The matter takes quite another aspect, when we contemplate, not
 the single capitalist, and the single labourer, but the capitalist class
 and the labouring class, not an isolated process of production, but capitalist
 production in full swing, and on its actual social scale. By converting
 part of his capital into labour-power, the capitalist augments the value
 of his entire capital. He kills two birds with one stone. He profits, not
 only by what he receives from, but by what he gives to, the labourer. 537The
 capital given in exchange for labour-power is converted into necessaries,
 by the consumption of which the muscles, nerves, bones, and brains of existing
 labourers are reproduced, and new labourers are begotten. Within the limits
 of what is strictly necessary, the individual consumption of the working class
 is, therefore, the reconversion of the means of subsistence given by capital
 in exchange for labour-power, into fresh labour-power at the disposal of
 capital for exploitation. It is the production and reproduction of that
 means of production so indispensable to the capitalist: the labourer himself.
 The individual consumption of the labourer, whether it proceed within the
 workshop or outside it, whether it be part of the process of production
 or not, forms therefore a factor of the production and reproduction of
 capital; just as cleaning machinery does, whether it be done while the
 machinery is working or while it is standing. The fact that the labourer
 consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and not to please
 the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. The consumption of food by
 a beast of burden is none the less a necessary factor in the process of
 production, because the beast enjoys what it eats. The maintenance and
 reproduction of the working class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition
 to the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave its
 fulfilment to the labourer’s instincts of self-preservation and of propagation.
 All the capitalist cares for, is to reduce the labourer’s individual consumption
 as far as possible to what is strictly necessary, and he is far away from
 imitating those brutal South Americans, who force their labourers to take
 the more substantial, rather than the less substantial, kind of food. [9]