor B, straight-
way hands it over to C his creditor, and so on ; the second
circumstance is the length of the intervals between the
different due- days of the obligations. The continuous chain
of payments, 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
movement 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
quantities. There thus remains only a single balance
to pay. The greater the amount of the payments concen-
trated, 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

government purchases opium from the ryots of India. ... In these cases, however, the
money always acts as a means of purchase. ... Of course capital also is ad-
vanced in the shape of money. . . . This point of view, however, does not fall
within the horizon of simple circulation." ("Zur Kj-itik." &c., pp. 119, 120.)

Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 115

contradiction without a terminus medius. In so far as the
payments balance one another, money functions only ideally
as money of account, as a measure of value. In so far as actual
payments have to be made, money does not serve as a circu-
lating medium, as a mere transient agent in the interchange
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.^ 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 immedi-
ately 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 valueless,
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 intoxicating prosperity, declares
money to be a vain imagination. Commodities alone are
money. But now the cry is everywhere : money alone is a
commodity ! As the hart pants after fresh water, so pants his
soul after money, the only wealth.^ In a crisis, the antithesis
between commodities and their value-form, money, becomes
heightened into an absolute contradiction. Hence, in such
events, the form under which money appears is of no import-

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 mone-
tary 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 there-
fore the sphere of that capital, viz., banking, the stock exchange, and finance.

2 ' ' The sudden reversion from a system of credit to a system of hard cash heaps
theoretical fright on top of the practical panic ; and the dealers by whose agency
circulation is affected, shudder before the impenetrable mystery in which their own
economical relations are involved " (Karl Marx, 1. c. p. 126). "The poor stand still, be-
cause the rich have no money to emjjloy 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 : " Proposals for raising a Colledge
of Industry," Lond. 1695. p. 3.)

1 1 6 Capitalist Production.

ance. The money famine continues, whether payments have
to be made in gold or in credit money such as bank-notes/

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, rapidity
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.^

Credit-money springs directly out of the function of money
as a means of payment. Certificates of the debts owing for the

1 The following shows how such times are exploited by the "amis du commerce."
' ' On one occasion (1839) an old grasping banker (in the city) in his private room raised
the lid of the desk he sat over, and displayed to a friend rolls of banknotes, saying
with intense glee there were £000,000 of them, they were held to make money tight,
and would all be let our after three o'clock on the same day." ("The Theory of
Exchanges. The Bank Charter Act of 1844." Lond. 1864. p. 81.) The Obsei-ver, 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 Questionable 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."

2 ' ' 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, cither 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 altogether
indefinite, bills at 12, 6, 3 months or 1 often aggregating together to swell the common
liabilities of one particular day. . . . " (" The Currency Theory Keviewed ; a
letter to the Sc(fttish people." By a Banker in England. Edinburgh, 1845, pp. 29, 30
passim.)

Mo7tey^ or the Circulation of Co7n7nodities, \\^

purchased commodities circulate for the purpose of transferring
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.^

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
becomes the commodity that is the universal subject-matter of
all contracts.^ Eents, 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 Eoman Empire twice failed in its attempt to levy
all contributions in money. The unspeakable misery of the
French agricultural population under Louis XI Y., a misery so
eloquently denounced by Boisguillebert, Marshal Vauban, and
others, was due not only to the weight of the taxes, but also

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
millions of pounds sterling, are here reduced to the scale of one million.

Receipts.

Paymrnts.

Bankers' and Merchants' Bills

Bills payable after date.

- £302,674

payable after date,

£533,596

Cheques on London Bankers,

- 663,672

Cheques on Bankers,

&c..

Bank of England Notes,

22,743

l^ayable on demand, -

357,715

Gold, - - - -

9:427

Country Notes,

9,627

Silver and Copper,

1,484

Bank of England Notes,

68,554

Gold, ....

28,089

Silver and Copper,

1,486

Post Office Orders,

. .

933

Total,

Total,

61,000,000

£1,000,000

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

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

1 1 8 Capitalist Prodtiction,

to the conversion of taxevS in kind into money taxes.^ 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 con-
servation 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 clcsely 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.^

From the law of the rapidity of currency of the means of

1 " L'argent ... est devenu le bourreau de toutes choses." Finance is the " alambic,
qui a fait evaporer nne quantite effroyable de biens et de denrees pour faire ce fatal
precis." "L'argent declare la guerre k tout le genre humain." (Boisguillebert :
" Dissertation sur la nature des richesses, de l'argent et des tributs." Edit. Daire»
Economistes financiers. Paris, 1843, t. i. , pp. 413, 419, 417. )

2 " On Whitsuntide, 1824," says Mr Craig before the Commons' Committee of 182G,
"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 transactions
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." Lend : 1844, p. 85 note). In explanation it should be stated,
that in Scotland, at the date of FuUarton's work, notes and not cheques were used to
withdraw deposits.

Money ^ 07"" the Circtdation of Commodities. 119

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.
The development of money into a medium of payment
makes it necessary to accumulate money against the dates
lixed for the payment of the sums owing. While hoarding, as
a distinct mode of acquiring riches, vanishes with the progress
of civil society, the formation of reserves of the means of pay-
ment 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 To the question, "If there were occasion to raise 40 millions p. a., whether the
same 6 millions (gold) . . . would suffice for such revolutions and circulations thereof,
as trade requires," Petty replies in his usual masterly manner, " I answer yes : for the
expense being 40 millions, if the revolutions were in such short circles, viz., weekly,
as happens among poor artizans and labourers, who receive and pay every Satui'day,
then \% parts of 1 million of money would answer these ends ; but if the circles be
quarterly, according to our custom of paying rent, and gathering taxes, then 10
millions were requisite. Wherefore, supposing payments in general to be of a mixed
circle between one week and 13, then add 10 millions to |§, the half of which will
be 5.3, so as if we have 5| millions we have enough." (William Petty : " Political
Anatomy of Ireland." 1672. Edit. : Lond. 1691, pp. 13. 14.)

2 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

I20 Capitalist Production.

Money of the world serves as the universal medium of
payment, as the universal means of purchasing, and as the
universally 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.^ Gold and silver serve as international 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.^

Just as every country needs a reserve of money for its home
circulation, so, too, it requires one for external circulation in

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. 136 sq. Sir Eobert 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 exceed more than
one-fourth of the reserve of gold. The value of silver being for that purpose estimated
at its price in the London market.

1 The opponents, themselves, of the mercantile system, a system which considered
the settlement of surplus trade balances in gold and silver as the aim of international
trade, entirely misconceived the functions of money of the world. I have shown by
the example of Ricardo in what way their false conception of the laws that regulate
the quantity of the circulating medium, is reflected in their equally false conception
of the international movement of the precious metals (1. c. pp. 150 sq.) His
erroneous dogma: "An unfavourable balance of trade never arises but from a re-
dundant currency. . . . The exportation of the coin is caused by its cheapness, and
is not the effect, but the cause of an unfavourable balance," already occurs inBarbon:
" The Balance of Trade, if there be one, is not the cause of sending away the money
out of a nation ; but that proceeds from the difference of the value of bullion in
every country." (N. Barbon ; 1. c. pp. 59, 60.) MacCulloch in "the Literature of
Political Economy, a classified catalogue, Lond. 1845," praises Barbon for this anti-
cipation, but prudently passes over the naive forms, in which Barbon clothes the
absurd supposition on which the "currency principle " is based. The absence of real
criticism and even of honesty, in that catalogue, culminates 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 "facile princeps argentariorum."

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

Money ^ or the Circulation of Commodities. 121

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.^ 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
till the conduits of currency, to replace abraded gold and silver
coins, to supply the material of articles of luxury, and to
petrify into hoards.^ This first current is started by the
countries that exchange their labour, realised 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 exchano^e.^

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

1 " I would desire, indeed, no more convincing evidence of the competency of bhe
machinery of the hoards in specie-paying countries to perform every necessary oflSce
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 consider-
able proportion of the sum in specie, without any perceptible contraction or derange-
ment of her domestic currency, or even any alarming fluctuation of her exchanges.'*
(FuUarton, 1. c, p. 134.)

2 " L'argent se partage entre les nations relativement au besoin qu'elles en ont . . .
ctant tou jours attir6 par les productions." (Le Trosne 1. c, p. 916.) " The mines
which are continually giving gold and silver, do give suflBcient to supply such a need-
ful balance to every nation." (J. Yanderlint, 1. c, p. 40.)

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

122 Capitalist Production.

the proper performance of their peculiar functions.^ 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.^

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

2 " 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 transported 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 :
" Quail tulumcunque," 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 accounts . . 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 circulation
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 property,
invariably takes the form at first of money; it appears as
moneyed wealth, as the capital of the merchant and of the
usurer.^ But we have no need to refer to the origin of capital
in order to discover that the first form of appearance of capital
is money. We can see it daily under our very eyes. All new
capital, to commence with, comes on the stage, that is, on the
market, whether of commodities, labour, or money, even in our

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, " NuUe terre sans
seigneur," and " L'argent n'a pas de maitre."

124 Capitalist Production.

days, in the shape of money that by a definite process has to
be transformed into capital.

The first distinction we notice between money that is money
only, and money that is capital, is nothing more than a diflfer-
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 diflferent form: M — C — M, the transformation of
money into commodities, and the change of commodities back
again into money ; or buying in order to sell. Money that
circulates in the latter manner is thereby transformed into, be-
comes capital, and is already potentially capital.

Now let us examine the circuit M — C — M a little closer. It
consists, like the other, of two antithetical phases. In the first
phase, M — C, or the purchase, the money is changed into a com-
modity. In the second phase, C — M, or the sale, the commodity
is changed back again into money. The combination 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 commodity is bought in order
to be sold, or, neglecting the distinction in form between buying
and selling, whereby a commodity is bought with money, and
then money is bought with a commodit}^^ The result, in which
the phases of the process vanish, is the exchange of money for
money, M— M. If I purchase 2000 lbs. of cotton for £100, and
resell the 2000 lbs. of cotton for £110, 1 have, in fact, exchanged
£100 for £110, money for money.

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

1 "Avec de I'argent on achete des marchandises, et avec des marchandises on
acliete de I'argent." (Mercier de la Eiviere : *' L'ordre natural et essentiel des societ^s
politiques," j), 543.)

The General Foi'imda for Capital. 125

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 personse, a buyer and a
seller — confront one another. Each circuit is the unity of the
same two antithetical phases, and in each case this unity is
brought about by the intervention of three contracting parties,
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 contrary,
the buyer lays out money in order that, as a seller, he
may recover money. By the purchase of his commodity
he 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

126 Capitalist Production.

back again. The money, therefore, is not spent, it is merely
advanced/

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

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

The circuit C — M — C comes completely to an end, so soon
as the money bi ought in by the sale of one commodity is
abstracted again by the purchase of another.

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

1 ' ' When a thing is bought in order to be sold again, the sum employed is called
money advanced ; when it is bought not to be sold, it may be said to be expended." —
(James Steuart : " AVorks," &c. Edited by Gen. Sir James Steuart, his son. Lond.,
1805. V. I., p. 274.)

The General Formula for Capital, 127

purchase. Therefore, in the circuit C — M — C, the expenditure
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 com-
modities, 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 circulation 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 qualitatively 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 exchanging money for money, the same for
the same, and appears to be an operation just as purposeless as
it is absurd.^ One sum of money is distinguishable from another

1 **0n n'echange pas de Vargent centre de I'argent," says Mercier de la Riviere to
the Mercantilists (1. c, p. 486.) In a work, which, ex professo, treats of " trade " and
"speculation,'- occurs the following : " All trade consists in the exchange of things
of different kinds; and the advantage" (to the merchant?) "arises out of this
difference. To exchange a pound of bread against a pound of bread ....
would be attended with no advantage ; . . . . Hence trade is advantageously-
contrasted with gambling, which consists in a mere exchange of money for money."
(Th. Corbet, " An Inquiry into the Causes and Modes of the Wealth of Individuals ;
or the Principles of Trade and Speculation explained." London, 1841, p. 5.) Although
Corbet does not see that M — M, the exchange of money for money, is the characteristic

',..^

128 Capitalist Production,

only by its amount. The character and tendency of the pro-
cess M — C — M, is therefore not due to any qualitative difference
between its extremes, both being money, but solely to their
quantitative difference. More money is withdrawn from circula-
tion 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 therefore M —
G — M', where M' = M + A M = the original sum advanced,
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 circulation, but adds
to itself a surplus-value or expands itself It is this movement
that converts it into capital.

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

The repetition or renewal of the act of selling in order to
buy, is kept within bounds by the very object it aims at,
namely, consumption or the satisfaction of definite wants, an
aim that lies altogether outside the sphere of circulation. But
when we buy in order to sell, we, on the contrary, begin and

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 species of trade, viz.,
speculation : but then comes MacCulloch and makes out, that to buy in order to sell,
is to speculate, and thus the difference between Speculation and Trade vanishes.
"Every transaction in which an individual buys produce in order to sell it again, is,
in fact, a speculation." (MacCulloch : " A Dictionary Practical, &c., of Commerce."
Lond., 1847, p. 1058.) With much more naivete, Pinto, the Pindar of the Amster-
dam Stock Exchange, remarks, " Le commerce est un jeu : (taken from Locke) et ce
u'est pas avec des gueux qu'on peut gagner. Si Ton gagnait long-temps en tout avec
fcous, il faudrait rendre de bon accord les plus grandes i)arties du profit pour recom-
mencer le jeu." (Pinto : " Traite de la Circulation et du Credit." Amsterdam, 1771,
p. 231.)

The General For mtda for Capital, 129

end with the same thing, money, exchange- value ; and thereby
the movement becomes interminable. No doubt, M becomes
M -f ^ M, £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.^ 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 renewed
movement. The circulation of capital has therefore no limits.^

1 " Capital is divisible .... into the original capital and the profit, the increment
to the capital .... although in j)ractice 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 Juhrbiicher, herausgegeben von
Arnold Ruge und Karl Marx." Paris, 1844, p. 99.)

2 Aristotle opposes CEconomic 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.

130 Capitalist Production.

As the conscious representative of this movement, the
possessor of money becomes a capitalist. His person, 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 — C — M,
becomes his subjective aim, and it is only in so far as the
appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract
becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he functions as
a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and endowed with
consciousness and a will. Use-values must therefore never
be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist;^ neither
must the profit on any single transaction. The restless never-
ending process of profit-making alone is what he aims at.^

that are necessary to existence, and useful either to a household or the sta,te. *' True
wealth (0 dXn^ivos ^kovroi) 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 {h xacr»jX/x« is literally retail trade, and
Aristotle takes this kind because in it values in use predominate) does not in its
natm-e 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 xwrnXixhf into trading in commodities, and this again, in opposition to
its original tendency, grew into Chrematistic, into the art of making money. Now
Chrematistic is distinguishable from (Economic in this way, that " in the case of
Chrematistic, circulation is the source of riches {-roLtiTixh ;^prif/.ciTa>v . . . . 'hia
XpvfcdTcuv ltaP>o\ris). And it appears to revolve about money, for money is the be-
ginning and end of this kind of exchange (to yap vofjuffjia o-roix'-'tov xai -r'tpai rrj:
tkWayTJs IffTiv). 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. " (Aristoteles De
Rep. edit. Bekker. lib. I. c. 8, 9. passim.)

1 "Commodities (here used in the sense of use-values) are not the terminating object
of the trading capitalist, money is his terminating object." (Th. Chalmers, On Pol,
Econ. &c., 2nd Ed., Glasgow, 1832, p. 165, 16G.)

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

The Geiteral FormiUa for Capital, 1 3 1

This boundless greed after riches, this passionate chase after
exchange- value,! 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 augmentation
of exchange-value, which the miser strives after, by seeking to
save^ his money from circulation, is attained by the more acute
capitalist, by constantly throwing it afresh into circulation.^

The independent form, i.e.y 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 circula-
tion 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.^ 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 suc-
cessively assumes in the course of its life, we then arrive at
these two propositions : Capital is money : Capital is com-
modities.'^ 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, expands spon-
taneously. For the movement, in the course of which it adds
surplus value, is its own movement, its expansion, therefore, is

1 " The inextinguishable passion for gain, the auri sacra fames, will always lead
capitalists." (MacCuUoch: " 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.

2 ^oZ,iiv is a characteristic Greek expression for hoarding. So in English to save
has the same two meanings : sauver and epargner.

3 " Questo infinito che le cose non hanno in progresso, hanno in giro." (Galiani.)

4 *' Ce n'est pas la matiere qui fait le capital, mais la valgur de ces matieres." (J.
B. Say : "Traite de I'Econ. Polit." 3 erne. ed. Paris, 1817, t. 1., p. 428.)

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

132 Capitalist ProdtLctioii.

automatic expansion. Because it is value, it has acquired the
occult quality of being able to add value to itself. It brings
forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

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

In simple circulation, C — M — C, the value of commodities
attained at the most a form independent of their use-values, i.e.,
the form of money ; but that same value now in the circulation
M — C — M, or the circulation of capital, suddenly presents itself
as an independent substance, endowed with a motion of its own,
passing through a life- process of its own, in which money and
commodities are mere forms which it assumes and casts off in
turn. Nay, more : instead of simply representing the relations
of commodities, it enters now, so to say, into private relations
with itself. It differentiates itself as original value from itself
as surplus- value; as the father differentiates himself from himself
qua the son, yet both are one and of one age: for only by the surplus
value of £10 does the £100 originally advanced become capital,
and so soon as this takes place, so soon as the son, and by the
son, the father, is begotten, so soon does their difference vanish,
and they again become one, £110.

Value therefore now becomes value in process, money in pro-
cess, and, as such, capital. It comes out of circulation, enters

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital, 133

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.^ 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 com-
modities, and by the sale of these commodities, is re-converted
into more money. The events that take place outside the
sphere of circulation, in the interval between the buying and
selling, do not affect the form of this movement. Lastly, in the
case of interest-bearing capital, the circulation M — C — M'
appears abridged. We have its result without the intermediate
stage, in the form M — M', " en style lapidaire " so to say, money
that is worth more money, value that is greater than itself.

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

CHAPTER V.

CONTRADICTIONS IN THE GENERAL FORMULA OF CAPITAL.

The form which circulation takes when money becomes
capital, 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
order of succession of the two antithetical processes, sale and
purchase. How can this purely formal distinction between
these processes change their character as it were by magic ?

But that is not all. This inversion has no existence for two
out of the three persons who transact business together. As
capitalist, I buy commodities from A and sell them again to B,

1 Capital : " portion fructifiante de la richesse accumulee . . . valeur permanente,
multipliante." (Sismondi : "Nouveaux principes de I'econ, polit.," t. 1., p. 88, 89.)

134 Capitalist Production.

but as a simple owner of commodities, I sell them to B and then
purchase fresh ones from A. A and B see no difference
between the two sets of transactions. They are merely buyers
or sellers. And I on each occasion meet them as a mere owner
of either money or commodities, as a buyer or a seller, and,
what is more, in both sets of transactions, I am opposed to A
only as a buyer and to B only as a seller, to the one only as

(money, to the other only as commodities, and to neither of I
them as capital or a capitalist, or as representative of anything I
that is more than money or commodities, or that can produce |
any effect beyond what money and commodities can. For me
the purchase from A and the sale to B are part of a series.
But the connexion between the two acts exists for me alone.
A does not trouble himself about my transaction with B, nor
does B about my business with A. And if I offered to explain
to them the meritorious nature of my action in inverting the
order of succession, they would probably point out to me that
I was mistaken as to that order of succession, and that the
whole transaction, instead of beginning with a purchase and
ending with a sale, began, on the contrary, with a sale and was
concluded with a purchase. In truth, my first act, the purchase,
was from the standpoint of A, a sale, and my second act, the
sale, was from the standpoint of B, a purchase. Not content f
with that, A and B would declare that the whole series was I
superfluous and nothing but Hokus Pokus ; that for the future (
A would buy direct from B, and B sell direct to A. Thus the
whole transaction would be reduced to a single act forming an
isolated, non-complemented phase in the ordinary circulation
of commodities, a mere sale from A's point of view, and from
B's, a mere purchase. The inversion, therefore, of the order of
succession, does not take us outside the sphere of the simple
circulation of commodities, and we must rather look, whether
there is in this simple circulation anything permitting an ex-
pansion ' of the value that enters into circulation, and, con-
sequently, 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 commodities.
This is always the case when two owners of commodities buy

Contradictions in the Formida of Capital. 135

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 express the value of the
commodities by their prices, but is not, itself, in the shape of
hard cash, confronted with them. So far as regards use-values,
it is clear that both parties may gain some advantage. Both
part with goods that, as use-values, are of no service to them,
and receive others that they can make use of. And there may
also be a further gain. A, who sells wine and buys corn,
possibly produces more wine, with given labour time, than \^
farmer B could, and B, on the other hand, more corn than .^J
wine-grower A could. A, therefore, may get, for the same x ^
exchange value, more corn, and B more wine, than each w^ould ^v^
respectively get without any exchange by producing his own '
corn and wine. With reference, therefore, to use- value, there
is good ground for saying that " exchange is a transaction by ] ^ ^
which both sides gain." ^ It is otherwise with exchange-value. ^^Vi
" A man who has plenty of wine and no corn treats with a man
who has plenty of corn and no wine ; an exchange takes place
between them of com 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." ^ The result is not altered by
introducing money, as a medium of circulation, between the
commodities, and making the sale and the purchase two distinct
acts.^ The value of a commodity is expressed in its price
before it goes into circulation, and is therefore a precedent
condition of circulation, not its result.*

Abstractedly considered, that is, apart from circu instances
not immediately flowing from the laws of the simple circulation
of commodities, there is in an exchange nothing (if we except

"i "L'echange est une transaction admirable dans laquelle les deux contractants
gagnent — toujours (!) " (Destutt de Tracy : "Traite de la Volonte et de ses effets."
Paris, 182G, p. 68.) This work appeared afterwards as " Traite de I'Econ. Polit."

2 " Mercier de la Eiviere," 1. c. p. 544.

s " Que I'une de ces deux valeurs soit argent, ou qu'elles soient toutes deux mar.
cbandises usuelles, rien de plus indifferent en soi." ("Mercier de la Eiviere," 1. c. p. 543. )

4 " Ce ne sont pas les contractants qui prononcent sur la valeur ; elle est decidee
avant la convention." (" Le Trosne," p. 906.)

N

V

Capitalist Pi'od action,

the replacing of one use-value by another) but a metamorphosis,
NJa mere change in the form of the commodity. The same
; exchange value, i.e., the same quantity of incorporated social
labour, remains throughout in the hands of the owner of the
commodity, first in the shape of his own commodity, then in
^ the form of the money for which he exchanged it, and lastly,
/'' in the shape of the commodity he buys with that money.
^^This change of form does not imply a change in the magnitude
of the value. But the change, which the value of the
commodity undergoes in this process, is limited to a change in
its money form. This form exists first as the price of the com-
modity 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 sove-
reigns and shillings. So far therefore as the circulation 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
J is nil. If therefore, as regards the use- values exchanged, 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." ^ It is true,
commodities may be sold at prices deviating from their values,
but these deviations are to be considered as infractions of the
laws of the exchange of commodities," which in its normal
state is an exchange of equivalents, consequently, no method
for increasing value.^

Hence, we see that behind all attempts to represent the

1 "Dove d egualit^ non d lucro." (Galiani, "Delia Moneta in Custodi, Parte
Moderna," t. iv. p. 244.)

2 " L'ccliange devient d^savautageux pour I'une des parties, lorsque quelque chose
efcrangere vient diminuer ou exagerer le i)rix ; alors I'cgalite est bless6e, mais la lesion
precede de cette cause et non de I'echange." (" Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 904.)

3 "L'echange est de sa nature un contrat d'egalite qui se fait de valeur pour valeur
egale. II n'est done pas un moyen de s'enrichir, isuisque I'on donne autant que Ton
resoit." C" Le Trosne," L c. p. 903.)

Contradictions in the Foi^mula of Capital, 137

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

2 LeTrosne, therefore, answers his friend Condillac with justice as follows: "Dans
vine . . . society formee il n'y a pas de surabondant en aucun genre." At the same time,
in a bantering way, he remarks : "If both the persons who exchange receive 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 exchange -value
that he has been chosen by Herr Professor Wilhelm Koscher as a proper person
to answer for the soundness of his own childish notions. See Roscher's "Die Grund-
lagen der Nationalokonomie, Dritte Auflage," J 858.

T

^

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 oficr for sale articles required for our own
consumption. . . . We wish to part with a useless thing, in
order to get one that we need ; we want to give less for more.
... It was natural to think that, in an exchange, value was
given for value, whenever each of the articles 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." ^ We see in this passage, how Con-
dillac 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 subsistence, and throws into circu-
lation only the excess over his own requirements.^ Still,
Condillac's argument is frequently used by modern economists,
more especially when the point is to show, that the exchange
of commodities in its developed form, commerce, is productive * V
of surplus- value. For instance, " Commerce .... adds value to ^

products, for the same products in the hands of consumers, are ja

worth more than in the hands of producers, and it may strictly p nJ

^

^

138 Capitalist Production,

be considered an act of production." ^ 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 serviceable 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 exchange-
value, and consequently equivalents, are exchanged, it is plain
that no one abstracts more value from, than he throws into,
circulation. There is no creation of surplus-value. And, in
its normal form, the circulation of commodities demands the
exchange of equivalents. But in actual practice, the process
does not retain its normal form. Let us, therefore, assume an
exchange of non-equivalents.

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

Suppose then, that by some inexplicable privilege, the seller
is enabled to sell his commodities above their value, what is
worth 100 for 110, in which case the price is nominally raised
10%. The seller therefore pockets a surplus value of 10.
But after he has sold he becomes a buyer. A third owner of
commodities comes to him now as seller, who in this capacity
also enjoys the privilege of selling his commodities 10% too

1 S. p. Newman: "Elements of Polit. Econ." Andover and New York, 1835, p. 175.

Contradictions in the Fornnula of Capital, 139

dear. Our friend gained 10 as a seller onl}?- to lose it again as
a buyer.^ 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 com-
modities 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 will become a seller. He was so before he became
buyer ; he had already lost 10% in selling before he gained
10% as buyer.^ Everything is just as it was.

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

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

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.)

2 " Si I'on est force de donner pour 18 livres une quantit6 de telle production qui
en valait 24, lorsqu'on employera ce m6me argent ^ acheter, on aura 6galement pour
18 1. ce que I'on payait 24." (" Le Trosne," 1. c. p. 897.)

8 " Chaque vendeur ne peut done parvenir h. rencherir habituellement ses marchan-
dises, qu'en se soumettant aussi si 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 ^ une diminu-
tion semblable sur le prix des choses qu'il vend." (" Mercier de la Kividre, " 1. c. p. 555.)

4 K. Torrens : *' An Essay on the Production of Wealth." London, 1821, p. 349.

140 Capitalist Production,

is only to say in other words : Tiie owner of commodities pos-
sesses, as a seller, the privilege of selling too dear. The seller
has himself produced the commodities or represents their pro-
ducer, but the buyer has to no less extent produced the com-
modities represented by his money, or represents their pro-
ducer. The distinction between them is, that one buys and
the other sells. The fact that the owner of the commodities,
under the designation of producer, sells them over their value,
and under the designation of consumer, pays too much for
them, does not carry us a single step further.^

To be consistent therefore, the upholders of the delusion that
surplus- value has its origin in a nominal rise of prices or in the
privilege which the seller has of selling too dear, must assume
the existence of a class that only buys and does not sell, i.e.,
only consumes and does not produce. The existence of such a
class is inexplicable from the standpoint we have so far reached,
viz., that of simple circulation. But let us anticipate. The
money with which such a class is constantly making purchases,
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 Minor thus paid a
3^early money tribute to ancient Rome. With this money
Rome purchased from them commodities, and purchased them
too dear. The provincials cheated the Romans, and thus got
back from their conquerors, in the course of trade, a portion of
the tribute. Yet, for all that, the conquered 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

1 "The idea of profits being paid by the consumers, is, assuredly, very absurd. Who
are the consumers ? " (G.Ramsay: "AnEssay on the Distribution of Wealth." Edin-
burgh, 1836, p. 183.)

2 " 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 glorifies
this class of simple buyers or consumers. (See ' ' An Inquiry into those principles re-
specting the Nature of Demand and the necessity of Consumption, lately advocated
by Mr. Malthus," &c. Lond., 1821, p. 55.)

Contradictions in the Formula of Capital, 141

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
j650. 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 circula-
tion has not increased by one iota, it is only distributed differ-
ently 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, without the
formality of an exchange, had directly stolen the £10 from B.
The sum of the values in circulation can clearly not be aug-
mented 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 capitalist
class, as a whole, in any country, cannot over-reach themselves.

Turn and twist then as we may, the fact remains unaltered.
If equivalents arc exchanged, no surplus-value results, and if
non-equivalents are exchanged, still no surplus- value.^ Circula-
tion, or the exchange of commodities, begets no value.^

1 Destutt de Tracy, although, or perhaps because, he was a member of the Institute,
held the ojDposite view. He says, industrial capitalists make profits because "they
all sell for more than it has cost to produce. And to whom do they sell ? In the
first instance to one another." (1. c, p. 239.)

2 " L'echange qui se fait de deux valeurs egales n'augmente ni ne diminue la masse
des valeurs subsistantes dans la societ6. L'echange de deux valeurs inegales . . .
ne change rien non jdIus d la somme des valeurs sociales, bien qu'il ajoute £i la fortune
de I'un ce qu'il 6te de la fortune de I'autre. " (J. B. Say, 1. c, 1. 1. , pp. 344, 345. ) Say ,
not in the least troubled as to the consequences of this statement, borrows it, almost
word for word, from the Physiocrats. The following examj^le will shew how Monsieur
Say turned to account the writings of the Physiocrats, in his day quite forgotten, for
ihe purpose of expanding the *' value " of his own. His most celebrated saying, " On
n'achdte des produits qu'avec des produits " (1. c, t. II., p. 438) runs as follows in
the original i)hysiocratic work : "Les productions ne se j>aient qu'avec des productions."
{"LeTrosne,"l. c, p. 899.)

3 " Exchange confers no value at all upon products. " (F. Way land : " The Elements
of Political Economy." Boston, 1853, p. 168.)

142 Capitalist Production.

The reason is now therefore plain why, in analysing the
standard form of capital, the form under which it determines
the economical organisation of modern society, we entirely
left out of consideration its most popular, and, so to say, ante-
diluvian forms, merchants' capital and money-lenders' capital.

The circuit M — C — M', buying in order to sell dearer, is seen
most clearly in genuine merchants' capital. But the movement
takes place entirely within the sphere of circulation. Since,
however, it is impossible, by circulation alone, to account for
the conversion of money into capital, for the formation of
surplus-value, it would appear, that merchants' capital is an
impossibility, so long as equivalents are exchanged;^ that, there-
fore, 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,
commerce is generally cheating."^ 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
the simple circulation of commodities forms our only assump-
tion, are entirely wanting.

What we have said with reference to merchants' capital,
applies still more to money-lenders' capital. In merchants'
capital, the two extremes, the money that is thrown upon the
market, and the augmented money that is withdrawn from the
market, are at least connected by a purchase and a sale, in
other words by the movement of the circulation. In money-
lenders' capital the form M — C — M' is reduced to the two ex-
tremes without a mean, M — M', money exchanged for more
money, a form that is incompatible with the nature of money,
and therefore remains inexplicable from the standpoint of the
circulation of commodities. Hence Aristotle : " since chrema-

1 Under the rule of invariable equivalents commerce would be imi^ossible. (G.
Opdyke: " A Treatise on Polit. Economy." New York, 1851, p. 66-69.) " The difference
between real value and exchange value is based upon this fact, namely, that the
value of a thing is different from the so-called equivalent given for it in trade, i.e.,
that this equivalent is no equivalent." (F. Engels, 1. c. p. 96.)

2 Benjamin Franklin : Works, Vol. II. edit. Sparks in "Positions to be examined
concerning National Wealth," p. 376.

Contradictions in the Formida of Capital. 143

tistic is a double science, one part belonging to commerce, the
other to economic, the latter being necessary and praiseworthy,
the former based on circulation and with justice disapproved
(for it is not based on Nature, but on mutual cheating), there-
fore the usurer is most rightly hated, because money itself is
the source of his gain, and is not used for the purposes for
which it was invented. For it originated for the exchange of
commodities, but interest makes out of money, more money.
Hence its name {roxoi interest and offspring). For the be-
gotten are like those who beget them. But interest is money
of money, so that of all modes of making a living, this is the
most contrary to nature."^

In the course of our investigation, we shall find that both
merchants' capital and interest-bearing capital are derivative
forms, and at the same time it will become clear, why these
two forms appear in the course of history before the modern
standard form of capital.

We have shown that surplus-value cannot be created by
circulation, and, therefore, that in its formation, something
must take place in the background, which is not apparent in
the circulation itself^ But can surplus- value possibly originate
■anywhere else than in circulation, which is the sum total of all
the mutual relations of commodity-owners, as far as they are
determined by their commodities ? Apart from circulation,
the commodity-owner is in relation only with his own com-
modity. So far as regards value, that relation is limited to
this, that the commodity contains a quantity of his own 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 account, this quantity
is also expressed by the price, which we will suppose to be £10.
But his labour is not represented both by the value of the
commodity, and by a surplus over that value, not by a price of
10 that is also a price of 11, not by a value that is greater than
itself. The commodity owner can, by his labour, create value,

^ Aristotle, 1. c. c. 10.

^" Profit, in the usual condition of the market, is not made by exchanging. Had
it not existed before, neither could it after that transaction," (Eamsay, 1. c, p, 184.

144 Capitalist Production.

but not self-expanding value. He can increase the value of his
commodity, by adding fresh labour, and therefore more value
to the value in hand, by making, for instance, leather into
boots. The same material has now more value, because it
contains a greater quantity of labour. The boots have there-
fore more value than the leather, but the value of the leather
remains what it was ; it has not expanded itself, has not,
during the making of the boots, annexed surplus value. It is
therefore impossible that outside the sphere of circulation, a
producer of commodities can, without coming into contact with
other commodity owners, expand value, and consequently con-
vert money or commodities into capital.

It is therefore impossible for capital to be produced by cir-
culation, and it is equally impossible for it to originate apart
from circulation. It must have its origin both in circulation
and yet not in circulation.

We have, therefore, got a double result.

The conversion of money into capital has to be explained on
the basis of the laws that regulate the exchange of commodities,
in such a way that the starting point is the exchange of
equivalents.^ Our friend. Moneybags, who as yet is only an
embryo capitalist, must buy his commodities at their value,
must sell them at their value, and yet at the end of the pro-
cess must withdraw more value from circulation than he threw

1 From the foregoing investigation, the reader will see that this statement only means
that the formation of capital must be possible even though the price and value of a
commodity be the same ; for its formation cannot be attributed to any deviation of
the one from the other. If prices actually differ from values, we must, first of 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 i^rocess.
The continual oscillations 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 re-
quires 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 j)rice, i.e., ultimately by the value of the commodities?
I say " ultimately," because average prices do not directly coincide with the values of
commodities, as Adam Smith, Kicardo, and others believe.

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power, 145

into it at starting. His development into a full-grown capi-
talist must take place, both within the sphere of circulation
and without it. These are the conditions of the problem.
Hie Rhodus, hie salta !

CHAPTER VI.

THE BUYING AND SELLING OF LABOUR-POWER.

The change of value that occurs in the case of money intended
to be converted into capital, cannot take place in the money
itself, since in its function of means of purchase and of pay-
ment, it does no more than realise the price of the commodity
it buys or pays for ; and, as hard cash, it is value petrified,
never varying.^ Just as little can it originate in the second
act of circulation, the re-sale of the commodity, which does
no more than transform the article from its bodily form back
again into its money-form. The change must, therefore, take
place in the commodity bought by the first act, M — C, but not
in its value, for equivalents are exchanged, and the commodity
is paid for at its full value. We are, therefore, forced to the
conclusion that the change originates in the use-value, as such,
of the commodity, i.e., in its consumption. In order to be able
to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our
friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the
sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity, whose use-
value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of
value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an em-
bodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value.
The possessor of money does find on the market such a special
commodity in capacity for labour or labour-power.

By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood
the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities exist-
ing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he
produces a use-value of any description.

1 " In the form of money capital is productive of no profit." (Ricardo :.

" Princ. of Pol. Econ." p. 267.)

K

14^ Capitalist Production.

But in order that our owner of money may be able to find
labour-power offered for sale as a commodity, various conditions
must first be fulfilled. The exchange of commodities of itself
implies no other relations of dependence than those which
result from its own nature. On this assumption, labour-power
can appear upon the market as a commodity, only if, and so
far as, its possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is,
offers it for sale, or sells it, as a commodity. In order that he
may be able to do this, he must have it at his disposal, must
be the untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour, i.e., of
his person.^ He and the owner of money meet in the market,
and deal with each other as on the basis of equal rights, with
this difierence alone, that one is buyer, the other seller ; both,
therefore, equal in the eyes of the law. The continuance of
this relation demands that the owner of the labour-power
should sell it only for a definite period, for if he were to sell it
rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself,
converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an owner
of a commodity into a commodity. He must constantly look
upon his labour-power as his own property, his own commodity,
and this he can only do by placing it at the disposal of the buyer
temporarily, for a definite period of time. By this means alone
can he avoid renouncing his rights of ownership over it.^

1 In encyclopaedias of classical antiquities we find such nonsense as this — that in
the ancient world capital was fuUy developed, " except that the free labourer and a
system of credit was wanting." Mommsen also, in his "History of B-ome," commits,
in this respect, one blunder after another.

2 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 effected by Kusa), slavery is hidden \mder the form of
jpeonage. By means of advances, repayable in labour, which are handed down
from generation to generation, not only the individual labourer, but his family,
Ijecome, 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 Eepresentativ^es 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 cajjabilities ;
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, " Philosophie des Rechts." Berlin, 1840, p. 104 § 67.)

The Buying and Selling of Labour- Power, 147

The second essential condition to the owner of money
finding labour-power in the market as a commodity is 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
subsistence. 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 appearance
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
dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that on
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 social basis one that is
common to all Listorical periods. It is clearly the result of
past historical development, the product of many economical

il \

148 Capitalist Production.

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
circulation 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 presupposes 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
historical features. On the other hand, if we consider money,
its existence implies a definite stage in the exchange of
commodities. The particular functions of money which it
performs, 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 ver}^
different stages in the process of social production. Yet we
know by experience that a circulation of commodities relatively
primitive, suflfices for the production of all these forms. Other-
wise with capital. The historical conditions of its existence
are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and
commodities. It can spring into life, only when the owner of
the means of production and subsistence meets in the market
with the free labourer selling his labour-power. And this one

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power, 149

historical condition comprises a world's history. Capital,
therefore, announces from its first appearance a new epoch in
the process of social production. ^

We must now examine more closely this peculiar commodity,
labour-power. Like all others it has a value. ^ 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, 5r
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
to that necessary for the production of those means of
subsistence ; in other words, the value of labour-power is the
value of the means of subsistence necessary for the mainten-
ance 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. ^ If the
owner of labour-power works to-day, to-morrow he must again
be able to repeat the same process in the same conditions as
regards health and strength. His means of subsistence must
therefore be sufficient to maintain him in his normal state as

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.

2 " The value or worth of a man, is as of all other things his price — that is to say,
so much as would be given for the use of his power. " (Th. Hobbes : " Leviathan " in
Works, Ed. Molesworth. Lond. 1839-44, v. iii., p. 76.)

3 Hence the Roman Villicus, as oveilooker of the agricultural slaves, received
"more meagre fare than working slaves, because his work was lighter." (Th.
Mommsen Rom. Geschichte, 1856, p. 810.)

150 Capitalist Production,

a labouring individual. His natural wants, such as food,
clothing, fuel, and housing, vary according to the climatic and
other physical conditions of his country. On the other hand,
the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also
the modes of satisfying them, are themselves the product of
historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent
on the degree of civilisation of a country, more particularly on
the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and
degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has been
formed. ^ In contradistinction therefore to the case of other
commodities, there enters into the determination of the value
of labour-power a historical and moral element. Nevertheless,
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."^ The labour-
power withdrawn from the market by wear and tear and
death, must be continually replaced by, at the very least, an
equal amount of fresh labour-power. Hence the sum of the
means of subsistence necessary for the production of labour-
power must include the means necessary for the labourer's
substitutes, i.e., his children, in order that this race of peculiar
commodity-owners may perpetuate its appearance in the
market.^

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

1 Compare W. H. Thornton : " Overpopulation and its Remedy," Lond., 1846.

2 Petty.

3 " Its (labour's) natural price. . . . consists in such a quantity of necessaries
rind 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., 1815, p. 62.) The word labour is
here wrongly used for labour-power.

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power. 1 5 1

in commodities of a greater or less amount. This amount
varies according to the more or less complicated character of
the labour-power. The expenses of this education (excessively-
small in the case of ordinary labour-power), enter pro tanto
into the total value spent in its production. #

The value of labour-power resolves itself into the value of a
definite quantity of the means of subsistence. It therefore ^

varies with the value of these means or with the quantity of . -i
labour requisite for their production. \\

Some of the means of subsistence, such as food and fuel, are ^
consumed daily, and a fresh supply must be provided '^si.
daily. Others such as clothes and furniture last for ^^

longer periods and require to be replaced only at longer in-
tervals. 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 another. 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 = ^^+^^^^^+^*'- Suppose
that in this mass of commodities requisite for the average day
there are embodied 6 hours of social labour, then there is incor-
porated daily in labour-power half a day's average social labour,
in other words, half a day's labour is requisite for the daily
production of labour-power. This quantity of labour forms
the value of a day's labour-power or the value of the labour-
power daily reproduced. If half a day's average social labour is
incorporated in three shillings, then three shillings is the price
corresponding to the value of a day's labour-power. If its
owner therefore offers it for sale at three shillings a day, its
selling price is equal to its value, and according to our sup-
position, our friend Moneybags, who is intent upon converting
his three shillings into capital, pays this value.

The minimum limit of the value of labour-power is de-
termined by the value of the commodities, without the daily
supply of which the labourer cannot renew his vital energy,
consequently by the value of those means of subsistence that

152 Capitalist Production,

are physically indispensable. If the price of labour-power fall
to this minimum, it falls below its value, since under such cir-
cumstances it can be maintained and developed only in a
crippled state. But the value of every commodity is deter-
mined by the labour-time requisite to turn it out so as to be of
normal quality.

It is a very cheap sort of sentimentality which declares this
method of determining the value of labour-power, a method
prescribed by the very nature of the case, to be a brutal
method, and which wails with 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 (^tre 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."^ When
we speak of capacity for labour, we do not speak of labour, any
more than when we speak of capacity for digestion, we speak
of digestion. The latter process requires something more than
a good stomach. When we speak of capacity for labour, we do
not abstract from the necessary means of subsistence. On the
contrary, their value is expressed in its value. If his capacity
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.""

One consequence of the peculiar nature of labour-power as a
commodity is, that its use-value does not, on the conclusion of
the 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

1 Rossi. " Cours d'Econ. Polit : " Bruxelles, 1842, p. 370.

2 Sismondi : " Nouv. Princ. etc," 1. 1, p. 112.

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power, 153

its force. The alienation of labour-power and its actual appro-
priation 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.^
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, ^ but also by a series of more enduring conse-
quences.^ Nevertheless, whether money serves as a means of

^ " All labour is paid after it has ceased." (" An Inquiry into those Principles re-
specting the Nature of Demand," &c., p. 104.) " Le credit commercial a du commencer
au moment od I'ouvrier, premier artisan de la production, a pu, au moyen de ses
Economies, attendre le salaire de son travail jusqu, si la fin de la semaine, de la
quinzaine, du mois, du trimestre, &c. (Ch. Ganilh : '* Des Systemes de I'Econ. Polit."
2eme. edit. Paris, 1821, t. I. p. 150.)

2 " L'ouvrier prete son industrie," but adds Storch slyly : he " risks nothing " ex-
cept "de perdre son salaire .... l'ouvrier ne transmet rien de materiel."
(Storch : " Cours d'Econ. Polit. Econ." Petersbourg, 1815, t. II., p., 37.)

3 One example. In London there are two sorts of bakers, the *' full priced," who
sell bread at its full value, and the " undersellers," who sell it under its value. The
latter class comprises more than three-fourths of the total number of bakers, (p.
xxxii in the Eepoi t of H. S. Tremenheere, commissioner to examine into ' ' the griev-
ances complained of by the journeymen bakers," &c.. Loud. 1862.) The undersellers,
almost without exception, sell bread adulterated with alum, soap, pearl ashes, chalk,
Derbyshire stone-dust, and such like agreeable nourishing and wholesome ingredients.
(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," 2nd Ed. Lond.
1862.) Sir JohnOordon stated before the committee of 1855, that '*in consequence
of these adulterations, the poor man, who lives on two pounds of bread a day, docs
not now get one fourth part of nourishing matter, let alone the deleterious effects on
his health." Tremenheere states (1. c. p. xlviii), as the reason, why a very large part
of the working class, although well aware of this adulteration, nevertheless accept
the alum, stone-dust, &c., as part of their purchase : that it is for them *' a matter of
necessity to take from their baker or from the chandler's shop, such bread as they
choose to supply. " As they are not paid their wages before the end of the week,
they in their turn are unable " to pay for the bread consumed by their families, dur-
ing the week, before the end of the week," and Tremenheere adds on the evidence of
witnesses, " it is notorious that bread composed of those mixtures, is made expressly

154 Capitalist Prodtiction,

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 re-
ceives the price stipulated to be paid for it.

We now know how the value paid by the purchaser to the
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 commodity,
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 surface and in view of all
men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production,

for sale in this manner. " In many English and still more Scotch agricultural dis-
tricts, wages are paid fortnightly and even monthly ; with such long intervals between
the payments, the agricultural labourer 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 example, where the wages are monthly, the same flour
that he could buy elsewhere at Is lOd per stone, costs him 2s 4d per stone. {" Sixth
Report" on "Public Health" by "The Medical Officer of the Privy Council.
&c., 1864." p. 264.) " The block printers of Paisley and Kilmarnock enforced, by
a strike, fortnightly, instead of monthly payment of wages." ("Eeports of the In-
spectors of Factories for 31st Oct., 1853," p. 34). As a further pretty result of the
credit given by the workmen to the capitalist, we may refer to the method current in
many English coal mines, where the labourer is not paid till the end of the month,
and in the meantime, receives sums on account from the capitalist, often in goods for
which the miner is obliged to pay more than the market price (Truck-system.) " It is
a common practice with the coal masters to pay once a month, and advance cash to
their workmen at the end of each intermediate week. The cash is given in the shop"
(i.e., the Tommy shop which belongs to the master) ; "the men take it on one side
and lay it out on the other." ("Children's Employment Commission, III. Report,"
Lond. 1864, p. 38, n. 192.)

The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power, 155

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 on, is in fact a very-
Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom,
Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer
and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained
only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and
the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give
legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each
enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of
commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent.
Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And
Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force
that brings them together and puts them in relation with each
other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of
each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself
about the rest, and just because 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 advantage, for the common weal and in the
interest of all.

On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange
of commodities, which furnishes the " Free-trader Vulgaris "
with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he
judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can
perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personse.
He, who before was the money owner, now strides in front as
capitalist ; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer.
The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business;
the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his
own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.

PART III.

THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPLUS-
VALUE.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LABOUR-PSOCESS AND THE PROCESS OF PRODUCING SUR-

PLUS-VALUK

SECTION 1. — THE LABOUR- PKOCESS OR THE PRODUCTION OP USE- VALUES.

The capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it; and labour-
power in use is labour itself. The purchaser of labour-power con-
sumes it by setting the seller of it to work. By working, the
latter becomes actually, what before he only was potentially,
labour-power in action, a labourer. In order that his labour may
reappear in a commodity, he must, before all things, expend it
on something useful, on something capable of satisfying a
want of some sort. Hence, what the capitalist sets the lab-
ourer 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
her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and

The Labour Process,

157

hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate
Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By
thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the
same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumber-
ing powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway.
We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms
of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasur-
able interval of time separates the state of things in which a
man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity,
from that state in which human labour was still in its first in-
stinctive stage. We presuppose labour in a form that stamps
it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that
resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an
architect in the construction of her cells. But what distin-
guishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that
the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects
it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a re-
sult that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at
its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in
the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose
of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to
which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination
is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily
organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation,
the workman's will be steadily in consonance with his purpose.
This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the
nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on,
and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives
play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his atten-
tion is forced to be.

The elementary factors of the labour-process are l,the personal
activity of man, i.6., work itself, 2, the subject of that work,
and 3, its instruments.

The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water) in
the virgin state in which it supplies ^ man with necessaries or

1 "The earth's spontaneous productions being in small quantity, and quite indepen-
dent of man, appear, as it were, to be furnished by Nature, in the same way as a small
sum is given to a young man, in order to i^ut him in a way of industry, and of mak-
ing his fortune. " (James Steuart : "Principles of Polit. Econ." edit. Dublin, 1770,
V. I. p. 116).

\C^

158 Capitalist Production,

the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently
of him, and is the universal subject of human labour. All
those things which labour merely separates from immediate
connection with their environment, are subjects of labour
spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we
catch and take from their element, water, timber which we
fell in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their
veins. If, on the other hand, the subject of labour has, so to
say, been filtered through previous labour, we call it raw
material ; such is ore already extracted and ready for wash-
ing. All raw material is the subject of labour, but not everj'-
subject of labour is raw material ; it can only become so, after
it has undergone some alteration by means of labour.

An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things,
which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject
of his labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity.
He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical pro-
perties of some substances in order to make other substances
subservient to his aims.^ Leaving out of consideration such
ready-made means of subsistence as fruits, in gathering which
a man's own limbs serve as the instruments of his labour, the
first thing of which the labourer possesses himself is not the
subject of labour but its instrument. Thus Nature becomes one
of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his own
bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of the Bible.
As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his original tool
house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones for throwing,
grinding, pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself is an instru-
ment of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implies a
whole series of other instruments and a comparatively high
development of labour.^ No sooner does labour undergo the

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-acfc on each other in
accordance with their own nature, in this way, without any direct interference in the
process, carries out reason's intentions." (Hegel : " Encyklopadie, Erster Theil. Die
Logik." Berlin, 1840, p. 382.)

2 In his otherwise miserable work, (" Theorie de I'Econ. Polit.'" Paris, 1819),
Ganilh enumerates in a striking manner in opposition to the " Physiocrats " the long
series of previous processes necessary before agriculture properly so called can com-
mence.

The Labour Process, 159

least development, than it requires specially prepared instru-
ments. 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 pre-
pared stones, wood, bones, and shells.^ The use and fabrication
of instruments of labour, although existing in the germ among
certain species of animals, is specifically characteristic of the
human labour-process, and Franklin therefore defines man as a
tool-making animal. Relics of by-gone instruments of labour
possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct
economical forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determina-
tion of extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made,
but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables
us to distinguish different economical epochs.^ Instruments of
labour not only supply a standard of the degree of develop-
ment to which human labour has attained, but they are also
indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is
carried on. Among the instruments of labour, those of a
mechanical nature, which, taken as a whole, we may call the
bone and muscles of production, ofi^er much more decided
characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those which,
like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, &;c., serve only to hold the
materials for labour, which latter class, we may in a general
way, call the vascular system of production. The latter first
begins to play an important part in the chemical industries.

In a wider sense we may include among the instruments of
labour, in addition to those things that are used for directly
transferring labour to its subject, and which therefore, in one

1 Turgot in his " Keflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses "
(1766) brings well into prominence the importance of domesticated animals to early
civilisation.

2 The least important commodities of all for the technological comparison of
different epochs of production are articles of luxury, in the strict meaning of the term.
However little our written histories up to this time notice the development of material
production, which is the basis of all social life, and therefore of all real history, yet
prehistoric times have been classified in accordance with the results, not of so called
historical, but of materialistic investigations. These periods have been divided, to
corresj)ond with the materials from which their implements and weapons were made,
viz., into the stone, the bronze, and the iron ages.

i6o Capitalist Production.

way or another, serve as conductors of activity, all such objects
as are necessary for carrying on the labour-process. These do
not enter directly into the process, but without them it is either
impossible for it to take place at all, or possible only to a
partial extent. Once more we find the earth to be a universal
instrument of this sort, for it furnishes a locus standi to the
labourer and a field of employment for his activity. Among
instruments that are the result of previous labour and also
belong to this class, we find workshops, canals, roads, and so
forth.

In the labour-process, therefore, man's activity, with the help
of the instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from
the commencement, in the material worked upon. The process
disappears in the product ; the latter is a use-value. Nature's
material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man.
Labour has incorporated itself with its subject : the former is
materialised, the latter transformed. That which in the labourer
appeared as movement, now appears in the product as a fixed
quality without motion. The blacksmith forges and the pro-
duct is a forcrinor.

If we examine the whole process from the point of view of
its result, the product, it is plain that both the instruments and
the subject of labour, are means of production,^ and that the
labour itself is productive labour.^

Though a use-value, in the form of a product, issues from
the labour-process, yet other use-values, products of previous
labour, enter into it as means of production. The same use-
value is both the product of a previous process, and a means of
production in a later process. Products are therefore not only
results, but also essential conditions of labour.

With the exception of the extractive industries, in which
the material for labour is provided immediately by nature,
such as mining, hunting, fishing, and agriculture (so far as the

^ It appears paradoxical to assert, that uncaught fish, for instance, are a means of
production in the fishing industry. But hitherto no one has discovered the art of
catching fish in waters that contain none.

2 This method of determining from the standpoint of the labour-process alone, what
is productive labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case of the capitalist
process of production.

The Labour P^^ocess. 16 1

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-
sory. An accessory may be consumed by the instruments of
labour, as coal under a boiler, oil by a wheel, hay by draft-
horses, or it may be mixed with the raw material in order to
produce some modification thereof, as chlorine into unbleached
linen, coal with iron, dye-stuff" with wool, or again, it may help
to carry on the work itself, as in the case of the materials used
for heating and lighting workshops. The distinction between
principal substance and accessory vanishes in the true chemical
industries, because there none of the raw material reappears, in
its original composition, in the substance of the product.^

Every object possesses various properties, and is thus capable
of being applied to different uses. One and the same product
may therefore serve as raw material in very different processes.
Corn, for example, is a raw material for millers, starch-manu-
facturers, distillers, and cattle-breeders. It also enters as raw
material into its own production in the shape of seed : coal, too,
is at the same time the product of, and a means of production
in, coal-mining.

Again, a particular product may be used in one and the same
process, both as an instrument of labour and as raw material.
Take, for instance, the fattening of cattle, where the animal is
the raw material, and at the same time an instrument for the
production of manure.

1 Storch calls true raw materials " matieres," and accessory material *' materiaux : ^*
Cherbuliez describes accessories as "matieres instrumentales."

L

1 62 Capitalist Prodtiction,

A product, though ready for immediate consumption, may
yet serve as raw material for a further product, as grapes when
they become the raw material for wine. On the other hand,
labour may give us its product in such a form, that we can use
it only as raw material, as is the case with cotton, thread, and
yarn. Such a raw material, though itself a product, may have
to go through a whole series of different processes : in each of
these in turn, it serves, with constantly varying form, as raw
material, until the last process of the series leaves it a perfect
product, ready for individual consumption, or for use as an in-
strument of labour.

Hence we see, that whether a use-value is to be regarded as
raw material, as instrument of labour, or as product, this is deter-
mined entirely by its function in the labour process, by the
position it there occupies : as this varies, so does its character.

Whenever therefore a product enters as a means of produc-
tion into a new labour-process, it thereby loses its character of
product, and becomes a mere factor in the process. A spinner
treats spindles only as implements for spinning, and flax only
as the material that he spins. Of course it is impossible to spin
without material and spindles ; and therefore the 'existence of
these things as products, at the commencement of the spinning
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 impor-
tance whatever, that bread is the produce of the previous
labour of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. On the con-
trary, it is generally by their imperfections as products, that
the means of production in any process assert themselves in
their character of products. A blunt knife or weak thread
forcibly remind us of Mr. A., the cutler, or Mr. B., the spinner.
In the finished product the labour by means of which it has
acquired its useful qualities is not palpable, has apparently
vanished.

A machine which does not serve the purposes of labour, is
useless. In addition, it falls a prey to the destructive influence
of natural forces. Iron rusts and wood rots. Yarn with which
we neither weave nor knit, is cotton wasted. Living labour

The Labour Process, 163

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
elementary 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 contact
with living labour, is the sole means by which they can be
made to retain their character of use-values, and be utilised.

Labour uses up its material factors, its subject and its
instruments, consumes them, and is therefore a process of con-
sumption. Such productive consumption is distinguished
from individual consumption by this, that the latter uses up
products, as means of subsistence for the living individual; the
former, as means whereby alone, labour, the labour-power of
the living individual, is enabled to act. The product, therefore,
of individual consumption, is the consumer himself ; the result
of productive consumption, is a product distinct from the con-
sumer.

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 represent
any combination of natural substances with human labour.

The labour process, resolved as above into its simple
elementary factors, is human action with a view to the pro-
duction of use- values, appropriation of natural substances to
human requirements ; it is the necessary condition for effecting
exchange of matter between man and Nature ; it is the ever-

164 Capitalist Production.

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 on 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.^

Let us now return to our would-be capitalist. We left him
just after he had purchased, in the open market, all the necessary
factors of the labour-process; its objective factors, the means of
production, as well as its subjective factor, labour-power.
With the keen eye of an expert, he has 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 labour-power
that he has just bought, by causing the labourer, the impersona-
tion of that labour-power, to consume the mea.ns of production
by his labour. The general character of the labour-process is
evidently not changed by the fact, that the labourer works for
the capitalist instead of for himself ; moreover, the particular
methods and operations employed in bootmaking or spinning
are not immediately changed by the intervention of the
capitalist. He must begin by taking the labour-power as he
finds it in the market, and consequently be satisfied with
labour of such a kind as would be found in the period
immediately preceding the rise of capitalists. Changes in 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.

1 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 first stick that he seizes to strike down
the fruit which hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation of one article for the
purpose of aiding in the acquisition of another, and thus discover the origin of
capital. (R. Torrens : " An Essay on the Production of Wealth," &c., pp. 70-71.)

The Labour Process, 165

The labour-process, turned into the process by which the
capitalist consumes labour-power, exhibits two characteristic
phenomena. First, the labourer works under the control of
the capitalist to whom his labour belongs ; the capitalist taking
good care that the work is done in a proper manner, and that
the means of production are used with intelligence, so that
there is no unnecessary waste of raw material, and no wear and
tear of the implements beyond what is necessarily caused by
the work.

Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and
not that of the labourer, its immediate producer. Suppose
that a capitalist pays for a day's labour-power at its value ;
then the right to use that power for a day belongs to him, just
as much as the right to use any other commodity, such as a
horse that he has hired for the day. To the purchaser of a
commodity belongs its use, and the seller of labour-power, by
giving his labour, does no more, in reality, than part with the
use-value that he has sold. From the instant he steps into
the workshop, the use- value of his labour-power, and therefore
also its use, which is labour, belongs to the capitalist. By the
purchase of labour-power, the capitalist incorporates labour, as
a living ferment, with the lifeless constituents of the product.
From his point of view, the labour-process is nothing more
than the consumption of the commodity purchased, ^.e., of
labour-power; bub 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 capital-
ist has purchased, things that have become his property. The
product of this process belongs, therefore, to him, just as much
as does the wine which is the product of a process of fermenta-
tion completed in his cellar.^

1 "Products are appropriated before they are converted into capital ; this conver-
sion does not secure them from such appropriation." (Cherbuliez : *' Riche ou Pauvre,"
edit. Paris, 1841, pp. 53, 54.) "The Proletarian, by selling his labour for a definite
quantity of the necessaries of life, renounces all claim to a share in the product.
The mode of appropriation of the jjroducts remains the same as before ; it is in no
way altered by the bargain we have mentioned. The product belongs exclusively to
the capitalist, who supplied the raw material and the necessaries of life ; and this is
a rigorous consequence of the law of appropriation, a law whose fundamental prin-
ciple was the very opposite, namely, that every labourer has an exclusive right to

1 66 Capitalist Pi^odtictiori.

SECTION 2. — THE PRODUCTIOX OF SURPLUS-VALUE.

The product appropriated by the capitalist is a use- value, as
yarn, for example, or boots. But, although boots are, in one
sense, the basis of all social progress, and our capitalist is a
decided " progressist/' yet he does not manufacture boots for
their own sake. Use-value is, by no means, the thing '* qu'on
aime pour lui-meme " in the production of commodities. Use-
values are only produced by capitalists, because, and in so far
as, they are the material substratum, the depositaries of
exchange-value. Our capitalist has two objects in view : in
the first place, he wants to produce a use-value that has a
value in exchange, that is to say, an article destined to be sold,
a commodity ; and secondly, he desires to produce a commodity
whose value shall be greater than the sum of the values of the
commodities used in its production, that is, of the means of
production and the labour-power, that he purchased with his
good money in the open market. His aim is to produce not
only a use- value, but a commodity also; not only use- value,
but value ; not only value, but at the same time surplus-
value.

It must be borne in mind, that we are now dealing with the
production of commodities, and that, up to this point, we have
only considered one aspect of the process. Just as commodities
are, at the same time, use- values and values, so the process of
producing them must be a labour-process, and at the same
time, a process of creating value.^

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,

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 : "Elements 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.

The Labou7' Process. 167

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 lbs. 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 lbs. 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 emploj^ed, amounts to the value of 2s.
If, then, twenty-four hours' labour, or two working days, are
required to produce the quantity of gold represented by twelve
shillings, we have here, to begin with, two -days' labour already
incorporated in the yarn.

We must not let ourselves be misled by the circumstance
that the cotton has taken a new shape while the substance of
the spindle has to a certain extent been used up. ^y the
general law of value, if the value of 40 lbs. of yarn = the value
of 40 lbs. of cotton -f- the value of a whole spindle, i.e.^ if the
same working time is required to produce the commodities on
either side of this equation, then 10 lbs. of yarn are an
equivalent for 10 lbs. of cottoQ, together with one-fourth of a
spindle. In the case we are considering the same working
time is materialised in the 10 lbs. of yarn on the one hand,
and in the 10 lbs. 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 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

i68 Capitalist Production.

raw material of the yarn, is part of the labour necessary to
produce the yarn, and is therefore contained in the yarn. The
same applies to the labour embodied in the spindle, without
whose wear and tear the cotton could not be spun.

Hence, in determining the value of the yarn, or the labour-
time required for its production, all the special processes
carried on at various times and in different places, which were
necessary, first to produce the cotton and the wasted portion of
the spindle, and then with the cotton and spindle to spin the
yarn, may together be looked on as different and successive
phases of one and the same process. The whole of the labour
in the yarn is past labour ; and it is a matter of no importance
that the operations necessary for the production of its con-
stituent elements were carried on at times which, referred to
the present, are more remote than the final operation of
spinning. If a definite quantity of labour, say thirty days,
is requisite to build a house, the total amount of labour incor-
porated in it is not altered by the fact that the work of the
last day is done twenty-nine days later than that of the first.
Therefore the labour contained in the raw material and the
instruments of labour can be treated just as if it were labour
expended in an earlier stage of the spinning process, before the
labour of actual spinning commenced.

The values of the means of production, i.e., the cotton and the
spindle, which values are expressed in the price of twelve
shillings, are therefore constituent parts of the value of the
yarn, or, in other words, of the value of the product.

Two conditions must nevertheless be fulfilled. First, the
cotton and spindle must concur in the production of a use-
value ; they must in the present case become yarn. Value is
independent of the particular use-value by which it is borne, but
it must be embodied in a use-value of some kind. Secondly,
the time occupied in the labour of production must not exceed
the time really necessary under the given social conditions of
the case. Therefore, if no more than 1 lb. of cotton be requisite
to spin 1 lb. of yarn, care must be taken that no more than
this weight of cotton is consumed in the production of 1 lb. of
yarn ; and similarly with regard to the spindle. Though the

The Labour Process, 169

capitalist liave 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 produce
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 ow-
ing to the cotton and the spindle. It amounts to twelve
shillings or the value of two days' work. The next point for
our consideration is, what portion of the value of the yarn is
added to the cotton by the labour of the spinner.

We have now to consider this labour under a very different
aspect from that which it had during the labour-process; there,
we viewed it solely as that particular kind of human activity
which changes cotton into yarn ; there, the more the labour
was suited to the work, the better the yarn, other circumstances
remaining the same. The labour of the spinner was then
viewed as specifically different from other kinds of productive
labour, different on the one hand in its special aim, viz., spinning,
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 differs
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 assumption that spinning is simple, unskilled labour, the
average labour of a given state of society. Hereafter we shall
see that the contrary assumption would make no difference.

170 Capitalist Production,

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.y the ex-
penditure of his vital force by the spinner, and not spinning
labour, because the special work of spinning counts here, only
so far as it is the expenditure of labour-power in general, and
not in so far as it is the specific work of the spinner.

In the process we are now considering it is of extreme im-
portance, that no more time be consumed in the work of trans-
forming the cotton into yarn than is necessary under the given
social conditions. If under normal, i.e.y average social condi-
tions of production, a pounds of cotton ought to be made into
h 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 6 pounds of yarn ; for in the creation
of value, the time that is socially necessary alone counts.

Not only the labour, but also the raw material and the pro-
duct now appear in quite a new light, very different from that
in which we viewed them in the labour-process pure and
simple. 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
absorbed by the cotton. If in one hour If lbs. of cotton can be
spun into If lbs. of yarn, then 10 lbs. of yarn indicate the
absorption of 6 hours' labour. Definite quantities of product,
these quantities being determined by experience, now represent
nothing but definite quantities of labour, definite masses of
crystallized labour -time. They are nothing more than the
materialisation of so many hours or so many days of social
labour.

We are here no more concerned about the facts, that the
labour is the specific work of spinning, that its subject is cotton

The Labour Process, 171

and its product yarn, than we are about the fact that the subject
itself is already a product and therefore raw material. If the
spinner, instead of spinning, were working in a coal mine, the
subject of his labour, the coal, would be supplied by Nature ;
nevertheless, a definite quantity of extracted coal, a hundred
weight for example, would represent a definite quantity of
absorbed labour.

We assumed, on the occasion of its sale, that the value of
a day's labour-power is three shillings, and that six hours'
labour 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 lbs. of cotton
into If lbs. of yarn,^ it follows that in six hours he will convert
10 lbs. of cotton into 10 lbs. of yarn. Hence, during the spinn-
ing process, the cotton absorbs six hours' labour. The same
quantity of labour is also embodied in a piece of gold of the
value of three shillings. Consequently by the mere labour of
spinning, a value of three shillings is added to the cotton.

Let us now consider the total value of the product, the 10
lbs. 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 lbs. of yarn, or the price of one pound is eighteen-
pence.

Our capitalist stares in astonishment. The value of the pro-
duct 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 fifteen
shillings were spent in the open market upon the constituent
elements of the product, or, what amounts to the same thing,
upon the factoi-s of the labour-process ; ten shillings were paid
for the cotton, two shillings for the substance of the spindle

1 These figures are quite arbitrary.

172 Capitalist Production.

worn away, and three shillings for the labour-power. The
swollen value of the yarn is of no avail, for it is merely the
sum of the values formerly existing in the cotton, the spindle,
and the labour-power : out of such a simple addition of existing
values, no surplus-value can possibly arise.^ These separate
values are now all concentrated in one thing ; but so they were
also in the sum of fifteen shillings, before it was split up into
three parts, by the purchase of the commodities.

There is in reality nothing very strange in this result. The
value of one pound of yarn being eighteenpence, if our capitalist
buys 10 lbs. of yarn in the ma^rket, 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,
exclaims : '' Oh ! but I advanced my money for the express
purpose 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. * 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
manufacturing them himself But if all his brother capitalists
were to do the same, where would he find his commodities in
the market ? And his money he cannot eat. He tries persua-
sion. " Consider my abstinence ; I might have played ducks
and drakes with the 15 shillings ; but instead of that I con-
sumed it productively, and made yarn with it." Very well,

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 fa9on d'imputer ^ 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'oeuvre; ce prix n'est qu'un total
de plusieurs valeurs consomm^es et additionnees ensemble; or, additionner n'est pas
multiplier." (" Mercier de la Riviere," 1. c, p. 599.)

2 Thus from 1844-47 he withdrew part of his capital from productive employment,
in order to throw it away in railway speculations ; and so also, during the American
Civil War, he closed his factory, and turned his work-people into the streets, in order
to gamble on the Liverpool cotton exchange.

The LaboiLT Process, 173

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
thei:efore 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 remedy that his
physician M'CuUoch 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 ? More-
over, there is here no question of service. ^ A service is nothing-
more than the useful effect of a use-value, be it of a commodity,

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 neigh-
bour, as when one steals and robs. All is not service and benefit to a neighbour that
is called service and benefit. For an adulteress and adtdterer do one another great
service and pleasure. A horseman does an incendiary a great service, by helloing 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, or take from them what they
have. The devil himself does his servants inestimable service ... To sum up,
the world is full of great, excellent, and daily service and benefit." (Martin Luther :
" An die Pfarherrn, wider den Wucher zu predigen," Wittenberg, 1540.)

174 Capitalist Production,

or be it of labour. ^ But here we are dealing with exchange-
value. The capitalist paid to the labourer a value o£ 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 him-
self is a practical man ; and though he does not always consider
what he says outside his business, yet in his business he knows
what he is about.

Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a
day's labour-power amounts to 3 shillings, because on our
assumption half a day's labour is embodied in that quantity of
labour-power, i.e., because the means of subsistence that are daily
required for the production of labour-power, cost half a day's
labour. But the past labour that is embodied in the labour-
power, and the living labour that it can call into action ; the
daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work,
are two totally different things. The former determines the
exchange- value of the labour-power, the latter is its use- value.
The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the
labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent
him from working a whole day. Therefore, the value of labour-
power, and the value which that labour-power creates in the
labour process, are two entirely different magnitudes ; and this
difference of the two values was what the capitalist had in
view, when he was purchasing the labour-power. The useful
qualities that labour-power possesses, and by virtue of which it

1 In "Zur Kritik der Pol. Oek.," p. 14, I make the following remark on this
Ijoint — " 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."

The Labour Process, 175

makes yarn or boots, were to him nothing more than a conditio
sine qua non; for in order to create vakie, 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 itself
This is the special service that the capitalist expects from
labour-power, and in this transaction he acts in accordance
with the " eternal laws " of the exchange of commodities. The
seller of labour-power, like the seller of any other commodity,
realises its exchange-value, and parts with its use- value. He
cannot take the one without giving the other. The use-value
of labour-power, or in other words, labour, belongs just as little
to its seller, as the use- value of oil after it has been sold belongs
to the dealer who has sold it. The owner of the money has
paid the value of a day's labour-power ; his, therefore, is the
use of it for a day ; a day's labour belongs to him. The cir-
cumstance, that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-
power costs only half a day's labour, while on the other hand
the very same labour-power can work during a whole day, that
consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is
double what he pays for that use, this circumstance is, without
doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an
injury to the seller.

Our capitalist foresaw this state of things, and that was the
cause of his laughter. The labourer therefore finds, in the
workshop, the means of production necessary for working, not
only during six, but during twelve hours. Just as during the
six hours' process our 10 lbs. of cotton absorbed six hours' labour,
and became 10 lbs. of yarn, so now, 20 lbs. of cotton will absorb 12
hours' labour and be changed into 20 lbs. of yarn. Let us now
examine the product of this prolonged process. There is now
materialised in this 20 lbs. 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 been absorbed by the cotton during
the spinning process. Expressed in gold, the labour of five
days is thirty shillings. This is therefore the price of the
20 lbs. of yarn, giving, as before, eighteenpence as the price of a
pound. But the sum of the values of the commodities that

176 Capitalist Production.

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 transformed into 30 shillings ; a surplus-
value of 3 shillings has been created. The trick has at last
succeeded ; money has been converted into capital.

Every condition of the problem is satisfied, while the laws
that regulate the exchange of commodities, have been in no way
violated. Equivalent has been exchanged for equivalent. For
the capitalist as buyer paid for each commodity, for the cotton,
the spindle and the labour-power, its full value. He then did
what is done by every purchaser of commodities; he consumed
their use- value. The consumption of the labour-power, which
was also the process of producing commodities, resulted in 20
lbs. of yarn, having a value of 30 shillings. The capitalist,
formerly a buyer, now returns to market as a seller, of com-
modities. He sells his yarn at eighteenpence a pound, which is
its exact value. Yet for all that he withdraws 3 shillings more
from circulation than he originally threw into it. This
metamorphosis, this conversion of money into capital, takes
place both within the sphere of circulation and also outside it ;
within the circulation, because conditioned by the purchase of
the labour-power in the market ; outside the circulation, be-
cause 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 labour-
process, by incorporating living labour with their dead sub-
stance, 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.

If we now compare the two processes of producing value and
of creating surplus-value, we see that the latter is nothing but
the continuation of the former beyond a definite point. If on
the one hand the process be not carried beyond the point,
where the value paid by the capitalist for the labour-power is

The Labour Process, 177

replaced by an exact equivalent, it is simply a process of pro-
ducing value ; if, on the other hand, it be continued beyond
that point, it becomes a process of creating surplus-value.

If we proceed further, and compare the process of producing
value with the labour-process, pure and simple, we find that
the latter consists of the useful labour, the work, that produces
use-values. Here we contemplate the labour as producing a
particular article ; we view it under its qualitative aspect alone,
with regard to its end and aim. But viewed as a value-creating
process, the same labour-process presents itself under its
quantitative aspect alone. Here it is a question merely of the
time occupied by the labourer in doing the work; of the period
during which the labour-power is usefully expended. Here,
the commodities that take part in the process, do not count
any longer as necessary adjuncts of labour-power in the pro-
duction of a definite, useful object. They count merely as
depositaries of so much absorbed or materialised labour ; that
labour, whether previously embodied in the means of production,
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 ca'^e may be.

Moreover, only so much of the time spent in the production
of any article is counted, as, under the given social conditions,
is necessary. The consequences of this are various. In the
first place, it becomes necessary that the labour should be
carried on under normal conditions. If a self-acting mule is
the implement in general use for spinning, it would be absurd
to supply the spinner with a distaff* and spinning wheel. The
cotton too must not be such rubbish as to cause extra waste in
being worked, but must be of suitable quality. Otherwise the
spinner would be found to spend more time in producing a
pound of yarn than is socially necessary, in which case the
excess of time would create neither value nor money. But
whether the material factors of the process are of normal
qupclity 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 employed,

M

178 Capitalist Prodttction.

it must possess tlio average skill, handiness and quickness j)re-
valent in that trade, and our capitalist took good care to buy
labour-power of such normal goodness. This power must be
applied with the average amount of exertion and with the
usual degree of intensity ; and the capitalist is as careful to
see that this is done, as that his workmen are not idle for a
single moment. He has bought the use of the labour- power
for a definite period, and he insists upon his rights. He has
no intention of being robbed. Lastly, and for this purpose our
friend has a penal code of his own, all wasteful consumption of
raw material or instruments of labour is strictly forbidden, be-
cause what is so wasted, represents labour superfluously ex-
pended, labour that does not count in the product or enter into
its value.^

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, dis-
tinguishable only as instrumentum vocale, from an animal as instrumenfcum 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 con-
vinces himself with immense satisfaction, that he is a different being, by treating
the one unmercifully and damaging the other con amore. Hence the principle, uni-
versally 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 encumbered 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 negroes ; horses are
always soon foundered or crippled by them, 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 overworked. But I do not need to go further than to the
window of the room in which I am writing, to see at almost any time, treatment of
cattle that would ensure the immediate discharge of the driver by almost any farmer
owring them in the North."

The Labour Process, 179

as creating value, a difference which we discovered by our
analysis of a commodity, resolves itself into a distinction be-
tween two aspects of the process of production.

The process of production, considered on the one hand as
the unity of the labour-process and the process of creating
value, is production of commodities ; considered on the other
hand as the unity of the labour-process and the process of pro-
ducing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process of production,
or capitalist production of com modities.

We stated, on a previous page, that in the creation of surjdus-
value it does not in the least matter, whether the labour ap-
propriated by the capitalist be simple unskilled labour of
average quality or more complicated skilled labour. All labour
of a higher or more complicated character than average labour
is expenditure of labour-power of a more costly kind, labour-
power whose production has cost more time and labour, and
which therefore has a higher value, than unskilled or simple
labour-power. This power being of higher value, its consump-
tion is labour of a higher class, labour that creates in equal times
proportionally higher values than unskilled labour does.
Whatever difference in skill there may be between the labour
of a si)inner and that of a jeweller, the portion of his labour
by which the jeweller merely replaces the value of his own
labour-power, does not in any way difier in quality from the
additional portion by which he creates surplus-value. In the
making of jewellery, just as in spinning, the surplus-value re-
sults only from a quantitative excess of labour, from a lengthen-
irig-out of one and the same labour-process, in the one case, of
the process of making jewels, in the other of the process of
making yarn.^

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 laboiu* sometimes
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 develoijed 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

i8o ' Capitalist Pivdudion,

But on the other hand, in every process of creating value,
the reduction of skilled labour to average social labour, e.^.,
one day of skilled to six days of unskilled labour, is un-
avoidable.^ We therefore save ourselves a superfluous opera-
tion, and simplify our analysis, by the assumption, that the
labour of the workman employed by the capitalist is unskilled
average labour.

CHAPTER YIIL

CONSTANT CAPITAL AND VARIABLE CAPITAL.

The various factors of the labour-process play different parts
in forming the value of the product.

The labourer adds fresh value to the subject of his labour
by expending upon it a given amount of additional labour, no
matter what, the specific character and utility of that labour
may be. On the other hand, the values of the means of pro-
duction used up in the process are preserved, and present
themselves afresh as constituent parts of the value of the pro-
Take as an example the labour of a bricklayer, winch in England occupies a much
higher level than that of a damask-weaver. Again, although the labour of a fustian
cutter demands great bodily exertion, and is at the same time unhealthy, yet it
counts only as unskilled labour. And then, we must not forget, that the so-called
skilled labour does not occupy a large space in the field of national labour. Laing
estimates that in England (and Wales) the livelihood of 11,300,000 people de]iends
on unskilled labour. If from the total population of 18,000,000 living at the time
when he wrote, we deduct 1,000,000 for the "genteel population," and 1,500,000
for paupers, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes, &c., and 4,650,000 who compose the
middle-elasSj there remain the above mentioned 11,000,000. But in his middle-class
he includes people that live on the interest of small investments, officials, men of
letters, artists, schoolmasters and the like, and in order to swell the number he also
includes in these 4,650,000 the better paid portion of the factory operatives ! The
bricklayers, too, figure amongst them. (S. Laing : " National Distress," &c., London,
1844.) " The great class who have nothing to give for food but ordinary labour, are
the great bulk of the people." (James Mill, in art : " Colony," Supplement to the
Eucyclop. Brit., 1831.)

1 " Wiiere 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.)

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. i8i

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 onco, one
in order to add value to the cotton, the other in order to pre-
serve the value of the means of production, or, what amounts
to the same thing, to transfer to the yarn, to the product, the
value of the cotton on which he works, and part of the value
of the spindle with which he works. But, by the very act of
adding new value, he preserves their former values. Since,
however, the addition of new value to the subject of his labour,
and the preservation of its former value, are two entirely dis-
tinct results, produced simultaneously by the labourer, during
one operation, it is plain that this twofold nature of the
result 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.^ 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 of the con-

1 " Labour gives a new creation for one extinguished." ( " An essay on the Polit,
Econ. of Nations," London, 1821, p. 13.)

1 82 Capitalist Product ion.

sumed article, forms a portion of the quantity of labour
necessary to produce the new use-value ; this portion is there-
fore labour transferred from the means of production to the
new product. Hence, the labourer preserves the values of the
consumed means of production, or transfers them as portions 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 productive
form. In so far then as labour is such specific productive activ-
ity, 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.

]f 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. Suppase 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 be works upon. Consequently, we
see, first, that the addition of new value takes place not by
virtue of his labour being spinning in particular, or joinering
in particular, but because it is labour in the abstract, a portion
of the total labour of society; and we see next, that the value
added is of a given definite amount, not because his labour
has a special utility, but because it is exerted for a definite
time. On the one hand, then, it is by virtue of its general
character, as being expenditure of human labour-power in the
abstract, that spinning adds new value to the values of the
cotton and the spindle ; and on the other hand, it is by virtue
of its special character, as being a concrete, useful process, that
the same labour of spinning both transfers the values of the
means of production to the product, and preserves them in the
product. Hence at one and the same time there is produced a
twofold result.

By the simple addition of a certain quantity of labour,
new value is added, and by the quality of this added
labour, the original values of the means of production
are preserved in the pi*oduct. This twofold effect, resulting

Constant Capital and Variable Capital, 183

fi'ora the twofold 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 lbs, to 36 lbs. But now
the 36 lbs, of cotton absorb only the same amount of labour as
formerly did the 6 lbs. One-sixth as much new labour isabsorbed
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 lb =i. of yarn,
the value transferred from the cotton is six times as great as
before. By the 6 hours* spinning, the value of the raw
material preserved and transferred to the product is six times
as great as before, although the new value added by the
labour of the spinner to each pound of the very same raw
material is one-sixth what it was formerlv. This shows that the
two properties of labour, by virtue of which it is enabled in
one case to preserve value, and in the other to create value, are
essentially different. On the one hand, the longer the time
necessary to spin a given weight of cotton into yarn, the
greater is the n&w value added to the material ; on the other
hand, the greater the weight of the cotton spun in a given time,
the greater is the value preserved, by being transferred 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 fall-
ing to one-sixth of that value. In both these cases, the spinner
puts the same quantity of labour into a pound of cotton, 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 maybe, six times as

1 84 Capitalist Production,

much as before. The same result occurs when the 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
machinery, 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 -/ijat he adds. Whether the value of
cotton rise from one shillinor to two shillinsfs, 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 b}' 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 its utility, it also loses its

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 185

value. The reason why means of production do not lose their
value, at the same time that they lose their use-value, is this :
they lose in the labour-process the original form of their use-
value, only to assume in the product the form of a new use-value.
But, however important it may be to value, that it should have
some object of utility to embody itself in, yet it is a matter of
complete indifference what particular object serves this purpose j
this we saw when treating of the metamorphosis of commodities.
Hence it follows that in the labour-process the means of pro-
duction transfer their value to the product only so far as along
with their use-value they lose also their exchange value.
They give up to the product that value alone which they
themselves lose as means of production. But in this respect the
material factors of the labour-process do not all behave alike.

The coal burnt under the boiler vanishes without leaving a
trace ; so, too, the tallow with which the axles of wheels are
greased. Dye stuffs and other auxiliary substances also vanish
but re-appear as properties of the product. Raw material
forms the substance of the product, but only after it has chajiged
its form. Hence raw material and auxiliary substances lose
the characteristic form with which they are clothed on entering
the labour-process. It is otherwise with the instruments of
labour. Tools, machines, workshops, and vessels, are of use in
the labour-process, only so long as they retain their original
shape, and are ready each morning to renew the process with
their shape unchanged. And just as during their lifetime,
that is to say, during the continued labour-process in which
they serve, they retain their shape independent of the product,
so, too, they do after their death. The corpses of machines,
tools, workshops, &;c., are always separate and distinct from the
product they helped to turn out. If we now consider the case
of any instrument of labour during the whole period of its
service, from the day of its entry into the workshop, till the
day of its banishment into the lumber room, we find that dur-
ing this period its use-value has been completely consumed,
and therefore its exchange value completely transferred to the
product. For instance, if a spinning machine lasts for 10 years,
it is plain that during that working period its total value is

1 86 Capitalist Production.

gradually transferred to the product of the 10 years. The life-
time 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 instruments 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 there-
fore parts with one-sixth of its value to the daily product. The
wear and tear of all instruments, their daily loss of use-value,
and the corresponding quantity of value they part with to the
product, are accordingly calculated upon this basis.

It is thus strikingly clear, that means of production never
transfer more value to the product than they themselves lose
during the labour-process by the destruction of their own use-
value. If such an instrument has no value to lose, if, in other
words, it is not the product of human labour, it transfers no
value to the product. It helps to create use- value without con-
tributing to the formation of exchange value. In this class are
included all means of production supplied by Nature without
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 w^hole 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

Constmit Capital and Variable Capital, 187

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/

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 lbs. used amounts to 15 lbs., which is con-
verted, not into yarn, but into " devil's dust." Now, although
this 15 lbs. 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 lbs. that form the substance of the yarn. The
use-value of 15 lbs. of cotton must vanish into dust, before 100
lbs. 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 reason^
the value of that cotton is transferred to the product. The same
holds good for every kind of refuse resulting from a labour-
process, so far at least as such refuse cannot be further employed
as a means in the production of new and independent use-values-

1 The subject of repairs of the implements of labour does not concern us here. A
machine that is undergoing repair, no longer plays the part of an instrument, but
that of a subject of labour. Work is no longer done with it, but upon it. It is quite
permissible for our purpose to assume, that the labour expended on the repairs of in-
struments 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 reduce it to a state
in which the cutler would say of it, it is not worth a new blade." We have shewn in
the text, that a machine takes part in every labour-process as an integral machine, but
that into the simultaneous process of creating value it enters only bit by bit. How
great then is the confusion of ideas exhibited in the following extract ! " Mr. Ricardo
says a i^ortion of the labour of the engineer in making [stocking] machines " is
contained for example in the value of a pair of stockings. " Yet the total labour,
that produced each single pair of stockings .... includes 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 machine." (" Obs. on certain verbal
disputesinPol.Econ. particularly relating to value,"p. 54.) The author, an uncommonly
self-satisfied wiseacre, is right in his confusion and therefore in his contention, to this
extent only that neither Ricardo nor any other economist, before or since him, has
accurately distinguished the two aspects of labour, and still less, therefore, the part
played by it under each of these aspects in the formation of value.

1 88 Capitalist Production.

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 whicli they
came into the process, or in other words, by the labour-time
necessary for their production. Therefore, the means of pro-
duction can never add more value to the product than they
themselves possess independently of the process in which they
assist. However useful a given kind of raw material, or a
machine, or other means of production may be, though it may
cost £150, or, say, 500 days' labour, yet it cannot, under any
circumstances, add to the value of the product more than £150.
Its value is determined not by the labour-process into which it
enters as a means of production, but by that out of which it has
issued as a product. \\i the labour-process it only serves as a
mere use-value, a thing with useful properties, and could not,
therefore, transfer an}^ value to the product, unless it possessed
such value previously.^

1 From this we may judge of tlie 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-process
by means of their use-values. Mr. Wra. Roscher who seldom loses an occasion of re-
gistering, in black and white, ingenious apologetic fancies, records the following
specimen :— " J. B. Say (Traits, t. 1. ch. 4) very truly remarks : the value produced
by an oil mill, aftar deduction of all costs, is something new, something quite different
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 iudeed something very different
from the labour expended in constructing the mill ! By value, Mr Roscher under-
stands such stuff as " oil," because oil has value, notwithstanding that " Nature " pro-
duces petroleum, though relatively " in small quantities," a fact to which he seems to
refer in his further observation : " It (Nature) produces scarcely any exchange-value."
Mr. Roscher's "Nature" and the exchange-value it produces are rather like the
foolish virgin who admitted indeed that she had had a child, but " it was such a little
one." This "savant serieux" in continuation remarks : " Ricardo's school is in the
habit of including capital as accumulated labour under the head of labour. This is
unskilful work, because, indeed, the owner of capital, after all, does something more
than the merely creating and preserving of the same : namely, the abstention from

Constant Capital and Variable Capital. 1 89

While productive labour is changing the means of produc-
tion into constituent elements of a new product, their value
undergoes a metempsychosis. Tt deserts the consumed body,
to occupy the new^ly 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 a
the same time preserving old values, and this, because th
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.^ So long as trade is good, the
capitalist is too much absorbed in money-grubbing to take
notice of this gratuitous gift of labour. A violent interruption
of the labour-process by a crisis, makes him sensitively aware
of \i?

As regards the means of production, what is really consumed
is their use- value, and the consumption of this use-value by labour

the enjoyment of it, for which he demands, e.gf., interest." (1. c.) How very "skil-
ful" is this '* anatomico-physiological method "of political economy, which, "indeed,"
converts a mere desire " after all " into a source of value.

1 "Of all the instruments of the farmers' trade, the labour of man ... is that on
which he is most to rely for the repayment of his capital. The other tvvo . . . the work-
ing stock of the cattle and the . . . carts, ploughs, spades, and so forth, without a
given portion of the first, are nothing at all." (Edmund Burke : " Thoughts and De-
tails on Scarcity, originally presented to the Right Hon. W. Pitt, in the month of
November 1795," Edit. London, 1800, p. 10.)

2 In " Tlie Times " of 26th November, 1862, a manufacturer, whose mill employed
800 hands, and consumed, on the average, 150 bales of East Indian, or 130 bales of
American cotton, complains, in doleful manner, of the standing expenses of his
factory when not working. He estimates them at £6,000 a year. Among them are
a number of items that do not concern us here, such as rent, rates, and taxes, in-
surance, salaries of the manager, book-keeper, engineer, and others. Then he reckons
£150 for coal used to heat the mill occasionally, and run the engine now and then.
Besides this, he includes the wages of the people employed at odd times to keep the
machinery in working order. Lastly, he puts down £1,200 for depreciation of
machinery, because " the weather and the natural principle of decay do not suspend
their operations because the steam-engine ceases to revolve." He says, emphatically,
he does not estimate his depreciation at more than the smaU sum of £1,200, because
his machinery is already nearly worn out.

I go Capitalist Production.

results in the product. There is no consumption of their value/
and it would therefore be inaccurate to say that it is reproduced.
It is rather preserved ; not by reason of any 0[»eration it under-
goes 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 t .) the means of production. It is the only original
bit of value formed during this process, the only yjortion of the
value of the product created by this process. Of course, we

1 "Productive consumption ... where the consumption of a commodity is a pert of
the process of production. . . . In these instances there is no consumption of value."
(S. P. Newman, 1. c. p. 293.)

2 In an American compendium that has gone through, perhaps, 20 editions, this
imssage 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 suflBces 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.

Constant Capital and Variable Capital, 1 9 1

do not forget that this new value only replaces the money
advanced by the capitalist in the purchase of the labour-power,
and spent by the labourer on the necessaries of life. With
regard to the money spent, the new value is merely a repro-
duction ; but, nevertheless, it is an actual, and not, as in the
case of the value of the means of production, only an apparent,
reproduction. The substitution of one value for another, is
here effected by the creation of new value.

We know, however, from what has gone before, that the
labour-process may continue beyond the time necessary to re-
produce and incorporate in the product a mere equivalent for
the value of the labour-power. Instead of the six hours that
are sufficient for the latter purpose, the process may continue
for twelve hours. The action of labour-power, therefore, not
only reproduces its own value, but produces value over and
above it. This surplus-value is the difference between the
value of the product and the value of the elements consumed
in the formation of that product, in other words, of the means
of production and the labour-power.

By our explanation of the different parts played by the vari-
ous factors of the labour-process in the formation of the pro-
duct's value, we have, in fact, disclosed the characters of the
different functions allotted to the different elements of capital
in the process of expanding its own value. The surplus of the
total value of the product, over the sum of the values of its
constituent factors, is the surplus of the expanded capital over
the capital originally advanced. The means of production on
the one hand, labour-power on the other, are merely the differ-
ent modes of existence which the value of the original capital
assumed when from being money it was transformed into the
various factors of the labour-process. That part of capital
then, which is represented by the means of production, by the
raw material, auxiliary material and the instruments of labour,
does not, in the process of production, undergo any quantitative
alteration of value. I therefore call it the constant part of
capital, or, more shortly, constant capital.

On the other hand, that part of capital, represented by
labour-power, does, in the process of production, undergo an

r92 Capitalist Production.

alteration of value. It both reproduces the equivalent of its;
own value, and also produces an excess, a surplus-value, which
may itself vary, may be more or less according to circumstances.
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 ia its elements.
Sup]30se 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 tlie 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 market 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 it-
self, 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 process 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 conditions. If
the time socially necessary for the production of any com-

Const a7it Capital and Variable Capital 193

modity alters — and a given weight of cotton represents, after a
bad harvest, more labour than after a good one — all previously
existing commodities of the same class are affected, because they
are, as it were, only individuals of the species,^ and their
value at any given time is measured by the labour sociall}^
necessary, i.e., by the labour necessary for their production
under the then existinor 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 pro-
duction, 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 tin implements of small value worked
up a relatively small quantity of raw material, one man may
now, with the aid of one expensive machine, work up one
hundred times as much raw material. In the latter case wo
have an enormous increase in the constant cai)ital, that is re-
presented by the total value of the means of production used,
and at the same time a great reduction in the variable ca})ital,
invested in labour-power. Such a revolution, however, alters
only the quantitative relation between the constant and the

1 "Toutes les productions d'un meme genre ne foment proprement qu'une masse,
dont le prix se determine eu general et sans egard aux circonstauces particulieres. "
(Le Trosne, 1. c, p. 803.)

N

194 Capitalist Production,

variable capital, 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.

CHAPTER IX.

THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE.

SECTION 1. — THE DEGREE OP EXPLOITATION OP 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 consideration,
in the first place, as a surplus, as the amount by which the
value of the product exceeds the value of its constituent
elements.

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=(c4-v) + s, where s is the surplus- value ;
or taking our former figures, the value of this commodity may
be (£410 const. -f £90 var.) + £90 surpl. The original capital
has now changed from C to C, from £500 to £590. The differ-
ence is 8 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

77/6' Rate oj Stirphts-vahie, 195

closely. Tlie 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-
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 by wear and
tear in the process ; for this is all it parts with to the product.
Now if we also reckon the remaining £1,000, which still con-
tinues in the machinery, as transferred to the product, we
ought also to reckon it as part of the value advanced, and thus
make it appear on both sides of our calculation.^ We should,
in this way, get £1,500 on one side and £1,590 on the other.
The difference of these two sums, or the surplus-value, would
still be £90. Throughout this Book therefore, by constant
capital advanced for the production of value, we always mean,
unless the context is repugnant thereto, the value of the means
of production actually consumed in the process, and that value
alone.

This being so, let us return to the formula C=^c-i-v, which
we saw was transformed into C =(c -h v) -f s, C becoming C
We know that the value of the constant capital is transferred
to, and merely re-appears in the product. The new value
actually created in the process, the value produced, or value-
product, is therefore not the same as the value of the product ;
it is not, as it would at first sight appear (c-|-v)-f s or £410

1 " If we reckon the value of the fixed capital employed as a part of the advances,
Tre must reckon the remaining value of such capital at the end of the year as a part
of the annual returns." (Malthus, "Princ. of Pol. Econ."2nded.,Lond., 1836, p. 269.)

ig6 Capitalist Production.

const. + £90 var. 4-^90 surpl.; bat v-hs or £90 var.-f£90 surpL
not £590 but £180. If c=o, or in other words, if there were
branches of industry in which the capitahst could dispense
with all means of production made by previous labour, whether
tliey be raw material, auxiliary material, or instruments of
labour, employing only labour-power and materials supplied
by Nature, in that case, there would be no constant capital to
transfer to the pn)duct. This component of the value of the
product, Le,y the £410 in our example, would be eliminated,
but the sum of £180, the amount of new value ci^ated, or the
value produced, which contains £90 of surplus- value, would
remain just as great as if c represented the highest value
imaginable. We should have C=(0+v)=v or C the expanded
capital=v-f s and therefore C — C=s as before. On the other
hand, if s=0, or in other words, if the labour-power, whose
value is advanced in the form of variable capital, weie to pio-
duce only its equivalent, we should have C=c4v or C the
value of the product==(c-fv)+0 or C=Cr. 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
\7henever 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

The Rate of Surplus-value, 197

+ £00 surpl. ; but £90 is a given and therefore a constant
quantity ; hence it appears absurd to treat it as variable. But
in fact, the terra £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
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 capitalist
production.

At first sight it appears a strange proceeding, to equate the
constant capital to zero. Yet it is what we do every day. If,
for example, we wish to calculate the amount of England's
profits from the cotton industry, we first of all deduct the sums
paid for cotton to the United States, India, Egypt and other
countries ; in other words, the value of the capital that merely
re-appears in the value of the product, is put = 0.

Of course the ratio of surplus-value not only to that portion
of the capital from which it immediately springs, and whose
change of value it represents, but also to the sum total of the
capital advanced is economically of very great importance.
We shall, therefore, in the third book, treat of this ratio ex-
haustively. In order to enable one portion of a capital to ex-
pand its value by being converted into labour-power, it is
necessary that another portion be converted into means of pro-
duction. In order that variable capital may perform its
function, constant capital must be advanced in proper proportion,
a proportion given by the special technical conditions of each
labour-process. The circumstance, however, that retorts and

19^ Capitalist Production.

other vessels, are necessary to a chemical process, does not
compel the chemist to notice them in the result of his analysis.
If we look at the means of production, in their relation to the
creation of value, and to the variation in the quantity of value,
apart from anything else, they appear simply as the material
in which labour-power, the value-creator, incorporates itself.
Neither the nature, nor the value of this material is of an}^
importance. The only requisite is that there be a sufficient
supply to absorb the labour expended in the process of pro-
duction. Tliat 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.^

In the first place then we equate the constant capital to zero.
The capital advanced is consequently reduced from c+v to v,
and instead of the value of the product (c+v)4s we have now
the value produced (v-f s). Given the new value produced =
fl80, which sum consequently represents the whole labour ex-
pended during the process, then subtracting from it £90 the
value of the variable capital, we have remaining £90, the
amount of the surplus- value. This sum of £90 or s expresses
the absolute quantity of surplus-value produced. The relative
quantity produced, or the increase per cent of the variable
capital, is determined, it is plain, by the ratio of the surplus-
value to the variable capital, or is expressed by *. In our
example this ratio is %%, which gives an increase of 100 %.
This relative increase in the value of the variable capital, or
the relative magnitude of the surplus-value, I call, " The rate
of surplus- value.'*

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 Jiis means of subsistence. Now since his

1 What Lucretius says is self-evident ; " nil posse creari de nihilo," oat of nothing,
nothing can be created. Creation of value is transformation of labour-power into
labour. Labour-power itself is energy transferred to a human organism by means of
nourishing matter.

2 In the same way that the English use the terms "rate of profit," "rate of in-
terest." We shall see, in Book III., that the rate of profit is no mystery, so soon as
we know the laws of surplus-value. If we reverse the process, we cannot compre-
hend either the one or the other.

7Jw Rate of Stirphis-valtie. 199

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
can be bought. The portion of his day's labour devoted to
this purpose, will be greater or less, in proportion to the value
of the necessaries that he daily requires on an average, or,
what amounts to the same thing, in proportion to the labour-
time required on an average to produce them. If the value
of those necessaries represent 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 take place, I call " necessai^ " labour- time, and the
labour expended during that time I call " necessary " labour.^
Necessary, as regards the labourer, because independent of the
particular social form of his labour ; necessary, as regards
capital, and the world of capitalists, because on the continued
existence of the labourer depends their existence also.

During the second period of the labcjur-process, that in

1 In this work, we have, up to now, employed the term " necessary labour-time," to
designate the time necessary under given social conditions for the production of any
commodity. Henceforward we use it to designate also the time necessary for the
production of the particular commodity labour-power. The use of one and the same
technical term in different senses is inconvenient, but in no science can it be
altogether avoided. Compare, for instance, the higher with the lower branches of
mathematics.

200 Capitalist Production.

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
working day, I name surplus labour-time, and to the labour
expended during that time, I give the name of surplus-labour.
It is every bit as important, for a correct understanding of
surplus- value, to conceive it as a mere congelation of surplus-
labour-time, as nothing but materialised surplus-labour, as it
is, for a pi'oper comprehension of value, to conceive it as a mere
congelation of so many hours of labour, as nothing but ma-
terialised labour. The essential difference between the various
economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society
based on slave labour, and one based on wage labour, lies only
in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case ex-
tracted from the actual producer, the labourer.^

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, tliat surplus-labour does to necessary labour,
or in other words, the rate of surplus- value \ = neS^^ro^*
Both ratios, ?^ and i"n>iu8jaT>our express the same thinor in different

' V necessary labour' 1 O

ways ; in the one case by reference to materialised, incorporated
labour, in tlie other by reference to living, fluent labour.

The rate of surplus-value is therefore an exact expression

1 Herr Wilhelm Thucy elides Eoscher has found a mare's nest. He has made the
important discovery that if, on the one hand, the formation of surplus-value, or
surplus-produce, and the consequent accumulation of capital, is now-a-days due to
the thrift of the capitalist, on the other hand, in the lowest stages of civilisation it is
the strong who compel the weak to economise (1. c. p. 78). To economise what ?
Labour ? Or superfluous wealth that does not exist ? What is it that makes such
men as Roscher account for the origin of surplus-value, by a mere rechauffe of the
more or less plausible excuses by the capitalist, for his appropriation of surplus-value ?
It is, besides their real ignorance, their apologetic dread of a scientific analysis of
value and surplus-value, and of obtaining a result, possibly not altogether palatable
to the powers that be.

The Rate of Surphis-value, 201

for the degree of exploitation of labour-power by capital, or of
the labourer by the capitalist.^

We assumed in our example, that the value of the product
=£410 const. + £90 var. + £90 surpL, and that the capital
advanced = £500. Since the surplus- value = £90, and the ad-
vanced capital = £500, we should, according to the usual way
of reckoning, get as the rate of surplus value (generally con-
founded with rate of profits) 18%, a rate so low as possibly
to cause a pleasant surprise to Mr. Carey and other harraon-
isers. But in truth, the rate of surplus-value is not equal
to ^ cr -^ but to ^ : thus it is not i§ but fg or 100%, which
is more than five times the apparent degree of exploitation.
Although, in the case we have supposed, we are ignorant of
the actual length of the working day, and of the duration in
days or weeks of the labour-process, as also of the number of
labourers employed, yet the rate of surplus-value ^ accurately
discloses to us, by means of its equivalent expression, ^2^^^SSr
the relation between the two parts of the working day. This
relation is here one of equality, the rate being 100%. Hence,
it is plain, the labourei-, in our example, works one half of the
day for himself, the other half for the capitalist.

The method of calculating the rate of surplus- value is there-
fore, shortly, as follows. We take the total value of the product
and put the constant capital which merely re-appears in it,
equal to zero. What remains, is the only value that has, in the
process of producing the commodity, been actually created. If
the amount of surplus-value be given, we have only to deduct
it from this remainder, to find the variable capital. And vice
versdy 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.

1 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-
labour =i 5 hours, the degree of exploitation is 100%. The amount of exploitation is
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 before,
100%, while the actual amount of exploitation has increased 20%, namely from five
hou s to six.

2'02 Capitalist Production,

Though the method is so simple, yet it may not be amiss, by
means of a few examples, to exercise the reader in the applica-
tion of the novel principles underlying it.

First we will take the case of a spinning mill containing
10,000 mule spindles, spinning No. 32 yarn from American
cotton, and producing 1 lb. of yarn weekly per spindle. We
assume the waste to be 6 % : under these circumstances 10,600
lbs. of cotton are consumed weekly, of which 600 lbs. go to
waste. The price of the cotton in April, 1871, was 7|d. ])er
lb. ; the raw material therefo^-e costs in round numbers £342.
The 10,000 spindles, inchiding 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 lbs. of coal per horse-power per
hour durinor 60 hours, and inclusive of that consumed in heatinor
the mill), 11 tons a week at 8s. 6d. a ton, amounts to about £4J
a week: gas, £1 a week, oil,«fec.,£4J a week. Total costof theabove
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 12Jd. per lb., which
gives for the value of 10,000 lbs. the sum of £510. The surplus
value is therefore in this case £510 — £430 ~ £80. We put
the constant part of the value of the product •=. 0, as it plays
no part in the creation of value. There remains £132 as the
weekly value cieated, which =: £52 var. £80 surpl. The
rate of surplus-value is therefore |o = 153H %. In a working
day of 10 hours with average labour the result is : necessary
labour = 3f^ hours, and surplus-labour = 61?%.^

One mora example. Jacob gives the following calculation for
the year 1815. Owing to the previous adjustment of several
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 spinner.
In England the horse-power of an engine was formerly calculated from the diameter
of its cylinder, now the actual horse-power shown by the indicator is taken.

The Rate of Surplus-value. 20,

Value Produced Per Acre.

Seed,

£1 9

0

Tithes, Rates, and

Manure,

2 10

0

Taxes, - - £1 1

0

Wages,

3 10

0

Rent, - - 1 8
Farmer's Profit and

Interest, - 12

Total, - £3 11

0

0

Total, -

£7 9

0

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- value of £3 lis. 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 lOs. Od., which is
the variable capital advanced : and we see that a new value of
£3 lOs. Od. + £3 lis. Od. has been produced in its place.
Tlierefore ~ == -||-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.^

SECTION 2. — THE UEPKESENTATION OF THE COMPONENTS OF THE VALUE OF
THE PRODUCT BY CORRESPONDING PROPORTIONAL PARTS OF THE PRO-
DUCT ITSELF.

Let US now return to the example by which we were shown
how the capitalist converts money into capital.

The product of a working day of 12 hours is 20 lbs. of yarn,
having a value of 30s. No less than ^ths of this value, or 24s.,
is due to mere re-appearance in it, of the value of the means of
production (20 lbs. of cotton, value 20s., and spindle worn away,
4s.) : it is therefore constant capital. The remaining ^ths or
6s. is the new value created during the spinning process : of

1 The calculations given in the text are intended merely as illustrations. We have
in fact assumed that prices = values. We shall, however, see, in Book III., that
even in the case of average prices the assumption cannot be made in this very simple
manner.

2Q4 Capitalist Production,

this one half replaces the value of the day's labour-power, or the
variable capital, the remaining half constitutes a surplus-value
of 3s. The total value then of the 20 lbs. of yarn is made up
as follows :

30s. value of yarn = 24s. const, -f 3s. var. + 3s. surpl.

Since the whole of this value is contained in the 20 lbs. 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 lbs. of yarn, then ^ ths
of this value, or the 24s. that form its constant part, is con-
tained in ^ths of the product or in 16 lbs. of yarn. Of the
latter 13J lbs. represent the value of the raw material, the 20s.
worth of cotton spun, and 2| lbs. represent the 4s. worth of
spindle, &c., worn away in the process.

Hence the whole of the cotton used up in spinning the 20
lbs. of yarn, is represented by 13 J lbs. of yarn. This latter
weight of yarn contains, it is true, by weight, no more than 13J
lbs. of cotton, worth 13 J shillings ; but the 6| shillings additional
value contained in it, are the equivalent for the cotton consumed
in spinning the remaining 6| lbs. of yarn. The effect is the
same as if these 6| lbs. of yarn contained no cotton at all, and
the whole 20 lbs. of cotton were concentrated in the 13 J lbs. of
yarn. The latter weight, on the other hand, does not contain
an atom either of the value of the auxiliary materials and imple-
ments, or of the value newly created in the process.

In the same way, the 2| lbs. of yarn, in which the 4s., the re-
mainder of the constant capital, is embodied, represents nothing
but the value of the auxiliary materials and instruments of
labour consumed in producing the 20 lbs. of yarn.

We have, therefore, amved at this result : although eight-
tenths of the product, or 16 lbs. 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
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 :

The Rate of Siirplus-value, 205

for so soon as our capit-alist sells it for 24s., and with the money
replaces his means of production, it becomes evident that this
16 lbs. of yarn is nothing more than so much cotton and spindle-
waste in disguise.

On the other hand, the remaining y^ ths of the product, or 4
lbs. 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 lbs., from the raw material and instruments
of labour consumed, was, so to say, intercepted in order to be
incorporated in the 16 lbs. first spun. In this case, it is as if
the spinner had spun 4 lbs. 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 lbs. 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 8s. surplus-value.

Since 12 workingjiours 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 lbs. of yarn ; for in ^^^ths or 16 lbs.
there are materialised the 48 hours of labour expended, before
the commencement of the spinning process, on the means of
production ; and in the remaining y^ths or 4 lbs. 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,
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-

2o6 Capitalist Production.

labour expended during the same process, or the surplus-value f
to do this, is, as will be seen later on from its application to
complicated and hitherto unsolved problems, no less impor-
tant 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 lbs. of yarn, or in 1
hour 1| lbs. ; consequently he produces in 8 hours 13 J lbs., 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| lbs. 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 lbs. 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 lbs. of yarn, whose value is equal to the surplus-
value, created by his surplus-labour during half a day. This
method of calculation serves the English manufacturer for
everyday use ; it shows, he will say, that in the first 8 hours,
or f of the working day, he gets back the value of his cotton ;
and so on for the remaining hours. It is also a perfectly
correct method: being in fact the first method given above
with this difference, that instead of being applied to space, in
which the different parts of the completed product lie side by
side, it deals with time, in which those parts are successively
produced. But it can also be accompanied by very barbarian
notions, more especially in the heads of those who are as mu*. h
interested, practically, in the process of making value beget
value, as they are in misunderstanding that process theoreti-
cally. Such people may get the notion into their heads, that
our spinner, for example, produces or replaces in the first 8
hours of his working day the value of the cotton; in the

The Rate of SurphtS'Vahie, 207

following hour and 86 minutes the vilue of the instruments of
labour worn away; in the next hour and 12 minutes the value
of the wages ; and that he devotes to the production of surplus-
value for the manufacturer, only that well known ** last hour."
In this way the poor spinner is made to perform the two-fold
miracle not only of producing cotton, spindles, steam-engine,
coal, oil, fee, 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 instru-
ments of labour demands four working days of twelve hours
each, and their conversion into yarn requires another such day.
That the love of lucre induces an easy belief in such miracles,
and that sycophant doctrinaires are never wanting to prove
them, is vouched for by the following incident of historical
celebrity.

SECTION 3. — senior's " LAST HOUR.**

One fine morning, in the year 1 836, Nassau W. Senior, who
may be called the bel-esprit of English economists, well known,
alike for his economical "science," and for, his beautiful style,
was summoned from Oxford to Manchester, to learn in the
latter place, the political economy that he taught in the former.
The manufacturers elected him as their champion, not only
against the newly passed Factory Act, but against the still
more menacing Ten-hours' agitation. With their usual practical
acuteness, they had found out that the learned Professor
"wanted a good deal of finishing;" it was this discovery that
caused them to write for him. On his side the Professor has
embodied the lecture he received from the Manchester manu-
facturers, in a pamphlet, entitled : " Letters on the Factory
Act, as it affects the cotton manufacture." London, 1837.
Here we find, amongst others, the following edifying passage :
" Under the present law, no mill in which persons under 18

years of age are employed, can be worked more

than \\\ 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

2o8 Capitalist Production,

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 produces 5-115ths
or one twenty -third. Of these 23-23rds (constituting 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 deterioration 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, therefore (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 Senior, 1. c, p. 12, 13. We let pass such extraordinary notions as are of no im-
portance for our purpose ; for instance, the assertion, that manufacturers reckon as
part of their profit, gross or net, the amount required to make good wear and tear of
machinery, or in other words, to replace a part of the capital. So. too, we pass over
any question as to the accuracy of his figures. Leonard Horner 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 undying
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 impor-
tance than the number of hours worked by the " hands " in the mills.

Apart from errors in j)rinciple, Senior's statement is confused. "WTiat he really in-
tended to say was this : The manufacturer employs the workman for 11^ hours or for
23 half-hours daily. As the working day, so, too, the working year, may be conceived
to consist of 11.^ hours or 23 half -hours, but each multiplied by the number of working
days in the year. On this supposition, the 23 half -hours yield an annual product of
£115,000; one half -hour yields ^V x £115,000; 20 half -hours yield |g x £115,000;
= £100,000, i.e., they replace no more than the capital advanced. There remain 3 half-
hours, which yield ^^5 x £115,000= £15,000 or the gross i>rofit. Of these 3 half -hours, one
yields oV x £115,000 = £5000 ; i.e., it makes up for the wear and tear of the
machinery ; the remaining 2 half -hours, i.e., the last hour, yield ^\ x £115,000 =
£10,000 or the net profit. In the text Senior converts the last -^^ of the product into
portions of the working day itself.

The Rate of Surplus-value, 209

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.y 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|, 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 reproducing or replacing the capital
that has been advanced. — If, on the other hand, he did not
believe them without further inquiry, but, as being an expert
in such matters, deemed an analysis necessary, then he ought,
in a question that is concerned exclusively with the relations
of net profit to the length of the working day, before all things
to have asked the manufacturers, to be careful not to lump
together machinery, workshops, raw material, and labour, but
to be good enough to place the constant capital, invested in
buildings, machinery, raw material, &ic., on one side of the
account, and the capital advanced in wages on the other side.
If the profesvsor then found, that in accordance with the calcu-
lation of the manufacturers, the workman reproduced or re-
placed his wages in 2 half-hours, in that case, he should have
continued his analysis thus :

According to your figures, the workman in the last hour but
one produces his wages, and in the last hour your surplus-
value or net profit. Now, since in equal periods he produces
equal values, the produce of the last hour but one, must have
the same value as that of the last hour. Further, it is only
while he labours that he produces any value at all, and the
amount of his labour is measured by his labour-time. This
you say, amounts to 11 J hours a day. He employs one portion
of these 11 J hours, in producing or replacing his wages, and the
remaining portion in producing your net profit. Beyond this he
does absolutely nothing. But since, on your assumption, his
wages, and the surplus-value he yields, are of equal value, it
is clear that he produces his wages in 5| hours, and your net

^210 Capitalist Production.

profit in the other oj 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 II2 working hours, of which 5f hours
measure the value of the yarn produced in the last hour bub
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 pro-
duce 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 vakie of this yarn is measured
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 remaining one hour
alone is added by him. Therefore since his wages are produced
in 5f hours, and the yarn produced in one hour also contains
5| hours' work, there is no witchcraft in the result, that the
value created by his 5| hours* spinning, is equal to the value of
the product spun in one hour. You are altogether 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 contrary, it is be-
cause 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 oww accord. This result is owing to
the quality of his labour, not to its quantity. It is true, he
will in one hour transfer to the yarn more value, in the shape
of cotton, than he will in half an hour ; but that is only be-
cause 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,
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, Le.y two hours of his own work and 9^ hours

The Rate of Surplus-vahie. 2 1 1

of other people's. And my assertion that, in the first 5f hours,
he produces his wages, and in the last 5| 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 yow. 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 J, 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 5| hours'
labour to 7i hours' labour, and the rate of surplus-value from
100% to 126 4 %• So that you are altogether too sanguine, in
expecting that by such an addition of 1| hours to the working
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
carried in the purse — you take too pessimist a view, when you
fear, that with a reduction of the hours of labour from \\\ to
10, the whole of your net profit will go to the dogs. Not at
all. All other conditions remaining the same, the surplus-
labour will fall from 5| hours to 4| 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." ^ Whenever your " last hour " strikes in

1 If, on the one hand, Senior proved that the net profit of the manufacturer,
the existence of the English cotton industry, and England's command of the markets
of the Wi)rld, depend on " the last working hour," on the other hand, Dr. Andrew
Ure showed, that if children and young persons under 18 years of age, instead of being
kept the full 12 hours in the warm and pure moral atmosphere of the factory, 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. Since 1848, the
factory inspectors have never tired of twitting the masters with this " last," this
"fatal hour." Thus Mr. Howell in his report of the 81st May, 1855: "Had the follow-
ing 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

212 Capitalist Production.

earnest, think on the Oxford Professor. And now, gentleman,
" farewell, and may we meet again in yonder better world, but
not before/'

Senior invented the battle cry of the " last hour " in 1836.*

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 siiinning
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 shoulders of a few of their work
people. One of the clauses of this petition is as follows : ' ' Your petitioners, as
parents, conceive that an additional hour of leisure will tend more to demoralise the
children than otherwise, believing that idleness is the parent of vice. " On this the
factory report of 31st Oct., 1848, says : The atmosphere 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 exceptionally 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 atmos-
phere. . . . 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 pro-
claimed, 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 si ce been so far improved, as to include morals as well as profit ; so that, if the
duration of the labour of children, is reduced to a full 10 hours, their morals, together
with the net profits of their employers, will vanish, both being dependent on this last,
this fatal hour. (See Repts., Insp. of Fact., for 31st Oct., 1848, p. 101.) The same
report then gives some examples of the morality and virtue of these same pure-minded
manufacturers, of the tricks, the artifices, the cajoling, the threats, and the falsifica-
tions, they made use of, in order, first, to compel a few defenceless workmen to sign
petitions of such a kind, and then to impose them upon Parliament as the petitions
of a whole branch of industry, or a whole country. It is highly characteristic of the
present status of so called economical science, that neither Senior himself, who, at a
later period, to his honour be it said, energetically supported the factory legislation,
nor his opponents, from first to last, have ever been able to explain the false con-
clusions of the '* original discovery." They appeal to actual experience, but the why
and wherefore remains a mystery.

I Nevertheless, the learnel professor was not without some benefit from his journey
to Manchester. In the " Letters on the Factory Act," he makes the whole net gains
including " profit " and " interest, "and even "something more," depend upon 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,
ho 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,

The Rate of Siirplus-valiie. 213

In the London Fconoraist 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.

SECTIOJf 4. — SURPLUS-PRODUCE.

The position of the product that represents the surplus-value,
(one* tenth of the 20 lbs,, or 2 lbs. 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 by the relative
magnitude of the surplus-produce.'^

The sum of the necessary labour and the surplus-labour, i.e.y
of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the
value of his labour-power, and produces the surplus-value, this
sum constitutes the actual time during which he works, i.e., the
working da}'.

in other words, from hw "abstinence,'* The dodge was an old one, but the word
* * abstinence " was new. Herr Roscher tra slates 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).

I '* To an individual with a capital of £20,000, whose profits were £2000 per annum,
it would be a matter quite indifferent whether his ca})ital would employ a 100 or 1030
men, whether the commodity produced sold for £10,000 or £20,000, provided, in all
cases, his profit were not diminished below £2000. 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.'* (Rio.
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 pro-
vince thus divided [in the old Roman manner, by small independent peasants], however
well cultivated, except for the mere purpose of breeding men, which taken singly is a
moat useless purpose?*' (Arthur Young; Political Arithmetic, &c. London, 1774,
p. 47.)

Very curious is " the strong inclination ... to represent net wealth as beneficial to
the labouring class .... though it is evidently not on account of being net." (Th.
Hopkins, On Rent of Land, &c. London, 1823, p. 126.)

214 Capitalist Production,

CHAPTER X.

THE WORKING DAY.

SECTION 1. — THE LIMITS OF THE WORKING DAY.

We started with the supposition that labour-power is bought
and sold at its value. Its value, like that of all other commo-
dities, is determined by the working time necessary to its
production. If the- prod-uction of the average daily means of
subsistence of the labourer takes up 6 hours, he must work, on
the average, G hours every day, to produce liis 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, coeteris 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 B4B 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, ~ in working day
111,-1 of A B. Since, further, the ratio i:£SL!p||J™|. deter-
mines 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
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

The Working Day, 215

(lay, iiecessary-lahour and surplus-labour time, were equal in ex-
tent, but not how long each of these two constituent parts was.

The working day is thus not a constant, but a variable
quantity. One of its parts, certainly, is determined by the
working time required for the reproduction of the labour-
power of the labourer himself. But its total amount varies
with the duration of the surplus-labour. The working day is,
therefore, determinable, but is, 'per se, indeterminate. ^

Although the working day is not a fixed, but a fluent
quantity, it can, on the other hand, only vary within certain
limits. The minimum limit is, however, not determinable ;
of course, if we make the extension line BC or the surplus-
labour =0, we have a minimum limit, i.e., the part of the day
which the labourer must necessarily work for his own main-
tenance. On the basis of capitalist production, however, this
necessary labour can form a part only of the working day ; the
working day itself can never be reduced to this minimum. On
the other hand, the working day has a maximum limit. It
cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point. This maximum
limit is conditioned by two things. First, by the physical
bounds of labour-power. Within the 24 hours of the natural day
a man can expend only a definite quantity of his vital force. A
horse, in like manner, can only work from day to day, 8 hours.
During part of the day this force must rest, sleep ; during
another part the man has to satisfy other physical needs, to
feed, wash, and clothe himself Besides these purely physical
limitations, the extension of the working day encounters
moral ones. The labourer needs time for satisfying his intellec-
tual and social wants, the extent and number of which are
conditioned by the general state of social advancement. The
variation of the working day fluctuates, therefore, within
physical and social bounds. But both these limiting conditions
are of a very elastic nature, and allow the greatest latitude.
So we find working days of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, i.e., of
the most diflerent lengths.

The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-rate.

1 "A day's labour is vague, it may be long or short." (*' An essay on Trade and
Commerce, containi'ic observations on taxes," &c. London, 1770, p. 73.)

2x6 Capitalist Production,

To him its use-value belongs during one working day. He
has thus acquired the right to make the labourer work for him
during one day. But, what is a working day ?

At all events, less than a natural day. By how much ?
The capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thile, 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. ^

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. ^

If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he
robs the capitalist.

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
stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production,
rises :

The commodity that 1 have sold to you differs from the
crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and

1 This question is far more important than the celebrated question of Sir Robert
Peel to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce : What is a pound? A question
that could only have been proposed, because Peel was as much in the dark as to the
nature of money as the " little shilling men " of Birmingham.

2 It is the aim of the capitalist to obtain with his expended capital the greatest
possible quantity of labour (d'obtenir du capital depens6 la plus forte somme de
travail possible. ) J. G. Courcelle-Seneuil. Traite theorique et pratique des entre-
prises industrielles. 2nd ed. Paris, 1857, p. 63.

3 "An hour's labour lost in a day is a prodigious injury to a commercial State.
. . . There is a very great consumption of luxuries among the labouring poor of this
kingdom : particularly among the manufacturing populace, by which they also
consume their time, the most fatal of consumptions." An Essay on Trade and
Commerce, &c., p. 47 and 153.

4 "Si le manouvrier libre prend un instant de reposjl'economie sordidequi le sixit
des yeux avec inquietude, pretend qu'il la vole.'' N. Linguet. "Th^orie des loix
civiles, &c. London, 17G7," t. II., p. 466.

The Working Day. 217

a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it.
That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of
capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You
and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange
of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity
belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer,
who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my
daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay
for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to
sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c.,
I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal
amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preach
to me constantly the gospel of "saving" and "abstinence."
Good ! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole
wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it.
I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as
much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and
healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the
working day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour-
power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in
labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour-power and
the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average
time that (doing a reasonable amount of work) an average
labourer can live, is 80 years, the value of my labour-power,
which you pay me from c^ay to day is g—^ or -^ of its total
value. But if you consume it in 10 years, you pay me daily
jjjgg- instead of -—■ of its total value, i.e., only J 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, therefore, a working
day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to
your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place.
You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in the
odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you represent face
to face with me has no heart in its breast. That which seems
to throb there is my own heart-beating. I demand the normal

2i8 Capitalist Production.

working day because I, like every other seller, demand tlie
value of my commodity. ^

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 main-
tains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the work-
ing day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two
working days out of one. On the other hand, the j)ecu]iar
nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consump-
tion 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 determin-
ation of what is a working day, presents itself as the result of
a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of
capitalists, and collective labour i.e., the working class.

SECTION 2. —THE GREED FOR SURPLUS-LABOUR. MANUFACTURER AND BOYARD.

Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part
of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the
labourer, free or not free, must add to the working time
necessary for his own maintenance an extra working time in
order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the
means of production,^ whether this proprietor be the Athenian
«ax«,- KayuSo;, Etruscau tlicocrat, civis Romanus, Norman baron,
American slave owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern landlord or
capitalist.^ It is, however, clear that in any given economic

1 During the great strike of the London builders, 1860-61, for the reduction of the
working day to 9 hours, their Commitlae published a manifesto that contained, to
some extent, the plea of our worker. The manifesto alludes, not without irony, to
the fact, that the greatest profit-monger amongst the building masters, a certain
Sir M. Peto, was in the odour of sanctity. (This same Peto, after 1867, came to an
end k la Strousberg.)

2 " Those who labour .... in reality feed both the pensioners . . . [called
the rich] and themselves." (Edmund Burke, 1. c, p. 2.)

•* Niebuhr in his " Roman History " says very naively : "It is evident that works
like the Etruscan, which in their ruins astound us, presuppose in little (!) states lords
and vassals." Sismondi says far more to the purpose that "Brussels lace" pre-
supposes wage-lords and wage-slaves.

The Working Day, 219

formation of society, where not the exchange-value but the
nse-vahie of the product predominates, surplus-labour will be
limited by a given set of wants which may be greater or less,
and that here no boundless thirst for surplus-labour arises from
the nature of the production itself Hence in antiquity over-
work becomes horrible only when the object is to obtain ex-
change-value in its specific independent money-form ; in the
production of gold and silver. Compulsory working to death
is here the recognised form of over-woik. Only read Diodorus
Siculus/ Still these are exceptions in antiquity. 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 market dominated by the capitalistic mode
of production, the sale of their products for export becoming
their principal interest, the civilized horrors of over-work are
grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, &;c. Hence
the negro labour in the Southern States of the American Union
preserved something of a patriarchal character, so long as pro-
duction was chiefly directed to immediate local consumption.
But in proportion, as the export of cotton became of vital
interest to these states, the over- working of the negro and some-
times the using up of his life in 7 years of labour became a
factor in a calculated and calculating system. It was no longer
a question of obtaining from him a certain quantity of useful
products. It was now a question of production of surplus-
labour itself So was it also wdth the corvee, e.g.^ in the
Danubian Principalities (now Roumania).

The comparison of the greed for surplus-labour in the
Danubian Principalities with the same greed in English factories
has a 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

1 " One cannot see these unfortunates (in the gold mines between Egypt, Ethiopia,
and Arabia) who cannot even have their bodies clean, or their nakedness clothed,
without pitying their miserable lot. There is no indulgence, no forbearance for the
sick, the feeble, the aged, for woman's weakness. All must, forced by blows, work
on until death puts an end to their sufferings and their distress." (** Diod. Sic. Bibl.
Hist.," lib. 3, c. 13.)

2 20 Capitalist ProduclioJl.

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 necessary
labour glide one into the other. I can, therefore, express the
same relationship b}^ 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 necessary
labour. Three days' surplus-labour in the week remain three
days that yield no equivalent to the labourer himself, whether
it be called corvde or wage-labour. But in the capitalist the
greed for surplus-labour appears in the straining after an un-
limited extension of the working day, in the Boyard more
simply in a direct hunting after days of corvde.^

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 coi'v^e rarely arose from serfdom ; serfdom
much more frequently on the other hand took origin from the
corv^e.^ This is what took place in the Roumanian provinces.

1 That which follows refers to the situation in the Roumanian provinces before the
change effected since the Crimean war.

2 This holds likewise for Germany, and especially for Prussia east of the Elbe. In
the 15th century the German peasant was nearly everywhere a man, who, whilst
subject to certain rents paid in produce and labour was otherwise at least
practically free. The German colonists in Brandenburg, Pomerania, Silesia, and
Eastern Prussia, were even legally acknowledged as free men. The victory of the
nobility in the peasants' war put an end to that. Not only were the conquered South
German peasants again enslaved. From the middle of the 16th century the peasants
of Eastern Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, and Silesia, and soon after the free
peasants of Schleswig-Holstein were degraded to the condition of serfs. (Maurer,
Fronhofe iv. vol , — Meitzen, der Boden des preussischen Staats. — Hansen,
Leibeigenschaft in Schleswig-Holstein. — Ed.)

The Working Day, 221

Their original mode c£ 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 puhlicus — 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 com-
mon land, the labour spent upon it. The labour of the free
peasants on their common land was transformed into corvee for
the thieves of the common land. This corvee soon developed
into a servile relationship existing in point of fact, not in point
of law, until Russia, the liberator of the world, made it legal
under pretence of abolishing serfdom. The code of the corvee,
Avhich the Russian General KisselefF proclaimed in 1831, was of
course dictated by the Boyards themselves. Thus Russia con-
quered with one blow the magnates of the Danubian provinces,
and the applause of liberal cretins throughout Europe.

According to the " Reglement organique," as this code of the
corvee is called, every Wallachian peasant owes to the so-called
landlord, besides a mass of detailed payments in kind : (1), 12
days of general labour ; (2), one day of field labour ; (3), one
day of wood carrying. In all, 14 days in the year. With deep
insight into political economy, however, the working day is not
taken in its ordinary sense, but as the working day necessary
to the production of an average daily product ; and that average
daily product is determined in so crafty a way that no Cyclops
would be done with it in 24 hours. In dry words, the Regle-
ment itself declares with true Russian irony that by 12 working
days one must understand the product of the manual labour of
36 days, by 1 day of field labour 3 days, and by 1 day 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

22 2 Capitalist Production.

Thus the prescribed corvee amounts to 56 working days yearly.
Ijut 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. 1-10 working days remain. The ratio of
the corvee to the necessary labour g- or ^Qi | 7o gives a much
smaller rate of surplus-value than that which regulates the
labour of the English agricultural or factory labourer. This
is, however, only the legally prescribed corvee. And in a spirit
yet more " liberal " than the English Factory Acts, the " Kegle-
ment organique " has known how to facilitate its own evasion.
After it has made h^ days out of 12, the nominal days work of
each of the o^ 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 da3^'s
work for some kinds of agricultural labour is interpretable in
such a way that the day begins in May and ends in October.
\vi Moldavia conditions are still harder. " The 12 corvee days
of the ' K^glement organique ' cried a Boyard drunk with
victory, amount to 3G5 days in the year."^

If the Reglement organique of the Danubian provinces was
a positive expression of the greed for surplus-labour which
every paragraph legalised, the English Factory Acts are the
negative expression of the same greed. These acts curb the
passion of capital for a limitless draining of labour-power, by
forcibly limiting the working day by state regulations, made
by a state tliat 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 necessity
which spread guano over the English fields. The same blind
eagerness for plunder that in the one case exhausted the soil,
had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living force of the
nation. Periodical epidemics speak on this point as clearly as
the diminishing military standard in Germany and France.^

1 Further details are to be found in E. Regnault's " Histoire politique et sociale des
Principautes Danubiennes Pai is, 1855

2 "In general and within certain limits, exceeding the medium size of their kind, is
evidence of the prosperity of organic beings. As to man, his bodily height lessens if

The Working Day. 223

The Factory Act of 1850 now in force (1867) allows for the
average working-day 10 hours, \.e., for the first 5 days 12 hours
from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., including \ an hour for breakfast, and
an hour for dinner, and thus leaving lOJ 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, lOJ for
each of the first 5 days, TA for the last.^ Certain guardians of
these laws are appointed, Factory Inspectors, directly under the
Home Secretary, whose reports are published lialf-y early, by
order of Parliament. They give regular and ofiicial statistics of
the capitalistic greed for surplus-labour.

Let us listen, for a moment, to the Factory Inspectors.^
" The fraudulent millowner begins work a quarter of an hour
(sometimes more, sometimes less) before 6 a.m., and leaves ofi:'
a quarter of an hour (sometimes more, sometimes less) after
6 p.m. He takes 5 minutes from the beginning and from the

1 is due growth is interfered with, either by physical or social conditions. In all
European countries in which the conscription holds, since its introduction, the medium
height of adult men, and generally their fitness for military service, has diminished.
Before the revolution (1789), the minimum for the infantry in France was 165 centi-
metres ; in 1818 (law of March 10th), 157; by the law of 1852, 156 cm. ; on the
average in France more than half are rejected on account of deficient height or bodily
weakness. The military standard in Saxony was in 1780, 178 cm. It is now 155.
In Prussia it is 157. According to the statement of Dr. Meyer in the Bavarian
Gazette, May 9th, 1862, the result of an average of 9 years is, that in Prussia out of
1000 conscripts 716 were unfit for military service, 317 because of deficiency in height,
and 399 because of bodily defects. . . . Berlin in 1858 could not provide its con-
tingent of recruits ; it was 156 men short." J. von Liebig : "Die Chemie in ihrer
Anwendung auf Agrikultur und Physiologic, 1863,' 7th Ed., vol. 1., pp. 117, 118.

1 The history of the Factory Act of 1850 will be found in the course of this chapter.

2 I only touch here and there on the period from the beginning of modern industry
in England to 1845. For this period I refer the reader to " Die Lage der arbei-
tenden Klasse in England, von Fried ich Engels, Leipzig, 1845." How completely
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 sui>erficial
comparison of his work with the official reports of the Children's Employment Com-
mission, published 18 to 10 years later (1863- 1867). '' hese deal especially with the
branches of industry in which the Factory Acts had not, up to 186:^, been introduced,
in fact are not yet introduced. Here, then, little or no alteration had been enforced,
by authority, in the conditions painted by Engels. I borrow my examples 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 foreground because she is the classic rejire-
sentative of capitalist production, and she alone has a continuous set of official
statistics of the things we are considering.

2 24 Capitalist Prodiution.

end of the half hour nominally allowed for breakfast, and 10
mirmtes at the beginning and end of the hour nominally allowed
for dinner. He works for a quarter of an hour (sometimes
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 „

00
Five daj's — 300 minutes.
On Saturday before 6 a.m. ... 15 minutes.

At breakfast time, ... ... 10 „

After 2 p.m., ... ... ... 15 „

40 minutes. .
Total weekly, ... ... 340 minutes.

Or 5 hours and 40 minutes weekly, which multiplied by 50
working weeks in the year (allowing two for holidays and
occasional stoppages) is equal to 27 working days."^

"Five minutes a day's increased work, multiplied by weeks,
are equal to two and a half days of produce in the year."^

" An additional hour a day gained by small instalments before
6 a.m., after 6 p.m., and at the beginning and end of the times
nominally fixed for meals, is nearly equivalent to working 13
months in the year."^

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.

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.
4,5.

2 E-epotts of the Inspector of Factories for the half year, October, 1856, p. 35.

3 Reports, &c., 30tli April, 1858, p. 9.

The Working Day. 225

Thus the Factory Inspector's report on the period of the
crisis from 1857 to 1858 :

" It may seem inconsistent that there should be any over-
working at a time when trade is so bad ; but that very bad-
ness leads to the transgression by unscrupulous men, they get

the extra profit of it In the last half year, says Leonard

Horner, 122 mills in my district have been given up ; 143 were
found standing," yet, overwork is continued beyond the legal
hours.^

" 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, how-
ever, to receive about the usual number of complaints that half,
or three-quarters of an hour in the day, are snatched from the
workers by encroaching upon the times professedly allowed for
rest and refreshment."^ The same phenomenon was reproduced
on a smaller scale during the frightful cotton-crisis from 1861
to 1865.^ " It is sometimes advanced by way of excuse, when
persons are found at work in a factory, either at a meal hour,
or at some illegal time, that they will not leave the mill at the
appointed hour, and that compulsion is necessary to force them
to cease work [cleaning their machinery, &c.], especially on
Saturday afternoons. But, if the hands remain in a factory
after the machinery has ceased to revolve . . . they would not
have been so employed if sufiicient time had been set apart
specially for cleaning, fee, either before 6 a.m. [sic.^] or before
2 p.m. on Saturday afternoons."'^

1 Eeports, &c., 1. e., p. 43.

2 Reports, &c., 1. c, p. 25.

3 Reports, &c. for the half year ending 30th April, 1861. See Appendix No. 2 ; Re-
ports, &c., 31st October, 1862, p. 7, 52, 53. The violations of the Acts became more
numerous during the last half year ].863. Cf. Reports, &c., ending 31st October,
1863, p. 7.

4 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 (York-
shire) that the owners of 8 large mills in the neighbourhood of Batley had violated the
Factory Acts. Some of these gf ntlemen were accused of having kept at work 5 boys
between 12 and 15 years of age, from 6 a.m. on Friday to 4 p.m. on the following
Saturday, not allowing them any respite except for meals and one hour for sleep at
midnight. And these children had to do this ceaseless labour of 30 hours in the

226 Capitalist Production.

" 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 v^^hen 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. . . } In cases where the additional
time is gained by a multiplication of small thefts in the course
of the day, there are insuperable difiiculties to the inspectors
making out a case."^

These " small thefts " of capital from the labourer's meal and
recreation time, the factory inspectors also designate as " petty
pilferings of minutes,"^ " snatching a few minutes,'"* or, as the
labourers technically called them, " nibbling and cribbling at
meal times." ®

It is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of surplus-
value by surplus-labour, is no secret. " If you allow me," said
a highly respectable master to me, " to work only ten minutes
in the da}^ over-time, you put one thousand a" year in my
pocket."^ " Moments are the elements of profit." ^

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 perfconified labour-time. All individual distinctions
are merged in those of "full-timers " and " half-timers."^

" shoddy-hole," as the hole is called, in which the woollen 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 protection of his lungs ! The
accused gentlemen affirm in lieu of taking an oath — as quakers they were too scrupu-
lously 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 cliildren
absolutely would not go to bed. The quaker gentlemen were mulcted in £20. Dry-
den anticipated these gentry :

" Fox full fraught in seeming sanctity,
That feared an oath, but like the devil would lie,
That look'd like Lent, and had the holy leer,
And durst not sin ! before he said his prayer ! "

1 Rep., 31st Oct., 1856, p. 34. 3 i. c, p. 48. M. c, p. 48.

2 1. c, p. 35. 4 1. c., p. 48. 6 1. c, p. 48.
1 Report of the Insp. &c., 30th April, 1860, p. 56.

8 This is the official expression both in the factories and in the reports.

The Working Day, 227

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 hanger for surplus-labour in
a department where the monstrous exactions, not surpassed,
says an English bourgeois economist, by the cruelties of the
Spaniards to the American red-skins,^ 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 exploita-
tion of labour is either free from fetters to this day, or was so
yesterda}^

Mr. Broughton Charlton, county magistrate, declared, as
chairman of a meeting held at the Assembly Rooms, Nottingham,
on the 14th January, 1860, "that there was an amount of
privation and suffering among that portion of the population
connected with the lace trade, unknown in other parts of the
kingdom, indeed, in the civilized world . . . Children of
nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two,
three, or four o'clock in the morning and compelled to work for
a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their
limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whiten-
ing, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like

torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate We are rot

surprised that Mr. Mallett, or any other manufacturer, should

stand forward and protest against discussion The

system, as the Rev. Montagu Valpy describes it, is one of
unmitigated slavery, socially, physically, morally, and spiritually.
.... 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 Carolinian cotton-planters. Is their

1 " The cupidity of mill-owners whose cruelties in the pursuit of gain have hardly-
been exceeded by those perpetrated by the Spaniards on the conquest of America in
the pursuit of gold." John Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes, 3rd
Ed. London, 1835, p. 114. The theoretical part of this book, a kind of hand-book of
Political Economy, is, considering the time of its publication, original in some parts,
c.r/., 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,

2 28 Capitalist Production,

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 ? " ^

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 ]841 to the "Children's
Employment Commissioners," in the leport 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, 18G3."
For my purpose it is enough to take, from the reports of 1860
and 1863, some depositions of the exploited children themselves.
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 agreeable and
healthful occupation. ^

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 tlie
em];)ty 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 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
night 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
morning. I get 3 shillings and sixpence. I do not get any more
for working at night. I worked two nights last week." Fern^^-
hough, a boy of ten : " I have not always an hour (for dinner).
I have only half an hour sometimes ; on Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday." ^

1 " Daily Telegraph," 17th January, 1860.

2 Cf. F. Engels' Lage, etc., p. 249-51.

3 Children's Employment Commission. First report, etc., 1863. Evidence, p. 10,
19, 18.

The Working Day, 229

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 30-47o of the adult male
population above 20 are employed in the potteries, among the
men of that age in the first district more than half, in the
second, nearly | of the whole deaths are the result of pulmonary
diseases among the potters. Dr. Boothroyd, a medical practitioner
at Hanley, says : " Each successive generation of potters is more
dwarfed and less robust than the preceding one.'' In like
manner another doctor, Mr. M'Bean: "Since he began to practise
among the potters 25 years ago, he had observed a marked
degeneration especially shown in diminution of stature and
breadth." These statements are taken from the report of Dr.
Greenhow in 1860.

From the report of the Commissioners in 1863, the following :
Dr. J. T. Arledge, senior physician of the North Staffordshire
Infirmary, says : " The potters as a class, both men and women,
represent a degenerated population, both physically and morally.
They are, as a rule, stunted in growth, ill-shaped, and frequently
ill-formed in the chest ; they become prematurely old, and are
certainly short-lived ; they are phlegmatic and bloodless, and
exhibit their debility of constitution by obstinate attacks of
dyspepsia, and disorders of the liver and kidneys, and by
i-heumatism. But of all diseases they are especially prone to
chest-disease, to pneumonia, phthisis, bronchitis, and asthma.
One form would appear peculiar to them, and is known as
potter's asthma, or potter's consumption. Scrofula attacking
the glands, or bones, or other parts of the body, is a disease of

two-thirds or more of the potters That the ' degener-

escence ' 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." ^

Mr. Charles Parsons, late house surgeon of the same institution,
writes in a letter to Commissioner Longe, amongst other things :
" I can only speak from personal observation and not from

1 Public Health, 3rd report, etc., p. 102, 104, 105.

2 ChUd. Emnl. Comra. I. Report, p. 24.

230 Capitalist Production.

statistical data, but I do not hesitate to assert that my indigna-
tion 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 tlie 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 workpeople
. . by whose labour and skill such great results have been
achieved." ^ And all that holds of the potteries in England is
true of those in Scotland.

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."-^

Of the witnesses that Commissioner White examined (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 phos-
phorus. 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). Thft

1 Children's Employment Commission, p. 22, and xi.

2 1. c. p. xlvii.
* I.e. p. liv.

The Working Day. 231

most active business months are from the beginning of October
to the end of i.pril. During this time the work goes on fast
and furious without intermission from G 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. Duify : " 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 lOJ hours is finished by 4.30. p.m., and
all after that is overtime." ^ (Does this Mr. Smith take no
meals himself during 10\ hours ? ) *' We (this same Smith) sel-
dom 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

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 78i 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 extremel}^
devoted to the pluralis majestatis, adds with a smile, " Machine
work is not great." So the employers in the block- printing

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-labour, which it would still be, even if the labour-
power expended during the normal working day were properly paid.

232 Capitalist Production,

say : ' Hand labour is more healthy than machine- work." On
the whole, manufacturers declare with indignation against the
proposal " to stop the machines at least during meal times.'
A clause, says Mr. Otley, manager of a wall-paper factory in
the Borough, '* which allowed work between, say 6 a.m. and 9
p.m. . . . would suit us (!) very well, but the factory hours, 6
a.m. to 6 p.m., are not suitable. Our machine i3 always
stopped for dinner. (What generosity 1) 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 sufiicient reason for allowing children under 13, and
3'oung 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.^

No branch of industry in England (we do not take into
account the making of bread by machinery recently intro-
duced) has preserved up to the present day a method of pro-
duction so archaic, so — as we see from the poets of the Roman
Empire — pre-christian, as baking. But capital, as was said
earlier, is at first indifferent as to the technical character of the
labour-process ; it begins by taking it just as it finds it.

The incredible adulteration of bread, especially in London,
was first revealed by the House of Commons Committee " on
the adulteration of articles of food " (1855-56), and Dr.
Hassall's work, " Adulterations detected." ^ 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."

1 1. c. Evidence, p. 123, 124, 125, 140, and 54.

2 Alum finely powdered, or mixed with salt, is a normal article of commerce bear
ing the significant name of ' ' bakers' stuff. "

3 Soot is a well-known and very energetic form of carbon, and forms a manure

The Working Day, 233

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 Protagoras
how to make white black, and black white, and better than
the Eleatics how to demonstrate ad oculos that everything is
only appearance.^

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,^ 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,
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

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 adulter-
ated 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 j)ay 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 falsifications of the
materials of the Sacrament. (De la falsification des substances sacramentelles,
Paris, 1856.)

" Report, &c., relating to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers,
&c., London, 1862,^' and " Second Report, &c., London, 1863."

234 Capitalist Production.

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 nnder 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 — throwinor out the dough, ' scalino: it off,' mouldinor
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, fcc, &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, fee, 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 baskets,
or wheeling hand-carts, and sometimes again in the bakehouse,
leaving off work at various hours between 1 and 6 p.m.
according to the season of the year, or the amount and nature
of their master's business ; while others are again engaged in
the bakehouse in ' bringing out ' more batches until late in the
afternoon.^ . . . During what is called ' the London season,' the
operatives belonging to the ' full-priced ' bakers at the West
End of the town, generally begin work at 11 p.m., and are en-
gaged in making the bread, with one or two short (sometimes
very short) intervals of rest, up to 8 o'clock the next morning.
They are then engaged all day long, up to 4, 5, 6, and as late
as 7 o'clock in the evening carrying out bread, or sometimes in

1. c. First Report, &c., p. vi.

The Working Day. 235

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 pre-
parations 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 common,
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."^
Even the bourgeois intellect understands the position of the
" underselling " masters. " The unpaid labour of the men was
made the source whereby the competition was carried on."^
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." ^

The adulteration of bread and the formation o£ 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.^ Thus was laid the foundation of capitalistic

1 1. c. p. Ixxi. 2 George Read, The History of Baking, London, 1848, p. 16.

3 Report (First) &c. Evidence of the "full-priced " baker Cheeseman, p. 108.

4 George Read, 1. c. At the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries
the factors (agents) that crowded into every possible trade were still denounced as

236 Capitalist Production.

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.^

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
organised at their own expense great meetings to agitate
against night and Sunday work. The public — e.g., at the
Dublin meeting in May, 18(j0 — took their part with Irish
warmth. As result of this movement, day labour alone was
successfully established in Wexford, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Water-
ford, &;c. " In Limerick, where the grievances of the journey-
men are demonstrated to be excessive, the movement has been
defeated by the opposition of the master bakers, the miller
bakers being the greatest opponents. 'J'he 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
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."^

The Committee of the English Government, which Govern-
ment, in Ireland, is armed to the te'eth, and general^ knows
how to show it, remonstrates in mild, though funereal, tones

" 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 Black well Hall are a Public
Nuisance and Prejudice to the Clothing Trade, and ought to be put down as a
Nuisance." The case of our English Wool, &c., London, 1685, p. 6, 7.

1 First Eeport, &c.

2 Report of Committee on the Baking Trade in Ireland for 1861.

The Working Day, 237

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 husband,
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."^

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 l),^ 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

u. c.

2 Public meeting of agricultural labourers at Lasswade, near Edinburgh, January
5tli, 1866. (See "Workman's Advocate," January 13th, 1866.) The formation
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 positipn of the Eng-
lish land labourers. Addendum to the 3rd ed.)

238 Capitalist Production.

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 ej^es 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 verdict, ex-
pressed the pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the rail-
ways 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.

From the motley crowd of labourers of all callings, ages,
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.

^ *' Reynolds' Newspaper," January, 1866. — Every week this same paper has,
under the sensational headings, " Fearful and fatal accidents," " Appalling tragedies,"
&c., a whole list of fresh railway catastrophes. On these an employe on the North
Staffordshire line comments : " Everyone knows the consequences that may occur if
the driver and fireman of a locomotive engine are not continually on the look-out.
How can that be expected from a man who has been at such work for 29 or 30 hours,
exj)osed to the weather, and without rest. The following is an example which is of
very frequent occurrence : — One fireman commenced work on the Monday morning
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 ; Thursday, 15
hours 35 minutes ; Friday, 14^ hours ; Saturday, 14 hours 10 minutes, making a
total for the week of 88 hours 40 minutes. Now, sir, fancy his astonishment on
being paid 6| days for the whole. Thinking it was a mistake, he ai:)plied to the time-
keeper, . . . and inquh-ed what they considered a day's work, and was told 13 hours
for a goods 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, t.e., lOd." 1. c, 4th February, 1866.

The Working Day, 239

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, emploj'-ed in a
highly-respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a
lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often-told
story,- was once more recounted. This girl worked, on an
average, 16 J 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 J
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.^ And this was one of the best
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-

1 Cf. F. Engels. 1. c, pp. 253, 254.

2 Dr. Letheby, Consulting Physician of the Board of Health, declared : " The mini-
mum of air for each adult ought to be in a sleeping room 300, and in a dwelling room
500 cubic feet." Dr. Richardson, Senior Physician to one of the London Hospitals :
" With needlewomen of all kinds, including milliners, dressmakers, and ordinary
sempstresses, there are three miseries — over-work, deficient air, and either deficient
food or deficient digestion. . . . Needlework, in the main, ... is infinitely
better adapted to women than to men. But the mischiefs of the trade, in the
metropolis especially, are that it is monopolised by some twenty-six capitalists, who,
under the advantages that spring from capital, can bring in capital to force economy
out of labour. This power tells throughout the whole class. If a dressmaker 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 mast 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 air. On these victims, consump-
tion, which is purely a disease of bad air, feeds." Dr. Richardson: "Work and
Overwork," in " Social Science Review," 18th July, 1863.

240 Capitalist Production,

bed, duly bore witness before the coroner's jury that " Mar}
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 b}'' over- work in an over-
crowded workroom, &c." " Our white slaves," cried the
"Morning 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."

"It is not in dressmakers' rooms that working to death is
the order of the day, but in a thousand other places ; in every
place I had almost said, where * a thriving business ' has to be
done. . . . We will take the blacksmith as a type. If
the poets were true, there is no man so hearty, so merr}^, 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
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 j)osition 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

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, 18G3, ' ' that, while we work our own young women to
death, using the scourge of starvation, instead of the crack of the whip, as the instru-
ment 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 conductors 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
histox-y, the American civil war, to this level, that the Peter of the North wants to
break the head of the Paul of the South with all his might, because the Peter of the
North hires his labour by the day, and the Paul of 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 !

The Working Day, 241

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."'^

SECTION 4. — DAY AND NIGHT WORK. THE RELAY SYSTEM.

Constant capital, the means of production, considered from
the standpoint of the creation of surplus-value, only exist to
absorb labour, and with every drop of labour a proportional
quantity of surplus-labour. While they fail to do this, their
mere existence causes a relative loss to the capitalist, for they
represent during the time they lie fallow, a useless advance of
capital. And this loss becomes positive and absolute as soon
as the intermission of their employment necessitates additional
outlay at the recommencement of work. The prolongation of
the working day beyond the limits of the natural day, into
the night, only acts as a palliative. It quenches only in a slight
degree the vampire thirst for the living blood of labour. To
appropriate labour during all the 24 hours of the day is, therefore,
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,
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

1 Dr Richardson, 1. c
Q

242 Capitalist Production,

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 agesof the children and young persons run
through all intermediate grades, from 8 (in some cases from 6)
to 18.^

In some branches of industry, the girls and women work
through the night together with the males.-

Placing on one side the generally injurious influence of night-
labour,'' the duration of the process of production, unbroken dur-

1 Children's Employment Commission. Third Report. London, 1864, p. iv., v., vi.

2 "Both in Staffordshire and in South Wales young girls and women are employed
on the pit banks and on the coke heaps, not only by day but also by night. This
practice has been often noticed in Reports presented to Parliament, as being attended
with great and notorious evils. These females employed with the men, hardly dis-
tinguished from them in their dress, and begrimed with dirt and smoke, are exposed
to the deterioration of character, arising from the loss of self-respect, which can
hardly fail to follow from their unfeminine occupation." (1. c. 194., p. xxvi. Cf.
Fourth Report (1865), 61, p. xiii.) It is the same in glass-works.

3 A steel manufacturer who employs children in night-labour remarked : " It
seems but natural that boys who work at night cannot sleep and get proper rest by
day, but will be running about." (1. c. Fourth Report, 63, p. xiii.) On the import-
ance of sunlight for the maintenance and growth of the body, a physician writes :
' ' Light also acts upon the tissues of the body directly in hardening them and supporting
their elasticity. The muscles of animals, when they are deprived of a proper amount
of light, become soft and inelastic, the nervous power loses its tone from defective

stimulation, and the elaboration of all growth seems to be perverted In

the case of children, constant access to plenty of light during the day, and to the
direct rays of the sun for a part of it, is most essential to health. Light assists in the
elaboration of good plastic blood, and hardens the fibre after it has been laid down.
It also acts as a stimulus upon the organs of sight, and by this means brings about
more activity in the various cerebral functions." Dr. W. Strange, Senior Physician
of the Worcester General Hospital, from whose work on "Health" (1864) this
passage is taken, writes in a letter to Mr. White, one of the commissioners : " I have
had opportunities formerly, when in Lancashire, of observing the effects of night- work
upon children, and I have no hesitation in saying, contrary to what some employers
were fond of asserting, those children who were subjected to it soon suffered in their
wealth." (1. c. 284., p. 55.) That such a question should furnish the material of
f.erious controversy, shows plainly how capitalist production acts on the brain-
f unctions of capitalists and their retainers.

The Working Day. 243

ing the 24 hours, offers very welcome opportunities of exceeding
the limits of the normal working day, e.g., in the branches of
industry already mentioned, which are of an exceedingly
fatiguing nature ; the official working day means for each
worker usually 12 hours by night or day. But the over- work
beyond this amount is in many cases, to use the words of the
English official report, " tiuly fearful."^

'' 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."^

"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 moi-e 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 a.m.
to h\ p.m., a boy worked about four nights every week till
8| p.m. at least . . . and this for six months. Another, at 9
years old, sometimes made three 12-hour shifts running, and,
when 10, has made two days and two nights running." A
third, "now 10 . . . worked from 6 a.m. till 12 p.m. three
nights, and till 9 p.m. the other nights." "Another, now 13,
. . . worked from 6 p.m. till 12 noon next day, for a week
together, and sometimes for three shifts together, e.g., from
Monday morning till Tuesday night." " Another, now 12, has

J 1. c. 57, p. xii. 2 1. c. Fourth Report (18G5), 58, p. xii. » 1. c.

244 Capitalist Prodztction.

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 morn-
ing, and gi'en over at 6 or 7 in the evening," &;c.^

1 1. c, p. xiii. The degree of culture of these " labour-powers " must naturally be
such as appears in the following dialogues with one of the commissioners : Jeremiah
Haynes, age 12 — "Four times four is 8 ; 4 fours are 16, A king is him that has all the
money and gold. We have a King (told it is a Queen), they call her the Princess
A.lexandra. Told that she married the Queen's son. The Queen's son is the Princess
Alexandra. A Princess is a man." William Turner, age 12 — "Don't live in Eng-
land. Think it is a country, but didn't know before." John Morris, age 14 —
"Have heard say that God made the world, and that all the people was drownded
but one ; heard say that one was a little bird." William Smith, age 15—" God
made man, man made woman." Edward Taylor, age 15 — "Do not know of Lon-
don." Henry Matthewman, age 17 — "Had been to chapel, but missed a good many
times lately. One name that they preached about was Jesus Christ, but I cannot
say any others, and I cannot tell anything about him. He was not killed, but died
like other people. He was not the same as other people in some ways, because he
was religious in some ways, and others isn't." (1. c. p. xv.) " The devil is a good
person. I don't know where he lives." " Christ was a wicked man." " This girl spelt
God as dog, and did not know the name of the queen." (" Ch. Employment Comm.
V. Report, 18G3," 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 consecu-
tively on alternate days, one set working 6 hours on Monday, and 18 on Saturday
to make up the 24 hours. In other cases an intermediate system prevails, by which
all employed on the paper-making machinery work 15 or 16 hours every day in the
week. This system, says Commissioner Lord, *' seems to combine all the evils of
both the 12 hours' and the 24 hours' relays." Children under 13, young persons under
18, and women, work under this night system. Sometimes under the 12 hours'
system they are obliged, on account of the non-appearance of those that oiight to
relieve them, to work a doiable turn of 24 hours. The evidence proves that boys
and girls very often work over-time, which, not unfrequently, extends to 24 or even 3G
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

The Working Day, 245

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.^., from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. In the forge tlie
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 the increase in the cost of production.
. . . . Skilled hands and the heads in every department
are difficult to get, but of lads we could get any number. .
. . . But from the small proportion of boys that we employ,
the subject (?.«., of restrictions on night work) Ls of little im-
portance or interest to us."^

Mr. J. Ellis, one of the firm of Messi-s, John Brown &; Co.,
steel and iron works, employing about SOOO men and boys, part
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 i or 170 are under the age of 13. With reference to the

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 terrible extent, "and that often in the dirtiest, and in the hottest, and in the
most monotonous of the various processes." (" Ch. Employment Comm. Eeport
IV 1865," p. xxxviii and xxxix.) i Fourth Report, &c., 1865, 70, p. xvL

246 Capitalist Production,

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 tlie night sets only ; it

would ruin their health We think, however, that

night work in alternate weeks is no harm. (Messrs. Nay lor &
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 I)
Labour is scarce heie, and might fall short if there were such
a regulation." {i.e., Ellis Brown & Co. might fall into the fatal
j)erplexity of being obliged to pay labour-power its full value.)i
The " Cyclops Steel and Iron Works," of Messrs. Cammell &
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
clearly that for the Messrs. Cyclops the forbidding of the night-
labour of children and young persons " would be impossible, it
would be tantamount to stopping their works," and yet their
business employs little more than 6 % ^^ ^^7^ under 18, and
less than 1 % under 13.2

1 1, c. 80, p. xvi. 2 1. c. 82, p. xviL

The Working Day. 247

On the same subject Mr. E. F. Sanderson, of the firm of
Sanderson, Bros., & Co., steel rolling-mills and forges, AtterclifFe,
says : " Great difficulty would be caused by preventing boys
under 18 from workinor at niorht. The chief would be the in-
crease of cost from employing men instead of boys. I cannot
say what this would be, but probably it would not be enough
to enable the manufacturers to raise the price of steel, and con-
sequently 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 Sandersonian
reason why boys cannot learn their handicraft in the day.^ In
addition to this, it would throw night labour on those who
worked instead of the boys, which they would not be able to

1 In our reflecting and reasoning age a man is not worth much who cannot give a
good reason for everything, no matter how bad or how crazy. Everything in the
world that has been done wrong has been done wrong for the very best of reasons.
(Hegel, 1. c, p. 249.)

248 Capitalist Production.

stand. The difficulties in fact would be so great that they
would very likely lead to the giving up of night work altogether,
and " as far as the work itself is concerned," says E. F. Sander-
son, " 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. Tlie smelting
furnaces, rolling-mills, &c., the buildings, machinery, iron, coal,
&;c., have something more to do than transform themselves into
steel. They are there to absorb surplus-labour, and naturally
absorb more in 24 hours than in 12. In fact they give, by
grace of God and law, the Sandersons a cheque on the working
time of a certain number of hands for all the 24 hours of the
day, and they lose their character as capital, are therefore 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, w^hich 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
w^orkers), 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
would suffer from the changes of temperature." (Whilst those
same furnaces suffer nothing from the day and night change of
labour.)^

1 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 certain quantity
of heat, radiated by the furnaces, would be **a pure loss" or "wasted," Com-
missioner White makes answer. His answer is unlike that of Ure, Senior, &c., and

The Working Day. 249

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.

" 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 has been seen that to these
questions 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.
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

their puny German plagiarists ^ la Eoscher who are touched by the "abstinence,''
" 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-houses throughout the kingdom from growing boys not
having enough quiet time to eat their meals at ease, with a little rest afterwards for
digestion." (1. c, p. xlv.) And this in the year of progress 1865 ! Without con-
sidering the expenditure of strength in lifting and carrying, such a child, in the sheds
where bottle and flint glass are made, walks during the performance 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 of 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 fresh 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 36 consecutive hours ; others where boys of 12 drudged on until 2 in the morn-
ing, and then slept in the 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 boys, 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 perhaps, self-denying Mr. Glass-Capital, primed with port-wine, reels out
of his club homeward droning out idiotically, " Britons never, never shall be slaves T

250 Capitalist Production,

country of Sabbatarians !)^ — moonshine ! But in its blind
unrestrainable 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
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 pro-
duction of surplus- value, the absorption of surplus-labour),
produces thus, with the extension of the working day, not only
the deterioration of human labour-power by robbing it of its

1 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 ex-
panding 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 overwork, the privations, and the hunger of
others. Ohsequium ventris istis {the labourers) pemiciosius est.

The Working Day, 251

normal, moral and physical, conditions of development and
function. It produces also the premature exhaustion and death
of this labour-power itself.^ It extends the labourer's time of
production during a given period by shortening his actual life-
time.

But the value of the labour-power includes the value of the
commodities necessary for the reproduction of the worker, or
for the keeping up of the working class. If then the unnatural
extension of the working day, that capital necessarily strives
after in its unmeasured passion for self-expansion, shortens the
length of life of the individual labourer, and therefore the
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 for
the reproduction of labour-power will be greater ; just as in a
machine the part of its value to be reproduced every day is
greater the more rapidly the machine is worn out. It would
seem therefore that the interest of capital itself points in the
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 of
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 not
so great that it cannot be repaired from the teeming preserves
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
the slave's preservation, when once trading in slaves is practised,
become reasons for racking to the uttermost the toil of the
slave ; for, when his place can at once be supplied from foreign
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
countries, that the most effective economy is that which takes

1 " We have given in our previous reports the statements of several experienced
manufacturers to the effect that over-hours. . . . certainly tend prematurely to ex
haust the working power of the men." (1. c. 61, p. xiii.)

252 Capitalist Proditction.

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
sacrificed. 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."^

Mntato 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 modem
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.^ In the year 1861 the population
alone of the town centres of this industry in Great Britain
numbered 101,802. " 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."^

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 noi'th, with the explanation " that the manu-
facturers would absorb and use it up."* " Agents were ap-
pointed with the consent of the Poor Law Commissioners. . . .

1 Cairnes, " The Slave Power," p. 110, 111.

2 John Ward : " History of the Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent," London, 1843, p. 42.
8 Ferrand's Speech in the House of Commons, 27th April, 1863.

4 " Those were the very words used by the cotton manufacturers," L c.

The Working Day. 253

An office was set up in Manchester, to which lists were sent of
those woi'kpeople 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 persons 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 well kept up, they were in effect
as regularly sold to these [Manchester] manufacturers as slaves

are sold to the cotton-grower in the United States In

1860, * the cotton trade was at its zenith.' .... The manu-
facturers again found that they were short of hands. . . . They
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 80,000 or
40,000 will be needed." After the " flesh agents and sub-
ao^ents " had in vain souorht throuo^h the ao^ricultural districts,
" a deputation came up to London, and waited on the right hon.
gentleman [Mr. Villiers, President of the Poor Law Board] with
a view of obtaining poor children from certain union houses
for the mills of Lancashire."^

1 1. c. Mr. Villiers, despite the best of intentions on his part, was " legally" obliged
to refuse the requests of the manufacturers. These gentlemen, however, attained
their end through the obliging nature of the 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 accompanied 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 agricultui-al districts of Scotland into Lancashire and 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 years of prosperity of

2 54 Capitalist Production.

What experience shows to the capitalist generallj^ is a con-
stant excess of population, Le., 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, short-lived, swiftly replacing each other, plucked, so
to say, before maturity.^ And, indeed, experience shows to 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 — shows how the degeneration of the industrial population
is only retarded by the constant absorption of primitive 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 powerfully amongst them,

the English cotton trade, the year 1860 stands unparalleled, and that, besides, wages
were exceptionally high. For this extraordinary demand for work had to contend
with the depopulation of Ireland, with unexampled emigration 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. Eedgrave says : " This kind 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 be about 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 aside some remuneration for them, could not be accomplished for 4s. a-head per
week." (Report of the Inspector of Factories for 30th April, 1860, p. 27.) Mr. Red-
grave forgets to tell us how the labourer himself can do all this for his children out
of their 4s. a-week wages, when the manufacturer cannot do it for the 50 or 100
children lodged, boarded, superintended all together. To guard against false con-
clusions 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 than his English competi-
tor, 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.) Red-
grave, 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 procure the simple fare, and to supply the

slender comforts to which he has been accustomed he lives upon his coarse

fare, and works hard, wherein his position is subordinate to that of the English oj^era-
tive." (" Rep. of Insp. of Fact.," 31st Oct., 1853, p. 85.)

1 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." ("Endand and America." London, 1833, vol. I, p. 55. Bv E. G. Wakefield.)

The Working Day, 255 '

and only permits the survival of the strongest, are already be-
ginning to die off.^ 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 depopulation 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 capitalist and of every capitalist
nation. Hence Capital is reckless of the health or length of
life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society.^ To
the outcry as to the physical and mental degradation, the pre-
mature death, the torture of overwork, it answers : Ought these
to trouble us since they increase our profits ? But looking at
things as a whole, all this does not, indeed, depend on the good
or ill will of the individual capitalist. Free competition brings
out the inherent laws of capitalist production, in the shape of
external coercive laws having power over every individual
capitalist.^

1 See " Public Health. Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council,
1863." Published in London 1864. This report deals especially with the agricultural
labourers. " Sutherland ... is commonly represented as a highly improved county
. . . but . . . recent inquiry has discovered that even there, in districts once famous
for fine men and gallant soldiers, the inhabitants have degenerated 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 they could be in the foul atmosphere of a
London alley." (W. T. Thornton. "Over-population and its remedy." 1. c, p. 74,
75.) They resemble in fact the 30,000 ** gallant Highlanders" whom Glasgow pigs
together in its wynds and closes, with prostitutes and thieves.

2 "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 consideration 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 Shaftesbury's Bill limited the hours
of children's labour," &c. (" Report of the Registrar-General," for October 1861.)

3 We, therefore, find, e.g., that in the beginning of 1863, 26 firms owning extensive
potteries in Staffordshire, amongst others, Josiah "Wedgwood, & Sons' petition in a
memorial for " some legislative enactment." Competition with other capitalists per-
mits them no voluntary limitation of working-time for children, &c. " Much as we
deplore the evils before mentioned, it would not be possible to prevent them by any

256 Capitalist Production,

The establishment of a normal working day is the result of
centuries of struggle between capitalist and labourer. The
history of this sti'uggle shows two opposed tendencies. Com-
pare, e.g.y the English factory legislation of our time with the
English Labour Statutes from the 14th century to well into
the middle of the 18th.^ Whilst the modern Factory Acts com-
pulsorily shartened 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
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

scheme of agreement between the manufacturers. . . . Taking all these points into
consideration, we have come to the convi..tion that some legislative enactment is
wanted." (" Children's Employment Comm." Rep. 1., 1863, p. 322.) 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 produc-
tion 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 1813, long
after the changes in methods of production had rendered them obsolete.

The Working Day, 257

limit of the labour of children under 12, was in England, even
in the middle of the I7th century, the normal working-day of
able-bodied artizans, robust labourers, athletic blacksmiths/

The first " Statute of Labourers " (23 Edward III, 1349)
found its immediate pretext (not its cause, for legislation of
this kind lasts centuries after the pretext for it has disappeared)
in the great plague that decimated the people, so that, as a Tory
writer says, " The difficulty of getting men to work on reason-
able 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."^ Reasonable wages were, therefore, 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 YIII.). 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 in the evening. But the
meal times consist of 1 hour for breakfast, 1 J hours for dinner,
and \ an hour for " noon-meate," i.e., exactly twice as much as
under the factory acts now in force.^ In winter, work was to

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, G3,
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, pa])er,
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 hoars 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 11th March, 1855.) " No minor who has
attained the age of 12 years, and is under the age of 15 years, shall be emi)loyed 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." ("Kevised 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, unnecessary and
burdensome." (h c, p. 206.)

3 In reference to this statute, J. Wade with truth remarks : *' From the statement
above (i.e., with regard to the statute) it appears that in 1496 the diet was considered
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

R

258 Capitalist Production.

last from 5 in the morning until dark, with the same intervals.
A statute of Elizabeth of 1562 leaves the length of the work-
ing day for all labourers " hired for daily or weekly wage " un-
touched, but aims at limiting the intervals to 21- 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 economj^, and to some extent the founder of
Statistics, 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 an half, whereas they take two, from eleven to one; thereby
this working h more, and spending ^V less, the above-men-
tioned (tax) might be raised."^ Was not Dr. Andrew Ure right
in crying down the 12 hours' bill of 1833 as a retrogression to
the times of the dark ages ? It is true, these regulations con-
tained in the statute mentioned by Petty, apply also to ap-
prentices. 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-
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 and 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

be reckoned at a much higher proportion of their wages," (J. Wade, " History of the
Middle and Working Classes," p. 24, 25, 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 Pretiosum, &c." By Bishop
Fleetwood. 1st Ed., London, 1707; 2d Ed., London, 1745.

iW. Petty, "Political Anatomy of Ireland, Verbum Sapienti," 1672, Ed. 1G91,
p. 10.

The Working Day. 259"

progress and require mucli longer time wherein to reach the
perfection of accomplished artists."^

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 capita], de-
nounces this obstinacy in the most violent manner, another
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 th6
" Essay on Trade and Commerce."

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 Whigu
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 incredible. 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 Eng
land," vol. L, p. 419.) Macaulay might have reported further that "extremely
well-disposed " amis c^w 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, cu la Macau-
lay, to the time of Adam Smith. It is true that with the substitution of manufacture
for handicrafts, traces of the exploitation 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 un-
mistakably ; 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 " amis <itt 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, and especially what ears !

2 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

26o Capitalist Productton.

Postlethwayt sa3^s 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 da3^s 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
wdiich 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 the}" 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
five or six. But if Englishmen are to be eternal drudges, 'tis
to be feared they wull 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

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 im-
proved." 2nd Edition, 1755. Tlie facts themselves are confirmed by many other
writers of the time, among others by Josiah Tucker.

The Working Day, 261

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 pro-
ceed." ^ 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 in 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 days 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 manufacturer) earns
a shilling by his labour, he then would be obliged to work
five days only in a week. If the bushel of wheat should cost
but four shillings, he would be obliged to work but four days *
but as wages in this kingdom are much 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 I 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 labouring poor,^ but the Dutch do this in
manufactures, and appear to be a very happy people. The
French do so, when holidays do not intervene.^ But our popu-
lace 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 tho

1 Postlethwayt, 1. c, " First Preliminary Discourse," p. 14.

2 " An Essay," &c. He himself relates on p. 96 A^herein the ** happiness " of the
English agricultural labourer already in 1770 consisted. " Their powers are always
upon the stretch, they cannot live cheaper than they do, nor work harder."

3 Protestantism, by changing almost all the traditional holidays into workdays,
plays an important part in the genesis of capital.

262 Capitalist Production.

less the manufacturing poor have of it, certainly the better for
themselves and for the State. The labouring people should
never think themselves independent of their superiors. ....
It is extremely dangerous to encourage mobs in a commercial
state like ours, where, perhaps, 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." To tliis end, and for " extirpating idleness, debauchery
and excess," promoting 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 dependent on public support, in a word, paupers, in
" an ideal workhouse.^^ 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."^ 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."^

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,
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 ! "^ At Ziirich the work

1 " An Essay," &c., p. 15, 41, 96, 97, 55, 57, 69.— Jacob Vanderlint, as early as 17S4,
declared that the secret of the out-cry of the capitalists as to the laziness of the
v/orking people was simjDly that they claimed for the same wages 6 days' labour
instead of 4.

2 1. c. p. 242.

3 1. c. " The French," he says, *' laugh at our enthusiastic ideas of liberty." 1. c.p. 78.

4 *' 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 Eepublic." ("Kep. 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

The Working Day. 26;^

of children over 10, is limited to 12 hours ; in Aargau in 186'2,
the work of children between 13 and 16, was reduced from
12J to 12 hours; in Austria in 1860, for children between 14
and 16, the same reduction was made.^ " 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 FOR THE NORMAL WORKING 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, ^ there followed on the
birth of machinism and modern industry in the last third of

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
I'annee 1848. Par M. Blanqui." M. Blanqui the economist, not the Eevolutionist, had
been entrusted by the Government with an inquiry into the condition of the work-
ing 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, 18ti2 : "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."

2 " It is certainly much to be regretted that any class of persons should toil 12 hours
a day, which, including the time for their meals and for going to and returning from
their work, amounts, in fact, to 14 of the 24 hours .... Without entering into the
question of health, no one 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 restriction, much younger, must
be extremely prejudicial, and is an evil greatly to be deplored .... For the sake,
therefore, of public morals, of bringing up an orderly population, and of giving the
great body of the people a leasonable 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 Horner in Reports of Insp. of Fact., Dec, 1841.)

264 Capitalist Prodtidion,

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/ Capital celebrated its
orgies.

As soon as the working class, stunned at first by the noise
and turmoil of the new S37stem of production, recovered, in
some measure, its senses, its resistance began, and first in the
native land of machinism, in England. For 30 years, however,
the concessions conquered by the v/orkpeople were purely
nominal. Parliment passed 5 Labour Laws between 1802 and
1883, but was shrewd enough not to vote a penny for their
carrjdng out, for the requisite officials, &c.''

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^ ^

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
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 law-
ful to employ young persons (i.e., persons between 13 and 18 years

1 See "Judgment of Mr. J. H. Otwey, Belfast. Hilary Sessions, County Antrim,
1860."

2 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 betwf en 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 1853,
in one single department — the Departement du Nord — has a paid government inspector
been appointed. Not less characteristic of the development of French society,
generally, is the fact, that Louis Philippe's law stood solitary among the all-embracing
mass of French laws, till the Revolution of 1848.

3 " Report of Insp. of Fact.," 30th April, 1860, p. 50.

The Working Day. 265

of age), at any time of the day, provided no one individual
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 provided." The
employment of children under 9, with exceptions mentioned
later, was forbidden; the work of children between 9 and 13
was limited to 8 hours a day, nis^ht 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 Com-
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 the
most barefaced way, ignored all the Acts as to children's labour
passed during the last twenty-two years, the pill was yet
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 of consideration for " capital," was the more noteworthy
as, Dr. Farre, Sir A. Carlisle, Sir B. Brodie, Sir C. Bell, Mr.

266 Capitalist Production,

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.y the factory
method) must be viewed as a most cruel mode of inflicting it."

That same *' reformed " Parliament, which in its delicate con-
sideration 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 agitation
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 compulsory
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 intimidate
the government to such an extent that in 1885 it proposed to
lower the limit of the age of childhood from 13 to 12. In the
meantime the pressure from without grew more threatening.
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,
first in part, and then entirel}'-, 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

The Working Day. 267

different 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.^ In the mean-
time, however, circumstances had greatly changed. The factory
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 immoral com-
petition of their false brethren whom greater impudence, or
more fortunate local circumstances, enabled to break the law.
Moreover, however much the individual manufacturer might
give the rein to liis old lust for gain, the spokesmen and
political leaders of the manufacturing class ordered a change
of front and of speech towards the workpeople. The}^ had
entered upon the contest for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and
needed the workers to help them to victory. They promised,
therefore, not only a double-sized loaf of bread, but the enact-
ment of the Ten Hours' Bill in the Free Trade millenium.^ Thus
they still less dared to oppose a measure intended onty to make
the law of 1833 a reality. Threatened in their holiest interest,
the rent of land, the Tories thundered with philanthropic in-
dignation against the " nefarious practices " * of their foes.

1 •' Rept. of Insp. of Fact.," 31st October, 1849, p. 6.

2 " Rept. of Insp. of Fact.," 31st October, 1848, p. 98.

3 Leonard Horner \ises the expression "nefarious practices" in his official reports.
(" Report of Insp. of Fact.," 31st October, 1850, p. 7.)

2 68 Capitalist Production,

This was the origin of the additional Factory Act of June
7th, 1844. It came into effect oii 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." ^ The working time
of children under 13 was reduced to 6 J, and in certain circum^
stances to 7 hours a-day.^

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.y 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 before
12 noon may not be again employed after 1 p.m. The after-
noon shift must therefore consist of other children than 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 employed
more than five hours before 1 p.m. without an interval for meal
time of at least 80 minutes. No child or young person [or
female] shall be employed or allowed to remain in any room in
which any manufacturing process is then [^.e., at meal times]
carried on," &c.

1 " Kept.," &c., 30th Sept., 1844, p. 15.

2 The Act allows children to be employed for 10 hours if they do not work day after
day, but only on alternate days. In the main, this clause remained inoperative.

The Working Day. 269

It has been seen that these 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
tlieir first consequences was that in practice the working day
of the adult males in factories became subject to the same
limitations, since in most processes of production the co-opera-
tion of the children, young persons, and women is indispens-
able. On the whole, therefore, during the period from 1844
to 1847, the 12 hours' working day became general 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 iaw.^

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
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 18 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

1 '* As a reduction in their hours of work would cause a larger number (of children)
to be employed, it was thouglit that the additional supply of children from 8 to 9
years of age would meet the increased demand " (I.e., p. 13).

270 Capitalist P^^odudion.

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, 1 848.
And the workers themselves, under the pretence that they had
been taught by experience, were to help in the destruction 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 con-
siderable number of the operatives must therefore be in very
narrow circumstances ; many, it is to be feared, in debt ; so
that it might fairly have been pi'esumed 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 n^^
supply of clothes for themselves and their families."^

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 8J%
as soon as the working day was shortened to 11, and a reduc-
tion 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 257o took place.^ 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 declared under oral ex-
amination, that their signatures had been extorted from them,
" They felt themselves oppressed, but not exactly by the

1 " Eep. of Insp. of Fact.," 31st Oct., 1848, p. 16.

2 *' 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 reduc-
tion in time, together 2s. 6d., and notwithstanding this, many of them said they
would rather work 10 hours." 1. c.

The Working Day, 271

Factory Act." ^ But if the manufacturers did not succeed in
making the workpeople speak as they wished, they them-
selves 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 those
of the French National Convention ruthlessly sacrificing the
unhappy factory workers to their humanitarian crotchet. This
manoeuvre also failed. Factory Inspector Leonard Horner
conducted in his own person, and through his sub-inspectors,
many examinations of witnesses in the factories of Lancashire.
About 707o of the workpeople examined declared in favour
of 10 hours, a much smaller percentage in favour of 11, and an
altogether insignificant minority for the old 12 hours.^

Another "friendly" dodge was to make the adult males
work 12 to 15 hours, and then to blazon abroad this fact as
the bdst proof of what the proletariat desired in its heart of
hearts. But the "ruthless" Factory Inspector Leonard Horner
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 ; tliat 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 immedi-
ately 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." ^

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

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.

2 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 Keports for the half-year ending October 1848. These examinations furnish
valuable material in other connexions also.

3 1. c. See the evidence collected by Leonard Horner himself, Nos. 69, 70, 71, 72,
92, 93, and that collected by Sub-Inspector A., Nos. 51, 52, 58, 59, 62, 70, of the
Appendix. One manufacturer, too, tells the plain truth. See No. 14, and No.
265, 1. c.

2/2 Capitalist Production.

imprisoned, 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 fractions 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 salvation 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 restricting in some measure the " free " exploita-
tion of labour-power. It was a pro-slavery rebellion in minia-
ture, 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 the male worker over 18,
and that since 1833 the 15 hours from 5.30 a.m. to 8.30 p.m.
had remained the legal " day," within the limits of which
at first the 12, and later the 10 hours' labour of young
persons and women had to be performed under the prescribed
conditions.

The manufacturers began by here and there discharging a
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.^

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,

1 Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1848, p. 133, 134.

The Working Day, 273

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."^ 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 —
Z.6., 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."^

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 6J
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 8.80 in the evening, 8 J hours ; in all, the
legal 6-| hours. Or better still. In order to make tlieir work
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."^ Workmen

1 Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1848, p. 47.
« Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1848, p. 130.
8 Reports, &c., 1. c, p. 142.
3

274 Capitalist Pi^oductzon.

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 my 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/ 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, Vjut 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 8.80 p.m., but also of making them hunger during

that time.

'* Jky, 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
revolt against the same law, so far as i't 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' Act
they were a " grievous hardship."^ They informed the in-

1 Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1850, pp. 5, 6.

2 The nature of capital remains the same in its develojjed as in its undeveloped
form. lu 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 -ijower, "is his
(the capitalist's) money." The same view was current among the Koman patricians.
The money they had advanced to the plebeian debtor had been transformed vid 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 Tables.
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 Daumer on
the Christian Eucharist.

3 lieports, &c., for 30th April, 1848, p. 28.

The Working Day. 275

spec tors in the coolest manner that they shoukl place them-
selves above the letter of the law, and re-introduce the old
system on their own account.^ They were acting in the interests
of the i-1-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 industrial
supremacy of Great Britain." " Perhaps it may be a little
dilficult 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
some little trouble to Inspectors and Sub-Inspectors of
Factories ? "'

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,
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. Heceiving a refusal, he at
fir«t kept quiet. A few months later, an individual named
Robinson, also a cotton-spinner, and if not his Man Friday, at

1 Thus, amang others, Philanthropist Ashworthto Leonard Horner, in a d'SgustLiig
Quaker letter. (Reports, &c., April, 1849, p. 4.)
=^ 1. c, p. 140.

276 Capitalist Production.

all events related to Eskrigge, appeared before the borough
magistrates of Stockport on a charge of introducing the identi-
cal plan of relays invented by Eskrigge. Four Justices sat.
among them three cotton-spinners, at their head this same
inevitable Eskrigge. Eskrigge acquitted Eobinson, and now
was of opinion that what was right for Robinson was fair for
Eskrigge. Supported by his own legal decision, he introduced
the system at once into his own factory.^ Of course, the com-
position of this tribunal was in itself a violation of the law.^
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 decisions
would conform to the law. . . . when these cases are brought
forward. I long for a stipendiary magistrate."^

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
Horner 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 con-
sidered it useless to prosecute more for this evasion of the law.
That part of the Act of 1884 which was framed for securing uni-
formity in the hours of woik, . . . is thus no longer in force in
m}^ district (Lancashire). Neither have the sub-inspectors or
myself any means of satisfying ourselves, when we inspect a
mill working by shifts, that the younor persons and women
are not working more than 10 hours a-day. ... In a return of
the 80th April, ... of mill-owners working by shifts, the
number amounts to 114, and has been for some time rapidly
increasing. In general, the time of working the mill is ex-
tended to 13J hours, from 6 a.m. to 7 J p.m., ... in some
insta,nces it amounts to 15 hours, from 5 J a.m. to 8 J p.m."^
Already, in Decernber, 1848, Leonard Horner had a list of 65
manufacturers and 29 overlookers who unanimously declared

1 Reports, &c., for 30bh April, 1849, pp. 21, 22. Cf. like examples ibid. pp. 4, 5.

2 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 as Justice of the Peace in any inquiries that con-
c:!rned the Factory Act.

» l.c. ♦ Ileports, &c., for 30th April, 1849, p. 5.

The Working Day. 277

that no system of supervision could, under this relay system,
prevent enormous overwork.^ Now, the same children and
3^oung persons were shifted from the spinning-room to the
weaving-room, now, during 15 hours, from one factory to
another.^ 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, and shifting
the hours of work and of rest for different individuals through-
out the day, so that you may never have one complete set of
hands workinof tofj^ether in the same room at the same time."^

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 " attractionof labour " was
changed into the attraction of capital. Look, for example, at
those schemes of the masters which the " respectable " press
praised as models of " what a reasonable degree of care and
method can accomplish." The personnel of the workpeople
was sometimes divided into from 12 to 14 categories, which
themselves constantly changed and rechanged their constituent
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

1 Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1849, p. 6.

2 Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1849, p. 21.
» Reports, &c., for 1st October, 1848, p. 95.

2/8 Capitalist Production.

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.^
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 capitalists.^ 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 Sth, 1850, decided that the manufacturers were
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 abolished."'
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."*

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 I 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

1 See Reports, &c, , for 30th April, 1849, p. 6, and the detailed explanation of the
" shifting system," by Factory Inspectors Howell and Saunders, in "Reports, &c., for
31st October, 1848.'' See also the petition to the Queen from the clergy of A.shton
and vicinity, in the spring of 1849, against the "shift system."

2 Of. for example, " The Factory Question and the Ten Hours' Bill." By R. H.
Greg, 1837.

3 F. Fngels : "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, a
verbal ambiguity which exactly reversed the meaning of the law against the arming
of pirate ships.

4 Rep., &c., for 30th April, 1850.

The Working Day, 279

the contradictory decisions of the magistrates, a condition of
thinors altocrether abnormal and anarchical obtains. One law
holds in Yorkshire, another in Lancashire; one law in one parish
of Lancashire, another in its immediate neighbourhood. The
manufacturer in large towns could evade the law, the manu-
facturer in country districts could not find the people necessary
for the relay-system, still less for the shifting of hands from
one factory to another," &c. And the first birthright of capital
is equal exploitation of labour-power by all capitalists.

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 working
day for " young persons and women," was raised from 10 to
10 J hours for the first five days of the week, and was shortened
to 1\ on the Saturday. The work was to go on between 6 a.m.
and 6 p.m.,^ with pauses of not less than \\ hours for meal-
times, these meal-times to be allowed at one and the same time
for all, and conformably to the conditions of 1844. By this an
end was put to the relay-system once for all.^ 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." ^ 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.^ 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.'' The Act of 1844 certainly
" robbed " them of the " liberty " of employing children under
11 longer than 6 J hours a day. But it secured to them, on the
other hand, the privilege of working children between 11 and

1 In winter, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. may be substituted.

2 "The presentlaw (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, &c., for 30th April, 1852, p. 14.)

3 Reports, &c., for Sept., 1844, p. 13. * 1. c. ' 1. c.

28o

Capitalist Production,

13, 10 hours a day, and of annulling in their case the education
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."^ 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-twisting
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 J 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."^ Official
medical inquiries proved afterwards that, on the contrary, " 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." * Despite the pro-

11. c.

2 Reports, &c., for 31st Oct., 1861, p. 26.

3 1. 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
txclusive of the terrible death-rate of children in the first years of their life, the
<-»flBcial 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
of Adult

Males en-
gaged in
manufac-
tures.

Death-rate

from
Pulmonary

Affections

per 100,000

Males.

Name of District.

Death-rate

from

Pulmonary

Affections

per 100,000

Females.

Percentage
of Adult

Females en-
gaged in
manufac-
tures.

Kind of Female
Occupation.

14-9

598

Wigan

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.

30-6

721

Stoke-upon-Trent

665

19-3

Earthenware

30-4

726

"Woolstanton
Eight healthy agri-

727

13-9

Do.

305

cultural districts

340

The Working Day, 281

tests of the Factory Inspector, renewed every 6 months, the
mischief continues to this hour.^

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 children
who could always be employed for half an hour before and 2 J
hours after this period, provided the whole of their labour did
not exceed %\ hours. Whilst the bill was under discussion, the
Factory Inspectors laid before Parliament statistics of the in-
famous abuses due to this anomaly. To no purpose. In the
background lurked the intention of screwing up, during pros-
perous years, the working day of adult males to 15 hours by
the aid of the children. The experience of the three following
years showed that suchan 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 " employ-
ment of children in the morning before 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.^ Since
the passing of the first Factory Act half a century had elapsed.^

Factory legislation for the first time went beyond its original
sphere in the " Printworks' Act 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

1 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.

2 During 1859 and 1860, the zenith years of the English cotton industry, some manu-
facturers 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 spinners 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 week more than the other operatives of the
country, we feel like helots in the land, and that we are perpetuating a system

injurious to ourselves and future generations This, therefore, is to

give you most respectful notice that when we commence work again after the
Christmas and New Year's holidays, we shall work 60 hours per week, and no more,
or from six to six, with one hour and a half out. " (Keports, &c. , for 30th April,
1860, p. 30.)

8 On the means that the wording of this Act afforded for its violation cf. the Parlia-
mentary Return " Factory Regulations Act " (6th August, 1859), and in it Leonard
Horner's " Suggestions for amending the Factory Acts to enable the Inspectors to
prevent illegal working, now become very prevalent."

202 Capitalist Production.

from 8 to 13, and for women to 16 hours, between 6 a.ra. and
10 p.m., without any legal pause for meal times. It allows
males over 13 to be worked at will day and night.^ It is a
Parliamentary abortion.^

However, the principle had triumphed with its victory in
those great branches of industry which form the most character-
istic creation of the modern mode of production. Their
wonderful development from 1853 to 1860, hand-in-band with
the physical and moral regeneration of the factory workers,
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."^
The Pharisees of " political economy " now proclaimed the dis-
cernment of the necessity of a legally fixed working day as a
characteristic new discovery of their " science."^ It will be
easily understood that after the factory magnates had resigned
themselves and become reconciled to the inevitable, the power 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 rapid
advance since 1860.

The dye-works and bleach- works all came under the Factory
Act of 1850 in 1860 ; ' lace and stocking manufactures in 1861.

1" 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, 1857, p. 39.)

2 " The Printworks' Act is admitted to be a failure, both with reference to its educa-
tional and protective provisions." (Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1862, p. 52.)

3 Thus, e.g., E. Potter in a letter to the "Times " of March 24th, 1863. The
"Times " reminded him of the manufacturers' revolt against the Ten Hours' Bill.

4 Thus, among others, Mr. W. Newmarch, collaborator and editor of Tooke's "History
of Prices." Is it a scientific advance to make cowardly concessions to public opinion?

5 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 defin-
itely on August 1st, 1862, at 10 hours, i.e., at 10^ hours for ordinary days, and 1\ for
Saturday, Now, when the fatal year, 1862, came, the old farce was repeated. Be-
sides, 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 the
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 operative
bleachers in Scotland that the bill was abandoned." (Reports, &c., for 31st October,

The Working Day, 28

o

In consequence of the first report of the Commission on the
employment of children (18G3), the same fate was shared by
the manufacturers of all earthenwares (not merely pottery),
lucifer-matches, percussion-caps, cartridges, carpets, fustian-
cutting, and many processes included under the name of
''finishing." In the year 1863 bleaching in the open air ^ and

1862, J). 14-15.) Thus defeated by the very work-people, in whose name it pretended
to speak, Capital discovered, with the help of lawyer spectacles, that the Act of 18G0,
drawn up, like all the Acts of Parliament for the "protection of labour," in equivocal
phrases, gave them a pretext to exclude from its working the calenderers and fin-
ishers. English jurisprudence, ever the faithful servant of capital, sanctioned in the
Court of Common Pleas this piece of pettifogging. "The operatives have been
greatly disappointed . . . they have complained of overwork, and it is greatly to be
regretted that the clear intention of the legislature should have failed by reason of a
faulty definition." (1. c, p. 18.)

1 The " open-air bleachers " had evaded the law of 1860, by means 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 from the operatives, bereft of
its notions as to the cool meadow-fragrance, in which bleaching in the open-air was
reported to take place. In this aerial bleaching, drying rooms were used at tempera-
tures of from 00'^ to 100° Fahrenheit, in which the work was done for the most part by
girls. *' Cooling" is the technical expression for their occasional escape from the dry-
ing-rooms into the fresh air. "Fifteen girls in stoves. Heat from 80° to 90° for
linens, and 100° and upwards for cambrics. Twelve girls ironing and doing-up
in a small room about 10 feet square, in the centre of which is a close stove. The
girls stand round 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 0 or 12 at night for successive nights." (Reports, &c., for 31st October,
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 perspiration,

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
directly 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." (I.e. p. 56-57.) The Factory Inspectors remarl ed on the supplementary law
of 1860, torn from these open-air bleachers : "The Act his not only failed to afford
that protection to the workers which it appears to offer, but contains a clause .... ap-
parently 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 than these, withoiit 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 situ-
ated." (Reports, &c., for 30th April, 1863, p. 40.)

284 Capitalist Pt'oduction.

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 impor-
tant branches of English Industry, with the exception of agri-
culture, mines, and the means of transport.^

bECTION 7. — THE STRUGGLE FOR THE NORMAL WORKING-DAY. RE-ACTION
OF THE ENGLISH FACTORY 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, whicli
may arise from the subordination of labour to capital. He will
remember that as far as we have at present gone, only the inde-
pendent labourer, and therefore only the labourer legally quali-
fied to act for himself, enters as a vendor of a commodity into a
contract with the capitalist. If, therefore, in our historical
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 onl}^ a specially striking example of labour
exploitation. Without, however, anticipating the subsequent
development of our inquiry, from the mere connexion of the
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 corresponding
changes in the social relations of the producers ^ gave rise first

1 Note to the 2n(i Ed. Since 1866, when I wrote the above passages, a re-action
has again set in.

2 "The conduct of each of these classes (capitalists and workmen) has been the
result of the relative situation in which they have been placed." (Reports, &c., for
31st October, 1848, p. 113.)

The Working Day. 285

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 working day
and its pauses. This control appears, therefore, during the
first half of the nineteenth century simply as exceptional
legislation.^ As soon as this primitive dominion of the new
mode of production was conquered, it was found that, in the
meantime, not only had many other branches of production
been made to adopt the same factory system, but that manu-
factures 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 industries, such
as nail-making, ^ had long since fallen as completely under
capitalist exploitation as the factories themselves. Legisla-
tion was, therefore, compelled to gradually get rid of its ex-
ceptional 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.^

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.* The English factory

1 '* The employments, placed under restriction, were connected vvith the manufac-
ture of textile fabrics by the aid of steam or water-power. There were two conditions
to which an employment must be subject to cause it to be inspected, viz., the use of
steam or water-power, and the manujfacture of certain specified fibres." (Keports,
&c., for 31st October, 1864, p. 8.)

2 On the condition of so-called domestic industries, specially valuable materials
are to be found in the latest reports of the Children's ICmployment Commission.

3 " 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.)

4 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

286 Capitalist Production,

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.^
Hence, the philosopher of the Factory, Ure, denounces as an
ineffable disgrace ta the English working-class that they in-
scribed "the slavery of the Factory Acts " on the banner which
they bore against capital, manfully striving for "perfect free-
dom of labour. "2

France limps slowly behind England. The February revolu-
tion was necessary to bring into the world the 12 hours' law,*
which is much more deficient than its Enorlish orio'inal. For

o o

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, now on that, and is getting
lost in a hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory enact-
ments.^ On the other hand, the French law proclaims as a

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 exploitation 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. 2^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.

1 Robert Owen, soon after 1810, not only maintained the necessity of a limitation
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 aU Factory Acts, the thiid
is already being used as a cloak for reactionary humbug.

2 Ure : "French translation, Philosophie des Llanufactures." Paris, 1836, Vol. II.,
p. 39, 40, 67, 77, &c.

3 In the Compte Rendu of the International Statistical Congress at Paris, 1855, 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 puri^ose they use two different sets of workers, of
whom neither is in the workshoj) 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 curti-
lage, 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."

The Working Day^ 287

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.^

In the United States of North 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." ^ At the same time, the Congress of the International
Working Men's Association at Geneva, on the proposition of
the London General Council, resolved that "the limitation of
the working-day is a preliminary condition without which
all further attempts at improvement and emancipation 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

(Report of Mr. Baker, in Reports, &c., for October 31st, 1861, p. 20.) After enume-
ratiug the different provisions of these Acts, and the complications arising from them,
Mr. Baker says : *' It will hence aj^^^ear 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
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.)

^ " AVe, 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
ought to be legally recognised as enough ; why we call to our help that powerful
lever, the press ; . . . and why we shall consider all those that refuse us this help
as enemies of the reform of labour and of the rights of the labourer." (Resolution of
the Working Men of Dunkiik, New York State, 1866.)

2 88 Capitalist Production.

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." ^

It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the
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 dis-
posed of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it is dis-
covered 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,^ 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." * 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."* In place of the pompous
catalogue of the " inalienable rights of man " comes the modest
Magna Charta of a legally limited working-day, which shall
make clear '* when the time which the worker sells is ended,
and when his own begins." " Quantum mutatus ab illo !

1 Reports, &c., for Oct., 1848, p. 112.

2 "The proceedings (the manoeuvres of capital, e.gr,, 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 disposal 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, 1864, p. 34.) "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.) s Friedrich Engels, 1. c, p. 5.

-* 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 31st 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 labourers employed ; and they are not in a position to
l^rotect themselves." (1. c, p. 8.)

^ " A still greater boon is the distinction at last made clear between the worker's
own time and his master's. The worker knows now when that whicli he sells is

Rate and Mass of Surplus- Value, 289

CHAPTER XL

RATE AND MASS OF 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 of that labour-power, are supposed to
be given, constant magnitudes.

This premised, with the rate, the mass is at the same time
given of the surplus- value that the individual labourer furnishes
to the capitalist in a definite period of time. If, e.g.^ the
necessary labour amounts to 6 hours daily, expressed in a
quantum of gold ^= 3 shillings, then 8s. is the daily value of
one labour-power or the value of the capital advanced in the
buying of one labour-power. If, further, the rate of surplus-
value be = 100 %, this variable capital of 8s. produces a mass
of surplus- value of 3s., or the labourer supplies daily a mass of
surplus-labour equal to 6 hours.

But the variable capital of a 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.

ended, and when his own begins ; and by possessing a sure foreknowledge of this, is
enabled to pre-arrange his own minutes for liis 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 a little "culture." "Formerly the master had no time for anything but
money j the servant had no time for anything but labour " (1. c, p, 48),

290 Capitalist Production.

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 of 300s. will produce a daily surplus-value of
300s., and one of n times 3s. a daily surplus-value of n x 3s.
The mass of the surplus-value produced is therefore equal to
the surplus-value which the working-day of one labourer
supplies multiplied by the number of labourers employed.
But 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 pi'oduced 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 individual
labour-power v, the sum total of the variable capital V, the
value of an average labour-power P, its degree of exploitation
t (nSSSboOr) ^^^ ^^ number of labourers employed n ; we
have:

( 1 xV
S= { V

( Px I' X n

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-
ceptional 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

Rate and Mass of Surplus- Value, 291

ratio, the mass of surplus- value produced remains unaltered.
If on our earlier assumption the capitalist must advance 300s.,
in order to exploit 100 labourers a day, and if the rate of
surplus-value amounts to oO %, this variable capital of 800s.
yields a surplus-value of 150s. or of 100 x 3 working hours. If
the rate of surplus-value doubles, or the working-day, instead
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 50 x
6 working hours. Diminution of the variable capital may there-
fore 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.^ 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 labourers em-
ployed, 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, accord-
ing 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 6 X 500 working hours. A capital of 300s. that employs

1 This elementary law appears to be unknown to the vulgar economists, who, upside-
down Archimedes, in the determination of the market-])rice of labour by supply and
demand, imagine they have found the fulcrum by means of which, not to move the
world, but to stop its motion.

292 Capitalist Pivduction.

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 12 x 100 working hours; and its total
value-product, the equivalent of the variable capital advanced
plus the surplus-value, can, day in, day out, never reach the sum
of 1200s. or 24 x 100 workinor hours. The absolute limit of
the average working-day — this being by Nature always less than
24 liours — sets an absolute limit to the compensation of a re-
duction of variable capital by a higher rate of surplus- value, or
of the decrease of the number of labourers exploited by f!»^igher
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 re-
duce as much as possible the number 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 working-
day is given, and also the limit of its necessary constituent, the
mass of value and surplus-value that an individual capitalist
produces, is clearly exclusively dependent on the mass of labour
that he sets in motion. But this, under the conditions supposed
above, depends on the mass of labour-power, or the number of
labourers whom he exploits, and this number in its turn is
determined by the amount of the variable capital advanced.
With a given rate of surplus -value, and a given value of labour-
power, therefore, the masses of surplus-value produced vary
directly as the amounts of the variable capitals advanced.

Rate and Mass of Surplus- Vahie. 293

Now we know that the capitalist divides his capital 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, 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 processes 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 previous 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, fee, are, of course, required, than to employ
100. The value of these additional means of production how-
ever, may rise, fall, remain 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, takes 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 ex-
ploitation being equal — vary directly as the amounts of the
variable constituents of these capitals, ^.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. Classical
economy, although not formulating the law, holds instinctively

294 Capitalist Production.

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 vioieut abstraction. It will be
seen later^ how the school of Ricardo has come to grief over
this stumbling-block. Vulgar economy which, indeed, " has
really learnt nothing," here as everywhere sticks to appearances
in opposition to the law which regulates and explains them.
In opposition to Spinoza, it believes that " ignorance is a suffi-
cient 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 a labourer is 10 hours, the social
working-day consists often 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 increased by
increasing the number of labourers, i.e., of the labouring
population. The growth of population here forms the mathe-
matical 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.^ It will, however, be seen in the following
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 the whole
year through, day in, day out, for the production of surplus-
value. If this labourer were in possession of his own means

1 Further particulars will be given in Book IV.

2 " The labour, that is the economic time, of society, is a given portion, say ten

hours a day of a million of people, or ten million hours Capital has its

boundary of increase. This boundary may, at any given period, be attained in the
actual extent of economic time employed." (' An Essay on the Political Economy of
Nations." London, 1821, pp. 47, 49.)

Rate and Mass of Surplus- Value. 295

of production, and were satisfied to live as a labourer, he need
not work beyond the time necessary for the reproduction of
his means of subsistence, say 8 hours a day. He would, besides,
only require the means of production sufficient for 8 working
hours. The capitalist, on the other hand, who makes him do,
besides these 8 hours, say 4 hours' surplus-labour, requires an
additional sum of money for furnishing the additional 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,
^.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 implied 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 advanced 8
times. Of course he can, like his labourer, take to work him-
self, participate directly in the process of production, but he is
then only a hj^brid between capitalist and labourer, a " small
master." A certain stage of capitalist production necessitates
that the capitalist be able to devote the whole of the time
during which he functions as a capitalist, i.e.y as personified
capital, to the appropriation and therefore control of the labour
of others, and to the selling of the products of this labour.^
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

1 " The farmer cannot rely on his own labour, and if he does, I will maintain that
he is a loser by it. His employment should be a general attention to the whole : his
thresher must be watched, or he will soon lose his wages in corn not threshed out ;
his mowers, reapers, &c., must be looked after; he must constantly go round his
fences ; he must see there is no neglect ; which would be the case if he was confined
to any one spot." (" An Inquiry into the connection between the Price of Provisions
and the Size of Farms, &c. By a Farmer." London, 1773, p. 12.) This book is very
interesting. In it the genesis of the "capitalist farmer" or "merchant farmer," as
he is explicitly called, may be studied, and his self-glorification at the expense of the
small farmer who has only to do with bare subsistence, be noted. "The class of
capitalists are from the first partially, and they become ultimately completely, dis-
charged from the necessity of the manual labour." (" Text-book of Lectures on the
Political Economy of Nations. By the Rev. Richard Jones." Hertford, 1852.
Lecture III. p. 39.)

296 Capitalist Production.

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
the law discovered by Hegel (in his "Logic"), that merely
quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into
qualitative changes.^

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
dijfferent 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 commerce, the
fore-runners of our modern joint-stock companies.^

Within the process of production, as we have §een, capital
acquired the command over labour, i.e., over functioning labour-
power or the labourer himself Personified capital, the capi-
talist takes care that the labourer does his work regularly and
with the proper degree of intensity.

Capital further developed into a coercive relation, which

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 ex-
planation 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 : QP- H2n +2^ that of the normal alcohols : C^^ H2n + 2o ;
of the normal fatty acids : 0°- H2n 02 and many others. In the above examples, by
the simply quantitative addition of C H^ to the molecular formula, a qualitatively
different body is each time formed. On the share (overestimated by Marx) of Laurent
and Gerhardt in the determination of this important fact see Kopp, "Entwicklung
der Ohemle." Miinchen, 1873, pp, 709, 716, and Schorlemmer, ** Rise and Progress
of Organic Chemistry," London, 1879, p. 54.— Ed.

2 Martin Luther calls these kinds of institutions : "The Company Monopolia."

\

Rate and Mass of Surplus- Value, 297

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
bounds, recklessness and eflB.ciency, all earlier systems of pro-
duction based on directly compulsory labour.

At first, capital subordinates labour on the basis of the tech-
nical conditions in which it historically finds it. It does not,
therefore, change immediately the mode of production. The
production of surplus-value — in the form hitherto considered
by us — by means of simple extension of the working-day,
proved, therefore, to be independent of any change in the
mode of production itself. It was not less active in the old-
fashioned bakeries than in the modern cotton factories.

If we consider the process of production from the point of
view of the simple labour-process, the labourer stands in relation
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 employs the means of production,
but the means of production that employ ^e labourer] In^ \
stead of being consumed by him as material elements of his
productive activity, they consume him as the ferment neces-
sary 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 workshops that
stand idle by night, and absorb no living labour, are " a mere
loss" to the capitalist. Hence, furnaces and workshops con-
stitute 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, trans-
forms the latter into a title and a right to the labour and
surplus-labour of others. An example will show, in conclusion.

298 Capitalist Production.

how this sophistication, peculiarto and characteristic of capitalist
production, this complete inversion of the relation between dead
and living labour, between value and 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. Carlile Sons k> Co., of the linen
and cotton thread factory at Paisley, 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 intelligent gentleman " then wrote a letter^ in the
"Glasgow Daily Mail" of April 25th, 1849, with the title,
"The relay system," in which among other things the following
grotesquely naive passage occurs : " Let us now . . . see what
evils will attend the limiting to 10 hours the working of the
factory. . . . They amount to the most serious damage to
the mill-owner's prospects and property. If he {i.e., his "hands ")
worked 12 hours before, and is limited to 10, then every 12
machines or spindles in his establishment shrink to 10, and
should the works be disposed of, they v/ill be valued only as 10,
so that a sixth part would thus be deducted from the value of
every factory in the country." ^

To tliis West of Scotland bourgeois brain, inheriting the
accumulated capitalistic qualities of "four generations," the
value of the means of production, spindles, &;c. is so inseparably
mixed up with their property, as capital, to expand their own
value, and to swallow up daily a definite quantity of the un-
paid 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 spindles

i Reports of Insp. of Fact., April 30th, 1849, p. 59.

2 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. 299

of this kind, but also the surph.is-labour which they help 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 machines
dwindles to that of 10 1

PART IV.
PRODUCTION OF RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CONCEPT OF RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE.

That portion of the working-day which merely produces
an equivalent for the value paid by the capitalist for his
labour-power, has, up to this point, been treated by us as
a constant magnitude ; and such in fact it is, under given
conditions of production and at a given stage in the econo-
mical development 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 magni-
tude 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 be-
tween necessary labour and surplus-labour, are given. Let

the whole line a c, a b — c represent, for example,

a working-day of 12 hours; the portion of a b 10 hours

The Concept of Relative Stirplus-Vahte. 30 1

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 prolonged, with-
out, or independently of, any prolongation of a c ?

Although the length 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 V b c is equal to half of b c

a b' — b c

or to one hour's labour-time. If now, in a c, the working day
of 12 hours, we move the point b to V, 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 liours, is, however, evidently impossible, without a
simultaneous contraction of the necessary labour-time from
a b into a V, from 10 hours to 9 hours. The prolongation of
the surplus-labour would correspond to a shortening of the
necessary labour ; or a portion of the labour-time previously
consumed, in reality, for the labourer's own benefit, 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
labour-power, i.e., the labour-time requisite to produce labour-
power, determines the ]i;bour-time necessary for the repro-
duction of that value. If one working hour be embodied in
sixpence, and the value of a day's labour-power be five shillings,
the labourer must work 10 hours a day, in order to replace
the value paid by capital for his labour-power, or to produce
an equivalent for the value of his daily necessary means of sub-
sistence. Given the value of these means of subsistence, the
value of his labour-power is given ;^ and given the value of his

1 The value of his average daily wages is determined by what the labourer requires

302 Capitalist Production.

labour-power, the duration of his necessary labour-time is given.
The duration of the surplus-labour, however, is arrived at, by
subtracting the necessary labour-time from the total working
day. Ten hours subtracted from twelve, leave two, and it is
not easy to see, how, under the given conditions, the surplus-
labour can possibly be prolonged beyond two hours. No
doubt, the capitalist can, instead of five shillings, pay the
labourer four shillings and sixpence or even less. For the re-
production of this value of four shillings and sixpence, nine
hours labour-time would suffice ; and consequently three hours
of surplus-labour, instead of two, would accrue to the capitalist,
and the surplus-value would rise from one shilling to eighteen-
pence. 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 consequently the proper reproduction of his labour-
power is crippled. The surplus-labour would in this case be
prolonged only by an overstepping of its normal limits ; its
domain would be extended only by a usurpation of part of the
domain of necessary labour-time. Despite the important part
which this method plays in actual practice, we are excluded
from considering it in this place, by our assumption, that all
commodities, including labour-power, are bought and sold at
their full value. Granted this, it follows that the labour-time
necessary for the production of labour-power, or for the repro-
duction of its value, cannot be lessened by a fall in the
labourer's wages below the value of his labour-power, but only
by a fall in this value itself. Given the length of the working
day, the prolongation of the surplus-labour must of necessity

*' so as to live, labour, and generate." (Wm. Petty : ' * Political Anatomy of Ireland, "
1672, p. 64.) " The price of Labour is always constituted of the price of necessaries
. . . whenever .... the labouring man's wages will not, suitably to his low rank and
station, as a labouring man, support such a family as is often the lot of many of them
to have," he does not receive proper wages. (J. Vanderlint, 1. c. p. 15.) *' Le simple
ouvrier, qui n'a que ses bras et son Industrie, n'a rien qu'autant qu'il parvient ^
vendre £t 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 necessaire pour lui procurer
sa subsistance. " (Turgot, Reflexions, &c., Oeuvres ed. Dairet. I. p. 10). " The price
of the necessaries of life is, in fact, the cost of producing labour," (Malthus,
Inquiry into, &c., Rent, London, 1815, p. 48 note).

The Concept of Relative Surplus- Value. 303

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 prolonged from two hours to three.

Such a fall in the value of labour-power implies, however,
that the same necessaries of life which were formerly produced
in ten hours, can now be produced in nine hours. But this is
impossible without an increase in the productiveness of labour. '
For example, suppose a shoemaker, with given tools, makes in
one working day of twelve hours, one pair of boots. If he
must make two pairs in the same time, the productiveness of
his labour must be doubled ; and this cannot be done, except
by an alteration in his tools or in his mode of working, or in
both. Hence, the conditions of production, i.e., his mode of
production, and the labour-process itself, must be revolu-
tionised. By increase in the productiveness of labour, we
mean, generally, an alteration in the labour-process, of such a
kind as to shorten the labour- time socially necessary for the
production of a commodity, and to endow a given quantity of
labour with the power of producing a greater quantity of use-
value.^ Hitherto in treating of surplus-value, arising from a
simple prolongation of the working day, we have assumed the
mode of production to be given and invariable. But when
surplus-value has to be produced by the conversion of necessary
labour into surplus-labour, it by no means suffices for capital
to take over the labour-process in the form under which it has
been historically handed down, and then simply to prolong the
duration of that process. The technical and social conditions
of the process, and consequently the very mode of production
must be revolutionised, before the productiveness of labour can
be increased. By that means alone can the value of labour-

1 "Quando si perfezionano le arti, chenon d altro che la scoperta dinuove vie, onde
si possa compiere una manufattura con meno gente o (che e lo stesso) in minor tempo
di prima." (Galiani 1. c. p. 159.) "L'economie sur les frais de production ne peu
done 6tre autre chose que I'ficonomie sur la quantity de travail employe pour
produire." (Sismondi Etudes t. I. p. 22.)

304 Capitalist Production.

power be made to sink, and the portion of the working day
necessary for the reproduction of that value, be shortened.

The surplus-value produced by prolongation of the working
day, I call absolute surplus-value. On the other hand, the
surplus-value arising from the curtailment of the necessary
labour-time, and from the corresponding alteration in the re-
spective lengths of the two components of the working day, I
call relative surplus-value.

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 de-
termined, not only by the quantity of labour which the
labourer 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 corres-
ponding 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 required for
producing the necessaries of life. But an increase in the pro-
ductiveness of labour in those branches of industry which
supply neither the necessaries of life, nor the means of produc-
tion for such necessaries, leaves the value of labour-power un-
disturbed.

The cheapened commodity, of course, causes only a pro
tanto fall in the value of labour-power, a fall proportional to
the extent of that commodity's employment in the reproduc-
tion of labour-power. Shirts, for instance, are a necessary
means of subsistence, but are only one out of many. The
totality of the necessaries of life consists, however, of various
commodities, each the product of a distinct industry ; and the
value of each of those commodities enters as a component part
into the value of labour-power. This latter value decreases

The Concept of Relative Surplus- Vahce, 305

with the decrease of the labour-time necessary for its reproduc-
tion ; the total decrease being the sum of all the different cur-
tailments of labour-time effected in those various and distinct
industries. This general result is treated, here, as if it were
the immediate result directly aimed at in each individual case.
Whenever an individual capitalist cheapens shirts, for instance,
by increasing the productiveness of labour, he by no means
necessarily aims at reducing the value of labour-power 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.^ The
general and necessary tendencies of capital must be distin-
guished 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
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
possible, 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
following remarks, in which we assume nothing more than the
results 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 up 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

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.)

U

3o6 Capitalist Production.

value newly added in working with those means. Now let
some one capitalist contrive to double the productiveness of
labour, and to produce in the working day of 12 hours, 24 in-
stead of 12 such articles. The value of the means of produc-
tion remaining the same, the value of each article will fall to
niiiepence, 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
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 ^V^h,
instead of y^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 shilling,
and represents 2 hours of social labour ; but under the altered
mode of production it costs only ninepence, or contains only 1 J
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 therefore, the
capitalist who applies the new method, sells his commodity
at its social value of one shilling, he sells it for threepence
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 articles
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 thinofs
being equal, his commodities can command a more extended
market only by a diminution of their prices. He will there-
fore sell them above their individual but under their social
value, say at tenpence each. Bj^ this means he still squeezes

The Concept of Relative Siirplus- Value, 307

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 circumstance,
there is a motive for each individual capitalist to cheapen
his commodities, by increasing the productiveness of labour.

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.^ 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, 14| of these articles merely replace the constant
capital advanced. The labour of the 12 hours' working day is
represented by the remaining 9f articles. Since the price of
the labour-power is five shillings, 6 articles represent the
necessary labour-time, and 3f articles the surplus-labour. The
ratio of the necessary labour to the surplus-labour, which under
average social conditions was 5 : 1, is now only 5 : 3. The
same result may be arrived at in the following way. The
value of the product of the working day of 12 hours is twenty
shillings. Of this sum, twelve shillings belong to the value of
the means of production, a value that merely re-appears.
There remain eight shillings, which are the expression in
money, of the value newly created during the working day.
This sum is greater than the sum in which average social
labour of the same kind is expressed : twelve hours of the
latter labour are expressed by six shillings only. The excep-
tionally productive labour operates as intensified labour; it

1 " A man's profit does not depend upon his command of the produce of other men's
labour, but upon his command of labour itself. If he can sell his goods at a higher
price, while his workmen's wages remain unaltered, he is clearly benefited. ... A
smaller proportion of what he produces is sufficient to put that labour into motion,
and a larger proportion consequently remains for himself." (' ' Outlines of Pol. Econ."
London, 1832, pp. 49, 50.)

3o8 Capitalist Production.

creates in equal periods of time greater values than average
social labour of the same kind. (See Ch. I. Sect. 1. p. 11.) But
our capitalist still continues to pay as before only five shillings
as the value of a day's labour-power. Hence, instead of 10
hours, the labourer need now work only 7i hours, in order to
re-produce this value. His surplus-labour is, therefore, in-
creased by 24 hours, and the surplus- value he produces 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 re-
lative surplus-value, do collectively. On the other hand,
however, this extra surpluf^-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.^ 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

1 " If my neighbour by doing much with little labour, can sell cheap, I must con-
trive to sell as clieap as he. So that every art, trade, or engine, doing work with
labour of fewer hands, and consequently cheaper, begets in others a kind of necessity
and emulation, either of using the same art, trade, or engine, or of inventing some
thing like it, that every man may be upon the square, that no man may be able to
undersell his neighbour." ("The Advantages of the East India Trade to England.''
London, 1720, p. 67.)

The Concept of Relative Surplus- Value. 309

surplus- value is, on the contrary, directly proportional to that
productiveness. It rises with rising and falls with falling
productiveness. The value of money being assumed to be
constant, an average social working day of 12 hours always
produces the same new value, six shillings, no matter how this
sum ma}" be apportioned between surplus-value and wages.
But if, in consequence of increased productiveness, the value
of the necessaries of life fall, and the value of a day's labour-
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 constant
tendency, to heighten the productiveness of labour, in order to
cheapen commodities, and by such cheapening to cheapen the
labourer himself^

The value of a commodity is, in itself, of no interest to the
. capitalist. What alone interests him, is the, ourplus-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 in-
creases in direct proportion to the development of the produc-
tiveness of labour, while, on the other hand, the value of com-
modities diminishes in the same proportion ; since one and the
same process cheapens commodities, and augments the surplus-
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 Quesnay,

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 the Bounty on Corn Ex-
ported," &c., Lond., 1753, p. 7.) " The interest of trade requires, that corn and all
provisions should be as cheap as possible ; for whatever makes them dear, must make
labour dear also ... in all countries, where industry is not restrained, the price of
provisions must affect the price of labour. This will always be diminished when the
necessaries of life grow cheaper. " (1. c. p. 3.) "Wages are decreased in the same
proportion as the powers of production increase. Machinery, it is true, cheapens the
necessaries of life, but it also cheapens the labourer." ("A Prize Essay on the
Comparative Merits of Competition and Co-operation." London, 1834, p. 27.)

310 Capitalist Production.

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, wliich arises from the labour of the workpeople, con-
sists in the aucrmentabion of the exchanoe-value of their

o o

products."^

The shortening of the working day is, therefore, by no
means what is aimed at, in capitalist production, when labour
is economised by increasing its productiveness.^ It is only the
shortening of the labour-time, necessary for the production of
a definite quantity of commodities, that is aimed at. The fact
that the workman, when the productiveness of his labour has
been increased, produces, say 10 times as many commodities as
before, and thus spends one-tenth as much labour-time on each,
by no means prevents him from continuing to work 12 hours as
lefore, nor from producing in those 12 hours 1200 articles in-
stead of 120. Nay, more, his working day may be prolonged
at the same time, so as to make him produce, say 1400 articles
in 14 hours. In the treatises, therefore, of economists of the
stamp of MacCulloch, Ure, Senior, and tutti quanti, we may
read upon one page, that the labourer owes a debt of gratitude
to capital for developing his productiveness, because the
necessary labour-time is thereby shortened, and on the next
page, that he must prove his gratitude by working in future

^ " lis conviennent que plus on peut, sans prejudice, epargner de frais ou de travaux
dispendieux dans la fabrication des ouvrages des artisans, plus cette epargne est pro-
fitable par la diminution des prix de ces ouvrages. Cependant ils croient que la pro-
duction de richesse qui resulte des travaux des artisans consiste dans I'augmentation
de la valeur venale de leurs ouvrages. " (Quesnay : ' ' Dialogues sur le Commerce et sur
leg Travaux des artisans," pp. 188, 189.)

2 " Ces speculateurs si economes du travail des ouvriers qu'il faudrait qu'ils pay-
assent." (J. N. Bidaut : *'Du Monopole qui s'6tablit dans les arts industriels et le
commerce." Paris, 1828, p. 13.) "The employer will be always on the stretch to
economise time and labour.'* (Dugald Stewart: Works ed. by Sir W. Hainilton.
Edinburgh, v. viii., 1855. Lectures on Polit. Econ., p. 318.) "Their (the capitalists')
interest is that the productive powers of the labourers they employ should be the
greatest possible. On promoting that power their attention is fixed and almost ex-
clusively fixed." (R. Jones : 1 o Lecture III.)

Co- Operation. 311

for 15 hours instead of 10. The object of all development 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 benefit, and by
that very shortening, to lengthen the other part of the day,
during which he is at liberty to work gratis for the capitalist.
How far this result is also attainable, without cheapening
commodities, will appear from an examination of the particular
modes of producing relative surplus-value, to which examina-
tion 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: too^ether, at the same time, in
one place (or, if you will, in the same field of labour), in order
to produce the same sort of commodity under the mastership
of one capitalist, constitutes, both historically and logically,
the starting point of capitalist production. With regard to
the mode of production itself, manufacture, in its strict mean-
ing, is hardly to be distinguished, in its earliest stages, from
the handicraft trades of the guilds, otherwise than by the
greater number of workmen simultaneously employed by one
and the same individual capital. The workshop of the
mediaeval master handicraftsman is simply enlarged.

At first, therefore, the difference is purely quantitative. We
have shown that the surplus-value produced by a given capital
is equal to the surplus-value produced by each workman mul-
tiplied by the number of workmen simultaneously employed.
The number of workmen in itself does not affect, either the rate
of surplus- value, or the degree of exploitation of labour-power.
If a working day of 12 hours be embodied in six shillings, 1200

312 Capitalist Production

such days will be embodied in 1200 times 6 shillings. In one
case 12 X 1200 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 many individual
workmen ; and it therefore makes no difference in the value
produced whether the 1200 men work separately, or united
under the control of one capitalist

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 sycophant,
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 ^w^ farm labourers, all indi-
vidual differences in the labour vanish, and that consequently
any given five adult farm labourers taken together, will in the
same time do as much work as any other five.^ But, however
that may be, it is clear, that the collective working day of a
large number of Workmen simultaneously 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 collective working day of
12 men simultaneously employed, consists of 144 hours; and
although the labour of each of the dozen men may deviate

"^ "Unquestionably, there is a good deal of difference between the value of one
man's labour and that of another from strength, dexterity, and honest application.
But I am quite sure, from my best observation, that any given five men will, in their
total, afford a proportion of labour equal to any other five within the periods of life I
have stated ; that is, that among such five men there will be one possessing all the
qualifications of a good workman, one bad, and the other three middling, and ap-
proximating to the first and the last. So that in so small a platoon as that of even
five, you will find the full complement of all that five men can earn. " (E. Burke, 1.
c. p. 15, 16). Compare Quetelet on the average individual.

Co- Operation, 3 1 3

more or less from average social labour, each of them requiring
a different time for the same operation, yet since the work-
ing day of each is one-twelfth of the collective working day
of 144« hours, it possesses the qualities of an average social
working day. From the point of view, however, of the capi-
talist who employs these 12 men, the working day is that of
the whole dozen. Each individual man's day is 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 merely in the fact, that the
men are all working for the same capitalist. But if the 1 2
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 surplus-value. Devia-
tions would occur in individual cases. If one workman re-
quired considerably more time for the production of a com-
modity 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. Ic would either be not sale-
able 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 capita-
list production provides the means of fixing this minimum.
Nevertheless, this minimum deviates from the average, al-
though 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 compensated
for the society at large, but not for the individual masters.
Thus the laws of the production of value are only fully realised
for the individual producer, when he produces as a capitalist,
and employes a number of workmen together, whose labour,
by its collective nature, is at once stamped as average social
labour.^

' Professor Roscher claims to have discovered that one needlewoman employed by

314 Capitalist Production.

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
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 sincrle weaver with two assistants. But it
costs less labour to build one workshop for twenty persons
than to build ten to accommodate two weavers each ; thus
the value of the means of production that are concentrated for
use in common on a large scale does not increase in direct pro-
portion 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
because 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 constant
capital falls, and in proportion to the magnitude of the fall, the
total value of the commodity also falls. The effect is the same
as if the means of production had cost less. The economy
in their application is entirely owing to their being con-
sumed in common by a large number of workmen. Moreover,
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, inde-
pendent labourers, or small masters, is acquired even when the

Mrs. Roscher during two days, does more work than two needlewomen employed
together during one day. The learned professor should not study the capitalist pro-
cess of production in the nursery, nor under circumstances where the principal per-
sonage, the capitalist, is wanting.

Co-Operation, 315

numerous workmen assembled togetlier do not assist one
another, but merely work side by side. A portion of the
instruments of labour acquires this social character before the
labour-process itself does so.

Economy in the use of the means of production has to be
considered under two aspects. First, as cheapening commodi-
ties, and thereby bringing about a fall in the value of labour-
power. Secondly, as altering the ratio of the surplus-value to
the total capital advanced, i.e., to the sum of the values of the
constant and variable capital. The latter aspect will not be
considered until we come to the third book, 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 exivsting
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
connextion with the methods by which his own personal pro-
ductiveness is increased.

When numerous labourers work together side by side,
whether in one and the same process, or in different but con-
nected processes, they are said to co-operate, or to work in co-
operation.^

Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the
defensive power of a regiment of infantry, is essentially
different from the sum of the offensive or defensive powers of
the individual cavalry or infantry soldiers taken separately, so
the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated
workmen differs from the social force that is developed, when
many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same un-
divided operation, such as raising a heavy weight, turning a
winch, or removing an obstacle.^ In such cases the effect of

1 ** Concourn de forces." (Destutt de Tracy, 1. c, p. 78.)

2 " There are numerous operations of so simple a kind as not to admit a division
into parts, which cannot be performed without the co-operation of many pairs of
hands. I would instance the lifting of a large tree on to a wain. . . . everything, iu

3i6 Capitalist Production,

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
individual, by means of co-operation, but the creation of a new
power, namely, the collective power of masses.^

-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.^ The reason of
this is that man is, if not as Aristotle contends, a political,^ at
all events a social animal.

Although a number of men 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, maj'' corres-
pond to a distinct phase of the labour-process, through all whose
phases, in consequence of co-operation, the subject of their
labour passes with greater speed. For instance, if a dozen
masons place themselves in a row, so as to pass stones from the

short, which cannot be done unless a great many pairs of hands help each other in
the same undivided employment and at the same time " (E. G. Wakefield : "A View of
the Art of Colonisation." London : 1849, p. 168).

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 : *' Pro-
posals for raising a CoUedge of Industry." London, 1696, p. 21.)

'^ " 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 expeditiously
done : f . i. in harvest, 2 drivers, 2 loaders, 2 pitchers, 2 rakers, and the rest at the
rick, or in the barn, will despatch double the work that the same number of hands
would do if divided into different gangs on different farms." ("An Inquiry into tlie
connection between the present Price of Provisions and the Size of Farms." By a
Farmer. London, 1773, pp. 7, 8.)

3 Strictly, Aristotle's definition is that man is by nature a town -citizen. This is
quite as characteristic of ancient classical society as Franklin's definition of man, as
a tool-making animal, is characteristic of Yankeedom.

Co- Operation. 3 1 *]

foot of a ladder to its summit, each of tliem 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
ladder with his burden.^ The object is carried over the same
distance in a shorter time. Again, a combination of labour
occurs whenever a building, for instance, is taken in hand on
different sides simultaneously ; although here also the co-
operating masons are doing the same, or the same kind of
work. The 12 masons, in their collective working day of 144
hours, make much more progress with the building than one
mason could make working for 12 days, or 144 hours. The
reason is, that a body of men working in concert has hands and
eyes both before and behind, and is, to a certain degree, omni-
present. The various parts of the work progress simul-
taneously.

In the above instances we have laid stress upon the point
that the men do the same, or the same kind of work, because
this, the most simple form of labour in common, plays a great
part in co-operation, even in its most fully developed stage.
If the work be complicated, then the mere number of the men
who co-operate allows of the various operations being appor-
tioned to different hands, and, consequently, of being carried
on simultaneously. The time necessary for the completion of
the whole work is thereby shortened.^

1 " On doit encore remarquer que cette division partielle de travail pent se fairc
quand merae les ouvriers sont occupes d'une meme besogne. Des masons par exemple,
occupes ^ faire passer de mains en mains des briques k un echafaudage sui^erieur, font
tons la m^me besogne, et pourtantil existe i>armi eux une espece de division de travail,
qui consiste en ce que chaoun d'eux fait passer la brique par un espace donne, et que
tons ensemble la font parvenir beaucoup plus promptement k I'endroit marque qu'ils
ne le feraient si chaoun d'eux portait sa brique s^parcment jusqu '^ I'echafaudago
sup^rieur," (F. Skarbek : "Theorie des richesses sociales." Paris, 1829. t. I.
pp. 97, 98.)

2 ** Est-il question d'executer un travail complique, plusieurs choses doivent 6tre
faites simultan^ment. L'un en fait une pendant que I'autre en fait une autre, et
tous contribuent k I'effet qu'un seal homme n'aurait pu produire. L'un rame pendant
que I'autre tient le gouvernail, et qu'un troisieme jette le filet ou harponne le poisson,
et la p^che a uu succes impossible sans ce concours." (Destutt de Tracy, 1. c.)

3i8 Capitalist Production,

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
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
labourers required to do the same amount of work in the same
period.^ 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
carried on over an extended space ; it is consequently impera-
tively called for in certain undertakings, such as draining, con-
structing dykes, irrigation works, and the making of canals,
roads and railways. On the other hand, while extending the

1 "The doing of it (agricultural work) at the critical juncture is of so much the
greater consequence." ("An Inquiry into the Connection between the Present Price,"
&c., p. 9.) "In agriculture, there is no more important factor than that of time."
(Liebig : " Ueber Theorie und Praxis in der Landwirthschaft. " 1856. p. 23.)

2 " The next evil is one which one would scarcely expect to find in a country which
exi)orts 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
uni)icked, 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, 18ul.)

Co- Operation. 319

scale of production, it renders possible a relative contraction of
the arena. This contraction of arena simultaneous with, and
arising from, extension of scale, whereby a number of useless
expenses are cut down, is owing to the conglomeration of
labourers, to the aggregation of various processes, and to the
concentration of the means of production.^

The combined working day produces, relatively to an equal
sum of isolated working-days, a greater quantity of use-values,
and, consequenth^, 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-sided-
ness, or performs simultaneously different operations, or econo-
mises 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 produc-
tive power of the combined working day is, under all circum-
stances, 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 systematically with
others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and de-
velopes the capabilities of his species.^

As a general rule, labourers cannot co-operate without being
brought together : their assemblage in one place is a necessary

1 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,
space is concentrated, it is an enlarged sphere of production, as compared to the
sphere of i^roduction 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.)

2 '* La forza di ciascuno uomo e m'uima, ma la riunione delle minime forze forma
una forza totale maggiore anche della somma delle forze medesime fino a die le forze
per essere riunite possono dirainuere il tempo ed accrescerelo sjmzio della loro azione."
(G. R. Carli, Note to P. Verri, 1. c. t., xv. p. 196.)

320 Capitalist Prodtiction,

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
300 workmen at once, though only for one day, requires a
greater outlay of capital, than does the payment of a smaller
number of men, week by week, during a whole year. Hence
the number of the labourers that co-operate, or the scale of
co-operation, depends, in the first instance, on the amount of
capital that the individual capitalist can spare for the purchase
of labour-power ; in other words, on the extent to which a
single capitalist has command over the means of subsistence of
a number of labourers.

And as with the variable, so it is with the constant capital.
For example, the outlay on raw material is 30 times as great,
for the capitalist who employs 300 men, as it is for each of
the 30 capitalists who employ 10 men. The value and quan-
tity of the instruments of labour used in common do not, it is
true, increase at the same rate as the number of workmen, but
they do increase very considerably. Hence, concentration of
large masses of the means of production in the hands of indi-
vidual capitalists, is a material condition for the co-opej-ation
of wage-labourers, and the extent of the co-operation or the
scale of production, depends on the extent of this concentration.

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 capita-
list production. We now see that a certain minimum amount
is a necessary condition for the conversion of numerous isolated
and independent processes into one combined social process.

We also saw that at first, the subjection of labour to capital

\

Co- Operation, 321

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,
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 working
of the individual activities, and to perform the general func-
tions that have their origin in the action of the combined
organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate
organs. A single violin player is his own conductor; an
orchestra requires a separate one. The work of directing,
superintending, and adjusting, becomes one of the functions of
cajDital, from the moment that the labour under the control of
capital, becomes co-operative. Once a function of capital, it
acquires special characteristics.

The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist produc-
tion, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus-
value,^ and consequently to exploit labour-power to the greatest
possible extent. As the number of the co-operating labourers
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 eifective
control over the proper application of those means.^ Moreover,

1 " Profits ... is the sole end of trade." (J. Vanderlint, 1. c, p. 11.)

2 That Philistine paper, the Spectator^ states that after the introduction of
a sort of partnership between capitalist and workmen in the " Wirework Company

\

322 Capitalist Production.

the co-operation of wage labourers is entirely brought about
by the capital that employs them. Their union into one
single productive body and the establishment of a connexion
between their individual functions, are matters foreign and
external to them, are not their own act, but the act of the
capital that brings and keeps them together. Hence the con-
nexion existing between their various labours appears to them,
ideally, in the shape of a preconceived plan of the capitalist,
and practically in the shape of the authority of the same capi-
talist, in the shape of the powerful will of another, who sub-
jects their activity to his aims. If, then, the control of the
capitalist is in substance twofold by reason of the twofold
nature of the process of production itself, — which, on the one
hand, is a social process for producing use-values, on the
other, a process for creating surplus-value — in form that con-
trol is despotic. As co-operation extends its scale, this despot-
ism takes forms peculiar to itself. Just as at first the capi-
talist is relieved from actual labour so soon as his capital has
reached that minimum amount with which capitalist pro-
duction, as such, begins, so now, he hands over the work of
direct and constant supervision of the individual workmen,
and groups of workmen, to a special kind of wage labourer
An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a
capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers), and
sergeants (foremen, overlookers), who, while the work is being
done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of
supervision becomes their established and exclusive function.
When comparing the mode of production of isolated peasants
and artizans with production by slave labour, the political
economist counts this labour of superintendence among the
faux frais of production. But, when considering the capital-

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 manufactur-
ing loss." The same paper finds that the main defect in the Kochdale co-operative
experiments is this : * * They showed that associations of workmen could manage
shops, mills, and almost all forms of industry with success, and they immediately
improved the condition of the men ; but then they did not leave a clear place for
jnasters, " Quelle horreur !

> Professor Cairns, after stating that the superintendence of labour is a leading

\^

Co-Operation, 323

ist 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 character of that process and the
antagonism of interests between capitalist and labourer/ 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
be 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 .^

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, iso-
lated 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
contracts 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
■Jabour-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

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.)

1 Sir James Steuart, a writer altogether remarkable for his quick eye for the
characteristic social distinctions between different modes of production, says : "Why
do large undertakings in the manufacturing way ruin private industry, but by coming
nearer to the simplicity of slaves ? " (" Prin. of Pol. Econ.," London, 1767, v. I., p.
167, 168.)

2 Auguste Comte and his school might therefore have shown that feudal lords are
an eternal necessity in the same way that they have done in the case of the lords
of capital. ,

324 Capitalist Production.

power of capital. This power is developed gratuitously, when-
ever the workmen are placed under given conditions, and it is
capital 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
is endowed by Nature — a productive power that is immanent
in ca])ital.

The colossal effects of simple co-operation are to be seen in
the gigantic structures of the ancient Asiatics, Egyptians,
Etruscans, &c. "It has happened in times past that these
Oriental States, after supplying the expenses of their civil and
military establishments, have found themselves in possession
of a surplus which they could apply to works of magnificence
or utility, and in the construction of these their command over
the hands and arms of almost the entire non-agricultural
population has produced stupendous monuments which still
indicate their power. The teeming valley of the Nile . . .
produced food for a swarming non-agricultural population, and
this food, belonging to the monarch and the priesthood, afforded
the means of erecting the mighty monuments which filled the
land. ... In moving the colossal statues and vast masses of
which the transport creates wonder, human labour almost
alone, was prodigally used. . . . The number of the labourers and
the concentration of their eflTorts sufiiced. 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 con-
temptible. The non-agricultural labourers of an Asiatic
monarchy have little but their individual bodily exertions to
bring to the task, but their number is their strength, and the
power of directing these masses gave rise to the palaces and
temples, the pyramids, and the armies of gigantic statues of
which the remains astonish and perplex us. It is that con-
finement of the revenues which feed them, to one or a few
hands, which makes such undertakings possible." ^ This power

1 R. Jones. "Text-book of Lectures," &c., pp. 77, 78. The ancient Assyrian,
Egyptian, and other collections in London, and in other European capitals, make
us eye-witnesses of the modes of carrying on that co-operative labour.

Co-Operation. ' 325

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
development, among races who live by the chase,^ or, say, in
the agriculture of Indian communities, is based, on the one
band, 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 ofi* 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 characteristics. The sporadic application of co-operation
on a large scale in ancient times, in the middle ages, and in
modern colonies, reposes on relations of dominion and servi-
tude, 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 developed in opposition to peasant agriculture
and to the carrying on of independent handicrafts whether in
guilds or not." From the standpoint of these, capitalistic co-
operation does not manifest itself as a particular historical
form of co-operati(m, but co-operation itself appears to be a
historical form peculiar to, and specifically distinguishing, the
capitalist process of production.

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

1 Linguet is probably right, when in his "Theorie des Lois Civiles," he declares
hunting to be the first form of co-operation, and man-hunting (war) one of the earliest
forms of hunting.

2 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.

326 Capitalist P^^oduction,

capitalist process of production. It is the first change experi-
enced by the actual labour-process, when subjected to capi tal
This change takes place spontaneously. The simultaneous
employment of a large number of wage-labourers, in one and
the same process, which is a necessary condition of this change,
also forms the starting point of capitalist production. This
point coincides with the birth of capital itself. If then, on the
one hand, the capitalist mode of production presents itself to
us historically, as a necessary condition to the transformation
of the labour-process into a social process, so, on the other hand,
this social form of the labour-process presents itself, as a method
employed by capital for the more profitable exploitation 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,^ and in that kind of
agriculture on a large scale, which corresponds to the epoch of
manufacture, and is distinguished from peasant agriculture,
mainly by the number of the labourers simultaneously em-
ployed, and by the mass of the means of production con-
centrated for their use. Simple co-operation is always the
prevailing form, in those branches of production in which
capital operates on a large scale, and division of labour and
machinery play but a subordinate part.

Co-operation ever constitutes the fundamental form of the
capitalist mode of production ; nevertheless, the elementary
form of co-operation continues to subsist as a particular form
of capitalist production side by side with the more developed
forms of that mode of production.

** Whether the united skill, industry, and emulation of many together on the
same work be not the way to advance it? And whether it had been otherwise
I>ossible for England, to have carried on her Woollen Manufacture to so great a per-
fection?" (Berkeley. **The Querist." London, 1750, p. 56, par. 521.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture, 327

CHAPTER XIV.

DIVISION OF LABOUR AND MANUFACTURE.

SECTION 1. — TWOFOLD ORIGIN OF MANUFACTURE.

That co-operation which is based on division of labour, assumes
its typical form in manufacture, and is the prevalent character-
istic form of the capitalist process of production throughout
the manufacturing period properly so called. That period,
roughly speaking, extends from the middle of the 16th to the
last third of the 18th century.

Manufacture takes its rise in two ways : —

(1.) By the assemblage, in one workshop under the control
of a single capitalist, of labourers belonging to various inde-
pendent handicrafts, but through whose hands a given article
must pass on its way to completion. A carriage, for example,
was formerly the product of the labour of a great number of inde-
pendent artificers, such as wheelwrights, harness-makers, tailors,
locksmiths,upholsterers, turners, fringe-makers,glaziers, painters,
polishers, gilders, &c. In the manufacture of carriages, how-
ever, all these different artificers are assembled in one build-
ing, where they work into one another's hands. It is true that
a carriage cannot be gilt before it has been made. But if a
number of carriages are being made simultaneously, some may
be in the hands of the gilders while others are going through an
earlier process. So far, we are still in the domain of simple
co-operation, which finds its materials ready to hand in the
shape of men and things. But very soon an important change
takes place. The tailor, the locksmith, and the other artificers,
being now exclusively occupied in carriage-making, each gradu-
ally loses, through want of practice, the 'ability to carry on, to
its full extent, his old handicraft. But, on the other hand, his
activity now confined in one groove, assumes the form best
adapted to the narrowed sphere of action. At first, carriage
manufacture is a combination of various independent handi-
crafts. By degrees, it becomes the splitting up of carriage

328 Capitalist Production.

making into its various detail processes, each of which
crystallizes into the exclusive function of a particular work-
man, 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 combining
different handicrafts together under the control of a single
capitalist.^

(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
performs in succession all the operations necessary for its
production. 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
repartition gets repeated, developes advantages of its own, and
gradually ossifies into a systematic division of labour. The

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
sans les epuiser ni les corrompre ; elle les laisse dans leur belles vallees de la Dr6me,
du Var, de I'lsere, de Vaucluse, pour y elever des vers et divider leurs cocons ; jamais
elle n'entre dans une veritable fabrique. Pour 6fcreaussibienobserv6 . . . le principe
de la division du travail s'y rev6t d'un caractere special. H y a bien des devideuses,
des moulineurs, des teinturiers, des encoUeurs, puis des tisserands ; mais ils ne sont pas
reunis dans un meme ^tablissement, ne dependent pas d'un m^rae maltre ; tons ils
sont ind^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 since Marx wrote
the above, the powerloom has invaded these factories, and is now — 1886— rapidly
superseding the handloom. Ed.]

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 329

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-
stone on which the English needle manufacture was raised.
But while in Nuremberg that single artificer performed a series
of perhaps 20 operations one after another, in England it was
not long before there were 20 needlemakers side by side, each
performing one alone of those 20 operations ; and in conse-
quence of further experience, each of those 20 operations was
again split up, isolated, and made the exclusive function of a
separate workman.

The mode in which manufacture arises, its growth out of
handicrafts, is therefore twofold. On the one hand, it arises
from the union of various independent handicrafts, which become
stripped of their independence and specialised to such an extent
as to be reduced to mere supplementary partial processes in the
production of one particular commodity. On the other hand,
it arises from the co-operation of artificers of one handicraft ;
it splits up that particular handicraft into its various detail
operations, isolating, and making these operations independent
of one another up to the point where each becomes the exclusive
function of a particular labourer. On the one hand, therefore,
manufacture either introduces division of labour into a process
of production, or further developes that division ; on the other
hand, it unites together handicrafts that were formerly separate.
But whatever may have been its particular starting point, its

1 final form is invariably the same — a productive mechanism
whose parts are human beings.

For a proper understanding of the division of labour in
manufacture, it is essential that the following points be firmly
grasped. First, the decomposition of a process of production
into its various successive steps coincides, here, strictly with

330 Capitalist Production.

the resolution of a handicraft into its successive manual
operations. 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
sureness, of the individual workman in handling his tools.
The handicraft continues to be the basis. This narrow
technical basis excludes a really scientific analysis of any
definite process of industrial production, since it is still a con-
dition that each detail process gone through by the product
must be capable of 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.^ 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

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., 1720. p. 71.)

Division of Labour a7id Manufacture. 331

repetition 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,
become established, and are accumulated and handed down.^
Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detail labourer,
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.
" 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

1 "Easy labour is transmitted skill." (Th. Hodgskin, 1. c. p. 125).

2 ** The arts also have ... in Egypt reached the requisite degree of perfection.
For it is the only country where artificers may not in any way meddle with the
affairs of at other class of citizens, but must follow that calling alone which by law is

hereditary in tiieir clan In other countries it is found that tradesman divide

their attention between too many objects. At one time they try agriculture, 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 punished 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 in-
herit from their forefathers numerous rules, they are eager to discover fresh
advantages." (Diodorus Siculus: Bibl. Hist. 1. 1. c. 74.)

S3^ Capitalist Production,

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."^ It is only the special skill accumulated from
generation to generation, and transmitted from father to son,
that gives to the Hindoo, as it does to the spider, this pro-
ficiency. 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,
demanded by every transition from rest to motion, is made up
for by prolonging the duration of the normal velocity when
once acquired. On the other hand, constant labour of one
uniform kind disturbs the intensity and flow of a man's animal
spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere change of
activity.

The productiveness of labour depends not only on the pro-
ficiency of the workman, but on the perfection of his tools.
Tools of the same kind, such as knives, drills, gimlets, ham-
mers, fcc, may be employed in different processes; and the

1 Historical and descriptive account of Brit. India, &c. , by Hugh Blurray and James
Wilson, &c., Edinburgh 1832. v. IL p. 449. The Indian loom is upright, i.e., the
warp is stretched vertically.

Division of Labour and Manufacture, 333

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
the instruments of labour — a differentiation whereby imple-
ments of a given sort acquire fixed shapes, adapted to each
particular application, and by the specialisation of those in-
struments, giving to each special implement its full play only
in the hands of a specific detail labourer. In Birmingham
alone 500 varieties of hammers are produced, and not only is
each adapted to one particular process, but several varieties
often serve exclusively for the different operations in one and
the same process. The manufacturing period simplifies, im-
proves, and multiplies the implements of labour, by adapting
them to the exclusively special functions of each detail la-
bourer.^ It thus creates at the same time one of the material
conditions for the existence of machinery, which consists of a
combination of simple instruments.

The detail labourer and his implements are the simplest
elements of manufacture. Let us now turn to its aspect as a
whole.

SECTION 3. — THE TWO FUNDAMENTAL FORMS OF MANUFACTURE I
HETEROGENEOUS MANUFACTURE, SERIAL MANUFACTURE.

The organisation of manufacture has two fundamental forms,
which, in spite of occasional blending, are essentially different

1 Darwin in his epoch-making work on the origin of species, remarks, with reference
to the natural organs of plants and animals, " So long as one and the same organ has
diflferent 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 differeixt use."

334 Capitalist Production.

in kind, and, moreover, play very distinct parts in the sub-
sequent transformation of manufacture into modern industry
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
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), finisseur de barillet
(cuts teeth in the wheels, makes the holes of the right size,
&;c.), escapement makers, cylinder makers for cylinder escape-
ments, 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 barillet (finishes the box for the spring, &c.),
steel polishers, wheel polishers, screw polishers, figure painters,
dial enamellers (melt the enamel on the copper), fabricant de
pendants (makes the ring by which the case is hung), finisseur
de charniere (puts the brass hinge in the cover, &;c.), faiseur de
secret (puts in the springs that open the case), graveur, ciseleur,
polisseur de boite, fcc, &;c., and last of all the repasseur, 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

Division of Labour and Mamifacture. 335

whole. This external relation between the finished product,
and its various and diverse elements makes it, as well in this
case as in the case of all similar finished articles, a matter of
chance whether the detail labourers are brought together in
one workshop or not. The detail operations may further be
carried on like so many independent handicrafts, as they are
in the Cantons of Vaud and Neu chatel ; while in Geneva there
exist large watch manufactories where the detail labourers
directly co-operate under the control of a single capitalist.
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 tlie work, saves the outlay on w^orkshops, &c.^
Nevertheless the position of this detail labourer who, though
he works at home, does so for a capitalist (manufacturer,
^tablisseur), is very different from that of the independent
artificer, who works for his own customers.'*

The second kind of nianufacture, its perfected form, pro-
duces articles that go through connected phases of develop-

1 In the year 1854 Geneva produced 80,000 watches, which is not one-fifth of the
production in the Canton of Neu ch4tel. 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 tho
Watch Trade" in "Reports by H. M.'s Secretaries of Embassy and Legation on the
Manufactures, Commerce, &c., No. 6, 1863." The want of connexion alone, between
the processes into which the production of articles that merely consist of parts fitted
together is split up, makes it very difficult to convert such a manufacture into a
branch of modern industry carried on by machinery ; but in the case of a watch there
are two other impediments in addition, the minuteness and delicacy of its parts, and
its character as an article of luxury. Hence their variety, which is such, that in the
best London houses scarcely a dozen watches are made alike in the course of a year.
The watch manufactory of Messrs. Vacheron & Constantin, in which machinery has
been employed with success, produces at the most three or four different varieties of
size and form.

2 In watchmaking, that classical example of heterogeneous manufacture, we may
study with great accuracy the above mentioned differentiation and specialisation of
the instruments of labour caused by the sub-division of handicrafts.

33^ Capitalist Production.

ment, through a series of processes step by step, like the wire
in the manufacture of needles, which passes through the hands
of 72 and sometimes even 92 different detail workmen.

In so far as such a manufacture, when first started, com-
bines scattered handicrafts, it lessens the space by which the
various phases of production are separated from each other.
The time taken in passing from one stags to another is
shortened, so is the labour that effectuates this passage.^ In
comparison with a handicraft, productive power is gained, and
this gain is owing to the general co-operative character of
manufacture. On the other liand, 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 mamtenance 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.^

If we confine our attention to some particular lot of raw
materials, of I'ags, 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 wdre, 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
difierent detail processes, which were successive in time, have
become simultaneous, go on side by side in space. Hence,

1 " In so close a cohabitation of the people, the carriage must needs be less. " ('' The
Advantages of the East India Trade," p. 106.)

2 "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 Industry
of Nations." Lond., 1855. Part II., p. 200.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 337

production of a greater quantum of finished commodities in a
given time.^ Tliis simultaneity, it is true, is due to the
general co-operative form of the process as a whole ; but
Alanufacture not only finds the conditions for co-operation
ready to hand, it also, to some extent, creates them by the
feub-division of handicraft labour. On the other hand, it
accomplishes this social organisation of the labour-process only
by riveting each labourer to a single fractional detail.

Since the fractional product of each detail labourer is, at the
same time, only a particular stage in the development of one
and the same finished article, each labourer, or each group of \
labourers, prepares the raw material for another labourer or
group. The result of the labour of the one is the starting
point for the labour of the other. The one 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,^ and even
intensity of labour, of quite a different kind, is begotten than
is to be found in an independent handicraft or even in simple
co-operation. The rule, that the labour-time expended on a
commodity should not exceed that which is socially necessary
for its production, appears, in the production of commodities
generally, to be established by the mere effect of competition ;

1 "It (the divisioQ 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 in-
dividual must have executed separately, it becomes possible to produce a multitude
of pins completely finished in the same time as a single pin might have been either
cut or pointed." (Dugald Stewart, 1. c, p. 319.)

2 * ' The more variety of artists to every manufacture . . . the greater the order
and regularity of every work, the same must needs be done in less time, the labour
must be less." ( " The Advantages," &c., p. 68.)

Y

SS^ Capitalist Production.

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.^

Different operations take, however, unequal periods, and yield
therefore, in equal times unequal quantities of fractional pro-
ducts. If, therefore, the same labourer has, day after day, to
perform the same operation, there must be a difierent number
of labourers for each operation ; for instance, in type manufac-
ture, there are four founders and two breakers to one rubber :
the founder casts 2,000 type an hour, the breaker breaks up
4,000, and the rubber polishes 8,000. Here we have again the
principle of co-operation in its simplest form, the simultaneous
emploj^ment of many doing the same thing ; only now, this
principle is the expression of an oi-ganic relation. The division
of labour, as carried out in Manufacture, not only simplifies and
multiplies the qualitatively different parts of the social collec-
tive labourer, but also creates a fixed mathematical relation or
ratio which regulates the quantitative 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 developes,
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.'' There is this to boot, that the same individual can

' 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.

2 " 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 establish-
ments." (C. Babbage. " On the Economy of Machinery," 1st ed. London, 1832.
Ch. xxi., p. 172-173 )

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 339

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
is an organised body of labour, the total mechanism being a
repetition or multiplication of these elementary organisms.
Take, for instance, the manufacture of glass bottles. It may
be resolved into three essentially different stages. First, the
preliminary stage, consisting of the preparation of the com-
ponents of the glass, mixing the sand and lime, &c., and melting
them into a fluid mass of glass.^ Various detail labourers are
employed in this first stage, as also in the final one of removing
the bottles from the drying furnace, sorting and packing 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
?^N^ 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

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.

340 Capitalist Prodtution.

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 workmeii
requisite for the preparatory and final stages.

Finally, just as Manufacture arises in part from the combina-
tion of various handicrafts, so, too, it developes into a combina-
tion 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-
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 manufacture
of flint glass combined with that of glass cutting and brass
founding ; the latter for the metal settings of various articlea
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 complete
technical system on its own foundation. That happens only
on its transformation into an industry carried on by machinery.

Early in the manufacturing period, the principle of lessening
the necessary labour-time in the production of commodities,^
was accepted and formulated : and the use of machines, especi-
ally for certain simple first processes that have to be conducted
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 tlie ores was
effected by stamping mills.^ The Roman Empire had handed

1 This can be seen from W. Petty, John Bellers, Andrew Yarranton, "The Ad-
vantages of the East India Trade," and J. Vanderlint, not to mention others.

3 Towards the end of the 16th century, mortars and sieves were still used in France
for pounding and washing ores.

Division of Labour and Manufacture, 341

down the elementary form of all machinery in the water-
wheel.i

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-
son with division of labour.^ The sporadic use of machinery
in the 17th century was of the greatest importance, because it
supplied the great mathematicians of that time with a practical
basis and stimulant to the creation of the science of mechanics.

The collective labourer, formed by the combination of a
number of detail labourers, is the machinery specially char-
acteristic of the manufacturing period. The various operations
that are performed in turns by the producer of a commodity,
and coalesce one with another during the progress of produc-
tion, lay claim to him in various wa3^s. In one operation he
must exert more strength, in another more skill, in another
more attention ; and the same individual does not possess all
these qualities in an equal degree. After Manufacture has
once separated, made independent, and isol?«ted 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

1 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 " miihle " is still found in use, not
only for all machinery driven by the forces of Nature, but also for all manufactures
where apparatus in the nature of machinery is applied.

2 As will be seen more in detail in the fourth book of this work, Adam Smith has
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 ot modern mechanical in-
dustry to the polemic of Lauderdal*-, and, at a later period, to that of Ure. A. Smith
also confounds differentiation of the instruments of labour, in which the detail
labourers themselves took an active part, with the invention of machinery ; in this
latter, it is not the workmen in manufactories, but learned men, handicraftsmen,
and even peasants (Brindley), who play a part.

/

342 Capitalist P reduction,

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.*
The one-sidedness and the deficiencies of the detail labourer
become perfections when he is a part of the collective labourer.*
The habit of doing only one thing converts him into a never
failing instrument, while his connexion with the whole me-
chanism compels him to work with the regularity of the parts
of a machine.*

Since the collective labourer has functions, both simple and
complex, both high and low, his members, the individual
labour-powers, require different degrees of training, and must
therefore have different values. Manufacture, therefore, de-
velopes a hierarchy of labour-powers, to which there corres-
ponds a scale of wages. If, on the one hand, the individual
labourers 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 labourers according to
both their natural and their acquired capabilities.* Every
process of production, however, requires certain simple manip-

1 " The master manufacturer, by dividing the work to be executed into different
processes, each requiring different degrees of skill or of force, can purchase exactly
that precise quantity of both which is necessary for each process ; whereas, if the
whole work were executed by one workman, that person must possess sufficient skill
to perform the most difficult, and sufficient strength to execute the most laborious of
the operations into which the article is divided." (Ch. Babbage. 1. c, ch. xviii.)

2 For instance, abnormal development of some muscles, curvature of bones, &c.

3 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.)

4 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 pole-
mical interest in the matter, and more sharply even than his contemporaries — Babbage,
e,g., who, though much his superior as a mathematician and mechanician, treated me-
chanical industry from the standpoint of manufacture alone. Ure says, " This appro-
priation ... 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, charac-
terises the whole manufacturing system as " a system for the division or gradation of
labour," as "the division of labour into degrees of skill," &'\ (Ure, 1. c. pp. 19-2.^
passim.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture, 343

ulations, which every man is capable of doing. They too
are now severed from their connexion with the more preg-
nant moments of activity, and ossified into exclusive func-
tions of specially 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 speciality into a
perfection, at the expense of the whole of a man's working
capacity, it also begins to make a speciality of the absence of
all development. Alongside of the hierarchic gradation there
steps the simple 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 consequence of the functions being simplified. In both
cases the value of labour-power falls.^ An exception to this
law^ holds good whenever the decomposition of the labour-
process begets new. and comprehensive functions, that either
had no place at all, or only a very modest one, in handicrafts.
The fall in the value of labour-power, caused by the disap-
pearance or diminution of the expenses of apprenticeship, im-
plies a direct increase of surplus- value for the benefit of
capital; for everything that shortens the necessary labour-
time required for the reproduction of labour-power, extends the
domain of surplus-labour.

SECTION 4. — DIVISION OP LABOUR IN MANUFACTURE, AND DIVISION OF
LABOUR IN SOCIETY.

We first considered the origin of Manufacture, then its
simple elements, then the detail labourer and his implements,
and finally, the totality of the mechanism. We shall now
lightly touch upon the relation between the division of labour
in manufacture, and the social division of labour, which forms
the foundation of all production of commodities.

If we keep labour alone in view, we may designate the
separation of social production into its main divisions or
genera — viz., agriculture, industries, &c., as division of labour

J *' Each handicraftsman being . . . enabled to perfect himself by practice in one
point, became ... a cheaper workman." (Ure, 1. c, p. 19.)

344 Capitalist Production,

in general, and the splitting up of these families into species
and sub-species, as division of labour in particular, and the
division of labour within the workshop as division of labour in
singular or in detail.^

Division of labour in a society, and the corresponding tying
down of individuals to a particular calling, developes itself,
just as does the division of labour in manufacture, from opposite
starting points. Within a family,^ and after further develop-
ment 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
clivision enlarges its materials by the expansion of the com-
munity, by the increase of population, and more especially, by
the conflicts between different tribes, and the subjugation of
one tribe by another. On the other hand, as I have before
remarked, the exchange of products springs up at the points
where different families, tribes, communities, come in contact ;
for, in the beginning of civilisation, it is not private indi-
viduals but families, tribes, &c., that meet on an independent
footing. Different communities find different means of pro-
duction, and different means of subsistence in their natural en-
vironment. Hence, their modes of production, and of living,
and their products are different. It is this spontaneously de-
veloped difference which, when different communities come in
contact, calls forth the mutual exchange of products, and the

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 ^ un certain
degre de civilisation trois genres de divisions d'industrie : la premiere, que nous
nommerons g6nerale, 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 speciale, est la division de chaque genre
d'industrie en especes. ... la troisierae division d'industrie, celle enfin qu'on devrait
qualifier de division de la besogne ou de travail proprement dit, est celle qui s'etablit
dans les arts et les metiers separes. . . . qui s'6tablit dans la plupart des manufactures
et des ateliers." (Skarbek. 1. c. pp. 84, 85.)

2 Note to the third edition. Subsequent very searching study of the primitive
condition of man, led the author to the conclusion, that it was not the family that
originally developed into the tribe, but that, on the contrary, the tribe was the primi-
tive and spontaneously developed form of human association, on the basis of blood
relationship, and that out of the first incipient loosening of the tribal bonds, the
many and various forms of the family were afterwards developed. (Ed. 3rd ed.)

Division of Labour and Manufacttire. 345

consequent gradual conversion of those products into com-
modities. Exchange does not create the differences between
the spheres of production, but brings what are already different
into relation, and thus converts them into more or less inter-
dependent branches of the collective production of an enlarged
society. In the latter case, the social division of labour arises
from the exchange between spheres of production, that are
originally distinct and independent of one another. In the
former, where the physiological division of labour is the starting
point, the particular organs of a compact whole grow loose,
and break off, principally owing to the exchange of commodi-
ties with foreign communities, and then isolate themselves so
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.^ It may be said,
that the whole economical history of societ}^ 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
workshop, a necessary condition for the division of labour
in society .'^ Nevertheless, this density is more or less relative.

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 JNIalthus
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 jjower 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.)

34^ Capitalist Production.

A relatively thinly populated country, with well-developed
means of communication, has a denser population than a more
numerously populated country, with badly-developed means of
communication ; and in this sense the Northern States of the
American Union, for instance, are more thickly populated than
Tndia.^

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 certain degree of development. Inversely, the former
division reacts upon and developes and multiplies the
latter. Simultaneously, with the differentiation of the in-
struments of labour, the industries that produce these in-
struments, become more and more differentiated.^ If the
manufacturing system seize upon an industry, which, pre-
viously, was carried on in connexion with others, either as a
chief or as a subordinate industry, and by one producer, these
industries immediately separate their connexion, and become
independent. If it seize upon a particular stage in the pro-
duction of a commodity, the other stages of its production
become converted into so many independent industries. It
has already been stated, that where the finished article con-
sists merely of a number of parts fitted together, the detail
operations may re-establish themselves as genuine and sep-
arate handicrafts. In order to carry out more perfectly the
division of labour in manufacture, a single branch of pro-
duction 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, in the first half
of the 18th century, over 100 different kinds of silk stuffs

1 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 famins, the defective means of
communication not permitting the failure of rice in one district to be compensated
by importation from another.

2 Thus, the fabrication of shuttles formed, as early as the 17th century, a special
branch of industry in Holland.

Division 0/ Labour and Manufacture, 347

were woven, and, in Avignon, it was law, that " every appren-
tice 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.^ 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 show how division of labour seizes upon, not only the
economical, but every other sphere of society, and everywhere
lays the foundation of that all engrossing system of specialis-
ing 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."^

But, in spite of the numerous analogies and links connecting
them, division of labour in the interior of a society, and that
in the interior of a workshop, differ not only in degree, but
also in kind. The analogy appears most indisputable where
there is an invisible bond uniting the various branches of
trade. For instance, the cattle breeder produces hides, the
tanner makes the hides into leather, and the shoemaker, the
leather into boots. Here the thing produced by each of them
is but a step towards the final form, which is the product of
all their labours combined. There are, besides, all the various
industries that supply the cattle-breeder, the tanner, and the
shoemaker with the means of production. Now it is quite
possible to imagine, with Adam Smith, that the difference be-
tween the above social division of labour, and the division in

1 "Whether the woollen manufacture of England is not diWded into several parts
or branches appropriated to particular places, where they are only or principally
manufactured ; fine cloths in Somersetshire, coarse in Yorkshire, long ells at Exeter,
soies at Sudbury, crapes at Norwich, linseys at Kendal, blankets at Whitney, and
so forth." (Berkeley : "The Querist," 1750, p. 520.)

2 A. Ferguson: " History of Civil Society." Edinburgh, 1767 ; Part iv., sect, ii.,
p. 285.

34^ Capitalist Production.

manufacture, is merely subjective, exists merely for the
observer, 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 gieat number of people employed in
each branch of labour, obscure the connexion.^ But what is
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 manufactures?
The fact that the detail labourer produces no commodities.^
It is only the common product of all the detail labourers that
becomes a commodity.^ 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

1 In manufacture proper, he says, the division of labour appears to be greater,
because " those employed ih every different branch of the work can often be col-
lected into the same workhouse, and jjlaced 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
employs 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 Mandeville's Kemarks
to his "Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Benefits." (First ed., without
the remarks, 1706 ; with the remarks, 1714.)

2 " 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.

3 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 industries, carried on independently
in different places. They entered as separate commodities into the umbrella man-
ufactory, where they were fitted together. The Yankees have given to articles thus

l\

Division of Labour and Manufacture, 349

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 independent producers of
commodities. While within the workshop, the iron law of
proportionality subjects definite numbers of workmen to de-
finite 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 difierent 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 produce a use-value, to satisfy a
particular social want, and while 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 par
ticular 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 upset
ting of this equilibrium. The a priori system on which th
division of labour, within the workshop, is regularly carrie
out, becomes in the division of labour within the society, an i
posteriori, nature-imposed necessity, controlling the lawless
caprice of the producers, and perceptible in the barometric^ 1
fluctuations of the market prices, Division of labour withii
the workshop implies the undisputed authority of the capita -
ist over men, that are but parts of a mechani>ra that belong 3
to him. The division of labour within the society brings int )
contact independent commodity-producers, who acknowledg 3
no other authority but that of competition, of the coercioi
exerted by the pressure of their mutual interests ; just as in tUe

fitted together, the name of "assembled articles," a name they deserve, for beipg
an assemblage of taxes. Thus the umbrella "assembles," first, 6*^/0 on the price/ of
each of its elements, and a further 67o on its own total price.

3 so Capitalist Production,

animal kingdom, the helluTn omnium contra omnes more or less
preserves the conditions 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 con-
scious 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 apologists 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-
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 organisation 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 dwarf-like or sporadic and accidental
development of the same.^

Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities, some
of which have continued down to this day, are based on posses-
sion in common of the land, on the blending of agriculture 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 pro-
ducing all it requires. The chief part of the products is

1 " On peut . . etablir en regie ginferale, que moins I'autoritd preside a la division
du travail dans I'interieur de la societe, plus la division du travail se developpe dans
I'interieur de I'atelier, et plus elle y est soumise k I'autorite d'un seul. Ainsi
l'atitorit6 dans I'atelier et celle dans la societe, par rapport a la division du travail,
sont en raison inverse I'une de I'autre." (Karl Marx, " Misere," &c., pp. 130-131.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture. 3 5 1

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
societjT- 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
book-keeper who keeps the accounts of the tillage and registers
everything relating thereto ; another official, who prosecutes
criminals, protects strangers travelling through, and escorts
them to the next village ; the boundary man, who guards the
boundaries against neighbouring communities ; the water-
overseer, 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 astro-
loger, 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 implements ; 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 com-
munities replaces the silversmith, in others the schoolmaster.
Tliis dozen of individuals is maintained at the expense of the
whole community. If the population increases, a new com-
munity is founded, on the pattern of the old one, on unoccupied
land. The whole mechanism discloses a systematic division of
labour ; but a division like that in manufactures is impossible,
since the smith and the carpenter, &;c., find an unchanging
market, and at the most there occur, according to the sizes of

352 Capitalist Production,

the villages, two or three of each, instead of one/ The law
that regulates the division of labour in the community acts
with the irresistible authority of a law of Nature, at the same
time that each individual artificer, the smith, the carpenter,
and so on, conducts in his workshop all the operations of his
handicraft in the traditional way, but independently, and
without recognizing any authority over him. The simplicit}^
of the organisation for production in these self-sufficing com-
munities that constantly reproduce themselves in the same
form, and when accidentally destroyed, spring up again on the
spot and with the same name^ — this simplicity supplies the
key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic societies,
an unchangeableness in such striking contrast with the con-
stant dissolution and refounding of Asiatic States, and the
never-ceasing changes of dynasty. The structure of the
economical elements of society remains untouched by the
storm-clouds of the political sky.

The rules of the guilds, as I have said before, by limiting
most strictly the number of apprentices and journeymen that a
single master could employ, prevented him from becoming a
capitalist. Moreover, he could not employ his journeymen in
any other handicraft than the one in which he was a master.
The guilds zealously repelled every encroachment by the capital
of merchants, the only form of free capital with which they
came in contact. A merchant could buy every kind of com-
modity, but labour as a commodity he could not buy. Ho
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

1 Lieut. -Col. Mark Wilks : "Historical Sketches of the South of India." Lond.,
1810-17, V. I., pp. 118-20. A good description of the various forms of the Indian
communities is to be found in George Campbell's "Modern India." Lond., 1852.

3 "Under this simple form . . . the inhabitants of the country have lived from
time immemorial. The boundaries of the villages have been but seldom altered ; and
though the villages themselves have been sometimes injured, and even desolated by
war, famine, and disease, the same name, the same limits, the same interests, and
even the same families, have continued for ages. The inhabitants give themselves
no trouble about the breaking up and division of kingdoms ; while the village remains
entire, they care not to what power it is transferred, or to what sovereign it devolves ;
its internal economy remains unchanged." (Th. Stamford Raffles, late Lieut. Gov.
of Java : "The History of Java." Lond., 1817, Vol. I., p. 285.)

Division of Labour and Manufacture, 353

founded new guilds by tlie side of the old ones ; all this, how-
ever, without concentrating various handicrafts in a single
workshop. Hence, the guild organization, however much it
may have contributed by separating, isolating, and perfecting
the handicrafts, to create the material conditions for the exist-
ence of manufacture, excluded division of labour in the
workshop. On the whole, the labourer and his means of pro-
duction remained closely united, like the snail with its shell,
and thus there was wanting the principal basis of manufacture,
the separation 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 manufacture,
is a special creation of the capitalist mode of production
alone.

SECTION O. — THE CAPITALISTIC CHARACTER OF MANUFACTURE,

An increased number of labourers under the control of one
capitalist is the natural starting-point, as well of co-operation
generally, as of manufacture in particular. But the division of
labour in manufacture makes this increase in the number of
workmen a technical necessity. The minimum number that
any given capitalist is bound to employ is here prescribed by
the previously established division of labour. On the other
hand, the advantages of further division are obtainable only
by adding to the number of workmen, and this can be done
only by adding multiples of the various detail groups. But
an increase in the variable component of the capital employed
necessitates an increase in its constant component, too, in the
workshops, implements, &c., and, in particular, in the raw
ma;terial, 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,

354 Capitalist Production.

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.^

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 labours appears to be
the productive power of capital. Manufacture proper not only
subjects the previously independent workman to the discipline
and command of capital, but, in addition, creates a hierarchic
gradation of the workmen themselves. While simple co-opera-
tion leaves the mode of working by the individual for the most
part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revolutionises it, and
seizes labour-power by its very roots. It converts the labourer
into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity
at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and in-
stincts ; just as in the States of La Plata they butcher a whole
beast for the sake of his hide or his tallow. Not only is the
detail work distributed to the different individuals, but the in-
dividual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional
operation,^ and the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which
makes man a mere fragment of his own body, becomes
realised.^ If, at first, the workman sells his labour-power to
capital, because the material means of producing a commodity

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 a 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 I'une de I'autre que le sont, dans le regime politique, la concentra-
tion des pouvoirs publics et la division des inter^ts prives." (Karl Marx. 1. c,
p. 134.)

2 Dugald Stewart calls manufacturing labourers "living automatons . . . employed
in the details of the work." (1. c, p. 318.)

3 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.

Division of Labour and Mamtfacture, 355

fail him, now his very labour-power refuses its services unlesc
it has been sold to capital. Its functions can be exercised
only in an environment that exists in the workshop of the
capitalist after the sale. By nature unfitted to make anything
independently, the manufacturing labourer developes produc-
tive activity as a mere appendage of the capitalist's workshop.^
As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of
Jehovah, so division of labour brands the manufacturing work-
man 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
one direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is
lost by the detail labourers, is concentrated in the capital that
employs them.^ It is a result of the division of labour in
manufactures, that the labourer is brought face to face with
the intellectual potencies of the material process of production,
as the property of another, and as a ruling power. This sepa-
ration begins in simple co-operation, where the capitalist re-
presents to the single workman, the oneness and the will of
the associated labour. It is developed in manufacture which
cuts down the labourer into a detail labourer. It is com-
pleted in modern industry, which makes science a productive
force distinct from labour and presses it into the service of
capital.^

1 ' ' L'ouvrier qui porte dans ses bras tout un metier, peut aller partout exercer son
industrie et trouver des raoyens de subsister : I'autre (the manufacturing labourer)
n'est qu'un accessoire qui, separd de ses confreres, n'a plus ni capacity, ni independ-
ance, et qui se trouve force d'accepter la loi qu'on juge h. propos de lui imposer."
(Storch. 1. c. Petersb. edit., 1815, t. I., p. 204.)

2 A. Ferguson, 1. c, p. 281 : " The former may have gained what the other has
lost."

3 «' 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 to increase his productive powers . . . has almost everywhere
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 Distribution of
Wealth. London, 1824," p. 274.)

35^ Capitalist Production.

In manufacture, in order to make the collective labourer,
and through him capital, rich in social productive power, each
labourer must be made poor in individual productive powers.
" Ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition.
Reflection and fancy are subject to err ; but a habit of moving
the hand or the foot is independent of either. Manufactures,
accordingly, prosper most where the mind is least consulted,
and where the workshop may ... be considered as an engine,
the parts of which are men." ^ 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-
'diotic persons.^

" 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
possijDle for a human creature to become." After describing
the stupidity of the detail labourer he goes on : " The uni-
formity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of

his mind It corrupts even the activity of his body and

renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and
perseverance in any other employments than that to which
he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade
seems in this manner to be acquired at the expense of his in-
tellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved
and civilised society, this is the state into which the labouring
poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily
fall."^ For preventing the complete deterioration of the great

1 A. Ferguson, 1. c, p. 280.

2 J. D. Tuckett : " A History of the Past and Present State of the Labouring Popu-
lation." Lond., 1846.

3 A. Smith : Wealth of Nations, Bk. V., ch. I., art. II. Being a j)upil of A. Fer-
guson who showed the disadvantageous effects of division of labour, Adam Smith
was perfectly clear on this point. In the introduction to his work, where he ex pro-
fesso praises division of labour, he indicates only in a cui'sory 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 Philosophie," I have sufficiently
explained the historical connection between Ferguson, A. Smith, Lemontey, and Say,
as regards their criticisms of Division of Labour, and have shown, for the first time,

Division of Labour and Manufacture, 357

mass of the people by division of labour, A. Smith recommends
education of the people by the State, but prudently, and in
homoeopathic doses. G. Garnier, his French translator and
commentator, who, under the first French Empire, quite natu-
rally developed into a senator, quite as naturally opposes him
on this point. Education of the masses, he urges, violates the
first law of the division of labour, and with it " our whole
social system would be proscribed." " Like all other divisions
of labour," he says, " that between hand labour and head
labour^ is more pronounced and decided in proportion as society
(he rightly uses this word, for capital, landed property and
their State) becomes richer. This division of labour, like every
other, is an effect of past, and a cause of future progress ....
ought the government then to work in opposition to this
division of labour, and to hinder its natural course ? Ought it
to expend a part of the public money in the attempt to con-
found and blend together two classes of labour, which are
striving after division and separation ? " ^

Some crippling of body and mind is inseparable even from
division of labour in society as a whole. Since, however, manu-
facture carries this social separation of branches of labour much
further, and also, by its peculiar division, attacks the individual
at the very roots of his life, it is the first to afford the materials
for, and to give a start to, industrial pathology.^

" To subdivide a man is to execute him, if he deserves the

that Division of Labour as practised in manufactures, is a specific form of the capi-
talist mode of production.

1 Ferguson had already said, 1. c. p. 281 : "And thinking itself, in this age of
separations, may become a peculiar craft."

2 G. Garnier, vol. V. of his translation of A. Smith, pp. 4-5.

8 Ramazzini, professor of practical medicine at Padua, published in 1713 his work
" De morbis artificum," which was translated into French 1781, reprinted 1841 in the
" Encyclopedie des Sciences Medicales. 7"^® Dis. Auteurs Classiques." The period
of Modern Mechanical Industry has, of course, very much enlarged his catalogue
of labour's diseases. See " Hygidne physique et morale de I'ouvrier dans les grandes
villes en general et dans la ville de Lyon en particulier. Par le Dr. A. L. Fonterel,
Paris, 1858," and " Die Krankheiten, welche verschiednen Standen, Altern und
Geschlechtern eigenthiimlich sind. 6 Vols. Ulm, 1860," and others. la 1854 the
Society of Arts appointed a Commission of Inquiry into industrial pathology. Th«
list of documents collected by this commission is to be seen in the catalogue of the
"Twickenham Economic Museum." Very important are the oflBcial " Eeports on
Public Health." See also Eduard Beich, M.D. "Ueber die Entartung des Men-
Bchen," Erlangen, 1868.

358 Capitalist Production,

sentence, to assassinate liim if he does not. . . . The sub-
division of labour is the assassination of a people."^

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 waiting 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 operations
of a handicraft (such as bookbinding) to particular men. In
such cases, a week's experience is enough to determine the pro-
portion between the numbers of the hands necessary for the
various functions.^

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 organisation of
the labour of society, and thereby developes at the same time

1 (D. Urquhart : Familiar Words. Lond., 1855, p. 119.) Hegel held very heretical
views on division of labour. In his Eechtsphilosophie he says : " By well educated
men we understand in the first instance, those who can do everything that others
do."

2 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 recomj^ense 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.

Division of Labour and Mamtfacture, 359

new productive forces in the society. In its specific capitalist
form — and under the given conditions, it could take no other
form than a capitalistic one — manufacture is but a particular
method of begetting relative surplus-value, or of augmenting
at the expense of the labourer the self-expansion of capital —
usually called social wealth, " Wealth of Nations," &ic. It in-
creases the social productive power of labour, not only for the
benefit of the capitalist instead of for that of the labourer, but
it does this by crippling the individual labourers. It creates
new conditions for the lordship of capital over labour. If,
therefore, on the one hand, it presents itself historically as a
progress and as a necessary phase in the economic develop-
ment of society, on the other hand it is a refined and civilised
method of exploitation.

Political economy, which as an independent science, first
sprang into being during the period of manufacture, views
the social division of labour only from the standpoint of
manufacture,^ and sees in it only the means of producing more
commodities with a given quantity of labour, and, conse-
quently, 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.^ In consequence of the separation of
the social branches of production, commodities are better
made, the various bents and talents of men select a suitable

1 The older writers, like Petty and the anonymous author of "Advantages of the
East India Trade," bring out the capitalist character of division of labour as applied
in manufacture more than A. Smith does.

2 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, die applicando
la hiano e I'ingegno sempre alio stesso genere di opere e di produtte, egli piii facili,
piii abbondanti e migliori ne traca lisultati, di quello che se ciascuno isolatamente le
cose tutte a se necessarie soltanto facesse. . . . Dividendosi in tal maniera per la
comune e privata utilitjl gli uomini in varie classi e condizioni." (Cesare Beccaria :
"Elemonti 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 Kepublic."

360 Capitalist Production.

field/ and without some restraint no important results can be
obtained anywhere.^ 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,^ who treats division of labour
as the foundation on which the division of society into classes
is based, as by Xenophon/ who with characteristic bourgeois

1 Thus, in the Odyssey xiv, , 228, ""AXXo? yhp tHWoktiv a.vyif WiTipTSTKi ^pyor,,"
and Archilochus in Sextus Erapiricus, " uWos Sixxu It" ^pyu xap^inv lahirai."

2 "riaxx' riTlffTciTe ^pyet^ xeexu; VriTtsTaro -rcivTa." Every Athenian considered him-
self 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 :

(Tet/f^aa-i rt eToifiorspot ol airrovpyoX rut av^paTu* ij ^prifjt,a<rt uroXtf.iiv,'* (Thuc : 1. I. C.
41.) Nevertheless, even with regard to material production, airapKUK^ as opposed
to division of labour remained their ideal, •' trap* Zv yup to iS, ^apei toutuv xal to
ff.vTKpxii.'^ 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.

3 With Plato, division of labour within the community is a development from the
multifarious requirements, and the limited caj)acities 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. " Oi) yap tfiXu to ■rparTOfzivov tjjv toO
trp&TTovTOi (Tp^oXriv 'TiptiiUiiv^ aXA.* avdyxT} rov vrpaTTovrx tm <rpaTTOfit,i>iio l<raxo\ouhiv fjcii
Iv 'ffapipyou fiipti. — *Avdyxti, — 'Ex ^r] toutuv ^Xi'iu Ti ixoLffra. ylyviTat xal xdXXtov xal
petov, oTuv ili iv xetra <puffiv xal iv xaipZ tr^oXhv Tuv S.k'Kuv &yuv TpexTTi^^^ (Rep. 1. 2. Ed.
Baiter, Orelli, &c). So in Thucydides 1. c. c, 42 : " Seafaring is an art like any
other, and cannot, as circumstances require, be carried on as a subsidiary occupation ;
nay, other subsidiary occupations cannot be carried on alongside of this one." If the
work, says Plato, has to wait for the labourer, the critical point in the process is
missed and the article spoiled, 'ipyou xaipov ^ioWvtoh.*' The same Platonic idea is
found recurring in the protest of the English bleachers against the clause in the
Factory Act that provides fixed meal times for all operatives. Their business cannot
wait the convenience of the workmen, for *' in the various operations of singeing,
washing, bleaching, mangling, calendering, and dyeing, none of them can be stopped
at a given moment without risk of damage .... to enforce the same dinner hour
for all the work-people might occasionally subject valuable goods to the risk of danger
by incomplete operations." Le platonisme ou va-t-il se nicher !

4 Xenophon says, it is not only an honour to receive food from the table of the King
of Persia, but such food is much more tasty than other food. "And there is nothing
wonderful in this, for as the other arts are brought to special perfection in the great
towns, so the royal food is prepared in a special way. For in the small towns the
same man makes bedsteads, doors, ploughs, and tables : often, too, he builds houses
into the bargain, and is quite content if he finds custom sufficient for his sustenance.

Division of Labottr and Manufacture. 361

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 idealisation of the Egyptian system of
castes, Egypt having served as the model of an industrial
country to many of his contemporaries also, amongst others to
Isocrates,^ and it continued to have this importance to the
Greeks of the Roman Empire.^

During the manufacturing period proper, i.e., the period
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.
Although manufacture creates, as we have already seen, a
simple separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled,
simultaneously with their hierarchic arrangeuient in classes,
yet the number of the unskilled labourers, owing to the pre-
ponderating 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 instru-
ments 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

It is altogether impossible for a man who does so many things to do them all well.
But in the great towns, where each can find many buyers, one trade is sufficient to
maintain the man who carries it on. Nay, there is often not even need of one com-
plete trade, but one man makes shoes for men, another for women. Here and there
one man gets a living by sewing, another by cutting out shoes ; one does nothing but
cut out clothes, another nothing but sew the pieces together. It follows necessarily
then, that he who does the simplest kind of work, undoubtedly does it better than
anyone else. So it is with the art of cooking." (Xen. Cyrop. 1. viii., c. 2.) Xeno-
phon here lays stress exclusively upon the excellence to be attained in use-value,
although he well knows that the gradations of the division of labour depend on the
extent of the market.

1 He (Busiris) divided them all into special castes commanded that the

same individuals should always carry on the same trade, for he knew that they who
change their occupations become skilled in none ; but that those who constantly stick
to one occupation bring it to the highest perfection. In truth, we shall also find tha;
in relation to the arts and handicrafts, they have outstripped]their rivals more than a
master does a bungler ; and the contrivances for maintaining the monarchy and the
other institutions of their State are so admirable that the most celebrated philo-
sophers who treat of this subject praise the constitution of the Egyptian State above
all others. (Isocrates, Busiris, c. 8.)

2 Of. Diodorus Siculus.

o

62 Capitalist Production.

splitting up of handicrafts lowers the cost of forming the work-
man, and thereby lowers his value, yet for the more difficult
detail work, a longer apprenticeship is necessary, and, even
vvliere it would be superfluous, is jealously insisted upon by
the workmen. In England, for instance, we find the laws of
apprenticeship, with their 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 manufacture as a whole possesses no
framework, apart from the labourers themselves, capital is con-
stantly 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 mechanical system in which . . .
he may do great damage to the whole." ^ Hence throughout
the whole manufacturing period there runs the complaint of
want of discipline among the workmen.^ And had we not the
testimony of contemporary writers, the simple facts, that during
the period between the 16th century and the epoch of Modern
Industry, capital failed to become the master of the whole
disposable working-time of the 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 ^Q 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 re-
volutionise that production to its very core. It towered u]) as
an economical work of art, on the broad foundation^ of the town

1 Ure, 1. c, p. 20.

2 This is more the case in England than in France, and more in France than in
Holland.

Divisio7i of Labour and Manufactttre. 363

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 raanufacture 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 division
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 manufac-
ture, produced in its turn — machines. It is they that sweep away
the handicraftsman's work as the regulating principle of social
production. Thus, on the one hand, the technical reason for
the life-long annexation of the workman to a detail function
is removed. On the other hand, the fetters that this same
principle laid on the dominion of capital, fall away.

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