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 magnitudes306
 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
 five farm labourers, all individual 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. [1] 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 more or less from
 average social labour, each of them requiring a different time for the
 same operation, yet since the working-day of each is one-twelfth of the
 collective working-day of 144 hours, it possesses the qualities of an average
 social working-day. From the point of view, however, of the capitalist
 who employs these 12 men, the working-day is that of the whole dozen. Each
 individual man’s day is 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 12 men are
 employed in six pairs, by as many different small masters, it will be quite
 a matter of chance, whether each of these masters produces the same value,
 and consequently whether he realises the general rate of surplus-value.
 Deviations would occur in individual cases. If one workman required considerably
 more time for the production of a commodity than is socially necessary,
 the duration of the necessary labour-time would, in his case, sensibly
 deviate from the labour-time socially necessary on an average; and consequently
 his labour would not count as average labour, nor his labour-power307
 as average labour-power. It would either be not saleable at all, or only
 at something below the average value of labour-power. A fixed minimum of
 efficiency in all labour is therefore assumed, and we shall see, later
 on, that capitalist production provides the means of fixing this minimum.
 Nevertheless, this minimum deviates from the average, although on the other
 hand the capitalist has to pay the average value of labour-power. Of the
 six small masters, one would therefore squeeze out more than the average
 rate of surplus-value, another less. The inequalities would be 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 employs a number of workmen
 together, whose labour, by its collective nature, is at once stamped as
 average social labour. [2]