The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”[1] its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.
A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.[2] Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.
Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., may be looked at from the two points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be of use in various ways. To discover the various uses of things is the work of history.[3] So also is the establishment of socially-recognized standards of measure for the quantities of these useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, partly in convention.
The utility of a thing makes it a use value.[4] But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities. When treating of use value, we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron. The use values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities.[5] Use values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value.
Exchange value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation, as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of another sort,[6] a relation constantly changing with time and place. Hence exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic value, i.e., an exchange value that is inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in terms.[7] Let us consider the matter a little more closely.
A given commodity, e.g., a quarter of wheat is exchanged for x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c. – in short, for other commodities in the most different proportions. Instead of one exchange value, the wheat has, therefore, a great many. But since x blacking, y silk, or z gold &c., each represents the exchange value of one quarter of wheat, x blacking, y silk, z gold, &c., must, as exchange values, be replaceable by each other, or equal to each other. Therefore, first: the valid exchange values of a given commodity express something equal; secondly, exchange value, generally, is only the mode of expression, the phenomenal form, of something contained in it, yet distinguishable from it.
Let us take two commodities, e.g., corn and iron. The proportions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron: e.g., 1 quarter corn = x cwt. iron. What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things – in 1 quarter of corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal quantities something common to both. The two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third.
A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear. In order to calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures, we decompose them into triangles. But the area of the triangle itself is expressed by something totally different from its visible figure, namely, by half the product of the base multiplied by the altitude. In the same way the exchange values of commodities must be capable of being expressed in terms of something common to them all, of which thing they represent a greater or less quantity.
This common “something” cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical, or any other natural property of commodities. Such properties claim our attention only in so far as they affect the utility of those commodities, make them use values. But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use value. Then one use value is just as good as another, provided only it be present in sufficient quantity. Or, as old Barbon says,
As use values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not contain an atom of use value.
If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.
Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are – Values.
We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value. But if we abstract from their use value, there remains their Value as defined above. Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value. The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed. For the present, however, we have to consider the nature of value independently of this, its form.
A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article. The quantity of labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour time in its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and hours.
Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour’s social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value.
We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour time socially necessary for its production.[9] Each individual commodity, in this connexion, is to be considered as an average sample of its class.[10] Commodities, therefore, in which equal quantities of labour are embodied, or which can be produced in the same time, have the same value. The value of one commodity is to the value of any other, as the labour time necessary for the production of the one is to that necessary for the production of the other. “As values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labour time.”[11]
A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use values, but use values for others, social use values. (And not only for others, without more. The mediaeval peasant produced quit-rent-corn for his feudal lord and tithe-corn for his parson. But neither the quit-rent-corn nor the tithe-corn became commodities by reason of the fact that they had been produced for others. To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange.)[12] Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.
At first sight a commodity presented itself to us as a complex of two things – use value and exchange value. Later on, we saw also that labour, too, possesses the same two-fold nature; for, so far as it finds expression in value, it does not possess the same characteristics that belong to it as a creator of use values. I was the first to point out and to examine critically this two-fold nature of the labour contained in commodities. As this point is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns, we must go more into detail.
Let us take two commodities such as a coat and 10 yards of linen, and let the former be double the value of the latter, so that, if 10 yards of linen = W, the coat = 2W.
The coat is a use value that satisfies a particular want. Its existence is the result of a special sort of productive activity, the nature of which is determined by its aim, mode of operation, subject, means, and result. The labour, whose utility is thus represented by the value in use of its product, or which manifests itself by making its product a use value, we call useful labour. In this connection we consider only its useful effect.
As the coat and the linen are two qualitatively different use values, so also are the two forms of labour that produce them, tailoring and weaving. Were these two objects not qualitatively different, not produced respectively by labour of different quality, they could not stand to each other in the relation of commodities. Coats are not exchanged for coats, one use value is not exchanged for another of the same kind.
To all the different varieties of values in use there correspond as many different kinds of useful labour, classified according to the order, genus, species, and variety to which they belong in the social division of labour. This division of labour is a necessary condition for the production of commodities, but it does not follow, conversely, that the production of commodities is a necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive Indian community there is social division of labour, without production of commodities. Or, to take an example nearer home, in every factory the labour is divided according to a system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives mutually exchanging their individual products. Only such products can become commodities with regard to each other, as result from different kinds of labour, each kind being carried on independently and for the account of private individuals.
To resume, then: In the use value of each commodity there is contained useful labour, i.e., productive activity of a definite kind and exercised with a definite aim. Use values cannot confront each other as commodities, unless the useful labour embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them. In a community, the produce of which in general takes the form of commodities, i.e., in a community of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of labour that are carried on independently of individual producers, each on their own account, develops into a complex system, a social division of labour.
Anyhow, whether the coat be worn by the tailor or by his customer, in either case it operates as a use value. Nor is the relation between the coat and the labour that produced it altered by the circumstance that tailoring may have become a special trade, an independent branch of the social division of labour. Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor. But coats and linen, like every other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous produce of Nature, must invariably owe their existence to a special productive activity, exercised with a definite aim, an activity that appropriates particular nature-given materials to particular human wants. So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life.
The use values, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements – matter and labour. If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter.[13] Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use values produced by labour. As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother.
Let us now pass from the commodity considered as a use value to the value of commodities.
By our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the linen. But this is a mere quantitative difference, which for the present does not concern us. We bear in mind, however, that if the value of the coat is double that of 10 yds of linen, 20 yds of linen must have the same value as one coat. So far as they are values, the coat and the linen are things of a like substance, objective expressions of essentially identical labour. But tailoring and weaving are, qualitatively, different kinds of labour. There are, however, states of society in which one and the same man does tailoring and weaving alternately, in which case these two forms of labour are mere modifications of the labour of the same individual, and not special and fixed functions of different persons, just as the coat which our tailor makes one day, and the trousers which he makes another day, imply only a variation in the labour of one and the same individual. Moreover, we see at a glance that, in our capitalist society, a given portion of human labour is, in accordance with the varying demand, at one time supplied in the form of tailoring, at another in the form of weaving. This change may possibly not take place without friction, but take place it must.
Just as, therefore, in viewing the coat and linen as values, we abstract from their different use values, so it is with the labour represented by those values: we disregard the difference between its useful forms, weaving and tailoring. As the use values, coat and linen, are combinations of special productive activities with cloth and yarn, while the values, coat and linen, are, on the other hand, mere homogeneous congelations of undifferentiated labour, so the labour embodied in these latter values does not count by virtue of its productive relation to cloth and yarn, but only as being expenditure of human labour power. Tailoring and weaving are necessary factors in the creation of the use values, coat and linen, precisely because these two kinds of labour are of different qualities; but only in so far as abstraction is made from their special qualities, only in so far as both possess the same quality of being human labour, do tailoring and weaving form the substance of the values of the same articles.
Coats and linen, however, are not merely values, but values of definite magnitude, and according to our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the ten yards of linen. Whence this difference in their values? It is owing to the fact that the linen contains only half as much labour as the coat, and consequently, that in the production of the latter, labour power must have been expended during twice the time necessary for the production of the former.
While, therefore, with reference to use value, the labour contained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with reference to value it counts only quantitatively, and must first be reduced to human labour pure and simple. In the former case, it is a question of How and What, in the latter of How much? How long a time? Since the magnitude of the value of a commodity represents only the quantity of labour embodied in it, it follows that all commodities, when taken in certain proportions, must be equal in value.
If the productive power of all the different sorts of useful labour required for the production of a coat remains unchanged, the sum of the values of the coats produced increases with their number. If one coat represents x days’ labour, two coats represent 2x days’ labour, and so on. But assume that the duration of the labour necessary for the production of a coat becomes doubled or halved. In the first case one coat is worth as much as two coats were before; in the second case, two coats are only worth as much as one was before, although in both cases one coat renders the same service as before, and the useful labour embodied in it remains of the same quality. But the quantity of labour spent on its production has altered.
An increase in the quantity of use values is an increase of material wealth. With two coats two men can be clothed, with one coat only one man. Nevertheless, an increased quantity of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous fall in the magnitude of its value. This antagonistic movement has its origin in the two-fold character of labour. Productive power has reference, of course, only to labour of some useful concrete form, the efficacy of any special productive activity during a given time being dependent on its productiveness. Useful labour becomes, therefore, a more or less abundant source of products, in proportion to the rise or fall of its productiveness. On the other hand, no change in this productiveness affects the labour represented by value. Since productive power is an attribute of the concrete useful forms of labour, of course it can no longer have any bearing on that labour, so soon as we make abstraction from those concrete useful forms. However then productive power may vary, the same labour, exercised during equal periods of time, always yields equal amounts of value. But it will yield, during equal periods of time, different quantities of values in use; more, if the productive power rise, fewer, if it fall. The same change in productive power, which increases the fruitfulness of labour, and, in consequence, the quantity of use values produced by that labour, will diminish the total value of this increased quantity of use values, provided such change shorten the total labour time necessary for their production; and vice versâ.
On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labour power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is the expenditure of human labour power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labour, it produces use values.[16]
Commodities come into the world in the shape of use values, articles, or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &c. This is their plain, homely, bodily form. They are, however, commodities, only because they are something two-fold, both objects of utility, and, at the same time, depositories of value. They manifest themselves therefore as commodities, or have the form of commodities, only in so far as they have two forms, a physical or natural form, and a value form.
The reality of the value of commodities differs in this respect from Dame Quickly, that we don’t know “where to have it.” The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition. Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will, yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity. In fact we started from exchange value, or the exchange relation of commodities, in order to get at the value that lies hidden behind it. We must now return to this form under which value first appeared to us.
Every one knows, if he knows nothing else, that commodities have a value form common to them all, and presenting a marked contrast with the varied bodily forms of their use values. I mean their money form. Here, however, a task is set us, the performance of which has never yet even been attempted by bourgeois economy, the task of tracing the genesis of this money form, of developing the expression of value implied in the value relation of commodities, from its simplest, almost imperceptible outline, to the dazzling money-form. By doing this we shall, at the same time, solve the riddle presented by money.
The simplest value-relation is evidently that of one commodity to some one other commodity of a different kind. Hence the relation between the values of two commodities supplies us with the simplest expression of the value of a single commodity.
The whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in this elementary form. Its analysis, therefore, is our real difficulty.
Here two different kinds of commodities (in our example the linen and the coat), evidently play two different parts. The linen expresses its value in the coat; the coat serves as the material in which that value is expressed. The former plays an active, the latter a passive, part. The value of the linen is represented as relative value, or appears in relative form. The coat officiates as equivalent, or appears in equivalent form.
The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimately connected, mutually dependent and inseparable elements of the expression of value; but, at the same time, are mutually exclusive, antagonistic extremes – i.e., poles of the same expression. They are allotted respectively to the two different commodities brought into relation by that expression. It is not possible to express the value of linen in linen. 20 yards of linen = 20 yards of linen is no expression of value. On the contrary, such an equation merely says that 20 yards of linen are nothing else than 20 yards of linen, a definite quantity of the use value linen. The value of the linen can therefore be expressed only relatively – i.e., in some other commodity. The relative form of the value of the linen presupposes, therefore, the presence of some other commodity – here the coat – under the form of an equivalent. On the other hand, the commodity that figures as the equivalent cannot at the same time assume the relative form. That second commodity is not the one whose value is expressed. Its function is merely to serve as the material in which the value of the first commodity is expressed.
No doubt, the expression 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or 20 yards of linen are worth 1 coat, implies the opposite relation. 1 coat = 20 yards of linen, or 1 coat is worth 20 yards of linen. But, in that case, I must reverse the equation, in order to express the value of the coat relatively; and so soon as I do that the linen becomes the equivalent instead of the coat. A single commodity cannot, therefore, simultaneously assume, in the same expression of value, both forms. The very polarity of these forms makes them mutually exclusive.
Whether, then, a commodity assumes the relative form, or the opposite equivalent form, depends entirely upon its accidental position in the expression of value – that is, upon whether it is the commodity whose value is being expressed or the commodity in which value is being expressed.
(a.) The nature and import of this form
In order to discover how the elementary expression of the value of a commodity lies hidden in the value relation of two commodities, we must, in the first place, consider the latter entirely apart from its quantitative aspect. The usual mode of procedure is generally the reverse, and in the value relation nothing is seen but the proportion between definite quantities of two different sorts of commodities that are considered equal to each other. It is apt to be forgotten that the magnitudes of different things can be compared quantitatively, only when those magnitudes are expressed in terms of the same unit. It is only as expressions of such a unit that they are of the same denomination, and therefore commensurable.[17]
Whether 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 20 coats or = x coats – that is, whether a given quantity of linen is worth few or many coats, every such statement implies that the linen and coats, as magnitudes of value, are expressions of the same unit, things of the same kind. Linen = coat is the basis of the equation.
But the two commodities whose identity of quality is thus assumed, do not play the same part. It is only the value of the linen that is expressed. And how? By its reference to the coat as its equivalent, as something that can be exchanged for it. In this relation the coat is the mode of existence of value, is value embodied, for only as such is it the same as the linen. On the other hand, the linen’s own value comes to the front, receives independent expression, for it is only as being value that it is comparable with the coat as a thing of equal value, or exchangeable with the coat. To borrow an illustration from chemistry, butyric acid is a different substance from propyl formate. Yet both are made up of the same chemical substances, carbon (C), hydrogen (H), and oxygen (O), and that, too, in like proportions – namely, C4H8O2. If now we equate butyric acid to propyl formate, then, in the first place, propyl formate would be, in this relation, merely a form of existence of C4H8O2; and in the second place, we should be stating that butyric acid also consists of C4H8O2. Therefore, by thus equating the two substances, expression would be given to their chemical composition, while their different physical forms would be neglected.
If we say that, as values, commodities are mere congelations of human labour, we reduce them by our analysis, it is true, to the abstraction, value; but we ascribe to this value no form apart from their bodily form. It is otherwise in the value relation of one commodity to another. Here, the one stands forth in its character of value by reason of its relation to the other.
By making the coat the equivalent of the linen, we equate the labour embodied in the former to that in the latter. Now, it is true that the tailoring, which makes the coat, is concrete labour of a different sort from the weaving which makes the linen. But the act of equating it to the weaving, reduces the tailoring to that which is really equal in the two kinds of labour, to their common character of human labour. In this roundabout way, then, the fact is expressed, that weaving also, in so far as it weaves value, has nothing to distinguish it from tailoring, and, consequently, is abstract human labour. It is the expression of equivalence between different sorts of commodities that alone brings into relief the specific character of value-creating labour, and this it does by actually reducing the different varieties of labour embodied in the different kinds of commodities to their common quality of human labour in the abstract.[18]
There is, however, something else required beyond the expression of the specific character of the labour of which the value of the linen consists. Human labour power in motion, or human labour, creates value, but is not itself value. It becomes value only in its congealed state, when embodied in the form of some object. In order to express the value of the linen as a congelation of human labour, that value must be expressed as having objective existence, as being a something materially different from the linen itself, and yet a something common to the linen and all other commodities. The problem is already solved.
When occupying the position of equivalent in the equation of value, the coat ranks qualitatively as the equal of the linen, as something of the same kind, because it is value. In this position it is a thing in which we see nothing but value, or whose palpable bodily form represents value. Yet the coat itself, the body of the commodity, coat, is a mere use value. A coat as such no more tells us it is value, than does the first piece of linen we take hold of. This shows that when placed in value-relation to the linen, the coat signifies more than when out of that relation, just as many a man strutting about in a gorgeous uniform counts for more than when in mufti.
In the production of the coat, human labour power, in the shape of tailoring, must have been actually expended. Human labour is therefore accumulated in it. In this aspect the coat is a depository of value, but though worn to a thread, it does not let this fact show through. And as equivalent of the linen in the value equation, it exists under this aspect alone, counts therefore as embodied value, as a body that is value. A, for instance, cannot be “your majesty” to B, unless at the same time majesty in B’s eyes assumes the bodily form of A, and, what is more, with every new father of the people, changes its features, hair, and many other things besides.
Hence, in the value equation, in which the coat is the equivalent of the linen, the coat officiates as the form of value. The value of the commodity linen is expressed by the bodily form of the commodity coat, the value of one by the use value of the other. As a use value, the linen is something palpably different from the coat; as value, it is the same as the coat, and now has the appearance of a coat. Thus the linen acquires a value form different from its physical form. The fact that it is value, is made manifest by its equality with the coat, just as the sheep’s nature of a Christian is shown in his resemblance to the Lamb of God.
We see, then, all that our analysis of the value of commodities has already told us, is told us by the linen itself, so soon as it comes into communication with another commodity, the coat. Only it betrays its thoughts in that language with which alone it is familiar, the language of commodities. In order to tell us that its own value is created by labour in its abstract character of human labour, it says that the coat, in so far as it is worth as much as the linen, and therefore is value, consists of the same labour as the linen. In order to inform us that its sublime reality as value is not the same as its buckram body, it says that value has the appearance of a coat, and consequently that so far as the linen is value, it and the coat are as like as two peas. We may here remark, that the language of commodities has, besides Hebrew, many other more or less correct dialects. The German “Wertsein,” to be worth, for instance, expresses in a less striking manner than the Romance verbs “valere,” “valer,” “valoir,” that the equating of commodity B to commodity A, is commodity A’s own mode of expressing its value. Paris vaut bien une messe. [Paris is certainly worth a mass]
By means, therefore, of the value-relation expressed in our equation, the bodily form of commodity B becomes the value form of commodity A, or the body of commodity B acts as a mirror to the value of commodity A.[19] By putting itself in relation with commodity B, as value in propriâ personâ, as the matter of which human labour is made up, the commodity A converts the value in use, B, into the substance in which to express its, A’s, own value. The value of A, thus expressed in the use value of B, has taken the form of relative value.
(b.) Quantitative determination of Relative value
Every commodity, whose value it is intended to express, is a useful object of given quantity, as 15 bushels of corn, or 100 lbs of coffee. And a given quantity of any commodity contains a definite quantity of human labour. The value form must therefore not only express value generally, but also value in definite quantity. Therefore, in the value relation of commodity A to commodity B, of the linen to the coat, not only is the latter, as value in general, made the equal in quality of the linen, but a definite quantity of coat (1 coat) is made the equivalent of a definite quantity (20 yards) of linen.
The equation, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, or 20 yards of linen are worth one coat, implies that the same quantity of value substance (congealed labour) is embodied in both; that the two commodities have each cost the same amount of labour or the same quantity of labour time. But the labour time necessary for the production of 20 yards of linen or 1 coat varies with every change in the productiveness of weaving or tailoring. We have now to consider the influence of such changes on the quantitative aspect of the relative expression of value.
If we compare the different cases in I and II, we see that the same change of magnitude in relative value may arise from totally opposite causes. Thus, the equation, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, becomes 20 yards of linen = 2 coats, either, because the value of the linen has doubled, or because the value of the coat has fallen by one-half; and it becomes 20 yards of linen = ½ coat, either, because the value of the linen has fallen by one-half, or because the value of the coat has doubled.
Thus real changes in the magnitude of value are neither unequivocally nor exhaustively reflected in their relative expression, that is, in the equation expressing the magnitude of relative value. The relative value of a commodity may vary, although its value remains constant. Its relative value may remain constant, although its value varies; and finally, simultaneous variations in the magnitude of value and in that of its relative expression by no means necessarily correspond in amount.[21]
We have seen that commodity A (the linen), by expressing its value in the use value of a commodity differing in kind (the coat), at the same time impresses upon the latter a specific form of value, namely that of the equivalent. The commodity linen manifests its quality of having a value by the fact that the coat, without having assumed a value form different from its bodily form, is equated to the linen. The fact that the latter therefore has a value is expressed by saying that the coat is directly exchangeable with it. Therefore, when we say that a commodity is in the equivalent form, we express the fact that it is directly exchangeable with other commodities.
When one commodity, such as a coat, serves as the equivalent of another, such as linen, and coats consequently acquire the characteristic property of being directly exchangeable with linen, we are far from knowing in what proportion the two are exchangeable. The value of the linen being given in magnitude, that proportion depends on the value of the coat. Whether the coat serves as the equivalent and the linen as relative value, or the linen as the equivalent and the coat as relative value, the magnitude of the coat’s value is determined, independently of its value form, by the labour time necessary for its production. But whenever the coat assumes in the equation of value, the position of equivalent, its value acquires no quantitative expression; on the contrary, the commodity coat now figures only as a definite quantity of some article.
For instance, 40 yards of linen are worth – what? 2 coats. Because the commodity coat here plays the part of equivalent, because the use-value coat, as opposed to the linen, figures as an embodiment of value, therefore a definite number of coats suffices to express the definite quantity of value in the linen. Two coats may therefore express the quantity of value of 40 yards of linen, but they can never express the quantity of their own value. A superficial observation of this fact, namely, that in the equation of value, the equivalent figures exclusively as a simple quantity of some article, of some use value, has misled Bailey, as also many others, both before and after him, into seeing, in the expression of value, merely a quantitative relation. The truth being, that when a commodity acts as equivalent, no quantitative determination of its value is expressed.
The first peculiarity that strikes us, in considering the form of the equivalent, is this: use value becomes the form of manifestation, the phenomenal form of its opposite, value.
The bodily form of the commodity becomes its value form. But, mark well, that this quid pro quo exists in the case of any commodity B, only when some other commodity A enters into a value relation with it, and then only within the limits of this relation. Since no commodity can stand in the relation of equivalent to itself, and thus turn its own bodily shape into the expression of its own value, every commodity is compelled to choose some other commodity for its equivalent, and to accept the use value, that is to say, the bodily shape of that other commodity as the form of its own value.
One of the measures that we apply to commodities as material substances, as use values, will serve to illustrate this point. A sugar-loaf being a body, is heavy, and therefore has weight: but we can neither see nor touch this weight. We then take various pieces of iron, whose weight has been determined beforehand. The iron, as iron, is no more the form of manifestation of weight, than is the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order to express the sugar-loaf as so much weight, we put it into a weight-relation with the iron. In this relation, the iron officiates as a body representing nothing but weight. A certain quantity of iron therefore serves as the measure of the weight of the sugar, and represents, in relation to the sugar-loaf, weight embodied, the form of manifestation of weight. This part is played by the iron only within this relation, into which the sugar or any other body, whose weight has to be determined, enters with the iron. Were they not both heavy, they could not enter into this relation, and the one could therefore not serve as the expression of the weight of the other. When we throw both into the scales, we see in reality, that as weight they are both the same, and that, therefore, when taken in proper proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the substance iron, as a measure of weight, represents in relation to the sugar-loaf weight alone, so, in our expression of value, the material object, coat, in relation to the linen, represents value alone.
Here, however, the analogy ceases. The iron, in the expression of the weight of the sugar-loaf, represents a natural property common to both bodies, namely their weight; but the coat, in the expression of value of the linen, represents a non-natural property of both, something purely social, namely, their value.
Since the relative form of value of a commodity – the linen, for example – expresses the value of that commodity, as being something wholly different from its substance and properties, as being, for instance, coat-like, we see that this expression itself indicates that some social relation lies at the bottom of it. With the equivalent form it is just the contrary. The very essence of this form is that the material commodity itself – the coat – just as it is, expresses value, and is endowed with the form of value by Nature itself. Of course this holds good only so long as the value relation exists, in which the coat stands in the position of equivalent to the linen.[22] Since, however, the properties of a thing are not the result of its relations to other things, but only manifest themselves in such relations, the coat seems to be endowed with its equivalent form, its property of being directly exchangeable, just as much by Nature as it is endowed with the property of being heavy, or the capacity to keep us warm. Hence the enigmatical character of the equivalent form which escapes the notice of the bourgeois political economist, until this form, completely developed, confronts him in the shape of money. He then seeks to explain away the mystical character of gold and silver, by substituting for them less dazzling commodities, and by reciting, with ever renewed satisfaction, the catalogue of all possible commodities which at one time or another have played the part of equivalent. He has not the least suspicion that the most simple expression of value, such as 20 yds of linen = 1 coat, already propounds the riddle of the equivalent form for our solution.
The body of the commodity that serves as the equivalent, figures as the materialisation of human labour in the abstract, and is at the same time the product of some specifically useful concrete labour. This concrete labour becomes, therefore, the medium for expressing abstract human labour. If on the one hand the coat ranks as nothing but the embodiment of abstract human labour, so, on the other hand, the tailoring which is actually embodied in it, counts as nothing but the form under which that abstract labour is realised. In the expression of value of the linen, the utility of the tailoring consists, not in making clothes, but in making an object, which we at once recognise to be Value, and therefore to be a congelation of labour, but of labour indistinguishable from that realised in the value of the linen. In order to act as such a mirror of value, the labour of tailoring must reflect nothing besides its own abstract quality of being human labour generally.
In tailoring, as well as in weaving, human labour power is expended. Both, therefore, possess the general property of being human labour, and may, therefore, in certain cases, such as in the production of value, have to be considered under this aspect alone. There is nothing mysterious in this. But in the expression of value there is a complete turn of the tables. For instance, how is the fact to be expressed that weaving creates the value of the linen, not by virtue of being weaving, as such, but by reason of its general property of being human labour? Simply by opposing to weaving that other particular form of concrete labour (in this instance tailoring), which produces the equivalent of the product of weaving. Just as the coat in its bodily form became a direct expression of value, so now does tailoring, a concrete form of labour, appear as the direct and palpable embodiment of human labour generally.
Hence, the second peculiarity of the equivalent form is, that concrete labour becomes the form under which its opposite, abstract human labour, manifests itself.
But because this concrete labour, tailoring in our case, ranks as, and is directly identified with, undifferentiated human labour, it also ranks as identical with any other sort of labour, and therefore with that embodied in the linen. Consequently, although, like all other commodity-producing labour, it is the labour of private individuals, yet, at the same time, it ranks as labour directly social in its character. This is the reason why it results in a product directly exchangeable with other commodities. We have then a third peculiarity of the equivalent form, namely, that the labour of private individuals takes the form of its opposite, labour directly social in its form.
The two latter peculiarities of the equivalent form will become more intelligible if we go back to the great thinker who was the first to analyse so many forms, whether of thought, society, or Nature, and amongst them also the form of value. I mean Aristotle.
In the first place, he clearly enunciates that the money form of commodities is only the further development of the simple form of value – i.e., of the expression of the value of one commodity in some other commodity taken at random; for he says:
is not to be distinguished from
He further sees that the value relation which gives rise to this expression makes it necessary that the house should qualitatively be made the equal of the bed, and that, without such an equalisation, these two clearly different things could not be compared with each other as commensurable quantities. “Exchange,” he says, “cannot take place without equality, and equality not without commensurability". (out isothς mh oushς snmmetriaς). Here, however, he comes to a stop, and gives up the further analysis of the form of value. “It is, however, in reality, impossible (th men oun alhqeia adunaton), that such unlike things can be commensurable” – i.e., qualitatively equal. Such an equalisation can only be something foreign to their real nature, consequently only “a makeshift for practical purposes.”
Aristotle therefore, himself, tells us what barred the way to his further analysis; it was the absence of any concept of value. What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And why not? Compared with the beds, the house does represent something equal to them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is – human labour.
There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that, to attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers. The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labour are equal and equivalent, because, and so far as they are human labour in general, cannot be deciphered, until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of a popular prejudice. This, however, is possible only in a society in which the great mass of the produce of labour takes the form of commodities, in which, consequently, the dominant relation between man and man, is that of owners of commodities. The brilliancy of Aristotle’s genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, “in truth,” was at the bottom of this equality.
The elementary form of value of a commodity is contained in the equation, expressing its value relation to another commodity of a different kind, or in its exchange relation to the same. The value of commodity A, is qualitatively expressed, by the fact that commodity B is directly exchangeable with it. Its value is quantitatively expressed by the fact, that a definite quantity of B is exchangeable with a definite quantity of A. In other words, the value of a commodity obtains independent and definite expression, by taking the form of exchange value. When, at the beginning of this chapter, we said, in common parlance, that a commodity is both a use value and an exchange value, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. A commodity is a use value or object of utility, and a value. It manifests itself as this two-fold thing, that it is, as soon as its value assumes an independent form – viz., the form of exchange value. It never assumes this form when isolated, but only when placed in a value or exchange relation with another commodity of a different kind. When once we know this, such a mode of expression does no harm; it simply serves as an abbreviation.
Our analysis has shown, that the form or expression of the value of a commodity originates in the nature of value, and not that value and its magnitude originate in the mode of their expression as exchange value. This, however, is the delusion as well of the mercantilists and their recent revivers, Ferrier, Ganilh,[23] and others, as also of their antipodes, the modern bagmen of Free-trade, such as Bastiat. The mercantilists lay special stress on the qualitative aspect of the expression of value, and consequently on the equivalent form of commodities, which attains its full perfection in money. The modern hawkers of Free-trade, who must get rid of their article at any price, on the other hand, lay most stress on the quantitative aspect of the relative form of value. For them there consequently exists neither value, nor magnitude of value, anywhere except in its expression by means of the exchange relation of commodities, that is, in the daily list of prices current. Macleod, who has taken upon himself to dress up the confused ideas of Lombard Street in the most learned finery, is a successful cross between the superstitious mercantilists, and the enlightened Free-trade bagmen.
A close scrutiny of the expression of the value of A in terms of B, contained in the equation expressing the value relation of A to B, has shown us that, within that relation, the bodily form of A figures only as a use value, the bodily form of B only as the form or aspect of value. The opposition or contrast existing internally in each commodity between use value and value, is, therefore, made evident externally by two commodities being placed in such relation to each other, that the commodity whose value it is sought to express, figures directly as a mere use value, while the commodity in which that value is to be expressed, figures directly as mere exchange value. Hence the elementary form of value of a commodity is the elementary form in which the contrast contained in that commodity, between use value and value, becomes apparent.
Every product of labour is, in all states of society, a use value; but it is only at a definite historical epoch in a society’s development that such a product becomes a commodity, viz., at the epoch when the labour spent on the production of a useful article becomes expressed as one of the objective qualities of that article, i.e., as its value. It therefore follows that the elementary value form is also the primitive form under which a product of labour appears historically as a commodity, and that the gradual transformation of such products into commodities, proceeds pari passu with the development of the value form.
We perceive, at first sight, the deficiencies of the elementary form of value: it is a mere germ, which must undergo a series of metamorphoses before it can ripen into the price form.
The expression of the value of commodity A in terms of any other commodity B, merely distinguishes the value from the use value of A, and therefore places A merely in a relation of exchange with a single different commodity, B; but it is still far from expressing A’s qualitative equality, and quantitative proportionality, to all commodities. To the elementary relative value form of a commodity, there corresponds the single equivalent form of one other commodity. Thus, in the relative expression of value of the linen, the coat assumes the form of equivalent, or of being directly exchangeable, only in relation to a single commodity, the linen.
Nevertheless, the elementary form of value passes by an easy transition into a more complete form. It is true that by means of the elementary form, the value of a commodity A, becomes expressed in terms of one, and only one, other commodity. But that one may be a commodity of any kind, coat, iron, corn, or anything else. Therefore, according as A is placed in relation with one or the other, we get for one and the same commodity, different elementary expressions of value.[24] The number of such possible expressions is limited only by the number of the different kinds of commodities distinct from it. The isolated expression of A’s value, is therefore convertible into a series, prolonged to any length, of the different elementary expressions of that value.
The value of a single commodity, the linen, for example, is now expressed in terms of numberless other elements of the world of commodities. Every other commodity now becomes a mirror of the linen’s value.[25] It is thus, that for the first time, this value shows itself in its true light as a congelation of undifferentiated human labour. For the labour that creates it, now stands expressly revealed, as labour that ranks equally with every other sort of human labour, no matter what its form, whether tailoring, ploughing, mining, &c., and no matter, therefore, whether it is realised in coats, corn, iron, or gold. The linen, by virtue of the form of its value, now stands in a social relation, no longer with only one other kind of commodity, but with the whole world of commodities. As a commodity, it is a citizen of that world. At the same time, the interminable series of value equations implies, that as regards the value of a commodity, it is a matter of indifference under what particular form, or kind, of use value it appears.
In the first form, 20 yds of linen = 1 coat, it might, for ought that otherwise appears, be pure accident, that these two commodities are exchangeable in definite quantities. In the second form, on the contrary, we perceive at once the background that determines, and is essentially different from, this accidental appearance. The value of the linen remains unaltered in magnitude, whether expressed in coats, coffee, or iron, or in numberless different commodities, the property of as many different owners. The accidental relation between two individual commodity-owners disappears. It becomes plain, that it is not the exchange of commodities which regulates the magnitude of their value; but, on the contrary, that it is the magnitude of their value which controls their exchange proportions.
Each commodity, such as, coat, tea, corn, iron, &c., figures in the expression of value of the linen, as an equivalent, and, consequently, as a thing that is value. The bodily form of each of these commodities figures now as a particular equivalent form, one out of many. In the same way the manifold concrete useful kinds of labour, embodied in these different commodities, rank now as so many different forms of the realisation, or manifestation, of undifferentiated human labour.
In the first place, the relative expression of value is incomplete because the series representing it is interminable. The chain of which each equation of value is a link, is liable at any moment to be lengthened by each new kind of commodity that comes into existence and furnishes the material for a fresh expression of value. In the second place, it is a many-coloured mosaic of disparate and independent expressions of value. And lastly, if, as must be the case, the relative value of each commodity in turn, becomes expressed in this expanded form, we get for each of them a relative value form, different in every case, and consisting of an interminable series of expressions of value. The defects of the expanded relative value form are reflected in the corresponding equivalent form. Since the bodily form of each single commodity is one particular equivalent form amongst numberless others, we have, on the whole, nothing but fragmentary equivalent forms, each excluding the others. In the same way, also, the special, concrete, useful kind of labour embodied in each particular equivalent, is presented only as a particular kind of labour, and therefore not as an exhaustive representative of human labour generally. The latter, indeed, gains adequate manifestation in the totality of its manifold, particular, concrete forms. But, in that case, its expression in an infinite series is ever incomplete and deficient in unity.
The expanded relative value form is, however, nothing but the sum of the elementary relative expressions or equations of the first kind, such as:
Each of these implies the corresponding inverted equation,
In fact, when a person exchanges his linen for many other commodities, and thus expresses its value in a series of other commodities, it necessarily follows, that the various owners of the latter exchange them for the linen, and consequently express the value of their various commodities in one and the same third commodity, the linen. If then, we reverse the series, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 10 lbs of tea, etc., that is to say, if we give expression to the converse relation already implied in the series, we get,
All commodities now express their value (1) in an elementary form, because in a single commodity; (2) with unity, because in one and the same commodity. This form of value is elementary and the same for all, therefore general.
The forms A and B were fit only to express the value of a commodity as something distinct from its use value or material form.
The first form, A, furnishes such equations as the following: – 1 coat = 20 yards of linen, 10 lbs of tea = ½ a ton of iron. The value of the coat is equated to linen, that of the tea to iron. But to be equated to linen, and again to iron, is to be as different as are linen and iron. This form, it is plain, occurs practically only in the first beginning, when the products of labour are converted into commodities by accidental and occasional exchanges.
The second form, B, distinguishes, in a more adequate manner than the first, the value of a commodity from its use value, for the value of the coat is there placed in contrast under all possible shapes with the bodily form of the coat; it is equated to linen, to iron, to tea, in short, to everything else, only not to itself, the coat. On the other hand, any general expression of value common to all is directly excluded; for, in the equation of value of each commodity, all other commodities now appear only under the form of equivalents. The expanded form of value comes into actual existence for the first time so soon as a particular product of labour, such as cattle, is no longer exceptionally, but habitually, exchanged for various other commodities.
The third and lastly developed form expresses the values of the whole world of commodities in terms of a single commodity set apart for the purpose, namely, the linen, and thus represents to us their values by means of their equality with linen. The value of every commodity is now, by being equated to linen, not only differentiated from its own use value, but from all other use values generally, and is, by that very fact, expressed as that which is common to all commodities. By this form, commodities are, for the first time, effectively brought into relation with one another as values, or made to appear as exchange values.
The two earlier forms either express the value of each commodity in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or in a series of many such commodities. In both cases, it is, so to say, the special business of each single commodity to find an expression for its value, and this it does without the help of the others. These others, with respect to the former, play the passive parts of equivalents. The general form of value, C, results from the joint action of the whole world of commodities, and from that alone. A commodity can acquire a general expression of its value only by all other commodities, simultaneously with it, expressing their values in the same equivalent; and every new commodity must follow suit. It thus becomes evident that since the existence of commodities as values is purely social, this social existence can be expressed by the totality of their social relations alone, and consequently that the form of their value must be a socially recognised form.
All commodities being equated to linen now appear not only as qualitatively equal as values generally, but also as values whose magnitudes are capable of comparison. By expressing the magnitudes of their values in one and the same material, the linen, those magnitudes are also compared with each other. For instance, 10 lbs of tea = 20 yards of linen, and 40 lbs of coffee = 20 yards of linen. Therefore, 10 lbs of tea = 40 lbs of coffee. In other words, there is contained in 1 lb of coffee only one-fourth as much substance of value – labour – as is contained in 1 lb of tea.
The general form of relative value, embracing the whole world of commodities, converts the single commodity that is excluded from the rest, and made to play the part of equivalent – here the linen – into the universal equivalent. The bodily form of the linen is now the form assumed in common by the values of all commodities; it therefore becomes directly exchangeable with all and every of them. The substance linen becomes the visible incarnation, the social chrysalis state of every kind of human labour. Weaving, which is the labour of certain private individuals producing a particular article, linen, acquires in consequence a social character, the character of equality with all other kinds of labour. The innumerable equations of which the general form of value is composed, equate in turn the labour embodied in the linen to that embodied in every other commodity, and they thus convert weaving into the general form of manifestation of undifferentiated human labour. In this manner the labour realised in the values of commodities is presented not only under its negative aspect, under which abstraction is made from every concrete form and useful property of actual work, but its own positive nature is made to reveal itself expressly. The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power.
The general value form, which represents all products of labour as mere congelations of undifferentiated human labour, shows by its very structure that it is the social resumé of the world of commodities. That form consequently makes it indisputably evident that in the world of commodities the character possessed by all labour of being human labour constitutes its specific social character.
The degree of development of the relative form of value corresponds to that of the equivalent form. But we must bear in mind that the development of the latter is only the expression and result of the development of the former.
The primary or isolated relative form of value of one commodity converts some other commodity into an isolated equivalent. The expanded form of relative value, which is the expression of the value of one commodity in terms of all other commodities, endows those other commodities with the character of particular equivalents differing in kind. And lastly, a particular kind of commodity acquires the character of universal equivalent, because all other commodities make it the material in which they uniformly express their value.
The antagonism between the relative form of value and the equivalent form, the two poles of the value form, is developed concurrently with that form itself.
The first form, 20 yds of linen = one coat, already contains this antagonism, without as yet fixing it. According as we read this equation forwards or backwards, the parts played by the linen and the coat are different. In the one case the relative value of the linen is expressed in the coat, in the other case the relative value of the coat is expressed in the linen. In this first form of value, therefore, it is difficult to grasp the polar contrast.
Form B shows that only one single commodity at a time can completely expand its relative value, and that it acquires this expanded form only because, and in so far as, all other commodities are, with respect to it, equivalents. Here we cannot reverse the equation, as we can the equation 20 yds of linen = 1 coat, without altering its general character, and converting it from the expanded form of value into the general form of value.
Finally, the form C gives to the world of commodities a general social relative form of value, because, and in so far as, thereby all commodities, with the exception of one, are excluded from the equivalent form. A single commodity, the linen, appears therefore to have acquired the character of direct exchangeability with every other commodity because, and in so far as, this character is denied to every other commodity.[26]
The commodity that figures as universal equivalent, is, on the other hand, excluded from the relative value form. If the linen, or any other commodity serving as universal equivalent, were, at the same time, to share in the relative form of value, it would have to serve as its own equivalent. We should then have 20 yds of linen = 20 yds of linen; this tautology expresses neither value, nor magnitude of value. In order to express the relative value of the universal equivalent, we must rather reverse the form C. This equivalent has no relative form of value in common with other commodities, but its value is relatively expressed by a never ending series of other commodities. Thus, the expanded form of relative value, or form B, now shows itself as the specific form of relative value for the equivalent commodity.
The universal equivalent form is a form of value in general. It can, therefore, be assumed by any commodity. On the other hand, if a commodity be found to have assumed the universal equivalent form (form C), this is only because and in so far as it has been excluded from the rest of all other commodities as their equivalent, and that by their own act. And from the moment that this exclusion becomes finally restricted to one particular commodity, from that moment only, the general form of relative value of the world of commodities obtains real consistence and general social validity.
The particular commodity, with whose bodily form the equivalent form is thus socially identified, now becomes the money commodity, or serves as money. It becomes the special social function of that commodity, and consequently its social monopoly, to play within the world of commodities the part of the universal equivalent. Amongst the commodities which, in form B, figure as particular equivalents of the linen, and, in form C, express in common their relative values in linen, this foremost place has been attained by one in particular – namely, gold. If, then, in form C we replace the linen by gold, we get,
In passing from form A to form B, and from the latter to form C, the changes are fundamental. On the other hand, there is no difference between forms C and D, except that, in the latter, gold has assumed the equivalent form in the place of linen. Gold is in form D, what linen was in form C – the universal equivalent. The progress consists in this alone, that the character of direct and universal exchangeability – in other words, that the universal equivalent form – has now, by social custom, become finally identified with the substance, gold.
Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities only because it was previously, with reference to them, a simple commodity. Like all other commodities, it was also capable of serving as an equivalent, either as simple equivalent in isolated exchanges, or as particular equivalent by the side of others. Gradually it began to serve, within varying limits, as universal equivalent. So soon as it monopolises this position in the expression of value for the world of commodities, it becomes the money commodity, and then, and not till then, does form D become distinct from form C, and the general form of value become changed into the money form.
The elementary expression of the relative value of a single commodity, such as linen, in terms of the commodity, such as gold, that plays the part of money, is the price form of that commodity. The price form of the linen is therefore
The difficulty in forming a concept of the money form, consists in clearly comprehending the universal equivalent form, and as a necessary corollary, the general form of value, form C. The latter is deducible from form B, the expanded form of value, the essential component element of which, we saw, is form A, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or x commodity A = y commodity B. The simple commodity form is therefore the germ of the money form.
A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than “table-turning” ever was. [26a]
The mystical character of commodities does not originate, therefore, in their use value. Just as little does it proceed from the nature of the determining factors of value. For, in the first place, however varied the useful kinds of labour, or productive activities, may be, it is a physiological fact, that they are functions of the human organism, and that each such function, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, &c. Secondly, with regard to that which forms the ground-work for the quantitative determination of value, namely, the duration of that expenditure, or the quantity of labour, it is quite clear that there is a palpable difference between its quantity and quality. In all states of society, the labour time that it costs to produce the means of subsistence, must necessarily be an object of interest to mankind, though not of equal interest in different stages of development.[27] And lastly, from the moment that men in any way work for one another, their labour assumes a social form.
Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form itself. The equality of all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively by their products all being equally values; the measure of the expenditure of labour power by the duration of that expenditure, takes the form of the quantity of value of the products of labour; and finally the mutual relations of the producers, within which the social character of their labour affirms itself, take the form of a social relation between the products.
A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.
This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the foregoing analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labour that produces them.
Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into relation with each other as values, it is not because we see in these articles the material receptacles of homogeneous human labour. Quite the contrary: whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values our different products, by that very act, we also equate, as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it.[28] Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social products; for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as much a social product as language. The recent scientific discovery, that the products of labour, so far as they are values, are but material expressions of the human labour spent in their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in the history of the development of the human race, but, by no means, dissipates the mist through which the social character of labour appears to us to be an objective character of the products themselves. The fact, that in the particular form of production with which we are dealing, viz., the production of commodities, the specific social character of private labour carried on independently, consists in the equality of every kind of that labour, by virtue of its being human labour, which character, therefore, assumes in the product the form of value – this fact appears to the producers, notwithstanding the discovery above referred to, to be just as real and final, as the fact, that, after the discovery by science of the component gases of air, the atmosphere itself remained unaltered.
Man’s reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently, also, his scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly opposite to that of their actual historical development. He begins, post festum, with the results of the process of development ready to hand before him. The characters that stamp products as commodities, and whose establishment is a necessary preliminary to the circulation of commodities, have already acquired the stability of natural, self-understood forms of social life, before man seeks to decipher, not their historical character, for in his eyes they are immutable, but their meaning. Consequently it was the analysis of the prices of commodities that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values. It is, however, just this ultimate money form of the world of commodities that actually conceals, instead of disclosing, the social character of private labour, and the social relations between the individual producers. When I state that coats or boots stand in a relation to linen, because it is the universal incarnation of abstract human labour, the absurdity of the statement is self-evident. Nevertheless, when the producers of coats and boots compare those articles with linen, or, what is the same thing, with gold or silver, as the universal equivalent, they express the relation between their own private labour and the collective labour of society in the same absurd form.
The categories of bourgeois economy consist of such like forms. They are forms of thought expressing with social validity the conditions and relations of a definite, historically determined mode of production, viz., the production of commodities. The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production.
Since Robinson Crusoe’s experiences are a favourite theme with political economists,[30] let us take a look at him on his island. Moderate though he be, yet some few wants he has to satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of various sorts, such as making tools and furniture, taming goats, fishing and hunting. Of his prayers and the like we take no account, since they are a source of pleasure to him, and he looks upon them as so much recreation. In spite of the variety of his work, he knows that his labour, whatever its form, is but the activity of one and the same Robinson, and consequently, that it consists of nothing but different modes of human labour. Necessity itself compels him to apportion his time accurately between his different kinds of work. Whether one kind occupies a greater space in his general activity than another, depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the case may be, to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimed at. This our friend Robinson soon learns by experience, and having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck, commences, like a true-born Briton, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a list of the objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations necessary for their production; and lastly, of the labour time that definite quantities of those objects have, on an average, cost him. All the relations between Robinson and the objects that form this wealth of his own creation, are here so simple and clear as to be intelligible without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those relations contain all that is essential to the determination of value.
Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson’s island bathed in light to the European middle ages shrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the independent man, we find everyone dependent, serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, laymen and clergy. Personal dependence here characterises the social relations of production just as much as it does the other spheres of life organised on the basis of that production. But for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to assume a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape, in the transactions of society, of services in kind and payments in kind. Here the particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society based on production of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate social form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time, as commodity-producing labour; but every serf knows that what he expends in the service of his lord, is a definite quantity of his own personal labour power. The tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than his blessing. No matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social relations between the products of labour.
For an example of labour in common or directly associated labour, we have no occasion to go back to that spontaneously developed form which we find on the threshold of the history of all civilised races.[31] We have one close at hand in the patriarchal industries of a peasant family, that produces corn, cattle, yarn, linen, and clothing for home use. These different articles are, as regards the family, so many products of its labour, but as between themselves, they are not commodities. The different kinds of labour, such as tillage, cattle tending, spinning, weaving and making clothes, which result in the various products, are in themselves, and such as they are, direct social functions, because functions of the family, which, just as much as a society based on the production of commodities, possesses a spontaneously developed system of division of labour. The distribution of the work within the family, and the regulation of the labour time of the several members, depend as well upon differences of age and sex as upon natural conditions varying with the seasons. The labour power of each individual, by its very nature, operates in this case merely as a definite portion of the whole labour power of the family, and therefore, the measure of the expenditure of individual labour power by its duration, appears here by its very nature as a social character of their labour.
Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community. All the characteristics of Robinson’s labour are here repeated, but with this difference, that they are social, instead of individual. Everything produced by him was exclusively the result of his own personal labour, and therefore simply an object of use for himself. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time. Labour time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution.
The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain material ground-work or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.
Political Economy has indeed analysed, however incompletely,[32] value and its magnitude, and has discovered what lies beneath these forms. But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour time by the magnitude of that value.[33] These formulæ, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him, such formulæ appear to the bourgeois intellect to be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by Nature as productive labour itself. Hence forms of social production that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated by the bourgeoisie in much the same way as the Fathers of the Church treated pre-Christian religions.[34]
To what extent some economists are misled by the Fetishism inherent in commodities, or by the objective appearance of the social characteristics of labour, is shown, amongst other ways, by the dull and tedious quarrel over the part played by Nature in the formation of exchange value. Since exchange value is a definite social manner of expressing the amount of labour bestowed upon an object, Nature has no more to do with it, than it has in fixing the course of exchange.
The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easy to be seen through. But when we come to more concrete forms, even this appearance of simplicity vanishes. Whence arose the illusions of the monetary system? To it gold and silver, when serving as money, did not represent a social relation between producers, but were natural objects with strange social properties. And modern economy, which looks down with such disdain on the monetary system, does not its superstition come out as clear as noon-day, whenever it treats of capital? How long is it since economy discarded the physiocratic illusion, that rents grow out of the soil and not out of society?
But not to anticipate, we will content ourselves with yet another example relating to the commodity form. Could commodities themselves speak, they would say: Our use value may be a thing that interests men. It is no part of us as objects. What, however, does belong to us as objects, is our value. Our natural intercourse as commodities proves it. In the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchange values. Now listen how those commodities speak through the mouth of the economist.
So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a diamond. The economic discoverers of this chemical element, who by-the-bye lay special claim to critical acumen, find however that the use value of objects belongs to them independently of their material properties, while their value, on the other hand, forms a part of them as objects. What confirms them in this view, is the peculiar circumstance that the use value of objects is realised without exchange, by means of a direct relation between the objects and man, while, on the other hand, their value is realised only by exchange, that is, by means of a social process. Who fails here to call to mind our good friend, Dogberry, who informs neighbour Seacoal, that, “To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but reading and writing comes by Nature.”[37]
It is plain that commodities cannot go to market and
 make exchanges of their own account. We must, therefore, have recourse
 to their guardians, who are also their owners Commodities are things, and
 therefore without power of resistance against man. If they are wanting
 in docility he can use force; in other words, he can take possession of
 them. [1] In order that these objects may enter into
 relation with each other as commodities, their guardians must place themselves
 in relation to one another, as persons whose will resides in those objects,
 and must behave in such a way that each does not appropriate the commodity
 of the other, and part with his own, except by means of an act done by
 mutual consent. They must therefore, mutually recognise in each other the
 rights of private proprietors. This juridical relation, which thus expresses
 itself in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed legal
 system or not, is a relation between two wills, and is but the reflex of
 the real economic relation between the two. It is this economic relation
 that determines the subject-matter comprised in each such juridical act.
 [2]
The persons exist for one another merely as representatives of, and,
 therefore. as owners of, commodities. In the course of our investigation
 we shall find, in general, that the characters who appear on the economic
 stage are but the personifications of the economic relations that exist
 between them.
What chiefly distinguishes a commodity from its owner is the fact,
 that it looks upon every other commodity as but the form of appearance
 of its own value. A born leveller and a cynic, it is always ready to exchange
 not only soul, but body, with any and every other commodity, be the same
 more repulsive than Maritornes herself. The owner makes up for this lack
 in the commodity of a sense of the concrete, by his own five and more senses.
 His commodity possesses for himself no immediate use-value. Otherwise,
 he would not bring it to the market. It has use-value for others; but for
 himself its only direct use-value is that of being a depository of exchange-value,
 and, consequently, a means of exchange.[3] Therefore,
 he makes up his mind to part with it for commodities whose value in use
 is of service to him. All commodities are non-use-values for their owners,
 and use-values for their non-owners. Consequently, they must all change
 hands. But this change of hands is what constitutes their exchange, and
 the latter puts them in relation with each other as values, and realises
 them as values. Hence commodities must be realised as values before they
 can be realised as use-values.
On the other hand, they must show that they are use-values before
 they can be realised as values. For the labour spent upon them counts effectively,
 only in so far as it is spent in a form that is useful for others. Whether
 that labour is useful for others, and its product consequently capable
 of satisfying the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange.
Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in exchange
 only for those commodities whose use-value satisfies some want of his.
 Looked at in this way, exchange is for him simply a private transaction.
 On the other hand, he desires to realise the value of his commodity, to
 convert it into any other suitable commodity of equal value, irrespective
 of whether his own commodity has or has not any use-value for the owner
 of the other. From this point of view, exchange is for him a social transaction
 of a general character. But one and the same set of transactions cannot
 be simultaneously for all owners of commodities both exclusively private
 and exclusively social and general.
Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges,
 whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another
 and thus by practice converted into commodities. The historical progress
 and extension of exchanges develops the contrast, latent in commodities,
 between use-value and value. The necessity for giving an external expression
 to this contrast for the purposes of commercial intercourse, urges on the
 establishment of an independent form of value, and finds no rest until
 it is once for all satisfied by the differentiation of commodities into
 commodities and money. At the same rate, then, as the conversion of products
 into commodities is being accomplished, so also is the conversion of one
 special commodity into money.[4]
In proportion as exchange bursts its local bonds, and the value
 of commodities more and more expands into an embodiment of human labour
 in the abstract, in the same proportion the character of money attaches
 itself to commodities that are by Nature fitted to perform the social function
 of a universal equivalent. Those commodities are the precious metals.
The truth of the proposition that, “although gold and silver are
 not by Nature money, money is by Nature gold and silver,”[6]
 is shown by the fitness of the physical properties of these metals for
 the functions of money.[7] Up to this point, however,
 we are acquainted only with one function of money, namely, to serve as
 the form of manifestation of the value of commodities, or as the material
 in which the magnitudes of their values are socially expressed. An adequate
 form of manifestation of value, a fit embodiment of abstract, undifferentiated,
 and therefore equal human labour, that material alone can be whose every
 sample exhibits the same uniform qualities. On the other hand, since the
 difference between the magnitudes of value is purely quantitative, the
 money commodity must be susceptible of merely quantitative differences,
 must therefore be divisible at will, and equally capable of being reunited.
 Gold and silver possess these properties by Nature.
The use-value of the money-commodity becomes two-fold. In addition
 to its special use-value as a commodity (gold, for instance, serving to
 stop teeth, to form the raw material of articles of luxury, &c.), it
 acquires a formal use-value, originating in its specific social function.
Since all commodities are merely particular equivalents of money,
 the latter being their universal equivalent, they, with regard to the latter
 as the universal commodity, play the parts of particular commodities. [8]
We have seen that the money-form is but the reflex, thrown upon
 one single commodity, of the value relations between all the rest. That
 money is a commodity [9] is therefore a new discovery
 only for those who, when they analyse it, start from its fully developed
 shape. The act of exchange gives to the commodity converted into money,
 not its value, but its specific value-form. By confounding these two distinct
 things some writers have been led to hold that the value of gold and silver
 is imaginary. [10] The fact that money can, in certain
 functions, be replaced by mere symbols of itself, gave rise to that other
 mistaken notion, that it is itself a mere symbol. Nevertheless under this
 error lurked a presentiment that the money-form of an object is not an
 inseparable part of that object, but is simply the form under which certain
 social relations manifest themselves. In this sense every commodity is
 a symbol, since, in so far as it is value, it is only the material envelope
 of the human labour spent upon it.[11] But if it be
 declared that the social characters assumed by objects, or the material
 forms assumed by the social qualities of labour under the régime
 of a definite mode of production, are mere symbols, it is in the same breath
 also declared that these characteristics are arbitrary fictions sanctioned
 by the so-called universal consent of mankind. This suited the mode of
 explanation in favour during the 18th century. Unable to account for the
 origin of the puzzling forms assumed by social relations between man and
 man, people sought to denude them of their strange appearance by ascribing
 to them a conventional origin.
It has already been remarked above that the equivalent form of
 a commodity does not imply the determination of the magnitude of its value.
 Therefore, although we may be aware that gold is money, and consequently
 directly exchangeable for all other commodities, yet that fact by no means
 tells how much 10 lbs., for instance, of gold is worth. Money, like every
 other commodity, cannot express the magnitude of its value except relatively
 in other commodities. This value is determined by the labour-time required
 for its production, and is expressed by the quantity of any other commodity
 that costs the same amount of labour-time. [12] Such
 quantitative determination of its relative value takes place at the source
 of its production by means of barter. When it steps into circulation as
 money, its value is already given. In the last decades of the 17th century
 it had already been shown that money is a commodity, but this step marks
 only the infancy of the analysis. The difficulty lies, not in comprehending
 that money is a commodity, but in discovering how, why, and by what means
 a commodity becomes money. [13]
We have already seen, from the most elementary expression of value,
 x commodity A = y commodity B, that the object in which the magnitude of
 the value of another object is represented, appears to have the equivalent
 form independently of this relation, as a social property given to it by
 Nature. We followed up this false appearance to its final establishment,
 which is complete so soon as the universal equivalent form becomes identified
 with the bodily form of a particular commodity, and thus crystallised into
 the money-form. What appears to happen is, not that gold becomes money,
 in consequence of all other commodities expressing their values in it,
 but, on the contrary, that all other commodities universally express their
 values in gold, because it is money. The intermediate steps of the process
 vanish in the result and leave no trace behind. Commodities find their
 own value already completely represented, without any initiative on their
 part, in another commodity existing in company with them. These objects,
 gold and silver, just as they come out of the bowels of the earth, are
 forthwith the direct incarnation of all human labour. Hence the magic of
 money. In the form of society now under consideration, the behaviour of
 men in the social process of production is purely atomic. Hence their relations
 to each other in production assume a material character independent of
 their control and conscious individual action. These facts manifest themselves
 at first by products as a general rule taking the form of commodities.
 We have seen how the progressive development of a society of commodity-producers
 stamps one privileged commodity with the character of money. Hence the
 riddle presented by money is but the riddle presented by commodities; only
 it now strikes us in its most glaring form.
Throughout this work, I assume, for the sake of simplicity,
 gold as the money-commodity.
The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with
 the material for the expression of their values, or to represent their
 values as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitatively equal, and
 quantitatively comparable. It thus serves as a universal measure of
 value. And only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent
 commodity par excellence, become money.
It is not money that renders commodities commensurable. Just the
 contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are realised human
 labour, and therefore commensurable, that their values can be measured
 by one and the same special commodity, and the latter be converted into
 the common measure of their values, i.e., into money. Money as a
 measure of value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be assumed
 by that measure of value which is immanent in commodities, labour-time.
 [1]
The expression of the value of a commodity in gold — x
 commodity A = y money-commodity — is its money-form or price. A
 single equation, such as 1 ton of iron = 2 ounces of gold, now suffices
 to express the value of the iron in a socially valid manner. There is no
 longer any need for this equation to figure as a link in the chain of equations
 that express the values of all other commodities, because the equivalent
 commodity, gold, now has the character of money. The general form of relative
 value has resumed its original shape of simple or isolated relative value.
 On the other hand, the expanded expression of relative value, the endless
 series of equations, has now become the form peculiar to the relative value
 of the money-commodity. The series itself, too, is now given, and has social
 recognition in the prices of actual commodities. We have only to read the
 quotations of a price-list backwards, to find the magnitude of the value
 of money expressed in all sorts of commodities. But money itself has no
 price. In order to put it on an equal footing with all other commodities
 in this respect, we should be obliged to equate it to itself as its own
 equivalent.
The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form of
 value generally, a form quite distinct from their palpable bodily form;
 it is, therefore, a purely ideal or mental form. Although invisible, the
 value of iron, linen and corn has actual existence in these very articles:
 it is ideally made perceptible by their equality with gold, a relation
 that, so to say, exists only in their own heads. Their owner must, therefore,
 lend them his tongue, or hang a ticket on them, before their prices can
 be communicated to the outside world. [2] 
 Since the expression of the value of commodities in gold is a merely ideal act, we may use for
 this purpose imaginary or ideal money. Every trader knows, that he is far
 from having turned his goods into money, when he has expressed their value
 in a price or in imaginary money, and that it does not require the least
 bit of real gold, to estimate in that metal millions of pounds’ worth of
 goods. When, therefore, money serves as a measure of value, it is employed
 only as imaginary or ideal money. This circumstance has given rise to the
 wildest theories. [3] But, although the money that performs
 the functions of a measure of value is only ideal money, price depends
 entirely upon the actual substance that is money. The value, or in other
 words, the quantity of human labour contained in a ton of iron, is expressed
 in imagination by such a quantity of the money-commodity as contains the
 same amount of labour as the iron. According, therefore, as the measure
 of value is gold, silver, or copper, the value of the ton of iron will
 be expressed by very different prices, or will be represented by very different
 quantities of those metals respectively.
If, therefore, two different commodities, such as gold and silver,
 are simultaneously measures of value, all commodities have two prices —
 one a gold-price, the other a silver-price. These exist quietly side by
 side, so long as the ratio of the value of silver to that of gold remains
 unchanged, say, at 15:1. Every change in their ratio disturbs the ratio
 which exists between the gold-prices and the silver-prices of commodities,
 and thus proves, by facts, that a double standard of value is inconsistent
 with the functions of a standard. [4]
Commodities with definite prices present themselves under
 the form: a commodity A = x gold; b commodity B = z gold;
 c commodity C = y gold, &c., where a, b,
 c, represent definite quantities of the commodities A, B, C and
 x, z, y, definite quantities of gold. The values of these commodities are,
 therefore, changed in imagination into so many different quantities of
 gold. Hence, in spite of the confusing variety of the commodities themselves,
 their values become magnitudes of the same denomination, gold-magnitudes.
 They are now capable of being compared with each other and measured, and
 the want becomes technically felt of comparing them with some fixed quantity
 of gold as a unit measure. This unit, by subsequent division into aliquot
 parts, becomes itself the standard or scale. Before they become money,
 gold, silver, and copper already possess such standard measures in their
 standards of weight, so that, for example, a pound weight, while serving
 as the unit, is, on the one hand, divisible into ounces, and, on the other,
 may be combined to make up hundredweights. [5] It is
 owing to this that, in all metallic currencies, the names given to the
 standards of money or of price were originally taken from the pre-existing
 names of the standards of weight.
As measure of Value, and as standard of price, money
 has two entirely distinct functions to perform. It is the measure of value
 inasmuch as it is the socially recognised incarnation of human labour;
 it is the standard of price inasmuch as it is a fixed weight of metal.
 As the measure of value it serves to convert the values of all the manifold
 commodities into prices, into imaginary quantities of gold; as the standard
 of price it measures those quantities of gold. The measure of values measures
 commodities considered as values; the standard of price measures, on the
 contrary, quantities of gold by a unit quantity of gold, not the value
 of one quantity of gold by the weight of another. In order to make gold
 a standard of price, a certain weight must be fixed upon as the unit. In
 this case, as in all cases of measuring quantities of the same denomination,
 the establishment of an unvarying unit of measure is all-important. Hence,
 the less the unit is subject to variation, so much the better does the
 standard of price fulfil its office. But only in so far as it is
 itself a product of labour, and, therefore, potentially variable in value,
 can gold serve as a measure of value. [6]
It is, in the first place, quite clear that a change in the value
 of gold does not, in any way, affect its function as a standard of price.
 No matter how this value varies, the proportions between the values of
 different quantities of the metal remain constant. However great the fall
 in its value, 12 ounces of gold still have 12 times the value of 1 ounce;
 and in prices, the only thing considered is the relation between different
 quantities of gold. Since, on the other hand, no rise or fall in the value
 of an ounce of gold can alter its weight, no alteration can take place
 in the weight of its aliquot parts. Thus gold always renders the same service
 as an invariable standard of price, however much its value may vary.
In the second place, a change in the value of gold does not interfere
 with its functions as a measure of value. The change affects all commodities
 simultaneously, and, therefore, caeteris paribus, leaves their relative
 values inter se, unaltered, although those values are now expressed
 in higher or lower gold-prices.
Just as when we estimate the value of any commodity by a definite
 quantity of the use-value of some other commodity, so in estimating the
 value of the former in gold, we assume nothing more than that the production
 of a given quantity of gold costs, at the given period, a given amount
 of labour. As regards the fluctuations of prices generally, they are subject
 to the laws of elementary relative value investigated in a former chapter.
A general rise in the prices of commodities can result only, either
 from a rise in their values — the value of money remaining constant —
 or from a fall in the value of money, the values of commodities remaining
 constant. On the other hand, a general fall in prices can result only,
 either from a fall in the values of commodities — the value of money remaining
 constant — or from a rise in the value of money, the values of commodities
 remaining constant. It therefore by no means follows, that a rise in the
 value of money necessarily implies a proportional fall in the prices of
 commodities; or that a fall in the value of money implies a proportional
 rise in prices. Such change of price holds good only in the case of commodities
 whose value remains constant. With those, for example, whose value rises,
 simultaneously with, and proportionally to, that of money, there is no
 alteration in price. And if their value rise either slower or faster than
 that of money, the fall or rise in their prices will be determined
 by the difference between the change in their value and that of money;
 and so on.
Let us now go back to the consideration of the price-form.
By degrees there arises a discrepancy between the current money-names
 of the various weights of the precious metal figuring as money, and the
 actual weights which those names originally represented. This discrepancy
 is the result of historical causes, among which the chief are: — (1) The
 importation of foreign money into an imperfectly developed community. This
 happened in Rome in its early days, where gold and silver coins circulated
 at first as foreign commodities. The names of these foreign coins never
 coincide with those of the indigenous weights. (2) As wealth increases,
 the less precious metal is thrust out by the more precious from its place
 as a measure of value, copper by silver, silver by gold, however much this
 order of sequence may be in contradiction with poetical chronology. [7]
 The word pound, for instance, was the money-name given to an actual pound
 weight of silver. When gold replaced silver as a measure of value, the
 same name was applied according to the ratio between the values of silver
 and gold, to perhaps 1-15th of a pound of gold. The word pound, as a money-name,
 thus becomes differentiated from the same word as a weight-name. [8]
 (3) The debasing of money carried on for centuries by kings and princes
 to such an extent that, of the original weights of the coins, nothing in
 fact remained but the names. [9]
These historical causes convert the separation of the money-name
 from the weight-name into an established habit with the community. Since
 the standard of money is on the one hand purely conventional, and must
 on the other hand find general acceptance, it is in the end regulated by
 law. A given weight of one of the precious metals, an ounce of gold, for
 instance, becomes officially divided into aliquot parts, with legally bestowed
 names, such as pound, dollar, &c. These aliquot parts, which thenceforth
 serve as units of money, are then subdivided into other aliquot parts with
 legal names, such as shilling, penny, &c. [10] But, both
 before and after these divisions are made, a definite weight of metal is
 the standard of metallic money. The sole alteration consists in the subdivision
 and denomination.
The prices, or quantities of gold, into which the values of commodities
 are ideally changed, are therefore now expressed in the names of coins,
 or in the legally valid names of the subdivisions of the gold standard.
 Hence, instead of saying: A quarter of wheat is worth an ounce of gold;
 we say, it is worth £3 17s. 10 1/2d. In this way commodities express
 by their prices how much they are worth, and money serves as money of
 account whenever it is a question of fixing the value of an article
 in its money-form. [11]
The name of a thing is something distinct from the qualities of
 that thing. I know nothing of a man, by knowing that his name is Jacob.
 In the same way with regard to money, every trace of a value-relation disappears
 in the names pound, dollar, franc, ducat, &c. The confusion caused
 by attributing a hidden meaning to these cabalistic signs is all the greater,
 because these money-names express both the values of commodities, and,
 at the same time, aliquot parts of the weight of the metal that is the
 standard of money. [12] On the other hand, it is absolutely
 necessary that value, in order that it may be distinguished from the varied
 bodily forms of commodities, should assume this material and unmeaning,
 but, at the same time, purely social form. [13]
Price is the money-name of the labour realised in a commodity.
 Hence the expression of the equivalence of a commodity with the sum of
 money constituting its price, is a tautology, [14]
 just as in general the expression of the relative value of a commodity
 is a statement of the equivalence of two commodities. But although price,
 being the exponent of the magnitude of a commodity’s value, is the exponent
 of its exchange-ratio with money, it does not follow that the exponent
 of this exchange-ratio is necessarily the exponent of the magnitude of
 the commodity’s value. Suppose two equal quantities of socially necessary
 labour to be respectively represented by 1 quarter of wheat and £2
 (nearly 1/2 oz. of gold), £2 is the expression in money of the magnitude
 of the value of the quarter of wheat, or is its price. If now circumstances
 allow of this price being raised to £3, or compel it to be reduced
 to £1, then although £1 and £3 may be too small or too
 great properly to express the magnitude of the wheat’s value; nevertheless
 they are its prices, for they are, in the first place, the form under which
 its value appears, i.e., money; and in the second place, the exponents
 of its exchange-ratio with money. If the conditions of production, in other
 words, if the productive power of labour remain constant, the same amount
 of social labour-time must, both before and after the change in price,
 be expended in the reproduction of a quarter of wheat. This circumstance
 depends, neither on the will of the wheat producer, nor on that of the
 owners of other commodities.
Magnitude of value expresses a relation of social production,
 it expresses the connexion that necessarily exists between a certain article
 and the portion of the total labour-time of society required to produce
 it. As soon as magnitude of value is converted into price, the above necessary
 relation takes the shape of a more or less accidental exchange-ratio between
 a single commodity and another, the money-commodity. But this exchange-ratio
 may express either the real magnitude of that commodity’s value, or the
 quantity of gold deviating from that value, for which, according to circumstances,
 it may be parted with. The possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity
 between price and magnitude of value, or the deviation of the former from
 the latter, is inherent in the price-form itself. This is no defect, but,
 on the contrary, admirably adapts the price-form to a mode of production
 whose inherent laws impose themselves only as the mean of apparently lawless
 irregularities that compensate one another.
The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the possibility
 of a quantitative incongruity between magnitude of value and price, i.e.,
 between the former and its expression in money, but it may also conceal
 a qualitative inconsistency, so much so, that, although money is nothing
 but the value-form of commodities, price ceases altogether to express value.
 Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour,
 &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders, and of
 thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities. Hence an
 object may have a price without having value. The price in that case is
 imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics. On the other hand, the
 imaginary price-form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect
 real value-relation; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which
 is without value, because no human labour has been incorporated in it.
Price, like relative value in general, expresses the value of
 a commodity (e.g., a ton of iron), by stating that a given quantity
 of the equivalent (e.g., an ounce of gold), is directly exchangeable
 for iron. But it by no means states the converse, that iron is directly
 exchangeable for gold. In order, therefore, that a commodity may in practice
 act effectively as exchange-value, it must quit its bodily shape, must
 transform itself from mere imaginary into real gold, although to the commodity
 such transubstantiation may be more difficult than to the Hegelian “concept,” 
 the transition from “necessity” to “freedom,” or to a lobster the casting
 of his shell, or to Saint Jerome the putting off of the old Adam. [15]
 Though a commodity may, side by side with its actual form (iron, for instance),
 take in our imagination the form of gold, yet it cannot at one and the
 same time actually be both iron and gold. To fix its price, it suffices
 to equate it to gold in imagination. But to enable it to render to its
 owner the service of a universal equivalent, it must be actually replaced
 by gold. If the owner of the iron were to go to the owner of some other
 commodity offered for exchange, and were to refer him to the price of the
 iron as proof that it was already money, he would get the same answer as
 St. Peter gave in heaven to Dante, when the latter recited the creed —
A price therefore implies both that a commodity is exchangeable for money,
 and also that it must be so exchanged. On the other hand, gold serves as
 an ideal measure of value, only because it has already, in the process
 of exchange, established itself as the money-commodity. Under the ideal
 measure of values there lurks the hard cash.
We saw in a former chapter that the exchange of
 commodities implies contradictory and mutually exclusive conditions. The
 differentiation of commodities into commodities and money does not sweep
 away these inconsistencies, but develops a modus vivendi, a form
 in which they can exist side by side. This is generally the way in which
 real contradictions are reconciled. For instance, it is a contradiction
 to depict one body as constantly falling towards another, and as, at the
 same time, constantly flying away from it. The ellipse is a form of motion
 which, while allowing this contradiction to go on, at the same time reconciles
 it.
In so far as exchange is a process, by which commodities are transferred
 from hands in which they are non-use-values, to hands in which they become
 use-values, it is a social circulation of matter. The product of one form
 of useful labour replaces that of another. When once a commodity has found
 a resting-place, where it can serve as a use-value, it falls out of the
 sphere of exchange into that of consumption. But the former sphere alone
 interests us at present. We have, therefore, now to consider exchange from
 a formal point of view; to investigate the change of form or metamorphosis
 of commodities which effectuates the social circulation of matter.
The comprehension of this change of form is, as a rule, very imperfect.
 The cause of this imperfection is, apart from indistinct notions of value
 itself, that every change of form in a commodity results from the exchange
 of two commodities, an ordinary one and the money-commodity. If we keep
 in view the material fact alone that a commodity has been exchanged for
 gold, we overlook the very thing that we ought to observe — namely, what
 has happened to the form of the commodity. We overlook the facts that gold,
 when a mere commodity, is not money, and that when other commodities express
 their prices in gold, this gold is but the money-form of those commodities
 themselves.
Commodities, first of all, enter into the process of exchange
 just as they are. The process then differentiates them into commodities
 and money, and thus produces an external opposition corresponding to the
 internal opposition inherent in them, as being at once use-values and values.
 Commodities as use-values now stand opposed to money as exchange-value.
 On the other hand, both opposing sides are commodi ties, unities of
 use-value and value. But this unity of differences manifests itself at
 two opposite poles, and at each pole in an opposite way. Being poles they
 are as necessarily opposite as they are connected. On the one side of the
 equation we have an ordinary commodity, which is in reality a use-value.
 Its value is expressed only ideally in its price, by which it is equated
 to its opponent, the gold, as to the real embodiment of its value. On the
 other hand, the gold, in its metallic reality, ranks as the embodiment
 of value, as money. Gold, as gold, is exchange-value itself. As to its
 use-value, that has only an ideal existence, represented by the series
 of expressions of relative value in which it stands face to face with all
 other commodities, the sum of whose uses makes up the sum of the various
 uses of gold. These antagonistic forms of commodities are the real forms
 in which the process of their exchange moves and takes place.
Let us now accompany the owner of some commodity — say, our old
 friend the weaver of linen — to the scene of action, the market. His 20
 yards of linen has a definite price, £2. He exchanges it for the
 £2, and then, like a man of the good old stamp that he is, he parts
 with the £2 for a family Bible of the same price. The linen, which
 in his eyes is a mere commodity, a depository of value, he alienates in
 exchange for gold, which is the linen’s value-form, and this form he again
 parts with for another commodity, the Bible, which is destined to enter
 his house as an object of utility and of edification to its inmates. The
 exchange becomes an accomplished fact by two metamorphoses of opposite
 yet supplementary character — the conversion of the commodity into money,
 and the re-conversion of the money into a commodity. [16]
 The two phases of this metamorphosis are both of them distinct transactions
 of the weaver — selling, or the exchange of the commodity for money; buying,
 or the exchange of the money for a commodity; and, the unity of the two
 acts, selling in order to buy.
The result of the whole transaction, as regards the weaver, is
 this, that instead of being in possession of the linen, he now has the
 Bible; instead of his original commodity, he now possesses another of the
 same value but of different utility. In like manner he procures his other
 means of subsistence and means of production. From his point of view, the
 whole process effectuates nothing more than the exchange of the product
 of his labour for the product of some one else’s, nothing more than an
 exchange of products.
The exchange of commodities is therefore accompanied by
 the following changes in their form.
The result of the whole process is, so far as concerns the objects themselves,
 C — C, the exchange of one commodity for another, the circulation of materialised
 social labour. When this result is attained, the process is at an end.
We see then, commodities are in love with money, but “the course
 of true love never did run smooth.” The quantitative division of labour
 is brought about in exactly the same spontaneous and accidental manner
 as its qualitative division. The owners of commodities therefore find out,
 that the same division of labour that turns them into independent private
 producers, also frees the social process of production and the relations
 of the individual producers to each other within that process, from all
 dependence on the will of those producers, and that the seeming mutual
 independence of the individuals is supplemented by a system of general
 and mutual dependence through or by means of the products.
The division of labour converts the product of labour into a commodity,
 and thereby makes necessary its further conversion into money. At the same
 time it also makes the accomplishment of this transubstantiation quite
 accidental. Here, however, we are only concerned with the phenomenon in
 its integrity, and we therefore assume its progress to be normal. Moreover,
 if the conversion take place at all, that is, if the commodity be not absolutely
 unsaleable, its metamorphosis does take place although the price realised
 may be abnormally above or below the value.
The seller has his commodity replaced by gold, the buyer has his
 gold replaced by a commodity. The fact which here stares us in the face
 is, that a commodity and gold, 20 yards of linen and £2, have changed
 hands and places, in other words, that they have been exchanged. But for
 what is the commodity exchanged? For the shape assumed by its own value,
 for the universal equivalent. And for what is the gold exchanged? For a
 particular form of its own use-value. Why does gold take the form of money
 face to face with the linen? Because the linen’s price of £2, its
 denomination in money, has already equated the linen to gold in its character
 of money. A commodity strips off its original commodity-form on being alienated,
 i.e., on the instant its use-value actually attracts the gold, that
 before existed only ideally in its price. The realisation of a commodity’s
 price, or of its ideal value-form, is therefore at the same time the realisation
 of the ideal use-value of money; the conversion of a commodity into money,
 is the simultaneous conversion of money into a commodity. The apparently
 single process is in reality a double one. From the pole of the commodity-owner
 it is a sale, from the opposite pole of the money-owner, it is a purchase.
 In other words, a sale is a purchase, C—M is also M—C. [18]
Because money is the metamorphosed shape of all other commodities, the
 result of their general alienation, for this reason it is alienable itself
 without restriction or condition. It reads all prices backwards, and thus,
 so to say, depicts itself in the bodies of all other commodities, which
 offer to it the material for the realisation of its own use-value. At the
 same time the prices, wooing glances cast at money by commodities, define
 the limits of its convertibility, by pointing to its quantity. Since every
 commodity, on becoming money, disappears as a commodity, it is impossible
 to tell from the money itself, how it got into the hands of its possessor,
 or what article has been changed into it. Non olet, from whatever source
 it may come. Representing on the one hand a sold commodity, it represents
 on the other a commodity to be bought. [22]
M—C, a purchase, is, at the same time, C—M, a sale; the concluding
 metamorphosis of one commodity is the first metamorphosis of another. With
 regard to our weaver, the life of his commodity ends with the Bible, into
 which he has reconverted his £2. But suppose the seller of the Bible
 turns the £2 set free by the weaver into brandy M—C, the concluding
 phase of C—M—C (linen—money—Bible), is also C—M, the first phase
 of C—M—C (Bible—money—brandy). The producer of a particular commodity
 has that one article alone to offer; this he sells very often in large
 quantities, but his many and various wants compel him to split up the price
 realised, the sum of money set free, into numerous purchases. Hence a sale
 leads to many purchases of various articles. The concluding metamorphosis
 of a commodity thus constitutes an aggregation of first metamorphoses of
 various other commodities.
If we now consider the completed metamorphosis of a commodity,
 as a whole, it appears in the first place, that it is made up of two opposite
 and complementary movements, C—M and M—C. These two antithetical transmutations
 of a commodity are brought about by two antithetical social acts on the
 part of the owner, and these acts in their turn stamp the character of
 the economic parts played by him. As the person who makes a sale, he is
 a seller; as the person who makes a purchase, he is a buyer. But just as,
 upon every such transmutation of a commodity, its two forms, commodity-form
 and money-form, exist simultaneously but at opposite poles, so every seller
 has a buyer opposed to him, and every buyer a seller. While one particular
 commodity is going through its two transmutations in succession, from a
 commodity into money and from money into another commodity,
 the owner of the commodity changes in succession his part from that of
 seller to that of buyer. These characters of seller and buyer are therefore
 not permanent, but attach themselves in turns to the various persons engaged
 in the circulation of commodities.
The complete metamorphosis of a commodity, in its simplest form,
 implies four extremes, and three dramatic personae. First, a commodity
 comes face to face with money; the latter is the form taken by the value
 of the former, and exists in all its hard reality, in the pocket of the
 buyer. A commodity-owner is thus brought into contact with a possessor
 of money. So soon, now, as the commodity has been changed into money, the
 money becomes its transient equivalent-form, the use-value of which equivalent-form
 is to be found in the bodies of other commodities. Money, the final term
 of the first transmutation, is at the same time the starting-point for
 the second. The person who is a seller in the first transaction thus becomes
 a buyer in the second, in which a third commodity-owner appears on the
 scene as a seller. [23]
The two phases, each inverse to the other, that make up the metamorphosis
 of a commodity constitute together a circular movement, a circuit: commodity-form,
 stripping off of this form, and return to the commodity-form. No doubt,
 the commodity appears here under two different aspects. At the starting-point
 it is not a use-value to its owner; at the finishing point it is. So, too,
 the money appears in the first phase as a solid crystal of value, a crystal
 into which the commodity eagerly solidifies, and in the second, dissolves
 into the mere transient equivalent-form destined to be replaced by a use-value.
The two metamorphoses constituting the circuit are at the same
 time two inverse partial metamorphoses of two other commodities. One and
 the same commodity, the linen, opens the series of its own metamorphoses,
 and completes the metamorphosis of another (the wheat). In the first phase
 or sale, the linen plays these two parts in its own person. But, then,
 changed into gold, it completes its own second and final metamorphosis,
 and helps at the same time to accomplish the first metamorphosis of a third
 commodity. Hence the circuit made by one commodity in the course of its
 metamorphoses is inextricably mixed up with the circuits of other commodities.
 The total of all the different circuits constitutes the circulation
 of commodities.
The circulation of commodities differs from the direct exchange
 of products (barter), not only in form, but in substance. Only consider
 the course of events. The weaver has, as a matter of fact, exchanged his
 linen for a Bible, his own commodity for that of some one else. But this
 is true only so far as he himself is concerned. The seller of the Bible,
 who prefers something to warm his inside, no more thought of exchanging
 his Bible for linen than our weaver knew that wheat had been exchanged
 for his linen. B’s commodity replaces that of A, but A and B do not mutually
 exchange those commodities. It may, of course, happen that A and B make
 simultaneous purchases, the one from the other; but such exceptional transactions
 are by no means the necessary result of the general conditions of the circulation
 of commodities. We see here, on the one hand, how the exchange of commodities
 breaks through all local and personal bounds inseparable from direct barter,
 and develops the circulation of the products of social labour; and on the
 other hand, how it develops a whole network of social relations spontaneous
 in their growth and entirely beyond the control of the actors. It is only
 because the farmer has sold his wheat that the weaver is enabled to sell
 his linen, only because the weaver has sold his linen that our Hotspur
 is enabled to sell his Bible, and only because the latter has sold the
 water of everlasting life that the distiller is enabled to sell his eau-de-vie,
 and so on.
The process of circulation, therefore, does not, like direct barter
 of products, become extinguished upon the use-values changing places and
 hands. The money does not vanish on dropping out of the circuit of the
 metamorphosis of a given commodity. It is constantly being precipitated
 into new places in the arena of circulation vacated by other commodities.
 In the complete metamorphosis of the linen, for example, linen — money
 — Bible, the linen first falls out of circulation, and money steps into
 its place. Then the Bible falls out of circulation, and again money takes
 its place. When one commodity replaces another, the money-commodity always
 sticks to the hands of some third person. [24] Circulation sweats money from every pore.
The change of form, C—M—C, by which the circulation of the material
 products of labour is brought about, requires that a given value in the
 shape of a commodity shall begin the process, and shall, also in the shape
 of a commodity, end it. The movement of the commodity is therefore a circuit.
 On the other hand, the form of this movement precludes a circuit from being
 made by the money. The result is not the return of the money, but its continued
 removal further and further away from its starting-point. So long as the
 seller sticks fast to his money, which is the transformed shape of his
 commodity, that commodity is still in the first phase of its metamorphosis,
 and has completed only half its course. But so soon as he completes the
 process, so soon as he supplements his sale by a purchase, the money again
 leaves the hands of its possessor. It is true that if the weaver, after
 buying the Bible, sell more linen, money comes back into his hands. But
 this return is not owing to the circulation of the first 20 yards of linen;
 that circulation resulted in the money getting into the hands of the seller
 of the Bible. The return of money into the hands of the weaver is brought
 about only by the renewal or repetition of the process of circulation with
 a fresh commodity, which renewed process ends with the same result as its
 predecessor did. Hence the movement directly imparted to money by the circulation
 of commodities takes the form of a constant motion away from its starting-point,
 of a course from the hands of one commodity-owner into those of another.
 This course constitutes its currency (cours de la monnaie).
Again, money functions as a means of circulation only because
 in it the values of commodities have independent reality. Hence its movement,
 as the medium of circulation, is, in fact, merely the movement of commodities
 while changing their forms. This fact must therefore make itself plainly
 visible in the currency of money. Thus the linen for instance, first of
 all changes its commodity-form into its money-form. The second term of its
 first metamorphosis, C—M, the money form, then becomes the
 first term of its final metamorphosis, M—C, its re-conversion into the
 Bible. But each of these two changes of form is accomplished by an exchange
 between commodity and money, by their reciprocal displacement. The
 same pieces of coin come into the seller’s hand as the alienated
 form of the commodity and leave it as the absolutely alienable form
 of the commodity. They are displaced twice. The first metamorphosis
 of the linen puts these coins into the weaver’s pocket, the second draws
 them out of it. The two inverse changes undergone by the same commodity
 are reflected in the displacement, twice repeated, but in opposite directions,
 of the same pieces of coin.
If, on the contrary, only one phase of the metamorphosis is gone
 through, if there are only sales or only purchases, then a given piece
 of money changes its place only once. Its second change of place always
 expresses the second metamorphosis of the commodity, its re-conversion
 from money. The frequent repetition of the displacement of the same coins
 reflects not only the series of metamorphoses that a single commodity has
 gone through, but also the intertwining of the innumerable metamorphoses
 in the world of commodities in general. It is a matter of course, that
 all this is applicable to the simple circulation of commodities alone,
 the only form that we are now considering.
Every commodity, when it first steps into circulation, and undergoes
 its first change of form, does so only to fall out of circulation again
 and to be replaced by other commodities. Money, on the contrary, as the
 medium of circulation, keeps continually within the sphere of circulation,
 and moves about in it. The question therefore arises, how much money this
 sphere constantly absorbs?
On this supposition then, the quantity of the medium of circulation is
 determined by the sum of the prices that have to be realised. If now we
 further suppose the price of each commodity to be given, the sum of the
 prices clearly depends on the mass of commodities in circulation. It requires
 but little racking of brains to comprehend that if one quarter of wheat
 costs £2,100 quarters will cost £200, 200 quarters £400,
 and so on, that consequently the quantity of money that changes place with
 the wheat, when sold, must increase with the quantity of that wheat.
The total circulation of commodities in a given country during
 a given period is made up on the one hand of numerous isolated and simultaneous
 partial metamorphoses, sales which are at the same time purchases, in which
 each coin changes its place only once, or makes only one move; on the other
 hand, of numerous distinct series of metamorphoses partly running side
 by side, and partly coalescing with each other, in each of which series
 each coin makes a number of moves, the number being greater or less according
 to circumstances. The total number of moves made by all the circulating
 coins of one denomination being given, we can arrive at the average number
 of moves made by a single coin of that denomination, or at the average
 velocity of the currency of money. The quantity of money thrown into the
 circulation at the beginning of each day is of course determined by the
 sum of the prices of all the commodities circulating simultaneously side
 by side. But once in circulation, coins are, so to say, made responsible
 for one another. If the one increase its velocity, the other either retards
 its own, or altogether falls out of circulation; for the circulation can
 absorb only such a quantity of gold as when multiplied by the mean number
 of moves made by one single coin or element, is equal to the sum of the
 prices to be realised. Hence if the number of moves made by the separate
 pieces increase, the total number of those pieces in circulation diminishes.
 If the number of the moves diminish, the total number of pieces increases.
 Since the quantity of money capable of being absorbed by the circulation
 is given for a given mean velocity of currency, all that is necessary in
 order to abstract a given number of sovereigns from the circulation is
 to throw the same number of one-pound notes into it, a trick well known
 to all bankers.
Just as the currency of money, generally considered, is but a
 reflex of the circulation of commodities, or of the antithetical metamorphoses
 they undergo, so, too, the velocity of that currency reflects the rapidity
 with which commodities change their forms, the continued interlacing of
 one series of metamorphoses with another, the hurried social interchange
 of matter, the rapid disappearance of commodities from the sphere of circulation,
 and the equally rapid substitution of fresh ones in their places. Hence,
 in the velocity of the currency we have the fluent unity of the antithetical
 and complementary phases, the unity of the conversion of the useful aspect
 of commodities into their value-aspect, and their re-conversion from the
 latter aspect to the former, or the unity of the two processes of sale
 and purchase. On the other hand, the retardation of the currency reflects
 the separation of these two processes into isolated antithetical phases,
 reflects the stagnation in the change of form, and therefore, in the social
 interchange of matter. The circulation itself, of course, gives no clue
 to the origin of this stagnation; it merely puts in evidence the phenomenon
 itself. The general public, who, simultaneously with the retardation of
 the currency, see money appear and disappear less frequently at the periphery
 of circulation, naturally attribute this retardation to a quantitative
 deficiency in the circulating medium. [30]
The total quantity of money functioning during a given period
 as the circulating medium, is determined, on the one hand, by the sum of
 the prices of the circulating commodities, and on the other hand, by the
 rapidity with which the antithetical phases of the metamorphoses follow
 one another. On this rapidity depends what proportion of the sum
 of the prices can, on the average, be realised by each single coin. But
 the sum of the prices of the circulating commodities depends on the quantity,
 as well as on the prices, of the commodities. These three factors, however,
 state of prices, quantity of circulating commodities, and velocity of money-currency,
 are all variable. Hence, the sum of the prices to be realised, and consequently
 the quantity of the circulating medium depending on that sum, will vary
 with the numerous variations of these three factors in combination. Of
 these variations we shall consider those alone that have been the most
 important in the history of prices.
While prices remain constant, the quantity of the circulating
 medium may increase owing to the number of circulating commodities increasing,
 or to the velocity of currency decreasing, or to a combination of the two.
 On the other hand the quantity of the circulating medium may decrease with
 a decreasing number of commodities, or with an increasing rapidity of their
 circulation.
With a general rise in the prices of commodities, the quantity
 of the circulating medium will remain constant, provided the number of
 commodities in circulation decrease proportionally to the increase in their
 prices, or provided the velocity of currency increase at the same rate
 as prices rise, the number of commodities in circulation remaining constant.
 The quantity of the circulating medium may decrease, owing to the number
 of commodities decreasing more rapidly; or to the velocity of currency increasing more rapidly, than prices rise.
With a general fall in the prices of commodities, the quantity
 of the circulating medium will remain constant, provided the number of
 commodities increase proportionally to their fall in price, or provided
 the velocity of currency decrease in the same proportion. The quantity
 of the circulating medium will increase, provided the number of commodities
 increase quicker, or the rapidity of circulation decrease quicker, than
 the prices fall.
The variations of the different factors may mutually compensate
 each other, so that notwithstanding their continued instability, the sum
 of the prices to be realised and the quantity of money in circulation remain
 constant; consequently, we find, especially if we take long periods into
 consideration, that the deviations from the average level, of the quantity
 of money current in any country, are much smaller than we should at first
 sight expect, apart of course from excessive perturbations periodically
 arising from industrial and commercial crises, or less frequently, from
 fluctuations in the value of money.
The law, that the quantity of the circulating medium is determined
 by the sum of the prices of the commodities circulating, and the average
 velocity of currency [31]
 may also be stated as follows: given the sum of the values of commodities,
 and the average rapidity of their metamorphoses, the quantity of precious
 metal current as money depends on the value of that precious metal. The
 erroneous opinion that it is, on the contrary, prices that are determined
 by the quantity of the circulating medium, and that the latter depends
 on the quantity of the precious metals in a country; [32]
 this opinion was based by those who first held it, on the absurd hypothesis
 that commodities are without a price, and money without a value, when they
 first enter into circulation, and that, once in the circulation,
 an aliquot part of the medley of commodities is exchanged for an aliquot
 part of the heap of precious metals. [33]
That money takes the shape of coin, springs from its function as the
 circulating medium. The weight of gold represented in imagination by the
 prices or money-names of commodities, must confront those commodities,
 within the circulation, in the shape of coins or pieces of gold of a given
 denomination. Coining, like the establishment of a standard of prices,
 is the business of the State. The different national uniforms worn at home
 by gold and silver as coins, and doffed again in the market of the world,
 indicate the separation between the internal or national spheres of the
 circulation of commodities, and their universal sphere.
The only difference, therefore, between coin and bullion,
 is one of shape, and gold can at any time pass from one form to the other.
 [34] But no sooner does coin leave the mint, than it
 immediately finds itself on the high-road to the melting pot. During their
 currency, coins wear away, some more, others less. Name and substance,
 nominal weight and real weight, begin their process of separation. Coins
 of the same denomination become different in value, because they are different
 in weight. The weight of gold fixed upon as the standard of prices, deviates
 from the weight that serves as the circulating medium, and the latter thereby
 ceases any longer to be a real equivalent of the commodities whose prices
 it realises. The history of coinage during the middle ages and down into
 the 18th century, records the ever renewed confusion arising from this
 cause. The natural tendency of circulation to convert coins into a mere
 semblance of what they profess to be, into a symbol of the weight of metal
 they are officially supposed to contain, is recognised by modern legislation,
 which fixes the loss of weight sufficient to demonetise a gold coin, or
 to make it no longer legal tender.
The fact that the currency of coins itself effects a separation
 between their nominal and their real weight, creating a distinction between
 them as mere pieces of metal on the one hand, and as coins with a definite
 function on the other — this fact implies the latent possibility of replacing
 metallic coins by tokens of some other material, by symbols serving the
 same purposes as coins. The practical difficulties in the way of coining
 extremely minute quantities of gold or silver, and the circumstance that
 at first the less precious metal is used as a measure of value instead
 of the-more precious, copper instead of silver, silver instead of gold,
 and that the less precious circulates as money until dethroned by the more
 precious — all these facts explain the parts historically played by silver
 and copper tokens as substitutes for gold coins. Silver and copper tokens
 take the place of gold in those regions of the circulation where
 coins pass from hand to hand most rapidly, and are subject to the maximum
 amount of wear and tear. This occurs where sales and purchases on a very
 small scale are continually happening. In order to prevent these satellites
 from establishing themselves permanently in the place of gold, positive
 enactments determine the extent to which they must be compulsorily received
 as payment instead of gold. The particular tracks pursued by the different
 species of coin in currency, run naturally into each other. The tokens
 keep company with gold, to pay fractional parts of the smallest gold coin;
 gold is, on the one hand, constantly pouring into retail circulation, and
 on the other hand is as constantly being thrown out again by being changed
 into tokens. [35]
The weight of metal in the silver and copper tokens is arbitrarily
 fixed by law. When in currency, they wear away even more rapidly than gold
 coins. Hence their functions are totally independent of their weight, and
 consequently of all value. The function of gold as coin becomes completely
 independent of the metallic value of that gold. Therefore things that are
 relatively without value, such as paper notes, can serve as coins in its
 place. This purely symbolic character is to a certain extent masked in
 metal tokens. In paper money it stands out plainly. In fact, ce n’est que
 le premier pas qui coûte.
We allude here only to inconvertible paper money issued by the
 State and having compulsory circulation. It has its immediate origin in
 the metallic currency. Money based upon credit implies on the other hand
 conditions, which, from our standpoint of the simple circulation of commodities,
 are as yet totally unknown to us. But we may affirm this much, that just
 as true paper money takes its rise in the function of money as the circulating
 medium, so money based upon credit takes root spontaneously in the function
 of money as the means of payment. [36]
Paper money is a token representing gold or money. The relation
 between it and the values of commodities is this, that the latter are ideally
 expressed in the same quantities of gold that are symbolically represented
 by the paper. Only in so far as paper money represents gold, which like
 all other commodities has value, is it a symbol of value. [37]
The commodity that functions as a measure of value,
 and, either in its own person or by a representative, as the medium of
 circulation, is money. Gold (or silver) is therefore money. It functions
 as money, on the one hand, when it has to be present in its own golden
 person. It is then the money-commodity, neither merely ideal, as in its
 function of a measure of value, nor capable of being represented, as in
 its function of circulating medium. On the other hand, it also functions
 as money, when by virtue of its function, whether that function be performed
 in person or by representative, it congeals into the sole form of value,
 the only adequate form of existence of exchange-value, in opposition to
 use-value, represented by all other commodities.
The continual movement in circuits of the two antithetical metamorphoses
 of commodities, or the never ceasing alternation of sale and purchase,
 is reflected in the restless currency of money, or in the function that
 money performs of a perpetuum mobile of circulation. But so soon
 as the series of metamorphoses is interrupted, so soon as sales are not
 supplemented by subsequent purchases, money ceases to be mobilised; it
 is transformed, as Boisguillebert says, from “meuble” into “immeuble,” 
 from movable into immovable, from coin into money.
With the very earliest development of the circulation of commodities,
 there is also developed the necessity, and the passionate desire, to hold
 fast the product of the first metamorphosis. This product is the transformed
 shape of the commodity, or its gold-chrysalis. [39]
 Commodities are thus sold not for the purpose of buying others, but in
 order to replace their commodity-form by their money-form. From being the
 mere means of effecting the circulation of commodities, this change of
 form becomes the end and aim. The changed form of the commodity is thus
 prevented from functioning as its unconditionally alienable form, or as
 its merely transient money-form. The money becomes petrified into a hoard,
 and the seller becomes a hoarder of money.
In the early stages of the circulation of commodities, it is the
 surplus use-values alone that are converted into money. Gold and silver
 thus become of themselves social expressions for superfluity or wealth.
 This naive form of hoarding becomes perpetuated in those communities in
 which the traditional mode of production is carried on for the supply of
 a fixed and limited circle of home wants. It is thus with the people of
 Asia, and particularly of the East Indies. Vanderlint, who fancies that
 the prices of commodities in a country are determined by the quantity of
 gold and silver to be found in it, asks himself why Indian commodities
 are so cheap. Answer: Because the Hindus bury their money. From 1602 to
 1734, he remarks, they buried 150 millions of pounds sterling of silver,
 which originally came from America to Europe. [40] In
 the 10 years from 1856 to 1866, England exported to India and China £120,000,000
 in silver, which had been received in exchange for Australian gold. Most
 of the silver exported to China makes its way to India.
A commodity, in its capacity of a use-value, satisfies a particular
 want, and is a particular element of material wealth. But the value of
 a commodity measures the degree of its attraction for all other elements
 of material wealth, and therefore measures the social wealth of its owner.
 To a barbarian owner of commodities, and even to a West-European peasant,
 value is the same as value-form, and therefore to him the increase in
 his hoard of gold and silver is an increase in value. It is true that the
 value of money varies, at one time in consequence of a variation in its
 own value, at another, in consequence of a change in the values of commodities.
 But this, on the one hand, does not prevent 200 ounces of gold from still
 containing more value than 100 ounces, nor, on the other hand, does it
 hinder the actual metallic form of this article from continuing to be the
 universal equivalent form of all other commodities, and the immediate social
 incarnation of all human labour. The desire after hoarding is in its very
 nature unsatiable. In its qualitative aspect, or formally considered, money
 has no bounds to its efficacy, i.e., it is the universal representative
 of material wealth, because it is directly convertible into any other commodity.
 But, at the same time, every actual sum of money is limited in amount,
 and, therefore, as a means of purchasing, has only a limited efficacy.
 This antagonism between the quantitative limits of money and its qualitative
 boundlessness, continually acts as a spur to the hoarder in his Sisyphus-like
 labour of accumulating. It is with him as it is with a conqueror who sees
 in every new country annexed, only a new boundary.
In order that gold may be held as money, and made to form a hoard,
 it must be prevented from circulating, or from transforming itself into
 a means of enjoyment. The hoarder, therefore, makes a sacrifice of the
 lusts of the flesh to his gold fetish. He acts in earnest up to the Gospel
 of abstention. On the other hand, he can withdraw from circulation no more
 than what he has thrown into it in the shape of commodities. The more he
 produces, the more he is able to sell. Hard work, saving, and avarice are,
 therefore, his three cardinal virtues, and to sell much and buy little
 the sum of his political economy. [45]
By the side of the gross form of a hoard, we find also its aesthetic
 form in the possession of gold and silver articles. This grows with the
 wealth of civil society. “Soyons riches ou paraissons riches” (Diderot).
In this way there is created, on the one hand, a constantly
 extending market for gold and silver, unconnected with their functions
 as money, and, on the other hand, a latent source of supply, to which recourse
 is had principally in times of crisis and social disturbance.
Hoarding serves various purposes in the economy of the metallic
 circulation. Its first function arises out of the conditions to which the
 currency of gold and silver coins is subject. We have seen how, along with
 the continual fluctuations in the extent and rapidity of the circulation
 of commodities and in their prices, the quantity of money current unceasingly
 ebbs and flows. This mass must, therefore, be capable of expansion and
 contraction. At one time money must be attracted in order to act as circulating
 coin, at another, circulating coin must be repelled in order to act again
 as more or less stagnant money. In order that the mass of money, actually
 current, may constantly saturate the absorbing power of the circulation,
 it is necessary that the quantity of gold and silver in a country be greater
 than the quantity required to function as coin. This condition is fulfilled
 by money taking the form of hoards. These reserves serve as conduits for
 the supply or withdrawal of money to or from the circulation, which in
 this way never overflows its banks. [46]
In the simple form of the circulation of commodities hitherto considered,
 we found a given value always presented to us in a double shape, as a commodity
 at one pole, as money at the opposite pole. The owners of commodities came
 therefore into contact as the respective representatives of what were already
 equivalents. But with the development of circulation, conditions arise
 under which the alienation of commodities becomes separated, by an interval
 of time, from the realisation of their prices. It will be sufficient
 to indicate the most simple of these conditions. One sort of article requires
 a longer, another a shorter time for its production. Again, the production
 of different commodities depends on different seasons of the year. One
 sort of commodity may be born on its own market place, another has to make
 a long journey to market. Commodity-owner No. 1, may therefore be ready
 to sell, before No. 2 is ready to buy. When the same transactions are continually
 repeated between the same persons, the conditions of sale are regulated
 in accordance with the conditions of production. On the other hand, the
 use of a given commodity, of a house, for instance, is sold (in common
 parlance, let) for a definite period. Here, it is only at the end of the
 term that the buyer has actually received the use-value of the commodity.
 He therefore buys it before he pays for it. The vendor sells an existing
 commodity, the purchaser buys as the mere representative of money, or rather
 of future money. The vendor becomes a creditor, the purchaser becomes a
 debtor. Since the metamorphosis of commodities, or the development of their
 value-form, appears here under a new aspect, money also acquires a fresh
 function; it becomes the means of payment.
The character of creditor, or of debtor, results here from the
 simple circulation. The change in the form of that circulation stamps buyer
 and seller with this new die. At first, therefore, these new parts are
 just as transient and alternating as those of seller and buyer, and are
 in turns played by the same actors. But the opposition is not nearly so
 pleasant, and is far more capable of crystallisation. [47]
 The same characters can, however, be assumed independently of the circulation
 of commodities. The class-struggles of the ancient world took the form
 chiefly of a contest between debtors and creditors, which in Rome ended
 in the ruin of the plebeian debtors. They were displaced by slaves. In
 the middle ages the contest ended with the ruin of the feudal debtors,
 who lost their political power together with the economic basis on which
 it was established. Nevertheless, the money relation of debtor and creditor
 that existed at these two periods reflected only the deeper-lying antagonism
 between the general economic conditions of existence of the classes in
 question.
Let us return to the circulation of commodities. The appearance
 of the two equivalents, commodities and money, at the two poles of the
 process of sale, has ceased to be simultaneous. The money functions now,
 first as a measure of value in the determination of the price of the commodity
 sold; the price fixed by the contract measures the obligation of the debtor,
 or the sum of money that he has to pay at a fixed date. Secondly, it serves
 as an ideal means of purchase. Although existing only in the promise of
 the buyer to pay, it causes the commodity to change hands. It is not before
 the day fixed for payment that the means of payment actually steps into
 circulation, leaves the hand of the buyer for that of the seller. The circulating
 medium was transformed into a hoard, because the process stopped short
 after the first phase, because the converted shape of the commodity, viz.,
 the money, was withdrawn from circulation. The means of payment enters
 the circulation, but only after the commodity has left it. The money is
 no longer the means that brings about the process. It only brings it to
 a close, by stepping in as the absolute form of existence of exchange-value,
 or as the universal commodity. The seller turned his commodity into money,
 in order thereby to satisfy some want, the hoarder did the same in order
 to keep his commodity in its money-shape, and the debtor in order to be
 able to pay; if he do not pay, his goods will be sold by the sheriff. The
 value-form of commodities, money, is therefore now the end and aim of a
 sale, and that owing to a social necessity springing out of the process
 of circulation itself.
The buyer converts money back into commodities before he has turned
 commodities into money: in other words, he achieves the second metamorphosis
 of commodities before the first. The seller’s commodity circulates, and
 realises its price, but only in the shape of a legal claim upon money.
 It is converted into a use-value before it has been converted into money.
 The completion of its first metamorphosis follows only at a later period.
 [48]
The obligations falling due within a given period, represent the
 sum of the prices of the commodities, the sale of which gave rise to those
 obligations. The quantity of gold necessary to realise this sum, depends,
 in the first instance, on the rapidity of currency of the means of payment.
 That quantity is conditioned by two circumstances: first the relations
 between debtors and creditors form a sort of chain, in such a way that
 A, when he receives money from his debtor B, straightway hands it over to
 C his creditor, and so on; the second circumstance is the length of the
 intervals between the different due-days of the obligations. The continuous
 chain of payments, or retarded first metamorphoses, is essentially different
 from that interlacing of the series of metamorphoses which we considered
 on a former page. By the currency of the circulating medium, the connexion
 between buyers and sellers, is not merely expressed. This connexion is
 originated by, and exists in, the circulation alone. Contrariwise, the
 movement of the means of payment expresses a social relation that was in
 existence long before.
The fact that a number of sales take place simultaneously, and
 side by side, limits the extent to which coin can be replaced by the rapidity
 of currency. On the other hand, this fact is a new lever in economising
 the means of payment. In proportion as payments are concentrated at one
 spot, special institutions and methods are developed for their liquidation.
 Such in the middle ages were the virements at Lyons. The debts due
 to A from B, to B from C, to C from A, and so on, have only to be confronted
 with each other, in order to annul each other to a certain extent like
 positive and negative quantities. There thus remains only a single balance
 to pay. The greater the amount of the payments concentrated, the less is
 this balance relatively to that amount, and the less is the mass of the
 means of payment in circulation.
The function of money as the means of payment implies a contradiction
 without a terminus medius. In so far as the payments balance one another,
 money functions only ideally as money of account, as a measure of value.
 In so far as actual payments have to be made, money does not serve as a
 circulating medium, as a mere transient agent in the interchange of products,
 but as the individual incarnation of social labour, as the independent
 form of existence of exchange-value, as the universal commodity. This contradiction
 comes to a head in those phases of industrial and commercial crises which
 are known as monetary crises. [49]Such a crisis occurs
 only where the ever-lengthening chain of payments, and an artificial system
 of settling them, has been fully developed. Whenever there is a general
 and extensive disturbance of this mechanism, no matter what its cause,
 money becomes suddenly and immediately transformed, from its merely ideal
 shape of money of account, into hard cash. Profane commodities can no longer
 replace it. The use-value of commodities becomes valueless, and their value vanishes
 in the presence of its own independent form. On the eve of the crisis,
 the bourgeois, with the self-sufficiency that springs from intoxicating
 prosperity, declares money to be a vain imagination. Commodities alone
 are money. But now the cry is everywhere: money alone is a commodity! As
 the hart pants after fresh water, so pants his soul after money, the only
 wealth. [50] In a crisis, the antithesis between commodities
 and their value-form, money, becomes heightened into an absolute contradiction.
 Hence, in such events, the form under which money appears is of no importance.
 The money famine continues, whether payments have to be made in gold or
 in credit money such as bank-notes. [51]
If we now consider the sum total of the money current during a
 given period, we shall find that, given the rapidity of currency of the
 circulating medium and of the means of payment, it is equal to the sum
 of the prices to be realised, plus the sum of the payments falling due,
 minus the payments that balance each other, minus finally the number of
 circuits in which the same piece of coin serves in turn as means of circulation
 and of payment. Hence, even when prices, rapidity of currency, and the
 extent of the economy in payments, are given, the quantity of money current
 and the mass of commodities circulating during a given period, such as
 a day, no longer correspond. Money that represents commodities long withdrawn
 from circulation, continues to be current. Commodities circulate, whose
 equivalent in money will not appear on the scene till some future day.
 Moreover, the debts contracted each day, and the payments falling due on
 the same day, are quite incommensurable quantities. [52]
Credit-money springs directly out of the function of money
 as a means of payment. Certificates of the debts owing for the purchased
 commodities circulate for the purpose of transferring those debts to others.
 On the other hand, to the same extent as the system of credit is extended,
 so is the function of money as a means of payment. In that character it
 takes various forms peculiar to itself under which it makes itself at home
 in the sphere of great commercial transactions. Gold and silver coin, on
 the other hand, are mostly relegated to the sphere of retail trade. [53]
When the production of commodities has sufficiently extended itself,
 money begins to serve as the means of payment beyond the sphere of the
 circulation of commodities. It becomes the commodity that is the universal
 subject-matter of all contracts. [54] Rents, taxes,
 and such like payments are transformed from payments in kind into money
 payments. To what extent this transformation depends upon the general conditions of
 production, is shown, to take one example, by the fact that the Roman Empire
 twice failed in its attempt to levy all contributions in money. The unspeakable
 misery of the French agricultural population under Louis XIV., a misery
 so eloquently denounced by Boisguillebert, Marshal Vauban, and others,
 was due not only to the weight of the taxes, but also to the conversion
 of taxes in kind into money taxes. [55] In Asia, on
 the other hand, the fact that state taxes are chiefly composed of rents
 payable in kind, depends on conditions of production that are reproduced
 with the regularity of natural phenomena. And this mode of payment tends
 in its turn to maintain the ancient form of production. It is one of the
 secrets of the conservation of the Ottoman Empire. If the foreign trade,
 forced upon Japan by Europeans, should lead to the substitution of money
 rents for rents in kind, it will be all up with the exemplary agriculture
 of that country. The narrow economic conditions under which that agriculture
 is carried on, will be swept away.
In every country, certain days of the year become by habit recognised
 settling days for various large and recurrent payments. These dates depend,
 apart from other revolutions in the wheel of reproduction, on conditions
 closely connected with the seasons. They also regulate the dates for payments
 that have no direct connexion with the circulation of commodities such
 as taxes, rents, and so on. The quantity of money requisite to make the payments,
 falling due on those dates all over the country, causes periodical, though
 merely superficial, perturbations in the economy of the medium of payment.
 [56]
From the law of the rapidity of currency of the
 means of payment, it follows that the quantity of the means of payment
 required for all periodical payments, whatever their source,
 is in inverse [57] proportion to the length of their
 periods. [58]
The development of money into a medium of payment makes it necessary
 to accumulate money against the dates fixed for the payment of the sums
 owing. While hoarding, as a distinct mode of acquiring riches, vanishes
 with the progress of civil society, the formation of reserves of the means
 of payment grows with that progress.
When money leaves the home sphere of circulation, it strips off the
 local garbs which it there assumes, of a standard of prices, of coin, of
 tokens, and of a symbol of value, and returns to its original form of bullion.
 In the trade between the markets of the world, the value of commodities
 is expressed so as to be universally recognised. Hence their independent
 value-form also, in these cases, confronts them under the shape of universal
 money. It is only in the markets of the world that money acquires to the
 full extent the character of the commodity whose bodily form is also the
 immediate social incarnation of human labour in the abstract. Its real
 mode of existence in this sphere adequately corresponds to its ideal concept.
Within the sphere of home circulation, there can be but one commodity
 which, by serving as a measure of value, becomes money. In the markets
 of the world a double measure of value holds sway, gold and silver. [59]
Money of the world serves as the universal medium of payment,
 as the universal means of purchasing, and as the universally recognised
 embodiment of all wealth. Its function as a means of payment in the settling
 of international balances is its chief one. Hence the watchword of the
 mercantilists, balance of trade. [60] Gold and silver
 serve as international means of purchasing chiefly and necessarily
 in those periods when the customary equilibrium in the interchange of products
 between different nations is suddenly disturbed. And lastly, it serves
 as the universally recognised embodiment of social wealth, whenever the
 question is not of buying or paying, but of transferring wealth from one
 country to another, and whenever this transference in the form of commodities
 is rendered impossible, either by special conjunctures in the markets or
 by the purpose itself that is intended. [61]
Just as every country needs a reserve of money for its home circulation
 so, too, it requires one for external circulation in the markets of the
 world. The functions of hoards, therefore, arise in part out of the function
 of money, as the medium of the home circulation and home payments, and
 in part out of its function of money of the world. [62]
 For this latter function, the genuine money-commodity, actual gold and
 silver, is necessary. On that account, Sir James Steuart, in order to distinguish
 them from their purely local substitutes, calls gold and silver “money
 of the world.”
The current of the stream of gold and silver is a double one.
 On the one hand, it spreads itself from its sources over all the markets
 of the world, in order to become absorbed, to various extents, into the
 different national spheres of circulation, to fill the conduits of currency,
 to replace abraded gold and silver coins, to supply the material of articles
 of luxury, and to petrify into hoards. [63]
 This first current is started by the countries that exchange their labour,
 realised in commodities, for the labour embodied in the precious metals
 by gold and silver-producing countries. On the other hand, there is a continual
 flowing backwards and forwards of gold and silver between the different
 national spheres of circulation, a current whose motion depends on the
 ceaseless fluctuations in the course of exchange. [64]
Countries in which the bourgeois form of production is developed
 to a certain extent, limit the hoards concentrated in the strong rooms
 of the banks to the minimum required for the proper performance of their
 peculiar functions. [65] Whenever these hoards are strikingly
 above their average level, it is, with some exceptions, an indication of
 stagnation in the circulation of commodities, of an interruption in the
 even flow of their metamorphoses. [66]
The circulation of commodities is the starting-point
 of capital. The production of commodities, their circulation, and that
 more developed form of their circulation called commerce, these form the
 historical ground-work from which it rises. The modern history of capital
 dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce
 and a world-embracing market.
If we abstract from the material substance of the circulation
 of commodities, that is, from the exchange of the various use-values, and
 consider only the economic forms produced by this process of circulation,
 we find its final result to be money: this final product of the circulation
 of commodities is the first form in which capital appears.
As a matter of history, capital, as opposed to landed property,
 invariably takes the form at first of money; it appears as moneyed wealth,
 as the capital of the merchant and of the usurer. [1]
 But we have no need to refer to the origin of capital in order to discover
 that the first form of appearance of capital is money. We can see it daily
 under our very eyes. All new capital, to commence with, comes on the stage,
 that is, on the market, whether of commodities, labour, or money, even
 in our days, in the shape of money that by a definite process has to be
 transformed into capital.
The first distinction we notice between money that is money only,
 and money that is capital, is nothing more than a difference in their form
 of circulation.
146The simplest form of the circulation of commodities is C-M-C,
 the transformation of commodities into money, and the change of the money
 back again into commodities; or selling in order to buy. But alongside
 of this form we find another specifically different form: M-C-M, the transformation
 of money into commodities, and the change of commodities back again into
 money; or buying in order to sell. Money that circulates in the latter
 manner is thereby transformed into, becomes capital, and is already potentially
 capital.
Now let us examine the circuit M-C-M a little closer. It consists,
 like the other, of two antithetical phases. In the first phase, M-C, or
 the purchase, the money is changed into a commodity. In the second phase,
 C-M, or the sale, the commodity is changed back again into money. The combination
 of these two phases constitutes the single movement whereby money is exchanged
 for a commodity, and the same commodity is again exchanged for money; whereby
 a commodity is bought in order to be sold, or, neglecting the distinction
 in form between buying and selling, whereby a commodity is bought with
 money, and then money is bought with a commodity. [2]
 The result, in which the phases of the process vanish, is the exchange
 of money for money, M-M. If I purchase 2,000 lbs. of cotton for £100,
 and resell the 2,000 lbs. of cotton for £110, I have, in fact, exchanged
 £100 for £110, money for money.
Now it is evident that the circuit M-C-M would be absurd and without
 meaning if the intention were to exchange by this means two equal sums
 of money, £100 for £100. The miser’s plan would be far simpler
 and surer; he sticks to his £100 instead of exposing it to the dangers
 of circulation. And yet, whether the merchant who has paid £100 for
 his cotton sells it for £110, or lets it go for £100, or even
 £50, his money has, at all events, gone through a characteristic
 and original movement, quite different in kind from that which it goes
 through in the hands of the peasant who sells corn, and with the money
 thus set free buys clothes. We have therefore to examine first the distinguishing
 characteristics of the forms of the circuits M-C-M and C-M-C, and in doing
 this the real difference that underlies the mere difference of form will
 reveal itself.
Let us see, in the first place, what the two forms have in common.
Both circuits are resolvable into the same two antithetical phases,
 C-M, a sale, and M-C, a purchase. In each of these phases the same material
 elements - a commodity, and money, and the same economic 147dramatis
 personae, a buyer and a seller - confront one another. Each circuit is
 the unity of the same two antithetical phases, and in each case this unity
 is brought about by the intervention of three contracting parties, of whom
 one only sells, another only buys, while the third both buys and sells.
What, however, first and foremost distinguishes the circuit C-M-C
 from the circuit M-C-M, is the inverted order of succession of the two
 phases. The simple circulation of commodities begins with a sale and ends
 with a purchase, while the circulation of money as capital begins with
 a purchase and ends with a sale. In the one case both the starting-point
 and the goal are commodities, in the other they are money. In the first
 form the movement is brought about by the intervention of money, in the
 second by that of a commodity.
In the circulation C-M-C, the money is in the end converted into
 a commodity, that serves as a use-value; it is spent once for all. In the
 inverted form, M-C-M, on the contrary, the buyer lays out money in order
 that, as a seller, he may recover money. By the purchase of his commodity
 he throws money into circulation, in order to withdraw it again by the
 sale of the same commodity. He lets the money go, but only with the sly
 intention of getting it back again. The money, therefore, is not spent,
 it is merely advanced. [3]
In the circuit C-M-C, the same piece of money changes its place
 twice. The seller gets it from the buyer and pays it away to another seller.
 The complete circulation, which begins with the receipt, concludes with
 the payment, of money for commodities. It is the very contrary in the circuit
 M-C-M. Here it is not the piece of money that changes its place twice,
 but the commodity. The buyer takes it from the hands of the seller and
 passes it into the hands of another buyer. Just as in the simple circulation
 of commodities the double change of place of the same piece of money effects
 its passage from one hand into another, so here the double change of place
 of the same commodity brings about the reflux of the money to its point
 of departure.
Such reflux is not dependent on the commodity being sold for more
 than was paid for it. This circumstance influences only the amount of the
 money that comes back. The reflux itself takes place, so soon as the purchased
 commodity is resold, in other words, so soon as the circuit M-C-M is completed.
 We have here, therefore, a palpable difference between the circulation
 of money as capital, and its circulation as mere money.
148The circuit C-M-C comes completely to an end, so soon as
 the money brought in by the sale of one commodity is abstracted again by
 the purchase of another.
If, nevertheless, there follows a reflux of money to its starting-point,
 this can only happen through a renewal or repetition of the operation.
 If I sell a quarter of corn for £3, and with this £3 buy clothes,
 the money, so far as I am concerned, is spent and done with. It belongs
 to the clothes merchant. If I now sell a second quarter of corn, money
 indeed flows back to me, not however as a sequel to the first transaction,
 but in consequence of its repetition. The money again leaves me, so soon
 as I complete this second transaction by a fresh purchase. Therefore, in
 the circuit C-M-C, the expenditure of money has nothing to do with its
 reflux. On the other hand, in M-C-M, the reflux of the money is conditioned
 by the very mode of its expenditure. Without this reflux, the operation
 fails, or the process is interrupted and incomplete, owing to the absence
 of its complementary and final phase, the sale.
The circuit C-M-C starts with one commodity, and finishes with
 another, which falls out of circulation and into consumption. Consumption,
 the satisfaction of wants, in one word, use-value, is its end and aim.
 The circuit M-C-M, on the contrary, commences with money and ends with
 money. Its leading motive, and the goal that attracts it, is therefore
 mere exchange-value.
In the simple circulation of commodities, the two extremes of
 the circuit have the same economic form. They are both commodities, and
 commodities of equal value. But they are also use-values differing in their
 qualities, as, for example, corn and clothes. The exchange of products,
 of the different materials in which the labour of society is embodied,
 forms here the basis of the movement. It is otherwise in the circulation
 M-C-M, which at first sight appears purposeless, because tautological.
 Both extremes have the same economic form. They are both money, and therefore
 are not qualitatively different use-values; for money is but the converted
 form of commodities, in which their particular use-values vanish. To exchange
 £100 for cotton, and then this same cotton again for £100,
 is merely a roundabout way of exchanging money for money, the same for
 the same, and appears to be an operation just as purposeless as it is absurd.
 [4] One sum of money is 149distinguishable from
 another only by its amount. The character and tendency of the process M-C-M,
 is therefore not due to any qualitative difference between its extremes,
 both being money, but solely to their quantitative difference. More money
 is withdrawn from circulation at the finish than was thrown into it at
 the start. The cotton that was bought for £100 is perhaps resold
 for £100 + £10 or £110. The exact form of this process
 is therefore M-C-M', where M' = M + D M = the original sum advanced,
 plus an increment. This increment or excess over the original value I call
 “surplus-value.” The value originally advanced, therefore, not only remains
 intact while in circulation, but adds to itself a surplus-value or expands
 itself. It is this movement that converts it into capital.
Of course, it is also possible, that in C-M-C, the two extremes
 C-C, say corn and clothes, may represent different quantities of value.
 The farmer may sell his corn above its value, or may buy the clothes at
 less than their value. He may, on the other hand, “be done” by the clothes
 merchant. Yet, in the form of circulation now under consideration, such
 differences in value are purely accidental. The fact that the corn and
 the clothes are equivalents, does not deprive the process of all meaning,
 as it does in M-C-M. The equivalence of their values is rather a necessary
 condition to its normal course.
151As the conscious representative of this movement, the possessor
 of money becomes a capitalist. His person, or rather his pocket, is the
 point from which the money starts and to which it returns. The expansion
 of value, which is the objective basis or main-spring of the circulation
 M-C-M, becomes his subjective aim, and it is only in so far as the appropriation
 of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of
 his operations, that he functions as a capitalist, that is, as capital
 personified and endowed with consciousness and a will. Use-values must
 therefore never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist; [7]
 neither must the profit on any single transaction. The restless never-ending
 process of profit-making alone is what he aims at. [8]
 This boundless greed after riches, this passionate chase after exchange-value
 [9], is common to the capitalist and the miser; but while
 the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational
 miser. The never-ending augmentation of exchange-value, which the miser
 strives after, by seeking to save [10] his money from
 circulation, is attained by the more acute capitalist, by constantly throwing
 it afresh into circulation. [11]
The independent form, i.e., the money-form, which the value
 of commodities assumes in the case of simple circulation, serves only one
 purpose, namely, their exchange, and vanishes in the final result of the
 movement. On the other hand, in the circulation M-C-M, both the 152money
 and the commodity represent only different modes of existence of value
 itself, the money its general mode, and the commodity its particular, or,
 so to say, disguised mode. [12] It is constantly changing
 from one form to the other without thereby becoming lost, and thus assumes
 an automatically active character. If now we take in turn each of the two
 different forms which self-expanding value successively assumes in the
 course of its life, we then arrive at these two propositions: Capital is
 money: Capital is commodities. [13] In truth, however,
 value is here the active factor in a process, in which, while constantly
 assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time
 changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off surplus-value
 from itself; the original value, in other words, expands spontaneously.
 For the movement, in the course of which it adds surplus-value, is its
 own movement, its expansion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because
 it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value
 to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden
 eggs.
Value, therefore, being the active factor in such a process, and
 assuming at one time the form of money, at another that of commodities,
 but through all these changes preserving itself and expanding, it requires
 some independent form, by means of which its identity may at any time be
 established. And this form it possesses only in the shape of money. It
 is under the form of money that value begins and ends, and begins again,
 every act of its own spontaneous generation. It began by being £100,
 it is now £110, and so on. But the money itself is only one of the
 two forms of value. Unless it takes the form of some commodity, it does
 not become capital. There is here no antagonism, as in the case of hoarding,
 between the money and commodities. The capitalist knows that all commodities,
 however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith
 and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful
 means whereby out of money to make more money.
In simple circulation, C-M-C, the value of commodities attained
 at the most a form independent of their use-values, i.e., the form
 of money; but that same value now in the circulation M-C-M, or the circulation
 of capital, suddenly presents itself as an independent substance, endowed
 with a motion of its own, passing through a life-process of its own, in
 which money and commodities are mere forms which it assumes
 and casts off in turn. Nay, more: instead of simply representing the relations
 of commodities, it enters now, so to say, into private relations with itself.
 It differentiates itself as original value from itself as surplus-value;
 as the father differentiates himself from himself qua the son, yet
 both are one and of one age: for only by the surplus-value of £10
 does the £100 originally advanced become capital, and so soon as
 this takes place, so soon as the son, and by the son, the father, is begotten,
 so soon does their difference vanish, and they again become one, £110.
Value therefore now becomes value in process, money in process,
 and, as such, capital. It comes out of circulation, enters into it again,
 preserves and multiplies itself within its circuit, comes back out of it
 with expanded bulk, and begins the same round ever afresh. [14]
 M-M', money which begets money, such is the description of Capital from
 the mouths of its first interpreters, the Mercantilists.
Buying in order to sell, or, more accurately, buying in order
 to sell dearer, M-C-M', appears certainly to be a form peculiar to one
 kind of capital alone, namely, merchants’ capital. But industrial capital
 too is money, that is changed into commodities, and by the sale of these
 commodities, is re-converted into more money. The events that take place
 outside the sphere of circulation, in the interval between the buying and
 selling, do not affect the form of this movement. Lastly, in the case of
 interest-bearing capital, the circulation M-C-M' appears abridged. We have
 its result without the intermediate stage, in the form M-M', “en style
 lapidaire” so to say, money that is worth more money, value that is greater
 than itself.
M-C-M' is therefore in reality the general formula of capital
 as it appears prima facie within the sphere of circulation.
The form which circulation takes when money
 becomes capital, is opposed to all the laws we have hitherto investigated
 bearing on the nature of commodities, value and money, and even of circulation
 itself. What distinguishes this form from that of the simple circulation
 of commodities, is the inverted order of succession of the two antithetical
 processes, sale and purchase. How can this purely formal distinction between
 these processes change their character as it were by magic?
Let us take the process of circulation in a form under which it
 presents itself as a simple and direct exchange of commodities. This is
 always the case when two owners of commodities buy from each other, and
 on the settling day the amounts mutually owing are equal and cancel each
 other. The money in this case is money of account and serves to express
 the value of the commodities by their prices, but is not, itself, in the
 shape of hard cash, confronted with them. So far as regards use-values,
 it is clear that both parties may gain some advantage. Both part with goods
 that, as use-values, are of no service to them, and receive others that
 they can make use of. And there may also be a further gain. A, who sells
 wine and buys corn, possibly produces more wine, with given labour-time,
 than farmer B could, and B on the other hand, more corn than wine-grower
 A could. A, therefore, may get, for the same exchange-value, more corn,
 and B more wine, than each would respectively get without any exchange
 by producing his own corn and wine. With reference, therefore, to use-value,
 there is good ground for saying that “exchange is a transaction by which
 both sides gain.” [1] It is otherwise with exchange-value.
 
 “A man who has plenty of wine and no corn treats with a man who has plenty
 of corn and no wine; an exchange takes place between them of corn to the
 value of 50, for wine of the same value.This act produces no increase of
 exchange-value either for the one or the other; for each of them already
 possessed, before the exchange, a value equal to that which he acquired
 by means of that operation.” [2] The result is not altered
 by introducing money, as a medium of circulation, between the commodities,
 and making the sale and the purchase 156two distinct acts. [3]
 The value of a commodity is expressed in its price before it goes into
 circulation, and is therefore a precedent condition of circulation, not
 its result. [4]
If commodities, or commodities and money, of equal exchange-value,
 and consequently equivalents, are exchanged, it is plain that no one abstracts
 more value from, than he throws into, circulation. There is no creation
 of surplus-value. And, in its normal form, the circulation of commodities
 demands the exchange of equivalents. But in actual practice, the process
 does not retain its normal form. Let us, therefore, assume an exchange
 of non-equivalents.
In any case the market for commodities is only frequented by owners
 of commodities, and the power which these persons exercise over each other,
 is no other than the power of their commodities. The material variety of
 these commodities is the material incentive to the act of exchange, and
 makes buyers and sellers mutually dependent, because none of them possesses
 the object of his own wants, and each holds in his hand the object of another’s
 wants. Besides these material differences of their use-values, there is
 only one other difference between commodities, namely, that between their
 bodily form and the form into which they are converted by sale, the difference
 between commodities and money. And consequently the owners of commodities
 are distinguishable only as sellers, those who own commodities, and buyers,
 those who own money.
Suppose then, that by some inexplicable privilege, the seller
 is enabled to sell his commodities above their value, what is worth 100
 for 110, in which case the price is nominally raised 10%. The seller therefore
 pockets a surplus-value of 10. But after he has sold he becomes a buyer.
 A third owner of commodities comes to him now as seller, who in this capacity
 also enjoys the privilege of selling his commodities 10% too dear. Our
 friend gained 10 as a seller only to lose it again as a buyer. [11]
 The net result is, that all owners of commodities sell their goods to one
 another at 10% above their value, which comes precisely to the same as
 if they sold them at their true value. Such a general and nominal rise
 of prices has the same effect as if the values had been expressed in weight
 of silver instead of in weight of gold. The nominal prices of commodities
 would rise, but the real relation between their values would remain unchanged.
Let us make the opposite assumption, that the buyer has the privilege
 of purchasing commodities under their value. In this case it is no longer
 necessary to bear in mind that he in his turn will become a seller. He 159was
 so before he became buyer; he had already lost 10% in selling before he
 gained 10% as buyer. [12] Everything is just as it was.
The creation of surplus-value, and therefore the conversion of
 money into capital, can consequently be explained neither on the assumption
 that commodities are sold above their value, nor that they are bought below
 their value. [13]
The problem is in no way simplified by introducing irrelevant
 matters after the manner of Col. Torrens: “Effectual demand consists in
 the power and inclination (!), on the part of consumers, to give for commodities,
 either by immediate or circuitous barter, some greater portion of ... capital
 than their production costs.” [14] In relation to circulation,
 producers and consumers meet only as buyers and sellers. To assert that
 the surplus-value acquired by the producer has its origin in the fact that
 consumers pay for commodities more than their value, is only to say in
 other words: The owner of commodities possesses, as a seller, the privilege
 of selling too dear. The seller has himself produced the commodities or
 represents their producer, but the buyer has to no less extent produced
 the commodities represented by his money, or represents their producer.
 The distinction between them is, that one buys and the other sells. The
 fact that the owner of the commodities, under the designation of producer,
 sells them over their value, and under the designation of consumer, pays
 too much for them, does not carry us a single step further. [15]
To be consistent therefore, the upholders of the delusion that
 surplus-value has its origin in a nominal rise of prices or in the privilege
 which the seller has of selling too dear, must assume the existence of
 a class that only buys and does not sell, i.e., only consumes and does
 not produce. The existence of such a class is inexplicable from the standpoint
 we have so far reached, viz., that of simple circulation. But let us anticipate.
 The money with which such a class is constantly making purchases, must
 constantly flow into their pockets, without any exchange, gratis, by might
 or right, from the pockets of the commodity-owners themselves. 160To
 sell commodities above their value to such a class, is only to crib back
 again a part of the money previously given to it. [16]
 The towns of Asia Minor thus paid a yearly money tribute to ancient Rome.
 With this money Rome purchased from them commodities, and purchased them
 too dear. The provincials cheated the Romans, and thus got back from their
 conquerors, in the course of trade, a portion of the tribute. Yet, for
 all that, the conquered were the really cheated. Their goods were still
 paid for with their own money. That is not the way to get rich or to create
 surplus-value.
Let us therefore keep within the bounds of exchange where sellers
 are also buyers, and buyers, sellers. Our difficulty may perhaps have arisen
 from treating the actors as personifications instead of as individuals.
A may be clever enough to get the advantage of B or C without
 their being able to retaliate. A sells wine worth £40 to B, and obtains
 from him in exchange corn to the value of £50. A has converted his
 £40 into £50, has made more money out of less, and has converted
 his commodities into capital. Let us examine this a little more closely.
 Before the exchange we had £40 worth of wine in the hands of A, and
 £50 worth of corn in those of B, a total value of £90. After
 the exchange we have still the same total value of £90. The value
 in circulation has not increased by one iota, it is only distributed differently
 between A and B. What is a loss of value to B is surplus-value to A; what
 is “minus” to one is “plus” to the other. The same change would have taken
 place, if A, without the formality of an exchange, had directly stolen
 the £10 from B. The sum of the values in circulation can clearly
 not be augmented by any change in their distribution, any more than the
 quantity of the precious metals in a country by a Jew selling a Queen Anne’s
 farthing for a guinea. The capitalist class, as a whole, in any country,
 cannot over-reach themselves. [17]
Turn and twist then as we may, the fact remains unaltered. If
 equivalents are exchanged, no surplus-value results, and if non-equivalents 161are
 exchanged, still no surplus-value. [18] Circulation,
 or the exchange of commodities, begets no value. [19]
The reason is now therefore plain why, in analysing the standard
 form of capital, the form under which it determines the economic organisation
 of modern society, we entirely left out of consideration its most popular,
 and, so to say, antediluvian forms, merchants’ capital and money-lenders’
 capital.
The circuit M-C-M, buying in order to sell dearer, is seen most
 clearly in genuine merchants’ capital. But the movement takes place entirely
 within the sphere of circulation. Since, however, it is impossible, by
 circulation alone, to account for the conversion of money into capital,
 for the formation of surplus-value, it would appear, that merchants’ capital
 is an impossibility, so long as equivalents are exchanged; [20]
 that, therefore, it can only have its origin in the two-fold advantage
 gained, over both the selling and the buying producers, by the merchant
 who parasitically shoves himself in between them. It is in this sense that
 Franklin says, “war is robbery, commerce is generally cheating.” [21]
 If the transformation of merchants’ money into capital is to be explained
 otherwise than by the producers being simply cheated, a long series of
 intermediate steps would be necessary, which, at present, when the simple
 circulation of commodities forms our only assumption, are entirely wanting.
What we have said with reference to merchants’ capital, applies
 still more to money-lenders’ capital. In merchants’ capital, the two extremes,
 the money that is thrown upon the market, and the augmented money that
 is withdrawn from the market, are at least connected by a purchase 162and
 a sale, in other words by the movement of the circulation. In money-lenders’
 capital the form M-C-M is reduced to the two extremes without a mean, M-M
 , money exchanged for more money, a form that is incompatible with the
 nature of money, and therefore remains inexplicable from the standpoint
 of the circulation of commodities. Hence Aristotle: “since chrematistic
 is a double science, one part belonging to commerce, the other to economic,
 the latter being necessary and praiseworthy, the former based on circulation
 and with justice disapproved (for it is not based on Nature, but on mutual
 cheating), therefore the usurer is most rightly hated, because money itself
 is the source of his gain, and is not used for the purposes for which it
 was invented. For it originated for the exchange of commodities, but interest
 makes out of money, more money. Hence its name ([greek: tokos] interest
 and offspring). For the begotten are like those who beget them. But interest
 is money of money, so that of all modes of making a living, this is the
 most contrary to Nature.” [22]
In the course of our investigation, we shall find that both merchants’
 capital and interest-bearing capital are derivative forms, and at the same
 time it will become clear, why these two forms appear in the course of
 history before the modern standard form of capital.
We have shown that surplus-value cannot be created by circulation,
 and, therefore, that in its formation, something must take place in the
 background, which is not apparent in the circulation itself. [23]
 But can surplus-value possibly originate anywhere else than in circulation,
 which is the sum total of all the mutual relations of commodity-owners,
 as far as they are determined by their commodities? Apart from circulation,
 the commodity-owner is in relation only with his own commodity. So far
 as regards value, that relation is limited to this, that the commodity
 contains a quantity of his own labour, that quantity being measured by
 a definite social standard. This quantity is expressed by the value of
 the commodity, and since the value is reckoned in money of account, this
 quantity is also expressed by the price, which we will suppose to be £10.
 But his labour is not represented both by the value of the commodity, and
 by a surplus over that value, not by a price of 10 that is also a price
 of 11, not by a value that is greater than itself. The commodity owner
 can, by his labour, create value, but not self-expanding value. He can
 increase the value of his commodity, by adding fresh labour, and therefore
 more value to the value in hand, by making, for instance, leather into
 boots. The same material has now more value, 163because it contains
 a greater quantity of labour. The boots have therefore more value than
 the leather, but the value of the leather remains what it was; it has not
 expanded itself, has not, during the making of the boots, annexed surplus-value.
 It is therefore impossible that outside the sphere of circulation, a producer
 of commodities can, without coming into contact with other commodity-owners,
 expand value, and consequently convert money or commodities into capital.
It is therefore impossible for capital to be produced by circulation,
 and it is equally impossible for it to originate apart from circulation.
 It must have its origin both in circulation and yet not in circulation.
We have, therefore, got a double result.
The conversion of money into capital has to be explained on the
 basis of the laws that regulate the exchange of commodities, in such a
 way that the starting-point is the exchange of equivalents. [24]
 Our friend, Moneybags, who as yet is only an embryo capitalist, must buy
 his commodities at their value, must sell them at their value, and yet
 at the end of the process must withdraw more value from circulation than
 he threw into it at starting. His development into a full-grown capitalist
 must take place, both within the sphere of circulation and without it.
 These are the conditions of the problem. Hic Rhodus, hic salta!25]
The change of value that occurs in the case
 of money intended to be converted into capital, cannot take place in the
 money itself, since in its function of means of purchase and of payment,
 it does no more than realise the price of the commodity it buys or pays
 for; and, as hard cash, it is value petrified, never varying. [1] Just as little can it originate in the second act of circulation, the re-sale of the commodity, which does no more than transform the article from its
 bodily form back again into its money-form. The change must, therefore,
 take place in the commodity bought by the first act, M-C, but not in its
 value, for equivalents are exchanged, and the commodity is paid for at
 its full value. We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that the change
 originates in the use-value, as such, of the commodity, i.e., in its consumption.
 In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity,
 our friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the sphere of
 circulation, in the market, a commodity, whose use-value possesses the
 peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption,
 therefore, is itself an embodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation
 of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special
 commodity in capacity for labour or labour-power.
By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the
 aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human
 being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description.
But in order that our owner of money may be able to find labour-power
 offered for sale as a commodity, various conditions must first 165be
 fulfilled. The exchange of commodities of itself implies no other relations
 of dependence than those which result from its own nature. On this assumption,
 labour-power can appear upon the market as a commodity, only if, and so
 far as, its possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is, offers
 it for sale, or sells it, as a commodity. In order that he may be able
 to do this, he must have it at his disposal, must be the untrammelled owner
 of his capacity for labour, i.e., of his person. [2]
 He and the owner of money meet in the market, and deal with each other
 as on the basis of equal rights, with this difference alone, that one is
 buyer, the other seller; both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the law.
 The continuance of this relation demands that the owner of the labour-power
 should sell it only for a definite period, for if he were to sell it rump
 and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself, converting himself
 from a free man into a slave, from an owner of a commodity into a commodity.
 He must constantly look upon his labour-power as his own property, his
 own commodity, and this he can only do by placing it at the disposal of
 the buyer temporarily, for a definite period of time. By this means alone
 can he avoid renouncing his rights of ownership over it. [3]
The second essential condition to the owner of money finding labour-power
 in the market as a commodity is this — that the labourer instead of being
 in the position to sell commodities in which his labour is incorporated,
 must be obliged to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power,
 which exists only in his living self.
In order that a man may be able to sell commodities other than
 labour-power, he must of course have the means of production, as raw 166material,
 implements, &c. No boots can be made without leather. He requires also
 the means of subsistence. Nobody — not even “a musician of the future” 
 — can live upon future products, or upon use-values in an unfinished state;
 and ever since the first moment of his appearance on the world’s stage,
 man always has been, and must still be a consumer, both before and while
 he is producing. In a society where all products assume the form of commodities,
 these commodities must be sold after they have been produced, it is only
 after their sale that they can serve in satisfying the requirements of
 their producer. The time necessary for their sale is superadded to that
 necessary for their production.
For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the owner
 of money must meet in the market with the free labourer, free in the double
 sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour-power as his own
 commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale,
 is short of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour-power.
The question why this free labourer confronts him in the market,
 has no interest for the owner of money, who regards the labour-market as
 a branch of the general market for commodities. And for the present it
 interests us just as little. We cling to the fact theoretically, as he
 does practically. One thing, however, is clear — Nature does not produce
 on the one side owners of money or commodities, and on the other men possessing
 nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no natural basis,
 neither is its social basis one that is common to all historical periods.
 It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product
 of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older
 forms of social production.
We must now examine more closely this peculiar commodity, labour-power.
 Like all others it has a value. [5] How is that value
 determined?
The owner of labour-power is mortal. If then his appearance in
 the market is to be continuous, and the continuous conversion of money
 into capital assumes this, the seller of labour-power must perpetuate himself,
 “in the way that every living individual perpetuates himself, by procreation.”
 [8] The labour-power withdrawn from the market by wear
 and tear and death, must be continually replaced by, at the very least,
 an equal amount of fresh labour-power. Hence the sum of the means of subsistence
 necessary for the production of labour-power must include the means necessary
 for the labourer’s substitutes, i.e., his children, in order that this
 race of peculiar commodity-owners may perpetuate its appearance in the
 market. [9]
In order to modify the human organism, so that it may acquire
 skill and handiness in a given branch of industry, and become labour-power
 of a special kind, a special education or training is requisite, and this,
 on its part, costs an equivalent in commodities of a greater or less amount.
 This amount varies according to the more or less complicated character
 of the labour-power. The expenses of this education (excessively small 169in
 the case of ordinary labour-power), enter pro tanto into the total value
 spent in its production.
The value of labour-power resolves itself into the value of a
 definite quantity of the means of subsistence. It therefore varies with
 the value of these means or with the quantity of labour requisite for their
 production.
Some of the means of subsistence, such as food and fuel, are consumed
 daily, and a fresh supply must be provided daily. Others such as clothes
 and furniture last for longer periods and require to be replaced only at
 longer intervals. One article must be bought or paid for daily, another
 weekly, another quarterly, and so on. But in whatever way the sum total
 of these outlays may be spread over the year, they must be covered by the
 average income, taking one day with another. If the total of the commodities
 required daily for the production of labour-power = A, and those required
 weekly = B, and those required quarterly = C, and so on, the daily average
 of these commodities = (365A + 52B + 4C + &c) / 365. Suppose that in
 this mass of commodities requisite for the average day there are embodied
 6 hours of social labour, then there is incorporated daily in labour-power
 half a day’s average social labour, in other words, half a day’s labour
 is requisite for the daily production of labour-power. This quantity of
 labour forms the value of a day’s labour-power or the value of the labour-power
 daily reproduced. If half a day’s average social labour is incorporated
 in three shillings, then three shillings is the price corresponding to
 the value of a day’s labour-power. If its owner therefore offers it for
 sale at three shillings a day, its selling price is equal to its value,
 and according to our supposition, our friend Moneybags, who is intent upon
 converting his three shillings into capital, pays this value.
The minimum limit of the value of labour-power is determined by
 the value of the commodities, without the daily supply of which the labourer
 cannot renew his vital energy, consequently by the value of those means
 of subsistence that are physically indispensable. If the price of labour-power
 fall to this minimum, it falls below its value, since under such circumstances
 it can be maintained and developed only in a crippled state. But the value
 of every commodity is determined by the labour-time requisite to turn it
 out so as to be of normal quality.
It is a very cheap sort of sentimentality which declares this
 method of determining the value of labour-power, a method prescribed by
 the very nature of the case, to be a brutal method, and which wails with
 Rossi that, “To comprehend capacity for labour (puissance de travail) at
 the same time that we make abstraction from the means of 170subsistence
 of the labourers during the process of production, is to comprehend a phantom
 (être de raison). When we speak of labour, or capacity for labour,
 we speak at the same time of the labourer and his means of subsistence,
 of labourer and wages.” [10] When we speak of capacity for labour, we do not speak of labour, any more than when we speak of capacity
 for digestion, we speak of digestion. The latter process requires something
 more than a good stomach. When we speak of capacity for labour, we do not
 abstract from the necessary means of subsistence. On the contrary, their
 value is expressed in its value. If his capacity for labour remains unsold,
 the labourer derives no benefit from it, but rather he will feel it to
 be a cruel nature-imposed necessity that this capacity has cost for its
 production a definite amount of the means of subsistence and that it will
 continue to do so for its reproduction. He will then agree with Sismondi:
 “that capacity for labour ... is nothing unless it is sold.” [11]
172We now know how the value paid by the purchaser to the possessor
 of this peculiar commodity, labour-power, is determined. The use-value
 which the former gets in exchange, manifests itself only in the actual
 utilisation, in the consumption of the labour-power. The money-owner buys
 everything necessary for this purpose, such as raw material, in the market,
 and pays for it at its full value. The consumption of labour-power is at
 one and the same time the production of commodities and of surplus-value.
 The consumption of labour-power is completed, as in the case of every other
 commodity, outside the limits of the market or of the sphere of circulation.
 Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we therefore
 take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place
 on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden
 abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face “No
 admittance except on business.” Here we shall see, not only how capital
 produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret
 of profit making.
This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the
 sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the
 innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and
 Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of
 labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract
 as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which
 they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each
 enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities,
 and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes
 only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself.
 The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with
 each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each.
 Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest,
 and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established
 harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work
 together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in the interest
 of all.
On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of
 commodities, which furnishes the “Free-trader Vulgaris” with his views
 and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on
 capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy
 of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money-owner, now strides
 in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer.
 The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other,
 timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market
 and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.
The capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it;
 and labour-power in use is labour itself. The purchaser of labour-power
 consumes it by setting the seller of it to work. By working, the latter
 becomes actually, what before he only was potentially, labour-power in
 action, a labourer. In order that his labour may re-appear in a commodity,
 he must, before all things, expend it on something useful, on something
 capable of satisfying a want of some sort. Hence, what the capitalist sets
 the labourer to produce, is a particular use-value, a specified article.
 The fact that the production of use-values, or goods, is carried on under
 the control of a capitalist and on his behalf, does not alter the general
 character of that production. We shall, therefore, in the first place,
 have to consider the labour-process independently of the particular form
 it assumes under given social conditions.
The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, the personal
 activity of man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that work,
 and 3, its instruments.
The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water) in
 the virgin state in which it supplies [1] man with necessaries
 or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently of him,
 and is the universal subject of human labour. All those things which labour
 merely separates from immediate connexion with their environment, are subjects
 of labour spontaneously provided by Nature. Such are fish which we catch
 and take from their element, water, timber which we fell in the virgin
 forest, and ores which we extract from their veins. If, on the other hand,
 the subject of labour has, so to say, been filtered through previous labour,
 we call it raw material; such is ore already extracted and ready for washing.
 All raw material is the subject of labour, but not every subject of labour
 is raw material: it can only become so, after it has undergone some alteration
 by means of labour.
In a wider sense we may include among the instruments of labour,
 in addition to those things that are used for directly transferring labour
 to its subject, and which therefore, in one way or another, serve as conductors
 of activity, all such objects as are necessary for carrying on the labour-process.
 These do not enter directly into the process, but without them it is either
 impossible for it to take place at all, or possible only to a partial extent.
 Once more we find the earth to be a universal instrument of this sort,
 for it furnishes a locus standi to the labourer and a field of employment
 for his activity. Among instruments that are the result of previous labour
 and also belong to this class, we find workshops, canals, roads, and so
 forth.
In the labour-process, therefore, man’s activity, with the help
 of the instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from the
 commencement, in the material worked upon. The process disappears in the
 product, the latter is a use-value, Nature’s material adapted by a change
 of form to the wants of man. Labour has incorporated itself with its subject:
 the former is materialised, the latter transformed. That which in the labourer
 appeared as movement, now appears in the product as a fixed quality without
 motion. The blacksmith forges and the product is a forging.
If we examine the whole process from the point of view of its
 result, the product, it is plain that both the instruments and the subject
 of labour, are means of production, [6] and that the
 labour itself is productive labour. [7]
Though a use-value, in the form of a product, issues from the
 labour-process, yet other use-values, products of previous labour, enter
 into it as means of production. The same use-value is both the product
 of a previous process, and a means of production in a later process. Products
 are therefore not only results, but also essential conditions of labour.
With the exception of the extractive industries, in which the
 material for labour is provided immediately by Nature, such as mining,
 hunting, fishing, and agriculture (so far as the latter is confined to
 breaking up virgin soil), all branches of industry manipulate raw material,
 objects already filtered through labour, already products of labour. Such
 is seed in agriculture. Animals and plants, which we are accustomed to
 consider as products of Nature, are in their present form, not only products
 of, say last year’s labour, but the result of a gradual transformation,
 continued through many generations, under man’s superintendence, and by
 means of his labour. But in the great majority of cases, instruments of
 labour show even to the most superficial observer, traces of the labour
 of past ages.
Raw material may either form the principal substance of a product,
 or it may enter into its formation only as an accessory. An accessory may
 be consumed by the instruments of labour, as coal under a boiler, oil by
 a wheel, hay by draft-horses, or it may be mixed with the raw material
 in order to produce some modification thereof, as chlorine into unbleached
 linen, coal with iron, dye-stuff with wool, or again, it may help to carry
 on the work itself, as in the case of the materials used for heating and
 lighting workshops. The distinction between principal substance and accessory
 vanishes in the true chemical industries, because there none of the raw
 material re-appears, in its original composition, in the substance of the
 product. [8]
Every object possesses various properties, and is thus capable
 of being applied to different uses. One and the same product may therefore
 serve as raw material in very different processes. Corn, for example, is
 a raw material for millers, starch-manufacturers, distillers, and cattlebreeders.
 It also enters as raw material into its own production in the shape of
 seed; coal, too, is at the same time the product of, and a means of production
 in, coal-mining.
Again, a particular product may be used in one and the same process,
 both as an instrument of labour and as raw material. Take, for instance,
 the fattening of cattle, where the animal is the raw material, and at the
 same time an instrument for the production of manure.
A product, though ready for immediate consumption, may yet serve
 as raw material for a further product, as grapes when they become the raw
 material for wine. On the other hand, labour may give us its product in
 such a form, that we can use it only as raw material, as is the case with 178cotton,
 thread, and yarn. Such a raw material, though itself a product, may have
 to go through a whole series of different processes: in each of these in
 turn, it serves, with constantly varying form, as raw material, until the
 last process of the series leaves it a perfect product, ready for individual
 consumption, or for use as an instrument of labour.
Hence we see, that whether a use-value is to be regarded as raw
 material, as instrument of labour, or as product, this is determined entirely
 by its function in the labour-process, by the position it there occupies:
 as this varies, so does its character.
Whenever therefore a product enters as a means of production into
 a new labour-process, it thereby loses its character of product, and becomes
 a mere factor in the process. A spinner treats spindles only as implements
 for spinning, and flax only as the material that he spins. Of course it
 is impossible to spin without material and spindles; and therefore the
 existence of these things as products, at the commencement of the spinning
 operation, must be presumed: but in the process itself, the fact that they
 are products of previous labour, is a matter of utter indifference; just
 as in the digestive process, it is of no importance whatever, that bread
 is the produce of the previous labour of the farmer, the miller, and the
 baker. On the contrary, it is generally by their imperfections as products,
 that the means of production in any process assert themselves in their
 character of products. A blunt knife or weak thread forcibly remind us
 of Mr. A., the cutler, or Mr. B., the spinner. In the finished product
 the labour by means of which it has acquired its useful qualities is not
 palpable, has apparently vanished.
A machine which does not serve the purposes of labour, is useless.
 In addition, it falls a prey to the destructive influence of natural forces.
 Iron rusts and wood rots. Yarn with which we neither weave nor knit, is
 cotton wasted. Living labour must seize upon these things and rouse them
 from their death-sleep, change them from mere possible use-values into
 real and effective ones. Bathed in the fire of labour, appropriated as
 part and parcel of labour’s organism, and, as it were, made alive for the
 performance of their functions in the process, they are in truth consumed,
 but consumed with a purpose, as elementary constituents of new use-values,
 of new products, ever ready as means of subsistence for individual consumption,
 or as means of production for some new labour-process.
If then, on the one hand, finished products are not only results,
 but also necessary conditions, of the labour-process, on the other hand,
 their assumption into that process, their contact with living labour, is
 the sole means by which they can be made to retain their character of use-values,
 and be utilised.
179Labour uses up its material factors, its subject and its
 instruments, consumes them, and is therefore a process of consumption.
 Such productive consumption is distinguished from individual consumption
 by this, that the latter uses up products, as means of subsistence for
 the living individual; the former, as means whereby alone, labour, the
 labour-power of the living individual, is enabled to act. The product,
 therefore, of individual consumption, is the consumer himself; the result
 of productive consumption, is a product distinct from the consumer.
In so far then, as its instruments and subjects are themselves
 products, labour consumes products in order to create products, or in other
 words, consumes one set of products by turning them into means of production
 for another set. But, just as in the beginning, the only participators
 in the labour-process were man and the earth, which latter exists independently
 of man, so even now we still employ in the process many means of production,
 provided directly by Nature, that do not represent any combination of natural
 substances with human labour.
The labour-process, resolved as above into its simple elementary
 factors, is human action with a view to the production of use-values, appropriation
 of natural substances to human requirements; it is the necessary condition
 for effecting exchange of matter between man and Nature; it is the everlasting
 Nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is independent
 of every social phase of that existence, or rather, is common to every
 such phase. It was, therefore, not necessary to represent our labourer
 in connexion with other labourers; man and his labour on one side, Nature
 and its materials on the other, sufficed. As the taste of the porridge
 does not tell you who grew the oats, no more does this simple process tell
 you of itself what are the social conditions under which it is taking place,
 whether under the slave-owner’s brutal lash, or the anxious eye of the
 capitalist, whether Cincinnatus carries it on in tilling his modest farm
 or a savage in killing wild animals with stones. [9]
Let us now return to our would-be capitalist. We left him just
 after he had purchased, in the open market, all the necessary factors of
 the labour process; its objective factors, the means of production, as
 well as its subjective factor, labour-power. With the keen eye of an expert,
 he has selected the means of production and the kind of labour-power best
 adapted to his particular trade, be it spinning, bootmaking, or 180any
 other kind. He then proceeds to consume the commodity, the labour-power
 that he has just bought, by causing the labourer, the impersonation of
 that labour-power, to consume the means of production by his labour. The
 general character of the labour-process is evidently not changed by the
 fact, that the labourer works for the capitalist instead of for himself;
 moreover, the particular methods and operations employed in bootmaking
 or spinning are not immediately changed by the intervention of the capitalist.
 He must begin by taking the labour-power as he finds it in the market,
 and consequently be satisfied with labour of such a kind as would be found
 in the period immediately preceding the rise of capitalists. Changes in
 the methods of production by the subordination of labour to capital, can
 take place only at a later period, and therefore will have to be treated
 of in a later chapter.
The labour-process, turned into the process by which the capitalist
 consumes labour-power, exhibits two characteristic phenomena. First, the
 labourer works under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs;
 the capitalist taking good care that the work is done in a proper manner,
 and that the means of production are used with intelligence, so that there
 is no unnecessary waste of raw material, and no wear and tear of the implements
 beyond what is necessarily caused by the work.
Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and not
 that of the labourer, its immediate producer. Suppose that a capitalist
 pays for a day’s labour-power at its value; then the right to use that
 power for a day belongs to him, just as much as the right to use any other
 commodity, such as a horse that he has hired for the day. To the purchaser
 of a commodity belongs its use, and the seller of labour-power, by giving
 his labour, does no more, in reality, than part with the use-value that
 he has sold. From the instant he steps into the workshop, the use-value
 of his labour-power, and therefore also its use, which is labour, belongs
 to the capitalist. By the purchase of labour-power, the capitalist incorporates
 labour, as a living ferment, with the lifeless constituents of the product.
 From his point of view, the labour-process is nothing more than the consumption
 of the commodity purchased, i. e., of labour-power; but this consumption
 cannot be effected except by supplying the labour-power with the means
 of production. The labour-process is a process between things that the
 capitalist has purchased, things that have become his property. The product
 of this process belongs, therefore, to him, just as much as does the wine
 which is the product of a process of fermentation completed in his cellar.
 [10]
181
The product appropriated by the capitalist is a use-value, as yarn, for
 example, or boots. But, although boots are, in one sense, the basis of
 all social progress, and our capitalist is a decided “progressist,” yet
 he does not manufacture boots for their own sake. Use-value is, by no means,
 the thing “qu’on aime pour lui-même” in the production of commodities.
 Use-values are only produced by capitalists, because, and in so far as,
 they are the material substratum, the depositories of exchange-value. Our
 capitalist has two objects in view: in the first place, he wants to produce
 a use-value that has a value in exchange, that is to say, an article destined
 to be sold, a commodity; and secondly, he desires to produce a commodity
 whose value shall be greater than the sum of the values of the commodities
 used in its production, that is, of the means of production and the labour-power,
 that he purchased with his good money in the open market. His aim is to
 produce not only a use-value, but a commodity also; not only use-value,
 but value; not only value, but at the same time surplus-value.
It must be borne in mind, that we are now dealing with the production
 of commodities, and that, up to this point, we have only considered one
 aspect of the process. Just as commodities are, at the same time, use-values
 and values, so the process of producing them must be a labour-process,
 and at the same time, a process of creating value. [11]
Let us now examine production as a creation of value.
We know that the value of each commodity is determined by the
 quantity of labour expended on and materialised in it, by the working-time
 necessary, under given social conditions, for its production. This rule
 also holds good in the case of the product that accrued to our capitalist,
 as the result of the labour-process carried on for him. Assuming this 182product
 to be 10 lbs. of yarn, our first step is to calculate the quantity of labour
 realised in it.
For spinning the yarn, raw material is required; suppose in this
 case 10 lbs. of cotton. We have no need at present to investigate the value
 of this cotton, for our capitalist has, we will assume, bought it at its
 full value, say of ten shillings. In this price the labour required for
 the production of the cotton is already expressed in terms of the average
 labour of society. We will further assume that the wear and tear of the
 spindle, which, for our present purpose, may represent all other instruments
 of labour employed, amounts to the value of 2s. If, then, twenty-four hours’
 labour, or two working-days, are required to produce the quantity of gold
 represented by twelve shillings, we have here, to begin with, two days’
 labour already incorporated in the yarn.
We must not let ourselves be misled by the circumstance that the
 cotton has taken a new shape while the substance of the spindle has to
 a certain extent been used up. By the general law of value, if the value
 of 40 lbs. of yarn = the value of 40 lbs. of cotton + the value of a whole
 spindle, i. e., if the same working-time is required to produce
 the commodities on either side of this equation, then 10 lbs. of yarn are
 an equivalent for 10 lbs. of cotton, together with one-fourth of a spindle.
 In the case we are considering the same working-time is materialised in
 the 10 lbs. of yarn on the one hand, and in the 10 lbs. of cotton and the
 fraction of a spindle on the other. Therefore, whether value appears in
 cotton, in a spindle, or in yarn, makes no difference in the amount of
 that value. The spindle and cotton, instead of resting quietly side by
 side, join together in the process, their forms are altered, and they are
 turned into yarn; but their value is no more affected by this fact than
 it would be if they had been simply exchanged for their equivalent in yarn.
The labour required for the production of the cotton, the raw
 material of the yarn, is part of the labour necessary to produce the yarn,
 and is therefore contained in the yarn. The same applies to the labour
 embodied in the spindle, without whose wear and tear the cotton could not
 be spun.
Hence, in determining the value of the yarn, or the labour-time
 required for its production, all the special processes carried on at various
 times and in different places, which were necessary, first to produce the
 cotton and the wasted portion of the spindle, and then with the cotton
 and spindle to spin the yarn, may together be looked on as different and
 successive phases of one and the same process. The whole of the labour
 in the yarn is past labour; and it is a matter of no importance that the
 operations necessary for the production of its constituent elements were
 carried on at times which, referred to the present, are more remote than
 the final operation of spinning. If a definite quantity 183of labour,
 say thirty days, is requisite to build a house, the total amount of labour
 incorporated in it is not altered by the fact that the work of the last
 day is done twenty-nine days later than that of the first. Therefore the
 labour contained in the raw material and the instruments of labour can
 be treated just as if it were labour expended in an earlier stage of the
 spinning process, before the labour of actual spinning commenced.
The values of the means of production, i. e., the cotton
 and the spindle, which values are expressed in the price of twelve shillings,
 are therefore constituent parts of the value of the yarn, or, in other
 words, of the value of the product.
Two conditions must nevertheless be fulfilled. First, the cotton
 and spindle must concur in the production of a use-value; they must in
 the present case become yarn. Value is independent of the particular use-value
 by which it is borne, but it must be embodied in a use-value of some kind.
 Secondly, the time occupied in the labour of production must not exceed
 the time really necessary under the given social conditions of the case.
 Therefore, if no more than 1 lb. of cotton be requisite to spin 1 lb.
 of yarn, care must be taken that no more than this weight of cotton is
 consumed in the production of 1 lb. of yarn; and similarly with regard
 to the spindle. Though the capitalist have a hobby, and use a gold instead
 of a steel spindle, yet the only labour that counts for anything in the
 value of the yarn is that which would be required to produce a steel spindle,
 because no more is necessary under the given social conditions.
We now know what portion of the value of the yarn is owing to
 the cotton and the spindle. It amounts to twelve shillings or the value
 of two days’ work. The next point for our consideration is, what portion
 of the value of the yarn is added to the cotton by the labour of the spinner.
We have now to consider this labour under a very different aspect
 from that which it had during the labour-process; there, we viewed it solely
 as that particular kind of human activity which changes cotton into yarn;
 there, the more the labour was suited to the work, the better the yarn,
 other circumstances remaining the same. The labour of the spinner was then
 viewed as specifically different from other kinds of productive labour,
 different on the one hand in its special aim, viz., spinning, different,
 on the other hand, in the special character of its operations, in the special
 nature of its means of production and in the special use-value of its product.
 For the operation of spinning, cotton and spindles are a necessity, but
 for making rifled cannon they would be of no use whatever. Here, on the
 contrary, where we consider the labour of the spinner only so far as it
 is value-creating, i.e., a source of value, his labour differs
 184in no respect from the labour of the man who bores cannon, or (what
 here more nearly concerns us), from the labour of the cotton-planter and
 spindle-maker incorporated in the means of production. It is solely by
 reason of this identity, that cotton planting, spindle making and spinning,
 are capable of forming the component parts differing only quantitatively
 from each other, of one whole, namely, the value of the yarn. Here, we
 have nothing more to do with the quality, the nature and the specific character
 of the labour, but merely with its quantity. And this simply requires to
 be calculated. We proceed upon the assumption that spinning is simple,
 unskilled labour, the average labour of a given state of society. Hereafter
 we shall see that the contrary assumption would make no difference.
While the labourer is at work, his labour constantly undergoes
 a transformation: from being motion, it becomes an object without motion;
 from being the labourer working, it becomes the thing produced. At the
 end of one hour’s spinning, that act is represented by a definite quantity
 of yarn; in other words, a definite quantity of labour, namely that of
 one hour, has become embodied in the cotton. We say labour, i.e.,
 the expenditure of his vital force by the spinner, and not spinning labour,
 because the special work of spinning counts here, only so far as it is
 the expenditure of labour-power in general, and not in so far as it is
 the specific work of the spinner.
In the process we are now considering it is of extreme importance,
 that no more time be consumed in the work of transforming the cotton into
 yarn than is necessary under the given social conditions. If under normal,
 i.e., average social conditions of production, a pounds of
 cotton ought to be made into b pounds of yarn by one hour’s labour,
 then a day’s labour does not count as 12 hours’ labour unless 12 a
 pounds of cotton have been made into 12 b pounds of yarn; for in
 the creation of value, the time that is socially necessary alone counts.
Not only the labour, but also the raw material and the product
 now appear in quite a new light, very different from that in which we viewed
 them in the labour-process pure and simple. The raw material serves now
 merely as an absorbent of a definite quantity of labour. By this absorption
 it is in fact changed into yarn, because it is spun, because labour-power
 in the form of spinning is added to it; but the product, the yarn, is now
 nothing more than a measure of the labour absorbed by the cotton. If in
 one hour 1 2/3 lbs. of cotton can be spun into 1 2/3 lbs. of yarn, then
 10 lbs. of yarn indicate the absorption of 6 hours’ labour. Definite quantities
 of product, these quantities being determined by experience, now represent
 nothing but definite quantities of labour, definite masses of crystallised
 labour-time. They are nothing more 185than the materialisation
 of so many hours or so many days of social labour.
We are here no more concerned about the facts, that the labour
 is the specific work of spinning, that its subject is cotton and its product
 yarn, than we are about the fact that the subject itself is already a product
 and therefore raw material. If the spinner, instead of spinning, were working
 in a coal mine, the subject of his labour, the coal, would be supplied
 by Nature; nevertheless, a definite quantity of extracted coal, a hundredweight
 for example, would represent a definite quantity of absorbed labour.
We assumed, on the occasion of its sale, that the value of a day’s
 labour-power is three shillings, and that six hours’ labour is incorporated
 in that sum; and consequently that this amount of labour is requisite to
 produce the necessaries of life daily required on an average by the labourer.
 If now our spinner by working for one hour, can convert 1 2/3 lbs. of cotton
 into 1 2/3 lbs. of yarn, [12] it follows that in six
 hours he will convert 10 lbs. of cotton into 10 lbs. of yarn. Hence, during
 the spinning process, the cotton absorbs six hours’ labour. The same quantity
 of labour is also embodied in a piece of gold of the value of three shillings.
 Consequently by the mere labour of spinning, a value of three shillings
 is added to the cotton.
Let us now consider the total value of the product, the 10 lbs.
 of yarn. Two and a half days’ labour has been embodied in it, of which
 two days were contained in the cotton and in the substance of the spindle
 worn away, and half a day was absorbed during the process of spinning.
 This two and a half days’ labour is also represented by a piece of gold
 of the value of fifteen shillings. Hence, fifteen shillings is an adequate
 price for the 10 lbs. of yarn, or the price of one pound is eighteenpence.
Our capitalist stares in astonishment. The value of the product
 is exactly equal to the value of the capital advanced. The value so advanced
 has not expanded, no surplus-value has been created, and consequently money
 has not been converted into capital. The price of the yarn is fifteen shillings,
 and fifteen shillings were spent in the open market upon the constituent
 elements of the product, or, what amounts to the same thing, upon the factors
 of the labour-process; ten shillings were paid for the cotton, two shillings
 for the substance of the spindle worn away, and three shillings for the
 labour-power. The swollen value of the yarn is of no avail, for it is merely
 the sum of the values formerly existing in the cotton, the spindle, and
 the labour-power: out of such 186a simple addition of existing
 values, no surplus-value can possibly arise. [13] These separate values are now all concentrated in one thing; but so they were
 also in the sum of fifteen shillings, before it was split up into three
 parts, by the purchase of the commodities.
There is in reality nothing very strange in this result. The value
 of one pound of yarn being eighteenpence, if our capitalist buys 10 lbs.
 of yarn in the market, he must pay fifteen shillings for them. It is clear
 that, whether a man buys his house ready built, or gets it built for him,
 in neither case will the mode of acquisition increase the amount of money
 laid out on the house.
Our capitalist foresaw this state of things, and that was the
 cause of his laughter. The labourer therefore finds, in the workshop, the
 means of production necessary for working, not only during six, but during
 twelve hours. Just as during the six hours’ process our 10 lbs. of cotton
 absorbed six hours’ labour, and became 10 lbs. of yarn, so now, 20 lbs.
 of cotton will absorb 12 hours’ labour and be changed into 20 lbs. of yarn.
 Let us now examine the product of this prolonged process. There is now
 materialised in this 20 lbs. of yarn the labour of five days, of 189which
 four days are due to the cotton and the lost steel of the spindle, the
 remaining day having been absorbed by the cotton during the spinning process.
 Expressed in gold, the labour of five days is thirty shillings. This is
 therefore the price of the 20 lbs. of yarn, giving, as before, eighteenpence
 as the price of a pound. But the sum of the values of the commodities that
 entered into the process amounts to 27 shillings. The value of the yarn
 is 30 shillings. Therefore the value of the product is 1/9 greater than
 the value advanced for its production; 27 shillings have been transformed
 into 30 shillings; a surplus-value of 3 shillings has been created. The
 trick has at last succeeded; money has been converted into capital.
Every condition of the problem is satisfied, while the laws that
 regulate the exchange of commodities, have been in no way violated. Equivalent
 has been exchanged for equivalent. For the capitalist as buyer paid for
 each commodity, for the cotton, the spindle and the labour-power, its full
 value. He then did what is done by every purchaser of commodities; he consumed
 their use-value. The consumption of the labour-power, which was also the
 process of producing commodities, resulted in 20 lbs. of yarn, having a
 value of 30 shillings. The capitalist, formerly a buyer, now returns to
 market as a seller, of commodities. He sells his yarn at eighteenpence
 a pound, which is its exact value. Yet for all that he withdraws 3 shillings
 more from circulation than he originally threw into it. This metamorphosis,
 this conversion of money into capital, takes place both within the sphere
 of circulation and also outside it; within the circulation, because conditioned
 by the purchase of the labour-power in the market; outside the circulation,
 because what is done within it is only a stepping-stone to the production
 of surplus-value, a process which is entirely confined to the sphere of
 production. Thus “tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles.” [“Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” – Voltaire, Candide]
By turning his money into commodities that serve as the material
 elements of a new product, and as factors in the labour-process, by incorporating
 living labour with their dead substance, the capitalist at the same time
 converts value, i.e., past, materialised, and dead labour into capital,
 into value big with value, a live monster that is fruitful and multiplies.
If we now compare the two processes of producing value and of
 creating surplus-value, we see that the latter is nothing but the continuation
 of the former beyond a definite point. If on the one hand the process be
 not carried beyond the point, where the value paid by the capitalist for
 the labour-power is replaced by an exact equivalent, it is simply a process
 of producing value; if, on the other hand, it be con190tinued beyond
 that point, it becomes a process of creating surplus-value.
If we proceed further, and compare the process of producing value
 with the labour-process, pure and simple, we find that the latter consists
 of the useful labour, the work, that produces use-values. Here we contemplate
 the labour as producing a particular article; we view it under its qualitative
 aspect alone, with regard to its end and aim. But viewed as a value-creating
 process, the same labour-process presents itself under its quantitative
 aspect alone. Here it is a question merely of the time occupied by the
 labourer in doing the work; of the period during which the labour-power
 is usefully expended. Here, the commodities that take part in the process,
 do not count any longer as necessary adjuncts of labour-power in the production
 of a definite, useful object. They count merely as depositories of so much
 absorbed or materialised labour; that labour, whether previously embodied
 in the means of production, or incorporated in them for the first time
 during the process by the action of labour-power, counts in either case
 only according to its duration; it amounts to so many hours or days as
 the case may be.
Moreover, only so much of the time spent in the production of
 any article is counted, as, under the given social conditions, is necessary.
 The consequences of this are various. In the first place, it becomes necessary
 that the labour should be carried on under normal conditions. If a self-acting
 mule is the implement in general use for spinning, it would be absurd to
 supply the spinner with a distaff and spinning wheel. The cotton too must
 not be such rubbish as to cause extra waste in being worked, but must be
 of suitable quality. Otherwise the spinner would be found to spend more
 time in producing a pound of yarn than is socially necessary, in which
 case the excess of time would create neither value nor money. But whether
 the material factors of the process are of normal quality or not, depends
 not upon the labourer, but entirely upon the capitalist. Then again, the
 labour-power itself must be of average efficacy. In the trade in which
 it is being employed, it must possess the average skill, handiness and
 quickness prevalent in that trade, and our capitalist took good care to
 buy labour-power of such normal goodness. This power must be applied with
 the average amount of exertion and with the usual degree of intensity;
 and the capitalist is as careful to see that this is done, as that his
 workmen are not idle for a single moment. He has bought the use of the
 labour-power for a definite period, and he insists upon his rights. He
 has no intention of being robbed. Lastly, and for this purpose our friend
 has a penal code of his own, all wasteful consumption of raw material or
 instruments of labour is strictly forbidden, because what is so wasted,
 represents 191labour superfluously expended, labour that does not
 count in the product or enter into its value. [17]
We now see, that the difference between labour, considered on
 the one hand as producing utilities, and on the other hand, as creating
 value, a difference which we discovered by our analysis of a commodity,
 resolves itself into a distinction between two aspects of the process of
 production.
The process of production, considered on the one hand as the unity
 of the labour-process and the process of creating value, is production
 of commodities; considered on the other hand as the unity of the labour-process
 and the process of producing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process
 of production, or capitalist production of commodities.
We stated, on a previous page, that in the creation of surplus-value
 it does not in the least matter, whether the labour appropriated by the
 capitalist be simple unskilled labour of average quality or more complicated
 skilled labour. All labour of a higher or more complicated character than
 average labour is expenditure of labour-power of a more costly kind, labour-power
 whose production has cost more time and labour, and which therefore has
 a higher value, than unskilled or 192simple labour-power. This
 power being higher-value, its consumption is labour of a higher class,
 labour that creates in equal times proportionally higher values than unskilled
 labour does. Whatever difference in skill there may be between the labour
 of a spinner and that of a jeweller, the portion of his labour by which
 the jeweller merely replaces the value of his own labour-power, does not
 in any way differ in quality from the additional portion by which he creates
 surplus-value. In the making of jewellery, just as in spinning, the surplus-value
 results only from a quantitative excess of labour, from a lengthening-out
 of one and the same labour-process, in the one case, of the process of
 making jewels, in the other of the process of making yarn. [18]
But on the other hand, in every process of creating value, the
 reduction of skilled labour to average social labour, e.g., one
 day of skilled to six days of unskilled labour, is unavoidable. [19]
 We therefore save ourselves a superfluous operation, and simplify our analysis,
 by the assumption, that the labour of the workman employed by the capitalist
 is unskilled average labour.
The various factors of the labour-process play different
 parts in forming the value of the product.
The labourer adds fresh value to the subject of his labour by
 expending upon it a given amount of additional labour, no matter what the
 specific character and utility of that labour may be. On the other hand,
 the values of the means of production used up in the process are preserved,
 and present themselves afresh as constituent parts of the value of the
 product; the values of the cotton and the spindle, for instance, re-appear
 again in the value of the yarn. The value of the means of production is
 therefore preserved, by being transferred to the product. This transfer
 takes place during the conversion of those means into a product, or in
 other words, during the labour-process. It is brought about by labour;
 but how?
The labourer does not perform two operations at once, one in order
 to add value to the cotton, the other in order to preserve the value of
 the means of production, or, what amounts to the same thing, to transfer
 to the yarn, to the product, the value of the cotton on which he works,
 and part of the value of the spindle with which he works. But, by the very
 act of adding new value, he preserves their former values. Since, however,
 the addition of new value to the subject of his labour, and the preservation
 of its former value, are two entirely distinct results, produced simultaneously
 by the labourer, during one operation, it is plain that this two-fold nature
 of the result can be explained only by the two-fold nature of his labour;
 at one and the same time, it must in one character create value, and in
 another character preserve or transfer value.
Now, in what manner does every labourer add new labour and consequently
 new value? Evidently, only by labouring productively in a 194particular
 way; the spinner by spinning, the weaver by weaving, the smith by forging.
 But, while thus incorporating labour generally, that is value, it is by
 the particular form alone of the labour, by the spinning, the weaving and
 the forging respectively, that the means of production, the cotton and
 spindle, the yarn and loom, and the iron and anvil become constituent
 elements of the product, of a new use-value. [1] Each
 use-value disappears, but only to re-appear under a new form in a new use-value.
 Now, we saw, when we were considering the process of creating value, that,
 if a use-value be effectively consumed in the production of a new use-value,
 the quantity of labour expended in the production of the consumed article,
 forms a portion of the quantity of labour necessary to produce the new
 use-value; this portion is therefore labour transferred from the means
 of production to the new product. Hence, the labourer preserves the values
 of the consumed means of production, or transfers them as portions of its
 value to the product, not by virtue of his additional labour, abstractedly
 considered, but by virtue of the particular useful character of that labour,
 by virtue of its special productive form. In so far then as labour is such
 specific productive activity, in so far as it is spinning, weaving, or
 forging, it raises, by mere contact, the means of production from the
 dead, makes them living factors of the labour-process, and combines with
 them to form the new products.
If the special productive labour of the workman were not spinning,
 he could not convert the cotton into yarn, and therefore could not transfer
 the values of the cotton and spindle to the yarn. Suppose the same workman
 were to change his occupation to that of a joiner, he would still by a
 day’s labour add value to the material he works upon. Consequently, we
 see, first, that the addition of new value takes place not by virtue of
 his labour being spinning in particular, or joinering in particular, but
 because it is labour in the abstract, a portion of the total labour of
 society; and we see next, that the value added is of a given definite amount,
 not because his labour has a special utility, but because it is exerted
 for a definite time. On the one hand, then, it is by virtue of its general
 character, as being expenditure of human labour-power in the abstract,
 that spinning adds new value to the values of the cotton and the spindle;
 and on the other hand, it is by virtue of its special character, as being
 a concrete, useful process, that the same labour of spinning both transfers
 the values of the means of production to the product, and preserves them
 in the product. Hence at one and the same time there is produced a two-fold
 result.
195By the simple addition of a certain quantity of labour,
 new value is added, and by the quality of this added labour, the original
 values of the means of production are preserved in the product. This two-fold
 effect, resulting from the two-fold character of labour, may be traced
 in various phenomena.
Let us assume, that some invention enables the spinner to spin
 as much cotton in 6 hours as he was able to spin before in 36 hours. His
 labour is now six times as effective as it was, for the purposes of useful
 production. The product of 6 hours’ work has increased six-fold, from 6
 lbs. to 36 lbs. But now the 36 lbs. of cotton absorb only the same amount
 of labour as formerly did the 6 lbs. One-sixth as much new labour is absorbed
 by each pound of cotton, and consequently, the value added by the labour
 to each pound is only one-sixth of what it formerly was. On the other hand,
 in the product, in the 36 lbs. of yarn, the value transferred from the
 cotton is six times as great as before. By the 6 hours’ spinning, the value
 of the raw material preserved and transferred to the product is six times
 as great as before, although the new value added by the labour of the spinner
 to each pound of the very same raw material is one-sixth what it was formerly.
 This shows that the two properties of labour, by virtue of which it is
 enabled in one case to preserve value, and in the other to create value,
 are essentially different. On the one hand, the longer the time necessary
 to spin a given weight of cotton into yarn, the greater is the new value
 added to the material; on the other hand, the greater the weight of the
 cotton spun in a given time, the greater is the value preserved, by being
 transferred from it to the product.
Let us now assume, that the productiveness of the spinner’s labour,
 instead of varying, remains constant, that he therefore requires the same
 time as he formerly did, to convert one pound of cotton into yarn, but
 that the exchange-value of the cotton varies, either by rising to six times
 its former value or falling to one-sixth of that value. In both these cases,
 the spinner puts the same quantity of labour into a pound of cotton, and
 therefore adds as much value, as he did before the change in the value:
 he also produces a given weight of yarn in the same time as he did before.
 Nevertheless, the value that he transfers from the cotton to the yarn is
 either one-sixth of what it was before the variation, or, as the case may
 be, six times as much as before. The same result occurs when the value
 of the instruments of labour rises or falls, while their useful efficacy
 in the process remains unaltered.
Again, if the technical conditions of the spinning process remain
 unchanged, and no change of value takes place in the means of production,
 the spinner continues to consume in equal working-times equal quantities
 of raw material, and equal quantities of machinery of unvarying value.
 The value that he preserves in the product is directly 196proportional
 to the new value that he adds to the product. In two weeks he incorporates
 twice as much labour, and therefore twice as much value, as in one week,
 and during the same time he consumes twice as much material, and wears
 out twice as much machinery, of double the value in each case: he therefore
 preserves, in the product of two weeks, twice as much value as in the product
 of one week. So long as the conditions of production remain the same, the
 more value the labourer adds by fresh labour, the more value he transfers
 and preserves; but he does so merely because this addition of new value
 takes place under conditions that have not varied and are independent of
 his own labour. Of course, it may be said in one sense, that the labourer
 preserves old value always in proportion to the quantity of new value that
 he adds. Whether the value of cotton rise from one shilling to two shillings,
 or fall to sixpence, the workman invariably preserves in the product of
 one hour only one half as much value as he preserves in two hours. In like
 manner, if the productiveness of his own labour varies by rising or falling,
 he will in one hour spin either more or less cotton, as the case may be,
 than he did before, and will consequently preserve in the product of one
 hour, more or less value of cotton; but, all the same, he will preserve
 by two hours’ labour twice as much value as he will by one.
Value exists only in articles of utility, in objects: we leave
 out of consideration its purely symbolical representation by tokens. (Man
 himself, viewed as the impersonation of labour-power, is a natural object,
 a thing, although a living conscious thing, and labour is the manifestation
 of this power residing in him.) If therefore an article loses its utility,
 it also loses its value. The reason why means of production do not lose
 their value, at the same time that they lose their use-value, is this:
 they lose in the labour-process the original form of their use-value, only
 to assume in the product the form of a new use-value. But, however important
 it may be to value, that it should have some object of utility to embody
 itself in, yet it is a matter of complete indifference what particular
 object serves this purpose; this we saw when treating of the metamorphosis
 of commodities. Hence it follows that in the labour-process the means of
 production transfer their value to the product only so far as along with
 their use-value they lose also their exchange-value. They give up to the
 product that value alone which they themselves lose as means of production.
 But in this respect the material factors of the labour-process do not all
 behave alike.
It is thus strikingly clear, that means of production never transfer
 more value to the product than they themselves lose during the labour-process
 by the destruction of their own use-value. If such an instrument has no
 value to lose, if, in other words, it is not the product of human labour,
 it transfers no value to the product. It helps to create use-value without
 contributing to the formation of exchange-value. In this class are included
 all means of production supplied by Nature without human assistance, such
 as land, wind, water, metals in situ, and timber in virgin forests.
Yet another interesting phenomenon here presents itself. Suppose
 a machine to be worth £1,000, and to wear out in 1,000 days. Then
 one thousandth part of the value of the machine is daily transferred to
 the 198day’s product. At the same time, though with diminishing
 vitality, the machine as a whole continues to take part in the labour-process.
 Thus it appears, that one factor of the labour-process, a means of production,
 continually enters as a whole into that process, while it enters into the
 process of the formation of value by fractions only. The difference between
 the two processes is here reflected in their material factors, by the same
 instrument of production taking part as a whole in the labour-process,
 while at the same time as an element in the formation of value, it enters
 only by fractions. [2]
On the other hand, a means of production may take part as a whole
 in the formation of value, while into the labour-process it enters only
 bit by bit. Suppose that in spinning cotton, the waste for every 115 lbs.
 used amounts to 15 lbs., which is converted, not into yarn, but into “devil’s
 dust.” Now, although this 15 lbs. of cotton never becomes a constituent
 element of the yarn, yet assuming this amount of waste to be normal and
 inevitable under average conditions of spinning, its value is just as surely
 transferred to the value of the yarn, as is the value of the 100 lbs. that
 form the substance of the yarn. The use-value of 15 lbs. of cotton must
 vanish into dust, before 100 lbs. of yarn can be made. The destruction
 of this cotton is therefore a necessary condition in the production of
 the yarn. And because it is a necessary condition, and for no other reason,
 the value of that cotton is transferred to the product. The same holds
 good for every kind of refuse resulting from a labour-process, so far at
 least as such refuse cannot be further employed as a means in the production
 of new and independent use-values. 199Such an employment of refuse
 may be seen in the large machine works at Manchester, where mountains of
 iron turnings are carted away to the foundry in the evening, in order the
 next morning to re-appear in the workshops as solid masses of iron.
We have seen that the means of production transfer value to the
 new product, so far only as during the labour-process they lose value in
 the shape of their old use-value. The maximum loss of value that they can
 suffer in the process, is plainly limited by the amount of the original
 value with which they came into the process, or in other words, by the
 labour-time necessary for their production. Therefore, the means of production
 can never add more value to the product than they themselves possess independently
 of the process in which they assist. However useful a given kind of raw
 material, or a machine, or other means of production may be, though it
 may cost £150, or, say, 500 days’ labour, yet it cannot, under any
 circumstances, add to the value of the product more than £150. Its
 value is determined not by the labour-process into which it enters as a
 means of production, but by that out of which it has issued as a product.
 In the labour-process it only serves as a mere use-value, a thing with
 useful properties, and could not, therefore, transfer any value to the
 product, unless it possessed such value previously. [3]
While productive labour is changing the means of production into
 constituent elements of a new product, their value undergoes a metempsychosis.
 It deserts the consumed body, to occupy the newly created one. But this
 transmigration takes place, as it were, behind the back of the labourer.
 He is unable to add new labour, to create new value, 200without
 at the same time preserving old values, and this, because the labour he
 adds must be of a specific useful kind; and he cannot do work of a useful
 kind, without employing products as the means of production of a new product,
 and thereby transferring their value to the new product. The property therefore
 which labour-power in action, living labour, possesses of preserving value,
 at the same time that it adds it, is a gift of Nature which costs the labourer
 nothing, but which is very advantageous to the capitalist inasmuch as it
 preserves the existing value of his capital. [4] So long
 as trade is good, the capitalist is too much absorbed in money-grubbing
 to take notice of this gratuitous gift of labour. A violent interruption
 of the labour-process by a crisis, makes him sensitively aware of it. [5]
As regards the means of production, what is really consumed is
 their use-value, and the consumption of this use-value by labour results
 in the product. There is no consumption of their value, [6]
 and it would therefore be inaccurate to say that it is reproduced. It is
 rather preserved; not by reason of any operation it undergoes itself in
 the process; but because the article in which it originally exists, vanishes,
 it is true, but vanishes into some other article. Hence, in the value of
 the product, there is a reappearance of the value of the means of production,
 but there is, strictly speaking, no reproduction of that value. That which
 is produced is a new use-value in which the old exchange-value reappears.
 [7]
It is otherwise with the subjective factor of the labour-process,
 with labour-power in action. While the labourer, by virtue of his labour
 being of a specialised kind that has a special object, preserves and transfers
 to the product the value of the means of production, he at the same time,
 by the mere act of working, creates each instant an additional or new value.
 Suppose the process of production to be stopped just when the workman has
 produced an equivalent for the value of his own labour-power, when, for
 example, by six hours’ labour, he has added a value of three shillings.
 This value is the surplus, of the total value of the product, over the
 portion of its value that is due to the means of production. It is the
 only original bit of value formed during this process, the only portion
 of the value of the product created by this process. Of course, we do not
 forget that this new value only replaces the money advanced by the capitalist
 in the purchase of the labour-power, and spent by the labourer on the necessaries
 of life. With regard to the money spent, the new value is merely a reproduction;
 but, nevertheless, it is an actual, and not, as in the case of the value
 of the means of production, only an apparent, reproduction. The substitution
 of one value for another, is here effected by the creation of new value.
We know, however, from what has gone before, that the labour-process
 may continue beyond the time necessary to reproduce and incorporate in
 the product a mere equivalent for the value of the labour-power. Instead
 of the six hours that are sufficient for the latter purpose, the process
 may continue for twelve hours. The action of labour-power, therefore, not
 only reproduces its own value, but produces value over and above it. This
 surplus-value is the difference between the value of the product and the
 value of the elements consumed in the formation of that product, in other
 words, of the means of production and the labour-power.
By our explanation of the different parts played by the various
 factors of the labour-process in the formation of the product’s value,
 we have, in fact, disclosed the characters of the different
 functions allotted to the different elements of capital in the process
 of expanding its own value. The surplus of the total value of the product,
 over the sum of the values of its constituent factors, is the surplus of
 the expanded capital over the capital originally advanced. The means of
 production on the one hand, labour-power on the other, are merely the different
 modes of existence which the value of the original capital assumed when
 from being money it was transformed into the various factors of the labour-process.
 That part of capital then, which is represented by the means of production,
 by the raw material, auxiliary material and the instruments of labour does
 not, in the process of production, undergo any quantitative alteration
 of value. I therefore call it the constant part of capital, or, more shortly,
 constant capital.
On the other hand, that part of capital, represented by labour-power,
 does, in the process of production, undergo an alteration of value. It
 both reproduces the equivalent of its own value, and also produces an excess,
 a surplus-value, which may itself vary, may be more or less according to
 circumstances. This part of capital is continually being transformed from
 a constant into a variable magnitude. I therefore call it the variable
 part of capital, or, shortly, variable capital. The same elements
 of capital which, from the point of view of the labour-process, present
 themselves respectively as the objective and subjective factors, as means
 of production and labour-power, present themselves, from the point of view
 of the process of creating surplus-value, as constant and variable capital.
As the value of the raw material may change, so, too, may that
 of the instruments of labour, of the machinery, &c., employed in the
 process; and consequently that portion of the value of the product transferred
 to it from them, may also change. If in consequence of a new invention,
 machinery of a particular kind can be produced by a diminished expenditure
 of labour, the old machinery becomes depreciated more or less, and consequently
 transfers so much less value to the product. But here again, the change
 in value originates outside the process in which the machine is acting
 as a means of production. Once engaged in this process, the machine cannot
 transfer more value than it possesses apart from the process.
Just as a change in the value of the means of production, even
 after they have commenced to take a part in the labour-process, does not
 alter their character as constant capital, so, too, a change in the proportion
 of constant to variable capital does not affect the respective functions
 of these two kinds of capital. The technical conditions of the labour-process
 may be revolutionised to such an extent, that where formerly ten men using
 ten implements of small value worked up a relatively small quantity of
 raw material, one man may now, with the aid of one expensive machine, work
 up one hundred times as much raw material. In the latter case we have an
 enormous increase in the constant capital, that is represented by the total
 value of the means of production used, and at the same time a great reduction
 in the variable capital, invested in labour-power. Such a revolution, however,
 alters only the quantitative relation between the constant and the variable
 capital, or the proportions in which the total capital is split up into
 its constant and variable constituents; it has not in the least degree
 affected the essential difference between the two.
The surplus-value generated in the process of production
 by C, the capital advanced, or in other words, the self-expansion of the
 value of the capital C, presents itself for our consideration, in the first
 place, as a surplus, as the amount by which the value of the product exceeds
 the value of its constituent elements.
The capital C is made up of two components, one, the sum of money
 c laid out upon the means of production, and the other, the sum of money
 v expended upon the labour-power; c represents the portion that has become
 constant capital, and v the portion that has become variable capital. At
 first then, C = c + v: for example, if £500 is the capital advanced,
 its components may be such that the £500 = £410 const. + £90
 var. When the process of production is finished, we get a commodity whose
 value = (c + v) + s, where s is the surplus-value; or taking our
 former figures, the value of this commodity may be (£410 const. +
 £90 var.) + £90 surpl. The original capital has now changed
 from C to C', from £500 to £590. The difference is s
 or a surplus-value of £90. Since the value of the constituent elements
 of the product is equal to the value of the advanced capital, it is mere
 tautology to say, that the excess of the value of the product over the
 value of its constituent elements, is equal to the expansion of the capital
 advanced or to the surplus-value produced.
Nevertheless, we must examine this tautology a little more closely.
 The two things compared are, the value of the product and the value of
 its constituents consumed in the process of production. Now we have seen
 how that portion of the constant capital which consists of the 205instruments
 of labour, transfers to the production only a fraction of its value, while
 the remainder of that value continues to reside in those instruments.
 Since this remainder plays no part in the formation of value, we may at
 present leave it on one side. To introduce it into the calculation would
 make no difference. For instance, taking our former example, c = £410:
 suppose this sum to consist of £312 value of raw material, £44
 value of auxiliary material, and £54 value of the machinery worn
 away in the process; and suppose that the total value of the machinery
 employed is £1,054. Out of this latter sum, then, we reckon as advanced
 for the purpose of turning out the product, the sum of £54 alone,
 which the machinery loses by wear and tear in the process; for this is
 all it parts with to the product. Now if we also reckon the remaining £1,000,
 which still continues in the machinery, as transferred to the product,
 we ought also to reckon it as part of the value advanced, and thus make
 it appear on both sides of our calculation. [1] We should, in this way, get £1,500 on one side and £1,590 on the other.
 The difference of these two sums, or the surplus-value, would still be
 £90. Throughout this Book therefore, by constant capital advanced
 for the production of value, we always mean, unless the context is repugnant
 thereto, the value of the means of production actually consumed in the
 process, and that value alone.
This being so, let us return to the formula C = c + v, which we
 saw was transformed into C' = (c + v) + s, C becoming C'. We know that
 the value of the constant capital is transferred to, and merely re-appears
 in the product. The new value actually created in the process, the value
 produced, or value-product, is therefore not the same as the value of the
 product; it is not, as it would at first sight appear (c + v) + s or £410
 const. + £90 var. + £90 surpl.; but v + s or £90 var.
 + £90 surpl., not £590 but £180. If c = 0, or in other
 words, if there were branches of industry in which the capitalist could
 dispense with all means of production made by previous labour, whether
 they be raw material, auxiliary material, or instruments of labour, employing
 only labour-power and materials supplied by Nature, in that case, there
 would be no constant capital to transfer to the product. This component
 of the value of the product, i.e., the £410 in our example,
 would be eliminated, but the sum of £180, the amount of new value
 created, or the value produced, which contains £90 of surplus-value,
 would remain just as great as if c represented the highest value imaginable.
 We should have C = (0 + v) = v or C' the expanded capital = v + s and therefore 206C'
 - C = s as before. On the other hand, if s = 0, or in other words, if the
 labour-power, whose value is advanced in the form of variable capital,
 were to produce only its equivalent, we should have C = c + v or C' the
 value of the product = (c + v) + 0 or C = C'. The capital advanced would,
 in this case, not have expanded its value.
From what has gone before, we know that surplus-value is purely
 the result of a variation in the value of v, of that portion of the capital
 which is transformed into labour-power; consequently, v + s = v + v', or
 v plus an increment of v. But the fact that it is v alone that varies,
 and the conditions of that variation, are obscured by the circumstance
 that in consequence of the increase in the variable component of the capital,
 there is also an increase in the sum total of the advanced capital. It
 was originally £500 and becomes £590. Therefore in order that
 our investigation may lead to accurate results, we must make abstraction
 from that portion of the value of the product, in which constant capital
 alone appears, and consequently must equate the constant capital to zero
 or make c = 0. This is merely an application of a mathematical rule, employed
 whenever we operate with constant and variable magnitudes, related to each
 other by the symbols of addition and subtraction only.
A further difficulty is caused by the original form of the variable
 capital. In our example, C' = £410 const. + £90 var. + £90
 surpl.; but £90 is a given and therefore a constant quantity; hence
 it appears absurd to treat it as variable. But in fact, the term £90
 var. is here merely a symbol to show that this value undergoes a process.
 The portion of the capital invested in the purchase of labour-power is
 a definite quantity of materialised labour, a constant value like the value
 of the labour-power purchased. But in the process of production the place
 of the £90 is taken by the labour-power in action, dead labour is
 replaced by living labour, something stagnant by something flowing, a constant
 by a variable. The result is the reproduction of v plus an increment of
 v. From the point of view then of capitalist production, the whole process
 appears as the spontaneous variation of the originally constant value,
 which is transformed into labour-power. Both the process and its result,
 appear to be owing to this value. If, therefore, such expressions as “£90
 variable capital,” or “so much self-expanding value,” appear contradictory,
 this is only because they bring to the surface a contradiction immanent
 in capitalist production.
At first sight it appears a strange proceeding, to equate the
 constant capital to zero. Yet it is what we do every day. If, for example,
 we wish to calculate the amount of England’s profits from the cotton industry,
 we first of all deduct the sums paid for cotton to the United States, India,
 Egypt and other countries; in other words, the value of the capital that
 merely re-appears in the value of the product, is put = 0.
207Of course the ratio of surplus-value not only to that portion
 of the capital from which it immediately springs, and whose change of value
 it represents, but also to the sum total of the capital advanced is economically
 of very great importance. We shall, therefore, in the third book, treat
 of this ratio exhaustively. In order to enable one portion of a capital
 to expand its value by being converted into labour-power, it is necessary
 that another portion be converted into means of production. In order that
 variable capital may perform its function, constant capital must be advanced
 in proper proportion, a proportion given by the special technical conditions
 of each labour-process. The circumstance, however, that retorts and other
 vessels, are necessary to a chemical process, does not compel the chemist
 to notice them in the result of his analysis. If we look at the means of
 production, in their relation to the creation of value, and to the variation
 in the quantity of value, apart from anything else, they appear simply
 as the material in which labour-power, the value-creator, incorporates
 itself. Neither the nature, nor the value of this material is of any importance.
 The only requisite is that there be a sufficient supply to absorb the labour
 expended in the process of production. That supply once given, the material
 may rise or fall in value, or even be, as land and the sea, without any
 value in itself; but this will have no influence on the creation of value
 or on the variation in the quantity of value. [2]
In the first place then we equate the constant capital to zero.
 The capital advanced is consequently reduced from c + v to v, and instead
 of the value of the product (c + v) + s we have now the value produced
 (v + s). Given the new value produced = £180, which sum consequently
 represents the whole labour expended during the process, then subtracting
 from it £90 the value of the variable capital, we have remaining
 £90, the amount of the surplus-value. This sum of £90 or s
 expresses the absolute quantity of surplus-value produced. The relative
 quantity produced, or the increase per cent of the variable capital, is
 determined, it is plain, by the ratio of the surplus-value to the variable
 capital, or is expressed by s/v. In our example this ratio is 90/90, which
 gives an increase of 100%. This relative increase in the value of the variable
 capital, or the relative magnitude of the surplus-value, I call, “The rate
 of surplus-value.” [3]
209During the second period of the labour-process, that in
 which his labour is no longer necessary labour, the workman, it is true,
 labours, expends labour-power; but his labour, being no longer necessary
 labour, he creates no value for himself. He creates surplus-value which,
 for the capitalist, has all the charms of a creation out of nothing. This
 portion of the working-day, I name surplus labour-time, and to the labour
 expended during that time, I give the name of surplus-labour. It is every
 bit as important, for a correct understanding of surplus-value, to conceive
 it as a mere congelation of surplus labour-time, as nothing but materialised
 surplus-labour, as it is, for a proper comprehension of value, to conceive
 it as a mere congelation of so many hours of labour, as nothing but materialised
 labour. The essential difference between the various economic forms of
 society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labour, and one
 based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour
 is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer. [6]
Since, on the one hand, the values of the variable capital and
 of the labour-power purchased by that capital are equal, and the value
 of this labour-power determines the necessary portion of the working-day;
 and since, on the other hand, the surplus-value is determined by the surplus
 portion of the working-day, it follows that surplus-value bears the same
 ratio to variable capital, that surplus-labour does to necessary labour,
 or in other words, the rate of surplus-value, s/v = (surplus labour)/(necessary labour). Both ratios, s/v and (surplus labour)/(necessary labour), express the same
 thing in different ways; in the one case by reference to materialised,
 incorporated labour, in the other by reference to living, fluent labour.
The rate of surplus-value is therefore an exact expression for
 the degree of exploitation of labour-power by capital, or of the labourer
 by the capitalist. [7]
210We assumed in our example, that the value of the product = 
 £410 const. + £90 var. + £90 surpl., and that the capital
 advanced = £500. Since the surplus-value = £90, and the advanced
 capital = £500, we should, according to the usual way of reckoning,
 get as the rate of surplus-value (generally confounded with rate of profits)
 18%, a rate so low as possibly to cause a pleasant surprise to Mr. Carey
 and other harmonisers. But in truth, the rate of surplus-value is not equal
 to s/C or s/(c+v), but to s/v: thus it is not 90/500 but 90/90 or 100%, which is more
 than five times the apparent degree of exploitation. Although, in the case
 we have supposed, we are ignorant of the actual length of the working-day,
 and of the duration in days or weeks of the labour-process, as also of
 the number of labourers employed, yet the rate of surplus-value s/v accurately
 discloses to us, by means of its equivalent expression, surplus-labour/necessary
 labour the relation between the two parts of the working-day. This relation
 is here one of equality, the rate being 100%. Hence, it is plain, the labourer,
 in our example, works one half of the day for himself, the other half for
 the capitalist.
The method of calculating the rate of surplus-value is therefore,
 shortly, as follows. We take the total value of the product and put the
 constant capital which merely re-appears in it, equal to zero. What remains,
 is the only value that has, in the process of producing the commodity,
 been actually created. If the amount of surplus-value be given, we have
 only to deduct it from this remainder, to find the variable capital. And
 vice versâ, if the latter be given, and we require to find
 the surplus-value. If both be given, we have only to perform the concluding
 operation, viz., to calculate s/v, the ratio of the surplus-value to the
 variable capital.
Though the method is so simple, yet it may not be amiss, by means
 of a few examples, to exercise the reader in the application of the novel
 principles underlying it.
First we will take the case of a spinning mill containing 10,000
 mule spindles, spinning No. 32 yarn from American cotton, and producing
 1 lb. of yarn weekly per spindle. We assume the waste to be 6%: under these
 circumstances 10,600 lbs. of cotton are consumed weekly, of which 600 lbs.
 go to waste. The price of the cotton in April, 1871, was 7¾d. per lb.;
 the raw material therefore costs in round numbers £342. 211The
 10,000 spindles, including preparation-machinery, and motive power, cost,
 we will assume, £1 per spindle, amounting to a total of £10,000.
 The wear and tear we put at 10%, or £1,000 yearly = £20 weekly.
 The rent of the building we suppose to be £300 a year, or £6
 a week. Coal consumed (for 100 horse-power indicated, at 4 lbs. of coal
 per horse-power per hour during 60 hours, and inclusive of that consumed
 in heating the mill), 11 tons a week at 8s. 6d. a ton, amounts to about
 £4½ a week: gas, £1 a week, oil, &c., £4½ a
 week. Total cost of the above auxiliary materials, £10 weekly. Therefore
 the constant portion of the value of the week’s product is £378.
 Wages amount to £52 a week. The price of the yarn is 12¼d. per.
 lb. which gives for the value of 10,000 lbs. the sum of £510. The
 surplus-value is therefore in this case £510 - £430 = £80.
 We put the constant part of the value of the product = 0, as it plays no
 part in the creation of value. There remains £132 as the weekly value
 created, which = £52 var. + £80 surpl. The rate of surplus-value
 is therefore 80/52 = 153 11/13%. In a working-day of 10 hours with average
 labour the result is: necessary labour = 3 31/33 hours, and surplus-labour
 = 6 2/33. [8]
One more example. Jacob gives the following calculation for the
 year 1815. Owing to the previous adjustment of several items it is very
 imperfect; nevertheless for our purpose it is sufficient. In it he assumes
 the price of wheat to be 8s. a quarter, and the average yield per acre
 to be 22 bushels.
Assuming that the price of the product is the same as its value, we here
 find the surplus-value distributed under the various heads of profit, interest,
 rent, &c. We have nothing to do with these in detail; we simply add
 them together, and the sum is a surplus-value of £3 11s. 0d. The
 sum of £3 19s. 0d., paid for seed and manure, is constant capital,
 and we put it equal to zero. There is left the sum of £3
 10s. 0d., which is the variable capital advanced: and we see that a new
 value of £3 10s. 0d + £3 11s. 0d. has been produced in its
 place. Therefore s/v = £3 11s. 0d. / £3 10s. 0d., giving
 a rate of surplus-value of more than 100%. The labourer employs more than
 one half of his working-day in producing the surplus-value, which different
 persons, under different pretexts, share amongst themselves. [9]
Let us now return to the example by which we were
 shown how the capitalist converts money into capital.
The product of a working-day of 12 hours is 20 lbs. of yarn, having
 a value of 30s. No less than 8/10ths of this value, or 24s., is due to
 mere re-appearance in it, of the value of the means of production (20 lbs.
 of cotton, value 20s., and spindle worn away, 4s.): it is therefore constant
 capital. The remaining 2/10ths or 6s. is the new value created during the
 spinning process: of this one half replaces the value of the day’s labour-power,
 or the variable capital, the remaining half constitutes a surplus-value
 of 3s. The total value then of the 20 lbs. of yarn is made up as follows:
Since the whole of this value is contained in the 20 lbs. of yarn
 produced, it follows that the various component parts of this value, can
 be represented as being contained respectively in corresponding parts of
 the product.
If the value of 30s. is contained in 20 lbs. of yarn, then 8/10ths
 of this value, or the 24s. that form its constant part, is contained in
 8/10ths of the product or in 16 lbs. of yarn. Of the latter 13 1/3 lbs.
 represent the value of the raw material, the 20s. worth of cotton spun,
 and 2 2/3 lbs. represent the 4s. worth of spindle, &c., worn away in
 the process.
Hence the whole of the cotton used up in spinning the 20 lbs.
 of yarn, 213is represented by 13 1/3 lbs. of yarn. This latter
 weight of yarn contains, it is true, by weight, no more than 13 1/3 lbs.
 of cotton, worth 13 1/3 shillings; but the 6 2/3 shillings additional value
 contained in it, are the equivalent for the cotton consumed in spinning
 the remaining 6 2/3 lbs. of yarn. The effect is the same as if these 6
 2/3 lbs. of yarn contained no cotton at all, and the whole 20 lbs. of cotton
 were concentrated in the 13 1/3 lbs. of yarn. The latter weight, on the
 other hand, does not contain an atom either of the value of the auxiliary
 materials and implements, or of the value newly created in the process.
In the same way, the 2 2/3 lbs. of yarn, in which the 4s., the
 remainder of the constant capital, is embodied, represents nothing but
 the value of the auxiliary materials and instruments of labour consumed
 in producing the 20 lbs. of yarn.
We have, therefore, arrived at this result: although eight-tenths
 of the product, or 16 lbs. of yarn, is, in its character of an article
 of utility, just as much the fabric of the spinner’s labour, as the remainder
 of the same product, yet when viewed in this connexion, it does not contain,
 and has not absorbed any labour expended during the process of spinning.
 It is just as if the cotton had converted itself into yarn, without help;
 as if the shape it had assumed was mere trickery and deceit: for so soon
 as our capitalist sells it for 24s., and with the money replaces his means
 of production, it becomes evident that this 16 lbs. of yarn is nothing
 more than so much cotton and spindle-waste in disguise.
On the other hand, the remaining 2/10ths of the product, or 4
 lbs of yarn, represent nothing but the new value of 6s., created during
 the 12 hours’ spinning process. All the value transferred to those 4 lbs,
 from the raw material and instruments of labour consumed, was, so to say,
 intercepted in order to be incorporated in the 16 lbs. first spun. In this
 case, it is as if the spinner had spun 4 lbs. of yarn out of air, or, as
 if he had spun them with the aid of cotton and spindles, that, being the
 spontaneous gift of Nature, transferred no value to the product.
Of this 4 lbs. of yarn, in which the whole of the value newly
 created during the process, is condensed, one half represents the equivalent
 for the value of the labour consumed, or the 3s. variable capital, the
 other half represents the 3s. surplus-value.
Since 12 working-hours of the spinner are embodied in 6s., it
 follows that in yarn of the value of 30s., there must be embodied 60 working-hours.
 And this quantity of labour-time does in fact exist in the 20 lbs of yarn;
 for in 8/10ths or 16 lbs there are materialised the 48 hours of 214labour
 expended, before the commencement of the spinning process, on the means
 of production; and in the remaining 2/10ths or 4 lbs there are materialised
 the 12 hours’ work done during the process itself.
On a former page we saw that the value of the yarn is equal to
 the sum of the new value created during the production of that yarn plus
 the value previously existing in the means of production.
It has now been shown how the various component parts of the value
 of the product, parts that differ functionally from each other, may be
 represented by corresponding proportional parts of the product itself.
To split up in this manner the product into different parts, of
 which one represents only the labour previously spent on the means of production,
 or the constant capital, another, only the necessary labour spent during
 the process of production, or the variable capital, and another and last
 part, only the surplus-labour expended during the same process, or the
 surplus-value; to do this, is, as will be seen later on from its application
 to complicated and hitherto unsolved problems, no less important than it
 is simple.
In the preceding investigation we have treated the total product
 as the final result, ready for use, of a working-day of 12 hours. We can
 however follow this total product through all the stages of its production;
 and in this way we shall arrive at the same result as before, if we represent
 the partial products, given off at the different stages, as functionally
 different parts of the final or total product.
One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior,
 who may be called the bel-esprit of English economists, well known, alike
 for his economic “science,” and for his beautiful style, was summoned from
 Oxford to Manchester, to learn in the latter place, the Political Economy
 that he taught in the former. The manufacturers elected him as their champion,
 not only against the newly passed Factory Act, but against the still more
 menacing Ten-hours’ agitation. With their usual practical acuteness, they
 had found out that the learned Professor “wanted a good deal of finishing;” 
 it was this discovery that caused them to write for him. On his side the
 Professor has embodied the lecture he received from the Manchester manufacturers,
 in a pamphlet, entitled: “Letters on the Factory Act, as it affects the
 cotton manufacture.” London, 1837. Here we find, amongst others, the following
 edifying passage:
And the Professor calls this an “analysis!” If, giving credence
 to the out-cries of the manufacturers, he believed that the workmen spend
 the best part of the day in the production, i.e., the reproduction or replacement
 of the value of the buildings, machinery, cotton, coal, &c., then his
 analysis was superfluous. His answer would simply have been: — Gentlemen!
 if you work your mills for 10 hours instead of 11½, then,
 other things being equal, the daily consumption of cotton, machinery, &c.,
 will decrease in proportion. You gain just as much as you lose. Your work-people
 will in future spend one hour and a half less time in reproducing or replacing
 the capital that has been advanced. — If, on the other hand, he did not
 believe them without further inquiry, but, as being an expert in such matters,
 deemed an analysis necessary, then he ought, in a question that is concerned
 exclusively with the relations of net profit to the length of the working-day,
 before all things to have asked the manufacturers, to be careful not to
 lump together machinery, workshops, raw material, and labour, but to be
 good enough to place the constant capital, invested in buildings, machinery,
 raw material, &c., on one side of the account, and the capital advanced
 in wages on the other side. If the Professor then found, that in accordance
 with the calculation of the manufacturers, the workman reproduced or replaced
 his wages in 2 half-hours, in that case, he should have continued his analysis
 thus:
Senior invented the battle cry of the “last hour” in 1836. [12]
 In the London Economist of the 15th April, 1848, the same cry was
 again raised by James Wilson, an economic mandarin of high standing: this
 time in opposition to the 10 hours’ bill.
The portion of the product that represents the
 surplus-value, (one tenth of the 20 lbs., or 2 lbs. of yarn, in the example
 given in Sec. 2) we call “surplus-produce.” Just as the rate of surplus-value
 is determined by its relation, not to the sum total of the capital, but
 to its variable part; in like manner, the relative quantity of surplus-produce
 is determined by the ratio that this produce bears, not to the remaining
 part of the total product, but to that part of it in which is incorporated
 the necessary labour. Since the production of surplus-value is the chief
 end and aim of capitalist production, it is clear, that the greatness of
 a man’s or a nation’s wealth should be measured, not by the absolute quantity
 produced, but by the relative magnitude of the surplus-produce. [13]
221The sum of the necessary labour and the surplus-labour,
 i.e., of the periods of time during which the workman replaces the value
 of his labour-power, and produces the surplus-value, this sum constitutes
 the actual time during which he works, i.e., the working-day.
We started with the supposition that labour-power
 is bought and sold at its value. Its value, like that of all other commodities,
 is determined by the working-time necessary to its production. If the production
 of the average daily means of subsistence of the labourer takes up 6 hours,
 he must work, on the average, 6 hours every day, to produce his daily labour-power,
 or to reproduce the value received as the result of its sale. The necessary
 part of his working-day amounts to 6 hours, and is, therefore, caeteris
 paribus [other things being equal], a given quantity. But with this, the extent of the working-day itself is not yet given.
Let us assume that the line A–––B represents the length of the necessary working-time, say 6 hours. If the labour be prolonged 1, 3, or 6 hours beyond A—–B, we have 3 other lines:
representing 3 different working-days of 7, 9, and 12 hours. The extension
 B—–C of the line A—–B represents the length of the surplus-labour. As
 the working-day is A—–B + B—–C or A—–C, it varies with the variable
 quantity B—–C. Since A—–B is constant, the ratio of B—–C to A—–B can
 always be calculated. In working-day I, it is 1/6, in working-day II, 3/6,
 in working day III 6/6 of A—–B. Since further the ratio (surplus working-time)/(necessary working-time), determines the rate of the surplus-value, the latter is given by the ratio
 of B—-C to A—-B. It amounts in the 3 different working-days respectively
 to 16 2/3, 50 and 100 per cent. On the other hand, the rate of surplus-value
 alone would not give us the extent of the working-day. If this rate, e.g., were
 100 per cent., the working-day might be of 8, 10, 12, or more hours. It
 would indicate that the 2 constituent parts of the working-day, necessary-labour
 and surplus-labour time, were equal in extent, but not how long each of
 these two constituent parts was.
The working-day is thus not a constant, but a variable quantity.
 One of its parts, certainly, is determined by the working-time required
 for the reproduction of the labour-power of the labourer himself. But its
 total amount varies with the duration of the surplus-labour. The working-day
 is, therefore, determinable, but is, per se, indeterminate. [1]
Although the working-day is not a fixed, but a fluent quantity,
 it can, on the other hand, only vary within certain limits. The minimum
 limit is, however, not determinable; of course, if we make the extension
 line B—‑C or the surplus-labour = 0, we have a minimum limit, i.e.,
 the part of the day which the labourer must necessarily work for his own
 maintenance. On the basis of capitalist production, however, this necessary
 labour can form a part only of the working-day; the working-day itself
 can never be reduced to this minimum. On the other hand, the working-day
 has a maximum limit. It cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point. This
 maximum limit is conditioned by two things. First, by the physical bounds
 of labour-power. Within the 24 hours of the natural day a man can expend
 only a definite quantity of his vital force. A horse, in like manner, can
 only work from day to day, 8 hours. During part of the day this force must
 rest, sleep; during another part the man has to satisfy other physical
 needs, to feed, wash, and clothe himself. Besides these purely physical
 limitations, the extension of the working-day encounters moral ones. The
 labourer needs time for satisfying his intellectual and social wants, the
 extent and number of which are conditioned by the general state of social
 advancement. The variation of the working-day fluctuates, therefore, within
 physical and social bounds. But both these limiting conditions are of a
 very elastic nature, and allow the greatest latitude. So we find working-days
 of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, i.e., of the most different lengths.
The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-rate. To
 him its use-value belongs during one working-day. He has thus acquired
 the right to make the labourer work for him during one day. But, what is
 a working-day? [2]
p224At all events, less than a natural day. By how much? The
 capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thule [the outermost limit], the necessary
 limit of the working-day. As capitalist, he is only capital personified.
 His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse,
 the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor,
 the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour.
 [3]
Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking
 living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during
 which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes
 the labour-power he has purchased of him. [4]
If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs
 the capitalist. [5]
The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange
 of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible
 benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. Suddenly the voice of the
 labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress of the process
 of production, rises:
We see then, that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the nature
 of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working-day,
 no limit to surplus-labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser
 when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make,
 whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand, the
 peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption
 by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he
 wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There
 is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing
 the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence
 is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of
 what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle
 between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and
 collective labour, i.e., the working-class.
p226
The comparison of the greed for surplus-labour in the Danubian
 Principalities with the same greed in English factories has a special interest,
 because surplus-labour in the corvée has an independent and palpable
 form.
Suppose the working-day consists of 6 hours of necessary labour,
 and 6 hours of surplus-labour. Then the free labourer gives the capitalist
 every week 6 x 6 or 36 hours of surplus-labour. It is the same as if he
 worked 3 days in the week for himself, and 3 days in the week gratis for
 the capitalist. But this is not evident on the surface. Surplus-labour
 and necessary labour glide one into the other. I can, therefore, express
 the same relationship by saying, e.g., that the labourer in every minute
 works 30 seconds for himself, and 30 for the capitalist, etc. It is otherwise
 with the corvée. The necessary labour which the Wallachian peasant
 does for his own maintenance is distinctly marked off from his surplus-labour
 on behalf of the Boyard. The one he does on his own field, the other on
 the seignorial estate. Both parts of the labour-time exist, therefore,
 independently, side by side one with the other. In the corvée the
 surplus-labour is accurately marked off from the necessary labour. This,
 however, can make no difference with regard to the quantitative relation
 of surplus-labour to necessary labour. Three days’ surplus-labour in the
 week remain three days that yield no equivalent to the labourer himself,
 whether it be called corvée or wage-labour. But in the capitalist
 the greed for surplus-labour appears in the straining after an unlimited
 extension of the working-day, in the Boyard more simply in a direct hunting
 after days of corvée. [10]
In the Danubian Principalities the corvée was mixed up
 with rents in kind and other appurtenances of bondage, but it formed the
 most important tribute paid to the ruling class. Where this was the case,
 the corvée rarely arose from serfdom; serfdom much more frequently
 on the other hand took origin from the corvée. [11] This is what took place p228in the Roumanian provinces. Their original
 mode of production was based on community of the soil, but not in the Slavonic
 or Indian form. Part of the land was cultivated in severalty as freehold
 by the members of the community, another part — ager publicus —
 was cultivated by them in common. The products of this common labour served
 partly as a reserve fund against bad harvests and other accidents, partly
 as a public store for providing the costs of war, religion, and other common
 expenses. In course of time military and clerical dignitaries usurped,
 along with the common land, the labour spent upon it. The labour of the
 free peasants on their common land was transformed into corvée for
 the thieves of the common land. This corvée soon developed into
 a servile relationship existing in point of fact, not in point of law,
 until Russia, the liberator of the world, made it legal under presence
 of abolishing serfdom. The code of the corvée, which the Russian
 General Kisseleff proclaimed in 1831, was of course dictated by the Boyards
 themselves. Thus Russia conquered with one blow the magnates of the Danubian
 provinces, and the applause of liberal cretins throughout Europe.
If the Règlement organique of the Danubian provinces was
 a positive expression of the greed for surplus-labour which every paragraph
 legalised, the English Factory Acts are the negative expression of the
 same greed. These acts curb the passion of capital for a limitless draining
 of labour-power, by forcibly limiting the working-day by state regulations,
 made by a state that is ruled by capitalist-and landlord. Apart from the
 working-class movement that daily grew more threatening, the limiting of
 factory labour was dictated by the same necessity which spread guano over
 the English fields. The same blind eagerness for plunder that in the one
 case exhausted the soil, had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living
 force of the nation. Periodical epidemics speak on this point as clearly
 as the diminishing military standard in Germany and France. [13]
The Factory Act of 1850 now in force (1867) allows for the average
 working-day 10 hours, i.e., for the first 5 days 12 hours from 6 a.m. to
 6 p.m., including ½ an hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner, and
 thus leaving 10½ working-hours, and 8 hours for Saturday, from 6 a.m.
 to 2 p.m., of which ½ an hour is subtracted for breakfast. 60 working-hours
 are left, 10½ for each of the first 5 days, 7½ for the last. [14]
Certain guardians of these laws are appointed, Factory Inspectors,
 directly under the Home Secretary, whose reports are published half-yearly,
 by order of Parliament. They give regular and official statistics of the
 capitalistic greed for surplus-labour.
Let us listen, for a moment, to the Factory Inspectors. [15]
Crises during which production is interrupted and the factories
 work “short time,” i.e., for only a part of the week, naturally do not
 affect the tendency to extend the working-day. The less business there
 is, the more profit has to be made on the business done. The less time
 spent in work, the more of that time has to be turned into surplus labour-time.
Thus the Factory Inspector’s report on the period of the crisis
 from 1857 to 1858:
The same phenomenon was reproduced on a smaller scale during the frightful cotton-crises from 1861 to 1865. [21]
These “small thefts” of capital from the labourer’s meal and recreation
 time, the factory inspectors also designate as “petty pilferings of minutes,” 
 [25] “snatching a few minutes,” [26] or, as the labourers technically called them, “nibbling and cribbling at meal-times.” [27]
It is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of surplus-value
 by surplus-labour, is no secret.
Nothing is from this point of view more characteristic than the
 designation of the workers who work full time as “full-timers,” and the
 children under 13 who are only allowed to work 6 hours as “half-timers.”
 The worker is here nothing more than personified labour-time. All individual
 distinctions are merged in those of “full-timers” and “half-timers” [30]
We have hitherto considered the tendency to the extension
 of the working-day, the were-wolf’s hunger for surplus-labour in a department
 where the monstrous exactions, not surpassed, says an English bourgeois
 economist, by the cruelties of the Spaniards to the American red-skins,
 [31] caused capital at last to be bound by the chains
 of legal regulations. Now, let us cast a glance at certain branches of
 production in which the exploitation of labour is either free from fetters
 to this day, or was so yesterday.
The potteries of Staffordshire have, during the last 22 years,
 been the subject of three parliamentary inquiries. The result is embodied
 in Mr. Scriven’s Report of 1841 to the “Children’s Employment Commissioners,” 
 in the report of Dr. Greenhow of 1860 published by order of the medical
 officer of the Privy Council (Public Health, 3rd Report, 112-113), lastly,
 in the report of Mr. Longe of 1862 in the “First Report of the Children’s
 Employment Commission, of the 13th June, 1863.” For my purpose it is enough
 to take, from the reports of 1860 and 1863, some depositions of the exploited
 children themselves. From the children we may form an opinion as to the
 adults, especially the girls and women, and that in a branch of industry
 by the side of which cotton-spinning appears an agreeable and healthful
 occupation. [33]
William Wood, 9 years old, was 7 years and 10 months when he began
 to work. He “ran moulds” (carried ready-moulded articles into the drying-room,
 afterwards bringing back the empty mould) from the beginning. He came to
 work every day in the week at 6 a.m., and left off about 9 p.m. “I work
 till 9 o’clock at night six days in the week. I have done so seven or eight
 weeks.”
Fernyhough, a boy of ten:
Dr. Greenhow states that the average duration of life in the pottery
 districts of Stoke-on-Trent, and Wolstanton is extraordinarily short. Although
 in the district of Stoke, only 36.6% and in Wolstanton only p23530.4%
 of the adult male population above 20 are employed in the potteries, among
 the men of that age in the first district more than half, in the second,
 nearly 2/5 of the whole deaths are the result of pulmonary diseases among
 the potters. Dr. Boothroyd, a medical practitioner at Hanley, says:
In like manner another doctor, Mr. M’Bean:
These statements are taken from the report of Dr. Greenhow in 1860. [35]
From the report of the Commissioners in 1863, the following: Dr.
 J. T. Arledge, senior physician of the North Staffordshire Infirmary, says:
Mr. Charles Parsons, late house surgeon of the same institution,
 writes in a letter to Commissioner Longe, amongst other things:
The manufacture of lucifer matches dates from 1833, from the discovery
 of the method of applying phosphorus to the match itself. Since 1845 this
 manufacture has rapidly developed in England, and has extended especially
 amongst the thickly populated parts of London as well as in Manchester,
 Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle and Glasgow. With it
 has spread the form of lockjaw, which a Vienna physician in 1845 discovered
 to be a disease peculiar to lucifer-matchmakers. Half the workers are children
 under thirteen, and young persons under eighteen. The manufacture is on
 account of its unhealthiness and unpleasantness in such bad odour that
 only the most miserable part of the labouring class, half-starved widows
 and so forth, deliver up their children to it, “the ragged, half-starved,
 untaught children.” [39]
Of the witnesses that Commissioner White examined (1863), 270
 were under 18, 50 under 10, 10 only 8, and 5 only 6 years old. A range
 of the working-day from 12 to 14 or 15 hours, night-labour, irregular meal-times,
 meals for the most part taken in the very workrooms that are pestilent
 with phosphorus. Dante would have found the worst horrors of his Inferno
 surpassed in this manufacture.
In the manufacture of paper-hangings the coarser sorts are printed
 by machine; the finer by hand (block-printing). The most active business
 months are from the beginning of October to the end of April. During this
 time the work goes on fast and furious without intermission from 6 a.m.
 to 10 p.m. or further into the night.
J. Leach deposes:
Still this same Mr. Smith, who is so extremely devoted to the pluralis majestatis
 [the Royal “we,” i.e., speaking on behalf of his subjects], adds with
 a smile, "Machine-work is not great.” So the employers in the block-printing
 say: “Hand labour is more healthy than machine work.” On the whole, manufacturers
 declare with indignation against the proposal “to stop the machines at
 least during meal-times.”
The report of the Commission opines with naïveté that the fear of some “leading firms” 
 of losing time, i.e., the time for appropriating the labour of others,
 and thence losing profit is not a sufficient reason for allowing children
 under 13, and young persons under 18, working 12 to 16 hours per day, to
 lose their dinner, nor for giving it to them as coal and water are supplied
 to the steam-engine, soap to wool, oil to the wheel — as merely auxiliary
 material to the instruments of labour, during the process of production
 itself. [41]
No branch of industry in England (we do not take into account
 the making of bread by machinery recently introduced) has preserved up
 to the present day a method of production so archaic, so — as we see from
 the poets of the Roman Empire — pre-christian, as baking. But capital,
 as was said earlier, is at first indifferent as to the p238technical
 character of the labour-process; it begins by taking it just as it finds
 it.
The incredible adulteration of bread, especially in London, was
 first revealed by the House of Commons Committee “on the adulteration of
 articles of food” (1855-56), and Dr. Hassall’s work, “Adulterations detected.”
 [42] The consequence of these revelations was the Act
 of August 6th, 1860, “for preventing the adulteration of articles of food
 and drink,” an inoperative law, as it naturally shows the tenderest consideration
 for every Free-trader who determines by the buying or selling of adulterated
 commodities “to turn an honest penny.” [43] The Committee itself formulated more or less naïvely its conviction that Free-trade
 meant essentially trade with adulterated, or as the English ingeniously
 put it, “sophisticated” goods. In fact this kind of sophistry knows better
 than Protagoras how to make white black, and black white, and better than
 the Eleatics how to demonstrate ad oculos [before your own eyes] that everything is only
 appearance. [44]
At all events the Committee had directed the attention of the
 public to its “daily bread,” and therefore to the baking trade. At the
 same time in public meetings and in petitions to Parliament rose the cry
 of the London journeymen bakers against their over-work, &c. The cry
 was so urgent that Mr. H. S. Tremenheere, also a member of the Commission
 of 1863 several times mentioned, was appointed Royal Commissioner of Inquiry.
 His report, [45] together with the evidence given, roused not the heart of the public but its stomach. Englishmen, always well up in the Bible, knew well enough that man, unless by elective grace a capitalist, or landlord, or sinecurist, is commanded to eat his bread in the sweat
 of his brow, but they did not know that he had to p239eat daily
 in his bread a certain quantity of human perspiration mixed with the discharge
 of abscesses, cobwebs, dead black-beetles, and putrid German yeast, without
 counting alum, sand, and other agreeable mineral ingredients. Without any
 regard to his holiness, Free-trade, the free baking-trade was therefore
 placed under the supervision of the State inspectors (Close of the Parliamentary
 session of 1863), and by the same Act of Parliament, work from 9 in the
 evening to 5 in the morning was forbidden for journeymen bakers under 18.
 The last clause speaks volumes as to the over-work in this old-fashioned,
 homely line of business.
Even the bourgeois intellect understands the position of the “underselling” 
 masters. “The unpaid labour of the men was made the source whereby the
 competition was carried on.” [48] And the “full-priced” baker denounces his underselling competitors to the Commission of Inquiry
 as thieves of foreign labour and adulterators.
The adulteration of bread and the formation of a class of bakers
 that sells the bread below the full price, date from the beginning of the
 18th century, from the time when the corporate character of the trade was
 lost, and the capitalist in the form of the miller or flour-factor, rises
 behind the nominal master baker.[50] Thus was laid the foundation of capitalistic production in this trade, of the unlimited extension
 of the working-day and of night-labour, although the latter only since
 1824 gained a serious footing, even in London. [51]
After what has just been said, it will be understood that the
 Report of the Commission classes journeymen bakers among the short-lived p241labourers,
 who, having by good luck escaped the normal decimation of the children
 of the working-class, rarely reach the age of 42. Nevertheless, the baking
 trade is always overwhelmed with applicants. The sources of the supply
 of these labour-powers to London are Scotland, the western agricultural
 districts of England, and Germany.
In the years 1858-60, the journeymen bakers in Ireland organised
 at their own expense great meetings to agitate against night and Sunday
 work. The public — e.g., at the Dublin meeting in May, 1860 — took their
 part with Irish warmth. As a result of this movement, day-labour alone
 was successfully established in Wexford, Kilkenny, Clonmel, Waterford,
 &c.
The Committee of the English Government, which Government, in
 Ireland, is armed to the teeth, and generally knows how to show it, remonstrates
 in mild, though funereal, tones with the implacable master bakers of Dublin,
 Limerick, Cork, &c.:
p242So far, we have dealt with Ireland. On the other side of
 the channel, in Scotland, the agricultural labourer, the ploughman, protests
 against his 13-14 hours’ work in the most inclement climate, with 4 hours’
 additional work on Sunday (in this land of Sabbatarians!), [54] whilst, at the same time, three railway men are standing before a London coroner’s jury — a guard, an engine-driver, a signalman. A tremendous
 railway accident has hurried hundreds of passengers into another world.
 The negligence of the employee is the cause of the misfortune. They declare
 with one voice before the jury that ten or twelve years before, their labour
 only lasted eight hours a-day. During the last five or six years it had
 been screwed up to 14, 18, and 20 hours, and under a specially severe pressure
 of holiday-makers, at times of excursion trains, it often lasted for 40
 or 50 hours without a break. They were ordinary men, not Cyclops. At a
 certain point their labour-power failed. Torpor seized them. Their brain
 ceased to think, their eyes to see. The thoroughly “respectable” British
 jurymen answered by a verdict that sent them to the next assizes on a charge
 of manslaughter, and, in a gentle “rider” to their verdict, expressed the
 pious hope that the capitalistic magnates of the railways would, in future,
 be more extravagant in the purchase of a sufficient quantity of labour-power,
 and more “abstemious,” more “self-denying,” more “thrifty,” in the draining
 of paid labour-power. [55]
p243From the motley crowd of labourers of all callings, ages,
 sexes, that press on us more busily than the souls of the slain on Ulysses,
 on whom — without referring to the Blue books under their arms — we see
 at a glance the mark of over-work, let us take two more figures whose striking
 contrast proves that before capital all men are alike — a milliner and
 a blacksmith.
In the last week of June, 1863, all the London daily papers published
 a paragraph with the “sensational” heading, “Death from simple over-work.”
 It dealt with the death of the milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years of
 age, employed in a highly-respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited
 by a lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often-told story, [56] was once more recounted. This girl worked, on an average, 16½ hours, during the season often 30 hours, without a break, whilst her failing labour-power
 was revived by occasional supplies of sherry, port, or coffee. It was just
 now the height of the season. It was necessary to conjure up in the twinkling
 of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to the ball
 in honour of the newly-imported Princess of Wales. Mary Anne Walkley had
 worked without intermission for 26½ hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in
 one room, that only afforded 1/3 of the cubic feet of air required for them.
 At night, they slept in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the
 bedroom was divided by partitions of board. [57] And
 this was one of the best milp244linery establishments in London. Mary
 Anne Walkley fell ill on the Friday, died on Sunday, without, to the astonishment
 of Madame Elise, having previously completed the work in hand. The doctor,
 Mr. Keys, called too late to the death-bed, duly bore witness before the
 coroner’s jury that
In order to give the doctor a lesson in good manners, the coroner’s jury
 thereupon brought in a verdict that
“Our white slaves,” cried the Morning
 Star, the organ of the Free-traders, Cobden and Bright, “our white
 slaves, who are toiled into the grave, for the most part silently pine
 and die.” [58]
In some branches of industry, the girls and women work through
 the night together with the males. [61]
Placing on one side the generally injurious influence of night-labour,
 [62] the duration of the process of production, unbroken during the 24 hours, offers very welcome opportunities of exceeding the
 limits of the normal working-day, e.g., in the branches of industry already
 mentioned, which are of an exceedingly fatiguing nature; the official working-day
 means for each worker usually 12 hours by night or day. But the over-work
 beyond this amount is in many cases, to use the words of the English official
 report, “truly fearful.” [63]
p248Let us now hear how capital itself regards this 24 hours’
 system. The extreme forms of the system, its abuse in the “cruel and incredible” 
 extension of the working-day are naturally passed over in silence. Capital
 only speaks of the system in its “normal” form.
Messrs. Naylor & Vickers, steel manufacturers, who employ
 between 600 and 700 persons, among whom only 10 per cent are under 18,
 and of those, only 20 boys under 18 work in night sets, thus express themselves:
Mr. J. Ellis, one of the firm of Messrs. John Brown & Co.,
 steel and iron works, employing about 3,000 men and boys, part of whose
 operations, namely, iron and heavier steel work, goes on night and day
 by relays, states “that in the heavier steel work one or two boys are employed
 to a score or two men.” Their concern employs upwards of 500 boys under
 18, of whom about 1/3 or 170 are under the age of 13. With reference to
 the proposed alteration of the law, Mr. Ellis says:
(Messrs. Naylor & Vickers, on the other hand, in conformity with the interest of their
 business, considered that periodically changed night-labour might possibly
 do more harm than continual night-labour.)
The “Cyclops Steel and Iron Works,” of Messrs. Cammell & Co.,
 are concocted on the same large scale as those of the above-mentioned John
 Brown & Co. The managing director had handed in his evidence to the
 Government Commissioner, Mr. White, in writing. Later he found it convenient
 to suppress the MS. when it had been returned to him for revision. Mr.
 White, however, has a good memory. He remembered quite clearly that for
 the Messrs. Cyclops the forbidding of the night-labour of children and
 young persons “would be impossible, it would be tantamount to stopping
 their works,” and yet their business p250employs little more than
 6% of boys under 18, and less than 1% under 13. [69]
On the same subject Mr. E. F. Sanderson, of the firm of Sanderson,
 Bros., & Co., steel rolling-mills and forges, Attercliffe, says:
Mr. Sanderson does not know how much he pays the children,
 but
And why not? Why could
 not boys learn their handicraft in the day-time? Your reason?
In other words, Messrs. Sanderson would have to pay part of the wages of the
 adult men out of their own pockets instead of by the night-work of the
 boys. Messrs. Sanderson’s profit would thus fall to some extent, and this
 is the good Sandersonian reason why boys cannot learn their handicraft
 in the day. [70] In addition to this, it would throw
 night-labour on those who worked instead of the boys, which they would
 not be able to stand. The difficulties in fact would be so great that they
 would very likely lead to the giving up of night-work altogether, and “as
 far as the work itself is concerned,” says E. F. Sanderson, “this would
 suit as well, but —” But Messrs. Sanderson have something else to make
 besides steel. Steel-making is simply a pretext for surplus-value making.
 The smelting furnaces, rolling-mills, &c., the buildings, machinery,
 iron, coal, &c., have something more to do than transform themselves
 into steel. They are there to absorb surplus-labour, and naturally absorb
 more in 24 hours than in 12. In fact they give, by grace of
 God and law, the Sandersons a cheque on the working-time of a certain number
 of hands for all the 24 hours of the day, and they lose their character
 as capital, are therefore a pure loss for the Sandersons, as soon as their
 function of absorbing labour is interrupted.
But why should these Sandersons pretend to a privilege not enjoyed
 by the other capitalists who only work during the day, and whose buildings,
 machinery, raw material, therefore lie “idle” during the night? E. F. Sanderson
 answers in the name of all the Sandersons:
The capitalistic mode of production (essentially the production
 of surplus-value, the absorption of surplus-labour), produces thus, with
 the extension of the working-day, not only the deterioration of human labour-power
 by robbing it of its normal, moral and physical, conditions of development
 and function. It produces also the premature exhaustion and death of this
 labour-power itself. [73] It extends the labourer’s
 time of production during a given period by shortening his actual life-time.
But the value of the labour-power includes the value of the commodities
 necessary for the reproduction of the worker, or for the keeping up of
 the working-class. If then the unnatural extension of the working-day,
 that capital necessarily strives after in its unmeasured passion for self-expansion,
 shortens the length of life of the individual labourer, and therefore the
 duration of his labour-power, the forces used up have to be replaced at
 a more rapid rate and the sum of the expenses for the reproduction of labour-power
 will be greater; just as in a machine the part of its value to be reproduced
 every day is greater the more rapidly the machine is worn out. It would
 seem therefore that the interest of capital itself points in the direction
 of a normal working-day.
The slave-owner buys his labourer as he buys his horse. If he
 loses his slave, he loses capital that can only be restored by new outlay
 in the slave-mart.
Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur 
 [It is of you that the story is told – Horace]. For slave-trade read
 labour-market, for Kentucky and Virginia, Ireland and the agricultural
 districts of England, Scotland, and Wales, for Africa, Germany. We heard
 how over-work thinned the ranks of the bakers in London. Nevertheless,
 the London labour-market is always over-stocked with German and other candidates
 for death in the bakeries. Pottery, as we saw, is one of the shortest-lived
 industries. Is there any want therefore of potters? Josiah Wedgwood, the
 inventor of modern pottery, himself originally a common workman, said in
 1785 before the House of Commons that the whole trade employed from 15,000
 to 20,000 people. [75] In the year 1861 the population
 alone of the town centres of this industry in Great Britain numbered 101,302.
No doubt in certain epochs of feverish activity the labour-market
 shows significant gaps. In 1834, e.g. But then the manufacturers
 proposed to the Poor Law Commissioners that they should send the “surplus-population” 
 of the agricultural districts to the north, with the explanation “that
 the manufacturers would absorb and use it up.” [77]
The Bury Guardian said, on the completion of the French treaty,
 that “10,000 additional hands could be absorbed by Lancashire, and that
 30,000 or 40,000 will be needed.” After the “flesh agents and sub-agents” 
 had in vain sought through the agricultural districts,
The establishment of a normal working-day is the result of centuries
 of struggle between capitalist and labourer. The history of this
 struggle shows two opposed tendencies. Compare, e.g., the English factory
 legislation of our time with the English labour Statutes from the 14th
 century to well into the middle of the 18th. [83] Whilst the modern Factory Acts compulsorily shortened the working-day, the earlier
 statutes p258tried to lengthen it by compulsion. Of course the pretensions
 of capital in embryo — when, beginning to grow, it secures the right of
 absorbing a quantum sufficit [sufficient quantity] of surplus-labour, not merely by the
 force of economic relations, but by the help of the State — appear very
 modest when put face to face with the concessions that, growling and struggling,
 it has to make in its adult condition. It takes centuries ere the “free” 
 labourer, thanks to the development of capitalistic production, agrees,
 i.e., is compelled by social conditions, to sell the whole of his
 active life. his very capacity for work, for the price of the necessaries
 of life, his birth-right for a mess of pottage. Hence it is natural that
 the lengthening of the working-day, which capital, from the middle of the
 14th to the end of the 17th century, tries to impose by State-measures
 on adult labourers, approximately coincides with the shortening of the
 working-day which, in the second half of the 19th century, has here and
 there been effected by the State to prevent the coining of children’s blood
 into capital. That which to-day, e.g., in the State of Massachusetts,
 until recently the freest State of the North-American Republic, has been
 proclaimed as the statutory limit of the labour of children under 12, was
 in England, even in the middle of the 17th century, the normal working-day
 of able-bodied artisans, robust labourers, athletic blacksmiths. [84]
The first “Statute of Labourers” (23 Edward III., 1349) found
 its immediate pretext (not its cause, for legislation of this kind lasts
 centuries after the pretext for it has disappeared) in the great plague
 that decimated the people, so that, as a Tory writer says, “The difficulty
 of getting men to work on reasonable terms (i.e., at a price that
 left their employers a reasonable quantity of surplus-labour) grew to such
 a height as to be quite intolerable.” [85] Reasonable
 wages were, therefore, fixed by p259law as well as the limits of
 the working-day. The latter point, the only one that here interests us,
 is repeated in the Statute of 1496 (Henry VII.). The working-day for all
 artificers and field labourers from March to September ought, according
 to this statute (which, however, could not be enforced), to last from 5
 in the morning to between 7 and 8 in the evening. But the meal-times consist
 of 1 hour for breakfast, 1½ hours for dinner, and ½ an hour for “noon-meate,” 
 i.e., exactly twice as much as under the factory acts now in force. [86] In winter, work was to last from 5 in the morning until dark, with the
 same intervals. A statute of Elizabeth of 1562 leaves the length of the
 working-day for all labourers “hired for daily or weekly wage” untouched,
 but aims at limiting the intervals to 2½ hours in the summer, or to
 2 in the winter. Dinner is only to last 1 hour, and the “afternoon-sleep
 of half an hour” is only allowed between the middle of May and the middle
 of August. For every hour of absence 1d. is to be subtracted from the wage.
 In practice, however, the conditions were much more favourable to the labourers
 than in the statute-book. William Petty, the father of Political Economy,
 and to some extent the founder of Statistics, says in a work that he published
 in the last third of the 17th century:
Was not Dr. Andrew Ure
 right in crying down the 12 hours’ bill of 1833 as a retrogression to the
 times of the dark ages? It is true these regulations contained in the statute
 mentioned by Petty, apply also to apprentices. But the condition of child-labour,
 even at the end of the 17th century, is seen from the following complaint:
Still, during the greater part of the 18th century, up to the
 epoch of Modern Industry and machinism, capital in England had not succeeded
 in seizing for itself, by the payment of the weekly value of labour-power,
 the whole week of the labourer, with the exception, however, of the agricultural
 labourers. The fact that they could live for a whole week on the wage of
 four days, did not appear to the labourers a sufficient reason that they
 should work the other two days for the capitalist. One party of English
 economists, in the interest of capital, denounces this obstinacy in the
 most violent manner, another party defends the labourers. Let us listen,
 e.g., to the contest between Postlethwayt whose Dictionary of Trade
 then had the same reputation as the kindred works of MacCulloch and MacGregor
 to-day, and the author (already quoted) of the “Essay on Trade and Commerce.”
 [89]
p261Postlethwayt says among other things:
Thereupon the author of the “Essay on Trade and Commerce” replies:
To this end, and for “extirpating idleness debauchery and excess,” promoting a spirit of industry, “lowering the price of labour
 in our manufactories, and easing the lands of the heavy burden of poor’s
 rates,” our “faithful Eckart” of capital proposes this approved device:
 to shut up such labourers as become dependent on p263public support,
 in a word, paupers, in “an ideal workhouse.” Such ideal workhouse
 must be made a “House of Terror,” and not an asylum for the poor, “where
 they are to be plentifully fed, warmly and decently clothed, and where
 they do but little work.” [94] In this “House of Terror,” this “ideal workhouse, the poor shall work 14 hours in a day, allowing
 proper time for meals, in such manner that there shall remain 12 hours
 of neat-labour.” [95]
Twelve working-hours daily in the Ideal Workhouse, in the “House
 of Terror” of 1770! 63 years later, in 1833, when the English Parliament
 reduced the working-day for children of 13 to 18, in four branches of industry
 to 12 full hours, the judgment day of English Industry had dawned! In 1852,
 when Louis Bonaparte sought to secure his position with the bourgeoisie
 by tampering with the legal working-day, the French working people cried
 out with one voice “the law that limits the working-day to 12 hours is
 the one good that has remained to us of the legislation of the Republic!” 
 [96] At Zürich the work of children over 10, is limited to 12 hours; in Aargau in 1862, the work of children between 13
 and 16, was reduced from 12½ to 12 hours; in Austria in 1860, for children
 between 14 and 16, the same reduction was made. [97] “What a progress,” since 1770! Macaulay would shout with exultation!
The “House of Terror” for paupers of which the capitalistic soul
 of 1770 only dreamed, was realised a few years later in the shape of a
 gigantic “Workhouse” for the industrial worker himself. It is called the
 Factory. And the ideal this time fades before the reality.
After capital had taken centuries in extending the
 working-day to its normal maximum limit, and then beyond this to the limit
 of the natural day of 12 hours, [98] there followed
 on the birth of machinism and modern industry in the last third of the
 18th century, a violent encroachment like that of an avalanche in its intensity
 and extent. All bounds of morals and nature, age and sex, day and night,
 were broken down. Even the ideas of day and night, of rustic simplicity
 in the old statutes, became so confused that an English judge, as late
 as 1860, needed a quite Talmudic sagacity to explain “judicially” what
 was day and what was night. [99] Capital celebrated
 its orgies.
As soon as the working-class, stunned at first by the noise and
 turmoil of the new system of production, recovered, in some measure, its
 senses, its resistance began, and first in the native land of machinism,
 in England. For 30 years, however, the concessions conquered by the workpeople
 were purely nominal. Parliament passed 5 labour Laws between 1802 and 1833,
 but was shrewd enough not to vote a penny for their carrying out, for the
 requisite officials, &c. [100]
p265A normal working-day for modern industry only dates from
 the Factory Act of 1833, which included cotton, wool, flax, and silk factories.
 Nothing is more characteristic of the spirit of capital than the history
 of the English Factory Acts from 1833 to 1864.
The Act of 1833 declares the ordinary factory working-day to be
 from half-past five in the morning to half-past eight in the evening and
 within these limits, a period of 15 hours, it is lawful to employ young
 persons (i.e., persons between 13 and 18 years of age), at any time
 of the day, provided no one individual young person should work more than
 12 hours in any one day, except in certain cases especially provided for.
 The 6th section of the Act provided. “That there shall be allowed in the
 course of every day not less than one and a half hours for meals to every
 such person restricted as hereinbefore provided.” The employment of children
 under 9, with exceptions mentioned later was forbidden; the work of children
 between 9 and 13 was limited to 8 hours a day, night-work, i.e.,
 according to this Act, work between 8:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m., was forbidden
 for all persons between 9 and 18.
The law-makers were so far from wishing to trench on the freedom
 of capital to exploit adult labour-power, or, as they called it, “the freedom
 of labour,” that they created a special system in order to prevent the
 Factory Acts from having a consequence so outrageous.
... Under the name of System of Relays, this “plan” was therefore
 carried out, so that, e.g., from 5.30 a.m. until 1.30 in the afternoon,
 one set of children between 9 and 13, and from 1.30 p.m. to 8.30 in the
 evening another set were “put to,” &c.
In order to reward the manufacturers for having, in the most barefaced
 way, ignored all the Acts as to children’s labour passed during the last
 twenty-two years, the pill was yet further gilded for them. Parliament
 decreed that after March 1st, 1834, no child under 11, after March 1st
 1835, no child under 12, and after March 1st, 1836, no child under 13 was
 to work more than eight hours in a factory. This “liberalism,” so full
 of consideration for “capital,” was the more noteworthy as. Dr. Farre,
 Sir A. Carlisle, Sir B. Brodie, Sir C. Bell, Mr. Guthrie, &c., in a
 word, the most distinguished physicians and surgeons in London, had declared
 in their evidence before the House of Commons, that there was danger in
 delay. Dr. Farre expressed himself still more coarsep266ly.
That same “reformed” Parliament, which in its delicate consideration
 for the manufacturers, condemned children under 13, for years to come,
 to 72 hours of work per week in the Factory Hell, on the other hand, in
 the Emancipation Act, which also administered freedom drop by drop, forbade
 the planters, from the outset, to work any negro slave more than 45 hours
 a week.
But in no wise conciliated, capital now began a noisy agitation
 that went on for several years. It turned chiefly on the age of those who,
 under the name of children, were limited to 8 hours’ work, and were subject
 to a certain amount of compulsory education. According to capitalistic
 anthropology, the age of childhood ended at 10, or at the outside, at 11.
 The more nearly the time approached for the coming into full force of the
 Factory Act, the fatal year 1836, the more wildly raged the mob of manufacturers.
 They managed, in fact, to intimidate the government to such an extent that
 in 1835 it proposed to lower the limit of the age of childhood from 13
 to 12. In the meantime the pressure from without grew more threatening.
 Courage failed the House of Commons. It refused to throw children of 13
 under the Juggernaut Car of capital for more than 8 hours a day, and the
 Act of 1833 came into full operation. It remained unaltered until June,
 1844.
This was the origin of the additional Factory Act of June 7th,
 1844. It came into effect on September 10th, 1844. It places under protection
 a new category of workers, viz., the women over 18. They were placed in
 every respect on the same footing as the young persons, their work time
 limited to twelve hours, their night-labour forbidden, &c. For the
 first time, legislation saw itself compelled to control directly and officially
 the labour of adults. In the Factory Report of 1844-1845, it is said with
 irony:
To get rid of the abuses of the “spurious relay system,” the law
 established besides others the following important regulations: —
So that if A, e.g., begins work at 8 in the morning, and B p268at
 10, B’s work-day must nevertheless end at the same hour as A’s. “The time
 shall be regulated by a public clock,” for example, the nearest railway
 clock, by which the factory clock is to be set. The occupier is to hang
 up a “legible” printed notice stating the hours for the beginning and ending
 of work and the times allowed for the several meals. Children beginning
 work before 12 noon may not be again employed after I p.m. The afternoon
 shift must therefore consist of other children than those employed in the
 morning. Of the hour and a half for meal-times,
It has been seen that these minutiae, which, with military uniformity,
 regulate by stroke of the clock the times, limits, pauses of the work were
 not at all the products of Parliamentary fancy. They developed gradually
 out of circumstances as natural laws of the modern mode of production.
 Their formulation, official recognition, and proclamation by the State,
 were the result of a long struggle of classes. One of their first consequences
 was that in practice the working-day of the adult males in factories became
 subject to the same limitations, since in most processes of production
 the co-operation of the children. young persons, and women is indispensable.
 On the whole, therefore, during the period from 1844 to 1847, the 12 hours’
 working-day became general and uniform in all branches of industry under
 the Factory Act.
The manufacturers, however, did not allow this “progress” without
 a compensating “retrogression.” At their instigation the House of Commons
 reduced the minimum age for exploitable children from 9 to 8, in order
 to assure that additional supply of factory children which is due to capitalists,
 according to divine and human law. [107]
The years 1846-47 are epoch-making in the economic history of
 England. The Repeal of the Corn Laws, and of the duties on cotton and other
 raw material; Free-trade proclaimed as the guiding star of legislation;
 in a word, the arrival of the millennium. On the other hand, in the same
 years, the Chartist movement and the 10 hours’ agitation reached their
 highest point. They found allies in the Tories panting for p269revenge.
 Despite the fanatical opposition of the army of perjured Free-traders,
 with Bright and Cobden at their head, the Ten Hours’ Bill, struggled for
 so long, went through Parliament.
The new Factory Act of June 8th, 1847, enacted that on July 1st,
 1847, there should be a preliminary shortening of the working-day for “young
 persons” (from 13 to 18), and all females to 11 hours, but that on May
 1st, 1848, there should be a definite limitation of the working-day to
 10 hours. In other respects, the Act only amended and completed the Acts
 of 1833 and 1844.
Capital now entered upon a preliminary campaign in order to hinder
 the Act from coming into full force on May 1st, 1848. And the workers themselves,
 under the presence that they had been taught by experience, were to help
 in the destruction of their own work. The moment was cleverly chosen.
The manufacturers tried to aggravate the natural effect of these
 circumstances by a general reduction of wages by 10%. This was done so
 to say, to celebrate the inauguration of the new Free-trade era. Then followed
 a further reduction of 8 1/3% as soon as the working-day was shortened
 to 11, and a reduction of double that amount as soon as it was finally
 shortened to 10 hours. Wherever, therefore, circumstances allowed it, a
 reduction of wages of at least 25% took place. [109]
 Under such favourably prepared conditions the agitation among the factory
 workers for the repeal of the Act of 1847 was begun. Neither lies, bribery,
 nor threats were spared in this attempt. But all was in vain. Concerning
 the half-dozen petitions in which workpeople were made to complain of “their
 oppression by the Act,” the petitioners themselves declared under oral
 examination, that their signatures had been extorted from them. “They felt
 themselves oppressed, but not exactly by the Factory p270Act.”
 [110] But if the manufacturers did not succeed in making the workpeople speak as they wished, they themselves shrieked all the louder in press and Parliament in the name of the workpeople. They denounced the Factory Inspectors as a kind of revolutionary commissioners like those
 of the French National Convention ruthlessly sacrificing the unhappy factory
 workers to their humanitarian crotchet. This manoeuvre also failed. Factory
 Inspector Leonard Horner conducted in his own person, and through his sub-inspectors,
 many examinations of witnesses in the factories of Lancashire. About 70%
 of the workpeople examined declared in favour of 10 hours, a much smaller
 percentage in favour of 11, and an altogether insignificant minority for
 the old 12 hours. [111]
Another “friendly” dodge was to make the adult males work 12 to
 15 hours, and then to blazon abroad this fact as the best proof of what
 the proletariat desired in its heart of hearts. But the “ruthless” Factory
 Inspector Leonard Horner was again to the fore. The majority of the “over-times” 
 declared:
The preliminary campaign of capital thus came to grief, and the
 Ten Hours’ Act came into force May 1st, 1848. But meanwhile the fiasco
 of the Chartist party whose leaders were imprisoned, and whose organisation
 was dismembered, had shaken the confidence of the English working-class
 in its own strength. Soon after this the June insurrection in Paris and
 its bloody suppression united, in England as on the Continent, all fractions
 of the ruling classes, landlords and capitalists, stock-exchange wolves
 and shop-keepers, Protectionists and Freetraders, government and opposition,
 priests and freethinkers, young whores and old nuns, under the common cry
 for the salvation of Property, p270Religion, the Family and Society.
 The working-class was everywhere proclaimed, placed under a ban, under
 a virtual law of suspects. The manufacturers had no need any longer to
 restrain themselves. They broke out in open revolt not only against the
 Ten Hours’ Act, but against the whole of the legislation that since 1833
 had aimed at restricting in some measure the “free” exploitation of labour-power.
 It was a pro-slavery rebellion in miniature, carried on for over two years
 with a cynical recklessness, a terrorist energy all the cheaper because
 the rebel capitalist risked nothing except the skin of his “hands.”
To understand that which follows we must remember that the Factory
 Acts of 1833, 1844, and 1847 were all three in force so far as the one
 did not amend the other: that not one of these limited the working-day
 of the male worker over 18, and that since 1833 the 15 hours from 5.30
 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. had remained the legal “day,” within the limits of which
 at first the 12, and later the 10 hours’ labour of young persons and women
 had to be performed under the prescribed conditions.
The manufacturers began by here and there discharging a part of,
 in many cases half of the young persons and women employed by them, and
 then, for the adult males, restoring the almost obsolete night-work. The
 Ten Hours’ Act, they cried, leaves no other alternative. [113]
Their second step dealt with the legal pauses for meals. Let us
 hear the Factory Inspectors.
After these pleasant demonstrations, Capital preluded its revolt
 by p272a step which agreed with the letter of the law of 1844, and
 was therefore legal.
The Act of 1844 certainly prohibited the employment after 1 p.m.
 of such children, from 8 to 13, as had been employed before noon. But it
 did not regulate in any way the 6½ hours’ work of the children whose
 work-time began at 12 midday or later. Children of 8 might, if they began
 work at noon, be employed from 12 to 1, 1 hour; from 2 to 4 in the afternoon,
 2 hours; from 5 to 8.30 in the evening, 3½ hours; in all, the legal
 6½ hours. Or better still. In order to make their work coincide with
 that of the adult male labourers up to 8.30 p.m., the manufacturers only
 had to give them no work till 2 in the afternoon, they could then keep
 them in the factory without intermission till 8.30 in the evening.
Workmen and factory inspectors protested on hygienic and moral grounds, but Capital answered:
In fact, according to statistics laid before the House of Commons on July
 26th, 1850, in spite of all protests, on July 15th, 1850, 3,742 children
 were subjected to this “practice” in 257 factories. [117] Still, this was not enough. The Lynx eye of Capital discovered that the Act of 1844 did not allow 5 hours’ work before mid-day without a pause
 of at least 30 minutes for refreshment, but prescribed nothing of the kind
 for work after mid-day. Therefore, it claimed and obtained the enjoyment
 not only of making children of 8 drudge without intermission from 2 to
 8.30 p.m., but also of making them hunger during that time.
p273This Shylock-clinging [118]
 to the letter of the law of 1844, so far as it regulated children’s labour, was but to lead up to an open revolt against the same law, so far as it regulated the labour of “young persons and women.” It will be remembered that the abolition of the “false relay system” was
 the chief aim and object of that law. The masters began their revolt with
 the simple declaration that the sections of the Act of 1844 which prohibited
 the ad libitum use of young persons and women in such short fractions
 of the day of 15 hours as the employer chose, were “comparatively harmless” 
 so long as the work-time was fixed at 12 hours. But under the Ten Hours’
 Act they were a “grievous hardship.” [119] They informed the inspectors in the coolest manner that they should place themselves above the letter of the law, and re-introduce the old system on their own account. [120] They were acting in the interests of the ill-advised operatives themselves, “in order to be able to pay them higher wages.”
All these shifts naturally were of no avail. The Factory Inspectors
 appealed to the Law Courts. But soon such a cloud of dust in the way of
 petitions from the masters overwhelmed the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey,
 that in a circular of August 5th, 1848, he recommends the inspectors not
p274But what was the good of summoning the capitalists when
 the Courts in this case the county magistrates — Cobbett’s “Great Unpaid” 
 — acquitted them? In these tribunals, the masters sat in judgment on themselves
 An example. One Eskrigge, cotton-spinner, of the firm of Kershaw, Leese,
 & Co., had laid before the Factory Inspector of his district the scheme
 of a relay system intended for his mill. Receiving a refusal, he at first kept quiet. A few months later, an individual named Robinson, also a cotton-spinner, and if not his Man Friday, at all events related to Eskrigge, appeared before the borough magistrates of Stockport on a charge of introducing
 the identical plan of relays invented by Eskrigge. Four Justices sat, among
 them three cottonspinners, at their head this same inevitable Eskrigge.
 Eskrigge acquitted Robinson, and now was of opinion that what was right
 for Robinson was fair for Eskrigge. Supported by his own legal decision,
 he introduced the system at once into his own factory. [122] Of course, the composition of this tribunal was in itself a violation of the law. [123]
The crown lawyers declared the masters’ interpretation of the
 Act of 1848 absurd. But the Saviours of Society would not allow themselves
 to be turned from their purpose. Leonard Horner reports,
Already, in December, 1848, Leonard Horner had
 a list of 65 manufacturers and 29 overlookers who unanimously declared
 that no system of supervision could, under this relay system, prevent enormous
 over-work. [126] Now, the same children and young persons were shifted from the spinning-room to the weaving-room, now, during 15
 hours, from one factory to another. [127] How was it
 possible to control a system which,
But on this apparently decisive victory of capital, followed at
 once a revulsion. The workpeople had hitherto offered a passive, although
 inflexible and unremitting resistance. They now protested in Lancashire
 and Yorkshire in threatening meetings. The pretended Ten Hours’ Act was
 thus simple humbug, parliamentary cheating, had never existed! The Factory
 Inspectors urgently warned the Government that the antagonism of classes
 had arrived at an incredible tension. Some of the masters themselves murmured:
And the first birthright
 of capital is equal exploitation of labour-power by all capitalists.
Under these circumstances a compromise between masters and men p277was
 effected that received the seal of Parliament in the additional Factory
 Act of August 5th, 1850. The working-day for “young persons and women,”
 was raised from 10 to 10 — hours for the first five days of the week,
 and shortened to 7½ on the Saturday. The work was to go on between 6
 a.m. and 6 p.m., [133] with pauses of not less than
 1½ hours for meal-times, these meal-times to be allowed at one and the
 same time for all, and conformably to the conditions of 1844. By this an
 end was put to the relay system once for all. [134]
 For children’s labour, the Act of 1844 remained in force.
One set of masters, this time as before, secured to itself special
 seigneurial rights over the children of the proletariat. These were the
 silk manufacturers. In 1833 they had howled out in threatening fashion,
 “if the liberty of working children of any age for 10 hours a day were
 taken away, it would stop their works.” [135] It would be impossible for them to buy a sufficient number of children over 13.
 They extorted the privilege they desired. The pretext was shown on subsequent
 investigation to be a deliberate lie. [136] It did
 not, however, prevent them, during 10 years, from spinning silk 10 hours
 a day out of the blood of little children who had to be placed upon stools
 for the performance of their work. [137] The Act of
 1844 certainly “robbed” them of the “liberty” of employing children under
 11 longer than 6½ hours a day. But it secured to them, on the other
 hand, the privilege of working children between 11 and 13, 10 hours a day,
 and of annulling in their case the education made compulsory for all other
 factory children. This time the pretext was
The children were slaughtered out-and-out for the sake of their delicate fingers, as in Southern Russia the horned cattle for the sake of their
 hide and tallow. At length, in 1850, the privilege granted in 1844, was
 limited to the departments of silk-twisting and silk-winding. But here,
 to make amends to capital bereft of its “freedom,” the work-time for children
 from 11 to 13 was raised from 10 p278to 10½ hours. Pretext: “Labour
 in silk mills was lighter than in mills
 for other fabrics, and less likely in other respects also to be
 prejudicial to health.” [139] Official medical inquiries proved afterwards that, on the contrary,
Despite the protests of the Factory Inspector, renewed every 6 months, the mischief continues to this hour. [141]
The Act of 1850 changed the 15 hours’ time from 6 a.m. to 8.30
 p.m., into the 12 hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. for “young persons and women” 
 only. It did not, therefore, affect children who could always be employed
 for half an hour before and 2½ hours after this period, provided the p279whole
 of their labour did not exceed 6½ hours. Whilst the bill was under discussion,
 the Factory Inspectors laid before Parliament statistics of the infamous
 abuses due to this anomaly. To no purpose. In the background lurked the
 intention of screwing up, during prosperous years, the working-day of adult
 males to 15 hours by the aid of the children. The experience of the three
 following years showed that such an attempt must come to grief against
 the resistance of the adult male operatives. The Act of 1850 was therefore
 finally completed in 1853 by forbidding the “employment of children in
 the morning before and in the evening after young persons and women.” Henceforth
 with a few exceptions the Factory Act of 1850 regulated the working-day
 of all workers in the branches of industry that come under it. [142] Since the passing of the first Factory Act half a century had elapsed. [143]
Factory legislation for the first time went beyond its original
 sphere in the “Printworks’ Act of 1845.” The displeasure with which capital
 received this new “extravagance” speaks through every line of the Act.
 It limits the working-day for children from 8 to 13, and for women to 16
 hours, between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., without any legal pause for meal-times.
 It allows males over 13 to be worked at will day and night. [144] It is a Parliamentary abortion. [145]
However, the principle had triumphed with its victory in those
 great branches of industry which form the most characteristic creation
 of the modern mode of production. Their wonderful development from 1853
 to 1860, hand-in-hand with the physical and moral regeneration of the factory
 workers, struck the most purblind. The masters from whom the p280legal
 limitation and regulation had been wrung step by step after a civil war
 of half a century, themselves referred ostentatiously to the contrast with
 the branches of exploitation still “free.” [146] The
 Pharisees of “Political Economy” now proclaimed the discernment of the
 necessity of a legally fixed working-day as a characteristic new discovery
 of their “science.” [147] It will be easily understood that after the factory magnates had resigned themselves and become reconciled
 to the inevitable, the power of resistance of capital gradually weakened,
 whilst at the same time the power of attack of the working-class grew with
 the number of its allies in the classes of society not immediately interested
 in the question. Hence the comparatively rapid advance since 1860.
The dye-works and bleach-works all came under the Factory Act
 of 1850 in 1860; [148] lace and stocking manufactures in 1861.
In consequence of the first report of the Commission on the employment
 of children (1863) the same fate was shared by the manufacturers of all
 earthenwares (not merely pottery), Lucifer-matches, percussion caps, cartridges,
 carpets, fustian-cutting, and many processes included under the name of
 “finishing.” In the year 1863 bleaching in the open air [149] and baking were placed under special Acts, by which, in the former, p281the labour of young persons and women during the night-time (from 8 in the evening to 6 in the morning), and in the latter, the employment of journeymen
 bakers under 18, between 9 in the evening and 5 in the morning were forbidden.
 We shall return to the later proposals of the same Commission, which threatened
 to deprive of their “freedom” all the important branches of English Industry,
 with the exception of agriculture, mines, and the means of transport. [150]
The reader will bear in mind that the production of
 surplus-value, or the extraction of surplus-labour, is the specific end
 and aim, the sum and substance, of capitalist production, quite apart from
 any changes p282in the mode of production, which may arise from
 the subordination of labour to capital. He will remember that as far as
 we have at present gone only the independent labourer, and therefore only
 the labourer legally qualified to act for himself, enters as a vendor of
 a commodity into a contract with the capitalist. If, therefore, in our
 historical sketch, on the one hand, modern industry, on the other, the
 labour of those who are physically and legally minors, play important parts,
 the former was to us only a special department, and the latter only a specially
 striking example of labour exploitation. Without, however, anticipating
 the subsequent development of our inquiry, from the mere connexion of the
 historic facts before us it follows:
First. The passion of capital for an unlimited and reckless
 extension of the working-day, is first gratified in the industries earliest
 revolutionised by water-power, steam, and machinery, in those first creations
 of the modern mode of production, cotton, wool, flax, and silk spinning,
 and weaving. The changes in the material mode of production, and the corresponding
 changes in the social relations of the producers [151] gave rise first to an extravagance beyond all bounds, and then in opposition to this, called forth a control on the part of Society which legally limits,
 regulates, and makes uniform the working-day and its pauses. This control
 appears, therefore, during the first half of the nineteenth century simply
 as exceptional legislation. [152] As soon as this primitive dominion of the new mode of production was conquered, it was found that,
 in the meantime, not only had many other branches of production been made
 to adopt the same factory system, but that manufactures with more or less
 obsolete methods, such as potteries, glass-making, &c., that old-fashioned
 handicrafts, like baking, and, finally, even that the so-called domestic
 industries, such as nail-making, [153] had long since fallen as completely under capitalist exploitation as the factories themselves.
 Legislation was, therefore, compelled to gradually get rid of its exceptional
 character, or where, as in England, it proceeds after the manner of the
 Roman Casuists, to declare any house in which work was done to be a factory.
 [154]
p283Second. The history of the regulation of the working-day
 in certain branches of production, and the struggle still going on in others
 in regard to this regulation, prove conclusively that the isolated labourer,
 the labourer as “free” vendor of his labour-power, when capitalist production
 has once attained a certain stage, succumbs without any power of resistance.
 The creation of a normal working-day is, therefore, the product of a protracted
 civil war, more or less dissembled, between the capitalist class and the
 working-class. As the contest takes place in the arena of modern industry,
 it first breaks out in the home of that industry — England. [155] The English factory workers were the champions, not only of the English, but of the modern working-class generally, as their theorists were the
 first to throw down the gauntlet to the theory of capital. [156] Hence, the philosopher of the Factory, Ure, denounces as an ineffable disgrace to the English working-class that they inscribed “the slavery of the Factory
 Acts” on the banner which they bore against capital, manfully striving
 for “perfect freedom of labour.” [157]
France limps slowly behind England. The February revolution was
 necessary to bring into the world the 12 hours’ law, [158] which is much more p284deficient than its English original. For all that, the French revolutionary method has its special advantages. It
 once for all commands the same limit to the working-day in all shops and
 factories without distinction, whilst English legislation reluctantly yields
 to the pressure of circumstances, now on this point, now on that, and is
 getting lost in a hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory enactments.
 [159] On the other hand, the French law proclaims as
 a principle that which in England was only won in the name of children,
 minors, and women, and has been only recently for the first time claimed
 as a general right. [160]
In the United States of North America, every independent movement
 of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the
 Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the
 black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once
 arose. The first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours’ agitation,
 that ran with the seven-leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic
 to the Pacific, from New England to California. The General Congress of
 labour at Baltimore (August 16th, 1866) declared:
At the same time, the Congress of the International p285Working Men’s Association at Geneva, on the proposition of the London General Council, resolved that “the limitation of the working-day is a preliminary condition
 without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must
 prove abortive... the Congress proposes eight hours as the legal limit
 of the working-day.”
Thus the movement of the working-class on both sides of the Atlantic,
 that had grown instinctively out of the conditions of production themselves,
 endorsed the words of the English Factory Inspector, R. J. Saunders
It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the process
 of production other than he entered. In the market he stood as owner of
 the commodity “labour-power” face to face with other owners of commodities,
 dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold to the capitalist
 his labour-power proved, so to say, in black and white that he disposed
 of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was
 no “free agent,” that the time for which he is free to sell his labour-power
 is the time for which he is forced to sell it, [163]
 that in fact the vampire will not lose its hold on him “so long as there
 is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited.” [164] For “protection” against “the serpent of their agonies,” the labourers must put their heads together, and, as a class, compel the passing of a
 law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers
 from selling. by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their
 families into slavery and death. [165] In place of
 the pompous catalogue of the “inalienable p286rights of man” comes
 the modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working-day, which shall make
 clear “when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own
 begins.” Quantum mutatus ab illo! [What a great change from that time! – Virgil] [166]
In this chapter, as hitherto, the value of labour-power,
 and therefore the part of the working day necessary for the reproduction
 or maintenance of that labour-power, are supposed to be given, constant
 magnitudes.
This premised, with the rate, the mass is at the same time given
 of the surplus-value that the individual labourer furnishes to the capitalist
 in a definite period of time. If, e.g., the necessary labour amounts
 to 6 hours daily, expressed in a quantum of gold = 3 shillings, then 3s.
 is the daily value of one labour-power or the value of the capital advanced
 in the buying of one labour-power. If, further, the rate of surplus-value
 be = 100%, this variable capital of 3s. produces a mass of surplus-value
 of 3s., or the labourer supplies daily a mass of surplus labour equal to
 6 hours.
But the variable capital of a capitalist is the expression in
 money of the total value of all the labour-powers that he employs simultaneously.
 Its value is, therefore, equal to the average value of one labour-power,
 multiplied by the number of labour-powers employed. With a given value
 of labour-power, therefore, the magnitude of the variable capital varies
 directly as the number of labourers employed simultaneously. If the daily
 value of one labour-power = 3s., then a capital of 300s. must be advanced
 in order to exploit daily 100 labour-powers, of n times 3s., in order to
 exploit daily n labour-powers.
In the same way, if a variable capital of 3s., being the daily
 value of one labour-power, produce a daily surplus-value of 3s., a variable
 capital of 300s. will produce a daily surplus-value of 300s., and one of
 n times 3s. a daily surplus-value of n × 3s. The mass of the surplus-value
 produced is therefore equal to the surplus-value which the working day of
 one labourer supplies multiplied by the number of labourers employed. But
 as further the mass of surplus-value which a single labourer produces, the
 value of labour-power being given, is determined by the rate of the surplus-value,
 this law follows: the mass of the surplus-value 289produced is equal
 to the amount of the variable capital advanced, multiplied by the rate
 of surplus-value, in other words: it is determined by the compound ratio
 between the number of labour-powers exploited simultaneously by the same
 capitalist and the degree of exploitation of each individual labour-power.
Let the mass of the surplus-value be S, the surplus-value supplied
 by the individual labourer in the average day s the variable capital daily
 advanced in the purchase of one individual labour-power v, the sum total
 of the variable capital V, the value of an average labour-power P, its
 degree of exploitation (a'/a) (surplus-labour/necessary-labour) and the number of labourers employed n; we have:
It is always supposed, not only that the value of an average labour-power
 is constant, but that the labourers employed by a capitalist are reduced
 to average labourers. There are exceptional cases in which the surplus-value
 produced does not increase in proportion to the number of labourers exploited,
 but then the value of the labour-power does not remain constant.
In the production of a definite mass of surplus-value, therefore
 the decrease of one factor may be compensated by the increase of the other.
 If the variable capital diminishes, and at the same time the rate of surplus-value
 increases in the same ratio, the mass of surplus-value produced remains
 unaltered. If on our earlier assumption the capitalist must advance 300s.,
 in order to exploit 100 labourers a day, and if the rate of surplus-value
 amounts to 50%, this variable capital of 300s. yields a surplus-value of
 150s. or of 100 × 3 workinghours. If the rate of surplus-value doubles,
 or the working day, instead of being extended from 6 to 9, is extended from
 6 to 12 hours and at the same time variable capital is lessened by half,
 and reduced to 150s., it yields also a surplus-value of 150s. or 50 × 6
 workinghours. Diminution of the variable capital may therefore be compensated
 by a proportionate rise in the degree of exploitation of labour-power,
 or the decrease in the number of the labourers employed by a proportionate
 extension of the working day. Within certain limits therefore the supply
 of labour exploitable by capital is independent of the supply of labourers.
 [1] On the contrary, a fall in the rate of surplus-value leaves unaltered the mass of the surplus-value produced, if the amount
 of the variable capital, or number of the labourers employed, increases
 in the same proportion.
This law clearly contradicts all experience based on appearance.
 Everyone knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the percentage on
 the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant and little variable
 capital, does not, on account of this, pocket less profit or surplus-value
 than a baker, who relatively sets in motion much variable and little constant
 capital. For the solution of this apparent contradiction, many intermediate
 terms are as yet wanted, as from the standpoint of elementary algebra many
 intermediate terms are wanted to understand that 0/0 may represent an actual
 magnitude. Classical economy, although not formulating the law, holds instinctively
 to it, because it is a necessary consequence of the general law of value.
 It tries to 291rescue the law from collision with contradictory
 phenomena by a violent abstraction. It will be seen later[2] how the school of Ricardo has come to grief over this stumbling block. Vulgar economy which, indeed, “has really learnt nothing,” here as everywhere
 sticks to appearances in opposition to the law which regulates and explains
 them. In opposition to Spinoza, it believes that “ignorance is a sufficient
 reason.”
The labour which is set in motion by the total capital of a society,
 day in, day out, may be regarded as a single collective working day. If,
 e.g., the number of labourers is a million, and the average working-day
 of a labourer is 10 hours, the social working day consists of ten million
 hours. With a given length of this working day, whether its limits are fixed
 physically or socially, the mass of surplus-value can only be increased
 by increasing the number of labourers, i.e., of the labouring population.
 The growth of population here forms the mathematical limit to the production
 of surplus-value by the total social capital. On the contrary, with a given
 amount of population, this limit is formed by the possible lengthening
 of the working day.[3] It will, however, be seen in the following chapter that this law only holds for the form of surplus-value dealt with up to the present.
293The minimum of the sum of value that the individual possessor
 of money or commodities must command, in order to metamorphose himself
 into a capitalist, changes with the different stages of development of
 capitalist production, and is at given stages different in different spheres
 of production, according to their special and technical conditions. Certain
 spheres of production demand, even at the very outset of capitalist production,
 a minimum of capital that is not as yet found in the hands of single individuals.
 This gives rise partly to state subsidies to private persons, as in France
 in the time of Clobber, and as in many German states up to our own epoch,
 partly to the formation of societies with legal monopoly for the exploitation
 of certain branches of industry and commerce, the forerunners of our modern
 joint stock companies.[6]
Within the process of production, as we have seen, capital acquired
 the command over labour, i.e., over functioning labour-power or
 the labourer himself. Personified capital, the capitalist takes care that
 the labourer does his work regularly and with the proper degree of intensity.
Capital further developed into a coercive relation, which compels
 the working class to do more work than the narrow round of its own life-wants
 prescribes. As a producer of the activity of others, as a pumper-out of
 surplus labour and exploiter of labour-power, it surpasses in energy, disregard
 of bounds, recklessness and efficiency, all earlier systems of production
 based on directly compulsory labour.
At first, capital subordinates labour on the basis of the technical
 conditions in which it historically finds it. It does not, therefore, change
 immediately the mode of production. The production of surplus-value — in
 the form hitherto considered by us — by means of simple extension of the
 working day, proved, therefore, to be independent of any change in the mode
 of production itself. It was not less active in the old-fashioned bakeries
 than in the modern cotton factories.
To this West of Scotland bourgeois brain, inheriting the accumulated
 capitalistic qualities of “four generations,” the value of the means of
 production, spindles, &c., is so inseparably mixed up with their property,
 as capital, to expand their own value, and to swallow up daily 295a
 definite quantity of the unpaid labour of others, that the head of the
 firm of Carlile & Co. actually imagines that if he sells his factory,
 not only will the value of the spindles be paid to him, but, in addition,
 their power of annexing surplus-value, not only the labour which is embodied
 in them, and is necessary to the production of spindles of this kind, but
 also the surpluslabour which they help to pump out daily from the brave
 Scots of Paisley, and for that very reason he thinks that with the shortening
 of the working day by 2 hours, the selling-price of 12 spinning machines
 dwindles to that of 10!
That portion of the working day which merely produces
 an equivalent for the value paid by the capitalist for his labour-power,
 has, up to this point, been treated by us as a constant magnitude, and
 such in fact it is, under given conditions of production and at a given
 stage in the economic development of society. Beyond this, his necessary
 labour-time, the labourer, we saw, could continue to work for 2, 3, 4,
 6, &c., hours. The rate of surplus-value and the length of the working day
 depended on the magnitude of this prolongation. Though the necessary labour-time
 was constant, we saw, on the other hand, that the total working day was
 variable. Now suppose we have a working day whose length, and whose apportionment
 between necessary labour and surplus-labour, are given. Let the whole line
 a c, a—b—c represent, for example, a working day of 12 hours; the portion
 of a b 10 hours of necessary labour, and the portion b c 2 hours of surplus-labour.
 How now can the production of surplus-value be increased, i.e., how can
 the surplus-labour be prolonged, without, or independently of, any prolongation
 of a c?
Although the length of a c is given, b c appears to be capable
 of prolongation, if not by extension beyond its end c, which is also the
 end of the working day a c, yet, at all events, by pushing back its starting-point
 b in the direction of a. Assume that b'—b in the line ab'bc is equal to
 half of b c
a——b'—b—c
or to one hour’s labour-time. If now, in a c, the working day
 of 12 hours, we move the point b to b', b c becomes b' c; the surplus-labour
 increases by one half, from 2 hours to 3 hours, although the working day
 remains as before at 12 hours. This extension of the surplus labour-time
 from b c to b' c, from 2 hours to 3 hours, is, however, evidently impossible,
 without a simultaneous contraction of the necessary labour-time from297
 a b into a b', from 10 hours to 9 hours. The prolongation of the surplus-labour
 would correspond to a shortening of the necessary labour; or a portion
 of the labour-time previously consumed, in reality, for the labourer’s
 own benefit, would be converted into labour-time for the benefit of the
 capitalist. There would be an alteration, not in the length of the working day,
 but in its division into necessary labour-time and surplus labour-time.
Such a fall in the value of labour-power implies, however, that
 the same necessaries of life which were formerly produced in ten hours,
 can now be produced in nine hours. But this is impossible without an increase
 in the productiveness of labour. For example, suppose a shoe-maker, with
 given tools, makes in one working day of twelve hours, one pair of boots.
 If he must make two pairs in the same time, the productiveness of his labour
 must be doubled; and this cannot be done, except by an alteration in his
 tools or in his mode of working, or in both. Hence, the conditions of production,
 i.e., his mode of production, and the labour-process itself, must be revolutionised.
 By increase in the productiveness of labour, we mean, generally, an alteration
 in the labour-process, of such a kind as to shorten the labour-time socially
 necessary for the production of a commodity, and to endow a given quantity
 of labour with the power of producing a greater quantity of use-value.
 [2] Hitherto in treating of surplus-value, arising from a simple prolongation of the working day, we have assumed the mode of production
 to be given and invariable. But when surplus-value has to be produced by
 the conversion of necessary labour into surplus-labour, it by no means
 suffices for capital to take over the labour-process in the form under
 which it has been historically handed down, and then simply to prolong
 the duration of that process. The technical and social conditions of the
 process, and299 consequently the very mode of production must be revolutionised,
 before the productiveness of labour can be increased. By that means alone
 can the value of labour-power be made to sink, and the portion of the working day
 necessary for the reproduction of that value, be shortened.
The surplus-value produced by prolongation of the working day,
 I call absolute surplus-value. On the other hand, the surplus-value
 arising from the curtailment of the necessary labour-time, and from the
 corresponding alteration in the respective lengths of the two components
 of the working day, I call relative surplus-value.
In order to effect a fall in the value of labour-power, the increase
 in the productiveness of labour must seize upon those branches of industry
 whose products determine the value of labour-power, and consequently either
 belong to the class of customary means of subsistence, or are capable of
 supplying the place of those means. But the value of a commodity is determined,
 not only by the quantity of labour which the labourer directly bestows
 upon that commodity, but also by the labour contained in the means of production.
 For instance, the value of a pair of boots depends not only on the cobbler’s
 labour, but also on the value of the leather, wax, thread, &c. Hence,
 a fall in the value of labour-power is also brought about by an increase
 in the productiveness of labour, and by a corresponding cheapening of commodities
 in those industries which supply the instruments of labour and the raw
 material, that form the material elements of the constant capital required
 for producing the necessaries of life. But an increase in the productiveness
 of labour in those branches of industry which supply neither the necessaries
 of life, nor the means of production for such necessaries, leaves the value
 of labour-power undisturbed.
The cheapened commodity, of course, causes only a pro tanto fall
 in the value of labour-power, a fall proportional to the extent of that
 commodity’s employment in the reproduction of labour-power. Shirts, for
 instance, are a necessary means of subsistence, but are only one out of
 many. The totality of the necessaries of life consists, however, of various
 commodities, each the product of a distinct industry; and the value of
 each of those commodities enters as a component part into the value of
 labour-power. This latter value decreases with the decrease of the labour-time
 necessary for its reproduction; the total decrease being the sum of all
 the different curtailments of labour-time effected in those various and
 distinct industries. This general result is treated, here, as if it were
 the immediate result directly aimed at in each individual case. Whenever
 an individual capitalist cheapens shirts, for instance, by increasing the
 productiveness of labour he by no means necessarily aims at reducing the
 value of labour-power and shortening, pro tanto300 the necessary labour-time.
 But it is only in so far as he ultimately contributes to this result, that
 he assists in raising the general rate of surplus-value. [3] The general and necessary tendencies of capital must be distinguished from their forms of manifestation.
It is not our intention to consider, here, the way in which the
 laws, immanent in capitalist production, manifest themselves in the movements
 of individual masses of capital, where they assert themselves as coercive
 laws of competition, and are brought home to the mind and consciousness
 of the individual capitalist as the directing motives of his operations.
 But this much is clear; a scientific analysis of competition is not possible,
 before we have a conception of the inner nature of capital, just as the
 apparent motions of the heavenly bodies are not intelligible to any but
 him, who is acquainted with their real motions, motions which are not directly
 perceptible by the senses. Nevertheless, for the better comprehension of
 the production of relative surplus-value, we may add the following remarks,
 in which we assume nothing more than the results we have already obtained.
The value of commodities is in inverse ratio to the productiveness
 of labour. And so, too, is the value of labour-power, because it depends
 on the values of commodities. Relative surplus-value is, on the contrary,
 directly proportional to that productiveness. It rises with rising and
 falls with falling productiveness. The value of money being assumed to
 be constant, an average social working day of 12 hours always produces
 the same new value, six shillings, no matter how this sum may be apportioned
 between surplus-value and wages. But if, in consequence of increased productiveness,
 the value of the necessaries of life fall, and the value of a day’s labour-power
 be thereby reduced from five shillings to three, the surplus-value increases
 from one shilling to three. Ten hours were necessary for the reproduction
 of the value of the labour-power; now only six are required. Four hours
 have been set free, and can be annexed to the domain of surplus-labour.
 Hence there is immanent in capital an inclination and constant tendency,
 to heighten the productiveness of labour, in order to cheapen commodities,
 and by such cheapening to cheapen the labourer himself. [6]
The value of a commodity is, in itself, of no interest to the
 capitalist. What alone interests him, is the surplus-value that dwells
 in it, and is realisable by sale. Realisation of the surplus-value necessarily
 carries with it the refunding of the value that was advanced. Now, since
 relative surplus-value increases in direct proportion to the development
 of the productiveness of labour, while, on the other hand, the value of
 commodities diminishes in the same proportion; since one and the same process
 cheapens commodities, and augments the surplus-value contained in them;
 we have here the solution of the riddle: why does the capitalist, whose
 sole concern is the production of exchange-value, continually strive to
 depress the exchange-value of commodities? A riddle with which Quesnay,
 one of the founders of Political Economy, tormented his opponents, and
 to which they could give him no answer.304
The shortening of the working day is, therefore, by no means what
 is aimed at, in capitalist production, when labour is economised by increasing
 its productiveness. [8] It is only the shortening of
 the labour-time, necessary for the production of a definite quantity of
 commodities, that is aimed at. The fact that the workman, when the productiveness
 of his labour has been increased, produces, say 10 times as many commodities
 as before, and thus spends one-tenth as much labour-time on each, by no
 means prevents him from continuing to work 12 hours as before, nor from
 producing in those 12 hours 1,200 articles instead of 120. Nay, more, his
 working day may be prolonged at the same time, so as to make him produce,
 say 1,400 articles in 14 hours. In the treatises, therefore, of economists
 of the stamp of MacCulloch, Ure, Senior, and tutti quanti [the like], we may read
 upon one page, that the labourer owes a debt of gratitude to capital for
 developing his productiveness, because the necessary labour-time is thereby
 shortened, and on the next page, that he must prove his gratitude by working
 in future for 15 hours instead of 10. The object of all development of
 the productiveness of labour, within the limits of capitalist production,
 is to shorten that part of the working day, during which the workman must
 labour for his own benefit, and by that very shortening, to lengthen the
 other part of the day, during which he is at liberty to work gratis for
 the capitalist. How far this result is also attainable, without cheapening
 commodities, will appear from an examination of the particular modes of
 producing relative surplus-value, to which examination we now proceed.
Capitalist production only then really begins, as
 we have already seen, when each individual capital employs simultaneously
 a comparatively large number of labourers; when consequently the labour-process
 is carried on on an extensive scale and yields, relatively, large quantities
 of products. A greater number of labourers working together, at the same
 time, in one place (or, if you will, in the same field of labour), in order
 to produce the same sort of commodity under the mastership of one capitalist,
 constitutes, both historically and logically, the starting-point of capitalist
 production. With regard to the mode of production itself, manufacture,
 in its strict meaning, is hardly to be distinguished, in its earliest stages,
 from the handicraft trades of the guilds, otherwise than by the greater
 number of workmen simultaneously employed by one and the same individual
 capital. The workshop of the medieval master handicraftsman is simply enlarged.
At first, therefore, the difference is purely quantitative. We
 have shown that the surplus-value produced by a given capital is equal
 to the surplus-value produced by each workman multiplied by the number
 of workmen simultaneously employed. The number of workmen in itself does
 nor affect, either the rate of surplus-value, or the degree of exploitation
 of labour-power. If a working-day of 12 hours be embodied in six shillings,
 1,200 such days will be embodied in 1,200 times 6 shillings. In one case
 12 × 1,200 working-hours, and in the other 12 such hours are incorporated
 in the product. In the production of value a number of workmen rank merely
 as so many individual workmen; and it therefore makes no difference in
 the value produced whether the 1,200 men work separately, or united under
 the control of one capitalist.
Economy in the use of the means of production has to be considered
 under two aspects. First, as cheapening commodities, and thereby bringing
 about a fall in the value of labour-power. Secondly, as altering the ratio
 of the surplus-value to the total capital advanced, i.e., to the sum of
 the values of the constant and variable capital. The latter aspect will
 not be considered until we come to the third book, to which, with the object
 of treating them in their proper connexion, we also relegate many other
 points that relate to the present question. The march of our analysis compels
 this splitting up of the subject-matter, a splitting up that is quite in
 keeping with the spirit of capitalist production. For since, in this mode
 of production, the workman finds the instruments of labour existing independently
 of him as another man’s property, economy in their use appears, with regard
 to him, to be a distinct operation, one that does not concern him, and
 which, therefore, has no connexion with the methods by which his own personal
 productiveness is increased.
When numerous labourers work together side by side, whether in
 one and the same process, or in different but connected processes, they
 are said to co-operate, or to work in co-operation. [3]
Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the defensive
 power of a regiment of infantry is essentially different from the sum of
 the offensive or defensive powers of the individual cavalry or infantry
 soldiers taken separately, so the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted
 by isolated workmen differs from the social force that is developed, when
 many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same undivided operation,
 such as raising a heavy weight, turning a winch, or removing an obstacle.
 [4] In such cases the effect of the combined labour309 could either not be produced at all by isolated individual labour, or it
 could only be produced by a great expenditure of time, or on a very dwarfed
 scale. Not only have we here an increase in the productive power of the
 individual, by means of co-operation, but the creation of a new power,
 namely, the collective power of masses. [5]
Apart from the new power that arises from the fusion of many forces
 into one single force, mere social contact begets in most industries an
 emulation and a stimulation of the animal spirits that heighten the efficiency
 of each individual workman. Hence it is that a dozen persons working together
 will, in their collective working-day of 144 hours, produce far more than
 twelve isolated men each working 12 hours, or than one man who works twelve
 days in succession. [6] The reason of this is that man is, if not as Aristotle contends, a political, [7] at all events a social animal.
Although a number of men may be occupied together at the same
 time on the same, or the same kind of work, yet the labour of each, as
 a part of the collective labour, may correspond to a distinct phase of
 the labour-process, through all whose phases, in consequence of co-operation,
 the subject of their labour passes with greater speed. For instance, if
 a dozen masons place themselves in a row, so as to pass stones from the
 foot of a ladder to its summit, each of them does the same thing; nevertheless,
 their separate acts form connected parts of one total operation; they are
 particular phases, which must be gone through by each stone; and the stones
 are thus carried up quicker by the 24 hands of the row of men than they
 could be if each man went separately up and down the ladder with his burden.
 [8] The object is carried over the310 same distance in a shorter time. Again, a combination of labour occurs whenever a building,
 for instance, is taken in hand on different sides simultaneously; although
 here also the co-operating masons are doing the same, or the same kind
 of work. The 12 masons, in their collective working-day of 144 hours, make
 much more progress with the building than one mason could make working
 for 12 days, or 144 hours. The reason is, that a body of men working in
 concert has hands and eyes both before and behind, and is, to a certain
 degree, omnipresent. The various parts of the work progress simultaneously.
In the above instances we have laid stress upon the point that
 the men do the same, or the same kind of work, because this, the most simple
 form of labour in common, plays a great part in co-operation, even in its
 most fully developed stage. If the work be complicated, then the mere number
 of the men who co-operate allows of the various operations being apportioned
 to different hands, and, consequently, of being carried on simultaneously.
 The time necessary for the completion of the whole work is thereby shortened.
 [9]
In many industries, there are critical periods, determined by
 the nature of the process, during which certain definite results must be
 obtained. For instance, if a flock of sheep has to be shorn, or a field
 of wheat to be cut and harvested, the quantity and quality of the product
 depends on the work being begun and ended within a certain time. In these
 cases, the time that ought to be taken by the process is prescribed, just
 as it is in herring fishing. A single person cannot carve a working-day
 of more than, say 12 hours, out of the natural day, but 100 men co-operating
 extend the working-day to 1,200 hours. The shortness of the time allowed
 for the work is compensated for by the large mass of labour thrown upon
 the field of production at the decisive moment. The completion of the task
 within the proper time depends on the simultaneous application of numerous
 combined working-days; the amount of useful effect depends on the number
 of labourers; this number, however, is always smaller than the number of
 isolated labourers required to do the same amount of work in the same period.
 [10] It is owing311 to the 
 absence of this kind of co-operation that, in the western part of the United States, quantities
 of corn, and in those parts of East India where English rule has destroyed
 the old communities, quantities of cotton, are yearly wasted. [11]
On the one hand, co-operation allows of the work being carried
 on over an extended space; it is consequently imperatively called for in
 certain undertakings, such as draining, constructing dykes, irrigation
 works, and the making of canals, roads and railways. On the other hand,
 while extending the scale of production, it renders possible a relative
 contraction of the arena. This contraction of arena simultaneous with,
 and arising from, extension of scale, whereby a number of useless expenses
 are cut down, is owing to the conglomeration of labourers, to the aggregation
 of various processes, and to the concentration of the means of production.
 [12]
The combined working-day produces, relatively to an equal sum
 of isolated working-days, a greater quantity of use-values, and, consequently,
 diminishes the labour-time necessary for the production of a given useful
 effect. Whether the combined working-day, in a given case, acquires this
 increased productive power, because it heightens the mechanical force of
 labour, or extends its sphere of action over a greater space, or contracts
 the field of production relatively to the scale of production, or at the
 critical moment sets large masses of labour to work, or excites emulation
 between individuals and raises their animal spirits, or impresses on the
 similar operations carried on by a number of men the stamp of continuity
 and many-sidedness, or performs simultaneously different operations, or
 economises the means of production by use in common, or lends to individual
 labour the character of average social312 labour whichever of these
 be the cause of the increase, the special productive power of the combined
 working-day is, under all circumstances, the social productive power of
 labour, or the productive power of social labour. This power is due to
 co-operation itself. When the labourer co-operates systematically with
 others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the
 capabilities of his species. [13]
As a general rule, labourers cannot co-operate without being brought
 together: their assemblage in one place is a necessary condition of their
 co-operation. Hence wage-labourers cannot co-operate, unless they are employed
 simultaneously by the same capital, the same capitalist, and unless therefore
 their labour-powers are bought simultaneously by him. The total value of
 these labour-powers, or the amount of the wages of these labourers for
 a day, or a week, as the case may be, must be ready in the pocket of the
 capitalist, before the workmen are assembled for the process of production.
 The payment of 300 workmen at once, though only for one day, requires a
 greater outlay of capital, than does the payment of a smaller number of
 men, week by week, during a whole year. Hence the number of the labourers
 that co-operate, or the scale of co-operation, depends, in the first instance,
 on the amount of capital that the individual capitalist can spare for the
 purchase of labour-power; in other words, on the extent to which a single
 capitalist has command over the means of subsistence of a number of labourers.
And as with the variable, so it is with the constant capital.
 For example, the outlay on raw material is 30 times as great, for the capitalist
 who employs 300 men, as it is for each of the 30 capitalists who employ
 10 men. The value and quantity of the instruments of labour used in common
 do not, it is true, increase at the same rate as the number of workmen,
 but they do increase very considerably. Hence, concentration of large masses
 of the means of production in the hands of individual capitalists, is a
 material condition for the co-operation of wage-labourers, and the extent
 of the co-operation or the scale of production, depends on the extent of
 this concentration.
We saw in a former chapter, that a certain minimum amount of capital
 was necessary, in order that the number of labourers simultaneously employed,
 and, consequently, the amount of surplus-value produced, might suffice
 to liberate the employer himself from manual labour, to convert him from
 a small master into a capitalist, and thus formally to establish capitalist
 production. We now see that a certain minimum amount is a necessary condition
 for the conversion of numerous313 isolated and independent processes
 into one combined social process.
We also saw that at first, the subjection of labour to capital
 was only a formal result of the fact, that the labourer, instead of working
 for himself, works for and consequently under the capitalist. By the co-operation
 of numerous wage-labourers, the sway of capital develops into a requisite
 for carrying on the labour-process itself, into a real requisite of production.
 That a capitalist should command on the field of production, is now as
 indispensable as that a general should command on the field of battle.
All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a
 directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual
 activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin
 in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action
 of its separate organs. A single violin player is his own conductor; an
 orchestra requires a separate one. The work of directing, superintending,
 and adjusting, becomes one of the functions of capital, from the moment
 that the labour under the control of capital, becomes co-operative. Once
 a function of capital, it acquires special characteristics.
The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production,
 is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus-value, [14] and consequently to exploit labour-power to the greatest possible extent. As the number of the co-operating labourers increases, so too does their
 resistance to the domination of capital, and with it, the necessity for
 capital to overcome this resistance by counterpressure. The control exercised
 by the capitalist is not only a special function, due to the nature of
 the social labour-process, and peculiar to that process, but it is, at
 the same time, a function of the exploitation of a social labour-process,
 and is consequently rooted in the unavoidable antagonism between the exploiter
 and the living and labouring raw material he exploits.
The labourer is the owner of his labour-power until he has done
 bargaining for its sale with the capitalist; and he can sell no more than
 what he has i.e., his individual, isolated labour-power. This state of
 things is in no way altered by the fact that the capitalist, instead of
 buying the labour-power of one man, buys that of 100, and enters into separate
 contracts with 100 unconnected men instead of with one. He is at liberty
 to set the 100 men to work, without letting them co-operate. He pays them
 the value of 100 independent labour-powers, but he does not pay for the
 combined labour-power of the hundred. Being independent of each other,
 the labourers are isolated persons, who enter into relations with the capitalist,
 but not with one another. This co-operation begins only with the labour-process,
 but they have then ceased to belong to themselves. On entering that process,
 they become incorporated with capital. As co-operators, as members of a
 working organism, they are but special modes of existence of capital. Hence,
 the productive power developed by the labourer when working in co-operation,
 is the productive power of capital. This power is developed gratuitously,
 whenever the workmen are placed under given conditions, and it is capital
 that places them under such conditions. Because this power costs capital
 nothing, and because, on the other hand, the labourer himself does not
 develop it before his labour belongs to capital, it appears as a power
 with which capital is endowed by Nature – a productive power that is immanent
 in capital.
The colossal effects of simple co-operation are to be seen in
 the gigantic structures of the ancient Asiatics, Egyptians, Etruscans,
 &c.
This power of Asiatic and Egyptian kings, Etruscan theocrats, &c., has in modern society been transferred to the capitalist,
 whether he be an isolated, or as in joint-stock companies, a collective capitalist.
Co-operation, such as we find it at the dawn of human development,
 among races who live by the chase, [20] or, say, in
 the agriculture of Indian communities, is based, on the one hand, on ownership
 in common of the means of production, and on the other hand, on the fact,
 that in those cases, each individual has no more torn himself off from
 the navel-string of his tribe or community, than each bee has freed itself
 from connexion with the hive. Such co-operation is distinguished from capitalistic
 co-operation by both of the above characteristics. The sporadic application
 of co-operation on a large scale in ancient times, in the middle ages,
 and in modern colonies, reposes on relations of dominion and servitude,
 principally on slavery. The capitalistic form, on the contrary, pre-supposes
 from first to last, the free wage-labourer, who sells his labour-power
 to capital. Historically, however, this form is developed in opposition
 to peasant agriculture and to the carrying on of independent handicrafts
 whether in guilds or not. [21] From the standpoint of these, capitalistic co-operation does not manifest itself as a particular
 historical form of co-operation, but co-operation itself appears to be
 a historical form peculiar to, and specifically distinguishing, the capitalist
 process of production.
Just as the social productive power of labour that is developed
 by317 co-operation, appears to be the productive power of capital, so
 co-operation itself, contrasted with the process of production carried
 on by isolated independent labourers, or even by small employers, appears
 to be a specific form of the capitalist process of production. It is the
 first change experienced by the actual labour-process, when subjected to
 capital. This change takes place spontaneously. The simultaneous employment
 of a large number of wage-labourers, in one and the same process, which
 is a necessary condition of this change, also forms the starting-point
 of capitalist production. This point coincides with the birth of capital
 itself. If then, on the one hand, the capitalist mode of production presents
 itself to us historically, as a necessary condition to the transformation
 of the labour-process into a social process, so, on the other hand, this
 social form of the labour-process presents itself, as a method employed
 by capital for the more profitable exploitation of labour, by increasing
 that labour’s productiveness.
In the elementary form, under which we have hitherto viewed it,
 co-operation is a necessary concomitant of all production on a large scale,
 but it does not, in itself, represent a fixed form characteristic of a
 particular epoch in the development of the capitalist mode of production.
 At the most it appears to do so, and that only approximately, in the handicraft-like
 beginnings of manufacture, [22] and in that kind of
 agriculture on a large scale, which corresponds to the epoch of manufacture,
 and is distinguished from peasant agriculture, mainly by the number of
 the labourers simultaneously employed, and by the mass of the means of
 production concentrated for their use. Simple co-operation is always the
 prevailing form, in those branches of production in which capital operates
 on a large scale, and division of labour and machinery play but a subordinate
 part.
Co-operation ever constitutes the fundamental form of the capitalist
 mode of production, nevertheless the elementary form of co-operation continues
 to subsist as a particular form of capitalist production side by side with
 the more developed forms of that mode of production.
That co-operation which is based on division of labour,
 assumes its typical form in manufacture, and is the prevalent characteristic
 form of the capitalist process of production throughout the manufacturing
 period properly so called. That period, roughly speaking, extends from
 the middle of the 16th to the last third of the 18th century.
Manufacture takes its rise in two ways:
(1.) By the assemblage, in one workshop under the control of a single
 capitalist, of labourers belonging to various independent handicrafts,
 but through whose hands a given article must pass on its way to completion.
 A carriage, for example, was formerly the product of the labour of a great
 number of independent artificers, such as wheelwrights, harness-makers,
 tailors, locksmiths, upholsterers, turners, fringe-makers, glaziers, painters,
 polishers, gilders, &c. In the manufacture of carriages, however, all
 these different artificers are assembled in one building where they work
 into one another’s hands. It is true that a carriage cannot be gilt before
 it has been made. But if a number of carriages are being made simultaneously,
 some may be in the hands of the gilders while others are going through
 an earlier process. So far, we are still in the domain of simple co-operation,
 which finds its materials ready to hand in the shape of men and things.
 But very soon an important change takes place. The tailor, the locksmith,
 and the other artificers, being now exclusively occupied in carriage-making,
 each gradually loses, through want of practice, the ability to carry on,
 to its full extent, his old handicraft. But, on the other hand, his activity
 now confined in one groove, assumes the form best adapted to the narrowed
 sphere of action. At first, carriage manufacture is a combination of various
 independent handicrafts. By degrees, it becomes the splitting up of carriage-making
 into its various detail processes, each of which crystallises319 into
 the exclusive function of a particular workman, the manufacture, as a whole,
 being carried on by the men in conjunction. In the same way, cloth manufacture,
 as also a whole series of other manufactures, arose by combining different
 handicrafts together under the control of a single capitalist. [1]
The mode in which manufacture arises, its growth out of handicrafts,
 is therefore two-fold. On the one hand, it arises from the union of various
 independent handicrafts, which become stripped of their independence and
 specialised to such an extent as to be reduced to mere supplementary partial
 processes in the production of one particular commodity. On the other hand,
 it arises from the co-operation of artificers of one handicraft; it splits
 up that particular handicraft into its various detail operations, isolating,
 and making these operations independent of one another up to the point
 where each becomes the exclusive function of a particular labourer. On
 the one hand, therefore, manufacture either introduces division of labour
 into a process of production, or further develops that division; on the
 other hand, it unites together handicrafts that were formerly separate.
 But whatever may have been its particular starting-point, its final form
 is invariably the same – a productive mechanism whose parts are human beings.
For a proper understanding of the division of labour in manufacture,
 it is essential that the following points be firmly grasped. First, the
 decomposition of a process of production into its various successive steps
 coincides, here, strictly with the resolution of a handicraft into its
 successive manual operations. Whether complex or simple, each operation
 has to be done by hand, retains the character of a handicraft, and is therefore
 dependent on the strength, skill, quickness, and sureness, of the individual
 workman in handling his tools. The handicraft continues to be the basis.
 This narrow technical basis excludes a really scientific analysis of any
 definite process of industrial production, since it is still a condition
 that each detail process gone through by the product must be capable of
 being done by hand and of forming, in its way, a separate handicraft. It
 is just because handicraft skill continues, in this way, to be the foundation
 of the process of production, that each workman becomes exclusively assigned
 to a partial function, and that for the rest of his life, his labour-power
 is turned into the organ of this detail function.
Secondly, this division of labour is a particular sort of co-operation,
 and many of its advantages[*] spring from the general character of co-operation,
 and not from this particular form of it.
If we now go more into detail, it is, in the first
 place, clear that a labourer who all his life performs one and the same
 simple operation, converts his whole body into the automatic, specialised
 implement of that operation. Consequently, he takes less time in doing
 it, than the artificer who performs a whole series of operations in succession.
 But the collective labourer, who constitutes the living mechanism of manufacture,
 is made up solely of such specialised detail labourers. Hence, in comparison
 with the independent handicraft, more is produced in a given time, or the
 productive power of labour is increased. [2] Moreover, when once this fractional work is established as the exclusive function
 of one person, the methods it employs become perfected. The workman’s continued
 repetition of the same simple act, and the concentration of his attention
 on it, teach him by experience how to attain the desired effect with the
 minimum of exertion. But since there are always several generations of
 labourers living at one time, and working together at the manufacture of
 a given article, the technical skill, the tricks of the trade thus acquired,
 become established, and are accumulated and handed down. [3]
Manufacture, in fact, produces the skill of the detail labourer,
 by reproducing, and systematically driving to an extreme within the workshop,
 the naturally developed differentiation of trades which it found ready
 to hand in society at large. On the other hand, the conversion of fractional
 work into the life-calling of one man, corresponds to the tendency shown
 by earlier societies, to make trades hereditary; either to petrify them
 into castes, or whenever definite historical conditions beget in the individual
 a tendency to vary in a manner incompatible with the nature of castes,
 to ossify them into guilds. Castes and guilds arise from the action of
 the same natural law, that regulates the differentiation of plants and
 animals into species and varieties, except that, when a certain degree
 of development has been reached, the heredity of castes and the exclusiveness
 of guilds are ordained as a law of society. [4]
It is only the special skill accumulated from generation to generation, and transmitted
 from father to son, that gives to the Hindu, as it does to the spider,
 this proficiency. And yet the work of such a Hindu weaver is very complicated,
 compared with that of a manufacturing labourer.
An artificer, who performs one after another the various fractional
 operations in the production of a finished article, must at one time change
 his place, at another his tools. The transition from one operation to another
 interrupts the flow of his labour, and creates, so to say, gaps in his
 working-day. These gaps close up so soon as he is tied to one and the same
 operation all day long; they vanish in proportion as the changes in his
 work diminish. The resulting increased productive power is owing either
 to an increased expenditure of labour-power in a given time i.e., to increased
 intensity of labour or to a decrease in the amount of labour-power unproductively
 consumed. The extra expenditure of power, demanded by every transition
 from rest to motion, is made up for by prolonging the duration of the normal
 velocity when once acquired. On the other hand, constant labour of one
 uniform kind disturbs the intensity and flow of a man’s animal spirits,
 which find recreation and delight in mere change of activity.
The productiveness of labour depends not only on the proficiency
 of the workman, but on the perfection of his tools. Tools of the same kind,
 such as knives, drills, gimlets, hammers, &c., may be employed323
 in different processes; and the same tool may serve various purposes in
 a single process. But so soon as the different operations of a labour-process
 are disconnected the one from the other, and each fractional operation
 acquires in the hands of the detail labourer a suitable and peculiar form,
 alterations become necessary in the implements that previously served more
 than one purpose. The direction taken by this change is determined by the
 difficulties experienced in consequence of the unchanged form of the implement.
 Manufacture is characterised by the differentiation of the instruments
 of labour – a differentiation whereby implements of a given sort acquire
 fixed shapes, adapted to each particular application, and by the specialisation
 of those instruments, giving to each special implement its full play only
 in the hands of a specific detail labourer. In Birmingham alone 500 varieties
 of hammers are produced, and not only is each adapted to one particular
 process, but several varieties often serve exclusively for the different
 operations in one and the same process. The manufacturing period simplifies,
 improves, and multiplies the implements of labour, by adapting them to
 the exclusively special functions of each detail labourer. [6] It thus creates at the same time one of the material conditions for the
 existence of machinery, which consists of a combination of simple instruments.
The detail labourer and his implements are the simplest elements
 of manufacture. Let us now turn to its aspect as a whole.
The organisation of manufacture has two fundamental
 forms which, in spite of occasional blending, are essentially different
 in kind, and, moreover, play very distinct parts in the subsequent transformation
 of manufacture into modern industry carried on by machinery. This double
 character arises from the nature of the article produced. This article
 either results from the mere mechanical fitting together of partial products
 made independently, or owes its completed shape to a series of connected
 processes and manipulations.
The second kind of manufacture, its perfected form, produces articles
 that go through connected phases of development, through a series of processes
 step by step, like the wire in the manufacture of needles, which passes
 through the hands of 72 and sometimes even 92 different detail workmen.
In so far as such a manufacture, when first started, combines
 scattered handicrafts, it lessens the space by which the various phases
 of production are separated from each other. The time taken in passing
 from one stage to another is shortened, so is the labour that effectuates
 this passage. [9] In comparison with a handicraft, productive power is gained, and this gain is owing to the general co-operative character
 of manufacture. On the other hand, division of labour, which is the distinguishing
 principle of manufacture, requires the isolation of the various stages
 of production and their independence of each other. The establishment and
 maintenance of a connexion between the isolated functions necessitates
 the incessant transport of the article from one hand to another, and from
 one process to another. From the standpoint of modern mechanical industry,
 this necessity stands forth as a characteristic and costly disadvantage,
 and one that is immanent in the principle of manufacture. [10]
326If we confine our attention to some particular lot of raw
 materials, of rags, for instance, in paper manufacture, or of wire in needle
 manufacture, we perceive that it passes in succession through a series
 of stages in the hands of the various detail workmen until completion.
 On the other hand, if we look at the workshop as a whole, we see the raw
 material in all the stages of its production at the same time. The collective
 labourer, with one set of his many hands armed with one kind of tools,
 draws the wire, with another set, armed with different tools, he, at the
 same time, straightens it, with another, he cuts it, with another, points
 it, and so on. The different detail processes, which were successive in
 time, have become simultaneous, go on side by side in space. Hence, production
 of a greater quantum of finished commodities in a given time. [11] This simultaneity, it is true, is due to the general co-operative form of the process as a whole; but Manufacture not only finds the conditions
 for co-operation ready to hand, it also, to some extent, creates them by
 the sub-division of handicraft labour. On the other hand, it accomplishes
 this social organisation of the labour-process only by riveting each labourer
 to a single fractional detail.
Since the fractional product of each detail labourer is, at the
 same time, only a particular stage in the development of one and the same
 finished article, each labourer, or each group of labourers, prepares the
 raw material for another labourer or group. The result of the labour of
 the one is the starting-point for the labour of the other. The one workman
 therefore gives occupation directly to the other. The labour-time necessary in each partial process, for attaining the desired effect, is learnt by
 experience; and the mechanism of Manufacture, as a whole, is based on the
 assumption that a given result will be obtained in a given time. It is
 only on this assumption that the various supplementary labour-processes
 can proceed uninterruptedly, simultaneously, and side by side. It is clear
 that this direct dependence of the operations, and therefore of the labourers,
 on each other, compels each one of them to spend on his work no more than
 the necessary time, and thus a continuity, uniformity, regularity, order,
 [12] and even intensity of labour, of quite a different kind, is begotten than is to be found in an independent327 handicraft
 or even in simple co-operation. The rule, that the labour-time expended
 on a commodity should not exceed that which is socially necessary for its
 production, appears, in the production of commodities generally, to be
 established by the mere effect of competition; since, to express ourselves
 superficially, each single producer is obliged to sell his commodity at
 its market-price. In Manufacture, on the contrary, the turning out of a
 given quantum of product in a given time is a technical law of the process
 of production itself. [13]
Different operations take, however, unequal periods, and yield
 therefore, in equal times unequal quantities of fractional products. If,
 therefore, the same labourer has, day after day, to perform the same operation,
 there must be a different number of labourers for each operation; for instance,
 in type manufacture, there are four founders and two breakers to one rubber:
 the founder casts 2,000 type an hour, the breaker breaks up 4,000, and
 the rubber polishes 8,000. Here we have again the principle of co-operation
 in its simplest form, the simultaneous employment of many doing the same
 thing; only now, this principle is the expression of an organic relation.
 The division of labour, as carried out in Manufacture, not only simplifies
 and multiplies the qualitatively different parts of the social collective
 labourer, but also creates a fixed mathematical relation or ratio which
 regulates the quantitative extent of those parts i.e., the relative number
 of labourers, or the relative size of the group of labourers, for each
 detail operation. It develops, along with the qualitative sub-division
 of the social labour-process, a quantitative rule and proportionality for
 that process.
When once the most fitting proportion has been experimentally
 established for the numbers of the detail labourers in the various groups
 when producing on a given scale, that scale can be extended only by employing
 a multiple of each particular group. [14] There is this to boot, that the same individual can do certain kinds of work just as
 well on a large as on a small scale; for instance, the labour of superintendence,
 the carriage of the fractional product from one stage to the next, &c.
 The isolation of such functions, their allotment to a particular labourer,
 does not become advantageous till after an increase in the328 number
 of labourers employed; but this increase must affect every group proportionally.
Finally, just as Manufacture arises in part from the combination
 of various handicrafts, so, too, it develops into a combination of various
 manufactures. The larger English glass manufacturers, for instance, make
 their own earthenware melting-pots, because, on the quality of these depends,
 to a great extent, the success or failure of the process. The manufacture
 of one of the means of production is here united with that of the product.
 On the other hand, the manufacture of the product may be united with other
 manufactures, of which that product is the raw material, or with the products
 of which it is itself subsequently329 mixed. Thus, we find the manufacture
 of flint glass combined with that of glass cutting and brass founding;
 the latter for the metal settings of various articles of glass. The various
 manufactures so combined form more or less separate departments of a larger
 manufacture, but are at the same time independent processes, each with
 its own division of labour. In spite of the many advantages offered by
 this combination of manufactures, it never grows into a complete technical
 system on its own foundation. That happens only on its transformation into
 an industry carried on by machinery.
Early in the manufacturing period, the principle of lessening
 the necessary labour-time in the production of commodities, [16] was accepted and formulated: and the use of machines, especially for certain simple first processes that have to be conducted on a very large scale,
 and with the application of great force, sprang up here and there. Thus,
 at an early period in paper manufacture, the tearing up of the rags was
 done by paper-mills; and in metal works, the pounding of the ores was effected
 by stamping mills. [17] The Roman Empire had handed
 down the elementary form of all machinery in the water-wheel. [18]
The handicraft period bequeathed to us the great inventions of
 the compass, of gunpowder, of type-printing, and of the automatic clock.
 But, on the whole, machinery played that subordinate part which Adam Smith
 assigns to it in comparison with division of labour. [19] The sporadic use of machinery in the 17th century was of the greatest importance, because it supplied the great mathematicians of that time with a practical
 basis and stimulant to the creation of the science of mechanics.
The collective labourer, formed by the combination of a number
 of detail labourers, is the machinery specially characteristic of the manufacturing330
 period. The various operations that are performed in turns by the producer
 of a commodity, and coalesce one with another during the progress of production,
 lay claim to him in various ways. In one operation he must exert more strength,
 in another more skill, in another more attention; and the same individual
 does not possess all these qualities in an equal degree. After Manufacture has once separated, made independent, and isolated the various operations, the labourers are divided, classified, and grouped according to their predominating
 qualities. If their natural endowments are, on the one hand, the foundation
 on which the division of labour is built up, on the other hand, Manufacture,
 once introduced, develops in them new powers that are by nature fitted
 only for limited and special functions. The collective labourer now possesses,
 in an equal degree of excellence, all the qualities requisite for production,
 and expends them in the most economical manner, by exclusively employing
 all his organs, consisting of particular labourers, or groups of labourers,
 in performing their special functions. [20] The one-sidedness and the deficiencies of the detail labourer become perfections when he
 is a part of the collective labourer. [21] The habit
 of doing only one thing converts him into a never failing instrument, while
 his connexion with the whole mechanism compels him to work with the regularity
 of the parts of a machine. [22]
We first considered the origin of Manufacture, then
 its simple elements, then the detail labourer and his implements, and finally,
 the totality of the mechanism. We shall now lightly touch upon the relation
 between the division of labour in manufacture, and the social division
 of labour, which forms the foundation of all production of commodities.
If we keep labour alone in view, we may designate the separation
 of social production into its main divisions or genera — viz.,
 agriculture, industries, &c., as division of labour in general, and
 the splitting up of these families into species and sub-species, as division
 of labour in332 particular, and the division of labour within the workshop
 as division of labour in singular or in detail. [25]
The foundation of every division of labour that is well developed,
 and brought about by the exchange of commodities, is the separation between
 town and country. [27] It may be said, that the whole economic history of society is summed up in the movement of this antithesis.
 We pass it over, however, for the present.
Just as a certain number of simultaneously employed labourers
 are the material pre-requisites for division of labour in manufacture,
 so are the number and density of the population, which here correspond
 to the agglomeration in one workshop, a necessary condition for the division
 of labour in society. [28] Nevertheless, this density is more or less relative. A relatively thinly populated country, with well-developed
 means of communication, has a denser population than a more numerously
 populated country, with badly-developed means of communication; and in
 this sense the Northern States of the American Union, for instance, are
 more thickly populated than India. [29]
If, in a society with capitalist production, anarchy in the social
 division of labour and despotism in that of the workshop are mutual conditions
 the one of the other, we find, on the contrary, in those earlier forms
 of society in which the separation of trades has been spontaneously developed,
 then crystallised, and finally made permanent by law, on the one hand,
 a specimen of the organisation of the labour of society, in accordance
 with an approved and authoritative plan, and on the other, the entire exclusion
 of division of labour in the workshop, or at all events a mere dwarflike
 or sporadic and accidental development of the same. [36]
The rules of the guilds, as I have said before, by limiting most
 strictly the number of apprentices and journeymen that a single master
 could employ, prevented him from becoming a capitalist. Moreover, he could
 not employ his journeymen in many other handicrafts than the one in which
 he was a master. The guilds zealously repelled every encroachment by the
 capital of merchants, the only form of free capital with which they came
 in contact. A merchant could buy every kind of commodity, but labour as
 a commodity he could not buy. He existed only on sufferance, as a dealer
 in the products of the handicrafts. If circumstances called for a further
 division of labour, the existing guilds split themselves up into varieties,
 or founded new guilds by the side of the old ones; all this, however, without
 concentrating various handicrafts in a single workshop. Hence, the guild
 organisation, however much it may have contributed by separating, isolating,
 and perfecting the handicrafts, to create the material conditions for the
 existence of manufacture, excluded division of labour in the workshop.
 On the whole, the labourer and his means of production remained closely
 united, like the snail with its shell, and thus there was wanting the principal
 basis of manufacture, the separation of the labourer from his means of
 production, and the conversion of these means into capital.
While division of labour in society at large, whether such division
 be brought about or not by exchange of commodities, is common to economic
 formations of society the most diverse, division of labour in the workshop,
 as practised by manufacture, is a special creation of the capitalist mode
 of production alone.
An increased number of labourers under the control
 of one capitalist is the natural starting-point, as well of co-operation
 generally, as of manufacture in particular. But the division of labour
 in manufacture makes this increase in the number of workmen a technical
 necessity. The minimum number that any given capitalist is bound to employ
 is here prescribed by the previously established division of labour. On
 the other hand, the advantages of further division are obtainable only
 by adding to the number of workmen, and this can be done only by adding
 multiples of the various detail groups. But an increase in the variable
 component of the capital employed necessitates an increase in its constant
 component, too, in the workshops, implements, &c., and, in particular,
 in the raw material, the call for which grows quicker340 than the number
 of workmen. The quantity of it consumed in a given time, by a given amount
 of labour, increases in the same ratio as does the productive power of
 that labour in consequence of its division. Hence, it is a law, based on
 the very nature of manufacture, that the minimum amount of capital, which
 is bound to be in the hands of each capitalist, must keep increasing; in
 other words, that the transformation into capital of the social means of
 production and subsistence must keep extending. [39]
In manufacture, as well as in simple co-operation, the collective
 working organism is a form of existence of capital. The mechanism that
 is made up of numerous individual detail labourers belongs to the capitalist.
 Hence, the productive power resulting from a combination of labours appears
 to be the productive power of capital. Manufacture proper not only subjects
 the previously independent workman to the discipline and command of capital,
 but, in addition, creates a hierarchic gradation of the workmen themselves.
 While simple co-operation leaves the mode of working by the individual
 for the most part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revolutionises it,
 and seizes labour-power by its very roots. It converts the labourer into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts; just as in the States of La Plata they butcher a whole beast for the sake of his hide or his
 tallow. Not only is the detail work distributed to the different individuals,
 but the individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional
 operation, [40] and the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which makes man a mere fragment of his own body, becomes realised. [41] If, at first, the workman sells his labour-power to capital, because the material means of producing a commodity fail him, now his very labour-power
 refuses its services unless it has been sold to capital. Its functions
 can be exercised only in an environment that exists in the workshop of
 the capitalist after the sale. By nature unfitted to make anything independently,
 the manufacturing labourer341 develops productive activity as a mere
 appendage of the capitalist’s workshop. [42] As the
 chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so division
 of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital.
The knowledge, the judgement, and the will, which, though in ever
 so small a degree, are practised by the independent peasant or handicraftsman,
 in the same way as the savage makes the whole art of war consist in the
 exercise of his personal cunning these faculties are now required only
 for the workshop as a whole. Intelligence in production expands in one
 direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is lost by the detail
 labourers, is concentrated in the capital that employs them. [43] It is a result of the division of labour in manufactures, that the labourer is brought face to face with the intellectual potencies of the material
 process of production, as the property of another, and as a ruling power.
 This separation begins in simple co-operation, where the capitalist represents
 to the single workman, the oneness and the will of the associated labour.
 It is developed in manufacture which cuts down the labourer into a detail
 labourer. It is completed in modern industry, which makes science a productive
 force distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital.
 [44]
In manufacture, in order to make the collective labourer, and
 through him capital, rich in social productive power, each labourer must
 be made poor in individual productive powers.
As a matter of fact, some few manufacturers in the middle of the 18th century preferred, for certain operations that
 were trade secrets, to employ half-idiotic persons. [46]
After describing the stupidity of the detail labourer he goes on:
For preventing the complete deterioration of the great mass of the people by division of labour, A.
 Smith recommends education of the people by the State, but prudently, and
 in homeopathic doses. G. Garnier, his French translator and commentator,
 who, under the first French Empire, quite naturally developed into a senator,
 quite as naturally opposes him on this point. Education of the masses,
 he urges, violates the first law of the division of labour, and with it
Some crippling of body and mind is inseparable even from division
 of labour in society as a whole. Since, however, manufacture carries343
 this social separation of branches of labour much further, and also, by
 its peculiar division, attacks the individual at the very roots of his
 life, it is the first to afford the materials for, and to give a start
 to, industrial pathology. [50]
Co-operation based on division of labour, in other words, manufacture,
 commences as a spontaneous formation. So soon as it attains some consistence
 and extension, it becomes the recognised methodical and systematic form
 of capitalist production. History shows how the division of labour peculiar
 to manufacture, strictly so called, acquires the best adapted form at first
 by experience, as it were behind the backs of the actors, and then, like
 the guild handicrafts, strives to hold fast that form when once found,
 and here and there succeeds in keeping it for centuries. Any alteration
 in this form, except in trivial matters, is solely owing to a revolution
 in the instruments of labour. Modern manufacture wherever it arises – I do
 not here allude to modern industry based on machinery – either finds the
 disjecta membra poetae ready to hand, and only waiting to be collected
 together, as is the case in the manufacture of clothes in large towns,
 or it can easily apply the principle of division, simply by exclusively
 assigning the various operations of a handicraft (such as book-binding)
 to particular men. In such cases, a week’s experience is enough to determine
 the proportion between the numbers of the hands necessary for the various
 functions. [52]
344By decomposition of handicrafts, by specialisation of the
 instruments of labour, by the formation of detail labourers, and by grouping
 and combining the latter into a single mechanism, division of labour in
 manufacture creates a qualitative gradation, and a quantitative proportion
 in the social process of production; it consequently creates a definite
 organisation of the labour of society, and thereby develops at the same
 time new productive forces in the society. In its specific capitalist form – 
 and under the given conditions, it could take no other form than a capitalistic
 one – manufacture is but a particular method of begetting relative surplus-value,
 or of augmenting at the expense of the labourer the self-expansion of capital – 
 usually called social wealth, “Wealth of Nations,” &c. It increases
 the social productive power of labour, not only for the benefit of the
 capitalist instead of for that of the labourer, but it does this by crippling
 the individual labourers. It creates new conditions for the lordship of
 capital over labour. If, therefore, on the one hand, it presents itself
 historically as a progress and as a necessary phase in the economic development
 of society, on the other hand, it is a refined and civilised method of
 exploitation.
Political Economy, which as an independent science, first sprang
 into being during the period of manufacture, views the social division
 of labour only from the standpoint of manufacture, [53] and sees in it only the means of producing more commodities with a given quantity of labour, and, consequently, of cheapening commodities and hurrying
 on the accumulation of capital. In most striking contrast with this accentuation
 of quantity and exchange-value, is the attitude of the writers of classical
 antiquity, who hold exclusively by quality and use-value. [54] In consequence of the separation of the social branches of production, commodities are better made, the various bents and talents of men select
 a suitable field, [55] and without some restraint no
 important results345 can be obtained anywhere. [56]Hence both product and producer are improved by division of labour. If the growth of the quantity produced is occasionally mentioned, this is only done with reference to the greater abundance of use-values. There is not a word alluding to exchange-value or to the cheapening of commodities. This aspect, from the standpoint of use-value alone, is taken as well by
 Plato, [57] who treats division of labour as the foundation on which the division of society into classes is based, as by Xenophon,
 [58] who with characteristic bourgeois instinct,346 approaches more nearly to division of labour within the workshop. Plato’s
 Republic, in so far as division of labour is treated in it, as the formative
 principle of the State, is merely the Athenian idealisation of the Egyptian
 system of castes, Egypt having served as the model of an industrial country
 to many of his contemporaries also, amongst others to Isocrates, [59] and it continued to have this importance to the Greeks of the Roman Empire. [60]
During the manufacturing period proper, i.e., the period during
 which manufacture is the predominant form taken by capitalist production,
 many obstacles are opposed to the full development of the peculiar tendencies
 of manufacture. Although manufacture creates, as we have already seen,
 a simple separation of the labourers into skilled and unskilled, simultaneously
 with their hierarchic arrangement in classes, yet the number of the unskilled
 labourers, owing to the preponderating influence of the skilled, remains
 very limited. Although it adapts the detail operations to the various degrees
 of maturity, strength, and development of the living instruments of labour,
 thus conducing to exploitation of women and children, yet this tendency
 as a whole is wrecked on the habits and the resistance of the male labourers.
 Although the splitting up of handicrafts lowers the cost of forming the
 workman, and thereby lowers his value, yet for the more difficult detail
 work, a longer apprenticeship is necessary, and, even where it would be
 superfluous, is jealously insisted upon by the workmen. In England, for
 instance, we find the laws of apprenticeship, with their seven years’ probation,
 in full force down to the end of the manufacturing period; and they are
 not thrown on one side till the advent of Modern Industry. Since handicraft
 skill is the foundation of manufacture, and since the mechanism of manufacture
 as a whole possesses no framework, apart from the labourers themselves,
 capital is constantly compelled to wrestle with the insubordination of
 the workmen.
Hence throughout the whole manufacturing period there runs the complaint of want of discipline among the workmen. [62] And had we not the testimony of contemporary writers, the simple facts, that during the period between the 16th century and the epoch of Modern Industry, capital
 failed to become the master of the whole disposable working-time of the
 manufacturing labourers, that manufactures are short-lived, and change
 their locality from one country to another with the emigrating or immigrating
 workmen, these facts would speak volumes. “Order must in one way or another
 be established,” exclaims in 1770 the oft-cited author of the “Essay on
 Trade and Commerce.” “Order,” re-echoes Dr. Andrew Ure 66 years later,
 “Order” was wanting in manufacture based on “the scholastic dogma of division
 of labour,” and “Arkwright created order.”
At the same time manufacture was unable, either to seize upon
 the production of society to its full extent, or to revolutionise that
 production to its very core. It towered up as an economic work of art,
 on the broad foundation of the town handicrafts, and of the rural domestic
 industries. At a given stage in its development, the narrow technical basis
 on which manufacture rested, came into conflict with requirements of production
 that were created by manufacture itself.
One of its most finished creations was the workshop for the production
 of the instruments of labour themselves, including especially the complicated
 mechanical apparatus then already employed.
This workshop, the product of the division of labour in manufacture,
 produced in its turn – machines. It is they that sweep away the handicraftsman’s
 work as the regulating principle of social production. Thus, on the one
 hand, the technical reason for the life-long annexation of the workman
 to a detail function is removed. On the other hand, the fetters that this
 same principle laid on the dominion of capital, fall away.
John Stuart Mill says in his “Principles of Political Economy":
That is, however, by no means the aim of the capitalistic application of machinery. Like every other increase in the productiveness of labour, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities, and, by shortening that portion of
 the working-day, in which the labourer works for himself, to lengthen the
 other portion that he gives, without an equivalent, to the capitalist.
 In short, it is a means for producing surplus-value.
In manufacture, the revolution in the mode of production begins
 with the labour-power, in modern industry it begins with the instruments
 of labour. Our first inquiry then is, how the instruments of labour are
 converted from tools into machines, or what is the difference between a
 machine and the implements of a handicraft? We are only concerned here
 with striking and general characteristics; for epochs in the history of
 society are no more separated from each other by hard and fast lines of
 demarcation, than are geological epochs.
Mathematicians and mechanicians, and in this they are followed
 by a few English economists, call a tool a simple machine, and a machine
 a complex tool. They see no essential difference between them, and even
 give the name of machine to the simple mechanical powers, the lever, the
 inclined plane, the screw, the wedge, &c. [2] As
 a matter of fact, every machine is a combination of those simple powers,
 no matter how they 352may be disguised. From the economic standpoint
 this explanation is worth nothing, because the historical element is wanting.
 Another explanation of the difference between tool and machine is that
 in the case of a tool, man is the motive power, while the motive power
 of a machine is something different from man, as, for instance, an animal,
 water, wind, and so on.[3]According to this, a plough drawn by oxen, which is a contrivance common to the most different epochs,
 would be a machine, while Claussen’s circular loom, which, worked by a
 single labourer, weaves 96,000 picks per minute, would be a mere tool.
 Nay, this very loom, though a tool when worked by hand, would, if worked
 by steam, be a machine. And since the application of animal power is one
 of man’s earliest inventions, production by machinery would have preceded
 production by handicrafts. When in 1735, John Wyatt brought out his spinning
 machine, and began the industrial revolution of the 18th century, not a
 word did he say about an ass driving it instead of a man, and yet this
 part fell to the ass. He described it as a machine “to spin without fingers.” 
 [4]
All fully developed machinery consists of three essentially different
 parts, the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechanism, and finally the
 tool or working machine. The motor mechanism is that which puts 353the
 whole in motion. It either generates its own motive power, like the steam-engine,
 the caloric engine, the electromagnetic machine, &c., or it receives
 its impulse from some already existing natural force, like the water-wheel
 from a head of water, the wind-mill from wind, &c. The transmitting
 mechanism, composed of fly-wheels, shafting, toothed wheels, pullies, straps,
 ropes, bands, pinions, and gearing of the most varied kinds, regulates
 the motion, changes its form where necessary, as for instance, from linear
 to circular, and divides and distributes it among the working machines.
 These two first parts of the whole mechanism are there, solely for putting
 the working machines in motion, by means of which motion the subject of
 labour is seized upon and modified as desired. The tool or working machine
 is that part of the machinery with which the industrial revolution of the
 18th century started. And to this day it constantly serves as such a starting-point,
 whenever a handicraft, or a manufacture, is turned into an industry carried
 on by machinery.
The machine, which is the starting-point of the industrial revolution,
 supersedes the workman, who handles a single tool, by a mechanism operating
 with a number of similar tools, and set in motion by a single motive power,
 whatever the form of that power may be. [10] Here we
 have the machine, but only as an elementary factor of production by machinery.
Increase in the size of the machine, and in the number of its
 working tools, calls for a more massive mechanism to drive it; and this
 mechanism requires, in order to overcome its resistance, a mightier moving
 power than that of man, apart from the fact that man is a very imperfect
 instrument for producing uniform continued motion. But assuming that he
 is acting simply as a motor, that a machine has taken the place of his
 tool, it is evident that he can be replaced by natural forces. Of all the
 great motors handed down from the manufacturing period, horse-356power
 is the worst, partly because a horse has a head of his own, partly because
 he is costly, and the extent to which he is applicable in factories is
 very restricted.[11] Nevertheless the horse was extensively used during the infancy of modern industry. This is proved, as well by
 the complaints of contemporary agriculturists, as by the term “horse-power,” 
 which has survived to this day as an expression for mechanical force.
As soon as tools had been converted from being manual implements
 of man into implements of a mechanical apparatus, of a machine, the motive
 mechanism also acquired an independent form, entirely emancipated from
 the restraints of human strength. Thereupon the individual machine, that
 we have hitherto been considering, sinks into a mere factor in production
 by machinery. One motive mechanism was now able to drive many machines
 at once. The motive mechanism grows with the number of the machines that
 are turned simultaneously, and the transmitting mechanism becomes a wide-spreading
 apparatus.
We now proceed to distinguish the co-operation of a number of
 machines of one kind from a complex system of machinery.
An organised system of machines, to which motion is communicated
 by the transmitting mechanism from a central automaton, is the most developed
 form of production by machinery. Here we have, in the place of the isolated
 machine, a mechanical monster whose body fills whole factories, and whose
 demon power, at first veiled under the slow and 361measured motions
 of his giant limbs, at length breaks out into the fast and furious whirl
 of his countless working organs.
Modern industry had therefore itself to take in hand the machine,
 its characteristic instrument of production, and to construct machines
 by machines. It was not till it did this, that it built up for itself a
 fitting technical foundation, and stood on its own feet. Machinery, simultaneously
 with the increasing use of it, in the first decades of this century, appropriated,
 by degrees, the fabrication of machines proper. But it was only during
 the decade preceding 1866, that the construction of railways and ocean
 steamers on a stupendous scale called into existence the cyclopean machines
 now employed in the construction of prime movers.
The most essential condition to the production of machines by
 machines was a prime mover capable of exerting any amount of force, and
 yet under perfect control. Such a condition was already supplied by the
 steam-engine. But at the same time it was necessary to produce the geometrically
 accurate straight lines, planes, circles, cylinders, cones, and spheres,
 required in the detail parts of the machines. This problem Henry Maudsley
 solved in the first decade of this century by the invention of the slide
 rest, a tool that was soon made automatic, and in a modified form was applied
 to other constructive machines besides the lathe, for which it was originally
 intended. This mechanical appliance replaces, not some particular tool,
 but the hand itself, which produces a given form by holding and guiding
 the cutting tool along the iron or other material operated upon. Thus it
 became possible to produce the forms of the individual parts of machinery
If we now fix our attention on that portion of the machinery employed
 in the construction of machines, which constitutes the operating tool,
 we find the manual implements re-appearing, but on a cyclopean scale. The
 operating part of the boring machine is an immense drill driven by a steam-engine;
 without this machine, on the other hand, the cylinders of large steam-engines
 and of hydraulic presses could not be made. The mechanical lathe is only
 a cyclopean reproduction of the ordinary foot-lathe; the planing machine,
 an iron carpenter, that works on iron with the same tools that the human
 carpenter employs on wood; the instrument that, on the London wharves,
 cuts the veneers, is a gigantic razor; the tool of the shearing machine,
 which shears iron as easily as a tailor’s scissors cut cloth, is a monster
 pair of scissors; and the steam-hammer works with an ordinary hammer head,
 but of such a weight that not Thor himself could wield it. [21] These steam-hammers are an invention of Nasmyth, and there is one that weighs over 6 tons and strikes with a vertical fall of 7 feet, on an anvil
 weighing 36 tons. It is mere child’s-play for it to crush a block of granite
 into powder, yet it is no less capable of driving, with a succession of
 light taps, a nail into a piece of soft wood. [22]
The implements of labour, in the form of machinery, necessitate
 the substitution of natural forces for human force, and the conscious application
 of science, instead of rule of thumb. In Manufacture, the organisation
 of the social labour-process is purely subjective; it is a combination
 of detail labourers; in its machinery system, modern industry has a productive
 organism that is purely objective, in which the labourer becomes a mere
 appendage to an already existing material condition of production. In simple
 co-operation, and even in that founded on division of labour, the suppression
 of the isolated, by the collective, workman still appears to be more or
 less accidental. Machinery, with a few exceptions to be mentioned later,
 operates only by means of associated 365labour, or labour in common.
 Hence the co-operative character of the labour-process is, in the latter
 case, a technical necessity dictated by the instrument of labour itself.
In the first place, it must be observed that the machinery, while
 always entering as a whole into the labour-process, enters into the value-begetting
 process only by bits. It never adds more value than it loses, on an average,
 by wear and tear. Hence there is a great difference between the value of
 a machine, and the value transferred in a given time by that machine to
 the product. The longer the life of the machine in the labour-process,
 the greater is that difference. It is true, no doubt, as we have already
 seen, that every instrument of labour enters as a whole into the labour-process,
 and only piece-meal, proportionally to its average daily loss by wear and
 tear, into the value-begetting process. But this difference between the
 instrument as a whole and its daily wear and tear, is much greater in a
 machine than in a tool, because the machine, being made from more durable
 material, has a longer life; because its employment, being regulated by
 strictly scientific laws, allows of greater economy in the wear and tear
 of its parts, and in the materials it consumes; and lastly, because its
 field of production is incomparably larger than that of a tool. After making
 allowance, both in the case of the machine and of the tool, for their average
 daily cost, that is for the value they transmit to the product by their
 average daily wear and tear, and for their consumption of auxiliary substance,
 such as oil, coal, and so on, they each do their work gratuitously, just
 like the forces furnished by Nature without the help of man. The greater
 the productive power of the machinery compared with that of the tool, the
 greater is the extent of its gratuitous service compared with that of the
 tool. In modern industry man succeeded for the first time in making the
 product of his past labour work on a large scale gratuitously, like the
 forces of Nature. [24]
In treating of Co-operation and Manufacture, it was shown that
 certain general factors of production, such as buildings, are, in comparison
 with the scattered means of production of the isolated workman, economised
 by being consumed in common, and that they therefore make the product cheaper.
 In a system of machinery, not only is the framework of the machine consumed
 in common by its numerous 367operating implements, but the prime
 mover, together with a part of the transmitting mechanism, is consumed
 in common by the numerous operative machines.
Given the difference between the value of the machinery, and the
 value transferred by it in a day to the product, the extent to which this
 latter value makes the product dearer, depends in the first instance, upon
 the size of the product; so to say, upon its area. Mr. Baynes, of Blackburn,
 in a lecture published in 1858, estimates that
In the first case, it is the day’s produce of 450 mule spindles, in the second, of 200 throstle spindles,
 in the third, of 15 power-looms, over which the daily cost of one horse-power,
 and the wear and tear of the machinery set in motion by that power, are
 spread; so that only a very minute value is transferred by such wear and
 tear to a pound of yarn or a yard of cloth. The same is the case with the
 steam-hammer mentioned above. Since its daily wear and tear, its coal-consumption,
 &c., are spread over the stupendous masses of iron hammered by it in
 a day, only a small value is added to a hundred weight of iron; but that
 value would be very great, if the cyclopean instrument were employed in
 driving in nails.
Given a machine’s capacity for work, that is, the number of its
 operating tools, or, where it is a question of force, their mass, the amount
 of its product will depend on the velocity of its working parts, on the
 speed, for instance, of the spindles, or on the number of blows given by
 the hammer in a minute. Many of these colossal hammers strike seventy 368times
 in a minute, and Ryder’s patent machine for forging spindles with small
 hammers gives as many as 700 strokes per minute.
Given the rate at which machinery transfers its value to the product,
 the amount of value so transferred depends on the total value of the machinery.
 [26] The less labour it contains, the less value it
 imparts to the product. The less value it gives up, so much the more productive
 it is, and so much the more its services approximate to those of natural
 forces. But the production of machinery by machinery lessens its value
 relatively to its extension and efficacy.
An analysis and comparison of the prices of commodities produced
 by handicrafts or manufactures, and of the prices of the same commodities
 produced by machinery, shows generally, that, in the product of machinery,
 the value due to the instruments of labour increases relatively, but decreases
 absolutely. In other words, its absolute amount decreases, but its amount,
 relatively to the total value of the product, of a pound of yarn, for instance,
 increases. [27]
As already stated, a steam-plough does as much work in one hour
 at a cost of three-pence, as 66 men at a cost of 15 shillings. I return
 to this example in order to clear up an erroneous notion. The 15 shillings
 are by no means the expression in money of all the labour expended in one
 hour by the 66 men. If the ratio of surplus-labour to necessary labour
 were 100%, these 66 men would produce in one hour a value of 30 shillings,
 although their wages, 15 shillings, represent only their labour for half
 an hour. Suppose, then, a machine cost as much as the wages for a year
 of the 150 men it displaces, say £3,000; this £3,000 is by
 no means the expression in money of the labour added to the object produced
 by these 150 men before the introduction of the machine, but only of that
 portion of their year’s labour which was expended for themselves and represented
 by their wages. On the other hand, the £3,000, the money-value of
 the machine, expresses all the labour expended on its production, no matter
 in what proportion this labour constitutes wages for the workman, and surplus-value
 for the capitalist. Therefore, though a machine cost as much as the labour-power
 displaced by it costs, yet the labour materialised in it is even then much
 less than the living labour it replaces. [32]
The starting-point of modern industry is, as we have
 shown, the revolution in the instruments of labour, and this revolution
 attains its most highly developed form in the organised system of machinery
 in a factory. Before we inquire how human material is incorporated with
 this objective organism, let us consider some general effects of this revolution
 on the labourer himself.
In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means
 of employing labourers of slight muscular strength, and those whose bodily
 development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple. The
 labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for
 by capitalists who used machinery. That mighty substitute for labour and
 labourers was forthwith changed into a means for increasing the number
 of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every
 member of the workman’s family, without distinction of age or sex. Compulsory
 work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children’s play,
 but also of free labour at home within moderate limits for the support
 of the family. [38]
373The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the
 labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but also
 by that necessary to maintain his family. Machinery, by throwing every
 member of that family on to the labour-market, spreads the value of the
 man’s labour-power over his whole family. It thus depreciates his labour-power.
 To purchase the labour-power of a family of four workers may, perhaps,
 cost more than it formerly did to purchase the labour-power of the head
 of the family, but, in return, four days’ labour takes the place of one,
 and their price falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus-labour
 of four over the surplus-labour of one. In order that the family may live,
 four people must now, not only labour, but expend surplus-labour for the
 capitalist. Thus we see, that machinery, while augmenting the human material
 that forms the principal object of capital’s exploiting power, [39] at the same time raises the degree of exploitation.
Machinery also revolutionises out and out the contract between
 the labourer and the capitalist, which formally fixes their mutual relations.
 Taking the exchange of commodities as our basis, our first assumption was
 that capitalist and labourer met as free persons, as independent owners
 of commodities; the one possessing money and means of production, the other
 labour-power. But now the capitalist buys children and young persons under
 age. Previously, the workman sold his own labour-power, which he disposed
 of nominally as a free agent. Now he sells wife and child. He has become
 a slave-dealer. [40] The demand for 374children’s labour often resembles in form the inquiries for negro slaves, such as were formerly to be read among the advertisements in American journals.
Every phenomenon of the factory districts is here reproduced, including, 
 but to a greater extent, ill-disguised infanticide, and dosing children
 with opiates. [51]
“Happy indeed,” exclaims Mr. Baker, the factory inspector, in his official report, “happy indeed will it be for the manufacturing districts of England,
 when every 377married woman having a family is prohibited from
 working in any textile works at all.” [53]
The moral degradation caused by the capitalistic exploitation
 of women and children has been so exhaustively depicted by F. Engels in
 his “Lage der Arbeitenden Klasse Englands,” and other writers, that I need
 only mention the subject in this place. But the intellectual desolation
 artificially produced by converting immature human beings into mere machines
 for the fabrication of surplus-value, a state of mind clearly distinguishable
 from that natural ignorance which keeps the mind fallow without destroying
 its capacity for development, its natural fertility, this desolation finally
 compelled even the English Parliament to make elementary education a compulsory
 condition to the “productive” employment of children under 14 years, in
 every industry subject to the Factory Acts. The spirit of capitalist production
 stands out clearly in the ludicrous wording of the so-called education
 clauses in the Factory Acts, in the absence of an administrative machinery,
 an absence that again makes the compulsion illusory, in the opposition
 of the manufacturers themselves to these education clauses, and in the
 tricks and dodges they put in practice for evading them.
Previous to the passing of the amended Factory Act, 1844, it happened, not unfrequently, that the
 certificates of attendance at school were signed by the schoolmaster or
 schoolmistress with a cross, as they themselves were unable to write.
The inspectors, when the Bill of 1844 was in preparation, did not fail to represent the disgraceful
 state of the places called schools, certificates from which they were obliged
 to admit as a compliance with the laws, but they were successful only in
 obtaining thus much, that since the passing of the Act of 1845,
Sir John Kincaid, factory inspector for Scotland, relates experiences of the same kind.
In Scotland the manufacturers try all they can to do without the children that are obliged to attend school.
Horribly grotesque does this appear in print works, which are regulated by a special Act. By that Act,
By the excessive addition of women and children to the ranks of
 the workers, machinery at last breaks down the resistance which the male
 operatives in the manufacturing period continued to oppose to the despotism
 of capital. [60]
If machinery be the most powerful means for increasing the productiveness
 of labour — i.e., for shortening the working-time required in the production
 of a commodity, it becomes in the hands of capital the most powerful means,
 in those industries first invaded by it, for lengthening the working-day
 beyond all bounds set by human nature. It creates, on the one hand, new
 conditions by which capital is enabled to give free scope to this its constant
 tendency, and on the other hand, new motives with which to whet capital’s
 appetite for the labour of others.
In the first place, in the form of machinery, the implements of
 labour become automatic, things moving and working independent of the workman.
 They are thenceforth an industrial perpetuum mobile, that would
 go on producing forever, did it not meet with certain natural obstructions
 in the weak bodies and the strong wills of its human attendants. The automaton,
 as capital, and because it is capital, is endowed, in the person of the
 capitalist, with intelligence and will; it is therefore animated by the
 longing to reduce to a minimum the resistance offered by that repellent
 yet elastic natural barrier, man. [61] This resistance is moreover lessened by the apparent lightness of machine work, and by
 the more pliant and docile character of the women and children employed
 on it. [62]
The productiveness of machinery is, as we saw, inversely proportional
 to the value transferred by it to the product. The longer the life of the
 machine, the greater is the mass of the products over which the value 381transmitted
 by the machine is spread, and the less is the portion of that value added
 to each single commodity. The active lifetime of a machine is, however,
 clearly dependent on the length of the working-day, or on the duration
 of the daily labour-process multiplied by the number of days for which
 the process is carried on.
The wear and tear of a machine is not exactly proportional to
 its working-time. And even if it were so, a machine working 16 hours daily
 for 7½ years, covers as long a working period as, and transmits to the
 total product no more value than, the same machine would if it worked only
 8 hours daily for 15 years. But in the first case the value of the machine
 would be reproduced twice as quickly as in the latter, and the capitalist
 would, by this use of the machine, absorb in 7½ years as much surplus-value
 as in the second case he would in 15.
The material wear and tear of a machine is of two kinds. The one
 arises from use, as coins wear away by circulating, the other from non-use,
 as a sword rusts when left in its scabbard. The latter kind is due to the
 elements. The former is more or less directly proportional, the latter
 to a certain extent inversely proportional, to the use of the machine.
 [63]
But in addition to the material wear and tear, a machine also
 undergoes, what we may call a moral depreciation. It loses exchange-value,
 either by machines of the same sort being produced cheaper than it, or
 by better machines entering into competition with it. [64] In both cases, be the machine ever so young and full of life, its value is no longer determined by the labour actually materialised in it, but
 by the labour-time requisite to reproduce either it or the better machine.
 It has, therefore, lost value more or less. The shorter the period taken
 to reproduce its total value, the less is the danger of moral depreciation;
 and the longer the working-day, the shorter is that period. When machinery
 is first introduced into an industry, new methods of reproducing it more
 cheaply follow blow upon blow, [65] and so do improvements, that not only affect 382individual parts and details of the machine,
 but its entire build. It is, therefore, in the early days of the life of
 machinery that this special incentive to the prolongation of the working-day
 makes itself felt most acutely. [66]
Given the length of the working-day, all other circumstances remaining
 the same, the exploitation of double the number of workmen demands, not
 only a doubling of that part of constant capital which is invested in machinery
 and buildings, but also of that part which is laid out in raw material
 and auxiliary substances. The lengthening of the working-day, on the other
 hand, allows of production on an extended scale without any alteration
 in the amount of capital laid out on machinery and buildings. [67] Not only is there, therefore, an increase of surplus-value, but the outlay necessary to obtain it diminishes. It is true that this takes place, more or less, with every lengthening of the working-day; but in the case under
 consideration, the change is more marked, because the capital converted
 into the instruments of labour preponderates to a greater degree. [68] The development of the factory system fixes a constantly increasing portion of the capital in a form, in which, on the one hand, its value is capable
 of continual self-expansion, and in which, on the other hand, it loses
 both use-value and exchange-value whenever it loses contact with living
 labour. “When a labourer,” said Mr. Ashworth, a cotton magnate, to Professor
 Nassau W. Senior, “lays down his spade, he renders useless, for that period,
 a capital worth eighteen-pence. When one of our people leaves the mill,
 he renders useless a capital that has cost £100,000.” [69] Only fancy! making “useless” for a single moment, a capital that has cost £100,000! It is, in truth, monstrous, that a single one of our people
 should ever leave the factory! The increased use of machinery, as Senior
 after the instruction he re383ceived from Ashworth clearly perceives,
 makes a constantly increasing lengthening of the working-day “desirable.” 
 [70]
Machinery produces relative surplus-value; not only by directly
 depreciating the value of labour-power, and by indirectly cheapening the
 same through cheapening the commodities that enter into its reproduction,
 but also, when it is first introduced sporadically into an industry, by
 converting the labour employed by the owner of that machinery, into labour
 of a higher degree and greater efficacy, by raising the social value of
 the article produced above its individual value, and thus enabling the
 capitalist to replace the value of a day’s labour-power by a smaller portion
 of the value of a day’s product. During this transition period, when the
 use of machinery is a sort of monopoly, the profits are therefore exceptional,
 and the capitalist endeavours to exploit thoroughly “the sunny time of
 this his first love,” by prolonging the working-day as much as possible.
 The magnitude of the profit whets his appetite for more profit.
The immoderate lengthening of the working-day, produced by machinery
 in the hands of capital, leads to a reaction on the part of society, the
 very sources of whose life are menaced; and, thence, to a normal working-day
 whose length is fixed by law. Thenceforth a phenomenon that we have already
 met with, namely, the intensification of labour, develops into great importance.
 Our analysis of absolute surplus-value had reference primarily to the extension
 or duration of the labour, its intensity being assumed as given. We now
 proceed to consider the substitution of a more intensified labour for labour
 of more extensive duration, and the degree of the former.
We now come to the question: How is the labour intensified?
The first effect of shortening the working-day results from the
 self-evident law, that the efficiency of labour-power is in an inverse
 ratio to the duration of its expenditure. Hence, within certain limits
 what is lost by shortening the duration is gained by the increasing tension
 of labour-power. That the workman moreover really does expend more labour-power,
 is ensured by the mode in which the capitalist pays him. [76] In those industries, such as potteries, where machinery plays little or no part, the introduction of the Factory Acts has strikingly shown that
 the mere shortening of the working-day increases to a wonderful degree
 the regularity, uniformity, order, continuity, and energy of the labour.
 [77] It seemed, however, doubtful whether this effect was produced in the factory proper, where the dependence of the workman
 on the continuous and uniform motion of the machinery had already created
 the strictest discipline. Hence, when in 1844 the reduction of the working-day
 to less than twelve hours was being debated, the masters almost unanimously
 declared
This assertion was contradicted by experiments. 
 Mr. Robert Gardner reduced the hours of labour in his two large factories at Preston, on and after
 the 20th April, 1844, from twelve to eleven hours a day. The result of
 about a year’s working was that “the same amount of product for the same
 cost was received, and the workpeople as a 388whole earned in eleven
 hours as much wages as they did before in twelve.” [79] I pass over the experiments made in the spinning and carding rooms, because they were accompanied by an increase of 2% in the speed of the machines.
 But in the weaving department, where, moreover, many sorts of figured fancy
 articles were woven, there was not the slightest alteration in the conditions
 of the work. The result was: “From 6th January to 20th April, 1844, with
 a twelve hours’ day, average weekly wages of each hand 10s. 1½d., from
 20th April to 29th June, 1844, with day of eleven hours, average weekly
 wages 10s. 3½d.” [80] Here we have more produced
 in eleven hours than previously in twelve, and entirely in consequence
 of more steady application and economy of time by the workpeople. While
 they got the same wages and gained one hour of spare time, the capitalist
 got the same amount produced and saved the cost of coal, gas, and other
 such items, for one hour. Similar experiments, and with the like success,
 were carried out in the mills of Messrs. Horrocks and Jacson. [81]
The shortening of the hours of labour creates, to begin with,
 the subjective conditions for the condensation of labour, by enabling the
 workman to exert more strength in a given time. So soon as that shortening
 becomes compulsory, machinery becomes in the hands of capital the objective
 means, systematically employed for squeezing out more labour in a given
 time. This is effected in two ways: by increasing the speed of the machinery,
 and by giving the workman more machinery to tent. Improved construction
 of the machinery is necessary, partly because without it greater pressure
 cannot be put on the workman, and partly because the shortened hours of
 labour force the capitalist to exercise the strictest watch over the cost
 of production. The improvements in the steam-engine have increased the
 piston speed, and at the same time have made it possible, by means of a
 greater economy of power, to drive with the same or even a smaller consumption
 of coal more machinery with the same engine. The improvements in the transmitting
 mechanism have lessened friction, and, what so strikingly distinguishes
 modern from the older machinery, have reduced the diameter and weight of
 the shafting to a constantly decreasing minimum. Finally, 389the
 improvements in the operative machines have, while reducing their size,
 increased their speed and efficiency, as in the modern power-loom; or,
 while increasing the size of their framework, have also increased the extent
 and number of their working parts, as in spinning-mules, or have added
 to the speed of these working parts by imperceptible alterations of detail,
 such as those which ten years ago increased the speed of the spindles in
 self-acting mules by one-fifth.
The reduction of the working-day to 12 hours dates in England
 from 1832. In 1836 a manufacturer stated:
In the year 1844, Lord Ashley, now Lord Shaftesbury, made in the House of Commons the following statements, supported by documentary evidence:
In the face of this remarkable intensity of labour which had already
 been reached in 1844 under the Twelve Hours’ Act, there appeared to be
 a justification for the assertion made at that time by the English manufacturers,
 that any further progress in that direction was impossible, and therefore
 that every further reduction of the hours of labour meant a lessened production.
 The apparent correctness of their reasons will be best shown by the following
 contemporary statement by Leonard Horner, the factory inspector, their
 ever watchful censor.
We now come to the period that follows the introduction of the
 Ten Hours’ Act in 1847 into the English cotton, woollen, silk, and flax
 mills.
James Nasmyth, the eminent civil engineer of Patricroft, near Manchester, explained in a letter to Leonard Horner,
 written in 1852, the nature of the improvements in the steam-engine that
 had been made between the years 1848 and 1852. After remarking that the
 horse-power of steam-engines, being always estimated in the official returns
 according to the power of similar engines in 1828, [87] is only nominal, and can serve only as an index of their real power, he goes on to say:
One fact is sufficient to show how greatly the wealth of the manufacturers
 increased along with the more intense exploitation of labour-power. From
 1838 to 1850, the average proportional increase in English cotton and other
 factories was 32%, while from 1850 to 1856 it amounted to 86%.
But however great the progress of English industry had been during
 the 8 years from 1848 to 1856 under the influence of a working-day of 10
 hours, it way far surpassed during the next period of 6 years from 1856
 to 1862. In silk factories, for instance, there were in 1856, spindles
 1,093,799; in 1862, 1,388,544; in 1856, looms 9,260; in 1862, 10,709. But
 the number of operatives was, in 1856, 56,131; in 1862, 52,429. The increase
 in the spindles was therefore 26.9% and in the looms 15.6%, while the number
 of the operatives decreased 7%. In the year 1850 there were employed in
 worsted mills 875,830 spindles; in 1856, 1,324,549 (increase 51.2%), and
 in 1862, 1,289,172 (decrease 2.7%). But if we deduct the doubling spindles
 that figure in the numbers for 1856, but not in those for 1862, it will
 be found that after 1856 the number of spindles remained nearly stationary.
 On the other hand, after 1850, the speed of the spindles and looms was
 in many cases doubled. The number of power-looms in worsted mills was,
 in 1850, 32,617; in 1856, 38,956; in 1862, 43,048. The number of the operatives
 was, in 1850, 79,737; in 1856, 87,794; in 1862, 86,063; included in these,
 however, the children under 14 years of age were, in 1850, 9,956; in 1856,
 11,228; in 1862, 13,178. In spite, therefore, of the greatly increased
 number of looms in 1862, compared with 1856, the total number of the workpeople
 employed decreased, and that of the children exploited increased. [92]
On the 27th April, 1863, Mr. Ferrand said in the House of Commons:
Although, therefore, the Factory Inspectors unceasingly and with
 justice, commend the results of the Acts of 1844 and 1850, yet they admit
 that the shortening of the hours of labour has already called forth such
 an intensification of the labour as is injurious to the health of the workman
 and to his capacity for work.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that the tendency that urges capital, so soon as a prolongation of the hours of labour is once for all forbidden,
 to compensate itself, by a systematic heightening of the intensity of labour,
 and to convert every improvement in machinery into a more perfect means
 of exhausting the workman, must soon lead to a state of things in which
 a reduction of the hours of labour will again be inevitable. [95] On the other hand, the rapid advance of English industry between 1848 and the present time, under the influence of a day of 10 hours, surpasses the
 advance made between 1833 and 1847, when the day was 12 hours long, by
 far more than the latter surpasses the advance made during the half century
 after the first introduction of the factory system, when the working-day
 was without limits. [96]
394
At the commencement of this chapter we considered
 that which we may call the body of the factory, i.e., machinery organised
 into a system. We there saw how machinery, by annexing the labour of women
 and children, augments the number of human beings who form the material
 for capitalistic exploitation, how it confiscates the whole of the workman’s
 disposable time, by immoderate extension of the hours of labour, and how
 finally its progress, which allows of enormous increase of production in
 shorter and shorter periods, serves as a means of systematically getting
 more work done in a shorter time, or of exploiting labour-power more intensely.
 We now turn to the factory as a whole, and that in its most perfect form.
Dr. Ure, the Pindar of the automatic factory, describes it, on
 the one hand, as
These two descriptions are far from being identical. In one, the collective
 labourer, or social body of labour, appears as the dominant 
 subject, and the mechanical automaton as the object; in the other, the automaton itself
 is the subject, and the workmen are merely conscious organs, co-ordinate
 with the unconscious organs of the automaton, and together with them, subordinated
 to the central396 moving-power. The first description is applicable
 to every possible employment of machinery on a large scale, the second
 is characteristic of its use by capital, and therefore of the modern factory
 system. Ure prefers therefore, to describe the central machine, from which
 the motion comes, not only as an automaton, but as an autocrat. “In these
 spacious halls the benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads
 of willing menials.” [97]
Along with the tool, the skill of the workman in handling it passes
 over to the machine. The capabilities of the tool are emancipated from
 the restraints that are inseparable from human labour-power. Thereby the
 technical foundation on which is based the division of labour in Manufacture,
 is swept away. Hence, in the place of the hierarchy of specialised workmen
 that characterises manufacture, there steps, in the automatic factory,
 a tendency to equalise and reduce to one and the same level every kind
 of work that has to be done by the minders of the machines; [98] in the place of the artificially produced differentiations of the detail workmen, step the natural differences of age and sex.
So far as division of labour re-appears in the factory, it is
 primarily a distribution of the workmen among the specialised machines;
 and of masses of workmen, not however organised into groups, among the
 various departments of the factory, in each of which they work at a number
 of similar machines placed together; their co-operation, therefore, is
 only simple. The organised group, peculiar to manufacture, is replaced
 by the connexion between the head workman and his few assistants. The essential
 division is, into workmen who are actually employed on the machines (among
 whom are included a few who look after the engine), and into mere attendants
 (almost exclusively children) of these workmen. Among the attendants are
 reckoned more or less all “Feeders” who supply the machines with the material
 to be worked. In addition to these two principal classes, there is a numerically
 unimportant class of persons, whose occupation it is to look after the
 whole of the machinery and repair it from time to time; such as engineers,
 mechanics, joiners, &c. This is a superior class of workmen, some of
 them scientifically educated, others brought up to a trade; it is distinct
 from the factory operative class, and merely aggregated to it. [99] This division of labour is purely technical.
397To work at a machine, the workman should be taught from
 childhood, in order that he may learn to adapt his own movements to the
 uniform and unceasing motion of an automaton. When the machinery, as a
 whole, forms a system of manifold machines, working simultaneously and
 in concert, the co-operation based upon it, requires the distribution of
 various groups of workmen among the different kinds of machines. But the
 employment of machinery does away with the necessity of crystallising this
 distribution after the manner of Manufacture, by the constant annexation
 of a particular man to a particular function. [100]
 Since the motion of the whole system does not proceed from the workman,
 but from the machinery, a change of persons can take place at any time
 without an interruption of the work. The most striking proof of this is
 afforded by the relays system, put into operation by the manufacturers
 during their revolt from 1848-1850. Lastly, the quickness with which machine
 work is learnt by young people, does away with the necessity of bringing
 up for exclusive employment by machinery, a special class of operatives.
 [101] With regard to the work of the mere attendants, it can, to some extent, be replaced in the mill by machines, [102] and 398owing to its extreme simplicity, it allows of a rapid and constant change of the individuals burdened with this drudgery.
Although then, technically speaking, the old system of division
 of labour is thrown overboard by machinery, it hangs on in the factory,
 as a traditional habit handed down from Manufacture, and is afterwards
 systematically re-moulded and established in a more hideous form by capital,
 as a means of exploiting labour-power. The life-long speciality of handling
 one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long speciality of serving
 one and the same machine. Machinery is put to a wrong use, with the object
 of transforming the workman, from his very childhood, into a part of a
 detail-machine. [103] In this way, not only are the
 expenses of his reproduction considerably lessened, but at the same time
 his helpless dependence upon the factory as a whole, and therefore upon
 the capitalist, is rendered complete. Here as everywhere else, we must
 distinguish between the increased productiveness due to the development
 of the social process of production, and that due to the capitalist exploitation
 of that process. In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use
 of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements
 of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements
 of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts
 of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent
 of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.
At the same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost, it does away with the many-sided play
 of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and
 intellectual activity. [105] The lightening of the
 labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free
 the labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. Every kind
 of capitalist production, in so far as it is not only a labour-process,
 but also a process of creating surplus-value, has this in common, that
 it is not the workman that employs the instruments of labour, but 399the
 instruments of labour that employ the workman. But it is only in the factory
 system that this inversion for the first time acquires technical and palpable
 reality. By means of its conversion into an automaton, the instrument of
 labour confronts the labourer, during the labour-process, in the shape
 of capital, of dead labour, that dominates, and pumps dry, living labour-power.
 The separation of the intellectual powers of production from the manual
 labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might of capital over
 labour, is, as we have already shown, finally completed by modern industry
 erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each individual
 insignificant factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before
 the science, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of labour that
 are embodied in the factory mechanism and, together with that mechanism,
 constitute the power of the “master.” This “master,” therefore, in whose
 brain the machinery and his monopoly of it are inseparably united, whenever
 he falls out with his “hands,” contemptuously tells them:
The contest between the capitalist and the wage-labourer
 dates back to the very origin of capital. It raged on throughout the whole
 manufacturing period. [112] But only since the introduction of machinery has the workman fought against the instrument
 of labour itself, the material embodiment of capital. He revolts against
 this particular form of the means of production, as being the material
 basis of the capitalist mode of production.
In the 17th century nearly all Europe experienced revolts of the
 workpeople against the ribbon-loom, a machine for weaving ribbons and trimmings,
 called in Germany Bandmühle, Schnurmühle, and Mühlenstuhl.
 These machines were invented in Germany. Abbé Lancellotti, in a
 work that appeared in Venice in 1636, but which was written in 1579, says
 as follows:
In Leyden, this machine was not used till 1629; there the
 riots of the ribbon-weavers at length compelled the Town Council to prohibit
 it.
After making various decrees more or less prohibitive against this loom in 1632, 1639,
 &c., the States General of Holland at length permitted it to be used,
 under certain conditions, by the decree of the 15th December, 1661. It
 was also prohibited in Cologne in 1676, at the same time that its introduction
 into England was causing disturbances among the workpeople. By an imperial
 Edict of 19th Feb., 1685, its use was forbidden throughout all Germany.
 In Hamburg it was burnt in public by order of the Senate. The Emperor Charles
 VI., on 9th Feb., 1719, renewed the edict of 1685, and not till 1765 was
 its use openly allowed in the Electorate of Saxony. This machine, which
 shook Europe to its foundations, was in fact the precursor of the mule
 and the power-loom, and of the industrial revolution of the 18th century.
 It enabled a totally inexperienced boy, to set the whole loom with all
 its shuttles in motion, by 404simply moving a rod backwards and
 forwards, and in its improved form produced from 40 to 50 pieces at once.
About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a Dutchman,
 succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginning
 of the 18th century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of
 the people, supported as it was by Parliament, only with great difficulty.
 No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that
 was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who
 had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously
 lived by carding wool, petitioned Parliament against Arkwright’s scribbling
 mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred
 in the English manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this
 century, chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known
 as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth,
 a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible
 measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt
 to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to
 direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production,
 but against the mode in which they are used. [113]
No doubt, in turning 407them out of this
 “temporal” world, the machinery caused them no more than “a temporary inconvenience.” 
 For the rest, since machinery is continually seizing upon new fields of
 production, its temporary effect is really permanent. Hence, the character
 of independence and estrangement which the capitalist mode of production
 as a whole gives to the instruments of labour and to the product, as against
 the workman, is developed by means of machinery into a thorough antagonism.
 [118] Therefore, it is with the advent of machinery, that the workman for the first time brutally revolts against the instruments
 of labour.
The instrument of labour strikes down the labourer. This direct
 antagonism between the two comes out most strongly, whenever newly introduced
 machinery competes with handicrafts or manufactures, handed down from former
 times. But even in modern industry the continual improvement of machinery,
 and the development of the automatic system, has an analogous effect.
The extraordinary power of expansion of the factory system owing to accumulated
 practical experience, to the mechanical means at hand, and to constant
 technical progress, was proved to us by the giant strides of that system
 under the pressure of a shortened working-day. But who, in 1860, the Zenith
 year of the English cotton industry, would have dreamt of the galloping
 improvements in machinery, and the corresponding displacement of working
 people, called into being during the following 3 years, under the stimulus
 of the American Civil War? A couple of examples from the Reports of the
 Inspectors of Factories will suffice on this point. A Manchester manufacturer states:
Another spinning-mill is estimated to effect a saving of labour of 10%.
 The Messrs. Gilmour, spinners at Manchester, state: “In our blowing-room
 department we consider our expense with new machinery is fully one-third
 less in wages and hands ... in the jack-frame and drawing-frame room, about
 one-third less in expense, and likewise one-third less in hands; in the
 spinning room about one-third less in expenses. But this is not all; when our yarn goes to the manufacturers, it is so much better by the application
 of our new machinery, that they will produce a greater quantity of cloth, and
 cheaper than from the yarn produced by old machinery.” [125] Mr. Redgrave further remarks in the same Report:
The following table shows the total result of the mechanical improvements
 in the English cotton industry due to the American Civil War.
Hence, between 1861 and 1868, 338 cotton factories disappeared, in other
 words more productive machinery on a larger scale was concentrated in the
 hands of a smaller number of capitalists. The number of power-looms decreased
 by 20,663; but since their product increased in the same period, an improved
 loom must have yielded more than an old one. Lastly the number of spindles
 increased by 1,612,541, while the number of operatives decreased by 50,505.
 The “temporary” misery inflicted on the workpeople by the cotton-crisis,
 was heightened, and from being temporary made permanent, by the rapid and
 persistent progress of machinery.
But machinery not only acts as a competitor who gets the better
 of the workman, and is constantly on the point of making him superfluous.
 It is also a power inimical to him, and as such capital proclaims it from
 the roof tops and as such makes use of it. It is the most powerful weapon
 for repressing strikes, those periodical revolts of the working-class against
 the autocracy of capital.[127] According to Gaskell, the steam-engine was from the very first an antagonist of human power,
 an antagonist that enabled the capitalist to tread under foot the growing
 claims of the workmen, who threatened the newly born factory
 system with a crisis.[128] It would be possible to
 write quite a history of the inventions, made since 1830, for the sole
 purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working-class.
 At the head of these in importance, stands the self-acting mule, because
 it opened up a new epoch in the automatic system.[129]
Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam-hammer, gives the following
 evidence before the Trades’ Union Commission, with regard to the improvements
 made by him in machinery and introduced in consequence of the wide-spread
 and long strikes of the engineers in 1851.
Ure says of a machine used in calico printing:
Speaking of an invention for dressing warps:
With regard to the invention of the self-acting mule, he says:
Although Ure’s work appeared 30 years ago, at a time when the factory system was comparatively but little developed, it still perfectly expresses the spirit of the factory, not only by its undisguised cynicism, but also by
 the naïveté with which it blurts out the stupid contradictions of
 the capitalist brain. For instance, after propounding the “doctrine” stated
 above, that capital, with the aid of science taken into its pay, always
 reduces the refractory hand of 412labour to docility, he grows
 indignant because
After preaching a long sermon to show how advantageous the rapid
 development of machinery is to the working-classes, he warns them, that
 by their obstinacy and their strikes they hasten that development.
A few pages before he states the contrary.
On the other hand, this same dispenser
 of consolation defends the lowness of the children’s wages on the ground
 that it prevents parents from sending their children at too early an age
 into the factory. The whole of his book is a vindication of a working-day
 of unrestricted length; that Parliament should forbid children of 13 years
 to be exhausted by working 12 hours a day, reminds his liberal soul of
 the darkest days of the Middle Ages. This does not prevent him from calling
 upon the factory operatives to thank Providence, who by means of machinery
 has given them the leisure to think of their “immortal interests.” [131]
James Mill, MacCulloch, Torrens, Senior, John Stuart
 Mill, and a whole series besides, of bourgeois political economists, insist
 that all machinery that displaces workmen, simultaneously and necessarily
 sets free an amount of capital adequate to employ the same identical workmen.
 [132]
Suppose a capitalist to employ 100 workmen, at £30 a year
 each, in a carpet factory. The variable capital annually laid out amounts, 413therefore,
 to £3,000. Suppose, also, that he discharges 50 of his workmen, and
 employs the remaining 50 with machinery that costs him £1,500. To
 simplify matters, we take no account of buildings, coal, &c. Further
 suppose that the raw material annually consumed costs £3,000, both
 before and after the change. [133] Is any capital set free by this metamorphosis? Before the change, the total sum of £6,000
 consisted half of constant, and half of variable capital. After the change
 it consists of £4,500 constant ( £3,000 raw material and £1,500
 machinery), and £1,500 variable capital. The variable capital, instead
 of being one half, is only one quarter, of the total capital. Instead of
 being set free, a part of the capital is here locked up in such a way as
 to cease to be exchanged against labour-power: variable has been changed
 into constant capital. Other things remaining unchanged, the capital of
 £6,000, can, in future, employ no more than 50 men. With each improvement
 in the machinery, it will employ fewer. If the newly introduced machinery
 had cost less than did the labour-power and implements displaced by it,
 if, for instance, instead of costing £1,500, it had cost only £1,000,
 a variable capital of £1,000 would have been converted into constant
 capital, and locked up; and a capital of £500 would have been set
 free. The latter sum, supposing wages unchanged, would form a fund sufficient
 to employ about 16 out of the 50 men discharged; nay, less than 16, for,
 in order to be employed as capital, a part of this £500 must now
 become constant capital, thus leaving only the remainder to be laid out
 in labour-power.
But, suppose, besides, that the making of the new machinery affords
 employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation
 to the carpet-makers, thrown on the streets? At the best, its construction
 employs fewer men than its employment displaces. The sum of £1,500
 that formerly represented the wages of the discharged carpet-makers, now
 represents in the shape of machinery: (1) the value of the means of production
 used in the construction of that machinery, (2) the wages of the mechanics
 employed in its construction, and (3) the surplus-value falling to the
 share of their “master.” Further, the machinery need not be renewed till
 it is worn out. Hence, in order to keep the increased number of mechanics
 in constant employment, one carpet manufacturer after another must displace
 workmen by machines.
As a matter of fact the apologists do not mean this sort of setting
 free.
They have in their minds the means of subsistence of the liberated
 work-people. It cannot be denied, in the above instance, that the machinery
 not only liberates 50 men, thus placing them at others’ disposal, but, 414at
 the same time, it withdraws from their consumption, and sets free, means
 of subsistence to the value of £1,500. The simple fact, by no means
 a new one, that machinery cuts off the workmen from their means of subsistence
 is, therefore, in economic parlance tantamount to this, that machinery
 liberates means of subsistence for the workman, or converts those means
 into capital for his employment. The mode of expression, you see, is everything.
 Nominibus mollire licet mala.
This theory implies that the £1,500 worth of means of subsistence
 was capital that was being expanded by the labour of the 50 men discharged.
 That, consequently, this capital falls out of employment so soon as they
 commence their forced holidays, and never rests till it has found a fresh
 investment, where it can again be productively consumed by these same 50
 men. That sooner or later, therefore, the capital and the workmen must
 come together again, and that, then, the compensation is complete. That
 the sufferings of the workmen displaced by machinery are therefore as transient
 as are the riches of this world.
In relation to the discharged workmen, the £1,500 worth
 of means of subsistence never was capital. What really confronted them
 as capital, was the sum of £1,500, afterwards laid out in machinery.
 On looking closer it will be seen that this sum represented part of the
 carpets produced in a year by the 50 discharged men, which part they received
 as wages from their employer in money instead of in kind. With the carpets
 in the form of money, they bought means of subsistence to the value of
 £1,500. These means, therefore, were to them, not capital, but commodities,
 and they, as regards these commodities, were not wage-labourers, but buyers.
 The circumstance that they were “freed” by the machinery, from the means
 of purchase, changed them from buyers into non-buyers. Hence a lessened
 demand for those commodities — voilà tout. If this diminution be
 not compensated by an increase from some other quarter, the market price
 of the commodities falls. If this state of things lasts for some time,
 and extends, there follows a discharge of workmen employed in the production
 of these commodities. Some of the capital that was previously devoted to
 production of necessary means of subsistence, has to become reproduced
 in another form. While prices fall, and capital is being displaced, the
 labourers employed in the production of necessary means of subsistence
 are in their turn “freed” from a part of their wages. Instead, therefore,
 of proving that, when machinery frees the workman from his means of subsistence,
 it simultaneously converts those means into capital for his further employment,
 our apologists, with their cut-and-dried law of supply and demand, prove,
 on the contrary, that machinery throws workmen on the streets, 415not
 only in that branch of production in which it is introduced, but also in
 those branches in which it is not introduced.
The real facts, which are travestied by the optimism of economists,
 are as follows: The labourers, when driven out of the workshop by the machinery,
 are thrown upon the labour market, and there add to the number of workmen
 at the disposal of the capitalists. In Part VII of this book it will be
 seen that this effect of machinery, which, as we have seen, is represented
 to be a compensation to the working class, is on the contrary a most frightful
 scourge. For the present I will only say this: The labourers that are thrown
 out of work in any branch of industry, can no doubt seek for employment
 in some other branch. If they find it, and thus renew the bond between
 them and the means of subsistence, this takes place only by the intermediary
 of a new and additional capital that is seeking investment; not at all
 by the intermediary of the capital that formerly employed them and was
 afterwards converted into machinery. And even should they find employment,
 what a poor look-out is theirs! Crippled as they are by division of labour,
 these poor devils are worth so little outside their old trade, that they
 cannot find admission into any industries, except a few of inferior kind,
 that are over-supplied with underpaid workmen. [134] Further, every branch of industry attracts each year a new stream of men, who furnish a contingent from which to fill up vacancies, and to draw a
 supply for expansion. So soon as machinery sets free a part of the workmen
 employed in a given branch of industry, the reserve men are also diverted
 into new channels of employment, and become absorbed in other branches;
 meanwhile the original victims, during the period of transition, for the
 most part starve and perish.
It is an undoubted fact that machinery, as such, is not responsible
 for “setting free” the workman from the means of subsistence. It cheapens
 and increases production in that branch which it seizes on, and at first
 makes no change in the mass of the means of subsistence produced in other
 branches. Hence, after its introduction, the society possesses as much,
 if not more, of the necessaries of life than before, for the labourers
 thrown out of work; and that quite apart from the enormous share of the
 annual produce wasted by the non-workers. And this is the point 416relied
 on by our apologists! The contradictions and antagonisms inseparable from
 the capitalist employment of machinery, do not exist, they say, since they
 do not arise out of machinery, as such, but out of its capitalist employment!
 Since therefore machinery, considered alone, shortens the hours of labour,
 but, when in the service of capital, lengthens them; since in itself it
 lightens labour, but when employed by capital, heightens the intensity
 of labour; since in itself it is a victory of man over the forces of Nature,
 but in the hands of capital, makes man the slave of those forces; since
 in itself it increases the wealth of the producers, but in the hands of
 capital, makes them paupers – for all these reasons and others besides, says
 the bourgeois economist without more ado, it is clear as noon-day that
 all these contradictions are a mere semblance of the reality, and that,
 as a matter of fact, they have neither an actual nor a theoretical existence.
 Thus he saves himself from all further puzzling of the brain, and what
 is more, implicitly declares his opponent to be stupid enough to contend
 against, not the capitalistic employment of machinery, but machinery itself.
No doubt he is far from denying that temporary inconvenience may
 result from the capitalist use of machinery. But where is the medal without
 its reverse! Any employment of machinery, except by capital, is to him
 an impossibility. Exploitation of the workman by the machine is therefore,
 with him, identical with exploitation of the machine by the workman. Whoever,
 therefore, exposes the real state of things in the capitalistic employment
 of machinery, is against its employment in any way, and is an enemy of
 social progress! [135] Exactly the reasoning of the
 celebrated Bill Sykes. “Gentlemen of the jury, no doubt the throat of this
 commercial traveller has been cut. But that is not my fault, it is the
 fault of the knife. Must we, for such a temporary inconvenience, abolish
 the use of the knife? Only consider! where would agriculture and trade
 be without the knife? Is it not as salutary in surgery, as it is knowing
 in anatomy? And in addition a willing help at the festive board? If you
 abolish the knife — you hurl us back into the depths of barbarism.” [136]
417Although machinery necessarily throws men out of work in
 those industries into which it is introduced, yet it may, notwithstanding
 this, bring about an increase of employment in other industries. This effect,
 however, has nothing in common with the so-called theory of compensation.
 Since every article produced by a machine is cheaper than a similar article
 produced by hand, we deduce the following infallible law: If the total
 quantity of the article produced by machinery, be equal to the total quantity
 of the article previously produced by a handicraft or by manufacture, and
 now made by machinery, then the total labour expended is diminished. The
 new labour spent on the instruments of labour, on the machinery, on the
 coal, and so on, must necessarily be less than the labour displaced by
 the use of the machinery; otherwise the product of the machine would be
 as dear, or dearer, than the product of the manual labour. But, as a matter
 of fact, the total quantity of the article produced by machinery with a
 diminished number of workmen, instead of remaining equal to, by far exceeds
 the total quantity of the hand-made article that has been displaced. Suppose
 that 400,000 yards of cloth have been produced on power-looms by fewer
 weavers than could weave 100,000 yards by hand. In the quadrupled product
 there lies four times as much raw material. Hence the production of raw
 material must be quadrupled. But as regards the instruments of labour,
 such as buildings, coal, machinery, and so on, it is different; the limit
 up to which the additional labour required for their production can increase,
 varies with the difference between the quantity of the machine-made article,
 and the quantity of the same article that the same number of workmen could
 make by hand.
When machinery is applied to any of the preliminary or intermediate
 stages through which the subject of labour has to pass on its way to completion,
 there is an increased yield of material in those stages, and simultaneously
 an increased demand for labour in the handicrafts or manufactures supplied
 by the produce of the machines. Spinning by machinery, for example, supplied
 yarn so cheaply and so abundantly that the hand-loom weavers were, at first,
 able to work full time without increased outlay. Their earnings accordingly
 rose. [140] Hence a flow of people into the cotton-weaving trade, till at length the 800,000 weavers, called into existence by the
 Jenny, the throstle and the mule, were overwhelmed by the power-loom. So
 also, owing to the abundance of clothing materials produced by machinery,
 the number of tailors, seamstresses and needlewomen, went on increasing
 until the appearance of the sewing-machine.
419In proportion as machinery, with the aid of a relatively
 small number of workpeople, increases the mass of raw materials, intermediate
 products, instruments of labour, &c., the working-up of these raw materials
 and intermediate products becomes split up into numberless branches; social
 production increases in diversity. The factory system carries the social
 division of labour immeasurably further than does manufacture, for it increases
 the productiveness of the industries it seizes upon, in a far higher degree.
The immediate result of machinery is to augment surplus-value
 and the mass of products in which surplus-value is embodied. And, as the
 substances consumed by the capitalists and their dependents become more
 plentiful, so too do these orders of society. Their growing wealth, and
 the relatively diminished number of workmen required to produce the necessaries
 of life beget, simultaneously with the rise of new and luxurious wants,
 the means of satisfying those wants. A larger portion of the produce of
 society is changed into surplus-produce, and a larger part of the surplus-produce
 is supplied for consumption in a multiplicity of refined shapes. In other
 words, the production of luxuries increases. [141]
 The refined and varied forms of the products are also due to new relations
 with the markets of the world, relations that are created by modern industry.
 Not only are greater quantities of foreign articles of luxury exchanged
 for home products, but a greater mass of foreign raw materials, ingredients,
 and intermediate products, are used as means of production in the home
 industries. Owing to these relations with the markets of the world, the
 demand for labour increases in the carrying trades, which split up into
 numerous varieties. [142]
The increase of the means of production and subsistence, accompanied
 by a relative diminution in the number of labourers, causes an increased
 demand for labour in making canals, docks, tunnels, bridges, and so on,
 works that can only bear fruit in the far future. Entirely new branches
 of production, creating new fields of labour, are also formed, as the direct
 result either of machinery or of the general industrial changes brought
 about by it. But the place occupied by these branches in the general production
 is, even in the most developed countries, far from important. The number
 of labourers that find employment in them is directly proportional to the
 demand, created by those industries, for the crudest form of manual labour.
 The chief industries of this kind are, at present, gas-works, telegraphs,
 photography, steam navigation, and railways. According to the census of
 1861 for England and Wales, 420we find in the gas industry (gas-works,
 production of mechanical apparatus, servants of the gas companies, &c),
 15,211 persons; in telegraphy, 2,399; in photography, 2,366; steam navigation,
 3,570; and in railways, 70,599, of whom the unskilled “navvies,” more or
 less permanently employed, and the whole administrative and commercial
 staff, make up about 28,000. The total number of persons, therefore, employed
 in these five new industries amounts to 94,145.
Lastly, the extraordinary productiveness of modern industry, accompanied
 as it is by both a more extensive and a more intense exploitation of labour-power
 in all other spheres of production, allows of the unproductive employment
 of a larger and larger part of the working-class, and the consequent reproduction,
 on a constantly extending scale, of the ancient domestic slaves under the
 name of a servant class, including men-servants, women-servants, lackeys,
 &c. According to the census of 1861, the population of England and
 Wales was 20,066,244; of these, 9,776,259 males, and 10,289,965 females.
 If we deduct from this population all who are too old or too young for
 work, all unproductive women, young persons and children, the “ideological” 
 classes, such as government officials, priests, lawyers, soldiers, &c.;
 further, all who have no occupation but to consume the labour of others
 in the form of rent, interest, &c.; and, lastly, paupers, vagabonds,
 and criminals, there remain in round numbers eight millions of the two
 sexes of every age, including in that number every capitalist who is in
 any way engaged in industry, commerce, or finance. Among these 8 millions
 are:
All the persons employed in textile factories and in mines, taken
 together, number 1,208,442; those employed in textile factories and metal
 industries, taken together, number 1,039,605; in both cases less than the
 number of modern domestic slaves. What a splendid result of the capitalist
 exploitation of machinery!
All political economists of any standing admit that
 the introduction of new machinery has a baneful effect on the workmen in
 the old handicrafts and manufactures with which this machinery at first
 competes. Almost all of them bemoan the slavery of the factory operative.
 And what is the great trump-card that they play? That machinery, after
 the horrors of the period of introduction and development have subsided,
 instead of diminishing, in the long run increases the number of the slaves
 of labour! Yes, Political Economy revels in the hideous theory, hideous
 to every “philanthropist” who believes in the eternal Nature-ordained necessity
 for capitalist production, that after a period of growth and transition,
 even its crowning success, the factory system based on machinery, grinds
 down more workpeople than on its first introduction it throws on the streets.
 [146]
It is true that in some cases, as we saw from instances of English
 worsted and silk factories, an extraordinary extension of the factory system
 may, at a certain stage of its development, be accompanied not 422only
 by a relative, but by an absolute decrease in the number of operatives
 employed. In the year 1860, when a special census of all the factories
 in the United Kingdom was taken by order of Parliament, the factories in
 those parts of Lancashire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire, included in the district
 of Mr. Baker, the factory inspector, numbered 652; 570 of these contained
 85,622 power-looms, 6,819,146 spindles (exclusive of doubling spindles),
 employed 27,439 horse-power (steam), and 1,390 (water), and 94,119 persons. In the year 1865, the same factories contained, looms 95,163, spindles
 7,025,031, had a steam-power of 28,925 horses, and a water-power of 1,445
 horses, and employed 88,913 persons. Between 1860 and 1865, therefore,
 the increase in looms was 11%, in spindles 3%, and in engine-power 3%,
 while the number of persons employed decreased 5½%. [147] Between 1852 and 1862, considerable extension of the English woollen manufacture took place, while the number of hands employed in it remained almost stationary,
In certain cases, the increase in the number of hands employed is only apparent; that is,
 it is not due to the extension of the factories already established, but
 to the gradual annexation of connected trades; for instance, the increase
 in power-looms, and in the hands employed by them between 1838 and 1856,
 was, in the cotton trade, simply owing to the extension of this branch
 of industry; but in the other trades to the application of steam-power
 to the carpet-loom, to the ribbon-loom, and to the linen-loom, which previously
 had been worked by the power of men. [149] Hence the increase of the hands in these latter trades was merely a symptom of a
 diminution in the total number employed. Finally, we have considered this
 question entirely apart from the fact, that everywhere, except in the metal
 industries, young persons (under 18), and women and children form the preponderating
 element in the class of factory hands.
In the few remarks I have still to make on this point, I shall
 refer to some actually existing relations, the existence of which our theoretical
 investigation has not yet disclosed.
On the motion of Mr. Gladstone, the House of Commons ordered,
 on the 17th February, 1867, a return of the total quantities of grain,
 corn, and flour, of all sorts, imported into, and exported from, the United
 Kingdom, between the years 1831 and 1866. I give below a summary of the
 result. The flour is given in quarters of corn. (See the Table on p. 426.)
The enormous power, inherent in the factory system, of expanding by jumps,
 and the dependence of that system on the markets of the world, necessarily
 beget feverish production, followed by over-filling of the markets, whereupon
 contraction of the markets brings on crippl427ing of production. The
 life of modern industry becomes a series of periods of moderate activity,
 prosperity, over-production, crisis and stagnation. The uncertainty and
 instability to which machinery subjects the employment, and consequently
 the conditions of existence, of the operatives become normal, owing to
 these periodic changes of the industrial cycle. Except in the periods of
 prosperity, there rages between the capitalists the most furious combat
 for the share of each in the markets. This share is directly proportional
 to the cheapness of the product. Besides the rivalry that this struggle
 begets in the application of improved machinery for replacing labour-power,
 and of new methods of production, there also comes a time in every industrial
 cycle, when a forcible reduction of wages beneath the value of labour-power,
 is attempted for the purpose of cheapening commodities. [156]
A necessary condition, therefore, to the growth of the number
 of factory hands, is a proportionally much more rapid growth of the amount
 of capital invested in mills. This growth, however, is conditioned by the
 ebb and flow of the industrial cycle. It is, besides, constantly interrupted
 by the technical progress that at one time virtually supplies the place
 of new workmen, at another, actually displaces old ones. This qualitative
 change in mechanical industry continually discharges hands from the factory,
 or shuts its doors against the fresh stream of recruits, while the purely
 quantitative extension of the factories absorbs not only the men 428thrown
 out of work, but also fresh contingents. The workpeople are thus continually
 both repelled and attracted, hustled from pillar to post, while, at the
 same time, constant changes take place in the sex, age, and skill of the
 levies.
The lot of the factory operatives will be best depicted by taking
 a rapid survey of the course of the English cotton industry.
Even when working short time the rent was frequently deducted from the wages of the operatives.
 [161] No wonder that in some parts of Lancashire a
 kind of famine fever broke out. But more characteristic than all this,
 was, the revolution that took place in the process of production at the
 expense of the workpeople. Experimenta in corpore vili, like those of anatomists
 on frogs, were formally made.
These experiments were not made solely at the expense of the workman’s means of subsistence. His five
 senses also had to pay the penalty.
In the Report of Inspectors of Factories for 30th April, 1864, we read as follows:
But the workpeople had to suffer, not only from the experiments of the manufacturers inside the mills, and of the municipalities outside, not
 only from reduced wages and absence of work, from want and from charity,
 and from the eulogistic speeches of lords and commons.
We find then, in the first 45 years of the English cotton trade,
 from 1770 to 1815, only 5 years of crisis and stagnation; but this was
 the period of monopoly. The second period from 1815 to 1863 counts, during
 its 48 years, only 20 years of revival and prosperity against 28 of depression
 and stagnation. Between 1815 and 1830 the competition with the continent
 of Europe and with the United States sets in. After 1833, the extension
 of the Asiatic markets is enforced by “destruction of the human race” (the
 wholesale extinction of Indian hand-loom weavers). After the repeal of
 the Corn Laws, from 1846 to 1863, there are 8 years of moderate activity
 and prosperity against 9 years of de432pression and stagnation. The
 condition of the adult male operatives, even during the years of prosperity,
 may be judged from the note subjoined. [166]
The exploitation of cheap and immature labour-power is carried
 out in a more shameless manner in modern Manufacture than in the factory
 proper. This is because the technical foundation of the factory system,
 namely, the substitution of machines for muscular power, and the light character
 of the labour, is almost entirely absent in Manufacture, and at the same
 time women and over-young children are subjected, in a most unconscionable
 way, to the influence of poisonous or injurious substances. This exploitation
 is more shameless in the so-called domestic industry than in manufactures,
 and that because the power of resistance in the labourers decreases with
 their dissemination; because a whole series of plundering parasites insinuate
 themselves between the employer and the workman; because a domestic industry
 has always to compete either with the factory system, or with manufacturing
 in the same branch of production; because poverty robs the workman of the
 conditions most essential to his labour, of space, light and ventilation;
 because employment becomes more and more irregular; and, finally, because
 in these the last resorts of the masses made “redundant” by modern industry
 and Agriculture, competition for work attains its maximum. Economy in the
 means of production, first systematically carried out in the factory system,
 and there, from the very beginning, coincident with the most reckless squandering
 of labour-power, and robbery of the conditions normally requisite for labour
 — this economy now shows its antagonistic and murderous side more and
 more in a given branch of industry, the less the social productive power
 of labour and the technical basis for a combination of processes are developed
 in that branch.
That excessive insobriety is prevalent from childhood upwards among the
 whole of this class, is only natural.
As to the manner, in which capital effects an economy in the requisites
 of labour, in modern Manufacture (in which I include all workshops of larger
 size, except factories proper), official and most ample material bearing
 on it is to be found in the Public Health Reports IV. (1863) and VI. (1864).
 The description of the workshops, more especially those of the London printers
 and tailors, surpasses the most loathsome phantasies of our romance writers.
 The effect on the health of the workpeople is self-evident. Dr. Simon,
 the chief medical officer of the Privy Council and the official editor
 of the “Public Health Reports,” says:
In illustration of the way in which
 the workrooms influence the state of health Dr. Simon gives the following
 table of mortality. [178]
I now come to the so-called domestic industry. In order to get an idea
 of the horrors of this sphere, in which capital conducts its exploitation
 in the background of modern mechanical industry, one must go to the apparently
 quite idyllic trade of nail-making, [179] carried on in a few remote villages of England. In this place, however, it will be
 enough to give a few examples from those branches of the lace-making and
 straw-plaiting industries that are not yet carried on by the aid of machinery,
 and that as yet do not compete with branches carried on in factories or
 in manufactories.
Of the 150,000 persons employed in England in the production of
 lace, about 10,000 fall under the authority of the Factory Act, 1861. Almost
 the whole of the remaining 140,000 are women, young persons, and children
 of both sexes, the male sex, however, being weakly represented. The state
 of health of this cheap material for exploitation will be seen from the
 following table, computed by Dr. Trueman, physician to the Nottingham General
 Dispensary. Out of 686 female patients who were lace-makers, most of them
 between the ages of 17 and 24, the number of consumptive ones were:
This progress in the rate of consumption ought to suffice for the most
 optimist of progressists, and for the biggest hawker of lies among the
 Free-trade bagmen of Germany.
The Factory Act of 1861 regulates the actual making of the lace,
 so far as it is done by machinery, and this is the rule in England. The
 branches that we are now about to examine, solely with regard to those
 of the workpeople who work at home, and not those who work in manufactories
 or warehouses, fall into two divisions, viz. (1), finishing; (2), mending.
 The former gives the finishing touches to the machine-made lace, and includes
 numerous sub-divisions.
The lace finishing is done either in what are called “mistresses’
 houses,” or by women in their own houses, with or without the help of their
 children. The women who keep the “mistresses’ houses” are themselves poor.
 The workroom is in a private house. The mistresses take orders from manufacturers,
 or from warehousemen, and employ as many women, girls, and young children
 as the size of their rooms and the fluctuating demand of the business will
 allow. The number of the workwomen employed in these workrooms varies from
 20 to 40 in some, and from 10 to 20 in others. The average age at which
 the children commence work is six years, but in many cases it is below
 five. The usual working-hours are from 8 in the morning till eight in the
 evening, with 1½ hours for meals, which are taken at irregular intervals,
 and often in the foul workrooms. When business is brisk, the labour frequently
 lasts from 8 or even 6 o’clock in the morning till 10, 11, or 12 o’clock
 at night. In English barracks the regulation space allotted to each soldier
 is 500-600 cubic feet, and in the military hospitals 1,200 cubic feet.
 But in those finishing sties there are but 67 to 100 cubic feet to each
 person. At the same time the oxygen of the air is consumed by gas-lights.
 In order to keep the lace clean, and although the floor is tiled or gagged,
 the children are often compelled, even in winter, to pull off their shoes.
The “long stick” is used by the mistresses as
 a stimulant more and more as the working hours are prolonged.
When women and their children
 work at home, which now-a-days means in a hired room, often in a garret,
 the state of things is, if possible, still worse. This sort of work is
 given out within a circle of 80 miles radius from Nottingham. On leaving
 the warehouses at 9 or 10 o’clock at night, the children are often given
 a bundle of lace to take home with them and finish. The Pharisee of a capitalist
 represented by one of his servants, accompanies this action, of course,
 with the unctuous phrase: “That’s for mother,” yet he knows well enough
 that the poor children must sit up and help. [182]
Pillow lace-making is chiefly carried on in England in two agricultural
 districts; one, the Honiton lace district, extending from 20 to 30 miles
 along the south coast of Devonshire, and including a few places in North
 Devon; the other comprising a great part of the counties of Buckingham,
 Bedford, and Northampton, and also the adjoining portions of Oxfordshire
 and Huntingdonshire. The cottages of the agricultural labourers are the
 places where the work is usually carried on. Many manufacturers employ
 upwards of 3,000 of these lace-makers, who are chiefly children and young
 persons of the female sex exclusively. The state of things described as
 incidental to lace finishing is here repeated, save that instead of the
 “mistresses’ houses,” we find what are called “lace-schools,” kept by poor
 women in their cottages. From their fifth year and often earlier, until
 their twelfth or fifteenth year, the children work in these schools; during
 the first year the very young ones work from four to eight hours, and later
 on, from six in the morning till eight and ten o’clock at night.
Where lace-making ends in the counties of Buckingham and Bedford,
 straw-plaiting begins, and extends over a large part of Hertfordshire and
 the westerly and northerly parts of Essex. In 1861, there were 40,043 persons
 employed in straw-plaiting and straw-hat making; of these 3,815 were males
 of all ages, the rest females, of whom 14,913, including about 7,000 children,
 were under 20 years of age. In the place of the lace-schools we find here
 the “straw-plait schools.” The children commence their instruction in straw-plaiting
 generally in their 4th, often between their 3rd and 4th year. Education,
 of course, they get none. The children themselves call the elementary schools,
 “natural schools,” to distinguish them from these blood-sucking institutions,
 in which they are kept at work simply to get through the task, generally
 30 yards daily, prescribed by their half-starved mothers. These same mothers
 often make them work at home, after school is over, till 10, 11, and 12
 o’clock at night. The straw cuts their mouths, with which they constantly
 moisten it, and their fingers. Dr. Ballard gives it as the general opinion
 of the whole body of medical officers in London, that 300 cubic feet is
 the minimum space proper for each person in a bedroom or workroom. But
 in the straw-plait schools space is more sparingly allotted than in the
 lace-schools, “12 2/3, 17, 18½ and below 22 cubic feet for each person.”
Thus do the children enjoy
 life till the age of 12 or 14. The wretched half-starved parents think
 of nothing but getting as much as possible out of their children. The latter,
 as soon as they are grown up, do not care a farthing, and naturally so,
 for their parents, and leave them.
And the native land of these model families is the pattern Christian country for Europe; so
 says at least Count Montalembert, certainly a competent authority on Christianity!
Wages in the above industries, miserable as they are (the maximum 442wages
 of a child in the straw-plait schools rising in rare cases to 3 shillings),
 are reduced far below their nominal amount by the prevalence of the truck
 system everywhere, but especially in the lace districts. [185]
The cheapening of labour-power, by sheer abuse of the labour of women
 and children, by sheer robbery of every normal condition requisite for
 working and living, and by the sheer brutality of overwork and night-work,
 meets at last with natural obstacles that cannot be overstepped. So also,
 when based on these methods, do the cheapening of commodities and capitalist
 exploitation in general. So soon as this point is at last reached — and
 it takes many years — the hour has struck for the introduction of machinery,
 and for the thenceforth rapid conversion of the scattered domestic industries
 and also of manufactures into factory industries.
An example, on the most colossal scale, of this movement is afforded
 by the production of wearing apparel. This industry, according to the classification
 of the Children’s Employment Commission, comprises straw-hat makers, ladies’-hat
 makers, cap-makers, tailors, milliners and dressmakers, shirt-makers, corset-makers,
 glove-makers, shoemakers, besides many minor branches, such as the making
 of neck-ties, collars, &c. In 1861, the number of females employed
 in these industries, in England and Wales, amounted to 586,299, of these
 115,242 at the least were under 20, and 16,650. under 15 years of age.
 The number of these workwomen in the United Kingdom in 1861, was 750,334.
 The number of males employed in England and Wales, in hat-making, shoemaking,
 glove-making and tailoring was 437,969; of these 14,964 under 15 years,
 89,285 between 15 and 20, and 333,117 over 20 years. Many of the smaller
 branches are not included in these figures. But take the figures as they
 stand; we then have for England and Wales alone, according to the census
 of 1861, a total of 1,024,277 persons, about as many as are absorbed by
 agriculture and cattle breeding. We begin to understand what becomes of
 the immense quantities of goods conjured up by the magic of machinery,
 and of the enormous masses of workpeople, which that machinery sets free.
The production of wearing apparel is carried on partly in manufactories
 in whose workrooms there is but a reproduction of that division of
 labour, the membra disjecta of which were found ready to hand; partly by
 small master-handicraftsmen; these, however, do not, as formerly, work
 for individual consumers, but for manufactories and warehouses, and to
 such an extent that often whole towns and stretches of country carry on
 certain branches, such as shoemaking, as a speciality; finally, on a very
 great scale by the so-called domestic workers, who form an external department
 of the manufactories, warehouses, and even of the workshops of the smaller
 masters. [186]
The raw material, &c., is supplied by mechanical industry,
 the mass of cheap human material (taillable à merci et miséricorde)
 is composed of the individuals “liberated” by mechanical industry and improved
 agriculture. The manufactures of this class owed their origin chiefly to
 the capitalist’s need of having at hand an army ready equipped to meet
 any increase of demand. [187] These manufactures, nevertheless, allowed the scattered handicrafts and domestic industries to continue to
 exist as a broad foundation. The great production of surplus-value in these
 branches of labour, and the progressive cheapening of their articles, were
 and are chiefly due to the minimum wages paid, no more than requisite for
 a miserable vegetation, and to the extension of working-time up to the
 maximum endurable by the human organism. It was in fact by the cheapness
 of the human sweat and the human blood, which were converted into commodities,
 that the markets were constantly being extended, and continue daily to
 be extended; more especially was this the case with England’s colonial
 markets, where, besides, English tastes and habits prevail. At last the
 critical point was reached. The basis of the old method, sheer brutality
 in the exploitation of the workpeople, accompanied more or less by a systematic
 division of labour, no longer sufficed for the extending markets and for
 the still more rapidly extending competition of the capitalists. The hour
 struck for the advent of machinery. The decisively revolutionary machine,
 the machine which attacks in an equal degree the whole of the numberless
 branches of this sphere of production, dressmaking, tailoring, shoemaking,
 sewing, hat-making, and many others, is the sewing-machine.
Its immediate effect on the workpeople is like that of all machinery,
 which, since the rise of modern industry, has seized upon new branches
 of trade. Children of too tender an age are sent adrift. The wage of the
 machine hands rises compared with that of the house-workers, many 444of
 whom belong to the poorest of the poor. That of the better situated handicraftsman,
 with whom the machine competes, sinks. The new machine hands are exclusively
 girls and young women. With the help of mechanical force, they destroy
 the monopoly that male labour had of the heavier work, and they drive off
 from the lighter work numbers of old women and very young children. The
 overpowering competition crushes the weakest of the manual labourers. The
 fearful increase in death from starvation during the last 10 years in London
 runs parallel with the extension of machine sewing. [188] The new workwomen turn the machines by hand and foot, or by hand alone, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, according to the weight, size, and
 special make of the machine, and expend a great deal of labour-power. Their
 occupation is unwholesome, owing to the long hours, although in most cases
 they are not so long as under the old system. Wherever the sewing-machine
 locates itself in narrow and already over-crowded workrooms, it adds to
 the unwholesome influences.
This industrial revolution which takes place spontaneously, is
 artificially helped on by the extension of the Factory Acts to all industries
 in which women, young persons and children are employed. The compulsory
 regulation of the working-day as regards its length, pauses, beginning
 and end, the system of relays of children, the exclusion of all children
 under a certain age, &c., necessitate on the one hand more machinery
 [197] and the substitution of steam as a motive power in the place of muscles. [198] On the other hand, in order to make up for the loss of time, an expansion occurs of the means
 of production used in common, of the furnaces, buildings, &c., in one
 word, greater concentration of the means of production and a correspondingly
 greater concourse of workpeople. The chief objection, repeatedly and passionately
 urged on behalf of each manufacture threatened with the Factory Act, is
 in fact this, that in order to continue the business on the old scale a
 greater outlay of capital will be necessary. But as regards labour in the
 so-called domestic industries and the intermediate forms between them and
 Manufacture, so soon as limits are put to the working-day and to the employment
 of children, those industries go to the wall. Unlimited exploitation
 of cheap labour-power is the sole foundation of their power to compete.
One of the essential conditions for the existence of the factory
 system, especially when the length of the working-day is fixed, is certainty
 in the result, i.e., the production in a given time of a given quantity
 of commodities, or of a given useful effect. The statutory pauses in the
 working-day, moreover, imply the assumption that periodical and sudden
 cessation of the work does no harm to the article undergoing the process
 of production. This certainty in the result, and this possibility of interrupting
 the work are, of course, easier to be attained in the purely mechanical
 industries than in those in which chemical and physical processes play
 a part; as, for instance, in the earthenware trade, in bleaching, dyeing,
 baking, and in most of the metal industries. Wherever there is a workingday
 without restriction as to length, wherever there is night-work and unrestricted
 waste of human life, there the slightest obstacle presented by the nature
 of the work to a change for the better is soon looked upon as an everlasting
 barrier erected by Nature. No poison kills vermin with more certainty than
 the Factory Act removes such everlasting barriers. No one made a greater
 outcry over “impossibilities” than our friends the earthenware manufacturers.
 In 1864, however, they were brought under the Act, and within sixteen months
 every “impossibility” had vanished.
In spite of every prophecy, the cost-price of earthenware did not rise, but the quantity produced did, and to such an extent that the export for
 the twelve months, ending December, 1865, exceeded in value by £138,628
 the average of the preceding three years. In the manufacture of matches
 it was thought to be an indispensable requirement, that boys, even while
 bolting their dinner, should go on dipping the matches in melted phosphorus,
 the poisonous vapour from which rose into their faces. The Factory Act
 (1864) made the saving of time a necessity, and so forced into existence
 a dipping machine, the vapour from which could not come in contact with
 the workers. [200] So, at the present time, in those branches of the lace 448manufacture not yet subject to the Factory
 Act, it is maintained that the meal-times cannot be regular owing to the
 different periods required by the various kinds of lace for drying, which
 periods vary from three minutes up to an hour and more. To this the Children’s
 Employment Commissioners answer:
Hardly had the Act been passed when our friends the manufacturers found out:
It is evident that the English legislature, which certainly no one will venture to reproach
 with being overdosed with genius, has been led by experience to the conclusion
 that a simple compulsory law is sufficient to enact away all the so-called
 impediments, opposed by the nature of the process, to the restriction and
 regulation of the working-day. Hence, on the introduction of the Factory
 Act into a given industry, a period varying from six to eighteen months
 is fixed within which it is incumbent on the manufacturers to remove all
 technical impediments to the working of the Act. Mirabeau’s “Impossible!
 ne me dites jamais ce bête de mot!” is particularly applicable to
 modern technology. But though the Factory Acts thus artificially ripen
 the material elements necessary for the conversion of the manufacturing
 system into the factory system, yet at the same time, owing to the necessity
 they impose for greater outlay of capital, they hasten on the decline of
 the small masters, and the concentration of capital. [203]
Besides the purely technical impediments that are removable
 by technical means, the irregular habits of the workpeople themselves obstruct
 the regulation of the hours of labour. This is especially the case where
 piece-wage predominates, and where loss of time in one part of the day
 or week can be made good by subsequent over-time, or by night-work, a process
 which brutalises the adult workman, and ruins his wife and children. [204] Although this absence of regularity in the expenditure of labour-power is a natural and rude reaction against the tedium of monotonous drudgery,
 it originates, also, to a much greater degree from anarchy in production,
 anarchy that in its turn pre-supposes unbridled exploitation of labour-power
 by the capitalist. Besides the general periodic changes of the industrial
 cycle, and the special fluctuations in the markets to which each industry
 is subject, we may also reckon what is called “the season,” dependent either
 on the periodicity of favourable seasons of the year for navigation; or
 on fashion, and the sudden placing of large orders that have to be executed
 in the shortest possible time. The habit of giving such orders becomes
 more frequent with the extension of railways and telegraphs.
In those factories and manufactories that are not yet subject
 to the Factory Acts, the most fearful over-work prevails periodically during
 what is called the season, in consequence of sudden orders. In the outside
 department of the factory, of the manufactory, and of the warehouse,
 the so-called domestic workers, whose employment is at the best irregular,
 are entirely dependent for their raw material and their orders on the caprice
 of the capitalist, who, in this industry, is not hampered by any regard
 for depreciation of his buildings and machinery, and risks nothing by a
 stoppage of work, but the skin of the worker himself. Here then he sets
 himself systematically to work to form an industrial reserve force that
 shall be ready at a moment’s notice; during one part of the year he decimates
 this force by the most inhuman toil, during the other part, he lets it
 starve for want of work.
In the same way as technical impediments, so, too, those “usages
 which have grown with the growth of trade” were and still are proclaimed
 by interested capitalists as obstacles due to the nature of the work. This
 was a favourite cry of the cotton lords at the time they were first threatened
 with the Factory Acts. Although their industry more than any other depends
 on navigation, yet experience has given them the lie. Since then, every
 pretended obstruction to business has been treated by the Factory inspectors
 as a mere sham. [208] The thoroughly conscientious
 investigations of the Children’s Employment Commission prove that the effect
 of the regulation of the hours of work, in some industries, was to spread
 the mass of labour previously employed more evenly over the whole year
 [208a] that this regulation was the first rational
 bridle on the murderous, meaningless caprices of fashion, [208b] caprices that 451consort so badly with the system of modern industry; that the development of ocean navigation and of the means of communication
 generally, has swept away the technical basis on which season-work was really supported, [209] and that all other so-called unconquerable difficulties vanish before larger buildings, additional machinery, increase in the number of workpeople employed, [210] and the alterations caused by all these in the mode of conducting the wholesale trade. [211] But for all that, capital never becomes reconciled to such changes — and this is admitted over and over again by its own representatives — except “under the pressure of a General Act
 of Parliament” [212] for the compulsory regulation
 of the hours of labour.
Factory legislation, that first conscious and methodical
 reaction of society against the spontaneously developed form of the process
 of production, is, as we have seen, just as much the necessary product
 of modern industry as cotton yarn, self-actors, and the electric telegraph.
 Before passing to the consideration of the extension of that legislation
 in England, we shall shortly notice certain clauses contained in the Factory
 Acts, and not relating to the hours of work.
Apart from their wording, which makes it easy for the capitalist
 to evade them, the sanitary clauses are extremely meagre, and, in fact, 452limited
 to provisions for whitewashing the walls, for insuring cleanliness in some
 other matters, for ventilation, and for protection against dangerous machinery.
 In the third book we shall return again to the fanatical opposition of
 the masters to those clauses which imposed upon them a slight expenditure
 on appliances for protecting the limbs of their workpeople, an opposition
 that throws a fresh and glaring light on the Free-trade dogma, according
 to which, in a society with conflicting interests, each individual necessarily
 furthers the common weal by seeking nothing but his own personal advantage!
 One example is enough. The reader knows that during the last 20 years,
 the flax industry has very much extended, and that, with that extension,
 the number of scutching mills in Ireland has increased. In 1864 there were
 in that country 1,800 of these mills. Regularly in autumn and winter women
 and “young persons,” the wives, sons, and daughters of the neighbouring
 small farmers, a class of people totally unaccustomed to machinery, are
 taken from field labour to feed the rollers of the scutching mills with
 flax. The accidents, both as regards number and kind, are wholly unexampled
 in the history of machinery. In one scutching mill, at Kildinan, near Cork,
 there occurred between 1852 and 1856, six fatal accidents and sixty mutilations;
 every one of which might have been prevented by the simplest appliances,
 at the cost of a few shillings. Dr. W. White, the certifying surgeon for
 factories at Downpatrick, states in his official report, dated the 15th
 December, 1865:
What could possibly show better the character of the capitalist
 mode of production, than the necessity that exists for forcing upon it,
 by Acts of Parliament, the simplest appliances for maintaining cleanliness
 and health? In the potteries the Factory Act of 1864 “has whitewashed and
 cleansed upwards of 200 workshops, after a period of abstinence from any
 such cleaning, in many cases of 20 years, and in some, entirely,” (this
 is the “abstinence” of the capitalist!) “in which were employed 27,800
 artisans, hitherto breathing through protracted days and often nights of
 labour, a mephitic atmosphere, and which rendered an otherwise comparatively
 innocuous occupation, pregnant with disease and 453death. The Act
 has improved the ventilation very much.” [214]
At the same time, this portion of the Act strikingly shows that the capitalist
 mode of production, owing to its very nature, excludes all rational improvement
 beyond a certain point. It has been stated over and over again that the
 English doctors are unanimous in declaring that where the work is continuous,
 500 cubic feet is the very least space that should be allowed for each
 person. Now, if the Factory Acts, owing to their compulsory provisions,
 indirectly hasten on the conversion of small workshops into factories,
 thus indirectly attacking the proprietary rights of the smaller capitalists,
 and assuring a monopoly to the great ones, so, if it were made obligatory
 to provide the proper space for each workman in every workshop, thousands
 of small employers would, at one full swoop, be expropriated directly!
 The very root of the capitalist mode of production, i.e., the self-expansion
 of all capital, large or small, by means of the “free” purchase and consumption
 of labour-power, would be attacked. Factory legislation is therefore brought
 to a deadlock before these 500 cubic feet of breathing space. The sanitary
 officers, the industrial inquiry commissioners, the factory inspectors,
 all harp, over and over again, upon the necessity for those 500 cubic feet,
 and upon the impossibility of wringing them out of capital. They thus,
 in fact, declare that consumption and other lung diseases among the workpeople
 are necessary conditions to the existence of capital. [215]
Paltry as the education clauses of the Act appear on the whole,
 yet they proclaim elementary education to be an indispensable condition
 to the employment of children. [216] The success of
 those clauses proved for the first time the possibility of combining education
 and gymnastics [217]454with manual labour,
 and, consequently, of combining manual labour with education and gymnastics.
 The factory inspectors soon found out by questioning the schoolmasters,
 that the factory children, although receiving only one half the education
 of the regular day scholars, yet learnt quite as much and often more.
Further information on this point will be found in Senior’s speech at the Social Science 
 Congress at Edinburgh in 1863. He there shows, amongst other
 things, how the monotonous and uselessly long school hours of the children
 of the upper and middle classes, uselessly add to the labour of the teacher,
 “while he not only fruitlessly but absolutely injuriously, wastes the time,
 health, and energy of the children.” [219] From the
 Factory system budded, as Robert Owen has shown us in detail, the germ
 of the education of the future, an education that will, in the case of
 every child over a given age, combine productive labour with instruction
 and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency
 of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human
 beings.
Modern industry, as we have seen, sweeps away by technical means
 the manufacturing division of labour, under which each man is bound hand
 and foot for life to a single detail-operation. At the same time, the 455capitalistic
 form of that industry reproduces this same division of labour in a still
 more monstrous shape; in the factory proper, by converting the workman
 into a living appendage of the machine; and everywhere outside the Factory,
 partly by the sporadic use of machinery and machine workers, [220] partly by re-establishing the division of labour on a fresh basis by the general introduction of the labour of women and children, and of cheap unskilled labour.
The antagonism between the manufacturing division of labour and
 the methods of modern industry makes itself forcibly felt. It manifests
 itself, amongst other ways, in the frightful fact that a great part of
 the children employed in modern factories and manufactures, are from their
 earliest years riveted to the most simple manipulations, and exploited
 for years, without being taught a single sort of work that would afterwards
 make them of use, even in the same manufactory or factory. In the English
 letter-press printing trade, for example, there existed formerly a system,
 corresponding to that in the old manufactures and handicrafts, of advancing
 the apprentices from easy to more and more difficult work. They went through
 a course of teaching till they were finished printers. To be able to read
 and write was for every one of them a requirement of their trade. All this
 was changed by the printing machine. It employs two sorts of labourers,
 one grown up, renters, the other, boys mostly from 11 to 17 years of age
 whose sole business is either to spread the sheets of paper under the machine,
 or to take from it the printed sheets. They perform this weary task, in London especially, for 14, 15, and 16 hours at a stretch, during several
 days in the week, and frequently for 36 hours, with only 2 hours’ rest
 for meals and sleep. [221] A great part of them cannot read, and they are, as a rule, utter savages and very extraordinary creatures.
As soon as they get too old for such child’s work, that is about 17 at the latest, they
 are discharged from the printing establishments. They become recruits of
 crime. Several attempts to procure them employment elsewhere, were rendered
 of no avail by their ignorance and brutality, and by their mental and bodily
 degradation.
One step already spontaneously taken towards effecting this revolution
 is the establishment of technical and agricultural schools, and of “écoles
 d’enseignement professionnel,” in which the children of the working-men
 receive some little instruction in technology and in the practical handling
 of the various implements of labour. Though the Factory Act, that first
 and meagre concession wrung from capital, is limited to combining elementary
 education with work in the factory, there can be no doubt that when the
 working-class comes into power, as inevitably it must, technical instruction,
 both theoretical and practical, will take its proper place in the working-class
 schools. There is also no doubt that such revolutionary ferments, the final
 result of which is the abolition of the old division of labour, are diametrically
 opposed to the capitalistic form of production, and to the economic status
 of the labourer corresponding to that form. But the historical development
 of the antagonisms, immanent in a given form of production, is the only
 way in which that form of production can be dissolved and a new form established.
 “Ne sutor ultra crepidam” — this nec plus ultra of handicraft wisdom became
 sheer nonsense, from the moment the watchmaker Watt invented the steam-engine,
 the barber Arkwright, the throstle, and the working-jeweller, Fulton, the
 steamship. [228]
So long as Factory legislation is confined to regulating the labour
 in factories, manufactories, &c., it is regarded as a mere interference
 with the exploiting rights of capital. But when it comes to regulating
 the so-called “home-labour,” [229] it is immediately viewed as a direct attack on the patria potestas, on parental authority.
 The tender-hearted English Parliament long affected to shrink from taking
 this step. The force of facts, however, compelled it at last to acknowledge
 that modern industry, in overturning the economic foundation on which was
 based the traditional family, and the family labour corresponding to it,
 had also unloosened all traditional family ties. The rights of the children
 had to be proclaimed. The final report of the Ch. Empl. Comm. of 1866,
 states:
It was not, however, the misuse of parental authority that created the capitalistic exploitation, whether
 direct or indirect, of children’s labour; but, on the contrary, it was
 the capitalistic mode of exploitation which, by sweeping away 460the
 economic basis of parental authority, made its exercise degenerate into
 a mischievous misuse of power. However terrible and disgusting the dissolution,
 under the capitalist system, of the old family ties may appear, nevertheless,
 modern industry, by assigning as it does an important part in the process
 of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young persons,
 and to children of both sexes, creates a new economic foundation for a
 higher form of the family and of the relations between the sexes. It is,
 of course, just as absurd to hold the Teutonic-Christian form of the family
 to be absolute and final as it would be to apply that character to the
 ancient Roman, the ancient Greek, or the Eastern forms which, moreover,
 taken together form a series in historical development. Moreover, it is
 obvious that the fact of the collective working group being composed of
 individuals of both sexes and all ages, must necessarily, under suitable
 conditions, become a source of humane development; although in its spontaneously
 developed, brutal, capitalistic form, where the labourer exists for the
 process of production, and not the process of production for the labourer,
 that fact is a pestiferous source of corruption and slavery. [231]
The necessity for a generalisation of the Factory Acts, for transforming
 them from an exceptional law relating to mechanical spinning and weaving
 — those first creations of machinery — into a law affecting social production
 as a whole, arose, as we have seen, from the mode in which modern industry
 was historically developed. In the rear of that industry, the traditional
 form of manufacture, of handicraft, and of domestic industry, is entirely
 revolutionised; manufactures are constantly passing into the factory system,
 and handicrafts into manufactures; and lastly, the spheres of handicraft and of the domestic industries become, in a, comparatively speaking, wonderfully
 short time, dens of misery in which capitalistic exploitation obtains free
 play for the wildest excesses. There are two circumstances that finally
 turn the scale: first, the constantly recurring experience that capital,
 so soon as it finds itself subject to legal control at one point, compensates
 itself all the more recklessly at other points; [232] secondly, the cry of the capitalists for equality in the conditions of competition, i.e., for equal restrain on all exploitation of labour. [233] On this point let us listen to two heart-broken cries. Messrs. Cooksley of Bristol, nail and chain, &c., manufacturers, spontaneously introduced the regulations of the Factory Act into their business.
Mr. J. Simpson (paper box and bagmaker, London) states before the commissioners of the
 Ch. Empl. Comm.:
Summarising, the Ch. Empl. Comm. says:
In its final report the Commission proposes to subject to the
 Factory Act more than 1,400,000 children, young persons, and women, of
 which number about one half are exploited in small industries and by the
 so-called home-work. [237] It says,
The Tory Cabinet [239] announced in the Speech
 from the Throne, on February 5, 1867, that it had framed the proposals
 of the Industrial Commission of Inquiry [240] into
 Bills. To get that far, another twenty years of experimentum in corpore
 vili had been required. Already in 1840 a Parliamentary Commission
 of Inquiry on the labour of children had been appointed. Its Report, in
 1842, unfolded, in the words of Nassau W. Senior,
The social conditions having undergone a change, Parliament could
 not venture to shelve the demands of the Commission of 1862, as it 463had
 done those of the Commission of 1840. Hence in 1864, when the Commission
 had not yet published more than a part of its reports, the earthenware
 industries (including the potteries), makers of paperhangings, matches,
 cartridges, and caps, and fustian cutters were made subject to the Acts
 in force in the textile industries. In the Speech from the Throne, on 5th
 February, 1867, the Tory Cabinet of the day announced the introduction
 of Bills, founded on the final recommendations of the Commission, which
 had completed its labours in 1866.
On the 15th August, 1867, the Factory Acts Extension Act, and
 on the 21st August, the Workshops’ Regulation Act received the Royal Assent;
 the former Act having reference to large industries, the latter to small.
The former applies to blast-furnaces, iron’ and copper mills,
 foundries, machine shops, metal manufactories, gutta-percha works, paper
 mills, glass-works, tobacco manufactories, letter-press printing (including
 newspapers), book-binding, in short to all industrial establishments of
 the above kind, in which 50 individuals or more are occupied simultaneously,
 and for not less than 100 days during the year.
To give an idea of the extent of the sphere embraced by the Workshops’
 Regulation Act in its application, we cite from its interpretation clause,
 the following passages:
Clause 7, which imposes a penalty for employment of children,
 young persons, and women, contrary to the provisions of the Act, subjects
 to fines, not only the occupier of the workshop, whether parent or not,
 but even
The Factory Acts Extension Act, which affects the large establishments,
 derogates from the Factory Act by a crowd of vicious exceptions and cowardly
 compromises with the masters.
The Workshops’ Regulation Act, wretched in all its details,
 remained a dead letter in the hands of the municipal and local authorities
 who were charged with its execution. When, in 1871, Parliament withdrew
 from them this power, in order to confer it on the Factory Inspectors,
 to whose province it thus added by a single stroke more than one hundred
 thousand workshops, and three hundred brickworks, care was taken at the
 same time not to add more than eight assistants to their already undermanned
 staff. [242]
What strikes us, then, in the English legislation of 1867, is,
 on the one hand, the necessity imposed on the parliament of the ruling
 classes, of adopting in principle measures so extraordinary, and on so
 great a scale, against the excesses of capitalistic exploitation; and on
 the other hand, the hesitation, the repugnance, and the bad faith, with
 which it lent itself to the task of carrying those measures into practice.
The Inquiry Commission of 1862 also proposed a new regulation
 of the mining industry, an industry distinguished from others by the exceptional
 characteristic that the interests of landlord and capitalist there join
 hands. The antagonism of these two interests had been favourable to Factory
 legislation, while on the other hand the absence of that antagonism is
 sufficient to explain the delays and chicanery of the legislation on mines.
The Inquiry Commission of 1840 had made revelations so terrible,
 so shocking, and creating such a scandal all over Europe, that to salve
 its conscience Parliament passed the Mining Act of 1842, in which it limited
 itself to forbidding the employment underground in mines of children under
 10 years of age and females.
Then another Act, The Mines’ Inspecting Act of 1860, provides
 that mines shall be inspected by public officers nominated specially for
 that purpose, and that boys between the ages of 10 and 12 years shall not
 be employed, unless they have a school certificate, or go to school for
 a certain number of hours. This Act was a complete dead letter owing to
 the ridiculously small number of inspectors, the meagreness of their powers,
 and other causes that will become apparent as we proceed.
One of the most recent Blue books on mines is the “Report from
 the Select Committee on Mines, together with &c. Evidence, 23rd July,
 1866.” This Report is the work of a Parliamentary Committee selected from
 members of the House of Commons, and authorised to summon and examine witnesses.
 It is a thick folio volume in which the Report 465itself occupies
 only five lines to this effect; that the committee has nothing to say,
 and that more witnesses must be examined!
The mode of examining the witnesses reminds one of the cross-examination
 of witnesses in English courts of justice, where the advocate tries, by
 means of impudent, unexpected, equivocal and involved questions, put without
 connexion, to intimidate, surprise, and confound the witness, and to give
 a forced meaning to the answers extorted from him. In this inquiry the
 members of the committee themselves are the cross-examiners, and among
 them are to be found both mine-owners and mine exploiters; the witnesses
 are mostly working coal miners. The whole farce is too characteristic of
 the spirit of capital, not to call for a few extracts from this Report.
 For the sake of conciseness I have classified them. I may also add that
 every question and its answer are numbered in the English Blue books.
1. Employment in mines of boys of 10 years and upwards.
 — In the mines the work, inclusive of going and returning, usually lasts
 14 or 15 hours, sometimes even from 3, 4 and 5 o’clock a.m., till 5 and
 6 o’clock p.m. (n. 6, 452, 83). The adults work in two shifts, of eight
 hours each; but there is no alternation with the boys, on account of the
 expense (n. 80, 203, 204). The younger boys are chiefly employed in opening
 and shutting the ventilating doors in the various parts of the mine; the
 older ones are employed on heavier work, in carrying coal, &c. (n.
 122, 739, 1747). They work these long hours underground until their 18th
 or 22nd year, when they are put to miner’s work proper (n. 161). Children
 and young persons are at present worse treated, and harder worked than
 at any previous period (n. 1663-1667). The miners demand almost unanimously
 an act of Parliament prohibiting the employment in mines of children under
 14. And now Hussey Vivian (himself an exploiter of mines) asks:
II. Education. — The working miners want a law for the
 compulsory education of their children, as in factories. They declare the
 clauses of the Act of 1860, which require a school certificate to be obtained
 before employing boys of 10 and 12 years of age, to be quite illusory.
 The examination of the witnesses on this subject is truly droll.
III. Employment of women. — Since 1842 women are no more
 employed underground, but are occupied on the surface in loading the coal,
 &c., in drawing the tubs to the canals and railway waggons, in sorting,
 &c. Their numbers have considerably increased during the last three
 or four years. (n. 1727.) They are mostly the wives, daughters, and widows
 of the working miners, and their ages range from 12 to 50 or 60 years.
 (ns. 645, 1779.)
IV. Coroner’s inquests. —
V. False weights and measures. — The workmen demand to
 be paid weekly instead of fortnightly, and by weight instead of by cubical
 contents of the tubs; they also demand protection against the use of false
 weights, &c. (n. 1071.)
VI. Inspection of mines. — Casualties from explosions
 are not the only things the workmen suffer from. (n. 234, sqq.)
This kind of examination becomes at last too much even for the
 chairman of the committee, and he interrupts with the observation:
A working miner objects to the
 17th section of the Act of 1860; he says,
Bourgeois examiner, himself a mine-owner:
This same bourgeois is not ashamed
 to put this question: “Do you not think that the mine-owner also suffers
 loss from an explosion?” Finally, “Are not you workmen in Lancashire able
 to take care of your own interests without calling in the Government to
 help you?” “No.” (n. 1042.)
In the year 1865 there were 3,217 coal mines in Great Britain,
 and 12 inspectors. A Yorkshire mine-owner himself calculates (Times,
 26th January, 1867), that putting on one side their office work, which
 absorbs all their time, each mine can be visited but once in ten years
 by an inspector. No wonder that explosions have increased progressively,
 both in number and extent (sometimes with a loss of 200-300 men), during
 the last ten years. These are the beauties of “free” capitalist production!
 [This sentence has been added to the English text in conformity with
 the 4th German edition. — Ed.]
The very defective Act, passed in 1872, is the first that
 regulates the hours of labour of the children employed in mines, and makes
 exploiters and owners, to a certain extent, responsible for so-called accidents.
The Royal Commission appointed in 1867 to inquire into the employment
 in agriculture of children, young persons, and women, has published some
 very important reports. Several attempts to apply the principles of the
 Factory Acts, but in a modified form, to agriculture have been made, but
 have so far resulted in complete failure. All that I wish to draw attention
 to here is the existence of an irresistible tendency towards the general
 application of those principles.
If the general extension of factory legislation to all trades
 for the purpose of protecting the working-class both in mind and body has
 become inevitable, on the other hand, as we have already pointed out, that
 extension hastens on the general conversion of numerous isolated small
 industries into a few combined industries carried on upon a large scale;
 it therefore accelerates the concentration of capital and the exclusive
 predominance of the factory system. It destroys both the ancient and the
 transitional forms, behind which the dominion of capital is still in part
 concealed, and replaces them by the direct and open sway of capital; but
 thereby it also generalises the direct opposition to this sway. While in
 each individual workshop it enforces uniformity, regularity, order, and
 economy, it increases by the immense spur which the limitation and regulation
 of the working-day give to technical improvement, the anarchy and the catastrophes
 of capitalist production as a whole, the intensity of labour, and the competition
 of machinery with the labourer. By the destruction of petty and domestic
 industries it destroys the last resort of the “redundant population,” and
 with it the sole remaining safety-valve of the whole social mechanism.
 By maturing the material conditions, and the combination on a social scale
 of the processes of production, it matures the contradictions and antagonisms
 of the capitalist form of production, and thereby provides, along with
 the elements for the formation of a new society, the forces for exploding
 the old one. [243]
The revolution called forth by modern industry in
 agriculture, and in the social relations of agricultural producers, will
 be investigated later on. In this place, we shall merely indicate a few
 results by way of anticipation. If the use of machinery in agriculture
 is for the most part free from the injurious physical effect it has on
 the factory operative, its action in superseding the labourers is more
 intense, and finds less resistance, as we shall see later in detail. In
 the counties of Cambridge and Suffolk, for example, the area of cultivated
 land has extended very much within the last 20 years (up to 1868), while
 in the same period the rural population has diminished, not only relatively,
 but absolutely. In the United States it is as yet only virtually that agricultural
 machines replace labourers; in other words, they allow of the cultivation
 by the farmer of a larger surface, but do not actually expel the labourers
 employed. In 1861 the number of persons occupied in England and Wales in
 the manufacture of agricultural machines was 1,034, whilst the number of
 agricultural labourers employed in the use of agricultural machines and
 steam-engines did not exceed 1,205.
In considering the labour-process, we began (see Chapter
 VII.) by treating it in the abstract, apart from its historical forms,
 as a process between man and Nature. We there stated, “If we examine the
 whole labour-process, from the point of view of its result, it is plain
 that both the instruments and the subject of labour are means of production,
 and that the labour itself is productive labour.” And in Note 2, same page,
 we further added: “This method of determining, from the standpoint of the
 labour-process alone, what is productive labour, is by no means directly
 applicable to the case of the capitalist process of production.” We now
 proceed to the further development of this subject.
So far as the labour-process is purely individual, one and the
 same labourer unites in himself all the functions, that later on become
 separated. When an individual appropriates natural objects for his livelihood,
 no one controls him but himself. Afterwards he is controlled by others.
 A single man cannot operate upon Nature without calling his own muscles
 into play under the control of his own brain. As in the natural body head
 and hand wait upon each other, so the labour-process unites the labour
 of the hand with that of the head. Later on they part company and even
 become deadly foes. The product ceases to be the direct product of the
 individual, and becomes a social product, produced in common by a collective
 labourer, i.e., by a combination of workmen, each of whom takes
 only a part, greater or less, in the manipulation of the subject of their
 labour. As the co-operative character of the labour-process becomes more
 and more marked, so, as a necessary consequence, does our notion of productive
 labour, and of its agent the productive labourer, become extended. In order
 to labour productively, it is no longer necessary for you to do manual
 work yourself; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer,
 and perform one of its subordinate functions. The first definition given
 above of productive labour, a definition deduced from the very nature of
 the production of material objects, still remains correct for the collective
 labourer, considered as a whole. But it no longer holds good for each member
 taken individually.
On the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour becomes
 narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities,
 it is essentially the production of surplus-value. The labourer produces,
 not for himself, but for capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that
 he should simply produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer
 alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capitalist, and
 thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we may take an example
 from outside the sphere of production of material objects, a schoolmaster
 is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of
 his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That
 the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in
 a sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion of a productive
 labourer implies not merely a relation between work and useful effect,
 between labourer and product of labour, but also a specific, social relation
 of production, a relation that has sprung up historically and stamps the
 labourer as the direct means of creating surplus-value. To be a productive
 labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune. In Book
 IV. which treats of the history of the theory, it will be more clearly
 seen, that the production of surplus-value has at all times been made,
 by classical political economists, the distinguishing characteristic of
 the productive labourer. Hence their definition of a productive labourer
 changes with their comprehension of the nature of surplus-value. Thus the
 Physiocrats insist that only agricultural labour is productive, since that
 alone, they say, yields a surplus-value. And they say so because, with
 them, surplus-value has no existence except in the form of rent.
The prolongation of the working-day beyond the point at which
 the labourer would have produced just an equivalent for the value of his
 labour-power, and the appropriation of that surplus-labour by capital,
 this is production of absolute surplus-value. It forms the general groundwork
 of the capitalist system, and the starting-point for the production of
 relative surplus-value. The latter presupposes that the working-day is
 already divided into two parts, necessary labour, and surplus-labour. In
 order to prolong the surplus-labour, the necessary labour is shortened
 by methods whereby the equivalent for the wages is produced in less time.
 The production of absolute surplus-value turns exclusively upon the length
 of the working-day; the production of relative surplus-value, revolutionises
 out and out the technical processes of labour, and the composition of society.
 It therefore presupposes a specific mode, the capitalist mode of production,
 a mode which, along with its methods, means, and conditions, arises and
 develops itself spontaneously on the foundation afforded by the formal
 subjection of labour to capital. In the course of this development, the
 formal subjection is replaced by the real subjection of labour to capital.
It will suffice merely to refer to certain intermediate forms,
 in which surplus-labour is not extorted by direct compulsion from the producer,
 nor the producer himself yet formally subjected to capital. In such forms
 capital has not yet acquired the direct control of the labour-process.
 By the side of independent producers who carry on their handicrafts and
 agriculture in the traditional old-fashioned way, there stands the usurer
 or the merchant, with his usurer’s capital or merchant’s capital, feeding
 on them like a parasite. The predominance, in a society, of this form of
 exploitation excludes the capitalist mode of production; to which mode,
 however, this form may serve as a transition, as it did towards the close
 of the Middle Ages. Finally, as is shown by modern “domestic industry,” 
 some intermediate forms are here and there reproduced in the background
 of Modern Industry, though their physiognomy is totally changed.
If, on the one hand, the mere formal subjection of labour to capital
 suffices for the production of absolute surplus-value, if, e.g.,
 it is sufficient that handicraftsmen who previously worked on their own
 account, or as apprentices of a master, should become wage labourers under
 the direct control of a capitalist; so, on the other hand, we have seen,
 how the methods of producing relative surplus-value, are, at the same time,
 methods of producing absolute surplus-value. Nay, more, the excessive prolongation
 of the working-day turned out to be the peculiar product of Modern Industry.
 Generally speaking, the specifically capitalist mode of production ceases
 to be a mere means of producing relative surplus-value, so soon as that
 mode has conquered an entire branch of production; and still more so, so
 soon as it has conquered all the important branches. It then becomes the
 general, socially predominant form of production. As a special method of
 producing relative surplus-value, it remains effective only, first, in
 so far as it seizes upon industries that previously were only formally
 subject to capital, that is, so far as it is propagandist; secondly, in
 so far as the industries that have been taken over by it, continue to be
 revolutionised by changes in the methods of production.
From one standpoint, any distinction between absolute and relative
 surplus-value appears illusory. Relative surplus-value is absolute, since
 it compels the absolute prolongation of the working-day beyond the labour-time
 necessary to the existence of the labourer himself. Absolute surplus-value
 is relative, since it makes necessary such a development of the productiveness
 of labour, as will allow of the necessary labour-time being confined to
 a portion of the working-day. But if we keep in mind the behaviour of surplus-value,
 this appearance of identity vanishes. Once the capitalist mode of production
 is established and become general, the difference between absolute and
 relative surplus-value makes itself felt, whenever there is a question
 of raising the rate of surplus-value. Assuming that labour-power is paid
 for at its value, we are confronted by this alternative: given the productiveness
 of labour and its normal intensity, the rate of surplus-value can be raised
 only by the actual prolongation of the working-day; on the other hand,
 given the length of the working-day, that rise can be effected only by
 a change in the relative magnitudes of the components of the working-day,
 viz., necessary labour and surplus-labour; a change which, if the wages
 are not to fall below the value of labour-power, presupposes a change either
 in the productiveness or in the intensity of the labour.
If the labourer wants all his time to produce the necessary means
 of subsistence for himself and his race, he has no time left in which to
 work gratis for others. Without a certain degree of productiveness in his
 labour, he has no such superfluous time at his disposal; without such superfluous
 time, no surplus-labour, and therefore no capitalists, no slave-owners,
 no feudal lords, in one word, no class of large proprietors. [1]
Thus we may say that surplus-value rests on a natural basis; but
 this is permissible only in the very general sense, that there is no natural
 obstacle absolutely preventing one man from disburdening himself of the
 labour requisite for his own existence, and burdening another with it,
 any more, for instance, than unconquerable natural obstacle prevent one
 man from eating the flesh of another. [2] No mystical
 ideas must in any way be connected, as sometimes happens, with this historically
 developed productiveness of labour. It is only after men have raised themselves
 above the rank of animals, when therefore their labour has been to some
 extent socialised, that a state of things arises in which the surplus-labour
 of the one becomes a condition of existence for the other. At the dawn
 of civilisation the productiveness acquired by labour is small, but so
 too are the wants which develop with and by the means of satisfying them.
 Further, at that early period, the portion of society that lives on the
 labour of others is infinitely small compared with the mass of direct producers.
 Along with the progress in the productiveness of labour, that small portion
 of society increases both absolutely and relatively. [3] Besides, capital with its accompanying relations springs up from an economic soil that is the product of a long process of development. The productiveness
 of labour that serves as its foundation and starting-point, is a gift,
 not of nature, but of a history embracing thousands of centuries.
Apart from the degree of development, greater or less, in the
 form of social production, the productiveness of labour is fettered by
 physical conditions. These are all referable to the constitution of man
 himself (race, &c.), and to surrounding nature. The external physical
 conditions fall into two great economic classes, (1) Natural wealth in
 means of subsistence, i.e., a fruitful soil, waters teeming with
 fish, &c., and (2), natural wealth in the instruments of labour, such
 as waterfalls, navigable rivers, wood, metal, coal, &c. At the dawn
 of civilisation, it is the first class that turns the scale; at a higher
 stage of development, it is the second. Compare, for example, England with
 India, or in ancient times, Athens and Corinth with the shores of the Black
 Sea.
The fewer the number of natural wants imperatively calling for
 satisfaction, and the greater the natural fertility of the soil and the
 favourableness of the climate, so much less is the labour-time necessary
 for the maintenance and reproduction of the producer. So much greater therefore
 can be the excess of his labours for others over his labour for himself.
 Diodorus long ago remarked this in relation to the ancient Egyptians.
Nevertheless the grand structures of ancient Egypt are less due to the
 extent of its population than to the large proportion of it that was freely
 disposable. Just as the individual labourer can do more surplus-labour
 in proportion as his necessary labour-time is less, so with regard to the
 working population. The smaller the part of it which is required for the
 production of the necessary means of subsistence, so much the greater is
 the part that can be set to do other work.
Capitalist production once assumed, then, all other circumstances
 remaining the same, and given the length of the working day, the quantity
 of surplus-labour will vary with the physical conditions of labour, especially
 with the fertility of the soil. But it by no means follows from this that
 the most fruitful soil is the most fitted for the growth of the capitalist
 mode of production. This mode is based on the dominion of man over nature.
 Where nature is too lavish, she “keeps him in hand, like a child in leading-strings.” 
 She does not impose upon him any necessity to develop himself. [5] It is not the tropics with their luxuriant vegetation, but the temperate zone, that is the mother-country of capital. It is not the mere fertility of the soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the variety of its natural products, the changes of the seasons, which form the physical basis for
 the social division of labour, and which, by changes in the natural surroundings,
 spur man on to the multiplication of his wants, his capabilities, his means
 and modes of labour. It is the necessity of bringing a natural force under
 the control of society, of economising, of appropriating or subduing it
 on a large scale by the work of man’s hand, that first plays the decisive
 part in the history of industry. Examples are, the irrigation works in
 Egypt, [6] Lombardy, Holland, or in India and Persia
 where irrigation by means of artificial canals, not only supplies the soil
 with the water indispensable to it, but also carries down to it, in the
 shape of sediment from the hills, mineral fertilisers. The secret of the
 flourishing state of industry in Spain and Sicily under the dominion of
 the Arabs lay in their irrigation works. [7]
Favourable natural conditions alone, give us only the possibility,
 never the reality, of surplus-labour, nor, consequently, of surplus-value
 and a surplus-product. The result of difference in the natural conditions
 of labour is this, that the same quantity of labour satisfies, in different
 countries, a different mass of requirements, [8] consequently, that under circumstances in other respects analogous, the necessary labour-time
 is different. These conditions affect surplus-labour only as natural limits,
 i.e., by fixing the points at which labour for others can begin.
 In proportion as industry advances, these natural limits recede. In the
 midst of our West European society, where the labourer purchases the right
 to work for his own livelihood only by paying for it in surplus-labour,
 the idea easily takes root that it is an inherent quality of human labour
 to furnish a surplus-product. [9]But consider, for example, an inhabitant of the eastern islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, where sago grows wild in the forests.
Suppose now such an eastern bread-cutter requires 12 working hours a week for the satisfaction of all his wants. Nature’s direct gift to him is plenty of leisure time. Before he can apply this
 leisure time productively for himself, a whole series of historical events
 is required; before he spends it in surplus-labour for strangers, compulsion
 is necessary. If capitalist production were introduced, the honest fellow
 would perhaps have to work six days a week, in order to appropriate to
 himself the product of one working day. The bounty of Nature does not explain
 why he would then have to work 6 days a week, or why he must furnish 5
 days of surplus-labour. It explains only why his necessary labour-time
 would be limited to one day a week. But in no case would his surplus-product
 arise from some occult quality inherent in human labour.
Thus, not only does the historically developed social productiveness
 of labour, but also its natural productiveness, appear to be productiveness
 of the capital with which that labour is incorporated.
Ricardo never concerns himself about the origin of surplus-value.
 He treats it as a thing inherent in the capitalist mode of production,
 which mode, in his eyes, is the natural form of social production. Whenever
 he discusses the productiveness of labour, he seeks in it, not the cause
 of surplus-value, but the cause that determines the magnitude of that value.
 On the other hand, his school has openly proclaimed the productiveness
 of labour to be the originating cause of profit (read: Surplus-value).
 This at all events is a progress as against the mercantilists who, on their
 side, derived the excess of the price over the cost of production of the
 product, from the act of exchange, from the product being sold above its
 value. Nevertheless, Ricardo’s school simply shirked the problem, they
 did not solve it. In fact these bourgeois economists instinctively saw,
 and rightly so, that it is very dangerous to stir too deeply the burning
 question of the origin of surplus-value. But what are we to think of John
 Stuart Mill, who, half a century after Ricardo, solemnly claims superiority
 over the mercantilists, by clumsily repeating the wretched evasions of
 Ricardo’s earliest vulgarisers?
Mill says:
So far, nothing but the old story; but Mill
 wishing to add something of his own, proceeds:
He here confounds the duration of labour-time with the duration
 of its products. According to this view, a baker whose product lasts only
 a day, could never extract from his workpeople the same profit, as a machine
 maker whose products endure for 20 years and more. Of course it is very
 true, that if a bird’s nest did not last longer than the time it takes
 in building, birds would have to do without nests.
This fundamental truth once established, Mill establishes his
 own superiority over the mercantilists.
For Mill then, exchange,
 buying and selling, those general conditions of capitalist production,
 are but an incident, and there would always be profits even without the
 purchase and sale of labour-power!
Then follows a splendid example of Mill’s method of handling the
 different historical forms of social production.
Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of things which as yet
 exists only exceptionally on our earth. [11] But let
 us finish — Mill is willing to concede,
Mill might have gone further
 and have added, that the labourer who advances to himself not only the
 necessaries of life but also the means of production, is in reality nothing
 but his own wage-labourer. He might also have said that the American peasant
 proprietor is but a serf who does enforced labour for himself instead of
 for his lord.
After thus proving clearly, that even if capitalist production
 had no existence, still it would always exist, Mill is consistent enough
 to show, on the contrary, that it has no existence, even when it does exist.
In reality, the labourer advances his labour gratuitously to the capitalist during, say one week, in order
 to receive the market price at the end of the week, &c., and it is
 this which, according to Mill, transforms him into a capitalist. On the
 level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the imbecile flatness of
 the present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great
 intellects.
The value of labour-power is determined by the value
 of the necessaries of life habitually required by the average labourer.
 The quantity of these necessaries is known at any given epoch of a given
 society, and can therefore be treated as a constant magnitude. What changes,
 is the value of this quantity. There are, besides, two other factors that
 enter into the determination of the value of labour-power. One, the expenses
 of developing that power, which expenses vary with the mode of production;
 the other, its natural diversity, the difference between the labour-power
 of men and women, of children and adults. The employment of these different
 sorts of labour-power, an employment which is, in its turn, made necessary
 by the mode of production, makes a great difference in the cost of maintaining
 the family of the labourer, and in the value of the labour-power of the
 adult male. Both these factors, however, are excluded in the following
 investigation. [1]
I assume (1) that commodities are sold at their value; (2) that
 the price of labour-power rises occasionally above its value, but never
 sinks below it.
On this assumption we have seen that the relative magnitudes of
 surplus-value and of price of labour-power are determined by three circumstances;
 (1) the length of the working-day, or the extensive magnitude of labour;
 (2) the normal intensity of labour, its intensive magnitude, whereby a
 given quantity of labour is expended in a given time; (3) the productiveness
 of labour, whereby the same quantum of labour yields, in a given time, a
 greater or less quantum of product, dependent on the degree of development
 in the conditions of production. Very different combinations are clearly
 possible, according as one of the three factors is constant and two variable,
 or two constant and one variable, or lastly, all three simultaneously variable.
 And the number of these combinations is augmented by the fact that, when
 these factors simultaneously vary, the amount and direction of their respective
 variations may differ. In what follows the chief combinations alone are
 considered.
On these assumptions the value of labour-power, and
 the magnitude of surplus-value, are determined by three laws.
(1.) A working day of given length always creates the same
 amount of value, no matter how the productiveness of labour, and, with
 it, the mass of the product, and the price of each single commodity produced,
 may vary.
If the value created by a working-day of 12 hours be, say, six
 shillings, then, although the mass of the articles produced varies with
 the productiveness of labour, the only result is that the value represented
 by six shillings is spread over a greater or less number of articles.
(2.) Surplus-value and the value of labour-power vary in
 opposite directions. A variation in the productiveness of labour, its increase
 or diminution, causes a variation in the opposite direction in the value
 of labour-power, and in the same direction in surplus-value.
The value created by a working day of 12 hours is a constant quantity,
 say, six shillings. This constant quantity is the sum of the surplus-value
 plus the value of the labour-power, which latter value the labourer replaces
 by an equivalent. It is self-evident, that if a constant quantity consists
 of two parts, neither of them can increase without the other diminishing.
 Let the two parts at starting be equal; 3 shillings value of labour-power,
 3 shillings surplus-value. Then the value of the labour-power cannot rise
 from three shillings to four, without the surplus-value falling from three
 shillings to two; and the surplus-value cannot rise from three shillings
 to four, without the value of labour-power falling from three shillings
 to two. Under these circumstances, therefore, no change can take place
 in the absolute magnitude, either of the surplus-value, or of the value
 of labour-power, without a simultaneous change in their relative magnitudes,
 i.e., relatively to each other. It is impossible for them to rise
 or fall simultaneously.
Further, the value of labour-power cannot fall, and consequently
 surplus-value cannot rise, without a rise in the productiveness of labour.
 For instance, in the above case, the value of the labour-power cannot sink
 from three shillings to two, unless an increase in the productiveness of
 labour makes it possible to produce in 4 hours the same quantity of necessaries
 as previously required 6 hours to produce. On the other hand, the value
 of the labour-power cannot rise from three shillings to four, without a
 decrease in the productiveness of labour, whereby eight hours become requisite
 to produce the same quantity of necessaries, for the production of which
 six hours previously sufficed. It follows from this, that an increase in
 the productiveness of labour causes a fall in the value of labour-power
 and a consequent rise in surplus-value, while, on the other hand, a decrease
 in such productiveness causes a rise in the value of labour-power, and
 a fall in surplus-value.
In formulating this law, Ricardo overlooked one circumstance;
 although a change in the magnitude of the surplus-value or surplus-labour
 causes a change in the opposite direction in the magnitude of the value
 of labour-power, or in the quantity of necessary labour, it by no means
 follows that they vary in the same proportion. They do increase or diminish
 by the same quantity. But their proportional increase or diminution depends
 on their original magnitudes before the change in the productiveness of
 labour took place. If the value of the labour-power be 4 shillings, or
 the necessary labour time 8 hours, and the surplus-value be 2 shillings,
 or the surplus-labour 4 hours, and if, in consequence of an increase in
 the productiveness of labour, the value of the labour-power fall to 3 shillings,
 or the necessary labour to 6 hours, the surplus-value will rise to 3 shillings,
 or the surplus-labour to 6 hours. The same quantity, 1 shilling or 2 hours,
 is added in one case and subtracted in the other. But the proportional
 change of magnitude is different in each case. While the value of the labour-power
 falls from 4 shillings to 3, i.e., by 1/4 or 25%, the surplus-value
 rises from 2 shillings to 3, i.e., by 1/2 or 50%. It therefore follows
 that the proportional increase or diminution in surplus-value, consequent
 on a given change in the productiveness of labour, depends on the original
 magnitude of that portion of the working day which embodies itself in surplus-value;
 the smaller that portion, the greater is the proportional change; the greater
 that portion, the less is the proportional change.
(3.) Increase or diminution in surplus-value is always
 consequent on, and never the cause of, the corresponding diminution or
 increase in the value of labour-power. [2]
Since the working-day is constant in magnitude, and is represented
 by a value of constant magnitude, since, to every variation in the magnitude
 of surplus-value, there corresponds an inverse variation in the value of
 labour-power, and since the value of labour-power cannot change, except
 in consequence of a change in the productiveness of labour, it clearly
 follows, under these conditions, that every change of magnitude in surplus-value
 arises from an inverse change of magnitude in the value of labour-power.
 If, then, as we have already seen, there can be no change of absolute magnitude
 in the value of labour-power, and in surplus-value, unaccompanied by a
 change in their relative magnitudes, so now it follows that no change in
 their relative magnitudes is possible, without a previous change in the
 absolute magnitude of the value of labour-power.
According to the third law, a change in the magnitude of surplus-value,
 presupposes a movement in the value of labour-power, which movement is
 brought about by a variation in the productiveness of labour. The limit
 of this change is given by the altered value of labour-power. Nevertheless,
 even when circumstances allow the law to operate, subsidiary movements
 may occur. For example: if in consequence of the increased productiveness
 of labour, the value of labour-power falls from 4 shillings to 3, or the
 necessary labour time from 8 hours to 6, the price of labour-power may
 possibly not fall below 3s. 8d., 3s. 6d., or 3s. 2d., and the surplus-value
 consequently not rise above 3s. 4d., 3s. 6d., or 3s. 10d. The amount of
 this fall, the lowest limit of which is 3 shillings (the new value of labour-power),
 depends on the relative weight, which the pressure of capital on the one
 side, and the resistance of the labourer on the other, throws into the
 scale.
The value of labour-power is determined by the value of a given
 quantity of necessaries. It is the value and not the mass of these necessaries
 that varies with the productiveness of labour. It is, however, possible
 that, owing to an increase of productiveness, both the labourer and the
 capitalist may simultaneously be able to appropriate a greater quantity
 of these necessaries, without any change in the price of labour-power or
 in surplus-value. If the value of labour-power be 3 shillings, and the
 necessary labour time amount to 6 hours, if the surplus-value likewise
 be 3 shillings, and the surplus-labour 6 hours, then if the productiveness
 of labour were doubled without altering the ratio of necessary labour to
 surplus-labour, there would be no change of magnitude in surplus-value
 and price of labour-power. The only result would be that each of them would
 represent twice as many use-values as before; these use-values being twice
 as cheap as before. Although labour-power would be unchanged in price,
 it would be above its value. If, however, the price of labour-power had
 fallen, not to 1s. 6d., the lowest possible point consistent with its new
 value, but to 2s. 10d. or 2s. 6d., still this lower price would represent
 an increased mass of necessaries. In this way it is possible with an increasing
 productiveness of labour, for the price of labour-power to keep on falling,
 and yet this fall to be accompanied by a constant growth in the mass of
 the labourer's means of subsistence. But even in such case, the fall in
 the value of labour-power would cause a corresponding rise of surplus-value,
 and thus the abyss between the labourer's position and that of the capitalist
 would keep widening. [3]
Ricardo was the first who accurately formulated the three laws
 we have above stated. But he falls into the following errors: (1) he looks
 upon the special conditions under which these laws hold good as the general
 and sole conditions of capitalist production. He knows no change, either
 in the length of the working-day, or in the intensity of labour; consequently
 with him there can be only one variable factor, viz., the productiveness
 of labour; (2), and this error vitiates his analysis much more than (1),
 he has not, any more than have the other economists, investigated surplus-value
 as such, i.e., independently of its particular forms, such as profit,
 rent, &c. He therefore confounds together the laws of the rate of surplus-value
 and the laws of the rate of profit. The rate of profit is, as we have already
 said, the ratio of the surplus-value to the total capital advanced; the
 rate of surplus-value is the ratio of the surplus-value to the variable
 part of that capital. Assume that a capital C of £500 is made up
 of raw material, instruments of labour, &c. (c) to the amount of £400;
 and of wages (v) to the amount of £100; and further, that the surplus-value
 (s) = £100. Then we have rate of surplus-value s/v = £100/£100
 = 100%. But the rate of profit s/c = £100/£500 = 20%. It is,
 besides, obvious that the rate of profit may depend on circumstances that
 in no way affect the rate of surplus-value. I shall show in Book III. that,
 with a given rate of surplus-value, we may have any number of rates of
 profit, and that various rates of surplus-value may, under given conditions,
 express themselves in a single rate of profit.
We know that, with transitory exceptions, a change in the productiveness
 of labour does not cause any change in the value of labour-power, nor consequently
 in the magnitude of surplus-value, unless the products of the industries
 affected are articles habitually consumed by the labourers. In the present
 case this condition no longer applies. For when the variation is either
 in the duration or in the intensity of labour, there is always a corresponding
 change in the magnitude of the value created, independently of the nature
 of the article in which that value is embodied.
If the intensity of labour were to increase simultaneously and
 equally in every branch of industry, then the new and higher degree of
 intensity would become the normal degree for the society, and would therefore
 cease to be taken account of. But still, even then, the intensity of labour
 would be different in different countries, and would modify the international
 application of the law of value. The more intense working-day of one nation
 would be represented by a greater sum of money than would the less intense
 day of another nation. [4]
The working-day may vary in two ways. It may be made
 either longer or shorter. From our present data, and within the limits
 of the assumptions made on p. 487 [v. 35 MECW p. 520] we obtain the following laws:
(1.) The working-day creates a greater or less amount of
 value in proportion to its length — thus, a variable and not a constant
 quantity of value.
(2.) Every change in the relation between the magnitudes
 of surplus-value and of the value of labour-power arises from a change
 in the absolute magnitude of the surplus-labour, and consequently of the
 surplus-value.
(3.) The absolute value of labour-power can change only
 in consequence of the reaction exercised by the prolongation of surplus-labour
 upon the wear and tear of labour-power. Every change in this absolute value
 is therefore the effect, but never the cause, of a change in the magnitude
 of surplus-value.
We begin with the case in which the working-day is shortened.
(1.) A shortening of the working-day under the conditions
 given above, leaves the value of labour-power, and with it, the necessary
 labour time, unaltered. It reduces the surplus-labour and surplus-value.
 Along with the absolute magnitude of the latter, its relative magnitude
 also falls, i.e., its magnitude relatively to the value of labour-power
 whose magnitude remains unaltered. Only by lowering the price of labour-power
 below its value could the capitalist save himself harmless.
All the usual arguments against the shortening of the working-day,
 assume that it takes place under the conditions we have here supposed to
 exist; but in reality the very contrary is the case: a change in the productiveness
 and intensity of labour either precedes, or immediately follows, a shortening
 of the working-day. [5]
(2.) Lengthening of the working-day. Let the necessary
 labour time be 6 hours, or the value of labour-power 3 shillings; also
 let the surplus-labour be 6 hours or the surplus-value 3 shillings. The
 whole working-day then amounts to 12 hours and is embodied in a value of
 6 shillings. If, now, the working-day be lengthened by 2 hours and the
 price of labour-power remain unaltered, the surplus-value increases both
 absolutely and relatively. Although there is no absolute change in the
 value of labour-power, it suffers a relative fall. Under the conditions
 assumed in 1. there could not be a change of relative magnitude in the
 value of labour-power without a change in its absolute magnitude. Here,
 on the contrary, the change of relative magnitude in the value of labour-power
 is the result of the change of absolute magnitude in surplus-value.
Since the value in which a day's labour is embodied, increases
 with the length of that day, it is evident that the surplus-value and the
 price of labour-power may simultaneously increase, either by equal or unequal
 quantities. This simultaneous increase is therefore possible in two cases,
 one, the actual lengthening of the working-day, the other, an increase
 in the intensity of labour unaccompanied by such lengthening.
When the working-day is prolonged, the price of labour-power may
 fall below its value, although that price be nominally unchanged or even
 rise. The value of a day's labour-power is, as will be remembered, estimated
 from its normal average duration, or from the normal duration of life among
 the labourers, and from corresponding normal transformations of organised
 bodily matter into motion, [6] in conformity with the
 nature of man. Up to a certain point, the increased wear and tear of labour-power,
 inseparable from a lengthened working-day, may be compensated by higher
 wages. But beyond this point the wear and tear increases in geometrical
 progression, and every condition suitable for the normal reproduction and
 functioning of labour-power is suppressed. The price of labour-power and
 the degree of its exploitation cease to be commensurable quantities.
It is obvious that a large number of combinations
 are here possible. Any two of the factors may vary and the third remain
 constant, or all three may vary at once. They may vary either in the same
 or in different degrees, in the same or in opposite directions, with the
 result that the variations counteract one another, either wholly or in
 part. Nevertheless the analysis of every possible case is easy in view
 of the results given in I., II., and III. The effect of every possible
 combination may be found by treating each factor in turn as variable, and
 the other two constant for the time being. We shall, therefore, notice,
 and that briefly, but two important cases.
In speaking of diminishing productiveness of labour, we here refer to diminution
 in those industries whose products determine the value of labour-power;
 such a diminution, for example, as results from decreasing fertility of
 the soil, and from the corresponding dearness of its products. Take the
 working-day at 12 hours and the value created by it at 6 shillings, of
 which one half replaces the value of the labour-power, the other forms
 the surplus-value. Suppose, in consequence of the increased dearness of
 the products of the soil, that the value of labour-power rises from 3 shillings
 to 4, and therefore the necessary labour time from 6 hours to 8. If there
 be no change in the length of the working-day, the surplus-labour would
 fall from 6 hours to 4, the surplus-value from 3 shillings to 2. If the
 day be lengthened by 2 hours, i.e., from 12 hours to 14, the surplus-labour
 remains at 6 hours, the surplus-value at 3 shillings [note], but the surplus-value
 decreases compared with the value of labour-power, as measured by the necessary
 labour time. If the day be lengthened by 4 hours, viz., from 12 hours to
 16, the proportional magnitudes of surplus-value and value of labour-power,
 of surplus-labour and necessary labour, continue unchanged, but the absolute
 magnitude of surplus-value rises from 3 shillings to 4, that of the surplus-labour
 from 6 hours to 8, an increment of 33 1/3%. Therefore, with diminishing
 productiveness of labour and a simultaneous lengthening of the working-day,
 the absolute magnitude of surplus-value may continue unaltered, at the
 same time that its relative magnitude diminishes; its relative magnitude
 may continue unchanged, at the same time that its absolute magnitude increases;
 and, provided the lengthening of the day be sufficient, both may increase.
In the period between 1799 and 1815 the increasing price of provisions
 led in England to a nominal rise in wages, although the real wages, expressed
 in the necessaries of life, fell. From this fact West and Ricardo drew
 the conclusion, that the diminution in the productiveness of agricultural
 labour had brought about a fall in the rate of surplus-value, and they
 made this assumption of a fact that existed only in their imaginations,
 the starting-point of important investigations into the relative magnitudes
 of wages, profits, and rent. But, as a matter of fact, surplus-value had
 at that time, thanks to the increased intensity of labour, and to the prolongation
 of the working-day, increased both in absolute and relative magnitude.
 This was the period in which the right to prolong the hours of labour to
 an outrageous extent was established; [7] the period
 that was especially characterised by an accelerated accumulation of capital
 here, by pauperism there. [8]
Increased productiveness and greater intensity of labour, both have a like
 effect. They both augment the mass of articles produced in a given time.
 Both, therefore, shorten that portion of the working-day which the labourer
 needs to produce his means of subsistence or their equivalent. The minimum
 length of the working-day is fixed by this necessary but contractile portion
 of it. If the whole working-day were to shrink to the length of this portion,
 surplus-labour would vanish, a consummation utterly impossible under the
 régime of capital. Only by suppressing the capitalist form of production
 could the length of the working-day be reduced to the necessary labour time.
 But, even in that case, the latter would extend its limits. On the one
 hand, because the notion of “means of subsistence” would considerably expand,
 and the labourer would lay claim to an altogether different standard of
 life. On the other hand, because a part of what is now surplus-labour,
 would then count as necessary labour; I mean the labour of forming a fund
 for reserve and accumulation.
The more the productiveness of labour increases, the more can
 the working-day be shortened; and the more the working-day is shortened,
 the more can the intensity of labour increase. From a social point of view,
 the productiveness increases in the same ratio as the economy of labour,
 which, in its turn, includes not only economy of the means of production,
 but also the avoidance of all useless labour. The capitalist mode of production,
 while on the one hand, enforcing economy in each individual business, on
 the other hand, begets, by its anarchical system of competition, the most
 outrageous squandering of labour-power and of the social means of production,
 not to mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at present
 indispensable, but in themselves superfluous.
The intensity and productiveness of labour being given, the time
 which society is bound to devote to material production is shorter, and
 as a consequence, the time at its disposal for the free development, intellectual
 and social, of the individual is greater, in proportion as the work is
 more and more evenly divided among all the able-bodied members of society,
 and as a particular class is more and more deprived of the power to shift
 the natural burden of labour from its own shoulders to those of another
 layer of society. In this direction, the shortening of the working-day
 finds at last a limit in the generalisation of labour. In capitalist society
 spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time
 of the masses into labour time.
We have seen that the rate of surplus-value is represented
 by the following formulae:
The two first of these formulae represent, as a ratio of values, that which,
 in the third, is represented as a ratio of the times during which those
 values are produced. These formulae, supplementary the one to the other,
 are rigorously definite and correct. We therefore find them substantially,
 but not consciously, worked out in classical Political Economy. There we
 meet with the following derivative formulae.
One and the same ratio is here expressed as a ratio of labour-times, of
 the values in which those labour-times are embodied, and of the products
 in which those values exist. It is of course understood that, by “Value
 of the Product,” is meant only the value newly created in a working-day,
 the constant part of the value of the product being excluded.
In all of these formulae (II.), the actual degree of exploitation of
 labour, or the rate of surplus-value, is falsely expressed. Let the working-day
 be 12 hours. Then, making the same assumptions as in former instances,
 the real degree of exploitation of labour will be represented in the following
 proportions.
From formulae II. we get very differently,
These derivative formulae express, in reality, only the proportion in which
 the working-day, or the value produced by it, is divided between capitalist
 and labourer. If they are to be treated as direct expressions of the degree
 of self-expansion of capital, the following erroneous law would hold good:
 Surplus-labour or surplus-value can never reach 100%. [1] Since the surplus-labour is only an aliquot part of the working-day, or
 since surplus-value is only an aliquot part of the value created, the surplus-labour
 must necessarily be always less than the working-day, or the surplus-value
 always less than the total value created. In order, however, to attain
 the ratio of 100:100 they must be equal. In order that the surplus-labour
 may absorb the whole day (i.e., an average day of any week or year), the
 necessary labour must sink to zero. But if the necessary labour vanish, so
 too does the surplus-labour, since it is only a function of the former.
 The ratio
The favorite method of treating the working-day as constant in magnitude
 became, through the use of formulae II., a fixed usage, because in them
 surplus-labour is always compared with a working-day of given length. The
 same holds good when the repartition of the value produced is exclusively
 kept in sight. The working-day that has already been realized in given value,
 must necessarily be a day of given length.
The habit of representing surplus-value and value of labour-power as
 fractions of the value created — a habit that originates in the capitalist
 mode of production itself, and whose import will hereafter be disclosed
 — conceals the very transaction that characterizes capital, namely the
 exchange of variable capital for living labour-power, and the consequent
 exclusion of the labourer from the product. Instead of the real fact, we
 have false semblance of an association, in which labourer and capitalist
 divide the product in proportion to the different elements which they respectively
 contribute towards its formation. [3]
Moreover, the formulae II. can at any time be reconverted into
 formulae I. If, for instance, we have
There is a third formula which I have occasionally already anticipated;
 it is
After the investigations we have given above, it is no longer possible
 to be misled, by the formula
The capitalist pays the value, so far as price coincides with value, of
 the labour-power, and receives in exchange the disposal of the living labour-power
 itself. His usufruct is spread over two periods. During one the labourer
 produces a value that is only equal to the value of his labour-power; he
 produces its equivalent. This the capitalist receives in return for his
 advance of the price of the labour-power, a product ready made in the market.
 During the other period, the period of surplus-labour, the usufruct of the
 labour-power creates a value for the capitalist, that costs him no equivalent.
 [4] This expenditure of labour-power comes to him gratis. In this sense it is that surplus-labour can be called unpaid labour.
Capital, therefore, is not only, as Adam Smith says, the command over
 labour. It is essentially the command over unpaid labour. All surplus-value,
 whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently
 crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labour.
 The secret of the self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having
 the disposal of a definite quantity of other people’s unpaid labour.
On the surface of bourgeois society the wage of the
 labourer appears as the price of labour, a certain quantity of money that
 is paid for a certain quantity of labour. Thus people speak of the value
 of labour and call its expression in money its necessary or natural price.
 On the other hand they speak of the market-prices of labour, i.e., prices
 oscillating above or below its natural price.
But what is the value of a commodity? The objective form of the
 social labour expended in its production. And how do we measure the quantity
 of this value? By the quantity of the labour contained in it. How then
 is the value, e.g., of a 12 hour working-day to be determined? By the
 12 working-hours contained in a working-day of 12 hours, which is an absurd
 tautology. [1]
In order to be sold as a commodity in the market, labour must
 at all events exist before it is sold. But, could the labourer give it
 an independent objective existence, he would sell a commodity and not labour.
 [2]
Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of money, i.e.,
 of realized labour, with living labour would either do away with the law
 of value which only begins to develop itself freely on the basis of capitalist
 production, or do away with capitalist production itself, which rests directly
 on wage-labour. The working-day of 12 hours embodies itself, e.g., in a
 money-value of 6s. Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the labourer
 receives 6s, for 12 hours’ labour; the price of his labour would be equal
 to the price of his product. In this case he produces no surplus-value
 for the buyer of his labour, the 6s. are not transformed into capital,
 the basis of capitalist production vanishes. But it is on this very basis
 that he sells his labour and that his labour is wage-labour. Or else he
 receives for 12 hours’ labour less than 6s., i.e., less than 12 hours’
 labour. Twelve hours’ labour are exchanged against 10, 6, &c., hours’
 labour. This equalization of unequal quantities not merely does away with
 the determination of value. Such a self-destructive contradiction cannot
 be in any way even enunciated or formulated as a law. [3]
It is of no avail to deduce the exchange of more labour against
 less, from their difference of form, the one being realized, the other
 living. [4] This is the more absurd as the value of a
 commodity is determined not by the quantity of labour actually realized
 in it, but by the quantity of living labour necessary for its production.
 A commodity represents, say, 6 working-hours. If an invention is made by
 which it can be produced in 3 hours, the value, even of the commodity already
 produced, falls by half. It represents now 3 hours of social labour instead
 of the 6 formerly necessary. It is the quantity of labour required for
 its production, not the realized form of that labour, by which the amount
 of the value of a commodity is determined.
That which comes directly face to face with the possessor of money
 on the market, is in fact not labour, but the labourer. What the latter
 sells is his labour-power. As soon as his labour actually begins, it has
 already ceased to belong to him; it can therefore no longer be sold by
 him. Labour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value, but has
 itself no value. [5]
In the expression “value of labour,” the idea of value is not
 only completely obliterated, but actually reversed. It is an expression
 as imaginary as the value of the earth. These imaginary expressions, arise,
 however, from the relations of production themselves. They are categories
 for the phenomenal forms of essential relations. That in their appearance
 things often represent themselves in inverted form is pretty well known
 in every science except Political Economy. [6]
Let us next see how value (and price) of labour-power, present
 themselves in this transformed condition as wages.
We know that the daily value of labour-power is calculated upon
 a certain length of the labourer’s life, to which, again, corresponds a
 certain length of working-day. Assume the habitual working-day as 12 hours,
 the daily value of labour-power as 3s., the expression in money of a value
 that embodies 6 hours of labour. If the labourer receives 3s., then he
 receives the value of his labour-power functioning through 12 hours. If,
 now, this value of a day’s labour-power is expressed as the value of a
 day’s labour itself, we have the formula: Twelve hours’ labour has a value
 of 3s. The value of labour-power thus determines the value of labour, or,
 expressed in money, its necessary price. If, on the other hand, the price
 of labour-power differs from its value, in like manner the price of labour
 differs from its so-called value.
As the value of labour is only an irrational expression for the
 value of labour-power, it follows, of course, that the value of labour
 must always be less than the value it produces, for the capitalist always
 makes labour-power work longer than is necessary for the reproduction of
 its own value. In the above example, the value of the labour-power that
 functions through 12 hours is 3s., a value for the reproduction of which
 6 hours are required. The value which the labour-power produces is, on
 the other hand, 6s., because it, in fact, functions during 12 hours, and
 the value it produces depends, not on its own value, but on the length
 of time it is in action. Thus, we have a result absurd at first sight that
 labour which creates a value of 6s. possesses a value of 3s. [7]
We see, further: The value of 3s. by which a part only of the
 working-day – i.e., 6 hours’ labour-is paid for, appears as the value or
 price of the whole working-day of 12 hours, which thus includes 6 hours
 unpaid for. The wage form thus extinguishes every trace of the division
 of the working-day into necessary labour and surplus-labour, into paid
 and unpaid labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the corvée,
 the labour of the worker for himself, and his compulsory labour for his
 lord, differ in space and time in the clearest possible way. In slave labour,
 even that part of the working-day in which the slave is only replacing
 the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact,
 he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave’s
 labour appears as unpaid labour. [8] In wage labour,
 on the contrary, even surplus-labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid.
 There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself;
 here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.
Hence, we may understand the decisive importance of the transformation
 of value and price of labour-power into the form of wages, or into the
 value and price of labour itself. This phenomenal form, which makes the
 actual relation invisible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that
 relation, forms the basis of all the juridical notions of both labourer
 and capitalist, of all the mystifications of the capitalistic mode of production,
 of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic shifts of the
 vulgar economists.
If history took a long time to get at the bottom of the mystery
 of wages, nothing, on the other hand, is more easy to understand than the
 necessity, the raison d’etre, of this phenomenon.
The exchange between capital and labour at first presents itself
 to the mind in the same guise as the buying and selling of all other commodities.
 The buyer gives a certain sum of money, the seller an article of a nature
 different from money. The jurist’s consciousness recognizes in this, at
 most, a material difference, expressed in the juridically equivalent formula:
 “Do ut des, do ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias.” [9]
Furthermore, exchange-value and use-value, being intrinsically
 incommensurable magnitudes, the expressions “value of labour,” “price of
 labour,” do not seem more irrational than the expressions “value of cotton,” 
 “price of cotton.” Moreover, the labourer is paid after he has given his
 labour. In its function of means of payment, money realizes subsequently
 the value or price of the article supplied – i.e., in this particular case,
 the value or price of the labour supplied. Finally, the use-value supplied
 by the labourer to the capitalist is not, in fact, his labour-power, but
 its function, some definite useful labour, the work of tailoring, shoemaking,
 spinning, &c. That this same labour is, on the other hand, the universal
 value-creating element, and thus possesses a property by which it differs
 from all other commodities, is beyond the cognizance of the ordinary mind.
Let us put ourselves in the place of the labourer who receives
 for 12 hours’ labour, say the value produced by 6 hours’ labour, say 3s.
 For him, in fact, his 12 hours’ labour is the means of buying the 3s. The
 value of his labour-power may vary, with the value of his usual means of
 subsistence, from 3 to 4 shillings, or from 3 to 2 shillings; or, if the
 value of his labour-power remains constant, its price may, in consequence
 of changing relations of demand and supply, rise to 4s. or fall to 2s.
 He always gives 12 hours of labour. Every change in the amount of the equivalent
 that he receives appears to him, therefore, necessarily as a change in
 the value or price of his 12 hours’ work. This circumstance misled Adam
 Smith, who treated the working-day as a constant quantity, [10] to the assertion that the value of labour is constant, although the value of the means of subsistence may vary, and the same working-day, therefore,
 may represent itself in more or less money for the labourer.
Let us consider, on the other hand, the capitalist. He wishes
 to receive as much labour as possible for as little money as possible.
 Practically, therefore, the only thing that interests him is the difference
 between the price of labour-power and the value which its function creates.
 But, then, he tries to buy all commodities as cheaply as possible, and
 always accounts for his profit by simple cheating, by buying under, and
 selling over the value. Hence, he never comes to see that, if such a thing
 as the value of labour really existed, and he really paid this value, no
 capital would exist, his money would not be turned into capital.
Moreover, the actual movement of wages presents phenomena which
 seem to prove that not the value of labour-power is paid, but the value
 of its function, of labour itself. We may reduce these phenomena to two
 great classes: 1.) Change of wages with the changing length of the working-day.
 One might as well conclude that not the value of a machine is paid, but
 that of its working, because it costs more to hire a machine for a week
 than for a day. 2.) The individual difference in the wages of different
 labourers who do the same kind of work. We find this individual difference,
 but are not deceived by it, in the system of slavery, where, frankly and
 openly, without any circumlocution, labour-power itself is sold. Only,
 in the slave system, the advantage of a labour-power above the average,
 and the disadvantage of a labour-power below the average, affects the slave-owner;
 in the wage-labour system, it affects the labourer himself, because his
 labour-power is, in the one case, sold by himself, in the other, by a third
 person.
For the rest, in respect to the phenomenal form, “value and price
 of labour,” or “wages,” as contrasted with the essential relation manifested
 therein, viz., the value and price of labour-power, the same difference
 holds that holds in respect to all phenomena and their hidden substratum.
 The former appear directly and spontaneously as current modes of thought;
 the latter must first be discovered by science. Classical Political Economy
 nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however, consciously
 formulating it. This it cannot, so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.
Wages themselves again take many forms, a fact not
 recognizable in the ordinary economic treatises which, exclusively interested
 in the material side of the question, neglect every difference of form.
 An exposition of all these forms however, belongs to the special study
 of wage labour, not therefore to this work. Still the two fundamental forms
 must be briefly worked out here.
The sale of labour-power, as will be remembered, takes place for
 a definite period of time. The converted form under which the daily, weekly,
 &c., value of labour-power presents itself, is hence that of time-wages, therefore day-wages, &c.
Next it is to be noted that the laws set forth, in the 17th chapter,
 on the changes in the relative magnitudes of price of labour-power and
 surplus-value, pass by a simple transformation of form, into laws of wages.
 Similarly the distinction between the exchange-value of labour power, and
 the sum of the necessaries of life into which this value is converted,
 now reappears as the distinction between nominal and real wages. It would
 be useless to repeat here, with regard to the phenomenal form, what has
 been already worked out in the substantial form. We limit ourselves therefore
 to a few points characteristic of time-wages.
The sum of money [1] which the labourer receives
 for his daily or weekly labour, forms the amount of his nominal wages,
 or of his wages estimated in value. But it is clear that according to the
 length of the working-day, that is, according to the amount of actual labour
 daily supplied, the same daily or weekly wage may represent very different
 prices of labour, i.e., very different sums of money for the same quantity
 of labour. [2] We must, therefore, in considering time-wages, again distinguish between the sum-total of the daily or weekly wages, &c.,
 and the price of labour. How then, to find this price, i.e., the money-value
 of a given quantity of labour? The average price of labour is found, when
 the average daily value of the labour-power is divided by the average number
 of hours in the working-day. If, e.g., the daily value of labour-power
 is 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 working-hours, and if the
 working-day is 12 hours, the price of 1 working hour is 3/12 shillings
 = 3d. The price of the working-hour thus found serves as the unit measure
 for the price of labour.
It follows therefore that the daily and weekly wages, &c.,
 may remain the same, although the price of labour falls constantly. If,
 e.g., the habitual working-day is 10 hours and the daily value of the labour-power
 3s., the price of the working-hour is 3 3/5d. It falls to 3d. as soon as
 the working-day rises to 12 hours, to 2 2/5d as soon as it rises to 15
 hours. Daily or weekly wages remain, despite all this, unchanged. On the
 contrary, the daily or weekly wages may rise, although the price of labour
 remains constant or even falls. If, e.g., the working-day is 10 hours,
 and the daily value of labour-power 3 shillings, the price of one working-hour
 is 3 3/5d. If the labourer, in consequence of increase of trade, works
 12 hours, the price of labour remaining the same, his daily wage now rises
 to 3 shillings 7 1/5 d. without any variation in the price of labour. The
 same result might follow if, instead of the extensive amount of labour,
 its intensive amount increased. [3] 
 The rise of the nominal daily or weekly wages may therefore be accompanied by a price of labour
 that remains stationary or falls. The same holds as to the income of the
 labourer’s family, as soon as the quantity of labour expended by the head
 of the family is increased by the labour of the members of his family.
 There are, therefore, methods of lowering the price of labour independent
 of the reduction of the nominal daily or weekly wages. [4]
As a general law it follows that, given the amount of daily or
 weekly labour, &c., the daily or weekly wages depend on the price
 of labour which itself varies either with the value of labour-power, or
 with the difference between its price and its value. Given, on the other
 hand, the price of labour, the daily or weekly wages depend on the quantity
 of the daily or weekly labour.
The unit-measure for time-wages, the price of the working-hour,
 is the quotient of the value of a day’s labour-power, divided by the number
 of hours of the average working-day. Let the latter be 12 hours, and the
 daily value of labour-power 3 shillings, the value of the product of 6
 hours of labour. Under these circumstances the price of a working hour
 is 3d.; the value produced in it is 6d. If the labourer is now employed
 less than 12 hours (or less than 6 days in the week), e.g., only 6 or 8
 hours, he receives, with this price of labour, only 2s. or 1s. 6d. a day.
 [5] As on our hypothesis he must work on the average
 6 hours daily, in order to produce a day’s wage corresponding merely to
 the value of his labour power, as according to the same hypothesis he works
 only half of every hour for himself, and half for the capitalist, it is
 clear that he cannot obtain for himself the value of the product of 6 hours
 if he is employed less than 12 hours. In previous chapters we saw the destructive
 consequences of over-work; here we find the sources of the sufferings that
 result to the labourer from his insufficient employment.
If the hour’s wage is fixed so that the capitalist does not bind
 himself to pay a day’s or a week’s wage, but only to pay wages for the
 hours during which he chooses to employ the labourer, he can employ him
 for a shorter time than that which is originally the basis of the calculation
 of the hour-wage, or the unit-measure of the price of labour. Since this
 unit is determined by the ratio
With an increasing daily or weekly wage the price of labour may
 remain nominally constant, and yet may fall below its normal level. This
 occurs every time that, the price of labour (reckoned per working-hour)
 remaining constant, the working-day is prolonged beyond its customary length.
 If in the fraction:
It is a fact generally known that, the longer the working-days,
 in any branch of industry, the lower are the wages. [10] A. Redgrave, factory inspector, illustrates this by a comparative review of the 20 years from 1839-1859, according to which wages rose in the factories
 under the 10 Hours Law, whilst they fell in the factories in which the
 work lasted 14 to 15 hours daily. [11]
From the law, “the price of labour being given, the daily or weekly
 wage depends on the quantity of labour expended,” it follows, first of
 all, that the lower the price of labour, the greater must be the quantity
 of labour, or the longer must be the working-day for the labourer to secure
 even a miserable average wage. The lowness of the price of labour acts
 here as a stimulus to the extension of the labour-time. [12]
On the other hand, the extension of the working-time produces,
 in its turn, a fall in the price of labour, and with this a fall in the
 day’s or week’s wages.
The determination of the price of labour by:
This jeremiad is also interesting because it shows how the appearance
 only of the relations of production mirrors itself in the brain of the
 capitalist. The capitalist does not know that the normal price of labour
 also includes a definite quantity of unpaid labour, and that this very
 unpaid labour is the normal source of his gain. The category of surplus
 labour-time does not exist at all for him, since it is included in the
 normal working-day, which he thinks he has paid for in the day’s wages.
 But over-time does exist for him, the prolongation of the working-day beyond
 the limits corresponding with the usual price of labour. Face to face with
 his underselling competitor, he even insists upon extra pay for this over-time.
 He again does not know that this extra pay includes unpaid labour, just
 as well as does the price of the customary hour of labour. For example,
 the price of one hour of the 12 hours’ working-day is 3d., say the value-product
 of half a working-hour, whilst the price of the over-time working-hour
 is 4d., or the value-product of 2/3 of a working hour. In the first case
 the capitalist appropriates to himself one-half, in the second, one-third
 of the working-hour without paying for it.
Wages by the piece are nothing else than a converted
 form of wages by time, just as wages by time are a converted form of the
 value or price of labour-power.
In piece wages it seems at first sight as if the use-value bought
 from the labourer was, not the function of his labour-power, living labour,
 but labour already realized in the product, and as if the price of this
 labour was determined, not as with time-wages, by the fraction
The confidence that trusts in this appearance ought to receive
 a first severe shock from the fact that both forms of wages exist side
 by side, simultaneously, in the same branches of industry; e.g.,
In the same saddlery shops of London, often for the same work,
 piece wages are paid to the French, time-wages to the English. In the regular
 factories in which throughout piece wages predominate, particular kinds
 of work are unsuitable to this form of wage, and are therefore paid by
 time. [3] But it is, moreover, self-evident that the
 difference of form in the payment of wages alters in no way their essential
 nature, although the one form may be more favorable to the development
 of capitalist production than the other.
Let the ordinary working-day contain 12 hours of which 6 are paid,
 6 unpaid. Let its value-product be 6 shillings, that of one hour’s labour
 therefore 6d. Let us suppose that, as the result of experience, a labourer
 who works with the average amount of intensity and skill, who, therefore,
 gives in fact only the time socially necessary to the production of an
 article, supplies in 12 hours 24 pieces, either distinct products or measurable
 parts of a continuous whole. Then the value of these 24 pieces, after.
 subtraction of the portion of constant capital contained in them, is 6
 shillings, and the value of a single piece 3d. The labourer receives 1
 ½d. per piece, and thus earns in 12 hours 3 shillings. Just as, with
 time-wages, it does not matter whether we assume that the labourer works
 6 hours for himself and 6 hours for the capitalist, or half of every hour
 for himself, and the other half for the capitalist, so here it does not
 matter whether we say that each individual piece is half paid, and half
 unpaid for, or that the price of 12 pieces is the equivalent only of the
 value of the labour-power, whilst in the other 12 pieces surplus-value
 is incorporated.
The form of piece wages is just as irrational as that of time-wages.
 Whilst in our example two pieces of a commodity, after subtraction of the
 value of the means of production consumed in them, are worth 6d. as being
 the product of one hour, the labourer receives for them a price of 3d.
 Piece wages do not, in fact, distinctly express any relation of value.
 It is not, therefore, a question of measuring the value of the piece by
 the working-time incorporated in it, but on the contrary, of measuring
 the working-time the labourer has expended by the number of pieces he has
 produced. In time-wages, the labour is measured by its immediate duration;
 in piece wages, by the quantity of products in which the labour has embodied
 itself during a given time. [4] The price of labour time itself is finally determined by the equation: value of a day’s labour = daily value of labour-power. Piece-wage is, therefore, only a modified
 form of time-wage.
Let us now consider a little more closely the characteristic peculiarities
 of piece wages.
The quality of the labour is here controlled by the work itself,
 which must be of average perfection if the piece-price is to be paid in
 full. Piece wages become, from this point of view, the most fruitful source
 of reductions of wages and capitalistic cheating.
They furnish to the capitalist an exact measure for the intensity
 of labour. Only the working-time which is embodied in a quantum of commodities
 determined beforehand, and experimentally fixed, counts as socially necessary
 working-time, and is paid as such. In the larger workshops of the London
 tailors, therefore, a certain piece of work, a waistcoat, e.g., is called
 an hour, or half an hour, the hour at 6d. By practice it is known how much
 is the average product of one hour. With new fashions, repairs, &c.,
 a contest arises between master and labourer as to whether a particular
 piece of work is one hour, and so on, until here also experience decides.
 Similarly in the London furniture workshops, &c. If the labourer does
 not possess the average capacity, if he cannot in consequence supply a
 certain minimum of work per day, he is dismissed. [5]
Since the quality and intensity of the work are here controlled
 by the form of wage itself, superintendence of labour becomes in great
 part superfluous. Piece wages therefore lay the foundation of the modern
 “domestic labour,” described above, as well as of a hierarchically organized
 system of exploitation and oppression. The latter has two fundamental forms.
 On the one hand, piece wages facilitate the interposition of parasites
 between the capitalist and the wage-labourer, the “sub-letting of labour.” 
 The gain of these middlemen comes entirely from the difference between
 the labour-price which the capitalist pays, and the part of that price
 which they actually allow to reach the labourer. [6]
 In England this system is characteristically called the “sweating system.” 
 On the other hand, piece-wage allows the capitalist to make a contract
 for so much per piece with the head labourer — in manufactures with the chief
 of some group, in mines with the extractor of the coal, in the factory
 with the actual machine-worker — at a price for which the head labourer
 himself undertakes the enlisting and payment of his assistant work people.
 The exploitation of the labourer by capital is here effected through the
 exploitation of the labourer by the labourer. [7]
Given piece-wage, it is naturally the personal interest of the
 labourer to strain his labour-power as intensely as possible; this enables
 the capitalist to raise more easily the normal degree of intensity of labour.
 [8] It is moreover now the personal interest of the labourer to lengthen the working-day, since with it his daily or weekly wages rise.
 [9] This gradually brings on a reaction like that already described in time-wages, without reckoning that the prolongation of the
 working-day, even if the piece wage remains constant, includes of necessity
 a fall in the price of the labour.
In time-wages, with few exceptions, the same wage holds for the
 same kind of work, whilst in piece wages, though the price of the working
 time is measured by a certain quantity of product, the day’s or week’s
 wage will vary with the individual differences of the labourers, of whom
 one supplies in a given time the minimum of product only, another the average,
 a third more than the average. With regard to actual receipts there is,
 therefore, great variety according to the different skill, strength, energy,
 staying-power, &c., of the individual labourers. [10] Of course this does not alter the general relations between capital and wage-labour. First, the individual differences balance one another in the
 workshop as a whole, which thus supplies in a given working-time the average
 product, and the total wages paid will be the average wages of that particular
 branch of industry. Second, the proportion between wages and surplus-value
 remains unaltered, since the mass of surplus labour supplied by each particular
 labourer corresponds with the wage received by him. But the wider scope
 that piece-wage gives to individuality tends to develop on the one hand
 that individuality, and with it the sense of liberty, independence, and
 self-control of the labourers, and on the other, their competition one
 with another. Piece-work has, therefore, a tendency, while raising individual wages above the average, to lower this average itself. But where a particular
 rate of piece-wage has for a long time been fixed by tradition, and its
 lowering, therefore, presented especial difficulties, the masters, in such
 exceptional cases, sometimes had recourse to its compulsory transformation
 into time-wages. Hence, e.g., in 1860 a great strike among the ribbon-weavers
 of Coventry. [11] Piece-wage is finally one of the chief supports of the hour-system described in the preceding chapter. [12]
From what has been shown so far, it follows that piece-wage is
 the form of wages most in harmony with the capitalist mode of production.
 Although by no means new — it figures side by side with time-wages officially
 in the French and English labour statutes of the 14th century — it only
 conquers a larger field for action during the period of manufacture, properly
 so-called. In the stormy youth of modern industry, especially from 1797
 to 1815, it served as a lever for the lengthening of the working-day, and
 the lowering of wages. Very important materials for the fluctuation of
 wages during that period are to be found in the Blue books: “Report and
 Evidence from the Select Committee on Petitions respecting the Corn Laws” 
 (Parliamentary Session of 1813-14), and “Report from the Lords’ Committee,
 on the State of the Growth, Commerce, and Consumption of Grain, and all
 Laws relating thereto” (Session of 1814-15). Here we find documentary evidence
 of the constant lowering of the price of labour from the beginning of the
 anti-Jacobin War. In the weaving industry, e.g., piece wages had fallen
 so low that, in spite of the very great lengthening of the working-day,
 the daily wages were then lower than before.
How little the increased intensity and extension of labour through piece wages
 benefited the agricultural proletariat, the following passage borrowed
 from a work on the side of the landlords and farmers shows:
Malthus at that time remarked with reference to the facts published by Parliament:
In the workshops under the Factory Acts, piece wages become the
 general rule, because capital can there only increase the efficacy of the
 working-day by intensifying labour. [16]
With the changing productiveness of labour the same quantum of
 product represents a varying working-time. Therefore, piece-wage also varies,
 for it is the money expression of a determined working-time. In our example
 above, 24 pieces were produced in 12 hours, whilst the value of the product
 of the 12 hours was 6s., the daily value of the labour-power 3s., the price
 of the labour-hour 3d., and the wage for one piece ½d. In one piece half-an-hour’s
 labour was absorbed. If the same working-day now supplies, in consequence
 of the doubled productiveness of labour, 48 pieces instead of 24, and all
 other circumstances remain unchanged, then the piece-wage falls from 1
 ½d. to 3/4d., as every piece now only represents 1/4, instead of ½
 of a working-hour. 24 by 1½d. = 3s., and in like manner 48 by 3/4d.
 = 3s. In other words, piece-wage is lowered in the same proportion as the
 number of the pieces produced in the same time rises, [17] and, therefore, as the working time spent on the same piece falls. This change in piece-wage, so far purely nominal, leads to constant battles
 between capitalist and labour. Either because the capitalist uses it as
 a pretext for actually lowering the price of labour, or because increased
 productive power of labour is accompanied by an increased intensity of
 the same. Or because the labourer takes seriously the appearance of piece wages
 (viz., that his product is paid for, and not his labour-power) and therefore
 revolts against a lowering of wages, unaccompanied by a lowering in the
 selling price of the commodity.
The capitalist rightly knocks on the head such pretensions as
 gross errors as to the nature of wage-labour. [19] He cries out against this usurping attempt to lay taxes on the advance of
 industry, and declares roundly that the productiveness of labour does not
 concern the labourer at all. [20]
In the 17th chapter we were occupied with the manifold combinations which may bring about a change in magnitude of the value of labour-power — this magnitude being considered either absolutely or relatively, i.e., as compared with surplus-value; whilst on the other hand, the quantum of the means of subsistence in which the price of labour is realized might again undergo fluctuations independent of, or different from, the changes of this price. [1] As has been already said, the simple translation of the value, or respectively of the price, of labour-power into the exoteric form of wages transforms all these laws into laws of the fluctuations of wages. That which appears in these fluctuations of wages within a single country as a series of varying combinations, may appear in different countries as contemporaneous difference of national wages. In the comparison of the wages in different nations, we must therefore take into account all the factors that determine changes in the amount of the value of labour-power; the price and the extent of the prime necessaries of life as naturally and historically developed, the cost of training the labourers, the part played by the labour of women and children, the productiveness of labour, its extensive and intensive magnitude. Even the most superficial comparison requires the reduction first of the average day-wage for the same trades, in different countries, to a uniform working-day. After this reduction to the same terms of the day-wages, time-wage must again be translated into piece-wage, as the latter only can be a measure both of the productivity and the intensity of labour.
In every country there is a certain average intensity of labour below which the labour for the production of a commodity requires more than the socially necessary time, and therefore does not reckon as labour of normal quality. Only a degree of intensity above the national average affects, in a given country, the measure of value by the mere duration of the working-time. This is not the case on the universal market, whose integral parts are the individual countries. The average intensity of labour changes from country to country; here it is greater, there less. These national averages form a scale, whose unit of measure is the average unit of universal labour. The more intense national labour, therefore, as compared with the less intense, produces in the same time more value, which expresses itself in more money.
But the law of value in its international application is yet more modified by the fact that on the world-market the more productive national labour reckons also as the more intense, so long as the more productive nation is not compelled by competition to lower the selling price of its commodities to the level of their value.
In proportion as capitalist production is developed in a country, in the same proportion do the national intensity and productivity of labour there rise above the international level. [2] The different quantities of commodities of the same kind, produced in different countries in the same working-time, have, therefore, unequal international values, which are expressed in different prices, i.e., in sums of money varying according to international values. The relative value of money will, therefore, be less in the nation with more developed capitalist mode of production than in the nation with less developed. It follows, then, that the nominal wages, the equivalent of labour-power expressed in money, will also be higher in the first nation than in the second; which does not at all prove that this holds also for the real wages, i.e., for the means of subsistence placed at the disposal of the labourer.
But even apart from these relative differences of the value of money in different countries, it will be found, frequently, that the daily or weekly, &tc., wage in the first nation is higher than in the second, whilst the relative price of labour, i.e., the price of labour as compared both with surplus-value and with the value of the product, stands higher in the second than in the first. [3]
J. W. Cowell, member of the Factory Commission of 1833, after careful investigation of the spinning trade, came to the conclusion that
The English Factory Inspector, Alexander Redgrave, in his report of Oct. 31st, 1866, proves by comparative statistics with continental states, that in spite of lower wages and much longer working-time, continental labour is, in proportion to the product, dearer than English. An English manager of a cotton factory in Oldenburg declares that the working time there lasted from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays included, and that the workpeople there, when under English overlookers, did not supply during this time quite so much product as the English in 10 hours, but under German overlookers much less. Wages are much lower than in England, in many cases 50%, but the number of hands in proportion to the machinery was much greater, in certain departments in the proportion of 5:3.
Mr. Redgrave gives very full details as to the Russian cotton factories. The data were given him by an English manager until recently employed there. On this Russian soil, so fruitful of all infamies, the old horrors of the early days of English factories are in full swing. The managers are, of course, English, as the native Russian capitalist is of no use in factory business. Despite all over-work, continued day and night, despite the most shameful under-payment of the workpeople, Russian manufacture manages to vegetate only by prohibition of foreign competition.
I give, in conclusion, a comparative table of Mr. Redgrave’s, on the average number of spindles per factory and per spinner in the different countries of Europe. He himself remarks that he had collected these figures a few years ago, and that since that time the size of the factories and the number of spindles per labourer in England has increased. He supposes, however, an approximately equal progress in the continental countries mentioned, so that the numbers given would still have their value for purposes of comparison.
It is well known that in Eastern Europe, as well as in Asia, English companies have undertaken the construction of railways, and have, in making them, employed side by side with the native labourers, a certain number of English working-men. Compelled by practical necessity, they thus have had to take into account the national difference in the intensity of labour, but this has brought them no loss. Their experience shows that even if the height of wages corresponds more or less with the average intensity of labour, the relative price of labour varies generally in the inverse direction.
The conversion of a sum of money into means of production
 and labour-power, is the first step taken by the quantum of value that
 is going to function as capital. This conversion takes place in the market,
 within the sphere of circulation. The second step, the process of production,
 is complete so soon as the means of production have been converted into
 commodities whose value exceeds that of their component parts, and, therefore,
 contains the capital originally advanced, plus a surplus-value. These commodities
 must then be thrown into circulation. They must be sold, their value realised
 in money, this money afresh converted into capital, and so over and over
 again. This circular movement, in which the same phases are continually
 gone through in succession, forms the circulation of capital.
The first condition of accumulation is that the capitalist must
 have contrived to sell his commodities, and to reconvert into capital the
 greater part of the money so received. In the following pages we shall
 assume that capital circulates in its normal way. The detailed analysis
 of the process will be found in Book II.
The capitalist who produces surplus-value — i.e., who
 extracts unpaid labour directly from the labourers, and fixes it in commodities,
 is, indeed, the first appropriator, but by no means the ultimate owner,
 of this surplus-value. He has to share it with capitalists, with landowners,
 &c., who fulfil other functions in the complex of social production.
 Surplus-value, therefore, splits up into various parts. Its fragments fall
 to various categories of persons, and take various forms, independent the
 one of the other, such as profit, interest, merchants’ profit, rent, &c.
 It is only in Book III. that we can take in hand these modified forms of
 surplus-value.
On the one hand, then, we assume that the capitalist sells at
 their value the commodities he has produced, without concerning ourselves
 either about the new forms that capital assumes while in the sphere of
 circulation, or about the concrete conditions of reproduction hidden under
 these forms. On the other hand, we treat the capitalist producer as owner
 of the entire surplus-value, or, better perhaps, as the representative
 of all the sharers with him in the booty. We, therefore, first of all consider
 accumulation from an abstract point of view — i.e., as a mere phase
 in the actual process of production.
So far as accumulation takes place, the capitalist must have succeeded
 in selling his commodities, and in reconverting the sale-money into capital.
 Moreover, the breaking-up of surplus-value into fragments neither alters
 its nature nor the conditions under which it becomes an element of accumulation.
 Whatever be the proportion of surplus-value which the industrial capitalist
 retains for himself, or yields up to others, he is the one who, in the
 first instance, appropriates it. We, therefore, assume no more than what
 actually takes place. On the other hand, the simple fundamental form of
 the process of accumulation is obscured by the incident of the circulation
 which brings it about, and by the splitting up of surplus-value. An exact
 analysis of the process, therefore, demands that we should, for a time,
 disregard all phenomena that hide the play of its inner mechanism.
Whatever the form of the process of production
 in a society, it must be a continuous process, must continue to go periodically
 through the same phases. A society can no more cease to produce than it
 can cease to consume. When viewed, therefore, as a connected whole, and
 as flowing on with incessant renewal, every social process of production
 is, at the same time, a process of reproduction.
The conditions of production are also those of reproduction. No
 society can go on producing, in other words, no society can reproduce,
 unless it constantly reconverts a part of its products into means of production,
 or elements of fresh products. All other circumstances remaining the same,
 the only mode by which it can reproduce its wealth, and maintain it at
 one level, is by replacing the means of production — i.e., the
 instruments of labour, the raw material, and the auxiliary substances consumed
 in the course of the year — by an equal quantity of the same kind of articles;
 these must be separated from the mass of the yearly products, and thrown
 afresh into the process of production. Hence, a definite portion of each
 year’s product belongs to the domain of production. Destined for productive
 consumption from the very first, this portion exists, for the most part,
 in the shape of articles totally unfitted for individual consumption.
If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be reproduction.
 Just as in the former the labour process figures but as a means towards
 the self-expansion of capital, so in the latter it figures but as a means
 of reproducing as capital — i.e., as self-expanding value — the
 value advanced. It is only because his money constantly functions as capital
 that the economic guise of a capitalist attaches to a man. If, for instance,
 a sum of £100 has this year been converted into capital, and produced
 a surplus-value of £20, it must continue during next year, and subsequent
 years, to repeat the same operation. As a periodic increment of the cap532ital
 advanced, or periodic fruit of capital in process, surplus-value acquires
 the form of a revenue flowing out of capital. [1]
If this revenue serve the capitalist only as a fund to provide
 for his consumption, and be spent as periodically as it is gained, then,
 caeteris paribus, simple reproduction will take place. And although
 this reproduction is a mere repetition of the process of production on
 the old scale, yet this mere repetition, or continuity, gives a new character
 to the process, or, rather, causes the disappearance of some apparent characteristics
 which it possessed as an isolated discontinuous process.
Variable capital, it is true, only then loses its character of
 a value advanced out of the capitalist’s funds, [5] when we view the process of capitalist production in the flow of its constant
 renewal. But that process must have had a beginning of some kind. From
 our present standpoint it therefore seems likely that the capitalist, once
 upon a time, became possessed of money, by some accumulation that took
 place independently of the unpaid labour of others, and that this was,
 therefore, how he was enabled to frequent the market as a buyer of labour-power.
 However this may be, the mere continuity of the process, the simple reproduction,
 brings about some other wonderful changes, which affect not only the variable,
 but the total capital.
If a capital of £1,000 beget yearly a surplus-value of £200,
 and if this surplus-value be consumed every year, it is clear that at the
 end of 5 years the surplus-value consumed will amount to 5 × £200
 or the £1,000 originally advanced. If only a part, say one half,
 were consumed, the same result would follow at the end of 10 years, since
 10 × £100= £1,000. General Rule: The value of the capital advanced
 divided by the surplus-value annually consumed, gives the number of years,
 or reproduction periods, at the expiration of which the capital originally
 advanced has been consumed by the capitalist and has disappeared. The capitalist
 thinks, that he is consuming the produce of the unpaid labour of others,
 i.e., the surplus-value, and is keeping intact his original capital;
 but what he thinks cannot alter facts. After the lapse of a certain number
 of years, the capital value he then possesses is equal to the sum total
 of the surplus-value appropriated by him during those years, and the total
 value he has consumed is equal to that of his original capital. It is true,
 he has in hand a capital whose amount has not changed, and of which a part,
 viz., the buildings, machinery, &c., were already there when the work
 of his business began. But what we have to do with here, is not the material
 elements, but the value, of that capital. When a person gets through all
 his property, by taking upon himself debts equal to the value of that property,
 it is clear that his property represents nothing but the sum total of his
 debts. And so it is with the capitalist; when he has consumed the equivalent
 of his original capital, the value 535of his present capital represents
 nothing but the total amount of the surplus-value appropriated by him without
 payment. Not a single atom of the value of his old capital continues to
 exist.
Apart then from all accumulation, the mere continuity of the process
 of production, in other words simple reproduction, sooner or later, and
 of necessity, converts every capital into accumulated capital, or capitalised
 surplus-value. Even if that capital was originally acquired by the personal
 labour of its employer, it sooner or later becomes value appropriated without
 an equivalent, the unpaid labour of others materialised either in money
 or in some other object. We saw in Chapt. IV.-VI. that in order to convert
 money into capital something more is required than the production and circulation
 of commodities. We saw that on the one side the possessor of value or money,
 on the other, the possessor of the value-creating substance; on the one
 side, the possessor of the means of production and subsistence, on the
 other, the possessor of nothing but labour-power, must confront one another
 as buyer and seller. The separation of labour from its product, of subjective
 labour-power from the objective conditions of labour, was therefore the
 real foundation in fact, and the starting-point of capitalist production.
But that which at first was but a starting-point, becomes, by
 the mere continuity of the process, by simple reproduction, the peculiar
 result, constantly renewed and perpetuated, of capitalist production. On
 the one hand, the process of production incessantly converts material wealth
 into capital, into means of creating more wealth and means of enjoyment
 for the capitalist. On the other hand, the labourer, on quitting the process,
 is what he was on entering it, a source of wealth, but devoid of all means
 of making that wealth his own. Since, before entering on the process, his
 own labour has already been alienated from himself by the sale of his labour-power,
 has been appropriated by the capitalist and incorporated with capital,
 it must, during the process, be realised in a product that does not belong
 to him. Since the process of production is also the process by which the
 capitalist consumes labour-power, the product of the labourer is incessantly
 converted, not only into commodities, but into capital, into value that
 sucks up the value-creating power, into means of subsistence that buy the
 person of the labourer, into means of production that command the producers.
 [6] The labourer therefore constantly produces material, 
 objective wealth, but in the form of capital, of an alien power that dominates
 and exploits him; 536and the capitalist as constantly produces
 labour-power, but in the form of a subjective source of wealth, separated
 from the objects in and by which it can alone be realised; in short he
 produces the labourer, but as a wage labourer. [7] This incessant reproduction, this perpetuation of the labourer, is the sine
 quâ non of capitalist production.
The labourer consumes in a two-fold way. While producing he consumes
 by his labour the means of production, and converts them into products
 with a higher value than that of the capital advanced. This is his productive
 consumption. It is at the same time consumption of his labour-power by
 the capitalist who bought it. On the other hand, the labourer turns the
 money paid to him for his labour-power, into means of subsistence: this
 is his individual consumption. The labourer’s productive consumption, and
 his individual consumption, are therefore totally distinct. In the former,
 he acts as the motive power of capital, and belongs to the capitalist.
 In the latter, he belongs to himself, and performs his necessary vital
 functions outside the process of production. The result of the one is,
 that the capitalist lives; of the other, that the labourer lives.
When treating of the working day, we saw that the labourer is
 often compelled to make his individual consumption a mere incident of production.
 In such a case, he supplies himself with necessaries in order to maintain
 his labour-power, just as coal and water are supplied to the steam-engine
 and oil to the wheel. His means of consumption, in that case, are the mere
 means of consumption required by a means of production; his individual
 consumption is directly productive consumption. This, however, appears
 to be an abuse not essentially appertaining to capitalist production. [8]
Hence both the capitalist and his ideological representative,
 the political economist, consider that part alone of the labourer’s individual
 consumption to be productive, which is requisite for the perpetuation of
 the class, and which therefore must take place in order that the capitalist
 may have labour-power to consume; what the labourer consumes for his own
 pleasure beyond that part, is unproductive consumption. [10] If the accumulation of capital were to cause a rise of wages and an increase in the labourer’s consumption, unaccompanied by increase in the consumption
 of labour-power by capital, the additional capital 538would be
 consumed unproductively. [11] In reality, the individual consumption of the labourer is unproductive as regards himself, for it
 reproduces nothing but the needy individual; it is productive to the capitalist
 and to the State, since it is the production of the power that creates
 their wealth. [12]
From a social point of view, therefore, the working class, even
 when not directly engaged in the labour process, is just as much an appendage
 of capital as the ordinary instruments of labour. Even its individual consumption
 is, within certain limits, a mere factor in the process of production.
 That process, however, takes good care to prevent these self-conscious
 instruments from leaving it in the lurch, for it removes their product,
 as fast as it is made, from their pole to the opposite pole of capital.
 Individual consumption provides, on the one hand, the means for their maintenance
 and reproduction: on the other hand, it secures by the annihilation of
 the necessaries of life, the continued re-appearance of the workman in
 the labour-market. The Roman slave was held by fetters: the wage labourer
 is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The appearance of independence
 is kept up by means of a constant change of employers, and by the fictio
 juris of a contract.
In former times, capital resorted to legislation, whenever necessary,
 to enforce its proprietary rights over the free labourer. For instance,
 down to 1815, the emigration of mechanics employed in machine making was,
 in England, forbidden, under grievous pains and penalties.
The reproduction of the working class carries with it the accumulation
 of skill, that is handed down from one generation to another. [13] To what extent the capitalist reckons the existence of such a skilled class among the factors of production that belong to him by right, and to what
 extent he actually regards it as the reality of his variable capital, is
 seen so soon as a crisis threatens him with its loss. In consequence of
 the civil war in the United States and of the accompanying cotton famine,
 the majority of the cotton operatives in Lancashire were, as is well known,
 thrown out of work. Both from the working class itself, and from other
 ranks 539of society, there arose a cry for State aid, or for voluntary
 national subscriptions, in order to enable the “superfluous” hands to emigrate
 to the colonies or to the United States. Thereupon, The Times published
 on the 24th March, 1863, a letter from Edmund Potter, a former president
 of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. This letter was rightly called in
 the House of Commons, the manufacturers’ manifesto. [14] We cull here a few characteristic passages, in which the proprietary rights of capital over labour-power are unblushingly asserted.
Mr. Potter then shows how useful the cotton trade is, how the “trade has
 undoubtedly drawn the surplus-population from Ireland and from the agricultural
 districts,” how immense is its extent, how in the year 1860 it yielded
 5/13 ths of the total English exports, how, after a few years, it will
 again expand by the extension of the market, particularly of the Indian
 market, and by calling forth a plentiful supply of cotton at 6d. per lb.
 He then continues:
Potter, the chosen mouthpiece of the manufacturers, distinguishes
 two sorts of “machinery,” each of which belongs to the capitalist, and
 of which one stands in his factory, the other at night-time and on Sundays
 is housed outside the factory, in cottages. The one is inanimate, the other
 living. The inanimate machinery not only wears out and depreciates from
 day to day, but a great part of it becomes so quickly superannuated, by
 constant technical progress, that it can be replaced with advantage by
 new machinery after a few months. The living machinery, on the contrary
 gets better the longer it lasts, and in proportion as the skill, handed
 from one generation to another, accumulates. The Times answered
 the cotton lord as follows:
The Times’ article was only a jeu d’esprit. The “great
 public opinion” was, in fact, of Mr. Potter’s opinion, that the factory
 operatives are part of the movable fittings of a factory. Their emigration
 was prevented. They were locked up in that “moral workhouse,” the cotton
 districts, and they form, as before, “the strength” of the cotton manufacturers
 of Lancashire.
Capitalist production, therefore, of itself reproduces the separation
 between labour-power and the means of labour. It thereby reproduces and
 perpetuates the condition for exploiting the labourer. It incessantly forces
 him to sell his labour-power in order to live, and enables the capitalist
 to purchase labour-power in order that he may enrich himself. [17] It is no longer a mere accident, that capitalist and labourer confront each other in the market as buyer and seller. It is the process itself
 that incessantly hurls back the labourer on to the market as a vendor of
 his 542labour-power, and that incessantly converts his own product
 into a means by which another man can purchase him. In reality, the labourer
 belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital. His economic
 bondage [18] is both brought about and concealed by
 the periodic sale of himself, by his change of masters, and by the oscillations
 in the market-price of labour-power. [19]
Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a continuous
 connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities,
 not only surplus-value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist
 relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage labourer.
 [20]
Hitherto we have investigated how surplus-value emanates
 from capital; we have now to see how capital arises from surplus-value.
 Employing surplus-value as capital, reconverting it into capital, is called
 accumulation of capital. [1]
First let us consider this transaction from the standpoint of
 the individual capitalist. Suppose a spinner to have advanced a capital
 of £10,000, of which four-fifths (£8,000) are laid out in cotton,
 machinery, &c., and one-fifth (£2,000) in wages. Let him produce
 240,000 lbs. of yarn annually, having a value of £12,000. The rate
 of surplus-value being 100%, the surplus-value lies in the surplus or net
 product of 40,000 lbs. of yarn, one-sixth of the gross product, with a
 value of £2,000 which will be realised by a sale. £2,000 is
 £2,000. We can neither see nor smell in this sum of money a trace
 of surplus-value. When we know that a given value is surplus-value, we
 know how its owner came by it; but that does not alter the nature either
 of value or of money.
In order to convert this additional sum of £2,000 into capital,
 the master-spinner will, all circumstances remaining as before, advance
 four-fifths of it (£1,600) in the purchase of cotton, &c., and
 one-fifth (£400) in the purchase of additional spinners, who will
 find in the market the necessaries of life whose value the master has advanced
 to them.
544Then the new capital of £2,000 functions in the spinning mill,
 and brings in, in its turn, a surplus-value of £400.
The capital value was originally advanced in the money form. The
 surplus-value on the contrary is, originally, the value of a definite portion
 of the gross product. If this gross product be sold, converted into money,
 the capital value regains its original form. From this moment the capital value
 and the surplus-value are both of them sums of money, and their reconversion
 into capital takes place in precisely the same way. The one, as well as
 the other, is laid out by the capitalist in the purchase of commodities
 that place him in a position to begin afresh the fabrication of his goods,
 and this time, on an extended scale. But in order to be able to buy those
 commodities, he must find them ready in the market.
His own yarns circulate, only because he brings his annual product
 to market, as all other capitalists likewise do with their commodities.
 But these commodities, before coming to market, were part of the general
 annual product, part of the total mass of objects of every kind, into which
 the sum of the individual capitals, i.e., the total capital of society,
 had been converted in the course of the year, and of which each capitalist
 had in hand only an aliquot part. The transactions in the market effectuate
 only the interchange of the individual components of this annual product,
 transfer them from one hand to another, but can neither augment the total
 annual production, nor alter the nature of the objects produced. Hence
 the use that can be made of the total annual product, depends entirely
 upon its own composition, but in no way upon circulation.
The annual production must in the first place furnish all those
 objects (use values) from which the material components of capital, used
 up in the course of the year, have to be replaced. Deducting these there
 remains the net or surplus-product, in which the surplus-value lies. And
 of what does this surplus-product consist? Only of things destined to satisfy
 the wants and desires of the capitalist class, things which, consequently,
 enter into the consumption fund of the capitalists? Were that the case,
 the cup of surplus-value would be drained to the very dregs, and nothing
 but simple reproduction would ever take place.
To accumulate it is necessary to convert a portion of the surplus-product
 into capital. But we cannot, except by a miracle, convert into capital
 anything but such articles as can be employed in the labour process (i.e.,
 means of production), and such further articles as are suitable for the
 sustenance of the labourer (i.e., means of subsistence). Consequently,
 a part of the annual surplus-labour must have been applied to the production
 of additional means of production and subsistence, over and above the quantity
 of these things required to replace the capital advanced. In one word,
 surplus-value is convertible into 545capital solely because the
 surplus-product, whose value it is, already comprises the material elements
 of new capital. [2]
Now in order to allow of these elements actually functioning as
 capital, the capitalist class requires additional labour. If the exploitation
 of the labourers already employed do not increase, either extensively or
 intensively, then additional labour-power must be found. For this the mechanism
 of capitalist production provides beforehand, by converting the working class
 into a class dependent on wages, a class whose ordinary wages suffice,
 not only for its maintenance, but for its increase. It is only necessary
 for capital to incorporate this additional labour-power, annually supplied
 by the working class in the shape of labourers of all ages, with the surplus
 means of production comprised in the annual produce, and the conversion
 of surplus-value into capital is complete. From a concrete point of view,
 accumulation resolves itself into the reproduction of capital on a progressively
 increasing scale. The circle in which simple reproduction moves, alters
 its form, and, to use Sismondi’s expression, changes into a spiral. [3]
Let us now return to our illustration. It is the old story: Abraham
 begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on. The original capital of £10,000
 brings in a surplus-value of £2,000, which is capitalised. The new
 capital of £2,000 brings in a surplus-value of £400, and this,
 too, is capitalised, converted into a second additional capital, which,
 in its turn, produces a further surplus-value of £80. And so the
 ball rolls on.
We here leave out of consideration the portion of the surplus-value
 consumed by the capitalist. Just as little does it concern us, for the
 moment, whether the additional capital is joined on to the original capital,
 or is separated from it to function independently; whether the same capitalist,
 who accumulated it, employs it, or whether he hands it over to another.
 This only we must not forget, that by the side of the newly-formed capital,
 the original capital continues to reproduce itself, and to produce surplus-value,
 and that this is also true of all accumulated capital, and the additional
 capital engendered by it.
The original capital was formed by the advance of £10,000.
 How did the owner become possessed of it? “By his own labour and that of
 his 546forefathers,” answer unanimously the spokesmen of Political
 Economy. [4] And, in fact, their supposition appears
 the only one consonant with the laws of the production of commodities.
But it is quite otherwise with regard to the additional capital
 of £2,000. How that originated we know perfectly well. There is not
 one single atom of its value that does not owe its existence to unpaid
 labour. The means of production, with which the additional labour-power
 is incorporated, as well as the necessaries with which the labourers are
 sustained, are nothing but component parts of the surplus-product, of the
 tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class.
 Though the latter with a portion of that tribute purchases the additional
 labour-power even at its full price, so that equivalent is exchanged for
 equivalent, yet the transaction is for all that only the old dodge of every
 conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has
 robbed them of.
If the additional capital employs the person who produced it,
 this producer must not only continue to augment the value of the original
 capital, but must buy back the fruits of his previous labour with more
 labour than they cost. When viewed as a transaction between the capitalist
 class and the working class, it makes no difference that additional labourers
 are employed by means of the unpaid labour of the previously employed labourers.
 The capitalist may even convert the additional capital into a machine that
 throws the producers of that capital out of work, and that replaces them
 by a few children. In every case the working class creates by the surplus-labour
 of one year the capital destined to employ additional labour in the following
 year. [5] And this is what is called: creating capital out of capital.
The accumulation of the first additional capital of £2,000
 presupposes a value of £10,000 belonging to the capitalist by virtue
 of his “primitive labour,” and advanced by him. The second additional capital
 of £400 presupposes, on the contrary, only the previous accumulation
 of the £2,000, of which the £400 is the surplus-value capitalised.
 The ownership of past unpaid labour is thenceforth the sole condition for
 the appropriation of living unpaid labour on a constantly increasing scale.
 The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more is he able to accumulate.
548Therefore, [7] however much the capitalist
 mode of appropriation may seem to fly in the face of the original laws
 of commodity production, it nevertheless arises, not from a violation,
 but, on the contrary, from the application of these laws. Let us make this
 clear once more by briefly reviewing the consecutive phases of motion whose
 culminating point is capitalist accumulation.
We saw, in the first place, that the original conversion of a
 sum of values into capital was achieved in complete accordance with the
 laws of exchange. One party to the contract sells his labour-power, the
 other buys it. The former receives the value of his commodity, whose use value
 — labour — is thereby alienated to the buyer. Means of production which
 already belong to the latter are then transformed by him, with the aid
 of labour equally belonging to him, into a new product which is likewise
 lawfully his.
The value of this product includes: first, the value of the used-up
 means of production. Useful labour cannot consume these means of production
 without transferring their value to the new product, but, to be saleable,
 labour-power must be capable of supplying useful labour in the branch of
 industry in which it is to be employed.
The value of the new product further includes: the equivalent
 of the value of the labour-power together with a surplus-value. This is
 so because the value of the labour-power — sold for a definite length
 of time, say a day, a week, etc. — is less than the value created by its
 use during that time. But the worker has received payment for the exchange-value
 of his labour-power and by so doing has alienated its use value — this
 being the case in every sale and purchase.
The fact that this particular commodity, labour-power, possesses
 the peculiar use value of supplying labour, and therefore of creating value,
 cannot affect the general law of commodity production. If, therefore, the
 magnitude of value advanced in wages is not merely found again in the product,
 but is found there augmented by a surplus-value, this is not because the
 seller has been defrauded, for he has really received the value of his
 commodity; it is due solely to the fact that this commodity has been used
 up by the buyer.
The law of exchange requires equality only between the exchange-values
 of the commodities given in exchange for one another. From the very outset
 it presupposes even a difference between their use values and it has nothing
 whatever to do with their consumption, which only begins after the deal
 is closed and executed.
549Thus the original conversion of money into capital is achieved
 in the most exact accordance with the economic laws of commodity production
 and with the right of property derived from them. Nevertheless, its result
 is:
Simple reproduction is only the periodical repetition of this first operation;
 each time money is converted afresh into capital. Thus the law is not broken;
 on the contrary, it is merely enabled to operate continuously. “Several
 successive acts of exchange have only made the last represent the first” 
 (Sismondi, “Nouveaux Principes, etc.,” p. 70).
And yet we have seen that simple reproduction suffices to stamp
 this first operation, in so far as it is conceived as an isolated process,
 with a totally changed character. “Of those who share the national income
 among themselves, the one side (the workers) acquire every year a fresh
 right to their share by fresh work; the others (the capitalists) have already
 acquired, by work done originally, a permanent right to their share” (Sismondi,
 l. c., pp. 110, 111). It is indeed notorious that the sphere of labour
 is not the only one in which primogeniture works miracles.
Nor does it matter if simple reproduction is replaced by reproduction
 on an extended scale, by accumulation. In the former case the capitalist
 squanders the whole surplus-value in dissipation, in the latter he demonstrates
 his bourgeois virtue by consuming only a portion of it and converting the
 rest into money.
The surplus-value is his property; it has never belonged to anyone
 else. If he advances it for the purposes of production, the advances made
 come from his own funds, exactly as on the day when he first entered the
 market. The fact that on this occasion the funds are derived from the unpaid
 labour of his workers makes absolutely no difference. If worker B is paid
 out of the surplus-value which worker A produced, then, in the first place,
 A furnished that surplus-value without having the just price of his commodity
 cut by a half-penny, and, in the second place, the transaction is no concern
 of B’s whatever. What B claims, and has a right to claim, is that the capitalist
 should pay him the value of his labour-power. “Both were still gainers:
 the worker because he was advanced the fruits of his labour” (should read:
 of the unpaid labour 550of other workers) “before the work was
 done” (should read: before his own labour had borne fruit); “the employer
 (le maître), because the labour of this worker was worth more
 than his wages” (should read: produced more value than the value of his
 wages). (Sismondi, l. c., p. 135.)
To be sure, the matter looks quite different if we consider capitalist
 production in the uninterrupted flow of its renewal, and if, in place of
 the individual capitalist and the individual worker, we view in their totality,
 the capitalist class and the working class confronting each other. But
 in so doing we should be applying standards entirely foreign to commodity
 production.
Only buyer and seller, mutually independent, face each other in
 commodity production. The relations between them cease on the day when
 the term stipulated in the contract they concluded expires. If the transaction
 is repeated, it is repeated as the result of a new agreement which has
 nothing to do with the previous one and which only by chance brings the
 same seller together again with the same buyer.
If, therefore, commodity production, or one of its associated
 processes, is to be judged according to its own economic laws, we must
 consider each act of exchange by itself, apart from any connexion with
 the act of exchange preceding it and that following it. And since sales
 and purchases are negotiated solely between particular individuals, it
 is not admissible to seek here for relations between whole social classes.
However long a series of periodical reproductions and preceding
 accumulations the capital functioning today may have passed through, it
 always preserves its original virginity. So long as the laws of exchange
 are observed in every single act of exchange the mode of appropriation
 can be completely revolutionised without in any way affecting the property
 rights which correspond to commodity production. These same rights remain
 in force both at the outset, when the product belongs to its producer,
 who, exchanging equivalent for equivalent, can enrich himself only by his
 own labour, and also in the period of capitalism, when social wealth becomes
 to an ever-increasing degree the property of those who are in a position
 to appropriate continually and ever afresh the unpaid labour of others.
This result becomes inevitable from the moment there is a free
 sale, by the labourer himself, of labour-power as a commodity. But it is
 also only from then onwards that commodity production is generalised and
 becomes the typical form of production; it is only from then onwards that,
 from the first, every product is produced for sale and all wealth produced
 goes through the sphere of circulation. Only when and where wage labour
 is its basis does commodity production impose itself upon 551society
 as a whole; but only then and there also does it unfold all its hidden
 potentialities. To say that the supervention of wage labour adulterates
 commodity production is to say that commodity production must not develop
 if it is to remain unadulterated. To the extent that commodity production,
 in accordance with its own inherent laws, develops further, into capitalist
 production, the property laws of commodity production change into the laws
 of capitalist appropriation. [8]
We have seen that even in the case of simple reproduction, all capital,
 whatever its original source, becomes converted into accumulated capital,
 capitalised surplus-value. But in the flood of production all the capital
 originally advanced becomes a vanishing quantity (magnitudo evanescens,
 in the mathematical sense), compared with the directly accumulated capital,
 i.e., with the surplus-value or surplus-product that is reconverted
 into capital, whether it functions in the hands of its accumulator, or
 in those of others. Hence, Political Economy describes capital in general
 as “accumulated wealth” (converted surplus-value or revenue), “that is
 employed over again in the production of surplus-value,” [9] and the capitalist as “the owner of surplus-value.” [10] It is merely another way of expressing the same thing to say that all existing capital is accumulated or capitalised interest, for interest is a mere
 fragment of surplus-value. [11]
Before we further investigate accumulation or the
 reconversion of surplus-value into capital, we must brush on one side an
 ambiguity introduced by the classical economists.
Let us see what Ricardo, e.g., says:
There can be no greater error than that which Ricardo and all subsequent economists repeat after A. Smith, viz., that
According to this, all surplus-value that is
 changed into capital becomes variable capital. So far from this being the
 case, the surplus-value, like the original capital, divides itself into
 constant capital and variable capital, into means of production and labour-power.
 Labour-power is the form under which variable capital exists during the
 process of production. In this process the labour-power is itself consumed
 by the capitalist while the means of production are consumed by the labour-power
 in the exercise of its function, labour. At the same time, the money paid
 for the purchase of the labour-power, is converted into necessaries, that
 are consumed, not by “productive labour,” but by the “productive labourer.” 
 Adam Smith, by a fundamentally perverted analysis, arrives at the absurd
 conclusion, that even though each individual capital is divided into a
 constant and a variable part, the capital of society resolves itself only
 into variable capital, i.e., is laid out exclusively in payment of
 wages. For instance, suppose a cloth manufacturer converts £2,000
 into capital. One portion he lays out in buying weavers, the other in woollen
 yarn, machinery, &c. But the people, from whom he buys the yarn and
 the machinery, pay for labour with a part of the purchase money, and so
 on until the whole £2,000 are spent in the payment of wages, i.e.,
 until the entire product represented by the £2,000 has been consumed
 by productive labourers. It is evident that the whole gist of this argument
 lies in the words “and so on,” which send us from pillar to post. In truth,
 Adam Smith breaks his investigation off, just where its difficulties begin.
 [17]
554The annual process of reproduction is easily understood,
 so long as we keep in view merely the sum total of the year’s production.
 But every single component of this product must be brought into the market
 as a commodity, and there the difficulty begins. The movements of the individual
 capitals, and of the personal revenues, cross and intermingle and are lost
 in the general change of places, in the circulation of the wealth of society;
 this dazes the sight, and propounds very complicated problems for solution.
 In the third part of Book II. I shall give the analysis of the real bearings
 of the facts. It is one of the great merits of the Physiocrats, that in
 their Tableau économique they were the first to attempt to
 depict the annual production in the shape in which it is presented to us
 after passing through the process of circulation. [18]
For the rest, it is a matter of course, that Political Economy,
 acting in the interests of the capitalist class, has not failed to exploit
 the doctrine of Adam Smith, viz., that the whole of that part of the surplus-product
 which is converted into capital, is consumed by the working class.
In the last preceding chapter, we treated surplus-value
 (or the surplus-product) solely as a fund for supplying the individual
 consumption of the capitalist. In this chapter we have, so far, treated
 it solely as a fund for accumulation. It is, however, neither the one nor
 the other, but is both together. One portion is consumed by the capitalist
 as revenue, [19] the other is employed as capital, is accumulated.
555Given the mass of surplus-value, then, the larger the one
 of these parts, the smaller is the other. Caeteris paribus, the
 ratio of these parts determines the magnitude of the accumulation. But
 it is by the owner of the surplus-value, by the capitalist alone, that
 the division is made. It is his deliberate act. That part of the tribute
 exacted by him which he accumulates, is said to be saved by him, because
 he does not eat it, i.e., because he performs the function of a capitalist,
 and enriches himself.
Except as personified capital, the capitalist has no historical
 value, and no right to that historical existence, which, to use an expression
 of the witty Lichnowsky, “hasn’t got no date.” And so far only is the necessity
 for his own transitory existence implied in the transitory necessity for
 the capitalist mode of production. But, so far as he is personified capital,
 it is not values in use and the enjoyment of them, but exchange-value and
 its augmentation, that spur him into action. Fanatically bent on making
 value expand itself, he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for
 production’s sake; he thus forces the development of the productive powers
 of society, and creates those material conditions, which alone can form
 the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full
 and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle. Only
 as personified capital is the capitalist respectable. As such, he shares
 with the miser the passion for wealth as wealth. But that which in the
 miser is a mere idiosyncrasy, is, in the capitalist, the effect of the
 social mechanism, of which he is but one of the wheels. Moreover, the development
 of capitalist production makes it constantly necessary to keep increasing
 the amount of the capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and
 competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt
 by each individual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels him
 to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it, but
 extend it he cannot, except by means of progressive accumulation.
So far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of capital
 — endowed as capital is, in his person, with consciousness and a will
 — his own private consumption is a robbery perpetrated on accumulation,
 just as in book-keeping by double entry, the private expenditure of the
 capitalist is placed on the debtor side of his account against his capital.
 To accumulate, is to conquer the world of social wealth, to increase the
 mass of human beings exploited by him, and thus to extend both the direct
 and the indirect sway of the capitalist. [20]
556But original sin is at work everywhere. As capitalist production,
 accumulation, and wealth, become developed, the capitalist ceases to be
 the mere incarnation of capital. He has a fellow-feeling for his own Adam,
 and his education gradually enables him to smile at the rage for asceticism,
 as a mere prejudice of the old-fashioned miser. While the capitalist of
 the classical type brands individual consumption as a sin against his function,
 and as “abstinence” from accumulating, the modernised capitalist is capable
 of looking upon accumulation as “abstinence” from pleasure.
At the historical dawn of capitalist production, — and every capitalist
 upstart has personally to go through this historical stage — avarice,
 and desire to get rich, are the ruling passions. But the progress of capitalist
 production not only creates a world of delights; it lays open, in speculation
 and the credit system, a thousand sources of sudden enrichment. 557When
 a certain stage of development has been reached, a conventional degree
 of prodigality, which is also an exhibition of wealth, and consequently
 a source of credit, becomes a business necessity to the “unfortunate” capitalist.
 Luxury enters into capital’s expenses of representation. Moreover, the
 capitalist gets rich, not like the miser, in proportion to his personal
 labour and restricted consumption, but at the same rate as he squeezes
 out the labour-power of others, and enforces on the labourer abstinence
 from all life’s enjoyments. Although, therefore, the prodigality of the
 capitalist never possesses the bona fide character of the open-handed
 feudal lord’s prodigality, but, on the contrary, has always lurking behind
 it the most sordid avarice and the most anxious calculation, yet his expenditure
 grows with his accumulation, without the one necessarily restricting the
 other. But along with this growth, there is at the same time developed
 in his breast, a Faustian conflict between the passion for accumulation,
 and the desire for enjoyment.
Dr. Aikin says in a work published in 1795:
They enriched themselves chiefly by
 robbing the parents, whose children were bound as apprentices to them;
 the parents paid a high premium, while the apprentices were starved. On
 the other hand, the average profits were low, and to accumulate, extreme
 parsimony was requisite. They lived like misers and were far from consuming
 even the interest on their capital.
Even in the early part of the 18th century, a Manchester manufacturer,
 who placed a pint of foreign wine before his guests, exposed himself to
 the remarks and headshakings of all his neighbours. Before the rise of
 machinery, a manufacturer’s evening expenditure at the public house where
 they all met, never exceeded sixpence for a glass of punch, and a penny
 for a screw of tobacco. It was not till 1758, and this marks an epoch,
 that a person actually engaged in business was seen with an equipage of
 his own.
What would the good Dr. Aikin say if he could rise from his grave and see the Manchester of today?
Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! “Industry
 furnishes the material which saving accumulates.” [23] 
 Therefore, save, save, i.e., reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value, or surplus-product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy
 expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a
 single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth. [24] But what avails lamentation in the face of historical necessity? If to classical economy, the proletarian is but a machine for the production
 of surplus-value; on the other hand, the capitalist is in its eyes only
 a machine for the conversion of this surplus-value into additional capital.
 Political Economy takes the historical function of the capitalist in bitter
 earnest. In order to charm out of his bosom the awful conflict between
 the desire for enjoyment and the chase after riches, Malthus, about the
 year 1820, advocated a division of labour, which assigns to the capitalist actually engaged in production, the business of accumulating, and to the
 other sharers in surplus-value, to the landlords, the place-men, the beneficed
 clergy, &c., the business of spending. It is of the highest importance,
 he says,
The capitalists having long
 been good livers and men of the world, uttered loud cries. What, exclaimed
 one of their spokesmen, a disciple of Ricardo, Mr. Malthus preaches high
 rents, heavy taxes, &c., so that the pressure of the spur may constantly
 be kept on the industrious by unproductive consumers! By all means, production,
 production on a constantly increasing scale, runs the shibboleth; but
Unfair as he finds it to spur on the industrial capitalist, by depriving his bread of its
 butter, yet he thinks it necessary to reduce the labourer’s wages to a
 minimum "to keep him industrious.” Nor does he for a moment conceal the
 fact, that the appropriation of unpaid labour is the secret of surplus-value. 559
The learned disputation, how the booty pumped out of the labourer
 may be divided, with most advantage to accumulation, between the industrial
 capitalist and the rich idler, was hushed in face of the revolution of
 July. Shortly afterwards, the town proletariat at Lyons sounded the tocsin
 of revolution, and the country proletariat in England began to set fire
 to farm-yards and corn-stacks. On this side of the Channel Owenism began
 to spread; on the other side, St. Simonism and Fourierism. The hour of
 vulgar economy had struck. Exactly a year before Nassau W. Senior discovered
 at Manchester, that the profit (including interest) of capital is the product
 of the last hour of the twelve, he had announced to the world another discovery.
An unparalleled sample this, of the discoveries of vulgar economy! It substitutes for an economic category, a sycophantic phrase — voilà tout. [that’s all]
This explains how and why, in the earlier states of society, the implements of labour were fabricated without
 abstinence on the part of the capitalist.
Namely, from
 those who ply the industry of appropriating the fruits of others’ industry.
 All the conditions for carrying on the labour process are suddenly converted
 into so many acts of abstinence on the part of the capitalist. If the corn is not all eaten, but part of it also sown — abstinence of the capitalist. If the wine gets time to mature — abstinence 560of the capitalist.
 [30] The capitalist robs his own self, whenever he “lends (!) the instruments of production to the labourer,” that is, whenever by
 incorporating labour-power with them, he uses them to extract surplus-value
 out of that labour-power, instead of eating them up, steam-engines, cotton,
 railways, manure, horses, and all; or as the vulgar economist childishly
 puts it, instead of dissipating “their value” in luxuries and other articles
 of consumption. [31] How the capitalists as a class
 are to perform that feat, is a secret that vulgar economy has hitherto
 obstinately refused to divulge. Enough, that the world still jogs on, solely
 through the self-chastisement of this modern penitent of Vishnu, the capitalist.
 Not only accumulation, but the simple “conservation of a capital requires
 a constant effort to resist the temptation of consuming it.” [32] The simple dictates of humanity therefore plainly enjoin the release of the capitalist from this martyrdom and temptation, in the same way that
 the Georgian slave-owner was lately delivered, by the abolition of slavery,
 from the painful dilemma, whether to squander the surplus-product, lashed
 out of his niggers, entirely in champagne, or whether to reconvert a part
 of it into more niggers and more land.
In economic forms of society of the most different kinds, there
 occurs, not only simple reproduction, but, in varying degrees, reproduction
 on a progressively increasing scale. By degrees more is produced and more
 consumed, and consequently more products have to be converted into means
 of production. This process, however, does not present itself as accumulation
 of capital, nor as the function of a capitalist, so long as the labourer’s
 means of production, and with them, his product and means of subsistence,
 do not confront him in the shape of capital. [33] 561Richard Jones, who died a few years ago, and was the successor of Malthus in the chair of Political Economy at Haileybury College, discusses this point well in the light of two important facts. Since the great mass of the Hindu
 population are peasants cultivating their land themselves, their products,
 their instruments of labour and means of subsistence never take “the shape
 of a fund saved from revenue, which fund has, therefore, gone through a
 previous process of accumulation.” [34] On the other
 hand, the non-agricultural labourers in those provinces where the English
 rule has least disturbed the old system, are directly employed by the magnates,
 to whom a portion of the agricultural surplus-product is rendered in the
 shape of tribute or rent. One portion of this product is consumed by the
 magnates in kind, another is converted, for their use, by the labourers,
 into articles of luxury and such like things, while the rest forms the
 wages of the labourers, who own their implements of labour. Here, production
 and reproduction on a progressively increasing scale, go on their way without
 any intervention from that queer saint, that knight of the woeful countenance,
 the capitalist “abstainer.”
The proportion in which surplus-value breaks up into
 capital and revenue being given, the magnitude of the capital accumulated
 clearly depends on the absolute magnitude of the surplus-value. Suppose
 that 80 per cent. were capitalised and 20 per cent. eaten up, the accumulated
 capital will be £2,400 or £200, according as the total surplus-value
 has amounted to £3,000 or £500. Hence all the circumstances
 that determine the mass of surplus-value operate to determine the magnitude
 of the accumulation. We sum them up once again, but only in so far as they
 afford new points of view in regard to accumulation.
It will be remembered that the rate of surplus-value depends,
 in the first place, on the degree of exploitation of labour-power. Political
 Economy values this fact so highly, that it occasionally identifies the
 acceleration of accumulation due to increased productiveness of labour, 562with
 its acceleration due to increased exploitation of the labourer. [35] In the chapters on the production of surplus-value it was constantly presupposed that wages are at least equal to the value of labour-power. Forcible reduction
 of wages below this value plays, however, in practice too important a part,
 for us not to pause upon it for a moment. It, in fact, transforms, within
 certain limits, the labourer’s necessary consumption fund into a fund for
 the accumulation of capital.
But if the labourers could live on air they could not be bought at any price.
 The zero of their cost is therefore a limit in a mathematical sense, always
 beyond reach, although we can always approximate more and more nearly to
 it. The constant tendency of capital is to force the cost of labour back
 towards this zero. A writer of the 18th century, often quoted already,
 the author of the “Essay on Trade and Commerce,” only betrays the innermost
 secret soul of English capitalism, when he declares the historic mission of England to be the forcing down of English wages to the level of the
 French and the Dutch. [37] With other things he says
 naively:
He quotes the work of a Northamptonshire manufacturer, who, with eyes squinting heavenward moans:
Twenty years later, an American humbug, the baronised Yankee, Benjamin Thompson (alias Count Rumford) followed the same line of philanthropy
 to the great satisfaction of God and man. His “Essays” are a cookery book
 with receipts of all kinds for replacing by some succedaneum the ordinary
 dear food of the labourer. The following is a particularly successful receipt
 of this wonderful philosopher:
With the advance of capitalistic production, the adulteration of food rendered Thompson’s
 ideal superfluous. [42] At the end of the 56418th and during the first ten years of the 19th century, the English farmers
 and landlords enforced the absolute minimum of wage, by paying the agricultural
 labourers less than the minimum in the form of wages, and the remainder
 in the shape of parochial relief. An example of the waggish way in which
 the English Dogberries acted in their “legal” fixing of a wages tariff:
Before the Committee of Inquiry of the House of Lords, 1814, a certain A. Bennett, a large farmer, magistrate, poor-law guardian, and wage-regulator,
 was asked:
The part played in our days by the direct robbery from the labourer’s necessary consumption fund in the formation of surplus-value, and, therefore, of
 the accumulation fund of capital, the so-called domestic industry has served
 to show. (Ch. xv., sect. 8, c.) Further facts on this subject will be given
 later.
Although in all branches of industry that part of the constant
 capital 565consisting of instruments of labour must be sufficient
 for a certain number of labourers (determined by the magnitude of the undertaking),
 it by no means always necessarily increases in the same proportion as the
 quantity of labour employed. In a factory, suppose that 100 labourers working
 8 hours a day yield 800 working-hours. If the capitalist wishes to raise
 this sum by one half, he can employ 50 more workers; but then he must also
 advance more capital, not merely for wages, but for instruments of labour.
 But he might also let the 100 labourers work 12 hours instead of 8, and
 then the instruments of labour already to hand would be enough. These would
 then simply be more rapidly consumed. Thus additional labour, begotten
 of the greater tension of labour-power, can augment surplus-product and
 surplus-value (i.e., the subject-matter of accumulation), without corresponding
 augmentation in the constant part of capital.
In the extractive industries, mines, &c., the raw materials
 form no part of the capital advanced. The subject of labour is in this
 case not a product of previous labour, but is furnished by Nature gratis,
 as in the case of metals, minerals, coal, stone, &c. In these cases
 the constant capital consists almost exclusively of instruments of labour,
 which can very well absorb an increased quantity of labour (day and night
 shifts of labourers, e.g.). All other things being equal, the mass
 and value of the product will rise in direct proportion to the labour expended.
 As on the first day of production, the original produce-formers, now turned
 into the creators of the material elements of capital — man and Nature
 — still work together. Thanks to the elasticity of labour-power, the domain
 of accumulation has extended without any previous enlargement of constant
 capital.
In agriculture the land under cultivation cannot be increased
 without the advance of more seed and manure. But this advance once made,
 the purely mechanical working of the soil itself produces a marvellous
 effect on the amount of the product. A greater quantity of labour, done
 by the same number of labourers as before, thus increases the fertility,
 without requiring any new advance in the instruments of labour. It is once
 again the direct action of man on Nature which becomes an immediate source
 of greater accumulation, without the intervention of any new capital.
Finally, in what is called manufacturing industry, every additional
 expenditure of labour presupposes a corresponding additional expenditure
 of raw materials, but not necessarily of instruments of labour. And as
 extractive industry and agriculture supply manufacturing industry with
 its raw materials and those of its instruments of labour, the additional
 product the former have created without additional advance of capital,
 tells also in favour of the latter.
566General result: by incorporating with itself the two primary
 creators of wealth, labour-power and the land, capital acquires a power
 of expansion that permits it to augment the elements of its accumulation
 beyond the limits apparently fixed by its own magnitude, or by the value
 and the mass of the means of production, already produced, in which it
 has its being.
Another important factor in the accumulation of capital is the
 degree of productivity of social labour.
With the productive power of labour increases the mass of the
 products, in which a certain value, and, therefore, a surplus-value of
 a given magnitude, is embodied. The rate of surplus-value remaining the
 same or even falling, so long as it only falls more slowly, than the productive
 power of labour rises, the mass of the surplus-product increases. The division
 of this product into revenue and additional capital remaining the same,
 the consumption of the capitalist may, therefore, increase without any
 decrease in the fund of accumulation. The relative magnitude of the accumulation fund
 may even increase at the expense of the consumption fund, whilst the cheapening
 of commodities places at the disposal of the capitalist as many means of
 enjoyment as formerly, or even more than formerly. But hand-in-hand with
 the increasing productivity of labour, goes, as we have seen, the cheapening
 of the labourer, therefore a higher rate of surplus-value, even when the
 real wages are rising. The latter never rise proportionally to the productive
 power of labour. The same value in variable capital therefore sets in movement
 more labour-power, and, therefore, more labour. The same value in constant
 capital is embodied in more means of production, i.e., in more instruments
 of labour, materials of labour and auxiliary materials; it therefore also
 supplies more elements for the production both of use value and of value,
 and with these more absorbers of labour. The value of the additional capital,
 therefore, remaining the same or even diminishing, accelerated accumulation
 still takes place. Not only does the scale of reproduction materially extend,
 but the production of surplus-value increases more rapidly than the value
 of the additional capital.
Labour transmits to its product the value of the means of production
 consumed by it. On the other hand, the value and mass of the means of production
 set in motion by a given quantity of labour increase as the labour becomes
 more productive. Though the same quantity of labour adds always to its
 products only the same sum of new value, still the old capital value, transmitted
 by the labour to the products, increases with the growing productivity
 of labour.
An English and a Chinese spinner, e.g., may work the same number
 of hours with the same intensity; then they will both in a week create
 equal values. But in spite of this equality, an immense difference will
 obtain between the value of the week’s product of the Englishman, who works
 with a mighty automaton, and that of the Chinaman, who has but a spinning-wheel.
 In the same time as the Chinaman spins one pound of cotton, the Englishman
 spins several hundreds of pounds. A sum, many hundred times as great, of
 old values swells the value of his prod568uct, in which those re-appear
 in a new, useful form, and can thus function anew as capital.
Labour embodied in the form of machinery of course did not directly force into life a single man, but it made it possible
 for a smaller number of labourers, with the addition of relatively less
 living labour, not only to consume the wool productively, and put into
 it new value, but to preserve in the form of yarn, &c., its old value.
 At the same time, it caused and stimulated increased reproduction of wool.
 It is the natural property of living labour, to transmit old value, whilst
 it creates new. Hence, with the increase in efficacy, extent and value
 of its means of production, consequently with the accumulation that accompanies
 the development of its productive power, labour keeps up and eternises
 an always increasing capital value in a form ever new.” [47] This natural power of labour takes the 569appearance of an intrinsic property of capital, in which it is incorporated, just as the productive
 forces of social labour take the appearance of inherent properties of capital,
 and as the constant appropriation of surplus-labour by the capitalists,
 takes that of a constant self-expansion of capital.
With the increase of capital, the difference between the capital
 employed and the capital consumed increases. In other words, there is increase
 in the value and the material mass of the instruments of labour, such as
 buildings, machinery, drain-pipes, working-cattle, apparatus of every kind
 that function for a longer or shorter time in processes of production constantly
 repeated, or that serve for the attainment of particular useful effects,
 whilst they themselves only gradually wear out, therefore only lose their
 value piecemeal, therefore transfer that value to the product only bit
 by bit. In the same proportion as these instruments of labour serve as
 product-formers without adding value to the product, i.e., in the
 same proportion as they are wholly employed but only partly consumed, they
 perform, as we saw earlier, the same gratuitous service as the natural
 forces, water, steam, air, electricity, etc. This gratuitous service of
 past labour, when seized and filled with a soul by living labour, increases
 with the advancing stages of accumulation.
Since past labour always disguises itself as capital, i.e.,
 since the passive of the labour of A, B, C, etc., takes the form of the
 active of the non-labourer X, bourgeois and political economists are full
 of praises of the services of dead and gone labour, which, according to
 the Scotch genius MacCulloch, ought to receive a special remuneration in
 the shape of interest, profit, etc. [48] The powerful and ever-increasing assistance 570given by past labour to the living
 labour process under the form of means of production is, therefore, attributed
 to that form of past labour in which it is alienated, as unpaid labour,
 from the worker himself, i.e., to its capitalistic form. The practical
 agents of capitalistic production and their pettifogging ideologists are
 as unable to think of the means of production as separate from the antagonistic
 social mask they wear today, as a slave-owner to think of the worker himself
 as distinct from his character as a slave.
With a given degree of exploitation of labour-power, the mass
 of the surplus-value produced is determined by the number of workers simultaneously
 exploited; and this corresponds, although in varying proportions, with
 the magnitude of the capital. The more, therefore, capital increases by
 means of successive accumulations, the more does the sum of the value increase
 that is divided into consumption fund and accumulation fund. The capitalist
 can, therefore, live a more jolly life, and at the same time show more
 “abstinence.” And, finally, all the springs of production act with greater
 elasticity, the more its scale extends with the mass of the capital advanced.
What silly tautology results from the attempt to represent the
 capitalistic limits of the labour fund as its natural and social limits
 may be seen, e.g., in Professor Fawcett. [53]
That is to say, we first add together the individual wages actually paid, and then we affirm that the sum thus
 obtained, forms the total value of the “labour fund” determined and vouchsafed
 to us by God and Nature. Lastly, we divide the sum thus obtained by the
 number of labourers to find out again how much may come to each on the
 average. An uncommonly knowing dodge this. It did not prevent Mr. Fawcett
 saying in the same breath:
573The greater part of the yearly accruing surplus-product,
 embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent, from the
 English labourer, is thus used as capital, not in England, but in foreign
 countries. But with the additional capital thus exported, a part of the
 “labour fund” invented by God and Bentham is also exported. [56]
In this chapter we consider the influence of the growth of capital on the
 lot of the labouring class. The most important factor in this inquiry is the
 composition of capital and the changes it undergoes in the course of the
 process of accumulation.
The composition of capital is to be understood in a two-fold sense. On the
 side of value, it is determined by the proportion in which it is divided into
 constant capital or value of the means of production, and variable capital or
 value of labour power, the sum total of wages. On the side of material, as it
 functions in the process of production, all capital is divided into means of
 production and living labour power. This latter composition is determined by
 the relation between the mass of the means of production employed, on the one
 hand, and the mass of labour necessary for their employment on the other. I
 call the former the value-composition, the latter the technical
 composition of capital.
Between the two there is a strict correlation. To express this, I call the
 value composition of capital, in so far as it is determined by its technical
 composition and mirrors the changes of the latter, the organic
 composition of capital. Wherever I refer to the composition of capital,
 without further qualification, its organic composition is always understood.
The many individual capitals invested in a particular branch of production
 have, one with another, more or less different compositions. The average of
 their individual compositions gives us the composition 575of the total
 capital in this branch of production. Lastly, the average of these averages, in
 all branches of production, gives us the composition of the total social
 capital of a country, and with this alone are we, in the last resort, concerned
 in the following investigation.
Classical economy grasped this fact so thoroughly that Adam Smith, Ricardo,
 &c., as mentioned earlier, inaccurately identified accumulation with the
 consumption, by the productive labourers, of all the capitalised part of the
 surplus-product, or with its transformation into additional wage labourers. As
 early as 1696 John Bellers says:
So also Bernard de Mandeville at the beginning of the eighteenth century:
What Mandeville, an honest, clear-headed man, had not yet seen, is that the
 mechanism of the process of accumulation itself increases, along with the
 capital, the mass of “labouring poor,” i.e., the wage
 labourers, who turn their labour power into an increasing power of
 self-expansion of the growing capital, and even by doing so must eternise their
 dependent relation on their own product, as personified in the capitalists. In
 reference to this relation of dependence, Sir F. M. Eden in his “The
 State of the Poor, an History of the Labouring Classes in England,” says,
Sir F. M. Eden, it may be remarked in passing, is the only disciple of Adam
 Smith during the eighteenth century that produced any work of importance. [6]
According to the economists themselves, it is neither the actual extent of
 social wealth, nor the magnitude of the capital already functioning, that lead
 to a rise of wages, but only the constant growth of accumulation and the degree
 of rapidity of that growth. (Adam Smith, Book I., chapter 8.) So far, we have
 only considered one special phase of this process, that in which the increase
 of capital occurs along with a constant technical composition of capital. But
 the process goes beyond this phase.
Once given the general basis of the capitalistic system, then, in the course
 of accumulation, a point is reached at which the development of the
 productivity of social labour becomes the most powerful lever 583of
 accumulation.
Apart from natural conditions, such as fertility of the soil, &c., and
 from the skill of independent and isolated producers (shown rather
 qualitatively in the goodness than quantitatively in the mass of their
 products), the degree of productivity of labour, in a given society, is
 expressed in the relative extent of the means of production that one labourer,
 during a given time, with the same tension of labour power, turns into
 products. The mass of the means of production which he thus transforms,
 increases with the productiveness of his labour. But those means of production
 play a double part. The increase of some is a consequence, that of the others a
 condition of the increasing productivity of labour. E.g., with the
 division of labour in manufacture, and with the use of machinery, more raw
 material is worked up in the same time, and, therefore, a greater mass of raw
 material and auxiliary substances enter into the labour process. That is the
 consequence of the increasing productivity of labour. On the other hand, the
 mass of machinery, beasts of burden, mineral manures, drain-pipes, &c., is
 a condition of the increasing productivity of labour. So also is it with the
 means of production concentrated in buildings, furnaces, means of transport,
 &c. But whether condition or consequence, the growing extent of the means
 of production, as compared with the labour power incorporated with them, is an
 expression of the growing productiveness of labour. The increase of the latter
 appears, therefore, in the diminution of the mass of labour in proportion to
 the mass of means of production moved by it, or in the diminution of the
 subjective factor of the labour process as compared with the objective factor.
This change in the technical composition of capital, this growth in the mass
 of means of production, as compared with the mass of the labour power that
 vivifies them, is reflected again in its value composition, by the increase of
 the constant constituent of capital at the expense of its variable constituent.
 There may be, e.g., originally 50 per cent. of a capital laid out in
 means of production, and 50 per cent. in labour power; later on, with the
 development of the productivity of labour, 80 per cent. in means of production,
 20 per cent. in labour power, and so on. This law of the progressive increase
 in constant capital, in proportion to the variable, is confirmed at every step
 (as already shown) by the comparative analysis of the prices of commodities,
 whether we compare different economic epochs or different nations in the same
 epoch. The relative magnitude of the element of price, which represents the
 value of the means of production only, or the constant part of capital
 consumed, is in direct, the relative magnitude of the other element of price
 that pays labour (the variable part of capital) is in inverse proportion to the
 advance of accumulation.
This diminution in the variable part of capital as compared with the
 constant, or the altered value-composition of the capital, however, only shows
 approximately the change in the composition of its material constituents. If,
 e.g., the capital-value employed today in spinning is 7/8 constant and
 1/8 variable, whilst at the beginning of the 18th century it was ½ constant and
 ½ variable, on the other hand, the mass of raw material, instruments of labour,
 &c., that a certain quantity of spinning labour consumes productively
 today, is many hundred times greater than at the beginning of the 18th century.
 The reason is simply that, with the increasing productivity of labour, not only
 does the mass of the means of production consumed by it increase, but their
 value compared with their mass diminishes. Their value therefore rises
 absolutely, but not in proportion to their mass. The increase of the difference
 between constant and variable capital, is, therefore, much less than that of
 the difference between the mass of the means of production into which the
 constant, and the mass of the labour power into which the variable, capital is
 converted. The former difference increases with the latter, but in a smaller
 degree.
But, if the progress of accumulation lessens the relative magnitude of the
 variable part of capital, it by no means, in doing this, excludes the
 possibility of a rise in its absolute magnitude. Suppose that a capital-value
 at first is divided into 50 per cent. of constant and 50 per cent. of variable
 capital; later into 80 per cent. of constant and 20 per cent. of variable. If
 in the meantime the original capital, say £6,000, has increased to £18,000, its
 variable constituent has also increased. It was £3,000, it is now £3,600. But
 where as formerly an increase of capital by 20 per cent. would have sufficed to
 raise the demand for labour 20 per cent., now this latter rise requires a
 tripling of the original capital.
This splitting-up of the total social capital into many individual capitals
 or the repulsion of its fractions one from another, is counteracted by their
 attraction. This last does not mean that simple concentration of the means of
 production and of the command over labour, which is identical with
 accumulation. It is concentration of capitals already formed, destruction of
 their individual independence, expropriation of capitalist by capitalist,
 transformation of many small into few large capitals. This process differs from
 the former in this, that it only presupposes a change in the distribution of
 capital already to hand, and functioning; its field of action is therefore not
 limited by the absolute growth of social wealth, by the absolute limits of
 accumulation. Capital grows in one place to a huge mass in a single hand,
 because it has in another place been lost by many. This is centralisation
 proper, as distinct from accumulation and concentration.
The laws of this centralisation of capitals, or of the attraction of capital
 by capital, cannot be developed here. A brief hint at a few facts must suffice.
 The battle of competition is fought by cheapening of commodities. The cheapness
 of commodities demands, caeteris paribus, on the productiveness of
 labour, and this again on the scale of production. Therefore, the larger
 capitals beat the smaller. It will further be 587remembered that, with
 the development of the capitalist mode of production, there is an increase in
 the minimum amount of individual capital necessary to carry on a business under
 its normal conditions. The smaller capitals, therefore, crowd
 into spheres of production which Modern Industry has only sporadically or
 incompletely got hold of. Here competition rages in direct proportion to the
 number, and in inverse proportion to the magnitudes, of the antagonistic
 capitals. It always ends in the ruin of many small capitalists, whose capitals
 partly pass into the hands of their conquerors, partly vanish. Apart from this,
 with capitalist production an altogether new force comes into play — the
 credit system, which in its first stages furtively creeps in as the humble
 assistant of accumulation, drawing into the hands of individual or associated
 capitalists, by invisible threads, the money resources which lie scattered,
 over the surface of society, in larger or smaller amounts; but it soon becomes
 a new and terrible weapon in the battle of competition and is finally
 transformed into an enormous social mechanism for the centralisation of
 capitals.
Commensurately with the development of capitalist production and
 accumulation there develop the two most powerful levers of centralisation
 — competition and credit. At the same time the progress of accumulation
 increases the material amenable to centralisation, i.e., the
 individual capitals, whilst the expansion of capitalist production creates, on
 the one hand, the social want, and, on the other, the technical means necessary
 for those immense industrial undertakings which require a previous
 centralisation of capital for their accomplishment. Today, therefore, the force
 of attraction, drawing together individual capitals, and the tendency to
 centralisation are stronger than ever before. But if the relative extension and
 energy of the movement towards centralisation is determined, in a certain
 degree, by the magnitude of capitalist wealth and superiority of economic
 mechanism already attained, progress in centralisation does not in any way
 depend upon a positive growth in the magnitude of social capital. And this is the specific difference between centralisation and
 concentration, the latter being only another name for reproduction on an
 extended scale. Centralisation may result from a mere change in the
 distribution of capitals already existing, from a simple alteration in the
 quantitative grouping of the component parts of social capital. Here capital
 can grow into powerful masses in a single hand because there it has been
 withdrawn from many individual hands. In any given branch of industry
 centralisation would reach its extreme limit if all the individual capitals
 invested in it were fused into 588 a single capital. [12] In a given society the limit would
 be reached only when the entire social capital was united in the hands of
 either a single capitalist or a single capitalist company.
Centralisation completes the work of accumulation by enabling industrial
 capitalists to extend the scale of their operations. Whether this latter result
 is the consequence of accumulation or centralisation, whether centralisation is
 accomplished by the violent method of annexation — when certain capitals
 become such preponderant centres of attraction for others that they shatter the
 individual cohesion of the latter and then draw the separate fragments to
 themselves — or whether the fusion of a number of capitals already formed
 or in process of formation takes place by the smoother process of organising
 joint-stock companies — the economic effect remains the same. Everywhere
 the increased scale of industrial establishments is the starting point for a
 more comprehensive organisation of the collective work of many, for a wider
 development of their material motive forces — in other words, for the
 progressive transformation of isolated processes of production, carried on by
 customary methods, into processes of production socially combined and
 scientifically arranged.
But accumulation, the gradual increase of capital by reproduction as it
 passes from the circular to the spiral form, is clearly a very slow procedure
 compared with centralisation, which has only to change the quantitative
 groupings of the constituent parts of social capital. The world would still be
 without railways if it had had to wait until accumulation had got a few
 individual capitals far enough to be adequate for the construction of a
 railway. Centralisation, on the contrary, accomplished this in the twinkling of
 an eye, by means of joint-stock companies. And whilst centralisation thus
 intensifies and accelerates the effects of accumulation, it simultaneously
 extends and speeds those revolutions in the technical composition of capital
 which raise its constant portion at the expense of its variable portion, thus
 diminishing the relative demand for labour.
The masses of capital fused together overnight by centralisation reproduce
 and multiply as the others do, only more rapidly, thereby becoming new and
 powerful levers in social accumulation. Therefore, when we speak of the
 progress of social accumulation we tacitly include — today — the
 effects of centralisation.
The additional capitals formed in the normal course of accumulation (see
 Chapter XXIV, Section 1) serve particularly as vehicles for
 the 589exploitation of new inventions and discoveries, and industrial
 improvements in general. But in time the old capital also reaches the moment of
 renewal from top to toe, when it sheds its skin and is reborn like the others
 in a perfected technical form, in which a smaller quantity of labour will
 suffice to set in motion a larger quantity of machinery and raw materials. The
 absolute reduction in the demand for labour which necessarily follows from this
 is obviously so much the greater the higher the degree in which the capitals
 undergoing this process of renewal are already massed together by virtue of the
 centralisation movement.
On the one hand, therefore, the additional capital formed in the course of
 accumulation attracts fewer and fewer labourers in proportion to its magnitude.
 On the other hand, the old capital periodically reproduced with change of
 composition, repels more and more of the labourers formerly employed by it.
The accumulation of capital, though originally appearing as its quantitative
 extension only, is effected, as we have seen, under a progressive qualitative
 change in its composition, under a constant increase of its constant, at the
 expense of its variable constituent. [13]
Even Malthus recognises overpopulation as a necessity of modern industry,
 though, after his narrow fashion, he explains it by the absolute over-growth of
 the labouring population, not by their becoming relatively supernumerary. He
 says:
After Political Economy has thus demonstrated the constant production of a
 relative surplus population of labourers to be a necessity of capitalistic
 accumulation, she very aptly, in the guise of an old maid, puts in the mouth of
 her “beau ideal” of a capitalist the following words addressed to
 those supernumeraries thrown on the streets by their own creation of additional
 capital: —
Capitalist production can by no means content itself with the quantity of
 disposable labour power which the natural increase of population yields. It
 requires for its free play an industrial reserve army independent of these
 natural limits.
Up to this point it has been assumed that the increase or
 diminution 595of the variable capital corresponds rigidly with the
 increase or diminution of the number of labourers employed.
The number of labourers commanded by capital may remain the same, or even
 fall, while the variable capital increases. This is the case if the individual
 labourer yields more labour, and therefore his wages increase, and this
 although the price of labour remains the same or even falls, only more slowly
 than the mass of labour rises. Increase of variable capital, in this case,
 becomes an index of more labour, but not of more labourers employed. It is the
 absolute interest of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labour out
 of a smaller, rather than a greater number of labourers, if the cost is about
 the same. In the latter case, the outlay of constant capital increases in
 proportion to the mass of labour set in action; in the former that increase is
 much smaller. The more extended the scale of production, the stronger this
 motive. Its force increases with the accumulation of capital.
We have seen that the development of the capitalist mode of production and
 of the productive power of labour — at once the cause and effect of
 accumulation — enables the capitalist, with the same outlay of variable
 capital, to set in action more labour by greater exploitation (extensive or
 intensive) of each individual labour power. We have further seen that the
 capitalist buys with the same capital a greater mass of labour power, as he
 progressively replaces skilled labourers by less skilled, mature labour power
 by immature, male by female, that of adults by that of young persons or
 children.
On the one hand, therefore, with the progress of accumulation, a larger
 variable capital sets more labour in action without enlisting more labourers;
 on the other, a variable capital of the same magnitude sets in action more
 labour with the same mass of labour power; and, finally, a greater number of
 inferior labour powers by displacement of higher.
The production of a relative surplus population, or the setting free of
 labourers, goes on therefore yet more rapidly than the technical revolution of
 the process of production that accompanies, and is accelerated by, the advance
 of accumulation; and more rapidly than the corresponding diminution of the
 variable part of capital as compared with the constant. If the means of
 production, as they increase in extent and effective power, become to a less
 extent means of employment of labourers, this state of things is again modified
 by the fact that in proportion as the productiveness of labour increases,
 capital increases its supply of labour more quickly than its demand for
 labourers. The overwork of the employed part of the working class swells the
 ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by
 its competition exerts on the former, forces these to submit to overwork and to
 subjugation under the dictates of capital. The condemna596tion of one
 part of the working class to enforced idleness by the overwork of the other
 part, and the converse, becomes a means of enriching the individual
 capitalists, [19] and accelerates
 at the same time the production of the industrial reserve army on a scale
 corresponding with the advance of social accumulation. How important is this
 element in the formation of the relative surplus population, is shown by the
 example of England. Her technical means for saving labour are colossal.
 Nevertheless, if to-morrow morning labour generally were reduced to a rational
 amount, and proportioned to the different sections of the working class
 according to age and sex, the working population to hand would be absolutely
 insufficient for the carrying on of national production on its present scale.
 The great majority of the labourers now “unproductive” would have
 to be turned into “productive” ones.
Between 1849 and 1859, a rise of wages practically insignificant, though
 accompanied by falling prices of corn, took place in the English agricultural
 districts. In Wiltshire, e.g., the weekly wages rose from 7s. to 8s.;
 in Dorsetshire from 7s. or 8s., to 9s., &c. This was the result of an
 unusual exodus of the agricultural surplus population caused by the demands of
 war, the vast extension of railroads, factories, mines, &c. The lower the
 wages, the higher is the proportion in which ever so insignificant a rise of
 them expresses itself. If the weekly wage, e.g., is 20s. and it rises
 to 22s., that is a rise of 10 per cent.; but if it is only 7s. and it rises to
 9s., that is a rise of 28 4/7 per cent., which sounds very fine. Everywhere the
 farmers were howling, and the London Economist, with reference to
 these starvation-wages, prattled quite seriously of “a general and
 substantial advance.” [20]
 What did the farmers do now? Did they wait until, in consequence of this
 brilliant remuneration, the agricultural labourers had so increased and
 multiplied that their wages must fall again, as prescribed by the dogmatic
 economic brain? They introduced more machinery, and in a moment the labourers
 were redundant again 598in a proportion satisfactory even to the
 farmers. There was now “more capital” laid out in agriculture than
 before, and in a more productive form. With this the demand for labour fell,
 not only relatively, but absolutely.
The above economic fiction confuses the laws that regulate the general
 movement of wages, or the ratio between the working class —
 i.e., the total labour power — and the total social capital,
 with the laws that distribute the working population over the different spheres
 of production. If, e.g., in consequence of favourable circumstances,
 accumulation in a particular sphere of production becomes especially active,
 and profits in it, being greater than the average profits, attract additional
 capital, of course the demand for labour rises and wages also rise. The higher
 wages draw a larger part of the working population into the more favoured
 sphere, until it is glutted with labour power, and wages at length fall again
 to their average level or below it, if the pressure is too great. Then, not
 only does the immigration of labourers into the branch of industry in question
 cease; it gives place to their emigration. Here the political economist thinks
 he sees the why and wherefore of an absolute increase of workers accompanying
 an increase of wages, and of a diminution of wages accompanying an absolute
 increase of labourers. But he sees really only the local oscillation of the
 labour-market in a particular sphere of production — he sees only the
 phenomena accompanying the distribution of the working population into the
 different spheres of outlay of capital, according to its varying needs.
The industrial reserve army, during the periods of stagnation and average
 prosperity, weighs down the active labour-army; during the periods of
 over-production and paroxysm, it holds its pretensions in check. Relative
 surplus population is therefore the pivot upon which the law of demand and
 supply of labour works. It confines the field of action of this law within the
 limits absolutely convenient to the activity of exploitation and to the
 domination of capital.
Capital works on both sides at the same time. If its accumulation, on the
 one hand, increases the demand for labour, it increases on the other the supply
 of labourers by the “setting free” of them, whilst at the same time
 the pressure of the unemployed compels those that are employed to furnish more
 labour, and therefore makes the supply of labour, to a certain extent,
 independent of the supply of labourers. The action of the law of supply and
 demand of labour on this basis completes the despotism of capital. As soon,
 therefore, as the labourers learn the secret, how it comes to pass that in the
 same measure as they work more, as they produce more wealth for others, and as
 the productive power of their labour increases, so in the same measure even
 their function as a means of the self-expansion of capital becomes more and
 more precarious for them; as soon as they discover that the degree of intensity
 of the competition among themselves depends wholly on the pressure of the
 relative surplus population; as soon as, by Trades’ Unions, &c., they
 try to organise a regular co-operation between employed and unemployed in order
 to destroy or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capitalistic
 production on their class, so soon capital and its sycophant, Political
 Economy, cry out at the infringement of the “eternal” and so to say
 “sacred” law of supply and demand. Every combination of employed
 and unemployed disturbs the “harmonious” action of this law. But,
 on the other hand, as soon as (in the colonies, e.g.) adverse
 circumstances prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army and, with it,
 the absolute dependence of the working class upon the capitalist class,
 capital, along with its commonplace Sancho 600Panza, rebels against the
 “sacred” law of supply and demand, and tries to check its
 inconvenient action by forcible means and State interference.
The relative surplus population exists in every possible form. Every
 labourer belongs to it during the time when he is only partially employed or
 wholly unemployed. Not taking into account the great periodically recurring
 forms that the changing phases of the industrial cycle impress on it, now an
 acute form during the crisis, then again a chronic form during dull times
 — it has always three forms, the floating, the latent, the stagnant.
In the centres of modern industry — factories, manufactures,
 ironworks, mines, &c. — the labourers are sometimes repelled,
 sometimes attracted again in greater masses, the number of those employed
 increasing on the whole, although in a constantly decreasing proportion to the
 scale of production. Here the surplus population exists in the floating form.
In the automatic factories, as in all the great workshops, where machinery
 enters as a factor, or where only the modern division of labour is carried out,
 large numbers of boys are employed up to the age of maturity. When this term is
 once reached, only a very small number continue to find employment in the same
 branches of industry, whilst the majority are regularly discharged. This
 majority forms an element of the floating surplus population, growing with the
 extension of those branches of industry. Part of them emigrates, following in
 fact capital that has emigrated. One consequence is that the female population
 grows more rapidly than the male, teste England. That the natural
 increase of the number of labourers does not satisfy the requirements of the
 accumulation of capital, and yet all the time is in excess of them, is a
 contradiction inherent to the movement of capital itself. It wants larger
 numbers of youthful labourers, a smaller number of adults. The contradiction is
 not more glaring than that other one that there is a complaint of the want of
 hands, while at the same time many thousands are out of work, because the
 division of labour chains them to a particular branch of industry. [21]
601The consumption of labour power by capital is, besides, so rapid
 that the labourer, half-way through his life, has already more or less
 completely lived himself out. He falls into the ranks of the supernumeraries,
 or is thrust down from a higher to a lower step in the scale. It is precisely
 among the work-people of modern industry that we meet with the shortest
 duration of life. Dr. Lee, Medical Officer of Health for Manchester, stated
In order to conform to these circumstances, the absolute increase of this
 section of the proletariat must take place under conditions that shall swell
 their numbers, although the individual elements are used up rapidly. Hence,
 rapid renewal of the generations of labourers (this law does not hold for the
 other classes of the population). This social need is met by early marriages, a
 necessary consequence of the conditions in which the labourers of modern
 industry live, and by the premium that the exploitation of children sets on
 their production.
As soon as capitalist production takes possession of agriculture, and in
 proportion to the extent to which it does so, the demand for an agricultural
 labouring population falls absolutely, while the accumulation of the capital
 employed in agriculture advances, without this repulsion being, as in
 non-agricultural industries, compensated by a greater attraction. Part of the
 agricultural population is therefore constantly on the point of passing over
 into an urban or manufacturing proletariat, and on the look-out for
 circumstances favourable to this transformation. (Manufacture is used here in
 the sense of all non-agricultural industries.) [23] This source of relative surplus population is thus
 constantly flowing. But the constant flow towards the towns
 pre-602supposes, in the country itself, a constant latent surplus
 population, the extent of which becomes evident only when its channels of
 outlet open to exceptional width. The agricultural labourer is therefore
 reduced to the minimum of wages, and always stands with one foot already in the
 swamp of pauperism.
The third category of the relative surplus population, the stagnant, forms a
 part of the active labour army, but with extremely irregular employment. Hence
 it furnishes to capital an inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labour power.
 Its conditions of life sink below the average normal level of the working
 class; this makes it at once the broad basis of special branches of capitalist
 exploitation. It is characterised by maximum of working-time, and minimum of
 wages. We have learnt to know its chief form under the rubric of
 “domestic industry.” It recruits itself
 constantly from the supernumerary forces of modern industry and agriculture,
 and specially from those decaying branches of industry where handicraft is
 yielding to manufacture, manufacture to machinery. Its extent grows, as with
 the extent and energy of accumulation, the creation of a surplus population
 advances. But it forms at the same time a self-reproducing and
 self-perpetuating element of the working class, taking a proportionally greater
 part in the general increase of that class than the other elements. In fact,
 not only the number of births and deaths, but the absolute size of the families
 stand in inverse proportion to the height of wages, and therefore to the amount
 of means of subsistence of which the different categories of labourers dispose.
 This law of capitalistic society would sound absurd to savages, or even
 civilised colonists. It calls to mind the boundless reproduction of animals
 individually weak and constantly hunted down. [24]
The lowest sediment of the relative surplus population finally dwells in the
 sphere of pauperism. Exclusive of vagabonds, criminals, prostitutes, in a word,
 the “dangerous” classes, this layer of society consists of three
 categories. First, those able to work. One need only glance superficially at
 the statistics of English pauperism to find that the quantity of paupers
 increases with every crisis, and diminishes with every revival of trade.
 Second, orphans and pauper children. These are candidates for the industrial
 reserve army, and are, in times of great prosperity, as 1860, e.g.,
 speedily and in large numbers enrolled in the 603active army of
 labourers. Third, the demoralised and ragged, and those unable to work, chiefly
 people who succumb to their incapacity for adaptation, due to the division of
 labour; people who have passed the normal age of the labourer; the victims of
 industry, whose number increases with the increase of dangerous machinery, of
 mines, chemical works, &c., the mutilated, the sickly, the widows, &c.
 Pauperism is the hospital of the active labour-army and the dead weight of the
 industrial reserve army. Its production is included in that of the relative
 surplus population, its necessity in theirs; along with the surplus population,
 pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist
 development of wealth. It enters into the faux frais of capitalist
 production; but capital knows how to throw these, for the most part, from its
 own shoulders on to those of the working class and the lower middle class.
The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and
 energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat
 and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve
 army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, develop
 also the labour power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial
 reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the
 greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour army, the greater
 is the mass of a consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse
 ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus layers
 of the working class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official
 pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.
 Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances,
 the analysis of which does not concern us here.
The folly is now patent of the economic wisdom that preaches to the
 labourers the accommodation of their number to the requirements of capital. The
 mechanism of capitalist production and accumulation constantly effects this
 adjustment. The first word of this adaptation is the creation of a relative
 surplus population, or industrial reserve army. Its last word is the misery of
 constantly extending strata of the active army of labour, and the dead weight
 of pauperism.
The law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means of production,
 thanks to the advance in the productiveness of social labour, may be set in
 movement by a progressively diminishing expenditure of human power, this law,
 in a capitalist society — where the labourer does not employ the means of
 production, but the means of production employ the labourer — undergoes a
 complete inversion and is expressed thus: the higher the productiveness of
 labour, the greater is the pressure of the labourers on the means of
 employment, the more precarious, therefore, becomes their condition of
 existence, viz., the sale of their own labour power for the increasing
 of another’s wealth, or for the self-expansion of capital. The fact that
 the means of production, and the productiveness of labour, increase more
 rapidly than the productive population, expresses itself, therefore,
 capitalistically in the inverse form that the labouring population always
 increases more rapidly than the conditions under which capital can employ this
 increase for its own self-expansion.
The Venetian monk Ortes, one of the great economic writers of the 18th
 century, regards the antagonism of capitalist production as a general natural
 law of social wealth.
In a thoroughly brutal way about 10 years after Ortes, the Church of England
 parson, Townsend, glorified misery as a necessary condition of wealth.
Everything therefore depends upon making hunger permanent among the working
 class, and for this, according to Townsend, the principle of population,
 especially active among the poor, provides.
Storch asks himself in what then really consists the progress of this
 capitalistic civilisation with its misery and its degradation of the masses, as
 compared with barbarism. He finds but one answer: security!
Finally Destutt de Tracy, the fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire, blurts out
 brutally:
No period of modern society is so favourable for the study of capitalist
 accumulation as the period of the last 20 years. It is as if this period had
 found Fortunatus’ purse. But of all countries England again furnishes the
 classical example, because it holds the foremost place in the world-market,
 because capitalist production is here alone completely developed, and lastly,
 because the introduction of the Free-trade millennium since 1846 has cut off
 the last retreat of vulgar economy. The titanic advance of production —
 the latter half of the 20 years’ period again far surpassing the former
 — has been already pointed out sufficiently in Part IV.
Although the absolute increase of the English population in the last half
 century was very great, the relative increase or rate of growth fell
 constantly, as the following table borrowed from the census shows.
Annual increase per cent. of the population of England and Wales in decimal
 numbers:
Let us now, on the other hand, consider the increase of wealth. Here the
 movement of profit, rent of land, &c., that come under the income tax,
 furnishes the surest basis. The increase of profits liable to income tax
 (farmers and some other categories not included) in Great Britain from 1853 to
 1864 amounted to 50.47% or 4.58% as the annual average, [31] that of the population during the same period to
 about 12%. The augmentation of the rent of land subject to taxation (including
 houses, railways, mines, fisheries, &c.), amounted for 1853 to 1864 to 38%
 or 3 5/12% annually. Under this head the following categories show the greatest
 increase:
If we compare the years from 1853 to 1864 in three sets of four consecutive
 years each, the rate of augmentation of the income increases constantly. [32] It is, e.g., for that
 arising from profits between 1853 to 1857, 1.73% yearly; 1857-1861, 2.74%, and
 for 1861-64, 9.30% yearly. The sum of the incomes of the United Kingdom that
 come under the income tax was in 1856, £307,068,898; in 1859, £328,127,416; in
 1862, £351,745,241; in 1863, £359,142,897; in 1864, £362,462,279; in 1865,
 £385,530,020. [33]
The accumulation of capital was attended at the same time by its
 concentration and centralisation. Although no official statistics of
 agriculture existed for England (they did for Ireland), they were voluntarily
 given in 10 counties. These statistics gave the result that from 1851 to 1861
 the number of farms of less than 100 acres had fallen from 31,583 to 26,597, so
 that 5,016 had been thrown together into larger farms. [34] From 1815 to 1825 no personal estate of more than
 £1,000,000 came under the succession duty; from 1825 to 1855, however, 8 did;
 and 4 from 1856 to June, 1859, i.e., in 4½ years. [35] The centralisation will, however,
 be best seen from a short analysis of the Income Tax Schedule D (profits,
 exclusive of farms, &c.), in the years 1864 and 1865. I note beforehand
 that incomes from this source pay income tax on everything over £60. These
 incomes liable to taxation in England, Wales and Scotland, amounted in 1864 to
 £95,844,222, in 1865 to 609£105,435,579. [36] The number of persons taxed were in 1864, 308,416,
 out of a population of 23,891,009; in 1865, 332,431 out of a population of
 24,127,003. The following table shows the distribution of these incomes in the
 two years:
In 1855 there were produced in the United Kingdom 61,453,079 tons of coal,
 of value £16,113,167; in 1864, 92,787,873 tons, of value £23,197,968; in 1855,
 3,218,154 tons of pig-iron, of value £8,045,385; 1864, 4,767,951 tons, of value
 £11,919,877. In 1854 the length of the railroads worked in the United Kingdom
 was 8,054 miles, with a paid-up capital of £286,068,794; in 1864 the length was
 12,789 miles, with capital paid up of £425,719,613. In 1854 the total sum of
 the exports and imports of the United Kingdom was £268,210,145; in 1865,
 £489,923,285. The following table shows the movement of the exports:
After these few examples one understands the cry of triumph of the
 Registrar-General of the British people:
Let us turn now to the direct agents of this industry, or the producers of
 this wealth, to the working class.
Thus spake this unctuous minister in the House of Commons of February 13th,
 1843. On April 16th, 1863, 20 years later, in the speech in which he introduced
 his Budget:
How lame an anti-climax! If the working class has remained
 “poor,” only “less poor” in proportion as it produces
 for the wealthy class “an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
 power,” then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of
 poverty have not lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth
 have. As to the cheapening of the means of subsistence, the official
 statistics, e.g., the accounts of the London Orphan Asylum, show an
 increase in price of 20% for the average of the three years 1860-1862, compared
 with 1851-1853. In the following three years, 1863-1865, there was a
 progressive rise in the price of meat, butter, milk, sugar, salt, coals, and a
 number of other necessary means of subsistence. [41] Gladstone’s 611next Budget speech of
 April 7th, 1864, is a Pindaric dithyrambus on the advance of
 surplus-value-making and the happiness of the people “tempered by
 poverty.” He speaks of masses “on the border” of pauperism,
 of branches of trade in which “wages have not increased,” and
 finally sums up the happiness of the working class in the words:
Professor Fawcett, not bound like Gladstone by official
 considerations, declares roundly:
In the chapters on the “working-day” and
 “machinery,” the reader has seen under what circumstances the
 British working class created an “intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
 power” for the propertied classes. There we were chiefly concerned with
 the social functioning of the labourer. But for a full elucidation of the law
 of accumulation, his condition outside the workshop must also be looked at, his
 condition as to food and dwelling. The limits of this book compel us to concern
 ourselves chiefly with the worst paid part of the industrial proletariat, and
 with the agricultural labourers, who together form the majority of the working
 class.
But first, one word on official pauperism, or on that part of the working
 class which has forfeited its condition of existence (the sale of labour
 power), and vegetates upon public alms. The official list of
 paupers 612numbered in England [44] 851,369 persons; in 1856, 877,767; in 1865, 971,433.
 In consequence of the cotton famine, it grew in the years 1863 and 1864 to
 1,079,382 and 1,014,978. The crisis of 1866, which fell most heavily on London,
 created in this centre of the world market, more populous than the kingdom of
 Scotland, an increase of pauperism for the year 1866 of 19.5% compared with
 1865, and of 24.4% compared with 1864, and a still greater increase for the
 first months of 1867 as compared with 1866. From the analysis of the statistics
 of pauperism, two points are to be taken. On the one hand, the fluctuation up
 and down of the number of paupers, reflects the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. On the other, the official statistics
 become more and more misleading as to the actual extent of pauperism in
 proportion as, with the accumulation of capital, the class-struggle, and,
 therefore, the class consciousness of the working men, develop. E.g.,
 the barbarity in the treatment of the paupers, at which the English Press
 (The Times, Pall Mall Gazette, etc.) have cried out so loudly during
 the last two years, is of ancient date. F. Engels showed in 1844 exactly the
 same horrors, exactly the same transient canting outcries of “sensational
 literature.” But frightful increase of “deaths by starvation”
 in London during the last ten years proves beyond doubt the growing horror in
 which the working-people hold the slavery of the workhouse, that place of
 punishment for misery. [45]
During the cotton famine of 1862, Dr. Smith was charged by the Privy Council
 with an inquiry into the conditions of nourishment of the distressed operatives
 in Lancashire and Cheshire. His observations during many preceding years had
 led him to the conclusion that “to avert starvation diseases,” the
 daily food of an average woman ought to contain at least 3,900 grains of carbon
 with 180 grains of nitrogen; the daily food of an average man, at least 4,300
 grains of carbon with 200 grains of nitrogen; for women, about the same
 quantity of nutritive elements as are contained in 2 lbs. of good wheaten
 bread, for men 1/9 more; for the weekly average of adult men and women, at
 least 28,600 grains of carbon and 1,330 grains of nitrogen. His
 calculation 613was practically confirmed in a surprising manner by its
 agreement with the miserable quantity of nourishment to which want had forced
 down the consumption of the cotton operatives. This was, in December, 1862,
 29,211 grains of carbon, and 1,295 grains of nitrogen weekly.
In the year 1863, the Privy Council ordered an inquiry into the state of
 distress of the worst-nourished part of the English working class. Dr. Simon,
 medical officer to the Privy Council, chose for this work the above-mentioned
 Dr. Smith. His inquiry ranges on the one hand over the agricultural labourers,
 on the other, over silk-weavers, needlewomen, kid-glovers, stocking-weavers,
 glove-weavers, and shoemakers. The latter categories are, with the exception of
 the stocking-weavers, exclusively town-dwellers. It was made a rule in the
 inquiry to select in each category the most healthy families, and those
 comparatively in the best circumstances.
As a general result it was found that
Among the agricultural labourers, those of England, the wealthiest part of
 the United Kingdom, were the worst fed. [47] The insufficiency of food among the agricultural
 labourers, fell, as a rule, chiefly on the women and children, for “the
 man must eat to do his work.” Still greater penury ravaged the
 town-workers examined.
(“Privation” of the capitalist all this! i.e.,
 “abstinence” from paying for the means of subsistence absolutely
 necessary for the mere vegetation of his “hands.”) [49]
The following table shows the conditions of nourishment of the above-named
 categories of purely town-dwelling work-people, as compared with the minimum
 assumed by Dr. Smith, and with the food-allowance of the cotton operatives
 during the time of their greatest distress: 614
One half, or 60/125, of the industrial labour categories investigated, had
 absolutely no beer, 28% no milk. The weekly average of the liquid means of
 nourishment in the families varied from seven ounces in the needle-women to 24¾
 ounces in the stocking-makers. The majority of those who did not obtain milk
 were needle-women in London. The quantity of bread-stuffs consumed weekly
 varied from 7¾ lbs. for the needle-women to 11½ lbs. for the
 shoemakers, and gave a total average of 9.9 lbs. per adult weekly. Sugar
 (treacle, etc.) varied from 4 ounces weekly for the kid-glovers to 11 ounces
 for the stocking-makers; and the total average per week for all categories was
 8 ounces per adult weekly. Total weekly average of butter (fat, etc.) 5 ounces
 per adult. The weekly average of meat (bacon, etc.) varied from 7¼ ounces for
 the silk-weavers, to 18¼ ounces for the kid-glovers; total average for the
 different categories 13.6 ounces. The weekly cost of food per adult, gave the
 following average figures; silk-weavers 2s. 2½d., needle-women 2s. 7d.,
 kid-glovers 2s. 9½d., shoemakers 2s 7¾d., stocking-weavers 2s. 6¼d. For the
 silk-weavers of Macclesfield the average was only 1s. 8½d. The worst categories
 were the needle-women, silk-weavers and kid-glovers. [50] Of these facts, Dr. Simon in his General Health
 Report says:
The intimate connexion between the pangs of hunger of the most industrious
 layers of the working class, and the extravagant consumption, coarse or
 refined, of the rich, for which capitalist accumulation is the basis, reveals
 itself only when the economic laws are known. It is otherwise with the
 “housing of the poor.” Every unprejudiced observer sees that the
 greater the centralisation of the means of production, the greater is the
 corresponding heaping together of the labourers, within a given space; that
 therefore the swifter capitalistic accumulation, the more miserable are the
 dwellings of the working-people. “Improvements” of towns,
 accompanying the increase of wealth, by 616the
 demolition of badly built quarters, the erection of palaces for banks,
 warehouses, &c., the widening of streets for business traffic, for the
 carriages of luxury, and for the introduction of tramways, &c., drive away
 the poor into even worse and more crowded hiding places. On the other hand,
 every one knows that the dearness of dwellings is in inverse ratio to their
 excellence, and that the mines of misery are exploited by house speculators
 with more profit or less cost than ever were the mines of Potosi. The
 antagonistic character of capitalist accumulation, and therefore of the
 capitalistic relations of property generally, [52] is here so evident, that even the official English
 reports on this subject teem with heterodox onslaughts on “property and
 its rights.” With the development of industry, with the accumulation of
 capital, with the growth and “improvement” of towns, the evil makes
 such progress that the mere fear of contagious diseases which do not spare even
 “respectability,” brought into existence from 1847 to 1864 no less
 than 10 Acts of Parliament on sanitation, and that the frightened bourgeois in
 some towns, as Liverpool, Glasgow, &c., took strenuous measures through
 their municipalities. Nevertheless Dr. Simon, in his report of 1865, says:
By order of the Privy Council, in 1864, an inquiry was made into the
 conditions of the housing of the agricultural labourers, in 1865 of the poorer
 classes in the towns. The results of the admirable work of Dr. Julian Hunter
 are to be found in the seventh (1865) and eighth (1866) reports on
 “Public Health.” To the agricultural labourers, I shall come later.
 On the condition of town dwellings, I quote, as preliminary, a general remark
 of Dr. Simon.
617London takes the first place in over-crowded habitations,
 absolutely unfit for human beings.
Further, the better-off part of the working class, together with the small
 shopkeepers and other elements of the lower middle class, falls in London more
 and more under the curse of these vile conditions of dwelling, in proportion as
 “improvements,” and with them the demolition of old streets and
 houses, advance, as factories and the afflux of human beings grow in the
 metropolis, and finally as house rents rise with the ground-rents.
There is almost no house-property in London that is not overburdened with a
 number of middlemen. For the price of land in London is always very high in
 comparison with its yearly revenue, and therefore every buyer speculates on
 getting rid of it again at a jury price (the expropriation valuation fixed by
 jurymen), or on pocketing an extraordinary increase of value arising from the
 neighbourhood of some large establishment. As a consequence of this there is a
 regular trade in the purchase of “fag-ends of leases.”
The rents are weekly, and these gentlemen run no risk. In consequence of the
 making of railroads in the City,
The workhouses are already over-crowded, and the “improvements”
 already sanctioned by 618Parliament are only just begun. If labourers
 are driven away by the demolition of their old houses, they do not leave their
 old parish, or at most they settle down on its borders, as near as they can get
 to it.
This same Strand, a main thoroughfare which gives strangers an imposing idea
 of the wealth of London, may serve as an example of the packing together of
 human beings in that town. In one of its parishes, the Officer of Health
 reckoned 581 persons per acre, although half the width of the
 Thames was reckoned in. It will be self-understood that every sanitary measure,
 which, as has been the case hitherto in London, hunts the labourers from one
 quarter, by demolishing uninhabitable houses, serves only to crowd them
 together yet more closely in another.
Admire this capitalistic justice! The owner of land, of houses, the
 businessman, when expropriated by “improvements” such as railroads,
 the building of new streets, &c., not only receives full indemnity. He
 must, according to law, human and divine, be comforted for his enforced
 “abstinence” over and above this by a thumping profit. The
 labourer, with his wife and child and chattels, is thrown out into the street,
 and — if he crowds in too large numbers towards quarters of the town
 where the vestries insist on decency, he is prosecuted in the name of
 sanitation!
Except London, there was at the beginning of the 19th century no single town
 in England of 100,000 inhabitants. Only five had more than 50,000. Now there
 are 28 towns with more than 50,000 inhabitants.
The more rapidly capital accumulates in an industrial or commercial town,
 the more rapidly flows the stream of exploitable human material, the more
 miserable are the improvised dwellings of the labourers.
Newcastle-on-Tyne, as the centre of a coal and iron district of growing
 productiveness, takes the next place after London in the housing inferno. Not
 less than 34,000 persons live there in single rooms. Because of their absolute
 danger to the community, houses in great numbers have lately been destroyed by
 the authorities in Newcastle and Gateshead. The building of new houses
 progresses very slowly, business very quickly. The town was, therefore, in
 1865, more full than ever. Scarcely a room was to let. Dr. Embleton, of the
 Newcastle Fever Hospital, says:
The price per week of such lodgings ranges from 8d. to 3s.
As a result of the ebbing and flowing of capital and labour, the state of
 the dwellings of an industrial town may today be bearable, tomorrow hideous. Or
 the aedileship of the town may have pulled itself together for the removal of
 the most shocking abuses. Tomorrow, like a swarm of locusts, come crowding in
 masses of ragged Irishmen or decayed English agricultural labourers. They are stowed away in cellars and lofts, or the
 hitherto respectable labourer’s dwelling is transformed into a lodging
 house whose personnel changes as quickly as the billets in the 30
 years’ war. Example: Bradford (Yorkshire). There the municipal philistine
 was just busied with urban improvements. Besides, there were still in Bradford,
 in 1861, 1,751 uninhabited houses. But now comes that revival of trade which
 the mildly liberal Mr. Forster, the negro’s friend, recently crowed over
 with so much grace. With the revival of trade came of course an overflow from
 the waves of the ever fluctuating “reserve army” or “relative
 surplus population.” The frightful cellar habitations and rooms
 registered in the list, [64] which
 Dr. Hunter obtained from the agent of an Insurance Company, were for the most
 part inhabited by well-paid labourers. They declared that they would willingly
 pay for better dwellings if they were to be had. Meanwhile, they become
 degraded, they fall ill, one and all, whilst the mildly liberal Forster, M. P.,
 sheds tears over the blessings of Free Trade, and the profits of the eminent
 men of Bradford who deal in worsted. In the Report of September, 1865, Dr.
 Bell, one of the poor law doctors of Bradford, ascribes the frightful mortality
 of fever-patients in his district to the nature of their dwellings.
Bristol takes the third place after London in the misery of its
 dwellings.
We turn now to a class of people whose origin is agricultural, but whose
 occupation is in great part industrial. They are the light infantry of capital,
 thrown by it, according to its needs, now to this point, now to that. When they
 are not on the march, they “camp.” Nomad labour is used for various
 operations of building and draining, brick-making, lime-burning,
 railway-making, &c. A flying column of pestilence, it carries into the
 places in whose neighbourhood it pitches its camp, small-pox, typhus, cholera,
 scarlet fever, &c. [67] In
 undertakings that involve much capital outlay, such as railways, &c., the
 contractor himself generally provides his army with wooden huts and the like,
 thus improvising villages without any sanitary provisions, outside the control
 of the local boards, very profitable to the contractor, who exploits the
 labourers in two-fold fashion — as soldiers of industry and as tenants.
 According as the wooden hut contains 1, 2, or 3 holes, its inhabitant, navvy,
 or whatever he may be, has to pay 1, 3, or 4 shillings weekly. [68] One example will suffice. In
 September, 1864, Dr. Simon reports that the Chairman of the Nuisances Removal
 Committee of the parish of Sevenoaks sent the following denunciation to Sir
 George Grey, Home Secretary: —
623The labourers in coal and other mines belong to the best paid
 categories of the British proletariat. The price at which they buy their wages
 was shown on an earlier page. [70]
 Here I merely cast a hurried glance over the conditions of their dwellings. As
 a rule, the exploiter of a mine, whether its owner or his tenant, builds a
 number of cottages for his hands. They receive cottages and coal for firing
 “for nothing” — i.e., these form part of their
 wages, paid in kind. Those who are not lodged in this way receive in
 compensation £4 per annum. The mining districts attract with rapidity a large
 population, made up of the miners themselves, and the artisans, shopkeepers,
 &c., that group themselves around them. The ground-rents are high, as they
 are generally where population is dense. The master tries, therefore, to run
 up, within the smallest space possible at the mouth of the pit, just so many
 cottages as are necessary to pack together his hands and their families. If new
 mines are opened in the neighbourhood, or old ones are again set working, the
 pressure increases. In the construction of the cottages, only
 one point of view is of moment, the “abstinence” of the capitalist
 from all expenditure that is not absolutely unavoidable.
In conflict with “public opinion,” or even with the Officers of
 Health, capital makes no difficulty about “justifying” the
 conditions partly dangerous, partly degrading, to which it confines the working
 and domestic life of the labourer, on the ground that they are necessary for
 profit. It is the same thing when capital “abstains” from
 protective measures against dangerous machinery in the factory, from appliances
 for ventilation and for safety in mines, &c. It is the same here with the
 housing of the miners. Dr. Simon, medical officer of the Privy Council, in his
 official Report says:
Before I turn to the regular agricultural labourers, I may be allowed to
 show, by one example, how industrial revulsions affect even the best-paid, the
 aristocracy, of the working class. It will be remembered that the year 1857
 brought one of the great crises with which the industrial cycle periodically
 ends. The next termination of the cycle was due in 1866. Already discounted in
 the regular factory districts by the cotton famine, which threw much capital
 from its wonted sphere into the great centres of the money-market, the crisis
 assumed, at this time, an especially financial character. Its outbreak in 1866
 was signalised by the failure of a gigantic London Bank, immediately followed
 by the collapse of countless swindling companies. One of the great London
 branches of industry involved in the catastrophe was iron shipbuilding. The magnates of this trade had not only over-produced beyond all
 measure during the overtrading time, but they had, besides, engaged in enormous
 contracts on the speculation that credit would be forthcoming to an equivalent
 extent. Now, a terrible reaction set in, that even at this hour (the end of
 March, 1867) continues in this and other London industries. [74] To show the condition of the
 labourers, I quote the following from the circumstantial report of a
 correspondent of the Morning Star, who, at the end of 1866, and
 beginning of 1867, visited the chief centres of distress:
On the after pains of the crisis of 1866, the following extract from a Tory
 newspaper. It must not be forgotten that the East-end of London, which is here
 dealt with, is not only the seat of the iron shipbuilding mentioned above, but
 also of a so-called “home-industry” always underpaid.
As it is the fashion amongst English capitalists to quote Belgium as the
 Paradise of the labourer because “freedom of labour,” or what is
 the same thing, “freedom of capital,” is there limited neither by
 the despotism of Trades’ Unions, nor by Factory Acts, a word or two on
 the “happiness” of the Belgian labourer. Assuredly no one was more
 thoroughly initiated in the mysteries of this happiness than the late M.
 Ducpétiaux, inspector-general of Belgian prisons and charitable institutions,
 and member of the central commission of Belgian statistics. Let us take his
 work: “Budgets économiques des classes ouvrières de la Belgique,”
 Bruxelles, 1855. Here we find among other matters, a normal Belgian
 labourer’s family, whose yearly income and expenditure he calculates on
 very exact data, and whose conditions of nourishment are then compared with
 those of the soldier, sailor, and prisoner. The family “consists of
 father, mother, and four children.” Of these 6 persons “four may be
 usefully employed the whole year through.” It is assumed that
 “there is no sick person nor one incapable of work, among them,”
 nor are there “expenses for religious, moral, and intellectual purposes,
 except a very small sum for church sittings,” nor “contributions to
 savings banks or benefit societies,” nor “expenses due to luxury or
 the result of improvidence.” The father and eldest son, however, allow
 themselves “the use of tobacco,” and on Sundays “go to the
 cabaret,” for which a whole 86 centimes a week are reckoned.
According to this the budget of the family is:
The annual expenditure of the family would cause a deficit upon the
 hypothesis that the labourer has the food of:
In fact, in this “Paradise of capitalists” there follows, on the
 smallest change in the price of the most essential means of subsistence, a
 change in the number of deaths and crimes! (See Manifesto of the Maatschappij:
 “De Vlamingen Vooruit!” Brussels, 1860, pp. 15, 16.) In all Belgium
 are 930,000 families, of whom, according to the official statistics, 90,000 are
 wealthy and on the list of voters = 450,000 persons; 390,000 families of the
 lower middle-class in towns and villages, the greater part of them constantly
 sinking into the proletariat, = 1,950,000 persons. Finally, 450,000 working
 class families = 2,250,000 persons, of whom the model ones enjoy the happiness
 depicted by Ducpétiaux. Of the 450,000 working class families, over 200,000 are
 on the pauper list.
Nowhere does the antagonistic character of capitalistic production and
 accumulation assert itself more brutally than in the progress of English
 agriculture (including cattle-breeding) and the retrogression of the English
 agricultural labourer. Before I turn to his present situation, a rapid
 retrospect. Modern agriculture dates in England from the middle of the 18th
 century, although the revolution in landed property, from which the changed
 mode of production starts as a basis, has a much earlier date.
If we take the statements of Arthur Young, a careful observer, though a
 superficial thinker, as to the agricultural labourer of 1771, the latter plays
 a very pitiable part compared with his predecessor of the end of the 14th
 century,
It is then proved in detail that the real agricultural wages between 1737
 and 1777 fell nearly ¼ or 25 per cent.
Nevertheless, the position of the English agricultural labourer from 1770 to
 1780, with regard to his food and dwelling, as well as to his self-respect,
 amusements, &c., is an ideal never attained again since 631that
 time. His average wage expressed in pints of wheat was from 1770 to 1771, 90
 pints, in Eden’s time (1797) only 65, in 1808 but 60. [78]
The same state of things went on quietly until
At 632this time, Sadler, in the House of Commons, christened the
 agricultural labourers “white slaves,” and a Bishop echoed the
 epithet in the Upper House. The most notable political economist of that period
 — E. G. Wakefield — says:
The time just before the repeal of the Corn Laws threw new light on the
 condition of the agricultural labourers. On the one hand, it was to the
 interest of the middle-class agitators to prove how little the Corn Laws
 protected the actual producers of the corn. On the other hand, the industrial
 bourgeoisie foamed with sullen rage at the denunciations of the factory system
 by the landed aristocracy, at the pretended sympathy with the woes of the
 factory operatives, of those utterly corrupt, heartless, and genteel loafers,
 and at their “diplomatic zeal” for factory legislation. It is an
 old English proverb that “when thieves fall out, honest men come by their
 own,” and, in fact, the noisy, passionate quarrel between the two
 fractions of the ruling class about the question, which of the two exploited
 the labourers the more shamefully, was on each hand the midwife of the truth.
 Earl Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, was commander-in-chief in the aristocratic,
 philanthropic, anti-factory campaign. He was, therefore, in 1845, a favourite
 subject in the revelations of the Morning Chronicle on the condition
 of the agricultural labourers. This journal, then the most important Liberal
 organ, sent special commissioners into the agricultural districts, who did not
 content themselves with mere general descriptions and statistics, but published
 the names both of the labouring families examined and of their landlords. The
 following list gives the wages paid in three villages in the neighbourhood of
 Blanford, Wimbourne, and Poole. The villages are the property of Mr. G. Bankes
 and of the Earl of Shaftesbury. It will be noted that, just like Bankes, this
 “low church pope,” this head of English pietists, pockets a great
 part of the miserable wages of the labourers under the pretext of house-rent:
 —
The repeal of the Corn Laws gave a marvellous impulse to English
 agriculture. [84] Drainage on the
 most extensive scale, new methods of stall-feeding, and of the artificial
 cultivation of green crops, introduction of mechanical manuring apparatus, new
 treatment of clay soils, increased use of mineral manures, employment of the
 steam-engine, and of all kinds of new machinery, more intensive cultivation
 generally, characterised this epoch. Mr. Pusey, Chairman of the Royal
 Agricultural 633Society, declares that the (relative) expenses of
 farming have been reduced nearly one half by the introduction of new machinery.
 On the other hand, the actual return of the soil rose rapidly. Greater outlay
 of capital per acre, and, as a consequence, more rapid concentration of farms,
 were essential conditions of the new method. [85] At the same time, the 634area under cultivation increased, from 1846 to
 1856, by 464,119 acres, without reckoning the great area in the Eastern
 Counties which was transformed from rabbit warrens and poor pastures into
 magnificent corn-fields. It has already been seen that, at the same time, the
 total number of persons employed in agriculture fell. As far as the actual
 agricultural labourers of both sexes and of all ages are concerned, their
 number fell from 1,241,396, in 1851, to 1,163, 217 in 1861. [86] If the English Registrar-General,
 therefore, rightly remarks:
But Professor Rogers comes to the conclusion that the lot of the English
 agricultural labourer of today, not to speak of his predecessor in the last
 half of the 14th and in the 15th century, but only compared with his
 predecessor from 1770 to 1780, has changed for the worse to an extraordinary
 extent, that “the peasant has again become a serf,” and a serf
 worse fed and worse clothed. [88]
 Dr. Julian Hunter, in his epochmaking report on the dwellings of the
 agricultural labourers, says:
In the year 1863, an official inquiry took place into the conditions of
 nourishment and labour of the criminals condemned to transportation and penal
 servitude. The results are recorded in two voluminous Blue books. Among other
 things it is said:
A few characteristic depositions of
 witnesses: John Smith, governor of the Edinburgh prison, deposes:
From the tables appended to the first volume of the Report I have compiled
 the annexed comparative summary.
The general result of the inquiry by the medical commission of 1863 on the
 food of the lowest fed classes, is already known to the reader. He will
 remember that the diet of a great part of the agricultural labourers’
 families is below the minimum necessary “to arrest starvation
 diseases.” This is especially the case in all the purely rural districts
 of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Wilts, Stafford, Oxford, Berks, and Herts.
The male and female servants living with the farmers
 themselves are sufficiently nourished. Their number fell from 288,277 in 1851,
 to 204,962 in 1861.
One of the most remarkable results of the inquiry was that the agricultural
 labourer of England, as compared with other parts of the United Kingdom,
 “is considerably the worst fed,” as the appended table shows:
Quantities of Carbon and Nitrogen weekly consumed by an average agricultural
 adult:
Dr. Hunter investigated 5,375 cottages of agricultural labourers, not only
 in the purely agricultural districts, but in all counties of England. Of these,
 2,195 had only one bedroom (often at the same time used as living-room), 2,930
 only two, and 250, more than two. I will give a few specimens culled from a
 dozen counties.
Wrestlingworth. Bedrooms about 12 feet long and 10 broad, although
 many are smaller than this. The small, one-storied cots are often divided by
 partitions into two bedrooms, one bed frequently in a kitchen, 5 feet 6 inches
 in height. Rent, £3 a year. The tenants have to make their own privies, the
 landlord only supplies a hole. As soon as one has made a privy, it is made use
 of by the whole neighbourhood. One house, belonging to a family called
 Richardson, was of quite unapproachable beauty. “Its plaster walls bulged
 very like a lady’s dress in a curtsey. One gable end was convex, the
 other concave, and on this last, unfortunately, stood the chimney, a curved
 tube of clay and wood like an elephant’s trunk. A long stick served as
 prop to prevent the chimney from falling. The doorway and window were
 rhomboidal.” Of 17 houses visited, only 4 had more than one bedroom, and
 those four overcrowded. The cots with one bedroom sheltered 3 adults and 3
 children, a married couple with 6 children, &c.
Dunton. High rents, from £4 to £5; weekly wages of the man, 10s.
 They hope to pay the rent by the straw-plaiting of the family. The higher the
 rent, the greater the number that must work together to pay it. Six adults,
 living with 4 children in one sleeping apartment, pay £3 10s. for it. The
 cheapest house in Dunton, 15 feet long externally, 10 broad, let for £3. Only
 one of the houses investigated had 2 bedrooms. A little outside the village, a
 house whose “tenants dunged against the house-side,” the lower 9
 inches of the door eaten away through sheer rottenness; the doorway, a single
 opening closed at night by a few bricks, ingeniously pushed up after shutting
 and covered with some matting. Half a window, with glass and frame, had gone
 the way of all flesh. Here, without furniture, huddled together were 3 adults
 and 5 children. Dunton is not worse than the rest of Biggleswade Union.
Beenham. In June, 1864, a man, his wife and 4 children lived in a
 cot (one-storied cottage). A daughter came home from service with scarlet
 fever. She died. One child sickened and died. The mother and one child were
 down with typhus when Dr. Hunter was called in. The father and one child slept
 outside, but the difficulty of securing isolation was seen here, for in the
 crowded market of the miserable village lay the linen of the fever-stricken
 household, waiting for the wash. The rent of H.’s house, 1s. a-week; one
 bedroom for man, wife, and 6 children. One house let for 8d. a-week, 14 feet 6
 inches long, 7 feet broad, kitchen, 6 feet high; the bedroom without window,
 fire-place, door, or opening, except into the lobby; no garden. A man lived
 here for a little while, with two grown-up daughters and one grown-up son;
 father and son slept on the bed, the girls in the passage. Each of the latter
 had a child while the family was living here, but one went to the workhouse for
 her confinement and then came home.
30 cottages — on 1,000 acres of land — contained here about
 130-140 persons. The parish of Bradenham comprises 1,000 acres; it
 numbered, in 1851, 36 houses and a population of 84 males and 54 females. This
 inequality of the sexes was partly remedied in 1861, when they numbered 98
 males and 87 females; increase in 10 years of 14 men and 33 women. Meanwhile,
 the number of houses was one less.
Winslow. Great part of this newly built in good style; demand for
 houses appears very marked, since very miserable cots let at 1s. to 1s. 3d. per
 week.
Water Eaton. Here the landlords, in view of the increasing
 population, have destroyed about 20 per cent. of the existing houses. A poor
 labourer, who had to go about 4 miles to his work, answered the question,
 whether he could not find a cot nearer: “No; they know better than to
 take a man in with my large family.”
Tinker’s End, near Winslow. A bedroom in which were 4 adults
 and 4 children; 11 feet long, 9 feet broad, 6 feet 5 inches high at its highest
 part; another 11 feet 3 inches by 9 feet, 5 feet 10 inches high, sheltered 6
 persons. Each of these families had less space than is considered necessary for
 a convict. No house had more than one bedroom, not one of them a back-door;
 water very scarce; weekly rent from 1s. 4d. to 2s. In 16 of the houses visited,
 only 1 man that earned 10s. a-week. The quantity of air for each person under
 the circumstances just described corresponds to that which he would have if he
 were shut up in a box of 4 feet measuring each way, the whole night. But then,
 the ancient dens afforded a certain amount of unintentional ventilation.
Gamblingay belongs to several landlords. It contains the
 wretchedest cots to be found anywhere. Much straw-plaiting. “A deadly
 lassitude, a hopeless surrendering up to filth,” reigns in Gamblingay.
 The neglect in its centre, becomes mortification at its extremities, north and
 south, where the houses are rotting to pieces. The absentee landlords bleed
 this poor rookery too freely. The rents are very high; 8 or 9 persons packed in
 one sleeping apartment, in 2 cases 6 adults, each with 1 or 2 children in one
 small bedroom.
In this county, diminutions in the number of persons and of cottages go, in
 many parishes, hand in hand. In not less than 22 parishes, however, the
 destruction of houses has not prevented increase of population, or has not
 brought about that expulsion which, under the name “migration to
 towns,” generally occurs. In Fingringhoe, a parish of 3,443 acres, were
 in 1851, 145 houses; in 1861, only 110. But the people did not wish to go away,
 and managed even to increase under these circumstances. In 1851, 252 persons
 inhabited 61 houses, but in 1861, 262 persons were squeezed into 49 houses. In
 Basilden, in 1851, 157 persons lived on 1,827 acres, in 35 houses; at the end
 of ten years, 180 persons in 27 houses. In the parishes of Fingringhoe, South
 Fambridge, Widford, Basilden, and Ramsden Crags, in 1851, 1,392 persons were
 living on 8,449 acres in 316 houses; in 1861, on the same area, 1,473 persons
 in 249 houses.
This little county has suffered more from the “eviction-spirit”
 than any other in England. At Nadby, overcrowded cottages generally, with only
 2 bedrooms, belonging for the most part to the farmers. They easily let them
 for £3 or £4 a-year, and paid a weekly wage of 9s.
Hartford had, in 1851, 87 houses; shortly after this, 19 cottages
 were destroyed in this small parish of 1,720 acres; population in 1831, 452; in
 1852, 382; and in 1861, 341. 14 cottages, each with 1 bedroom, were visited. In
 one, a married couple, 3 grown-up sons, 1 grown-up daughter, 4 children —
 in all 10 in another, 3 adults, 6 children. One of these rooms, in which 8
 people slept, was 12 feet 10 inches long, 12 feet 2 inches broad, 6 feet 9
 inches high: the average, without making any deduction for projections into the
 apartment, gave about 130 cubic feet per head. In the 14 sleeping rooms, 34
 adults and 33 children. These cottages are seldom provided with gardens, but
 many of the inmates are able to farm small allotments at 10s. or 12s. per rood.
 These allotments are at a distance from the houses, which are without privies.
 The family “must either go to the allotment to deposit their
 ordures,” or, as happens in this place, saving your presence, “use
 a closet with a trough set like a drawer in a chest of drawers, and drawn out
 weekly and conveyed to the allotment to be emptied where its contents were
 wanted.” In Japan, the circle of life-conditions moves more decently than
 this.
Langtoft. A man lives here, in Wright’s house, with his wife,
 her mother, and 5 children; the house has a front kitchen, scullery, bedroom
 over the front kitchen; front kitchen and bedroom, 12 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5
 inches; the whole ground floor, 21 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches. The
 bedroom is a garret: the walls run together into the roof like a sugar-loaf, a
 dormer-window opening in front. “Why did he live here? On account of the
 garden? No; it is very small. Rent? High, 1s. 3d. per week. Near his work? No;
 6 miles away, so that he walks daily, to and fro, 12 miles. He lived there,
 because it was a tenantable cot,” and because he wanted to have a cot for
 himself alone, anywhere, at any price, and in any conditions. The following are
 the statistics of 12 houses in Langtoft, with 12 bedrooms, 38 adults, and 36
 children.
Kennington, very seriously over-populated in 1859, when diphtheria
 appeared, and the parish doctor instituted a medical inquiry into the condition
 of the poorer classes. He found that in this locality, where much labour is
 employed, various cots had been destroyed and no new ones built. In one
 district stood four houses, named birdcages; each had 4 rooms of the following
 dimensions in feet and inches:
Brinworth, Pickford and Floore: in these villages in the winter
 20-30 men were lounging about the streets from want of work. The farmers do not
 always till sufficiently the corn and turnip lands, and the landlord has found
 it best to throw all his farms together into 2 or 3. Hence want of employment.
 Whilst on one side of the wall, the land calls for labour, on the other side
 the defrauded labourers are casting at it longing glances. Feverishly
 overworked in summer, and half-starved in winter, it is no wonder if they say
 in their peculiar dialect, “the parson and gentlefolk seem frit to death
 at them.”
At Floore, instances, in one bedroom of the smallest size, of couples with
 4, 5, 6 children; 3 adults with 5 children; a couple with grandfather and 6
 children down with scarlet fever, &c.; in two houses with two bedrooms, two
 families of 8 and 9 adults respectively.
Stratton. 31 houses visited, 8 with only one bedroom. Pentill, in
 the same parish: a cot let at Is. 3d. weekly with 4 adults and 4 children, had
 nothing good about it, except the walls, from the floor of rough-hewn pieces of
 stones to the roof of worn-out thatch.
House-destruction here not quite so excessive; yet from 1851 to 1861, the
 number of inhabitants to each house on the average, has risen from 4.2 to 4.6.
Badsey. Many cots and little gardens here. Some of the farmers
 declare that the cots are “a great nuisance here, because they bring the
 poor.” On the statement of one gentleman:
(according to him the houses give birth to the inhabitants, who then by a
 law of Nature press on “the means of housing”). Dr. Hunter
 remarks:
The gang-system obtains almost exclusively in the counties of Lincoln,
 Huntingdon, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Nottingham, here and there in the
 neighbouring counties of Northampton, Bedford, and Rutland. Lincolnshire will
 serve us as an example. A large part of this county is new land, marsh
 formerly, or even, as in others of the eastern counties just named, won lately
 from the sea. The steam-engine has worked wonders in the way of drainage. What
 were once fens and sandbanks, bear now a luxuriant sea of corn and the highest
 of rents. The same thing holds of the alluvial lands won by human endeavour, as
 in the island of Axholme and other parishes on the banks of the Trent. In
 proportion as the new farms arose, not only were no new cottages built: old
 ones were demolished, and the supply of labour had to come from open villages,
 miles away, by long roads that wound along the sides of the hills. There alone
 had the population formerly found shelter from the incessant floods of the
 winter-time. The labourers that dwell on the farms of 400-1,000 acres (they are called “confined labourers”) are solely
 employed on such kinds of agricultural work as is permanent, difficult, and
 carried on by aid of horses. For every 100 acres there is, on an average,
 scarcely one cottage. A fen farmer, e.g., gave evidence before the Commission
 of Inquiry:
The soil requires much light field labour, such as weeding, hoeing, certain
 processes of manuring, removing of stones, &c. This is done by the gangs,
 or organised bands that dwell in the open villages.
The gang consists of 10 to 40 or 50 persons, women, young persons of both
 sexes (13-18 years of age, although the boys are for the most part eliminated
 at the age of 13), and children of both sexes (6-13 years of age). At the head
 is the gang-master, always an ordinary agricultural labourer, generally what is
 called a bad lot, a scapegrace, unsteady, drunken, but with a dash of
 enterprise and savoir-faire. He is the recruiting-sergeant for the
 gang, which works under him, not under the farmer. He generally arranges with
 the latter for piece-work, and his income, which on the average is not very
 much above that of an ordinary agricultural labourer, [111] depends almost entirely upon the
 dexterity 650with which he manages to extract within the shortest time
 the greatest possible amount of labour from his gang. The farmers have
 discovered that women work steadily only under the direction of men, but that
 women and children, once set going, impetuously spend their life-force —
 as Fourier knew — while the adult male labourer is shrewd enough to
 economise his as much as he can. The gang-master goes from one farm to another,
 and thus employs his gang from 6 to 8 months in the year. Employment by him is,
 therefore, much more lucrative and more certain for the labouring families,
 than employment by the individual farmer, who only employs children
 occasionally. This circumstance so completely rivets his influence in the open
 villages that children are generally only to be hired through his
 instrumentality. The lending out of these individually, independently of the
 gang, is his second trade.
The “drawbacks” of the system are the overwork of the children
 and young persons, the enormous marches that they make daily to and from the
 farms, 5, 6, and sometimes 7 miles distant, finally, the demoralisation of the
 gang. Although the gang-master, who, in some districts is called “the
 driver,” is armed with a long stick, he uses it but seldom, and
 complaints of brutal treatment are exceptional. He is a democratic emperor, or
 a kind of Pied Piper of Hamelin. He must therefore be popular with his
 subjects, and he binds them to himself by the charms of the gipsy life under
 his direction. Coarse freedom, a noisy jollity, and obscenest impudence give
 attractions to the gang. Generally the gangmaster pays up in a public house;
 then he returns home at the head of the procession reeling drunk, propped up
 right and left by a stalwart virago, while children and young persons bring up
 the rear, boisterous, and singing chaffing and bawdy songs. On the return
 journey what Fourier calls “phanerogamie,” is the order of the day.
 The getting with child of girls of 13 and 14 by their male companions of the
 same age, is common. The open villages which supply the contingent of the gang,
 become Sodoms and Gomorrahs, [112]
 and have twice as high a rate of illegitimate births as the rest of the
 kingdom. The moral character of girls bred in these schools, when married
 women, was shown above. Their children, when opium does not give them the
 finishing stroke, are born recruits of the gang.
The gang in its classical form just described, is called the public, common,
 or tramping gang. For there are also private gangs. These are made up in the
 same way as the common gang, but count fewer members, and work, not under a
 gang-master, but under some old farm servant, 651whom the farmer does
 not know how to employ in any better way. The gipsy fun has vanished here, but
 according to all witnesses, the payment and treatment of the children is worse.
The gang-system, which during the last years has steadily increased, [113] clearly does not exist for the
 sake of the gang-master. It exists for the enrichment of the large farmers,
 [114] and indirectly of the
 landlords. [115] For the farmer
 there is no more ingenious method of keeping his labourers well below the
 normal level, and yet of always having an extra hand ready for extra work, of
 extracting the greatest possible amount of labour with the least possible
 amount of money [116] and of
 making adult male labour “redundant.” From the exposition already
 made, it will be understood why, on the one hand, a greater or less lack of
 employment for the agricultural labourer is admitted, while on the other, the
 gang-system is at the same time declared “necessary” on account of
 the want of adult male labour and its migration to the towns. [117] The cleanly weeded land, and the
 uncleanly human weeds, of Lincolnshire, are pole and counterpole of
 capitalistic production. [118]
In concluding this section, we must travel for a moment to Ireland. First,
 the main facts of the case.
The population of Ireland had, in 1841, reached 8,222,664; in 1851, it had
 dwindled to 6,623,985; in 1861, to 5,850,309; in 1866, to 5½ millions, nearly
 to its level in 1801. The diminution began with the famine year, 1846, so that
 Ireland, in less than twenty years, lost more than 5/16 ths of its people. [119] Its total emigration from May,
 1851, to July, 1865, numbered 1,591,487: the emigration during the years
 1861-1865 was more than half-a-million. The number of inhabited houses fell,
 from 1851-1861, by 52,990. From 1851-1861, the number of holdings of 15 to 30
 acres increased 61,000, that of holdings over 30 acres, 109,000, whilst the
 total number of all farms fell 120,000, a fall, therefore, solely due to the
 suppression of farms under 15 acres — i.e., to their
 centralisation.
The decrease of the population was naturally accompanied by a decrease in
 the mass of products. For our purpose, it suffices to consider the 5 years from
 1861-1865 during which over half-a-million emigrated, and the absolute number
 of people sank by more than 1/3 of a million. From the above table it results:
 —
Let us now turn to agriculture, which yields the means of subsistence for
 cattle and for men. In the following table is calculated the
 decrease 654or increase for each separate year, as compared with its
 immediate predecessor. The Cereal Crops include wheat, oats, barley, rye,
 beans, and peas; the Green Crops, potatoes, turnips, marigolds, beet-root,
 cabbages, carrots, parsnips, vetches. &c.
In the year 1865, 127,470 additional acres came under the heading
 “grass land,” chiefly because the area under the heading of
 “bog and waste unoccupied,” decreased by 101,543 acres. If we
 compare 1865 655with 1864, there is a decrease in cereals of 246,667
 qrs., of which 48,999 were wheat, 160,605 oats, 29,892 barley, &c.: the
 decrease in potatoes was 446,398 tons, although the area of their cultivation
 increased in 1865.
From the movement of population and the agricultural produce of Ireland, we
 pass to the movement in the purse of its landlords, larger farmers, and
 industrial capitalists. It is reflected in the rise and fall of the Income-tax.
 It may be remembered that Schedule D. (profits with the exception of those of
 farmers), includes also the so-called, “professional” profits
 — i.e., the incomes of lawyers, doctors, &c.; and the
 Schedules C. and E., in which no special details are given, include the incomes
 of employees, officers, State sinecurists, State fundholders, &c.
Under Schedule D., the average annual increase of income from 1853-1864 was
 only 0.93; whilst, in the same period, in Great Britain, it was 4.58. The
 following table shows the distribution of the profits (with the exception of
 those of farmers) for the years 1864 and 1865: —
England, a country with fully developed capitalist production, and
 pre-eminently industrial, would have bled to death with such a drain of
 population as Ireland has suffered. But Ireland is at present only an
 agricultural district of England, marked off by a wide channel from the country
 to which it yields corn, wool, cattle, industrial and military recruits.
The depopulation of Ireland has thrown much of the land out of cultivation,
 has greatly diminished the produce of the soil, [123] and, in spite of the greater area devoted to
 cattle breeding, has brought about, in some of its branches, an absolute
 diminution, in others, an advance scarcely worthy of mention, and constantly
 interrupted by retrogressions. Nevertheless, with the fall in numbers of the
 population, rents and farmers’ profits rose, although the latter not as
 steadily as the former. The reason of this is easily comprehensible. On the one
 hand, with the throwing of small holdings into large ones, and the change of
 arable into pasture land, a larger part of the whole produce was transformed
 into surplus-produce. The surplus-produce increased, although the total
 produce, of which it formed a fraction, decreased. On the other hand, the money
 value of this surplus-produce increased yet more rapidly than its mass, in
 consequence of the rise in the English market price of meat, wool, &c.,
 during the last 20, and especially during the last 10, years.
The scattered means of production that serve the producers themselves as
 means of employment and of subsistence, without expanding their own value by
 the incorporation of the labour of others, are no more capital than a product
 consumed by its own producer is a commodity. If, with the mass of the
 population, that of the means of production employed in agriculture also
 diminished, the mass of the capital employed in agriculture increased, because
 a part of the means of production that were formerly scattered, was
 concentrated and turned into capital.
The total capital of Ireland outside agriculture, employed in industry and
 trade, accumulated during the last two decades slowly, and with great and
 constantly recurring fluctuations; so much the more rapidly did the
 concentration of its individual constituents develop. And, however small its
 absolute increase, in proportion to the dwindling population it had increased
 largely.
Here, then, under our own eyes and on a large scale, a process is revealed,
 than which nothing more excellent could be wished for by orthodox economy for
 the support of its dogma: that misery springs from absolute surplus population,
 and that equilibrium is re-established by depopulation. This is a far more
 important experiment than was the plague in the middle of the 14th century so
 belauded of Malthusians. Note further: If only the naïveté of the schoolmaster
 could apply, to the conditions of production and population of the nineteenth
 century, the standard of the 14th, this naïveté, into the bargain, overlooked
 the fact that whilst, after the plague and the decimation that accompanied it,
 followed on this side of the Channel, in England, enfranchisement and
 enrichment of the agricultural population, on that side, in France, followed
 greater servitude and more misery. [124]
The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed
 poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage.
 The exodus of the next 20 years, an exodus still constantly increasing, did
 not, as, e.g., the Thirty Years’ War, decimate, along with the
 human beings, their means of production. Irish genius discovered an altogether
 new way of spiriting a poor people thousands of miles away from the scene of
 its misery. The exiles transplanted to the United States, send home sums of
 money every year as travelling expenses for those left behind. Every troop that
 emigrates one year, draws another after it the next. Thus, instead of costing
 Ireland anything, 659emigration forms one of the most lucrative branches
 of its export trade. Finally, it is a systematic process, which does not simply
 make a passing gap in the population, but sucks out of it every year more
 people than are replaced by the births, so that the absolute level of the
 population falls year by year. [125]
A clear statement of the condition of the agricultural labourers in Ireland
 is to be found in the Reports of the Irish Poor Law Inspectors (1870). [127] Officials of a government which
 is maintained only by bayonets and by a state of siege, now open, now
 disguised, they have to observe all the precautions of language that their
 colleagues in England disdain. In spite of this, however, they do not let their
 government cradle itself in illusions. According to them the rate of wages in
 the country, still very low, has within the last 20 years risen 50-60 per
 cent., and stands now, on the average, at 6s. to 9s. per week. But behind this
 apparent rise, is hidden an actual fall in wages, for it does not correspond at
 all to the rise in price of the necessary means of subsistence that has taken
 place in the meantime. For proof, the following extract from the official
 accounts of an Irish workhouse.
The price of the necessary means of subsistence is therefore fully twice,
 and that of clothing exactly twice, as much as they were 20 years before.
Even apart from this disproportion, the mere comparison of the rate of wages
 expressed in gold would give a result far from accurate. Before the famine, the
 great mass of agricultural wages were paid in kind, only the smallest part in
 money; today, payment in money is the rule. From this it follows that, whatever
 the amount of the real wage, its money rate must rise.
In fact, formerly, the agricultural labourers were but the smallest of the
 small farmers, and formed for the most part a kind of rear-guard of the medium
 and large farms on which they found employment. Only since the catastrophe of
 1846 have they begun to form a fraction of the class of purely wage labourers,
 a special class, connected with its wage-masters only by monetary relations.
We know what were the conditions of their dwellings in 1846. Since then they
 have grown yet worse. A part of the agricultural labourers, which, however,
 grows less day by day, dwells still on the holdings of the farmers in
 over-crowded huts, whose hideousness far surpasses the worst that the English
 agricultural labourers offered us in this way. And this holds generally with
 the exception of certain tracts of Ulster; in the south, in the counties of
 Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, &c.; in the east, in Wicklow, Wexford, &c.;
 in the centre of Ireland, in King’s and Queen’s County, Dublin,
 &c.; in the west, in Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway, &c.
In order to increase the attractions of these holes for the labourers, the
 pieces of land belonging thereto from time immemorial, are systematically
 confiscated.
The first act of the agricultural revolution was to sweep away the huts
 situated on the field of labour. This was done on the largest scale, and as if
 in obedience to a command from on high. Thus many labourers were compelled to
 seek shelter in villages and towns. There they were thrown like refuse into
 garrets, holes, cellars and corners, in the worst back slums. Thousands of Irish
 families, who according to the testimony of the English, eaten up as these are
 with national prejudice, are notable for their rare attachment to the domestic
 hearth, for their gaiety and the purity of their home-life, found themselves
 suddenly transplanted into hotbeds of vice. The men are now obliged to seek
 work of the neighbouring farmers and are only hired by the day, and therefore
 under the most precarious form of wage. Hence
These results of the agricultural revolution — i.e., the
 change of arable into pasture land, the use of machinery, the most rigorous
 economy of labour, &c., are still further aggravated by the model
 landlords, who, instead of spending their rents in other countries, condescend
 to live in Ireland on their demesnes. In order that the law of supply and
 demand may not be broken, these gentlemen draw their
The uncertainty and irregularity of employment, the constant return and long
 duration of gluts of labour, all these symptoms of a relative surplus
 population, figure therefore in the reports of the Poor Law administration, as
 so many hardships of the agricultural proletariat. It will be remembered that
 we met, in the English agricultural proletariat, with a similar spectacle. But
 the difference is that in England, an industrial country, the industrial
 reserve recruits itself from the country districts, whilst in Ireland, an
 agricultural country, the agricultural reserve recruits itself from the towns,
 the cities of refuge of the expelled agricultural labourers. In the former,
 the supernumeraries of agriculture 663are transformed into factory
 operatives; in the latter, those forced into the towns, whilst at the same time
 they press on the wages in towns, remain agricultural labourers, and are
 constantly sent back to the country districts in search of work.
The official inspectors sum up the material condition of the agricultural
 labourer as follows:
After this, it is no wonder that, according to the unanimous testimony of
 the inspectors, a sombre discontent runs through the ranks of this class, that
 they long for the return of the past, loathe the present, despair of the
 future, give themselves up “to the evil influence of agitators,”
 and have only one fixed idea, to emigrate to America. This is the land of
 Cockaigne, into which the great Malthusian panacea, depopulation, has
 transformed green Erin.
What a happy life the Irish factory operative leads one example will
 show:
Such are Irish wages, such is Irish life!
In fact the misery of Ireland is again the topic of the day in England. At
 the end of 1866 and the beginning of 1867, one of the Irish land magnates, Lord
 Dufferin, set about its solution in The Times. “Wie menschlich
 von solch grossem Herrn!”
Centralisation has from 1851 to 1861 destroyed principally farms of the
 first three categories, under 1 and not over 15 acres. These above all must
 disappear. This gives 307,058 “supernumerary” farmers, and
 reckoning the families the low average of 4 persons, 1,228,232 persons. On the
 extravagant supposition that, after the agricultural revolution is complete
 one-fourth of these are again absorbable, there remain for emigration 921,174
 persons. Categories 4, 5, 6, of over 15 and not over 100 acres, are, as was
 known long since in England, too small for capitalistic cultivation of corn,
 and for sheep-breeding are almost vanishing quantities. On the same supposition
 as before, therefore, there are further 788,761 persons to emigrate; total,
 1,709,532. And as l’appétit vient en mangeant, Rentroll’s eyes will
 soon discover that Ireland, with 3½ millions, is still always miserable, and
 miserable because she is overpopulated. Therefore her depopulation must go yet
 further, that thus she may fulfil her true destiny, that of an English
 sheep-walk and cattle-pasture.” [141]
Like all good things in this bad world, this profitable method has its
 drawbacks. With the accumulation of rents in Ireland, the accumulation of the
 Irish in America keeps pace. The Irishman, banished by sheep and ox, re-appears
 on the other side of the ocean as a Fenian, and face to face with the old queen
 of the seas rises, threatening and more threatening, the young giant
 Republic:
This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property. M. Thiers, e.g., had the assurance to repeat it with all the solemnity of a statesman to the French people, once so spirituel. But as soon as the question of property crops up, it becomes a sacred duty to proclaim the intellectual food of the infant as the one thing fit for all ages and for all stages of development. In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part. In the tender annals of Political Economy, the idyllic reigns from time immemorial. Right and “labour” were from all time the sole means of enrichment, the present year of course always excepted. As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic.
The economic structure of capitalist society has grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of the latter set free the elements of the former.
The immediate producer, the labourer, could only dispose of his own person after he had ceased to be attached to the soil and ceased to be the slave, serf, or bondsman of another. To become a free seller of labour power, who carries his commodity wherever he finds a market, he must further have escaped from the regime of the guilds, their rules for apprentices and journeymen, and the impediments of their labour regulations. Hence, the historical movement which changes the producers into wage-workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side alone exists for our bourgeois historians. But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.
The industrial capitalists, these new potentates, had on their part not only to displace the guild masters of handicrafts, but also the feudal lords, the possessors of the sources of wealth. In this respect, their conquest of social power appears as the fruit of a victorious struggle both against feudal lordship and its revolting prerogatives, and against the guilds and the fetters they laid on the free development of production and the free exploitation of man by man. The chevaliers d’industrie, however, only succeeded in supplanting the chevaliers of the sword by making use of events of which they themselves were wholly innocent. They have risen by means as vile as those by which the Roman freedman once on a time made himself the master of his patronus.
The starting point of the development that gave rise to the wage labourer as well as to the capitalist, was the servitude of the labourer. The advance consisted in a change of form of this servitude, in the transformation of feudal exploitation into capitalist exploitation. To understand its march, we need not go back very far. Although we come across the first beginnings of capitalist production as early as the 14th or 15th century, sporadically, in certain towns of the Mediterranean, the capitalistic era dates from the 16th century. Wherever it appears, the abolition of serfdom has been long effected, and the highest development of the middle ages, the existence of sovereign towns, has been long on the wane.
In the history of primitive accumulation, all revolutions are epoch-making that act as levers for the capital class in course of formation; but, above all, those moments when great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and “unattached” proletarians on the labour-market. The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process. The history of this expropriation, in different countries, assumes different aspects, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession, and at different periods. In England alone, which we take as our example, has it the classic form. [1]
675The process of forcible expropriation
 of the people received in the 16th century a new and
 frightful impulse from the Reformation, and from the
 consequent colossal spoliation of the church property. The
 Catholic church was, at the time of the Reformation, feudal
 proprietor of a great part of the English land. The
 suppression of the monasteries, &c., hurled their
 inmates into the proletariat. The estates of the church were
 to a large extent given away to rapacious royal favourites,
 or sold at a nominal price to speculating farmers and
 citizens, who drove out, en masse, the hereditary
 sub-tenants and threw their holdings into one. The legally
 guaranteed property of the poorer folk in a part of the
 church’s tithes was tacitly confiscated. [7] “Pauper ubique
 jacet,” cried Queen Elizabeth, after a journey through
 England. In the 43rd year of her reign the nation was
 obliged to recognise pauperism officially by the
 introduction of a poor-rate. “The authors of this law seem
 to have been ashamed to state the grounds of it, for
 [contrary to traditional usage] it has no preamble
 whatever.” [8]
 By the 16th of Charles I., ch. 4, it was declared perpetual,
 and in fact only in 1834 did it take a new and harsher form.
 [9] These
 immediate results of the Reformation were
 not 676its most lasting ones. The
 property of the church formed the religious bulwark of the
 traditional conditions of landed property. With its fall
 these were no longer tenable. [10]
Even in the last decade of the 17th century, the
 yeomanry, the class of independent peasants, were more
 numerous than the class of farmers. They had formed the
 backbone of Cromwell’s strength, and, even according to the
 confession of Macaulay, stood in favourable contrast to the
 drunken squires and to their servants, the country clergy,
 who had to marry their masters’ cast-off mistresses. About
 1750, the yeomanry had disappeared, [11] and so had, in the last decade
 of the 18th century, the last trace of the common land of
 the agricultural labourer. We leave on one side here the
 purely economic causes of the agricultural revolution. We
 deal only with the forcible means employed.
After the restoration of the Stuarts, the landed
 proprietors carried, by legal means, an act of usurpation,
 effected everywhere on the Continent without any legal
 formality. They abolished the feudal tenure of land,
 i.e., they got rid of all its obligations to the
 State, “indemnified” the State by taxes on the peasantry and
 the rest of the mass of the people, vindicated for
 themselves the rights of modern private property in estates
 to which they had only a feudal title, and, finally, passed
 those laws of settlement, which, mutatis mutandis,
 had the same effect on the English agricultural
 labourer, as the edict of the Tartar Boris Godunof on the
 Russian peasantry.
The “glorious Revolution” brought into power, along with
 William 677of Orange, the landlord and
 capitalist appropriators of surplus-value.
 [12] They inaugurated
 the new era by practising on a colossal scale thefts of
 state lands, thefts that had been hitherto managed more
 modestly. These estates were given away, sold at a
 ridiculous figure, or even annexed to private estates by
 direct seizure. [13] All this happened without the
 slightest observation of legal etiquette. The Crown lands
 thus fraudulently appropriated, together with the robbery of
 the Church estates, as far as these had not been lost again
 during the republican revolution, form the basis of the
 today princely domains of the English oligarchy.
 [14] The bourgeois
 capitalists favoured the operation with the view, among
 others, to promoting free trade in land, to extending the
 domain of modern agriculture on the large farm-system, and
 to increasing their supply of the free agricultural
 proletarians ready to hand. Besides, the new landed
 aristocracy was the natural ally of the new bankocracy, of
 the newly-hatched haute finance, and of the large
 manufacturers, then depending on protective duties. The
 English bourgeoisie acted for its own interest quite as
 wisely as did the Swedish bourgeoisie who, reversing the
 process, hand in hand with their economic allies, the
 peasantry, helped the kings in the forcible resumption of
 the Crown lands from the oligarchy. This happened since
 1604 under Charles X. and Charles XI.
Communal property — always distinct from the State
 property just dealt with — was an old Teutonic
 institution which lived on under cover of feudalism. We have
 seen how the forcible usurpation of this, generally
 accompanied by the turning of arable into pasture land,
 begins at the end of the 15th and extends into the 16th
 century. But, at that time, the process was carried on by
 means of individual acts of violence against which
 legislation, for a hundred and fifty years, fought in vain.
 The advance made by the 18th century shows itself in this,
 that the law itself 678becomes now the
 instrument of the theft of the people’s land, although the
 large farmers make use of their little independent methods
 as well. [15]
 The parliamentary form of the robbery is that of Acts for
 enclosures of Commons, in other words, decrees by which the
 landlords grant themselves the people’s land as private
 property, decrees of expropriation of the people. Sir F. M.
 Eden refutes his own crafty special pleading, in which he
 tries to represent communal property as the private property
 of the great landlords who have taken the place of the
 feudal lords, when he, himself, demands a “general Act of
 Parliament for the enclosure of Commons” (admitting thereby
 that a parliamentary coup d’état is
 necessary for its transformation into private property), and
 moreover calls on the legislature for the indemnification
 for the expropriated poor. [16]
Whilst the place of the independent yeoman was taken by
 tenants at will, small farmers on yearly leases, a servile
 rabble dependent on the pleasure of the landlords, the
 systematic robbery of the Communal lands helped especially,
 next to the theft of the State domains, to swell those large
 farms, that were called in the 18th century capital farms
 [17] or
 merchant farms, [18] and to “set free” the
 agricultural population as proletarians for manufacturing
 industry.
Let us hear for a moment a defender of enclosures and an
 opponent of Dr. Price. “Not is it a consequence that there
 must be depopulation, because men are not seen wasting their
 labour in the open field.... If, by converting the little
 farmers into a body of men who must work for others, more
 labour is produced, it is an advantage which the nation” (to
 which, of course, the “converted” ones do not belong)
 “should wish for ... the produce being greater when their
 joint labours are employed on one farm, there will be a
 surplus for manufactures, and by this means manufactures,
 one of the mines of the nation, will increase, in proportion
 to the quantity of corn produced.” [24]
The stoical peace of mind with which the political
 economist regards the most shameless violation of the
 “sacred rights of property” and the grossest acts of
 violence to persons, as soon as they are necessary to lay
 the foundations of the capitalistic mode of production, is
 shown by Sir F. M. Eden, philanthropist and tory to boot.
 The whole series of 681thefts,
 outrages, and popular misery, that accompanied the forcible
 expropriation of the people, from the last third of the 15th
 to the end of the 18th century, lead him merely to the
 comfortable conclusion: “The due proportion between arable
 land and pasture had to be established. During the whole of
 the 14th and the greater part of the 15th century, there was
 one acre of pasture to 2, 3, and even 4 of arable land.
 About the middle of the 16th century the proportion was
 changed of 2 acres of pasture to 2, later on, of 2 acres of
 pasture to one of arable, until at last the just proportion
 of 3 acres of pasture to one of arable land was attained.”
In the 19th century, the very memory of the connexion
 between the agricultural labourer and the communal property
 had, of course, vanished. To say nothing of more recent
 times, have the agricultural population received a farthing
 of compensation for the 3,511,770 acres of common land which
 between 1801 and 1831 were stolen from them and by
 parliamentary devices presented to the landlords by the
 landlords?
The last process of wholesale expropriation of the
 agricultural population from the soil is, finally, the
 so-called clearing of estates, i.e., the sweeping
 men off them. All the English methods hitherto considered
 culminated in “clearing.” As we saw in the picture of modern
 conditions given in a former chapter, where there are no
 more independent peasants to get rid of, the “clearing” of
 cottages begins; so that the agricultural labourers do not
 find on the soil cultivated by them even the spot necessary
 for their own housing. But what “clearing of estates” really
 and properly signifies, we learn only in the promised land
 of modern romance, the Highlands of Scotland. There the
 process is distinguished by its systematic character, by the
 magnitude of the scale on which it is carried out at one
 blow (in Ireland landlords have gone to the length of
 sweeping away several villages at once; in Scotland areas as
 large as German principalities are dealt with), finally by
 the peculiar form of property, under which the embezzled
 lands were held.
But the brave Gaels must expiate yet more bitterly their
 idolatry, romantic and of the mountains, for the “great men”
 of the clan. The smell of their fish rose to the noses of
 the great men. They scented some profit in it, and let the
 sea-shore to the great fishmongers of London. For the second
 time the Gaels were hunted out. [31]
685The spoliation of the church’s
 property, the fraudulent alienation of the State domains,
 the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal
 and clan property, and its transformation into modern
 private property under circumstances of reckless terrorism,
 were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation.
 They conquered the field for capitalistic agriculture, made
 the soil part and parcel of capital, and created for the
 town industries the necessary supply of a “free” and
 outlawed proletariat.
In England this legislation began under Henry VII.
Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work
 receive a beggar’s licence. On the other hand, whipping and
 imprisonment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to
 the cart-tail and whipped until the blood streams from their
 bodies, then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace
 or to where they have lived the last three years and to “put
 themselves to labour.” What grim irony! In 27 Henry VIII.
 the former statute is repeated, but strengthened with new
 clauses. For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping
 is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the
 third relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened
 criminal and enemy of the common weal.
Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years
 of age are to be severely flogged and branded on the left
 ear unless some one will take them into service for two
 years; in case of a repetition of the offence, if they are
 over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take
 them into service for two years; but for the third offence
 they are to be executed without mercy as felons. Similar
 statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and another of 1597.
 [2]
688James 1: Any one wandering
 about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond.
 Justices of the peace in petty sessions are authorised to
 have them publicly whipped and for the first offence to
 imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2 years.
 Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and as often
 as the justices of the peace think fit... Incorrigible and
 dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left
 shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught
 begging again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes,
 legally binding until the beginning of the 18th century,
 were only repealed by 12 Anne, c. 23.
Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th
 century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established in
 Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI.’s reign
 (Ordinance of July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from
 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and
 not practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the
 same nature are the statute of Charles V. for the
 Netherlands (October, 1537), the first edict of the States
 and Towns of Holland (March 10, 1614), the “Plakaat” of the
 United Provinces (June 26, 1649), &c.
Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly
 expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned
 into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws
 grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the
 wage system.
It is not enough that the conditions of labour are
 concentrated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at the one
 pole of society, while at the
 other 689are grouped masses of men,
 who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Neither is
 it enough that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily.
 The advance of capitalist production develops a
 working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks
 upon the conditions of that mode of production as
 self-evident laws of Nature. The organisation of the
 capitalist process of production, once fully developed,
 breaks down all resistance. The constant generation of a
 relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and
 demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that
 corresponds with the wants of capital. The dull compulsion
 of economic relations completes the subjection of the
 labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic
 conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally.
 In the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to
 the “natural laws of production,” i.e., to his
 dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and
 guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions of production
 themselves. It is otherwise during the historic genesis
 of capitalist production. The bourgeoisie, at its rise,
 wants and uses the power of the state to “regulate” wages,
 i.e., to force them within the limits suitable for
 surplus-value making, to lengthen the working-day and to
 keep the labourer himself in the normal degree of
 dependence. This is an essential element of the so-called
 primitive accumulation.
The class of wage labourers, which arose in the latter
 half of the 14th century, formed then and in the following
 century only a very small part of the population, well
 protected in its position by the independent peasant
 proprietary in the country and the guild-organisation in the
 town. In country and town master and workmen stood close
 together socially. The subordination of labour to capital
 was only formal — i.e., the mode of
 production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic
 character. Variable capital preponderated greatly over
 constant. The demand for wage labour grew, therefore,
 rapidly with every accumulation of capital, whilst the
 supply of wage labour followed but slowly. A large part of
 the national product, changed later into a fund of
 capitalist accumulation, then still entered into the
 consumption-fund of the labourer.
Legislation on wage labour (from the first, aimed at the
 exploitation of the labourer and, as it advanced, always
 equally hostile to him), [3] 
 is started in England by the
 Statute of Labourers, of Edward III., 1349. The ordinance
 of 1350 in France, issued in the name of King John,
 corresponds with it. English and French legislation run
 parallel and are 690identical in
 purport. So far as the labour-statutes aim at compulsory
 extension of the working-day, I do not return to them, as
 this point was treated earlier (Chap. X., Section 5).
The Statute of Labourers was passed at the urgent
 instance of the House of Commons. A Tory says naively:
A tariff of wages was fixed by
 law for town and country, for piece-work and day-work. The
 agricultural labourers were to hire themselves out by the
 year, the town ones “in open market.” It was forbidden,
 under pain of imprisonment, to pay higher wages than those
 fixed by the statute, but the taking of higher wages was
 more severely punished than the giving them. [So also in
 Sections 18 and 19 of the Statute of Apprentices of
 Elizabeth, ten days’ imprisonment is decreed for him that
 pays the higher wages, but twenty-one days for him that
 receives them.] A statute of 1360 increased the penalties
 and authorised the masters to extort labour at the legal
 rate of wages by corporal punishment. All combinations,
 contracts, oaths, &c., by which masons and carpenters
 reciprocally bound themselves, were declared null and void.
 Coalition of the labourers is treated as a heinous crime
 from the 14th century to 1825, the year of the repeal of the
 laws against Trades’ Unions. The spirit of the Statute of
 Labourers of 1349 and of its offshoots comes out clearly in
 the fact, that indeed a maximum of wages is dictated by the
 State, but on no account a minimum.
During the very first storms of the revolution, the
 French bourgeoisie dared to take away from the workers the
 right of association but just acquired. By a decree of June
 14, 1791, they declared all coalition of the workers as “an
 attempt against liberty and the declaration of the rights of
 man,” punishable by a fine of 500 livres, together with
 deprivation of the rights of an active citizen for one year.
 [6] This law
 which, by means of State compulsion, confined the struggle
 between capital and labour within limits comfortable for
 capital, has outlived revolutions and changes of dynasties.
 Even the Reign of Terror left it untouched. It was but quite
 recently struck out of the Penal Code. Nothing is more
 characteristic than the pretext for this bourgeois coup
 d’état. “Granting,” says Chapelier, the reporter
 of the Select Committee on this law, “that wages ought to be
 a little higher than they are, ... that
 they ought to be 693high enough for
 him that receives them, to be free from that state of
 absolute dependence due to the want of the necessaries of
 life, and which is almost that of slavery,” yet the workers
 must not be allowed to come to any understanding about their
 own interests, nor to act in common and thereby lessen their
 “absolute dependence, which is almost that of slavery;”
 because, forsooth, in doing this they injure “the freedom of
 their cidevant masters, the present entrepreneurs,” and
 because a coalition against the despotism of the quondam
 masters of the corporations is — guess what! —
 is a restoration of the corporations abolished by the French
 constitution.[7]
The usurpation of the common lands allowed him to augment greatly
 his stock of cattle, almost without cost, whilst they yielded him a richer
 supply of manure for the tillage of the soil. To this was added in the
 16th century a very important element. At that time the contracts for farms
 ran for a long time, often for 99 years. The progressive fall in the value
 of the precious metals, and therefore of money, brought the farmers golden
 fruit. Apart from all the other circumstances discussed above, it lowered
 wages. A portion of the latter was now added to the profits of the farm.
 The continuous rise in the price of corn, wool, meat, in a word of all
 agricultural produce, swelled the money capital of the farm without any
 action on his part, whilst the rent he paid (being calculated on the old
 value of money) diminished in reality. [2] Thus they
 grew rich at the expense both of their labourers and their landlords. No
 wonder, therefore, that England, at the end of the 16th century, had a
 class of capitalist farmers, rich, considering the circumstances of the
 time. [3]
The genesis of the industrial *
 capitalist did not proceed in such a gradual way as that of the farmer.
 Doubtless many small guild-masters, and yet more independent small artisans,
 or even wage labourers, transformed themselves into small capitalists,
 and (by gradually extending exploitation of wage labour and corresponding
 accumulation) into full-blown capitalists. In the infancy of capitalist
 production, things often happened as in the infancy of medieval towns,
 where the question, which of the escaped serfs should be master and which
 servant, was in great part decided by the earlier or later date of their
 flight. The snail’s pace of this method corresponded in no wise with the
 commercial requirements of the new world market that the great discoveries
 of the end of the 15th century created. But the middle ages had handed
 down two distinct forms of capital, which mature in the most different
 economic social formations, and which before the era of the capitalist
 mode of production, are considered as capital quand même [all the same] — usurer’s
 capital and merchant’s capital.
The author should have remembered that revolutions are not made by laws.
The money capital formed by means of usury and commerce was prevented
 from turning into industrial capital, in the country by the feudal constitution,
 in the towns by the guild organisation. [3] These fetters
 vanished with the dissolution of feudal society, with the expropriation
 and partial eviction of the country population. The new manufactures were
 established at sea-ports, or at inland points beyond the control of the old
 municipalities and their guilds. Hence in England an embittered struggle
 of the corporate towns against these new industrial nurseries.
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation,
 enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning
 of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into
 a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy
 dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are
 the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the
 commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It
 begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions
 in England’s Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars
 against China, &c.
The different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute themselves
 now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal,
 Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the 17th century,
 they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the
 national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system.
 These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial
 system. But, they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and
 organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of
 transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode,
 and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society
 pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.
Of the Christian colonial system, W. Howitt, a man who makes a
 speciality of Christianity, says:
The history of the colonial administration of Holland — and Holland was
 the head capitalistic nation of the 17th century —
Nothing is more characteristic than their system
 of stealing men, to get slaves for Java. The men stealers were trained
 for this purpose. The thief, the interpreter, and the seller, were the
 chief agents in this trade, native princes the chief sellers. The young
 people stolen, were thrown into the secret dungeons of Celebes, until they
 were ready for sending to the slave-ships. An official report says:
To secure Malacca, the Dutch corrupted the Portuguese governor. He let them into
 the town in 1641. They hurried at once to his house and assassinated him,
 to “abstain” from the payment of £21,875, the price of his treason.
 Wherever they set foot, devastation and depopulation followed. Banjuwangi,
 a province of Java, in 1750 numbered over 80,000 inhabitants, in 1811 only
 18,000. Sweet commerce!
The English East India Company, as is well known, obtained, besides
 the political rule in India, the exclusive monopoly of the tea-trade, as
 well as of the Chinese trade in general, and of the transport of goods
 to and from Europe. But the coasting trade of India and between the islands,
 as well as the internal trade of India, were the monopoly of the higher
 employés of the company. The monopolies of salt, opium, betel and
 other commodities, were inexhaustible mines of wealth. The employés
 themselves fixed the price and plundered at will the unhappy Hindus. The
 Governor-General took part in this private traffic. His favourites received
 contracts under conditions whereby they, cleverer than the alchemists,
 made gold out of nothing. Great fortunes sprang up like mushrooms in a
 day; primitive accumulation went on without the advance of a shilling.
 The trial of Warren Hastings swarms with such cases. Here is an instance.
 A contract for opium was given to a certain Sullivan at the moment of his
 departure on an official mission to a part of India far removed from the
 opium district. Sullivan sold 705his contract to one Binn for £40,000;
 Binn sold it the same day for £60,000, and the ultimate purchaser
 who carried out the contract declared that after all he realised an enormous
 gain. According to one of the lists laid before Parliament, the Company
 and its employés from 1757-1766 got £6,000,000 from the Indians
 as gifts. Between 1769 and 1770, the English manufactured a famine by buying
 up all the rice and refusing to sell it again, except at fabulous prices.
 [6]
The treatment of the aborigines was, naturally, most frightful
 in plantation-colonies destined for export trade only, such as the West
 Indies, and in rich and well-populated countries, such as Mexico and India,
 that were given over to plunder. But even in the colonies properly so called,
 the Christian character of primitive accumulation did not belie itself.
 Those sober virtuosi of Protestantism, the Puritans of New England, in
 1703, by decrees of their assembly set a premium of £40 on every
 Indian scalp and every captured red-skin: in 1720 a premium of £100
 on every scalp; in 1744, after Massachusetts-Bay had proclaimed a certain
 tribe as rebels, the following prices: for a male scalp of 12 years and
 upwards £100 (new currency), for a male prisoner £105, for
 women and children prisoners £50, for scalps of women and children
 £50. Some decades later, the colonial system took its revenge on
 the descendants of the pious pilgrim fathers, who had grown seditious in
 the meantime. At English instigation and for English pay they were tomahawked
 by red-skins. The British Parliament proclaimed bloodhounds and scalping
 as “means that God and Nature had given into its hand.”
The colonial system ripened, like a hot-house, trade and navigation.
 The “societies Monopolia” of Luther were powerful levers for concentration
 of capital. The colonies secured a market for the budding manufactures,
 and, through the monopoly of the market, an increased accumulation. The
 treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement,
 and murder, floated back to the mother-country and were there turned into
 capital. Holland, which first fully developed the colonial system, in 1648
 stood already in the acme of its commercial greatness. It was
Today industrial supremacy implies commercial supremacy. In the
 period of manufacture properly so called, it is, on the other hand, the
 commercial supremacy that gives industrial predominance. Hence the preponderant
 rôle that the colonial system plays at that time. It was “the strange
 God” who perched himself on the altar cheek by jowl with the old Gods of
 Europe, and one fine day with a shove and a kick chucked them all of a
 heap. It proclaimed surplus-value making as the sole end and aim of humanity.
The system of public credit, i.e., of national debts, whose
 origin we discover in Genoa and Venice as early as the Middle Ages, took
 possession of Europe generally during the manufacturing period. The colonial
 system with its maritime trade and commercial wars served as a forcing-house
 for it. Thus it first took root in Holland. National debts, i.e.,
 the alienation of the state – whether despotic, constitutional or republican – marked
 with its stamp the capitalistic era. The only part of the so-called national
 wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions of modern peoples
 is their national debt. [7] Hence, as a necessary consequence,
 the modern doctrine that a nation becomes the richer the more deeply it
 is in debt. Public credit becomes the credo of capital. And with
 the rise of national debt-making, want of faith in the national debt takes
 the place of the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which may not be forgiven.
The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive
 accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter’s wand, it endows barren
 money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without
 the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable
 from its employment in industry or even in usury. The state creditors actually
 give nothing away, for the sum lent is transformed into public bonds, easily
 negotiable, which go on functioning in their hands just as so much hard
 cash would. But further, apart from the class of lazy annuitants thus created,
 and from the improvised wealth of the financiers, middlemen between the
 government and the nation – as also apart from the tax-farmers, merchants,
 private manufacturers, to whom a good part of every national loan renders
 the service of a capital fallen from heaven – the national debt has given
 rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all
 kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern
 bankocracy.
At their birth the great banks, decorated with national titles,
 were only associations of private speculators, who placed themselves by
 the 707side of governments, and, thanks to the privileges they
 received, were in a position to advance money to the State. Hence the accumulation
 of the national debt has no more infallible measure than the successive
 rise in the stock of these banks, whose full development dates from the
 founding of the Bank of England in 1694. The Bank of England began with
 lending its money to the Government at 8%; at the same time it was empowered
 by Parliament to coin money out of the same capital, by lending it again
 to the public in the form of banknotes. It was allowed to use these notes
 for discounting bills, making advances on commodities, and for buying the
 precious metals. It was not long ere this credit-money, made by the bank
 itself, became. The coin in which the Bank of England made its loans to
 the State, and paid, on account of the State, the interest on the public
 debt. It was not enough that the bank gave with one hand and took back
 more with the other; it remained, even whilst receiving, the eternal creditor
 of the nation down to the last shilling advanced. Gradually it became inevitably
 the receptacle of the metallic hoard of the country, and the centre of
 gravity of all commercial credit. What effect was produced on their contemporaries
 by the sudden uprising of this brood of bankocrats, financiers, rentiers,
 brokers, stock-jobbers, &c., is proved by the writings of that time,
 e.g., by Bolingbroke’s. [8]
With the national debt arose an international credit system, which
 often conceals one of the sources of primitive accumulation in this or
 that people. Thus the villainies of the Venetian thieving system formed
 one of the secret bases of the capital-wealth of Holland to whom Venice
 in her decadence lent large sums of money. So also was it with Holland
 and England. By the beginning of the 18th century the Dutch manufactures
 were far outstripped. Holland had ceased to be the nation preponderant
 in commerce and industry. One of its main lines of business, therefore,
 from 1701-1776, is the lending out of enormous amounts of capital, especially
 to its great rival England. The same thing is going on today between England
 and the United States. A great deal of capital, which appears today in
 the United States without any certificate of birth, was yesterday, in England,
 the capitalised blood of children.
As the national debt finds its support in the public revenue,
 which must cover the yearly payments for interest, &c., the modern
 system of taxation was the necessary complement of the system of national
 loans. The loans enable the government to meet extraordinary expenses, 708without
 the tax-payers feeling it immediately, but they necessitate, as a consequence,
 increased taxes. On the other hand, the raising of taxation caused by the
 accumulation of debts contracted one after another, compels the government
 always to have recourse to new loans for new extraordinary expenses. Modern
 fiscality, whose pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary means of
 subsistence (thereby increasing their price), thus contains within itself
 the germ of automatic progression. Overtaxation is not an incident, but
 rather a principle. In Holland, therefore, where this system was first
 inaugurated, the great patriot, DeWitt, has in his “Maxims” extolled it
 as the best system for making the wage labourer submissive, frugal, industrious,
 and overburdened with labour. The destructive influence that it exercises
 on the condition of the wage labourer concerns us less however, here, than
 the forcible expropriation, resulting from it, of peasants, artisans, and
 in a word, all elements of the lower middle class. On this there are not
 two opinions, even among the bourgeois economists. Its expropriating efficacy
 is still further heightened by the system of protection, which forms one
 of its integral parts.
The great part that the public debt, and the fiscal system corresponding
 with it, has played in the capitalisation of wealth and the expropriation
 of the masses, has led many writers, like Cobbett, Doubleday and others,
 to seek in this, incorrectly, the fundamental cause of the misery of the
 modern peoples.
The system of protection was an artificial means of manufacturing
 manufacturers, of expropriating independent labourers, of capitalising
 the national means of production and subsistence, of forcibly abbreviating
 the transition from the medieval to the modern mode of production. The
 European states tore one another to pieces about the patent of this invention,
 and, once entered into the service of the surplus-value makers, did not
 merely lay under contribution in the pursuit of this purpose their own
 people, indirectly through protective duties, directly through export premiums.
 They also forcibly rooted out, in their dependent countries, all industry,
 as, e.g., England did. with the Irish woollen manufacture. On the
 continent of Europe, after Colbert’s example, the process was much simplified.
 The primitive industrial capital, here, came in part directly out of the
 state treasury. “Why,” cries Mirabeau, “why go so far to seek the cause
 of the manufacturing glory of Saxony before the war? 180,000,000 of debts
 contracted by the sovereigns!” [9]
Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, commercial
 wars, &c., these children of the true manufacturing period, increase
 gigantically during the infancy of Modem Industry. The birth of the latter
 is heralded by a great slaughter of the innocents. Like the royal navy,
 the factories were recruited by means of the press-gang. Blasé as
 Sir F. M. Eden is as to the horrors of the expropriation of the agricultural
 population from the soil, from the last third of the 15th century to his
 own time; with all the self-satisfaction with which he rejoices in this
 process, “essential” for establishing capitalistic agriculture and “the
 due proportion between arable and pasture land” — he does not show, however,
 the same economic insight in respect to the necessity of child-stealing
 and child-slavery for the transformation of manufacturing exploitation
 into factory exploitation, and the establishment of the “true relation” 
 between capital and labour-power. He says:
With the development of capitalist production during the manufacturing
 period, the public opinion of Europe had lost the last remnant of shame
 and conscience. The nations bragged cynically of every infamy that served
 them as a means to capitalistic accumulation. Read, e.g., the naïve
 Annals of Commerce of the worthy A. Anderson. Here it is trumpeted forth
 as a triumph of English statecraft that at the Peace of Utrecht, England
 extorted from the Spaniards by the Asiento Treaty the privilege of being
 allowed to ply the negro trade, until then only carried on between Africa
 and the English West Indies, between Africa and Spanish America as well.
 England thereby acquired the right of supplying Spanish America until 1743
 with 4,800 negroes yearly. This 711threw, at the same time, an
 official cloak over British smuggling. Liverpool waxed fat on the slave trade.
 This was its method of primitive accumulation. And, even to the present
 day, Liverpool “respectability” is the Pindar of the slave trade which
 — compare the work of Aikin [1795] already quoted — “has coincided with
 that spirit of bold adventure which has characterised the trade of Liverpool
 and rapidly carried it to its present state of prosperity; has occasioned
 vast employment for shipping and sailors, and greatly augmented the demand
 for the manufactures of the country” (p. 339). Liverpool employed in the
 slave-trade, in 1730, 15 ships; in 1751, 53; in 1760, 74; in 1770, 96;
 and in 1792, 132.[12]
Whilst the cotton industry introduced child-slavery in England,
 it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier,
 more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation.
 In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage workers in Europe needed, for its
 pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new world.
Tantae molis erat, to establish the “eternal laws of Nature” of
 the capitalist mode of production, to complete the process of separation
 between labourers and conditions of labour, to transform, at one pole,
 the social means of production and subsistence into capital, at the opposite
 pole, the mass of the population into wage labourers, into “free labouring
 poor,” that artificial product of modern society. [13]
 If money, according to Augier, [14] “comes into the
 world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,” capital comes dripping
 from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. [15]
The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist
 mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first
 negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the
 proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of
 a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This
 does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him
 individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e.,
 on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means
 of production.
The transformation of scattered private property, arising
 from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally,
 a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the
 transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting
 on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case,
 we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in
 the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of
 the people. [2]
First of all, Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, 
 means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not
 as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative
 — the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his
 own free will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social
 relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things.
 [4] 
 Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan
 River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount
 of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides,
 300 persons of the working class, men, women, and children. Once arrived
 at his destination, “Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed
 or fetch him water from the river.” [5] Unhappy Mr. Peel who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production
 to Swan River!
For the understanding of the following discoveries of Wakefield,
 two preliminary remarks: We know that the means of production and subsistence,
 while they remain the property of the immediate producer, are not capital.
 They become capital only under circumstances in which they serve at the
 same time as means of exploitation and subjection of the labourer. But this
 capitalist soul of theirs is so intimately wedded, in the head of the political
 economist, to their material substance, that he christens them capital
 under all circumstances, even when they are its exact opposite. Thus is
 it with Wakefield. Further: the splitting up of the means of production
 into the individual property of many independent labourers, working on their
 own account, he calls equal division of capital. It is with the political
 economist as with the feudal jurist. The latter stuck on to pure monetary
 relations the labels supplied by feudal law.
We have seen that the expropriation of the mass of the people
 from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production. The
 essence of a free colony, on the contrary, consists in this — that the
 bulk of the soil is still public property, and every settler on it therefore
 can turn part of it into his private property and individual means of production,
 without hindering the later settlers in the same operation.[10]
 This is the secret both of the prosperity of the colonies and of their
 inveterate vice — opposition to the establishment of capital. “Where land
 is very cheap and all men are free, where every one who so pleases can
 easily obtain a piece of land for himself, not only is labour very dear,
 as respects the labourer’s share of the produce, but the difficulty is to
 obtain combined labour at any price.” [11]
As in the colonies the separation of the labourer from the conditions
 of labour and their root, the soil, does not exist, or only sporadically,
 or on too limited a scale, so neither does the separation of agriculture
 from industry exist, nor the destruction of the household industry of the
 peasantry. Whence then is to come the internal market for capital? “No
 part of the population of America is exclusively agricultural, excepting
 slaves and their employers who combine capital and labour in particular
 works. Free Americans, who cultivate the soil, follow many other occupations.
 Some portion of the furniture and tools which they use is commonly made
 by themselves. They frequently build their own houses, and carry to market,
 at whatever distance, the produce of their own industry. They are spinners
 and weavers; they make soap and candles, as well as, in many cases, shoes
 and clothes for their own use. In America the cultivation of land is often
 the secondary pursuit of a blacksmith, a miller or a shopkeeper.” [12]
 With such queer people as these, where is the “field of abstinence” for
 the capitalists?
What is now, according to Wakefield, the consequence of this unfortunate
 state of things in the colonies? A “barbarising tendency of dispersion”
 of producers and national wealth.[17] The parcelling-out
 of the means of production among innumerable owners, working on their own
 account, annihilates, along with the centralisation of capital, all the
 foundation of combined labour. Every long-winded undertaking, extending
 over several years and demanding outlay of fixed capital, is prevented
 from being carried out. In Europe, capital invests without hesitating a
 moment, for the working class constitutes its living appurtenance, always
 in excess, always at disposal. But in the colonies! Wakefield tells an
 extremely doleful anecdote. He was talking with some capitalists of Canada
 and the state of New York, where the immigrant wave often becomes stagnant
 and deposits a sediment of “supernumerary” labourers. “Our capital,” says
 one of the characters in the melodrama, "was ready for many operations
 which require a considerable period of time for their completion; but we
 could not begin such operations with labour which, we knew, would soon leave
 us. If we had been sure of retaining the labour of such emigrants, we should
 have been glad to have engaged it at once, and for a high price: and we
 should have engaged it, even though we had been sure it would leave us,
 provided we had been sure of a fresh supply whenever we might need it.” 
 [18]
After Wakefield has constructed the English capitalist agriculture
 and its “combined” labour with the scattered cultivation of American peasants,
 he unwittingly gives us a glimpse at the reverse of the medal. He depicts
 the mass of the American people as well-to-do, independent, enterprising,
 and comparatively cultured, whilst “the English agricultural labourer is
 miserable wretch, a pauper.... In what country, except North America and
 some new colonies, do the wages of free labour employed in agriculture much
 exceed a bare subsistence for the labourer? ... Undoubtedly , farm-horses
 in England, being a valuable property, are better fed than English peasants.”
 [19] But, never mind, national wealth is, once again,
 by its very nature, identical with misery of the people.
However, we are not concerned here with the conditions of the colonies.
 The only thing that interests us is the secret discovered in the new world
 by the Political Economy of the old world, and proclaimed on the housetops:
 that the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore
 capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the annihilation
 of self-earned private property; in other words, the expropriation of the
 labourer.
Hence the formula for the circuit of money-capital is: M — C ...
 P ... C' — M', the dots indicating that the process of circulation is interrupted,
 and C' and M' designating C and M increased by surplus-value.
The first and third stages were discussed in Book I only in so
 far as this was necessary for the understanding of the second stage, the
 process of production of capital. For this reason, the various forms which
 capital takes on in its different stages, and which now assumes and now
 strips off in the repetition of its circuit, were not considered. These
 forms are now the direct object of our study.
In order to conceive these forms in their pure state, one must
 first of all discard all factors which have nothing to do with the changing
 or building of forms as such. It is therefore taken for granted here not
 only that the commodities are sold at their values but also that this takes
 place under the same conditions throughout. Likewise disregarded therefore
 are any changes of value which might occur during the movement in circuits.
Aside from this qualitative division of the sum of commodities into which M is transformed, the formula M — C<LMP also represents a most characteristic quantitative relation.
We know that the value, or price, of labour-power is paid to its
 owner, who offers it for sale as a commodity, in the form of wages, that
 is to say as the price of a sum of labour containing surplus-labour. For
 instance if the daily value of labour-power is equal to the product of
 five hours labour valued at three shillings, this sum figures in the contract
 between the buyer and seller as the price, or wages, for, say, ten hours
 of labour. If such a contract is made for instance with 50 labourers, they
 are supposed to work altogether 500 hours per day for the purchaser, and
 one half of this time, or 250 hours equal to 25 days of labour of 10 hours
 each, represents nothing but surplus labour. The quantity and the volume
 of the means of production to be purchased must be sufficient for the utilisation
 of this mass of labour.
M — C<LMP,
 then, does not merely express the qualitative relation indicating that a certain sum of money, say £422, is exchanged for a corresponding sum of means of production and labour-power, but also a quantitative relation between L, the part of the money spent
 for labour-power, and MP, the part spent for means of production. This
 relation is determined at the outset by the quantity of excess labour,
 of surplus-labour to be expended by a certain number of labourers.
If for instance in a spinning-mill the weekly wage of its 50 labourers
 amounts to £50, £372 must be spent for means of production,
 if this is the value of the means of production which a weekly labour of
 3,000 hours, 1,500 of which are surplus-labour, transforms into yarn.
It is immaterial here how much additional value in the form of
 means of production is required in the various lines of industry by the
 utilisation of additional labour. The point merely is that the part of
 the money spent for means of production — the means of production bought
 in M — MP — must absolutely suffice, i.e., must at the outset be calculated
 accordingly, must be procured in corresponding proportion. To put it another
 way, the quantity of means of production must suffice to absorb the amount
 of labour, to be transformed by it into products. If the means of production
 at hand were insufficient, the excess labour at the disposal of the purchaser
 could not be utilised; his right to dispose of it is futile. If there were
 more means of production than available labour, they would not be saturated
 with labour, would not be transformed into products.
As soon as M — C<LMP is completed, the purchaser has at his disposal more than simply the means of production and labour-power required for the production of some useful article. He
 disposes of a greater capacity to render labour-power fluent, or a greater
 quantity of labour than is necessary for the replacement of the value of
 this labour-power, and he has at the same time the means of production
 requisite for the realisation or materialisation of this quantity of labour.
 In other words, he has at his disposal the factors making for the production
 of articles of a greater value than that of the elements of production — the factors of production of a mass of commodities containing surplus-value.
 The value advanced by him in money-form has now assumed a bodily form in
 which it can be incarnated as a value generating surplus-value (in the
 shape of commodities). In brief, value exists here in the condition or
 form of productive capital, which has the factor of creating value
 and surplus-value. Let us call capital in this form P.
Now the value of P is equal to that of L + MP, it is equal to
 M exchanged for L and MP. M is the same capital-value as P, only it has
 a different mode of existence, it is capital-value in the state or form
 of money — money-capital.
M — C<LMP, or its general form M — C, a sum of purchases of commodities, an act of the general circulation of commodities, is therefore at the same time — as a stage in the independent circuit of capital — a transformation of capital-value from its money-form into its productive form. More briefly, it is the transformation of money-capital into productive capital. In the diagram of the circuit which we
 are here discussing, money appears as the first depository of capital-value,
 and money-capital therefore represents the form in which capital is advanced.
Capital in the form of money-capital is in a state in which it
 can perform the functions of money, in the present case the functions of
 a universal means of purchase and universal means of payment. (The last-named
 inasmuch as labour-power though first bought is not paid for until it has
 been put into operation. To the extent that the means of production are
 not found ready on the market but have to be ordered first, money in M — MP
 likewise serves as a means of payment.) This capacity is not due to the
 fact that money-capital is capital but that it is money.
On the other hand capital-value in the form of money cannot perform
 any other functions but those of money. What turns the money-functions
 into functions of capital is the definite role they play in the movement
 of capital, and therefore also the interrelation of the stage in which
 these functions are performed with the other stages of the circuit of capital.
 Take, for instance, the case with which we are here dealing. Money is here
 converted into commodities the combination of which represents the bodily
 form of productive capital, and this form already contains latently, potentially,
 the result of the process of capitalist production.
A part of the money performing the function of money-capital in
 M — C<LMP assumes, by consummating the act of circulation, a function in which it loses its capital character but preserves its money-character. The circulation of money-capital M is divided into
 M — MP and M — L, into the purchase of means of production and the purchase of labour-power. Let us consider the last-named process by itself. M — L
 is the purchase of labour-power by the capitalist. It is also the sale
 of labour-power — we may here say of labour, since the form of wages is
 assumed — by the laborer who owns it. What is M — C ( = M — L) for the buyer is here, as in every other purchase, L — M ( = C — M) for the seller
 (the laborer). It is the sale of his labour-power. This is the first stage
 of circulation, or the first metamorphosis, of the commodity (Buch I, Kap.
 III, 2a).[English edition: Ch. III, 2a — Ed.] It is for the seller
 of labour a transformation of his commodity into the money-form. The laborer
 spends the money so obtained gradually for a number of commodities required
 for the satisfaction of his needs, for articles of consumption. The complete
 circulation of his commodity therefore appears as L — M — C, that is to
 say first as L — M ( = C — M) and secondly as M — C; hence in the general form of the simple circulation of commodities, C — M — C. Money is in this case merely a passing means of circulation, a mere medium in the exchange
 of one commodity for another.
M — L is the characteristic moment in the transformation of money-capital
 into productive capital, because it is the essential condition for the
 real transformation of value advanced in the form of money into capital,
 into a value producing surplus-value. M — MP is necessary only for the
 purpose of realising the quantity of labour bought in the process M — L,
 which was discussed from this point of view in Book I, Part II, under the
 head of “The Transformation of Money into Capital.” We shall have to consider the matter at this point also from another angle, relating especially to
 money-capital the form in which capital manifests itself.
Generally M — L is regarded as characteristic of the capitalist
 mode of production. However not at all for the reason given above, that
 the purchase of labour-power represents a contract of purchase which stipulates
 for the delivery of a quantity of labour in excess of that needed to replace
 the price of the labour-power, the wages; hence delivery of surplus-labour,
 the fundamental condition for the capitalisation of the value advanced,
 or for the production of surplus-value, which is the same thing. On the
 contrary, it is so regarded because of its form, since money in the form
 of wages buys labour, and this is the characteristic mark of the money
 system.
Nor is it the irrationality of the form which is taken as characteristic.
 On the contrary, one overlooks the irrational. The irrationality consists
 in the fact that labour itself as a value-creating element cannot have
 any value, nor can therefore any definite amount of labour have any value
 expressed in its price, in its equivalence to a definite quantity of money.
 But we know that wages are but a disguised form, a form in which for instance
 the price of one day’s labour-power presents itself as the price of the
 labour rendered fluent by this labour-power in one day. The value produced
 by this labour-power in, say, six hours of labour is thus expressed as
 the value of twelve hours’ functioning or operation of the labour-power.
M — L is regarded as the characteristic feature, the hallmark
 of the so-called money system, because labour there appears as the commodity
 of its owner, and money therefore as the buyer — hence on account of the
 money-relation (i.e., the sale and purchase of human activity). Money however
 appears very early as a buyer of so-called services, without the transformation
 of M into money-capital, and without any change in the general character
 of the economic system.
It makes no difference to money into what sort of commodities
 it is transformed. It is the universal equivalent of all commodities which
 show, if only by their prices, that ideally they represent a certain sum
 of money, anticipate their transformation into money, and do not acquire
 the form in which they may be converted into use-values for their owners
 until they change places with money. Once labour-power has come into the
 market as the commodity of its owner and its sale takes the form of payment
 for labour, assumes the shape of wages, its purchase and sale is no more
 startling than the purchase and sale of any other commodity. The characteristic
 thing is not that the commodity labour-power is purchasable but that labour-power
 appears as a commodity.
By means of M — C<LMP, the transformation of money-capital into productive capital, the capitalist effects the combination of the objective and personal factors of production so far as they consist of commodities. If money is transformed into productive capital for the
 first time or if it performs for the first time the function of money-capital
 for its owner, he must begin by buying means of production, such as buildings,
 machinery, etc., before he buys any labour-power. For as soon as he compels
 labour-power to act in obedience to his sway, he must have means of production
 to which he can apply it as labour-power.
This is the capitalist’s presentation of the case.
The labourer’s case is as follows: The productive application
 of his labour-power is not possible until it is sold and brought into connection
 with means of production. Before its sale, labour-power exists therefore
 separately from the means of production, from the material conditions of
 its application. In this state of separation it cannot be used either directly
 for the production of use-values for its owner or for the production of
 commodities, by the sale of which he could live. But from the moment that
 as a result of its sale it is brought into connection with means of production,
 it forms part of the productive capital of its purchaser, the same as the
 means of production.
True, in the act M — L the owner of money and the owner of labour-power
 enter only into the relation of buyer and seller, confront one another
 only as money-owner and commodity-owner. In this respect they enter merely
 into a money-relation. Yet at the same time the buyer appears also from
 the outset in the capacity of an owner of means of production, which are
 the material conditions for the productive expenditure of labour-power
 by its owner. In other words, these means of production are in opposition
 to the owner of the labour-power, being property of another. On the other
 hand the seller of labour faces its buyer as labour-power of another which
 must be made to do his bidding, must be integrated into his capital, in
 order that it may really become productive capital. The class relation
 between capitalist and wage-laborer therefore exists, is presupposed from
 the moment the two face each other in the act M — L (L — M on the part
 of the laborer). It is a purchase and sale, a money-relation, but a purchase
 and sale in which the buyer is assumed to be a capitalist and the seller
 a wage-laborer. And this relation arises out of the fact that the conditions
 required for the realisation of labour-power, viz., means of subsistence
 and means of production, are separated from the owner of labour-power,
 being the property of another.
We are not concerned here with the origin of this separation.
 It exists as soon as M — L goes on. The thing which interests us here is
 this: If M — L appears here as a function of money-capital or money as
 the form of existence of capital, the sole reason that money here assumes
 the role of a means of paying for a useful human activity or service; hence
 by no means in consequence of the function of money as a means of payment.
 Money can be expended in this form only because labour-power finds itself
 in a state of separation from its means of production (including the means
 of subsistence as means of production of the labour-power itself), and
 because this separation can be overcome only by the sale of the labour-power
 to the owner of the means of production; because therefore the functioning
 of labour-power, which is not at all limited to the quantity of labour
 required for the reproduction of its own price, is likewise the concern
 of its buyer. The capital-relation during the process of production arises
 only because it is inherent in the act of circulation, in the different
 fundamental economic conditions in which buyer and seller confront each
 other, in their class relation. It is not money which by its nature creates
 this relation; it is rather the existence of this relation which permits
 of the transformation of a mere money-function into a capital-function.
In the conception of money-capital (for the time being we deal
 with the latter only within the confines of the special function in which
 it faces us here) two errors run parallel to each other or cross each other.
 In the first place the functions performed by capital-value in its capacity
 as money-capital, which it can perform precisely owing to its money-form,
 are erroneously derived from its character as capital, whereas they are
 due only to the money-form of capital-value, to its form of appearance
 as money. In the second place, on the contrary, the specific content of
 the money-function, which renders it simultaneously a capital-function,
 is traced to the nature of money (money being here confused with capital),
 while the money function premises social conditions, such as are here indicated
 by the act M — L, which do not at all exist in the mere circulation of
 commodities and the corresponding circulation of money.
The purchase and sale of slaves is formally also a purchase and
 sale of commodities. But money cannot perform this function without the
 existence of slavery. If slavery exists, then money can be invested in
 the purchase of slaves. On the other hand the mere possession of money
 cannot make slavery possible.
In order that the sale of one’s own labour-power (in the form
 of the sale of one’s own labour or in the form of wages) may constitute
 not an isolated phenomenon but a socially decisive premise for the production
 of commodities, in order that money-capital may therefore perform, on a
 social scale , the above-discussed function M — C<LMP, historical processes are assumed by which the original connection of the means of production with labour-power was dissolved — processes in consequence of which the mass of the people, the labourers, have, as non-owners, come face to face with non-labourers as the owners of these means of production. It makes no difference in this case whether the connection before its dissolution was such in form that the laborer, being himself a means of production,
 belonged to the other means of production or whether he was their owner.
What lies back of M — C<LMP is distribution; not distribution in the ordinary meaning of a distribution of articles of consumption, but the distribution of the elements of production itself,
 the material factors of which are concentrated on one side, and labour-power,
 isolated, on the other.
The means of production, the material part of productive capital,
 must therefore face the laborer as such, as capital, before the act M — L
 can become a universal, social one.
We have seen on previous occasions [English edition: Karl Marx,
 Capital, Vol. I, Part VII, Moscow, 1954. — Ed.] that in
 its further development capitalist production, once it is established,
 not only reproduces this separation but extends its scope further and further
 until it becomes the prevailing condition. However, there is still another
 side to this question. In order that capital may be able to arise and take
 control of production, a definite stage in the development of trade is
 assumed. This applies therefore also to the circulation of commodities,
 and hence to the production of commodities; for no articles can enter circulation
 as commodities unless they are produced for sale, hence as commodities.
 But the production of commodities does not become the normal, dominant
 type of production until capitalist production serves as its basis.
The Russian landowners, who as a result of the so-called emancipation
 of the peasants are now compelled to carry on agriculture with the help
 of wage-labourers instead of the forced labour of serfs, complain about
 two things: First, about the lack of money-capital. They say for instance
 that comparatively large sums must be paid to wage-labourers before the
 crops are sold, and just then there is a dearth of ready cash, the prime
 condition. Capital in the form of money must always be available, particularly
 for the payment of wages, before production can be carried on capitalistically.
 But the landowners may take hope. Everything comes to those who wait, and
 in due time the industrial capitalist will have at his disposal not alone
 his own money but also that of others.
The second complaint is more characteristic. It is to the effect
 that even if one has money, not enough labourers are to be had at any time.
 The reason is that the Russian farm-laborer, owing to the common ownership
 of land in the village community, has not yet been fully separated from
 his means of production and hence is not yet a “free wage-laborer” in the
 full sense of the word. But the existence of the latter on a social scale
 is a sine qua non for M — C, the conversion of money into commodities,
 to be able to represent the transformation of money-capital into productive
 capital.
It is therefore quite clear that the formula for the circuit of
 money-capital, M — C ... C' — M', is the matter-of-course form of the circuit
 of capital only on the basis of already developed capitalist production,
 because it presupposes the existence of a class of wage-labourers on a
 social scale. We have seen that capitalist production does not only create
 commodities and surplus-value, but also reproduces to an ever increasing
 extent the class of wage-labourers, into whom it transforms the vast majority
 of direct producers. Since the first condition for its realisation is the
 permanent existence of a class of wage-labourers, M — C ... P ... C' — M'
 presupposes a capital in the form of productive capital, and hence the
 form of the circuit of productive capital.
This movement is represented by M — C<LMP ... P, in which the dots indicate that the circulation of capital is interrupted, while its circular movement continues, since it passes from the sphere of circulation of commodities into that of production. The first stage,
 the transformation of money-capital into productive capital, is therefore
 merely the harbinger and introductory phase of the second stage, the functioning
 of productive capital.
M — C<LMP presupposes that the individual performing this act not only has at his disposal values in any use-form, but also that he has them in the form of money, that he is the owner of
 money. But as the act consists precisely in giving away money, the individual
 can remain the owner of money only in so far as the act of giving away
 implies a return of money. But money can return to him only through the
 sale of commodities. Hence the above act assumes him to be a producer of
 commodities.
On the other hand, the same conditions which give rise to the
 basic condition of capitalist production, the existence of a class of wage-workers,
 facilitate the transition of all commodity production to capitalist commodity
 production. As capitalist production develops, it has a disintegrating,
 resolvent effect on all older forms of production, which, designed mostly
 to meet the direct needs of the producer, transform only the excess produced
 into commodities. Capitalist production makes the sale of products the
 main interest, at first apparently without affecting the mode of production
 itself. Such was for instance the first effect of capitalist world commerce
 on such nations as the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, etc. But, secondly, wherever
 it takes root capitalist production destroys all forms of commodity production
 which are based either on the self-employment of the producers, or merely
 on the sale of the excess product as commodities. Capitalist production
 first makes the production of commodities general and then, by degrees,
 transforms all commodity production into capitalist commodity production.
 [3]
Whatever the social form of production, labourers and means of
 production always remain factors of it. But in a state of separation from
 each other either of these factors can be such only potentially. For production
 to go on at all they must unite. The specific manner in which this union
 is accomplished distinguishes the different economic epochs of the structure
 of society from one another. In the present case, the separation of the
 free worker from his means of production is the starting-point given, and
 we have seen how and under what conditions these two elements are united
 in the hands of the capitalist, namely, as the productive mode of existence
 of his capital. The actual process which the personal and material creators
 of commodities enter upon when thus brought together, the process of production,
 becomes therefore itself a function of capital, the capitalist process
 of production, the nature of which has been fully analysed in the first
 book of this work. Every enterprise engaged in commodity production becomes
 at the same time an enterprise exploiting labour-power. But only the capitalist
 production of commodities has become an epoch-making mode of exploitation,
 which, in the course of its historical development, revolutionises, through
 the organisation of the labour-process and the enormous improvement of
 technique, the entire structure of society in a manner eclipsing all former
 epochs.
The means of production and labour-power, in so far as they are
 forms of existence of advanced capital-value, are distinguished by the
 different roles assumed by them during the process of production in the
 creation of value, hence also of surplus-value, into constant and variable
 capital. Being different components of productive capital they are furthermore
 distinguished by the fact that the means of production in the possession
 of the capitalist remain his capital even outside of the process of production,
 while labour-power becomes the form of existence of an individual capital
 only within this process. Whereas labour-power is a commodity only in the
 hands of its seller, the wage-labourer, it becomes capital only in the
 hands of its buyer, the capitalist who acquires the temporary use of it.
 The means of production do not become the material forms of productive
 capital, or productive capital, until labour-power, the personal form of
 existence of productive capital, is capable of being embodied in them.
 Human labour-power is by nature no more capital than by means of production.
 They acquire this specific social character only under definite, historically
 developed conditions, just as only under such conditions the character
 of money is stamped upon precious metals, or that of money-capital upon
 money.
Productive capital, in performing its functions, consumes its
 own component parts for the purpose of transforming them into a mass of
 products of a higher value. Since labour-power acts merely as one of its
 organs, the excess of the product’s value engendered by its surplus-labour
 over and above the value of productive capital’s constituent elements is
 also the fruit of capital. The surplus-labour of labour-power is the gratuitous
 labour performed for capital and thus forms surplus-value for the capitalist,
 a value which costs him no equivalent return. The product is therefore
 not only a commodity, but a commodity pregnant with surplus-value. Its
 value is equal to P + s, that is to say equal to the value of the productive
 capital P consumed in the production of the commodity plus the surplus
 values created by it. Let us assume that this commodity consists of 10,000
 lbs. of yarn, and that means of production worth £372 and labour
 power worth £50 were consumed in the fabrication of this quantity
 of yarn. During the process of spinning, the spinners transmitted to the
 yarn the value of the means of production consumed by their labour, amounting
 to £372, and at the same time they created, in proportion with the
 labour-power expended by them, new value to the amount of, say, £128.
 The 10,000 lbs. of yarn therefore represent a value of £500.
Capital in the form of commodities has to perform the function
 of commodities. The articles of which capital is composed are produced
 especially for the market and must be sold, transformed into money, hence
 go through the process C — M.
Suppose the commodity of the capitalist to consist of 10,000 lbs.
 of cotton yarn. If £372 represent the value of the means of production
 consumed in the spinning process, and new value to the amount of £128
 has been created, the yarn has a value of £500, which is expressed
 in its price of the same amount. Suppose further that this price is realised
 by the sale C — M. What is it that makes of this simple act of all commodity
 circulation at the same time a capital-function? No change that takes place
 inside of it, neither in the use-character of the commodity — for it passes
 into the hands of the buyer as an object of use — nor in its value, for
 this value has not experienced any change of magnitude, but only of form.
 It first existed in the form of yarn, while now it exists in the form of
 money. Thus a substantial distinction is evident between the first stage
 M — C and the last stage C — M. There the advanced money functions as money-capital, because it is transformed by means of the circulation into commodities
 of a specific use-value. Here the commodities can serve as capital only
 to the extent that they bring this character with them in ready shape from
 the process of production before their circulation begins. During the spinning
 process, the spinners create yarn value to the amount of £128. Of
 this sum, say £50 represent to the capitalist merely an equivalent
 for his outlay for labour-power, while £78 — when the degree of
 exploitation of labour-power is 156 per cent — form surplus-value. The
 value of the 10,000 lbs. of yarn therefore embodies first the value of
 the consumed productive capital P, the constant part of which amounts to
 
 £372 and the variable to £50, their sum being £422, equal
 to 8,440 lbs. of yarn. Now the value of the productive capital P is equal
 to C, the value of its constituent elements, which in the stage M — C confronted
 the capitalist as commodities in the hands of their sellers.
The function of C' is now that of all commodities, viz.: to transform
 itself into money, to be sold, to go through the circulation stage C — M.
 So long as the capital, now expanded, remains in the form of commodity-capital,
 lies immovable in the market, the process of production is at rest. The
 commodity-capital acts neither as a creator of products nor as a creator
 of value. A given capital-value will serve, in widely different degrees,
 as a creator of products and value, and the scale of reproduction will
 be extended or reduced commensurate with the particular speed with which
 that capital throws off its commodity-form and assumes that of money, or
 with the rapidity of the sale. It was shown in Book I that the degree of
 efficiency of any given capital is conditional on the potentialities of
 the productive process, which to a certain extent are independent of the
 magnitude of its own value. [English edition: Karl Marx, Capital,
 Vol. I, pp. 602-08. — Ed.] Here it appears that the process of
 circulation sets in motion new forces independent of the capital’s magnitude
 of value and determining its degree of efficiency, its expansion and contraction.
The mass of commodities C', being the depository of the expanded
 capital, must furthermore pass in its entirety through the metamorphosis
 C' — M'. The quantity sold is here a main determinant. The individual commodity
 figures only as an integral part of the total mass. The £500 worth
 of value exists in the 10,000 lbs. of yarn. If the capitalist succeeds
 in selling only 7,440 lbs. at their value of £372, he has replaced
 only the value of his constant capital, the value of the expanded means
 of production. If he sells 8,440 lbs. he recovers only the value of the
 total capital advanced. He must sell more in order to realise some surplus-value,
 and he must sell the entire 10,000 lbs. in order to realise the surplus-value
 of £78 (1,560 lbs. of yarn). In £500 in money he receives merely
 an equivalent for the commodity sold. His transaction within the circulation
 is simply C — M. If he had paid his labourers £64 in wages instead
 of £50 his surplus-value would only be £64 instead of £78,
 and the degree of exploitation would have been only 100 per cent instead
 of 156. But the value of the yarn would not change; only the relation between
 its component parts would be different. The circulation act C — M would
 still represent the sale of 10,000 lbs. of yarn for £500, their value.
C' is equal to C + c (or £422 at £78). C equals the
 value of P, the productive capital, and this equals the value of M, the
 money advanced in M — C, the purchase of the elements of production, amounting
 to £422 in our example. If the mass of commodities is sold at its
 value, then C equals £422 and c equals £78, the value of the
 surplus-product of 1,560 lbs. of yarn. If we call c, expressed in money,
 m, then C' — M' = (C + c) - (M + m), and the circuit M — C ... P ... C' — M', 
 in its expanded form, is therefore represented by 
 M — C<LMP ... P ... (C + c) - (M + m).
In the first stage the capitalist takes articles of consumption
 out of the commodity-market proper and the labour-market. In the third
 stage he throws commodities back, but only into one market, the commodity-market
 proper. However the fact that he extracts from the market, by means of
 his commodities, a greater value than he threw upon it originally is due
 only to the circumstance that he throws more commodity-value back upon
 it than he first drew out of it. He threw value M upon it and drew out
 of it the equivalent C; he throws C + c back upon it, and draws out of
 it the equivalent M + m.
M was in our example equal to the value of 8,440 lbs. of yarn.
 But he throws 10,000 lbs. of yarn on the market, consequently he returns
 a greater value than he took from it. On the other hand he threw this increased
 value on the market only because through the exploitation of labour-power
 in the process of production he had created surplus-value (as an aliquot
 part of the product expressed in surplus-product). It is only by virtue
 of being the product of this process that the mass of commodities becomes
 commodity-capital, the bearer of the expanded capital-value. By performing
 C' — M' the advanced capital-value as well as the surplus-value are realised.
 The realisation of both takes place simultaneously in a series of sales
 or in a lump sale of the entire mass of commodities which is expressed
 by C' — M'. But the same circulation act C' — M' is different for capital-value
 and surplus-value, as it expresses for each of them a different stage of
 their circulation, a different section of the series of metamorphoses through
 which they must pass in the sphere of circulation. The surplus-value c
 came into the world only during the process of production. It appeared
 for the first time in the commodity-market, in the form of commodities.
 This is its first form of circulation, hence the act c — m is its first
 circulation act, or its first metamorphosis, which remains to be supplemented
 by the antithetical act of circulation, or the reverse metamorphosis, m — c.
 [5]
It is different with the circulation which the capital-value C
 performs in the same circulation act C' — M', and which constitutes for
 the circulation act C — M, in which C is equal to P, equal to the M originally
 advanced. Capital-value has opened its first circulation act in the form
 of M, money-capital, and returns through the act C — M to the same form.
 It has therefore passed through the two antithetical stages of circulation,
 first M — C, second C — M, and finds itself once more in the form in which
 it can begin its circular movement anew. What for surplus-value constitutes
 the first transformation of the commodity-form into that of money, constitutes
 for capital-value in return, or retransformation, into its original money-form.
By means of M — C<LMP money capital is transformed into an equivalent mass of commodities, L and MP. These commodities no longer perform the function of commodities, of articles for sale. Their value is now in the hands of the capitalist who bought them; they represent
 the value of his productive capital P. And in the function of P, productive
 consumption, they are transformed into a kind of commodity differing materially
 from the means of production, into yarn, in which their value is not only
 preserved but increased, from £422 to £500. By means of this
 real metamorphosis, the commodities taken from the market in the first
 stage, M — C, are replaced by commodities of different substance and value,
 which now must perform the function of commodities, must be transformed
 into money and sold. The process of production therefore appears to be
 only an interruption of the process of circulation of capital-value, of
 which up to that point only the first phase, M — C, has been passed through.
 It passes through the second and concluding phase, C — M, after C has been
 altered in substance and value. But so far as capital-value, considered
 by itself, is concerned, it has merely suffered an alteration of its use-form
 in the process of production. It existed in the form of £422 worth
 of L and MP, while now it exists in the form of £422 worth of, or
 8,440 lbs. of yarn. If we therefore consider merely the two circulation
 phases of capital-value, apart from its surplus-value, we find that it
 passes through 1) M — C and 2) C — M, in which the second C has a different
 use-form but the same value as the first C. Hence it passes through M — C — M, a form of circulation which, because the commodity here changes place twice and in the opposite direction — transformation from money into commodities and from commodities into money — necessitates the return of the value advanced in the form of money to its money-form — its reconversion into money.
The same circulation act C' — M' that constitutes the second and
 concluding metamorphosis, a return to the money-form, for the capital-value
 advanced in money, represents for the surplus-value — borne along by the
 commodity-capital and simultaneously realised by its change into the money-form
 — its first metamorphosis, its transformation from the commodity- to the
 money-form, C — M, its first circulation phase.
We have, then, two kinds of observations to make here. First,
 the ultimate reconversion of capital-value into its original money-form
 is a function of commodity-capital. Secondly, this function includes the
 first transformation of surplus-value from its original commodity-form
 to its money-form. The money-form, then, plays a double role here. On the
 one hand it is the form to which a value originally advanced in money returns,
 hence a return to the form of value which opened the process. On the other
 hand it is the first converted form of a value which originally enters
 the circulation in commodity-form. If the commodities composing the commodity-capital
 are sold at their values, as we assume, then C plus c is transformed into
 M plus m, its equivalent. The realised commodity-capital now exists in
 the hands of the capitalist in this form: M plus m (£422 plus £78 = £500). Capital-value and surplus-value are now present in the form of money, the
 form of the universal equivalent.
At the conclusion of the process capital-value has therefore resumed
 the form in which it entered it, and as money-capital can now open and
 go through a new process. Just because the initial and final forms of this
 process are those of money-capital, M, we call this form of the circulation
 process the circuit of money-capital. It is not the form but merely the
 magnitude of the advanced value that is changed at the close.
M plus m is nothing but a sum of money of a definite magnitude,
 in this case £500. But as a result of the circulation of capital,
 as realised commodity-capital, this sum of money contains the capital-value
 and the surplus-value. And these values are now no longer inseparably united
 as they were in the yarn; they now lie side by side. Their sale has given
 both of them an independent money-form; 211/250 of this money represent
 the capital-value of £422 and 39/250 constitute the surplus-value
 of £78. This separation, effected by the realisation of the commodity-capital,
 has not only the formal content to which we shall refer presently. It becomes
 important in the process of the reproduction of capital, depending on whether
 m is entirely or partially or not at all lumped together with M, i.e.,
 depending on whether or not it continues to function as a component part
 of the advanced capital-value. Both m and M may pass through quite different
 processes of circulation.
In M' capital has returned to its original form M, to its money-form,
 a form however in which it is materialised as capital.
There is in the first place a difference of quantity. It was M,
 £422. It is now M', £500, and this difference is expressed
 by M ... M', the quantitatively different extremes of the circuit, whose
 movement is indicated only by the three dots. M' > M, and M' - M = s, the
 surplus-value. But as a result of this circular movement M ... M' it is
 only M' which exists now; it is the product in which its process of formation
 has become extinct. M' now exists by itself, independently of the movement
 which brought it into existence. That movement is gone; M' is there in
 its place.
But M', being M plus m, £500, composed of £422 advanced
 capital plus an increment of the same amounting to £78, represents
 at the same time a qualitative relation, although this qualitative relation
 itself exists only as a relation between the parts of one and the same
 sum, hence as a quantitative relation. M, the advanced capital, which is
 now once more present in its original form (£422), exists as realised
 capital. It has not only preserved itself but also realised itself as capital
 by being distinguished as such from m (£78), to which it stands in
 the same relation as to an increase of its own, to a fruit of
 its own, to an increment to which it has given birth itself. It has
 been realised as capital because it has been realised as a value which
 has created value. M' exists as a capital-relation. M no longer appears
 as mere money, but expressly plays the part of money-capital, expressed
 as a self-expanded value, hence possessing the property of self-expansion,
 of hatching a higher value than it itself has. M became capital by virtue
 of its relation to the other part of M', which it has brought about, which
 has been effected by it as the cause, which is the consequence of it as
 the ground. Thus M' appears as the sum of values differentiated within
 itself, functionally (conceptually) distinguished within itself, expressing
 the capital-relation.
But this is expressed only as a result, without the intervention
 of the process of which it is the result.
Parts of value as such are not qualitatively different from one
 another, except in so far as they appear as values of different articles,
 of concrete things, hence in various use-forms and therefore as values
 of different commodities — a difference which does not originate with
 them themselves as mere parts of value. In money all differences between
 commodities are extinguished, because it is the equivalent form common
 to all of them. A sum of money in the amount of £500 consists solely
 of uniform elements of £1 each. Since the intermediate links of its
 origin are obliterated in the simple existence of this sum of money and
 every trace has been lost of the specific difference between the different
 component parts of capital in the process of production, there exists now
 only the distinction between the conceptual form of a principal equal to £422, the capital advanced, and an excess value of £78. Let
 M' be equal to, say, £110, of which £100 may be equal to M,
 the principal, and 10 equal to s, the surplus-value. There is an absolute
 homogeneity, an absence of conceptual distinctions, between the two constituent
 parts of the sum of £110. Any £10 of this sum always constitute
 1/11 of the total sum of £1/10, whether they are 1/10 of the advanced
 principal of £100 or the excess of £10 above it. Principal
 and excess sum, capital and surplus-sum, may therefore be expressed as
 fractional parts of the total sum. In our illustration, 10/11 form the
 principal, or the capital, and 1/11 the surplus sum. In its money-expression
 realised capital appears therefore at the end of its process as an irrational
 expression of the capital-relation.
True, this applies also to C' (C plus c). But there is this difference:
 that C', of which C and c are only proportional value-parts of the same
 homogeneous mass of commodities, indicates its origin P, whose immediate
 product it is, while in M', a form derived directly from circulation, the
 direct relation to P is obliterated.
The irrational distinction between the principal and the incremental
 sum, which is contained in M', so far as that expresses the result of the
 movement M ... M', disappears as soon as it once more functions actively
 as money-capital and is therefore not fixed as a money-expression of expanded
 industrial capital. The circuit of capital can never begin with M' (although
 M' now performs the function of M). It can begin only with M, that is to
 say it can never begin as an expression of the capital-relation, but only
 as a form of advance of capital-value. As soon as the £500 are once
 more advanced as capital, in order again to produce s, they constitute
 a point of departure, not one of return. Instead of a capital of £422,
 a capital of £500 is now advanced. It is more money than before,
 more capital-value, but the relation between its two constituent parts
 has disappeared. In fact a sum of £500 instead of the £422
 might originally have served as capital.
It is not an active function of money-capital to appear as M';
 to appear as M' is rather a function of C'. Even in the simple circulation
 of commodities, first in C1 — M, secondly in M — C2, money M does not figure actively until the second act, M — C2. Its appearance in the form of M is only the result of the first act, by virtue of which it only then appears as a converted form of C1. True, the capital-relation contained in M', the relation of one of its
 parts as the capital-value to the other as its value increment, acquires
 functional importance in so far as, with the constantly repeated circuit
 M ... M', M' splits into two circulations, one of them a circulation of
 capital, the other of surplus-value. Consequently these two parts perform
 not only quantitatively but also qualitatively different functions, M others
 than m. But considered by itself, the form M ... M' does not include what
 the capitalist consumes, but explicitly only the self-expansion and accumulation,
 so far as the latter expresses itself above all as a periodical augmentation
 of ever renewed advances of money-capital.
Although M', equal to M plus m, is the irrational form of capital,
 it is at the same time only money-capital in its realised form, in the
 form of money which has generated money. But this is different from the
 function of money-capital in the first stage, 
 M — C<LMP.
 In the first stage, M circulates as money. It assumes the functions of
 money-capital because only in its money state can it perform a money-function,
 can it transform itself into the elements of P, into L and MP, which stand
 opposed to it as commodities. In this circulation act it functions only
 as money. But as this act is the first stage of capital-value in process,
 it is simultaneously a function of money-capital, by virtue of the specific
 use-form of the commodities L and MP which are bought. M' on the other
 hand, composed of M, the capital-value, and m, the surplus-value begotten
 of M, stands for self-expanded capital-value — the purpose and the outcome,
 the function of the total circuit of capital. The fact that it expresses
 this outcome in the form of money, as realised money-capital, does not
 derive from its being the money-form of capital, money-capital,
 but on the contrary from its being money-capital, capital in the
 form of money, from capital having opened the process in this form, from
 its having been advanced in the money-form. Its reconversion into the money-form
 is, as we have seen, a function of commodity-capital C', not of money-capital.
 As for the difference between M and M', it (m) is simply the money-form
 of c, the increment of C. M' is composed of M plus m only because C' was
 composed of C plus c. In C' therefore this difference and the relation
 of the capital-value to the surplus-value generated by it is present and
 expressed before both of them are transformed into M', into a sum of money
 in which both parts of the value come face to face with each other independently
 and may, therefore, be employed in separate and distinct functions.
It follows furthermore that each time equally great quantities
 of simultaneously existing values face and replace each other in the two
 metamorphoses M — C and C' — M' belonging in circulation. The change in
 value pertains exclusively to the metamorphosis P, the process of production,
 which thus appears as a real metamorphosis of capital, as compared with
 the merely metamorphosis of circulation.
Let us now consider the total movement, M — C ... P ... C' — M',
 or, M — C<LMP
 ... P ... C' (C + c) — M' (M + m), its more expanded form. Capital here appears as a value which goes through a series of interconnected, interdependent transformations, a series of metamorphoses which form just as many phases, or stages, of the process
 as a whole. Two of these phases belong in the sphere of circulation, one
 of them in that of production. In each one of these phases capital-value
 has a different form for which there is a correspondingly different, special
 function. Within this movement the advanced value does not only preserve
 itself but grows, increases in magnitude. Finally, in the concluding stage,
 it returns to the same form which it had at the beginning of the process
 as a whole. This process as a whole constitutes therefore the process of
 moving in circuits.
The two forms assumed by capital-value at the various stages of
 its circulation are those of money-capital and commodity-capital. The form pertaining to the stage of production is that of productive
 capital. The capital which assumes these forms in the course of its
 total circuit and then discards them and in each of them performs the function
 corresponding to the particular form, is industrial capital, industrial
 here in the sense it comprises every branch of industry run on a capitalist
 basis.
Money-capital, commodity-capital and productive capital, do not
 therefore designate independent kinds of capital whose functions form the
 content of likewise independent branches of industry separated from one
 another. They denote here only special functional forms of industrial capital,
 which assumes all three of them one after the other.
Capital describes its circuit normally only so long as its various
 phases pass uninterruptedly into one another. If capital stops short in
 the first phase M — C, money-capital assumes the rigid form of a hoard;
 if it stops in the phase of production, the means of production lie without
 functioning on the one side, while labour-power remains unemployed on the
 other; and if capital stops short in the last phase C' — M', piles of unsold
 commodities accumulate and clog the flow of circulation.
In the general formula the product P is regarded as a material
 thing different from the elements of the productive capital, as an object
 existing apart from the process of production and having a use-form different
 from that of the elements of production. This is always the case when the
 result of the productive process assumes the form of a thing, even when
 a part of the product re-enters the resumed production as one of its elements.
 Grain for instance serves as seed for its own production, but the product
 consists only of grain and hence has a shape different from those of related
 elements such as labour-power, implements, fertiliser. But there are certain
 independent branches of industry in which the product of the productive
 process is not a new material product, is not a commodity. Among these
 only the communications industry, whether engaged in transportation proper,
 of goods and passengers, or in the mere transmission of communications,
 letters, telegrams, etc., is economically important.
A. Chuprov [6] says on this score:
[his product, thrust out of the process of production when finished, passes into circulation as a commodity separated from it].
The result, whether men or goods are transported, is a change
 in their whereabouts. Yarn, for instance, may now be in India instead of
 in England, where it was produced.
However, what the transportation industry sells is change of location.
 The useful effect is inseparably connected with the process of transportation,
 i.e., the productive process of the transport industry. Men and goods travel
 together with the means of transportation, and their traveling, this locomotion,
 constitutes the process of production effected by these means. The useful
 effect can be consumed only during this process of production. It does
 not exist as a utility different from this process, a use-thing which does
 not function as an article of commerce, does not circulate as a commodity,
 until after it has been produced. But the exchange-value of this useful
 effect is determined, like that of any other commodity, by the value of
 the elements of production (labour-power and means of production) consumed
 in it plus the surplus-value created by the surplus-labour of the labourers
 employed in transportation. This useful effect also entertains the very
 same relations to consumption that other commodities do. If it is consumed
 individually its value disappears during its consumption; if it is consumed
 productively so as to constitute by itself a stage in the production of
 the commodities being transported, its value is transferred as an additional
 value to the commodity itself. The formula for the transport industry would
 therefore be M — C<LMP
 ... P — M', since it is the process of production itself that is paid for and consumed, not a product separate and distinct from it. Hence this formula has almost the same form
 as that of the production of precious metals, the only difference being
 that in this case M' represents the converted form of the useful effect
 created during the process of production, and not the bodily form of the
 gold or silver produced in this process and extruded from it.
Industrial capital is the only mode of existence of capital in
 which not only the appropriation of surplus-value, or surplus-product,
 but simultaneously its creation is a function of capital. Therefore with
 it the capitalist character of production is a necessity. Its existence
 implies the class antagonism between capitalists and wage-labourers. To
 the extent that it seizes control of social production, the technique and
 social organisation of the labour-process are revolutionised and with them
 the economico-historical type of society. The other kinds of capital, which
 appeared before industrial capital amid conditions of social production
 that have receded into the past or are now succumbing, are not only subordinated
 to it and the mechanism of their functions altered in conformity with it,
 but move solely with it as their basis, hence live and die, stand and fall
 with this basis. Money-capital and commodity-capital, so far as they function
 as vehicles of particular branches of business, side by side with industrial
 capital, are nothing but modes of existence of the different functional
 forms now assumed, now discarded by industrial capital in the sphere of
 circulation — modes which, due to social division of labour, have attained
 independent existence and been developed one-sidedly.
The circuit M ... M' on the one hand intermingles with the general
 circulation of commodities, proceeds from it and flows back into it, is
 a part of it. On the other hand it forms an independent movement of the
 capital-value for the individual capitalist, a movement of its own which
 takes place partly within the general circulation of commodities, partly
 outside of it, but which always preserves its independent character. First,
 because its two phases that take place in the sphere of circulation, M — C
 and C' — M', being phases of the movement of capital, have functionally
 definite characters. In M — C, C is materially determined as labour-power
 and means of production; in C' — M' the capital-value is realised plus
 the surplus-value. Secondly, because P, the process of production, embraces
 productive consumption. Thirdly, because the return of the money to its
 starting-point makes of the movement M ... M' a circuit complete in itself.
Every individual capital is therefore, on the one hand, in its
 two circulation-halves M — C and C' — M', an agent of the general circulation
 of commodities, in which it either functions or lies concatenated as money
 or as a commodity, thus forming a link in the general chain of metamorphoses
 taking place in the world of commodities. On the other hand it describes
 within the general circulation its own independent circuit in which the
 sphere of production forms a transitional stage and in which this capital
 returns to its starting-point in the same form in which it left that point.
 Within its own circuit, which includes its real metamorphosis in the process
 of production, it changes at the same time the magnitude of its value.
 It returns not simply as money-value, but as augmented, increased money-value.
Let us finally consider M — C ... P ... C' — M' as a special form
 of the circular course of capital, alongside the other forms which we shall
 analyse later. We shall find that it is distinguished by the following
 features:
1. It appears as the circuit of money-capital, because
 industrial capital in its money-form, as money-capital, forms the
 starting-point and the point of return of its total process. The formula
 itself expresses the fact that the money is not expended here as money
 but is merely advanced, hence is merely the money-form of capital, money-capital.
 It expresses furthermore that exchange-value, not use-value, is the determining
 aim of this movement. Just because the money-form of value is the independent,
 tangible form in which value appears, the form of circulation M ... M',
 the initial and terminal points of which are real money, expresses most
 graphically the compelling motive of capitalist production — money-making.
 The process of production appears merely as an unavoidable intermediate
 link, as a necessary evil for the sake of money-making. All nations with
 a capitalist mode of production are therefore seized periodically by a
 feverish attempt to make money without the intervention of the process
 of production.
2. The stage of production, the function of P, represents in this
 circuit an interruption between the two phases of circulation M — C ...
 C' — M', which in its turn represents only the intermediate link in the
 simple circulation M — C — M'. The process of production appears in the
 form of a circuit-describing process, formally and explicitly as that which
 it is in the capitalist mode of production, as a mere means of expanding
 the advanced value, hence enrichment as such as the purpose of production.
3. Since the series of phases is opened by M — C, the second link
 of the circulation is C' — M'. In other words, the starting-point is M,
 the money-capital that is to be self-expanded; the terminal point is M',
 the self-expanded money-capital M plus m, in which M figures as realised
 capital along with its offspring m. This distinguishes the circuit of M
 from that of the two other circuits P and C', and does so in two ways.
 On the one hand by the money-form of the two extremes. And money is the
 independent, tangible form of existence of value, the value of the product
 in its independent value-form, in which every trace of the use-value of
 the commodities has been extinguished. On the other hand the form P ...
 P does not necessarily become P ... P' (P plus p), and in the form C ...
 C' no difference whatever in value is visible between the two extremes.
 It is therefore characteristic of the formula M — M' that for one thing
 capital-value is its starting-point and expanded capital-value its point
 of return, so that the advance of capital-value appears as the means and
 expanded capital-value as the end of the entire operation; and that for
 another thing this relation is expressed in money-form, in the independent
 value-form, hence money-capital as money begetting money. The generation
 of surplus-value by value is not only expressed as the Alpha and Omega
 of the process, but explicitly in the form of glittering money.
C' — M' directly contains the sale of C'; but C' — M', a sale
 on the one part, is M — C, a purchase, on the other part, and in the last
 analysis a commodity is bought only for its use-value, in order to enter
 (leaving intermediate sales out of consideration) the process of consumption,
 whether this is individual or productive, according to the nature of the
 article bought. But this consumption does not enter the circuit of individual
 capital, the product of which is C'. This product is eliminated from the
 circuit precisely because it is a commodity for sale. C' is expressly designed
 for consumption by others than the producer. Thus we find that certain
 exponents of the mercantile system (which is based on the formula M — C
 ... P ... C' — M') deliver lengthy sermons to the effect that the individual
 capitalist should consume only as much as the labourer, that the nation
 of capitalists should leave the consumption of their own commodities, and
 the consumption process in general, to the other, less intelligent nations
 but that they themselves should make productive consumption their life’s
 task. These sermons frequently remind one in form and content of analogous
 ascetic expostulations of the fathers of the church.
The circuit made by money-capital is therefore the most one-sided,
 and thus the most striking and typical form in which the circuit of industrial
 capital appears, the capital whose aim and compelling motive — the self-expansion
 of value, the making of money, and accumulation — is thus conspicuously
 revealed (buying to sell dearer). Owing to the fact that the first phase
 is M — C it is also revealed that the constituents of productive capital
 originate in the commodity-market, and in general that the capitalist process
 of production depends on circulation, on commerce. The circuit of money-capital
 is not merely the production of commodities; it is itself possible only
 through circulation and presupposes it. This is plain, if only from the
 fact that the form M belonging in circulation appears as the first and
 pure form of advanced capital-value, which is not the case in the other
 two circuit forms.
The money-capital circuit always remains the general expression
 of industrial capital, because it always includes the self-expansion of
 the advanced value. In P ... P, the money-expression of capital appears
 only as the price of the elements of production, hence only as a value
 expressed in money of account and is fixed in this form in book-keeping.
M ... M' becomes a special form of the industrial capital circuit
 when newly active capital is first advanced in the form of money and then
 withdrawn in the same form, either in passing from one branch of industry
 to another or in retiring industrial capital from a business. This includes
 the functioning as capital of the surplus-value first advanced in the form
 of money, and becomes most evident when surplus-value functions in some
 other business than the one in which it originated. M ... M' may be the
 first circuit of a certain capital; it may be the last; it may be regarded
 as the form of the total social capital; it is the form of capital that
 is newly invested, either as capital recently accumulated in the form of
 money, or as some old capital which is entirely transformed into money
 for the purpose of transfer from one branch of industry to another.
Being a form always contained in all circuits, money-capital performs
 this circuit precisely for that part of capital which produces surplus-value,
 viz., variable capital. The normal form of advancing wages is payment in
 money; this process must be renewed in comparatively short intervals, because
 the labourer lives from hand to mouth. The capitalist must therefore always
 confront the labourer as money-capitalist, and his capital as money-capital.
 There can be no direct or indirect balancing of accounts in this case such
 as we find in the purchase of means of production and in the sale of produced
 commodities (so that the greater part of the money-capital actually figures
 only in the form of commodities, money only in the form of money of account
 and finally in cash only in the balancing of accounts). On the other hand,
 a part of the surplus-value arising out of variable capital is spent by
 the capitalist for his individual consumption, which pertains to the retail
 trade and, however circuitous the route may be, this part is always spent
 in cash, in the money-form of surplus-value. Variable capital always appears
 anew as money-capital invested in wages (M — L) and m as surplus-value
 to defray the cost of individual consumption of the capitalist. Hence M,
 advanced variable capital-value, and m, its increment, are necessarily
 held in the form of money to be spent in this form.
The formula M — C ... P ... C' — M', with its result M' = M +
 m, is deceptive in form, is illusory in character, owing to the existence
 of the advanced and self-expanded value in its equivalent form, money.
 The emphasis is not on the self-expansion of value but on the money-form
 
 of this process, on the fact that more value in money-form is finally drawn
 out of the circulation than was originally advanced to it; hence on the
 multiplication of the mass of gold and silver belonging to the capitalist.
 The so-called monetary system is merely an expression of the irrational
 form M — C — M', a movement which takes place exclusively in circulation
 and therefore can explain the two acts M — C and C — M' in no other way
 than as a sale of C above its value in the second act and therefore as
 C drawing more money out of the circulation than was put into it by its
 purchase. On the other hand M — C ... P ... C' — M', fixed as the exclusive
 form, constitutes the basis of the more highly developed mercantile system,
 in which not only the circulation of commodities but also their production
 appears as a necessary element.
The illusory character of M — C ... P ... C' — M' and the correspondingly
 illusory interpretation exists whenever this form is fixed as occurring
 once, not as fluent and ever renewed; hence whenever this form is considered
 not as one of the forms of the circuit but as its exclusive form. But it
 itself points toward other forms.
In the first place this entire circuit is premised on the capitalist
 character of the process of production, and therefore considers this process
 together with the specific social conditions brought about by it as the
 basis. M — C = M — C<LMP; but M — L assumes the existence of the wage-labourer, and hence the means of production as part of productive capital. It assumes therefore that the process of labour and self-expansion, the process of production, is a function of capital.
In the second place, if M ... M' is repeated, the return to the
 money-form appears just as evanescent as the money-form in the first stage.
 M — C disappears to make room for P. The constantly recurrent advance in
 the form of money and its constant return in the form of money appear merely
 as fleeting moments in the circuit.
In the third place
On the other hand before the second circuit of P is completed,
 the first circuit, that of commodity-capital, C' — M'.M — C ... P ... C'
 (abridged C' ... C') has already been made. Thus the first form already
 contains the other two, and the money-form thus disappears, so far as it
 is not merely an expression of value but an expression of value in the
 equivalent form, in money.
Finally, if we consider some newly invested individual capital
 describing for the first time the circuit M — C ... P ... C' — M', then
 M — C is the preparatory phase, the forerunner of the first process of
 production gone through by this individual capital. This phase M — C is
 consequently not presupposed but rather called for or necessitated by the
 process of production. But this applies only to this individual capital.
 The general form of the circuit of industrial capital is the circuit
 of money-capital, whenever the capitalist mode of production is taken
 for granted, hence in social conditions determined by capitalist production.
 Therefore the capitalist process of production is assumed as a pre-condition,
 if not in the first circuit of the money-capital of a newly invested industrial
 capital, then outside of it. The continuous existence of this process of
 production presupposes the constantly renewed circuit P ... P. Even in
 the first stage, M — C, this premise plays a part, for this assumes on the one hand the existence of the class of wage-labourers; and then, on the other, that which is M — C, the first
 stage, for the buyer of means of production, is C' — M' for their seller;
 hence C' presupposes commodity-capital, and thus the commodities themselves
 as a result of capitalist production, and thereby the function of productive
 capital.
Two things are at once strikingly apparent in this form.
For one thing, while in the first form, M ... M', the process
 of production, the function of P, interrupts the circulation of money-capital
 and acts only as a mediator between its two phases M — C and C' — M', here the entire circulation process of industrial capital, its entire movement
 within the phase of circulation, constitutes only an interruption and consequently
 only the connecting link between the productive capital, which as the first
 extreme opens the circuit, and that which closes it as the other extreme
 in the same form, hence in the form in which it starts again. Circulation
 proper appears but as an instrument promoting the periodically renewed
 reproduction, rendered continuous by the renewal.
For another thing, the entire circulation presents itself in a
 form which is the opposite of that which it has in the circuit of money-capital.
 There it was: M — C — M (M — C. C — M), apart from the determination of value; here it is, again apart from the value determination: C — M — C (C — M. M — C), i.e., the form of the simple circulation of commodities.
Let us first consider the process C' — M' — C, which takes place in
 the sphere of circulation between the two extremes P ... P.
The starting-point of this circulation is commodity-capital; C'
 = C + c = P + c. The function of commodity-capital C' — M' (the realisation
 of the capital-value contained in it equals P, which now exists as the
 constituent part C of C', as well as of the surplus-value contained in
 it, which exists as a constituent part of the same quantity of commodities
 and has the value c) was examined in the first form of the circuit. But
 there this function formed the second phase of the interrupted circulation
 and the concluding phase of the entire circuit. Here it forms the second
 phase of the circuit but the first phase of the circulation. The first
 circuit ends with M', and since M' as well as the original M can again
 open the second circuit as money-capital, it was not necessary at first
 to see whether M and m (surplus-value) contained in M' continue in their
 course together or whether each of them pursues its own course. This would
 only have become necessary if we had followed up further the first circuit
 in its renewed course. But this point must be decided in the circuit of
 the productive capital, because the determination of its very first circuit
 depends on it and because C' — M' appears in it as the first phase of the
 circulation, which has to be complemented by M — C. It depends on this
 decision whether the formula represents simple reproduction or reproduction
 on an extended scale. The character of the circuit changes according to
 the decision made.
Let us, then, consider first the simple reproduction of productive
 capital, assuming that, as in the first chapter, conditions remain constant
 and that commodities are bought and sold at their values.
On this assumption the entire surplus-value enters into the individual
 consumption of the capitalist. As soon as the transformation of the commodity-capital
 C' into money has taken place, that part of the money which represents
 the capital-value continues to circulate in the circuit of industrial capital;
 the other part, which is surplus-value changed into money, enters into
 the general circulation of commodities, constitutes a circulation of money
 emanating from the capitalist but taking place outside of the circulation
 of his individual capital.
In our illustration we had a commodity-capital C' of 10,000 lbs.
 of yarn, valued at £500; £422 of this represent the value of
 the productive capital and continue, as the money-form of 8,440 lbs. of
 yarn, the capital circulation begun by C', while the surplus value of £78,
 the money-form of 1,560 lbs. of yarn, the excess of the commodity-product,
 leaves this circulation and describes a separate course within the general
 circulation of commodities.
However that may be, by means of C' — M' both the capital-value
 and surplus-value contained in C' acquire a separable existence, the existence
 of different sums of money. In both cases M and m are really a converted
 form of the value which originally in C' had only a peculiar, an ideal
 expression as the price of the commodity.
c — m — c represents the simple circulation of commodities, the
 first phase of which, c — m, is included in the circulation of commodity-capital,
 C' — M', i.e., included in the circuit of capital; its complementary phase
 m — c falls, on the contrary, outside of this circuit, being a separate
 act in the general circulation of commodities. The circulation of C and
 c, of capital-value and surplus-value, splits after the transformation
 of C' into M'. Hence it follows:
First, while the commodity-capital is realised by C' — M' = C' — (M
 + m), the movement of capital-value and surplus-value, which in C' — M'
 is still united and carried on by the same quantity of commodities, becomes
 separable, both of them henceforth possessing independent forms as separate
 sums of money.
Secondly, if this separation takes place, m being spent as the
 revenue of the capitalist, while M as a functional form of capital-value
 continues its course determined by the circuit, the first act, C' — M',
 in connection with the subsequent acts, M — C and m — c, may be represented as two different circulations C — M — C and c — m — c; and both of these series, so far as their general form is concerned, belong in the usual circulation of commodities.
By the way, in the case of the continuous, indivisible commodities,
 it is a matter of practice to isolate the value constituents ideally. For
 instance in the London building-business, which is carried on mainly on
 credit, the building contractor receives advances in accordance with the
 stage of construction reached. None of these stages is a house, but only
 a really existing constituent part of an inchoate future house; hence,
 in spite of its reality, it is but an ideal fraction of the entire house,
 but real enough to serve as security for an additional advance. (See on
 this point Chapter XII below.) [See pp. 237-38 of this book. — Ed.]
Thirdly, if the movement of capital-value and surplus-value, which
 still proceeds unitedly in C and M, is separated only in part (a portion
 of the surplus-value not being spent as revenue) or not at all, a change
 takes place in the capital-value itself within its circuit, before it is
 completed. In our illustration the value of the productive capital was
 equal to £422. If that capital continues M — C, as, say, £480
 or £500, then it strides through the latter stages of its circuit
 with an increase of £58 or £78 over its initial value. This
 may also go hand in hand with a change in the composition of its value.
C' — M', the second stage of the circulation and the final stage
 of circuit I (M ... M'), is the second stage in our circuit and the first
 in the circulation of commodities. So far as the circulation is concerned,
 it must be complemented by M' — C'. But not only has C' — M' the process
 of self-expansion already behind it (in this case the function of P, the
 first stage), but its result, the commodity C'; has already been realised.
 The process of the self-expansion of capital and the realisation of the
 commodities representing the expanded capital-value are therefore completed
 in C' — M'.
And so we have premised simple reproduction, i.e., that m — c
 separates entirely from M — C. Since both circulations, c — m — c as well as C — M — C, belong in the circulation of commodities, so far as their general form is concerned (and for this reason do not show only value differences
 in their extremes), it is easy to conceive the process of capitalist production,
 after the manner of vulgar economy, as a mere production of commodities,
 of use-values designed for consumption of some sort, which the capitalist
 produces for no other purpose than that of getting in their place commodities
 with different use-values, or of exchanging them for such, as vulgar economy
 erroneously states.
C' acts from the very outset as commodity-capital, and the purpose
 of the entire process, enrichment (the production of surplus-value), does
 not by any means exclude increasing consumption on the part of the capitalist
 as his surplus-value (and hence his capital) increases; on the contrary,
 it emphatically includes it.
Indeed, in the circulation of the revenue of the capitalist, the
 produced commodity c (or the fraction of the produced commodity C' ideally
 corresponding to it) serves only to transform it, first into money, and
 from money into a number of other commodities serving private consumption.
 But we must not, at this point, overlook the trifling circumstance that
 c is commodity-value which did not cost the capitalist anything, an incarnation
 of surplus-labour, for which reason it originally stepped on the stage
 as a component part of commodity-capital C'. This c is, by the very nature
 of its existence, bound to the circuit of capital-value in process and
 if this circuit begins to stagnate or is otherwise disturbed, not only
 the consumption of c restricted or entirely arrested, but also the disposal
 of that series of commodities which serve to replace c. The same is true
 when C' — M' ends in failure, or only a part of C' can be sold.
We have seen that c — m — c, representing the circulation of the
 revenue of the capitalist, enters into the circulation of capital only
 so long as c is a part of the value of C', of capital in its functional
 form of commodity-capital; but, as soon as it acquires independence from
 m — c, hence throughout the form c — m — c, the circulation of that revenue does not enter into the movement of the capital advanced by the capitalist,
 although it stems from it. This circulation is connected with the movement
 of advanced capital inasmuch as the existence of capital presupposes the
 existence of the capitalist, and his existence is conditioned on his consuming
 surplus-value.
Within the general circulation C', for example yarn, functions
 only as a commodity; but as an element in the circulation of capital it
 performs the function of commodity-capital, a form which capital-value
 alternately assumes and discards. After the sale of the yarn to a merchant,
 it is extruded out of the circular movement of capital whose product it
 is, but nevertheless, as a commodity, it moves always in the sphere of
 the general circulation. The circulation of one and the same mass of commodities
 continues, in spite of the fact that it has ceased to be a phase in the
 independent circuit of the spinner’s capital. Hence the real definitive
 metamorphosis of the mass of commodities thrown into circulation by the
 capitalist, C — M, their final exit into consumption may be completely
 separated in time and space from that metamorphosis in which this mass
 of commodities functions as his commodity-capital. The same metamorphosis
 which has been accomplished in the circulation of capital still remains
 to be accomplished in the sphere of the general circulation.
This state of things is not changed a bit if this yarn enters
 the circuit of some other industrial capital. The general circulation comprises
 as much the intertwining of the circuits of the various independent fractions
 of social capital, i.e., the totality of the individual capitals, as the
 circulation of those values which are not thrown on the market as capital
 but enter into individual consumption.
The relation between a circuit of capital forming part of a general
 circulation and a circuit forming links in an independent circuit is shown
 further on when we examine the circulation of M, which is equal to M plus
 m. M as money-capital continues capital’s circuit; m, being spent as revenue
 (m — c), enters into the general circulation, but comes flying out of the
 circuit of capital. Only that part enters the latter circuit which performs
 the function of additional money-capital. In c — m — c money serves only
 as coin; the object of this circulation is the individual consumption of
 the capitalist. It is typical of the idiocy of vulgar economy that it gives
 out this circulation, which does not enter into the circuit of capital
 — the circulation of that part of the value produced which is consumed
 as revenue — as the characteristic circuit of capital.
In the second phase M — C, the capital-value M, which is equal
 to P (the value of the productive capital that at this point opens the
 circuit of industrial capital), is again present, delivered of its surplus-value,
 therefore having the same magnitude of value as it had in the first stage
 of the circuit of money-capital M — C. In spite of the difference in place
 the function of the money-capital into which the commodity-capital has
 now been transformed is the same: its transformation into MP and L, into
 means of production and labour-power.
In the functioning of commodity-capital C' — M', the capital-value,
 simultaneously with c — m, has consequently gone through the phase C — M and enters now into the complementary phase
 M — C<LMP.
 Its complete circulation is therefore 
 C — M— C<LMP.
First: Money-capital M appeared in Form I (circuit M ... M') as
 the original form in which capital-value is advanced; it appears here from
 the outset as a part of that sum of money into which commodity-capital
 transformed itself in the first circulation phase C' — M', therefore from
 the outset as the transformation of P, the productive capital, through
 the medium of the sale of commodities, into the money-form. Money-capital
 exists here from the outset as that form of capital-value which is neither
 its original nor its final one, since the phase M — C, which concludes
 the phase C — M, can only be performed by again discarding the money-form.
 Therefore that part of M — C which is at the same time M — L appears now
 no longer as a mere advance of money by the purchase of labour-power, but
 as an advance by means of which the same 1,000 lbs. of yarn, valued at
 £50, which form a part of the commodity-value created by labour-power,
 are advanced to labour-power in the form of money. The money advanced
 here to the labourer is only a converted equivalent form of a part of the
 commodity-value produced by himself. And for that reason if no other the
 act M — C, so far as it means M — L, is by no means simply a replacement
 of a commodity in the form of money by a commodity in the use-form, but
 it includes other elements which are independent of the general commodity
 circulation as such.
Secondly: In the circulation 
 C — M — C<LMP
 the same money changes place twice; the capitalist first receives it as
 a seller and passes it on as a buyer; the transformation of commodities
 into the money-form serves only for the purpose of retransforming it from
 the money-form into the commodity-form; the money-form of capital, its
 existence as money-capital, is only a transient phase in this movement;
 or, so far as the movement is fluent, money-capital appears only as a medium
 of circulation when it serves as a means of purchase; it acts as a paying
 medium proper when capitalists buy from one another and therefore only
 have to square accounts.
Thirdly, the function of money-capital, whether it is a mere circulating
 medium or a paying medium, effects only the replacement of C by L and MP,
 i.e., the replacement of the yarn, the commodity which represents the result
 of the productive capital (after deducting the surplus-value to be used
 as revenue), by its elements of production, in other words, the retransformation
 of capital-value from its form as a commodity into the elements that build
 this commodity. In the last analysis, the function of money-capital promotes
 only the retransformation of commodity-capital into productive capital.
In order that the circuit may be completed normally, C' must be
 sold at its value and in its entirety. Furthermore C — M — C includes not
 merely replacement of one commodity by another, but replacement with value-relations
 remaining the same. We assume that this takes place here. As a matter of
 fact, however, the value of the means of production vary. It is precisely
 capitalist production to which continuous change of value-relations is
 peculiar, if only because of the ever changing productivity of labour that
 characterises this mode of production. This change in the value of the
 elements of production will be discussed later on, [See Section V of Chapter
 XV of this volume. — Ed.] and we merely mention it here. The transformation of the elements of production into commodity-products, of P into C', takes
 place in the sphere of production, while the transformation from C' into
 P occurs in the sphere of circulation. It is brought about by a simple
 metamorphosis of commodities, but its content is a phase in the process
 of reproduction, regarded as a whole. C — M — C, being a form of circulation of capital, involves a functionally determined exchange of matter. The
 transformation C — M — C requires further that C should be equal to the
 elements of production of the commodity-quantum C', and that these elements
 should retain their original value-relations to one another. It is therefore
 assumed that the commodities are not only bought at their respective values,
 but also do not undergo any change of value during the circular movement.
 Otherwise this process cannot run normally.
In M ... M', M represents the original form of the capital-value,
 which is discarded only to be resumed. In P ... C' — M' — C ... P, M represents a form which is only assumed in the process and which is discarded before
 this process is over. The money-form appears here only as a transient independent
 form of capital-value. Capital in the form of C' is just as anxious to
 assume the money-form as it is to discard it in M', after barely assuming
 that garb in order again to transform itself into productive capital. So
 long as it remains in the garb of money, it does not function as capital
 and its value does not therefore expand. The capital lies fallow. M serves
 here as a circulating medium, but as a circulating medium of capital. [Here
 Marx made the following note in the manuscript: “Against Tooke.” — Ed.]
 The semblance of independence which the money-form of capital-value possesses
 in the first form of its circuit (the form of money-capital) disappears
 in this second form, which thus is a criticism of Form I and reduces it
 to merely a special form. If the second metamorphosis, M — C, meets with
 any obstacles — for instance if there are no means of production in the
 market — the circuit, the flow of the process of reproduction, is interrupted
 quite as much as when capital is held fast in the form of commodity-capital.
 But there is this difference: It can remain longer in the money-form than
 in the transitory form of commodities. It does not cease to be money, if
 it does not perform the functions of money-capital; but it does cease to
 be a commodity, or a use-value in general, if it is delayed too long in
 the exercise of its function of commodity-capital. Furthermore, in its
 money-form it is capable of assuming another form in the place of its original
 one of productive capital while it cannot budge at all if held in the form
 of C'.
C' — M' — C includes acts of circulation only for C' in accordance
 with its form, acts which are phrases of its reproduction; but the real
 reproduction of C, into which C' transforms itself, is necessary for the
 performance of C' — M' — C. This however is conditioned on processes of
 reproduction which lie outside of the process of reproduction of the individual
 capital represented by C'.
In Form I the act M — C<LMP prepares on the first transformation of money-capital into productive capital; in Form II it prepares the retransformation from commodity-capital into productive
 capital; that is to say, so far as the investment of industrial capital
 remains the same, retransformation of the commodity-capital into the same
 elements of production as those from which it originated. Consequently
 here as well as in Form I, the act appears as a preparatory phase of the
 process of production, but as a return to it, as a renewal of it, hence
 as a precursor of the process of reproduction, hence also of a repetition
 of the process of self-expansion of value.
It must be noted once more that M — L is not a simple exchange
 of commodities but the purchase of a commodity, L, which is to serve for
 the production of surplus-value, just as M — MP is only a procedure which
 is materially indispensable for the attainment of this end.
With the completion of M — C<LMP M is reconverted into productive capital, into P, and the circuit begins anew.
The expanded form of P ... C' — M' — C ... P is therefore:
Apart from the productive consumption of M, which is transformed
 into L and MP, the circuit contains the first member M — L, which signifies,
 from the standpoint of the labourer, L — M, which equals C — M. In the
 labourer’s circulation, L — M — C, which includes his consumption, only the first member falls within the circuit of the capital as a result of
 M — L. The second act, M — C, does not fall within the circulation of individual capital, although it springs from it. But the continuous existence of the
 working class is necessary for the capitalist class, and so is therefore
 the consumption of the labourer made possible by M — C.
The only condition which the act C' — M' stipulates for capital-value
 to continue its circuit and for surplus-value to be consumed by the capitalist
 is that C' shall have been converted into money, shall have been sold.
 Of course, C' is bought only because the article is a use-value, hence
 serviceable for consumption of any kind, productive or individual. But
 if C' continues to circulate for instance in the hands of the merchant
 who bought the yarn, this at first does not in the least affect the continuation
 of the circuit of the individual capital which produced the yarn and sold
 it to the merchant. The entire process continues and with it the individual
 consumption of the capitalist and the labourer made necessary by it. This
 point is important in a discussion of crises.
The representation of M' as a relation of m to M, as a capital-relation,
 is not directly a function of money-capital but of commodity-capital C',
 which in its turn, as a relation of c and C, expresses but the result of
 the process of production, of the self-expansion of capital-value which
 took place in it.
If the continuation of the process of circulation meets with obstacles,
 so that M must suspend its function M — C on account of external circumstances,
 such as the conditions of the market, etc., and if it therefore remains
 for a shorter or longer time in its money-form, then we have once more
 money in the form of a hoard, which happens also in simple commodity circulation
 whenever the transition from C — M to M — C is interrupted by external
 circumstances. It is an involuntary formation of a hoard. In the case at
 hand money has the form of fallow, latent money-capital. But we will not
 discuss this point any further for the present.
In either case however persistence of capital in its money state
 appears as the result of interrupted movement, no matter whether this is
 expedient or inexpedient, voluntary or involuntary, in accordance with
 its functions or contrary to them.
If in the transaction of our capitalist the money serves as a
 means of payment (the commodities having to be paid for by the buyer on
 longer or shorter terms), then the surplus-product intended for capitalisation
 is not transformed into money but into creditor’s claims, into titles of
 ownership of an equivalent which the buyer may already have in his possession
 or which he may expect to possess. It does not enter into the reproductive
 process of the circuit any more than does money in invested in interest-bearing
 securities, etc., although it may enter into the circuits of other individual
 industrial capitals.
The entire character of capitalist production is determined by
 the self-expansion of the advanced capital-value, that is to say, in the
 first instance by the production of as much surplus-value as possible;
 in the second place however (see Buch I, Kap. XXII) [English edition: Ch.
 XXIV. — Ed.] by the production of capital, hence by the transformation of surplus-value into capital. Accumulation, or production on an extended
 scale, which appears as a means for constantly more expanded production
 of surplus-value — hence for the enrichment of the capitalist, as his
 personal aim — and is comprised in the general tendency of capitalist
 production, becomes later, however, as was shown in Book I, by virtue of
 its development, a necessity for every individual capitalist. The constant
 augmentation of his capital becomes a condition of its preservation. But
 we need not revert more fully to what was previously expounded.
We considered first simple reproduction, assuming that the entire
 surplus-value is spent as revenue. In reality under normal conditions a
 part of the surplus-value must always be spent as revenue, and another
 part must be capitalised. And it is quite immaterial whether a certain
 surplus-value produced in any particular period is entirely consumed or
 entirely capitalised. On the average — the general formula can represent
 only the average movement — both cases occur. But in order not to complicate
 the formula, it is better to assume that the entire surplus-value is accumulated.
 The formula: 
 P ... C' — M' — C'<LMP ... P' stands for productive capital, which is reproduced on an enlarged scale and with greater value, and which as augmented productive capital begins its second
 circuit, or, what amounts to the same, renews its first circuit. As soon
 as this second circuit is begun, we once more have P as the starting-point;
 only this P is a larger productive capital than the first P was. Hence,
 if in the formula M ... M' the second circuit begins with M', M' functions
 as M, as an advanced money-capital of a definite magnitude. It is a larger
 money-capital than the one with which the first circular movement was opened,
 but all reference to its augmentation by the capitalisation of surplus-value
 ceases as soon as it assumes the function of advanced money-capital. This
 origin is expunged in its form of money-capital, which begins its circuit.
 This also applies to P' as soon as it functions as the starting-point of
 a new circuit.
If we compare P ... P' with M ... M', or with the first circuit,
 we find that they have not the same significance at all. M ... M' taken
 by itself as an isolated circuit, expresses only that M, the money-capital
 (or industrial capital in its circuit as money-capital), is money generating
 money, value generating value, in other words, produces surplus-value.
 But in the P circuit the process of producing surplus-value is already
 completed upon the termination of the first stage, the process of production,
 and after going through the second stage (the first stage of the circulation),
 C' — M', the capital-value plus surplus-value already exist as realised
 money-capital, as M', which appeared as the last extreme in the first circuit.
 That surplus-value has been produced is depicted in the first-considered
 formula P ... P (see expanded formula, [M — C<LMP ... P ... (C + c) - (M + m)]) by c — m — c, which, in its second stage, falls outside of the circulation of capital and represents the circulation of surplus-value
 as revenue. In this form, where the entire movement is represented by P
 ... P, where consequently there is no difference in value between the two
 extremes, the self-expansion of the advanced value the production of surplus-value,
 is therefore represented in the same way as in M ... M', except that the
 act C' — M', which appears as the last stage in M ... M', and as the second
 stage of the circuit, serves as the first stage of the circulation in P ... P.
In P ... P', P' does not indicate that the surplus-value has been
 produced but that the produced surplus-value has been capitalised, hence
 that capital has been accumulated and that therefore P', in contrast to
 P, consists of the original capital-value plus the value of the capital
 accumulated because of the capital-value’s movement.
As soon as M' or C' have become fixed as M plus m or C plus c,
 i.e., as the relation between the capital-value and surplus-value, its
 offspring, this relation is expressed in both of them, in the first case
 in the money-form, in the second case in the commodity-form, which does
 not change matters in the least. Consequently this relation does not have
 its origin in any properties or functions inherent in money as such or
 commodities as such. In both cases the characteristic property of capital,
 that of being a value, is expressed only as a result. C' is always the
 product of the function of P, and M' is always merely the form of C' changed
 in the circuit of industrial capital. As soon therefore as the realised
 money-capital resumes its special function of money capital, it ceases
 to express the capital-relation contained in M' = M plus m. After M ...
 M' has been passed through and M' begins the circuit anew, it does not
 figure as M even if the entire surplus-value contained in M' is capitalised.
 The second circuit begins in our case with a money-capital of £500,
 instead of £422, as in the first circuit. The money-capital, which
 opens the circuit, is £78 larger than before. This difference exists
 on comparing the one circuit with the other, but no such comparison is
 made within each particular circuit. The £500 advanced as money-capital,
 £78 which formerly existed as surplus-value, do not play any other
 role than would some other £500 with which another capitalist inaugurates
 his first circuit. The same happens in the circuit of the productive capital.
 The increased P' acts as P on recommencing, just as P did in the simple
 reproduction P ... P.
In the stage 
 M' — C'<LMP,
 the augmented magnitude is indicated only by C', but not by L' or MP'.
 Since C is the sum of L and MP, C' indicates sufficiently that the sum
 of L and MP contained in it is greater than the original P. In the second
 place, the terms L' and MP' would be incorrect, because we know that the
 growth of capital involves a change in the constitution of its value and
 that as this change progresses the value of MP increases, that of L always
 decreasing relatively and often absolutely.
The form of a hoard is simply the form of money not in circulation,
 of money whose circulation has been interrupted and which is therefore
 fixed in its money-form. As for the process of hoarding, it is common to
 all commodity production and figures as an end in itself only in the undeveloped,
 pre-capitalist forms of this production. In the present case, however,
 the hoard appears as a form of money-capital and the formation of a hoard
 as a process which temporarily accompanies the accumulation of capital
 because and so far as the money here figures as latent money-capital;
 because the formation of a hoard, the state of being a hoard, in which
 the surplus-value existing in money-form finds itself, is a functionally
 determined preparatory stage gone through outside of the circuit described
 by the capital and required for the transformation of the surplus-value
 into really functioning capital. By its definition it is therefore latent
 money-capital. Hence the size it must acquire before it can take part in
 the process is determined in each case by the value constitution of the
 productive capital. But so long as it remains in the condition of a hoard
 it does not yet perform the functions of money-capital but is still idle
 money-capital; not money-capital whose function has been interrupted, as
 was the case before, but money-capital not yet capable of performing it.
We are here discussing the accumulation of money in its original
 real form of an actual hoard of money. It may also exist in the form of
 a mere outstanding money, of claims on debtors by capitalists who have
 sold C'. As for other forms in which this latent money-capital may exist
 in the meantime even in the shape of money-breeding money, such as interest-bearing
 bank deposits, bills of exchange or securities of any description, these
 do not belong here. Surplus-value realised in the form of money in such
 cases performs special capital-functions outside the circuit described
 by the industrial capital which originated it — functions which in the
 first place have nothing to do with that circuit as such but which in the
 second place presuppose capital-functions which differ from the functions
 of industrial capital and which have not yet been developed here.
If the process C' — M' is prolonged beyond its normal duration,
 if therefore the commodity capital is abnormally delayed in its transformation
 into the money-form or if, for instance, after the completion of this transformation
 the price of the means of production into which the money-capital must
 be transformed has risen above the level prevailing at the beginning of
 the circuit, the hoard functioning as accumulation-fund can be used in
 the place of money-capital or of part of it. Thus the money-accumulation
 fund serves as a reserve fund for counter-balancing disturbances in the
 circuit.
As such a reserve fund it differs from the fund of purchasing
 or paying media discussed in the circuit P ... P. These media are a part
 of functioning money-capital (hence forms of existence of a part of capital-value
 in general going through the process) whose parts enter upon their functions
 only at different times, successively. In the continuous process of production,
 reserve-money capital is always formed, since one day money is received
 and no payments have to be made until later, and another day large quantities
 of goods are sold while other large quantities are not due to be bought
 until a subsequent date. In these intervals a part of the circulating capital
 exists continuously in the form of money. A reserve fund on the other hand
 is not a part of constituent capital already performing its functions,
 or, to be more exact, of money-capital. It is rather a part of capital
 in a preliminary stage of its accumulation, of surplus-value not yet transformed
 into active capital. As for the rest, it needs no explaining that a capitalist
 in financial straits does not concern himself about what the particular
 functions of the money he has on hand are. He simply employs whatever money
 he has for the purpose of keeping his capital circulating. For instance
 in our illustration M is equal to £422, M' to £500. If a part
 of the capital of £422 exists as a fund of means of payment and purchase,
 as a money reserve, it is intended, other conditions remaining the same,
 that it should enter wholly into the circuit, and besides should suffice
 for this purpose. The reserve fund however is a part of the £78 of
 surplus-value. It can enter the circular course of the capital worth £422
 only to the extent that this circuit takes place under conditions not remaining
 the same; for it is a part of the accumulation-fund, and figures here without
 any extension of the scale of reproduction.
Money-accumulation fund implies the existence of latent money-capital,
 hence the transformation of money into money-capital.
The following is the general formula for the circuit of productive
 capital. It combines simple reproduction and reproduction on a progressively
 increasing scale:
The circuit of productive capital is the form in which classical
 Political Economy examines the circular movement of industrial capital.
C' — M' — C ... P ... C'.
If reproduction takes place on an extended scale, then the final
 C' is greater than the initial C' and should therefore be designated here
 as C''.
The difference between the third form and the first two is as
 follows: First, in this case the total circulation with its two antithetical
 phases opens the circuit, while in the Form I the circulation is interrupted
 by the process of production and in Form II the total circulation with
 its two complementary phases appears merely as a means of effecting the
 process of reproduction and therefore constitutes the movement mediating
 between P ... P. In the case of M ... M', the form of circulation is M — C
 ... C' — M' = M — C — M. In the case of P ... P it has the inverted form C' — M'. M — C = C — M — C. In the case of C' — C' it likewise has this form.
Secondly, when circuits I and II are repeated, even if the final
 points M' and P' form the starting-points of the renewed circuit, the form
 in which M' and P' were produced disappears. M' = M plus m and P' = P plus
 p begin the new process as M and P. But in the form III the starting-point
 C must be designated as C', even if the circuit is renewed on the same
 scale, for the following reason. In Form I, as soon as M' as such opens
 a new circuit it functions as money-capital M, as an advance in money-form
 of the capital-value that is to produce surplus-value. The size of the
 advanced money-capital, augmented by the accumulation achieved during the
 first circuit, has increased. But whether the size of the advanced money-capital
 is £422 or £500 does not alter the fact that it appears as
 simple capital-value. M' no longer exists as self-expanded capital or a
 capital pregnant with surplus-value, as a capital-relation. Indeed, it
 is to expand itself only during its process. The same is true of P ...
 P'; P' must steadily continue to function as P, as capital-value which is
 to produce surplus-value, and must renew its circuit.
The commodity-capital circuit, on the contrary, does not open
 with just capital-value but with capital-value augmented in the commodity-form.
 Hence it includes from the start the circuit of not only capital-value
 existing in the form of commodities, but also of surplus-value. Consequently
 if simple reproduction takes place in this form, the C' at the terminal
 point is equal in size to the C' at the starting-point. If a part of the
 surplus-value enters into the capital circuit, C'', an enlarged C', appears
 at the close instead of C'. This is merely a larger C' than that of the
 proceeding circuit, with a larger accumulated capital-value. Hence it begins
 its new circuit with a relatively larger, newly created surplus-value.
 In any event C' always inaugurates the circuit as a commodity-capital which
 is equal to capital-value plus surplus-value.
C' as C does not appear in the circuit of an individual industrial
 capital as a form of this capital but as a form of some other industrial
 capital, so far as the means of production are the product of the latter.
 The act M — C (i.e., M — MP) of the first capital is C' — M' for this second capital.
In the circulation act M — C<LMP L and MP bear identical relations, as they are commodities in the hands of their sellers — on the one hand the labourers who sell their labour-power, on the other the owner of the means of production, who sells these. For the
 purchaser, whose money here functions as money-capital, L and MP function
 merely as commodities until he has bought them, hence so long as they confront
 his capital, existing in the form of money, as commodities of others. MP
 and L differ here only in this respect, that MP may be C', hence capital,
 in the hands of its seller, if MP is the commodity-form of his capital,
 while L is always nothing else but a commodity for the labourer and becomes
 capital only in the hands of its purchaser as a constituent part of P.
For this reason C' can never open any circuit as a mere C, as
 a mere commodity-form of capital-value. As commodity-capital it is always
 two-fold. From the point of view of use-value it is the product, in the
 present case yarn, of the functioning of P whose elements L and MP, coming
 as commodities from the sphere of circulation, have functioned only as
 factors in the creation of this product. Secondly, from the point of view
 of value, it is the capital-value P plus the surplus-value s produced by
 the functioning of P.
It is only in the circuit described by C' itself that C equal
 to P and equal to the capital-value can and must separate from that part
 of C' in which the surplus-value is lodged. It does not matter whether
 the two things can be actually separated, as in the case of yarn, or whether
 they cannot, as in the case of a machine. They always become separable
 as soon as C' is transformed into M'.
If the entire commodity-product can be separated into independent
 homogeneous partial products, as in the case of our 10,000 lbs. of yarn,
 and if therefore the act C' — M' can be represented by a number of successive
 sales, then the capital-value in the form of commodities can function as
 C, can be separated from C', before the surplus-value, hence before C'
 in its entirety, has been realised.
Of the 10,000 lbs. of yarn worth £500, the value of 8,440
 lbs., equal to £422, is equal to the capital-value less the surplus-value.
 If the capitalist sells first 8,440 lbs. of yarn at £422, then these 8,440
 lbs. of yarn represent C, the capital-value in commodity-form. The surplus-product
 of 1,560 lbs. of yarn, contained besides in C' and equal to a surplus value
 of £78, does not circulate until later. The capitalist could get
 through C — M — C<LMP before the circulation of the surplus-product
 c — m — c is accomplished.
Or if he sells 7,440 lbs. of yarn worth £372, and then 1,000
 lbs. of yarn worth £50, he might replace the means of production
 (the constant capital c) with the first part of C, and the variable capital
 v, the labour-power, with the second part of C, and then proceed as before.
But if such successive sales take place and the conditions of
 the circuit permit it, the capitalist, instead of separating C' into c
 + v + s, may make such a preparation also in the case of aliquot parts
 of C'.
For example the 7,440 lbs. of yarn equal at £372, which
 as parts of C' (10,000 lbs. of yarn worth £500) represent the constant
 part of capital, may themselves be separated into 5,535.360 lbs. of yarn
 worth £276.768, which replace only the constant part, the value of
 the means of production used up in producing 7,440 lbs. of yarn; 744 lbs.
 of yarn worth £37.200, which replace only the variable capital; and
 1,160.640 lbs. of yarn worth £58.032, which, being surplus-product,
 are the depositories of surplus-value. Consequently on selling the 7,440
 lbs. of yarn, he can replace the capital value contained in them out of
 the sale of 6,279.360 lbs. of yarn at the price of £313.968, and
 he can spend as his revenue the value of the surplus-product amounting
 to 1,160.640 lbs., or £58.032.
In the same way, he may divide up another 1,000 lbs. of yarn equal
 to £50, equal to the variable capital-value, and sell them accordingly;
 744 lbs. of yarn worth £37.200, constant capital-value contained
 in 1,000 lbs. of yarn; finally, 100 lbs. of yarn worth £5.000, variable
 capital-value ditto; hence 844 lbs. of yarn worth £42.200, replacement
 of the capital-value contained in the 1,000 lbs. of yarn; finally 156 lbs.
 of yarn worth £7.800, representing the surplus-product contained
 in it, which may be consumed as such.
Finally, he may divide the remaining 1,560 lbs. of yarn worth
 £78, in such a way, provided he succeeds in selling them, that the
 sale of 1,160.640 lbs. of yarn, worth £58.032, replaces the value
 of the means of production contained in those 1,560 lbs. of yarn, and that
 156 lbs. of yarn worth £7.800, replaces the variable capital-value;
 altogether 1,316.640 lbs. of yarn equal to £65.832, replacement of
 the total capital-value; finally the surplus-product of 243.360 lbs., equal
 to £12.168, remains to be spent as revenue.
All the elements — c, v and s — contained in the yarn are divisible
 into the same component parts, and so is every individual pound of yarn,
 worth 1 s., or 12 d.
In Form I, or M ... M', the process of production intervenes midway
 between the two complementary and mutually opposite phases of the circulation
 of capital. It is past before the concluding phase C' — M' begins. Money
 is advanced as capital, is first transformed into the elements of production
 and from these into the commodity-product, and this commodity-product in
 its turn is changed back into money. It is a full and complete business
 cycle that results in money, something everyone can use for everything.
 A new start is therefore only a possibility. M ... P ... M' may be either
 be the last circuit that concludes the functioning of some individual capital
 being withdrawn from business, or the first circuit of some new capital
 entering upon its function. The general movement is here M ... M', from
 money to more money.
In Form III, C' — M' — C .... P ... C', the two phases of the
 circulation process open the circuit, and do so in the same order which
 obtains in Form II, P ... P; next follows P, with its function, the productive
 process, the same as in Form I; the circuit closes with the result of the
 process of production, C'. Just as in Form II the circuit closes with P,
 the merely renewed existence of productive capital, so here it closes with
 C', the renewed existence of commodity-capital. Just as in Form II capital,
 in its concluding form P, must start the process over again as a process
 of production, so here upon the reappearance of industrial capital in the
 form of commodity-capital the circuit must re-open with the circulation
 phase C' — M'. Both forms of the circuit are incomplete because they do
 not close with M', the capital-value retransformed into money and self-expanded. Both must therefore be continued and consequently include the reproduction.
 The total circuit in Form III is C' ... C'.
The third form is distinguished from the first two by the fact
 that it is only in this circuit that the self-expanded capital-value —
 and not the original one, the capital-value that must still produce surplus-value
 — appears as the starting point of its self-expansion. C as a capital-relation
 is here the starting point and as such relation has a determining influence
 on the entire circuit because it includes the circuit of the capital-value
 as well as that of the surplus-value in its first phase, and because the
 surplus-value must at least in the average, if not in every single circuit,
 be expended partly as revenue, go through the circulation c — m — c, and
 must perform the function of an element of capital accumulation.
In the form C' ... C' the consumption of the entire commodity-product
 is assumed as the condition of the normal course of the circuit of capital
 itself. The individual consumption of the labourer and the individual consumption
 of the unaccumulated part of the surplus-product comprise the entire individual
 consumption. Hence consumption in its totality — individual as well as
 productive — enters into circuit C' as a condition of it. Productive consumption
 (which essentially includes the individual consumption of the labourer,
 since labour-power is a continuous product, with certain limits, of the
 labourer’s individual consumption) is carried on by every individual capital.
 Individual consumption, except in so far as it is required for the existence
 of the individual capitalist, is here assumed to be only a social act,
 but by no means an act of the individual capitalist.
In Forms I and II the aggregate movement appears as a movement
 of advanced capital-value. In Form III the self-expanded capital, in the
 shape of the total commodity-product, forms the starting-point and has
 the form of moving capital, commodity-capital. Not until its transformation
 into money has been accomplished does the movement branch out into movements
 of capital and of revenue. The distribution of the total social product,
 as well as the special distribution of the product for each individual
 commodity-capital, into an individual consumption-fund on the one hand
 and into reproduction fund on the other is included in this form in the
 circuit of capital.
In M... M' possible enlargement of the circuit is included, depending
 on the volume of m entering into the renewed circuit.
In P ... P the new circuit may be started by P with the same or
 perhaps even a smaller value and yet may represent a reproduction on an
 extended scale, for instance when certain elements of commodities become
 cheaper on account of increased productivity of labour. Vice versa, a productive
 capital which has increased in value may, in a contrary case, represent
 reproduction on a materially contracted scale as for instance when elements
 of production have become dearer. The same is true of C' ... C'.
In C' ... C' capital in the form of commodities is the premise
 of production. It re-appears as a premise within this circuit in the second
 C. If this C has not yet been produced or reproduced the circuit is obstructed.
 This C must be reproduced, for the greater part of as C' of some other
 industrial capital. In this circuit C' exists as the point of departure,
 of transition, and of the conclusion of the movement; hence it is always
 there. It is a permanent condition of the process of reproduction.
C' ... C' is distinguished from Forms I and II by still another
 feature. All three circuits have this in common, that capital begins its
 circular course in the same form in which it concludes it, and thus finds
 itself in the initial form in which it opens the circuit anew. The initial
 form M, P or C' is always the one in which capital-value (in III augmented
 by its surplus-value) is advanced, in other words its original form in
 regard to the circuit. The concluding form M', P or C' is always a changed
 form of a functional form which preceded in the circuit and is not the
 original form.
Thus M' in I is a changed form of C', the final P in II is a changed
 form of M (and this transformation is accomplished in I and II by a simple
 act of commodity circulation, by a formal change of position of commodity
 and money); in III, C' is a changed form of the productive capital P. But
 here, in III, the transformation, in the first place, does not merely concern
 the functional form of capital but also the magnitude of its value; in
 the second place, however, the transformation is not the result of a merely
 formal change in position pertaining to the circulation process, but of
 a real transformation experienced by the use-form and value of the commodity
 constituents of the productive capital in the process of production.
The form of the initial extreme M, P or C' is the premise of the
 corresponding circuit I, II or III. The form returning in the final extreme
 is premised and consequently brought about by the series of metamorphoses
 of the circuit itself. C', as the terminal point in the circuit of an individual
 industrial capital, presupposes only the non-circulation form P of the
 same industrial capital of which it is the product. M', as the terminal
 point of I, as the converted form of C' (C' — M'), presupposes that M is
 in the hands of the buyer, exists outside of the circuit M ... M', and
 is drawn into it and made its own terminal form by the sale of C'. Thus
 the terminal P in II presupposes that L and MP (C) exist outside and are
 incorporated in it as its terminal form by means of M — C. But apart from
 the last extreme, the circuit of individual money-capital does not presuppose
 the existence of money-capital in general, nor does the circuit of individual
 productive capital presuppose the existence of productive capital. In I,
 M may be the first money-capital; in II, P may be the first productive
 capital appearing on the historical scene. But in III,
On the basis that the capitalist mode of production is the prevailing
 mode, all commodities in the hands of the seller must, besides, be commodity-capital.
 And they continue to be so in the hands of the merchant or become such
 if they were not such before. Or they have to be commodities — such as
 imported articles — which replace original commodity-capital and hence
 bestow upon it merely another form of existence.
As forms of existence of P the commodity-elements L and MP, of
 which the productive capital P consists, do not possess the same form as
 in the various commodity markets where they are fetched. They are now united,
 and so combined they can perform the functions of productive capital.
That C appears as the premise of C only in this Form III, within
 the circuit itself, is due to capital in commodity-form being its starting
 point. The circuit is opened by the transformation of C' (in so far as
 it functions as capital-value, regardless of whether it has been increased
 by the addition of surplus-value or not) into those commodities which are
 its elements of production. But this transformation comprises the entire
 process of circulation, C — M — C (equal to L plus MP), and is its result.
 C here stands at both extremes, but the second extreme, which receives
 its form C by means of M — C from outside, the commodity-market, is not
 the last extreme of the circuit but only of its first two stages comprising
 the process of circulation. Its result is P, which then performs its function,
 the process of production. It is only as the result of this process, hence
 not as that of the circulation process, that C' appears as the terminal
 point of the circuit and in the same form as the starting-point, C'. On
 the other hand in M ... M' and P ... P, the final extremes M' and P are
 the direct results of the process of circulation. Here therefore it is
 presupposed only at the end that one time M' and the other time P exist
 in the hands of others. In so far as the circuit is made between the extremes,
 neither M in the one case nor P in the other — the existence of M as the
 money of another person and of P as the production process of another capital
 — appears as the premise of these circuits. C' ... C' on the contrary
 presupposes the existence of C (equal to L plus MP) as commodities of others
 in the hands of others — commodities drawn into the circuit by the introductory
 process of circulation and transformed into productive capital, as a result
 of whose functioning C' once more becomes the concluding form of the circuit.
In the formula C' ... C', the movement of the commodity-capital,
 that is to say, of the total product created capitalistically, appears
 not only as the premise of the independent circuit of the individual capital
 but also as required by it. If the formula and its peculiarities are grasped,
 it is no longer sufficient to confine oneself to indicating that the metamorphoses
 C' — M' and M — C are on the one hand functionally defined sections in
 the metamorphoses of capital, on the other are links in the general circulation
 of commodities. It becomes necessary to elucidate the intertwining of the
 metamorphoses of one individual capital with those of other individual
 capitals and with that part of the total product which is intended for
 individual consumption. On analysing the circuit of an individual industrial
 capital, we therefore base our studies mainly on the first two forms.
The circuit C' ... C' appears as a form of a single individual
 capital, for instance in agriculture, where calculations are made from
 crop to crop. In Formula II, the sowing is the starting-point, in Formula
 III the harvest, or, to speak with the physiocrats, Formula II starts out
 with the avance, and Formula III with the reprises. The
 movement of capital-value appears in III from the outset only as a part
 of the movement of the general mass of products, while in I and II the
 movement of C' constitutes only a phase of the movement of some isolated
 capital.
In Formula III commodities in the market are the continuous premise
 of the process of production and reproduction. Hence, if attention is fixed
 exclusively on this formula all elements of the process of production seem
 to originate in commodity circulation and to consist only of commodities.
 This one-sided conception overlooks those elements of the process of production
 which are independent of the commodity-elements.
Since in C' ... C' the starting-point is the total product (total
 value), it turns out that (if foreign trade is disregarded) reproduction
 on an extended scale, productivity remaining otherwise constant, can take
 place only when the part of the surplus-product to be capitalised already
 contains the material elements of the additional productive capital; that
 therefore, so far as the production of one year serves as the premise of
 the following year’s production or so far as this can take place simultaneously
 with the process of simple reproduction within one year, surplus-product
 is at once produced in a form which enables it to perform the functions
 of additional capital. Increased productivity can increase only the substance
 of capital but not its value; but therewith it creates additional material
 for the self-expansion of that value.
C' ... C' is the groundwork for Quesnay's Tableau économique,
 and it shows great and true discretion on his part that in contrast to
 M ... M' (the isolatedly and rigidly retained form of the mercantile system)
 he selected this form and not P ... P.
All three circuits have the following in common: The self-expansion
 of value as the determining purpose, as the compelling motive. In I this
 is expressed in its form. Formula II begins with P, the very process of
 creating surplus-value. In III the circuit begins with the self-expanded
 value, even if the movement is repeated on the same scale.
As C — M means M — C for the buyer, and M — C means C — M for the seller, the circulation of capital presents only the ordinary metamorphosis of commodities, and the laws evolved with regard to it (Buch I, Kap. III,
 2) [English edition: Ch. III, 2. — Ed.] on the mass of money in
 circulation are valid here. However, if we do not cling to this formal
 aspect but rather consider the actual connection between the metamorphoses
 of the various individual capitals, in other words, if we study the connection
 between the circuits of individual capitals as partial movements of the
 process of reproduction of the total social capital, then the mere change
 of form of money and commodities cannot explain the connection.
In a constantly revolving circle every point is simultaneously
 a point of departure and a point of return. If we interrupt the rotation,
 not every point of departure is a point of return. Thus we have seen that
 not only does every individual circuit presuppose (implicite) the
 others, but also that the repetition of the circuit in one form comprises
 the performance of the circuit in the other forms. The entire difference
 thus appears to be a merely formal one, or as a merely subjective distinction
 existing solely for the observer.
Since every one of these circuits is considered a special form
 of this movement in which various individual industrial capitals are engaged,
 this difference exists only as an individual one. But in reality every
 individual industrial capital is present simultaneously in all three circuits.
 These three circuits, the forms of reproduction assumed by the three forms
 of capital, are made continuously side by side. For instance, one part
 of the capital-value, which now performs the function of commodity-capital,
 is transformed into money-capital, but at the same time another part leaves
 the process of production and enters the circulation as a new commodity-capital.
 The circuit form C' ... C' is thus continuously described; and so are the
 other two forms. The reproduction of capital in each one of its forms and
 stages is just as continuous as the metamorphosis of these forms and the
 successive passage through the three stages. The entire circuit is thus
 a unity of its three forms.
We assumed in our analysis that capital-value in its entire magnitude
 acts as money-capital, productive-capital or commodity-capital. For instance,
 we had those £422 first entirely as money-capital, then we transformed
 them wholly into productive capital, and finally into commodity-capital,
 into yarn of the value of £500 (containing £78 worth of surplus-value).
 Here the various stages are just so many interruptions. So long as, e.g.,
 those £422 retain their money-form, that is to say, until the purchases
 M — C (L plus MP) are made, the entire capital exists and functions only
 as money-capital. As soon as it is transformed into productive capital,
 it performs neither the function of money-capital nor of commodity-capital.
 Its entire process of circulation is interrupted, as soon as it functions
 in one of its two circulation stages, either as M or as C'. Consequently,
 the circuit P ... P would represent not only a periodical renewal of the
 productive capital but also the interruption of its function, the process
 of production, up to the time when the process of circulation is completed.
 Instead of proceeding continuously, production would take place in jerks
 and would be renewed only in periods of accidental duration, according
 to whether the two stages of the process of circulation are got through
 with quickly or slowly. This would apply for instance to a Chinese artisan
 who works only for private customers and whose process of production ceases
 until he receives a new order.
This is indeed true of every single part of capital that is in
 motion, and all parts of capital go through this motion in succession.
 Suppose that the 10,000 lbs. of yarn are the weekly product of some spinner.
 These 10,000 lbs. of yarn leave the sphere of production entirely and enter
 the sphere of circulation; the capital-value contained in it must all be
 converted into money-capital, and so long as this value continues in the
 form of money-capital it cannot enter anew into the process of production.
 It must first go into circulation and be reconverted into the elements
 of productive capital, L plus MP. The circuit-describing process of capital
 means constant interruption, the leaving of one stage and the entering
 into the next, the discarding of one form and the assuming of another.
 Each one of these stages not only presupposes the next but also excludes
 it.
But continuity is the characteristic mark of capitalist production,
 necessitated by its technical basis, although not always absolutely attainable.
 Let us see then what happens in reality. While, e.g., the 10,000 lbs. of
 yarn appear in the market as commodity-capital and are transformed into
 money (regardless of whether it is a paying or purchasing medium or only
 money of account), new cotton, coal, etc., take the place of the yarn in
 the process of production, have therefore already been reconverted from
 the money-form and commodity-form into that of productive capital, and
 begin to function as such. At the same time that these 10,000 lbs. of yarn
 are being reconverted into money, the preceding 10,000 lbs. of yarn are
 going through the second stage of their circulation and are being reconverted
 from money into the elements of productive capital. All parts of capital
 successively describe circuits, are simultaneously at its different stages.
 The industrial capital, continuously progressing along its orbit, thus
 exists simultaneously at all its stages and in the diverse functional forms
 corresponding to these stages. That part of industrial capital which is
 converted for the first time from commodity-capital into money begins the
 circuit C' ... C', while industrial capital as a moving whole has already
 passed through that circuit. One hand advances money, the other receives
 it. The inauguration of the circuit M ... M' at one place coincides with
 the return of the money at another place. The same is true of productive
 capital.
The next form in which the process presents itself is that of
 a succession of phases, so that the transition of capital into a new phase
 is made necessary by its departure from another. Every separate circuit
 has therefore one of the functional forms of capital for its point of departure
 and point of return. On the other hand the aggregate process is in fact
 the unity of the three circuits, which are the different forms in which
 the continuity of the process expresses itself. The aggregate circuit presents
 itself to every functional form of capital as its specific circuit and
 every one of these circuits is a condition of the continuity of the total
 process. The cycle of each functional form is dependent upon the others.
 It is a necessary prerequisite of the aggregate process of production,
 especially for the social capital, that it is at the same time a process
 of reproduction and hence a circuit of each one of its elements. Various
 fractional parts of capital pass successively through the various stages
 and functional forms. Thanks to this every functional form passes simultaneously
 with the others through its own circuit, although always a different part
 of capital finds its expression in it. One part of capital, continually
 changing, continually reproduced, exists as a commodity-capital which is
 converted into money; another as money-capital which is converted into
 productive capital; and a third as productive capital which is transformed
 into commodity-capital. The continuous existence of all three forms is
 brought about by the circuit the aggregate capital describes in passing
 through precisely these three phases.
Capital as a whole, then, exists simultaneously, spatially side
 by side, in its different phases. But every part passes constantly and
 successively from one phase, from one functional form, into the next and
 thus functions in all of them in turn. Its forms are hence fluid and their
 simultaneousness is brought about by their succession. Every form follows
 another and precedes it, so that the return of one capital part to a certain
 form is necessitated by the return of the other part to some other form.
 Every part describes continuously its own cycle, but it is always another
 part of capital which exists in this form, and these special cycles form
 only simultaneous and successive elements of the aggregate process.
The continuity — instead of the above-described interruption
 — of the aggregate process is achieved only in the unity of the three
 circuits. The aggregate social capital always has this continuity and its
 process always exhibits the unity of the three circuits.
The continuity of the reproduction is at times more or less interrupted
 so far as individual capitals are concerned. In the first place the masses
 of value are frequently distributed at various periods in unequal portions
 over the various stages and functional forms. In the second place these
 portions may be differently distributed, according to the character of
 the commodity to be produced, hence according to the particular sphere
 of production in which the capital is invested. In the third place the
 continuity may be more or less broken in those branches of production which
 are dependent on the seasons, either on account of natural conditions (agriculture,
 herring catch, etc.) or on account of conventional circumstances, as for
 instance in so-called seasonal work. The process goes on most regularly
 and uniformly in the factories and mines. But this difference in the various
 branches of production does not cause any difference in the general forms
 of the circular process.
This succession of the metamorphoses of capital in process includes
 continuous comparison of the change in the magnitude of value of the capital
 brought about in the circuit with the original value. If value’s acquisition
 of independence of the value-creating power, labour-power, is inaugurated
 by the act M — L (purchase of labour-power) and is effected during the
 process of production as exploitation of labour-power, this acquisition
 of independence on the part of value does not re-appear in that circuit,
 in which money, commodities, and elements of production are merely alternating
 forms of capital-value in process, and the former magnitude of value is
 compared with capital’s present changed magnitude of value.
This he says against the comparison of commodity-values of different epochs,
 a comparison which amounts only to comparing the expenditure of labour
 required in various periods for the production of the same sort of commodities,
 once the value of money has been fixed for every period. This comes from
 his general misunderstanding, for he thinks that exchange-value is equal
 to value, that the form if value is value itself; consequently commodity-value
 can no longer be compared, if they do not function actively as exchange-values
 and thus cannot actually be exchanged for one another. He has not the least
 inkling of the fact that value functions as capital-value or capital only
 in so far as it remains identical with itself and is compared with itself
 in the different phases of its circuit, which are not at all “contemporary” but succeed one another.
In order to study the formula of the circuit in its purity it is not sufficient to postulate that commodities are sold at their value; it must also be assumed that this takes place with other things being equal. Take for instance the form P ... P, disregarding all technical revolutions within the process of production by which the productive capital of a certain
 capitalist might be depreciated; disregarding furthermore all reactions
 which a change in the elements of value of the productive capital might
 have on the value of the existing commodity-capital, which might appreciate
 or depreciate if a stock of it is on hand. Suppose the 10,000 lbs. of yarn,
 C', have been sold at their value of £500; 8,440 lbs. equal to £422,
 replace the capital-value contained in C'. But if the value of cotton,
 coal, etc., has increased (we do not consider mere fluctuations in price),
 these £422 may not suffice for the full replacement of the elements
 of productive capital; additional money-capital is required, money-capital
 is tied up. The opposite takes place when those prices fall. Money-capital
 is set free. The process takes a wholly normal course only when the value-relations
 remain constant; its course is practically normal so long as the disturbances
 during the repetitions of the circuit balance one another. But the greater
 these disturbances the greater the money-capital which the industrial capitalist
 must possess to tide over the period of readjustment; and as the scale
 of each individual process of production and with it the minimum size of
 the capital to be advanced increases in the process of capitalist production,
 we have here another circumstance to be added to those others which transform
 the function of the industrial capitalist more and more into a monopoly
 of big money-capitalists, who may operate singly or in association.
We remark incidentally that if a change in the value of the elements
 of production occurs a difference appears between the form M...M' on one
 side and of P ... P and C' ... C' on the other.
In M ... M', the formula of newly-invested capital, which first appears
 as money-capital, a fall in the value of the means of production, such
 as raw material, auxiliary material, etc., will permit of a smaller expenditure
 of money-capital than before this fall for the purpose of starting a business
 of a definite size, because the scale of the process of production (productive
 power development remaining the same) depends on the mass and volume of
 the means of production which a given quantity of labour-power can cope
 with; but it does not depend on the value of these means of production
 nor on that of the labour-power (the latter value affects only the magnitude
 of self-expansion). Take the reverse case. If there is a rise in the value
 of the elements of production of the commodities which constitute the elements
 of the productive capital, then more money-capital is needed for the establishment
 of a business of definite proportions. In both cases it is only the amount
 of the money-capital required for new investment that is affected. In the
 former case money-capital becomes surplus, in the latter it is tied up,
 provided the accession of new individual industrial capital proceeds in
 the usual way in a given branch of production.
The circuits P ... P and C' ... C' present themselves as M ...
 M' only to the extent that the movement of P and C' is at the same time
 accumulation, hence to the extent that additional m, money, is converted
 into money-capital; here, too, we do not take into consideration the reaction
 of such changes in value on those constituent parts of capital which are
 engaged in the process of production. It is not the original expenditure
 which is directly affected here, but an industrial capital engaged in its
 process of reproduction and not in its first circuit; i.e., 
 C' ... C<LMP,
 the reconversion of commodity-capital into its elements of production,
 so far as they are composed of commodities. When value (prices) fall three
 cases are possible: The process of reproduction is continued on the same
 scale; in that event a part of the money-capital existing hitherto is set
 free and money-capital is accumulated, although no real accumulation (production
 on an extended scale) or transformation of m (surplus-value) into an accumulation-fund
 initiating and accompanying such accumulation has previously taken place.
 Or the process of reproduction is carried on a more extensive scale than
 ordinarily would have been the case, provided the technical proportions
 admit it. Or, finally, a larger stock of raw materials, etc., is laid in.
The opposite occurs if the value of the elements of replacement of a
 commodity-capital increases. In that case reproduction no longer takes
 place on its normal scale (e.g., the working-day gets shorter); or additional
 money-capital must be employed in order to maintain the old volume of work
 (money-capital is tied up); or the money-fund for accumulation, when one
 exists, is employed entirely or partially for the operation of the process
 of reproduction on its old scale instead of for the enlargement of this
 process. This is also tying up money-capital, except that here the additional
 money-capital does not come from the outside, from the money-market, but
 from the means of the industrial capitalist himself.
However, there may be modifying circumstances in P ... P and C'
 ... C'. If our spinning-mill proprietor for example has a large stock of
 cotton (a large proportion of his productive capital in the form of a stock
 of cotton), a part of his productive capital is depreciated by a fall in
 the prices of cotton; but if on the contrary these prices rise, this part
 of his productive capital appreciates. On the other hand, if he has tied
 up huge quantities in the form of commodity-capital, for instance of cotton
 yarn, a part of his commodity-capital, hence of his circuit describing
 capital in general, is depreciated by a fall of cotton, or appreciated
 by a rise in its prices. Finally take the process 
 C' — M — C<LMP. If C' — M, the realisation of the commodity-capital, has taken place before a change in the value of the elements of C, then capital is affected only
 in the way indicated in the first case, namely in the second act of circulation,
 M — C<LMP; but if such a change has occurred before C' — M has been effected, then, other conditions remaining equal, a fall in the price of cotton causes a corresponding fall in the price of yarn, and a rise in the price of cotton means conversely a rise in the price
 of yarn. The effect on the various individual capitals invested in the
 same branch of production may differ widely, according to the circumstances
 in which they find themselves.
Money-capital may also be set free or tied up on account of differences
 in the duration of the process of circulation, hence also in the speed
 of circulation. But this belongs in the discussion on turnover. At this
 point we are only interested in the real difference that becomes evident,
 with regard to changes of values of the elements of productive capital,
 between M ... M' and the other two circuit forms.
However two points must be noted here.
First: as soon as act M — MP is completed, the commodities (MP)
 cease to be such and become one of the modes of existence of industrial
 capital in its functional form of P, productive capital. Thereby however
 their origin is obliterated. They exist henceforth only as forms of existence
 of industrial capital, are embodied in it. However it still remains true
 that to replace them they must be reproduced, and to this extent the capitalist
 mode of production is conditional on modes of production lying outside
 of its own stage of development. But it is the tendency of the capitalist
 mode of production to transform all production as much as possible into
 commodity production. The mainspring by which this is accomplished is precisely
 the involvement of all production into the capitalist circulation process.
 And developed commodity production itself is capitalist commodity production.
 The intervention of industrial capital promotes this transformation everywhere,
 but with it also the transformation of all direct producers into wage-labourers.
Secondly: the commodities entering into the circulation of industrial
 capital (including the requisite means of subsistence into which variable
 capital, after being paid to the labourers, is transformed for the purpose
 of reproducing their labour-power), regardless of their origin and of the
 social form of the productive process by which they were brought into existence,
 come face to face with industrial capital itself already in the form of
 commodity-capital, in the form of commodity-dealer’s or merchant’s capital. And merchant’s capital, by its very nature comprises commodities of all
 modes of production.
The capitalist mode of production presupposes not only large-scale
 production but also, and necessarily so, sales on a large scale, hence
 sale to the merchant, not to the individual consumer. If this consumer
 is himself a productive consumer, hence an industrial capitalist, i.e.,
 if the industrial capital of one branch of production supplies some other
 branch of industry with means of production, direct sale by one industrial
 capitalist to many others take place (in the form of orders, etc.). To
 this extent every industrial capitalist is a direct seller and his own
 merchant, which by the way is when he sells to a merchant.
Trading in commodities as the function of merchant’s capital is
 a premise of capitalist production and develops more and more in the course
 of development of such production. Therefore we occasionally take its existence
 for granted to illustrate particular aspects of the process of capitalist
 circulation; but in the general analysis of this process we assume direct
 sale, without the intervention of a merchant, because this intervention
 obscures various facets of the movement.