The difficulty with the annual social product arises therefore from the fact that the constant portion of value is represented by a wholly different class of products — means of production — than the new value v + s added to this constant portion of value and represented by articles of consumption. Thus the appearance is created, so far as value is concerned, that two-thirds of the consumed mass of products are found again in a new form as new product, without any labour having been expended by society in their production. This is not so in the case of an individual capital. Every individual capitalist employs some particular concrete kind of labour, which transforms the means of production peculiar to it into a product. Let for instance the capitalist be a machine-builder, the constant capital expended during the year 6,000c, the variable 1,500v, the surplus-value 1,500s, the product 9,000, the product, say, 18 machines of 500 each. The entire product here exists in the same form, that of machines. (If he produces various kinds, each kind is calculated separately.) The entire commodity-product is the result of the labour expended during the year in machine-building; it is a combination of the same concrete kind of labour with the same means of production. The various portions of the value of the product therefore present themselves in the same bodily form: 12 machines embody 6,000c, 3 machines 1,500v, 3 machines 1,500s. In the present case it is evident that the value of the 12 machines is equal to 6,000c, not because there is incorporated in these 12 machines only labour performed previously to the manufacture of these machines and not labour expended on building them. The value of the means of production for 18 machines did not of itself become transformed into 12 machines but the value of these 12 machines (consisting itself of 4,000c + 1,000v + 1,000s) is equal to the total value of the constant capital contained in the 18 machines. The machine-manufacturer must therefore sell 12 of the 18 machines in order to replace his expended constant capital, which he requires for the reproduction of 18 new machines. On the contrary, the thing would be inexplicable if in spite of the fact that the labour expended was employed solely in the manufacture of machines, the result were to be: On the one hand 6 machines equal to 1,500v + 1,500s, on the other iron, copper, screws, belts, etc., of a value amounting to 6,000c, i.e., the means of production of the machines in their bodily form, which, as we know, the individual machine-building capitalist does not produce himself but must replace by way of the process of circulation. And yet it seems at first glance that the reproduction of the annual product of society takes place in this absurd way.