The specifically capitalist mode of production, the development of the
 productive power of labour corresponding to it, and the change thence resulting
 in the organic composition of capital, do not merely keep pace with the advance
 of accumulation, or with the growth of social wealth. They develop at a much
 quicker rate, because mere accumulation, the absolute increase of the total
 social capital, is accompanied by the centralisation of the individual capitals
 of which that total is made up; and because the change in the technological
 composition of the additional capital goes hand in hand with a similar change
 in the technological composition of the original capital. With the advance of
 accumulation, therefore, the proportion of constant to variable capital
 changes. If it was originally say 1:1, it now becomes successively 2:1, 3:1,
 4:1, 5:1, 7:1, &c., so that, as the capital increases, instead of ½ of its
 total value, only 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/8, &c., is transformed into
 labour-590power, and, on the other hand, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 5/6, 7/8 into
 means of production. Since the demand for labour is determined not by the
 amount of capital as a whole, but by its variable constituent alone, that
 demand falls progressively with the increase of the total capital, instead of,
 as previously assumed, rising in proportion to it. It falls relatively to the
 magnitude of the total capital, and at an accelerated rate, as this magnitude
 increases. With the growth of the total capital, its variable constituent or
 the labour incorporated in it, also does increase, but in a constantly
 diminishing proportion. The intermediate pauses are shortened, in which
 accumulation works as simple extension of production, on a given technical
 basis. It is not merely that an accelerated accumulation of total capital,
 accelerated in a constantly growing progression, is needed to absorb an
 additional number of labourers, or even, on account of the constant
 metamorphosis of old capital, to keep employed those already functioning. In
 its turn, this increasing accumulation and centralisation becomes a source of
 new changes in the composition of capital, of a more accelerated diminution of
 its variable, as compared with its constant constituent. This accelerated
 relative diminution of the variable constituent, that goes along with the
 accelerated increase of the total capital, and moves more rapidly than this
 increase, takes the inverse form, at the other pole, of an apparently absolute
 increase of the labouring population, an increase always moving more rapidly
 than that of the variable capital or the means of employment. But in fact, it
 is capitalistic accumulation itself that constantly produces, and produces in
 the direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relatively redundant
 population of labourers, i.e., a population of greater extent than
 suffices for the average needs of the self-expansion of capital, and therefore
 a surplus population.