Just as little as the commodities that the capitalist buys with
 a part of the surplus-value for his own consumption, serve the purpose
 of production and of creation of value, so little is the labour that he
 buys for the satisfaction of his natural and social requirements, productive labour.
 Instead of converting surplus-value into capital, he, on the contrary,
 by the purchase of those commodities and that labour, consumes or expends
 it as revenue. In the face of the habitual mode of life of the old feudal
 nobility, which, as Hegel rightly says, “consists in consuming what is
 in hand,” and more especially displays itself in the luxury of personal
 retainers, it was extremely important for bourgeois economy to promulgate the doctrine that accumulation of capital is the first duty of every citizen, and to preach without ceasing, that a man cannot accumulate, if he eats up all his revenue, instead of spending a good part of it in the acquisition
 of additional productive labourers, who bring in more than they cost. On
 the other hand the economists had to contend against the popular prejudice,
 that confuses capitalist production with hoarding, [12]and fancies that accumulated wealth is either wealth that is rescued
 from being destroyed in its existing form, i.e., from being consumed,
 or wealth that is withdrawn from circulation. Exclusion of money from circulation
 would also exclude absolutely its self-expansion as capital, while accumulation
 of a hoard in the shape of commodities would be sheer tomfoolery. [13] The accumulation of commodities in great masses is the result either
 of over-production or of a stoppage of circulation. [14]It is true that the popular mind is impressed by the sight, on the
 one hand, of the mass of goods that are stored up for gradual consumption
 by the rich, [15] and on the other hand, by the formation of reserve stocks; the latter, a phenomenon that is common to all modes
 of production, and on which we shall dwell for a moment, when we come to
 analyse circulation. Classical economy is therefore quite right, when it
 maintains that the consumption of surplus-products by productive, instead
 of by unproductive labourers, is a characteristic feature of the process
 of accumulation. But at this point the mistakes also begin. Adam Smith
 has made it the fashion, to represent accumulation as nothing more than
 consumption of surplus products by pro553ductive labourers, which amounts
 to saying, that the capitalising of surplus-value consists in merely turning
 surplus-value into labour-power.