p256What experience shows to the capitalist generally is a constant
 excess of population, i.e., an excess in relation to the momentary requirements
 of surplus-labour-absorbing capital, although this excess is made up of
 generations of human beings stunted, short-lived, swiftly replacing each
 other, plucked, so to say, before maturity. [79] And,
 indeed, experience shows to the intelligent observer with what swiftness
 and grip the capitalist mode of production, dating, historically speaking,
 only from yesterday, has seized the vital power of the people by the very
 root — shows how the degeneration of the industrial population is only
 retarded by the constant absorption of primitive and physically uncorrupted
 elements from the country — shows how even the country labourers, in spite
 of fresh air and the principle of natural selection, that works so powerfully
 amongst them, and only permits the survival of the strongest, are already
 beginning to die off. [80] Capital that has such good
 reasons for denying the sufferings of the legions of workers that surround
 it, is in practice moved as much and as little by the sight of the coming
 degradation and final depopulation of the human race, p257as by
 the probable fall of the earth into the sun. In every stockjobbing swindle
 every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every
 one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after he himself
 has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety. Après
 moi le déluge! [After me, the flood] is the watchword of every capitalist and of every
 capitalist nation. Hence Capital is reckless of the health or length of
 life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society. [81]
 To the out-cry as to the physical and mental degradation, the premature
 death, the torture of over-work, it answers: Ought these to trouble us
 since they increase our profits? But looking at things as a whole, all
 this does not, indeed, depend on the good or ill will of the individual
 capitalist. Free competition brings out the inherent laws of capitalist
 production, in the shape of external coercive laws having power over every
 individual capitalist. [82]