Either the price of labour keeps on rising, because its rise does not
 interfere with the progress of accumulation. In this there is nothing
 wonderful, for, says Adam Smith, “after these (profits) are diminished,
 stock may not only continue to increase, but to increase much faster than
 before.... A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster
 than a small stock with great profits.” (l. c., ii, p. 189.) In this case
 it is evident that a diminution in the unpaid labour in no way interferes with
 the extension of the domain of capital. — Or, on the other hand,
 accumulation slackens in consequence of the rise in the price of labour,
 because the stimulus of gain is blunted. The rate of accumulation lessens; but
 with its lessening, the primary cause of that lessening vanishes,
 i.e., the disproportion between capital and exploitable labour power.
 The mechanism of the process of capitalist production removes 581the
 very obstacles that it temporarily creates. The price of labour falls again to
 a level corresponding with the needs of the self-expansion of capital, whether
 the level be below, the same as, or above the one which was normal before the
 rise of wages took place. We see thus: In the first case, it is not the
 diminished rate either of the absolute, or of the proportional, increase in
 labour power, or labouring population, which causes capital to be in excess,
 but conversely the excess of capital that makes exploitable labour power
 insufficient. In the second case, it is not the increased rate either of the
 absolute, or of the proportional, increase in labour power, or labouring
 population, that makes capital insufficient; but, conversely, the relative
 diminution of capital that causes the exploitable labour power, or rather its
 price, to be in excess. It is these absolute movements of the accumulation of
 capital which are reflected as relative movements of the mass of exploitable
 labour power, and therefore seem produced by the latter’s own independent
 movement. To put it mathematically: the rate
 of accumulation is the independent, not the dependent, variable; the rate of
 wages, the dependent, not the independent, variable. Thus, when the industrial
 cycle is in the phase of crisis, a general fall in the price of commodities is
 expressed as a rise in the value of money, and, in the phase of prosperity, a
 general rise in the price of commodities, as a fall in the value of money. The
 so-called currency school concludes from this that with high prices too much,
 with low prices too little [8] money
 is in circulation. Their ignorance and complete misunderstanding of facts [9] are worthily paralleled by the
 economists, who interpret the above phenomena of accumulation by saying that
 there are now too few, now too many wage labourers.