This is the place to return to one of the grand exploits of economic
 apologetics. It will be remembered that if through the introduction of new, or
 the extension of old, machinery, a portion of variable capital is transformed
 into constant, the economic apologist interprets this operation which
 “fixes” capital and by that very act sets labourers
 “free,” in exactly the opposite way, pretending that it sets free
 capital for the labourers. Only now can one fully understand the effrontery of
 these apologists. What are set free are not only the labourers immediately
 turned out by the machines, but also their future substitutes in the rising
 generation, and the additional contingent, that with the usual extension of
 trade on the old basis would be regularly absorbed. They are now all “set
 free,” and every new bit of capital looking out 599for employment
 can dispose of them. Whether it attracts them or others, the effect on the
 general labour demand will be nil, if this capital is just sufficient to take
 out of the market as many labourers as the machines threw upon it. If it
 employs a smaller number, that of the supernumeraries increases; if it employs
 a greater, the general demand for labour only increases to the extent of the
 excess of the employed over those “set free.” The impulse that
 additional capital, seeking an outlet, would otherwise have given to the
 general demand for labour, is therefore in every case neutralised to the extent
 of the labourers thrown out of employment by the machine. That is to say, the
 mechanism of capitalistic production so manages matters that the absolute
 increase of capital is accompanied by no corresponding rise in the general
 demand for labour. And this the apologist calls a compensation for the misery,
 the sufferings, the possible death of the displaced labourers during the
 transition period that banishes them into the industrial reserve army! The
 demand for labour is not identical with increase of capital, nor supply of
 labour with increase of the working class. It is not a case of two independent
 forces working on one another. Les dés sont pipés.