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 simultaneously
 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 common, and therefore on
 a larger scale than before. A room where twenty weavers work at twenty
 looms must be larger than the room of a single weaver with two assistants.
 But it costs less labour to build one workshop for twenty persons than
 to build ten to accommodate two weavers each; thus the value of the means
 of production that are concentrated for use in common on a large scale
 does not increase in direct proportion 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 economy308 in their application is
 entirely owing to their being consumed 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, independent labourers, or small
 masters, is acquired even when the numerous workmen assembled together
 do not assist one another, but merely work side by side. A portion of the
 instruments of labour acquires this social character before the labour-process
 itself does so.