Capital a critique of Political Economy Volume I book One: The Process of Production of Capital

[Added in the 4th German edition — The “hopelessly bewildering tangle of contradictory enactments” (S. 314) (present volume, p. 284) which English legislation called into life by means of the mutually conflicting Factory Acts, the Factory Acts Extension Act and the Workshops’ Act, finally became intolerable, and thus all legislative enactments on this subject were codified in the Factory and Workshop Act of 1878. Of course no detailed critique of this English industrial code now in effect can be presented here. The following remarks will have to suffice. The Act comprises:

1) Textile Mills. Here everything remains about as it was: children more than 10 years of age may work 5½ hours a day; or 6 hours and Saturday off; young persons and women, 10 hours on 5 days, and at most 6½ on Saturday.

2) Non-Textile Factories. Here the regulations are brought closer than before to those of No. 1, but there are still several exceptions which favour the capitalists and which in certain cases may be expanded by special permission of the Home Secretary.

3) Workshops, defined approximately as in the former Act; as for the children, young workers and women employed there, the workshops are about on a par with the non-textile factories, but again conditions are easier in details.

4) Workshops in which no children or young workers are employed, but only persons of both sexes above the age of 18; this category enjoy still easier conditions.

5) Domestic Workshops, where only members of the family are employed, in the family dwelling: still more elastic regulations and simultaneously the restriction that the inspector may, without special permission of the ministry or a court, enter only rooms not used also for dwelling purposes; and lastly unrestricted freedom for straw-plaiting and lace and glove-making by members of the family. With all its defects this Act, together with the Swiss Federal Factory Law of March 23, 1877, is still by far the best piece of legislation in this field. A comparison of it with the said Swiss federal law is of particular interest because it clearly demonstrates the merits and demerits of the two legislative methods — the English, “historical” method, which intervenes when occasion requires, and the continental method, which is built up on the traditions of the French Revolution and generalises more. Unfortunately, due to insufficient inspection personnel, the English code is still largely a dead letter with regard to its application to workshops. — F. E.]

2⁴⁵ “You divide the people into two hostile camps of clownish boors and emasculated dwarfs. Good heavens! a nation divided into agricultural and commercial interests, calling itself sane; nay, styling itself enlightened and civilised, not only in spite of, but in consequence of this monstrous and unnatural division.” (David Urquhart, l.c., p. 119.) This passage shows, at one and the same time, the strength and the weakness of that kind of criticism which knows how to judge and condemn the present, but not how to comprehend it.

2⁴⁶ See Liebig: “Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie,” 7. Auflage, 1862, and especially the “Einleitung in die Naturgesetze des Feldbaus,” in the 1st Volume. To have developed from the point of view of natural science, the negative, i.e., destructive side of modern agriculture, is one of Liebig’s immortal merits. His summary, too, of the history of agriculture, although not free from gross errors, contains flashes of light. It is, however, to be regretted that he ventures on such haphazard assertions as the following: “By greater pulverising and more frequent ploughing, the circulation of air in the interior of porous soil is aided, and the surface exposed to the action of the atmosphere is increased and renewed; but it is easily seen that the increased yield of the land cannot be proportional to the labour spent on that land, but increases in a much smaller proportion. This law,” adds Liebig, “was first enunciated by John Stuart Mill in his ‘Principles of Pol. Econ.,’ Vol. 1, p. 17, as follows: ‘That the produce of land increases, caeteris paribus, in a diminishing ratio to the increase of the labourers employed’ (Mill here introduces in an erroneous form the law enunciated by Ricardo’s school, for since the ‘decrease of the labourers employed,’ kept even pace in England with the advance of agriculture, the law discovered in, and applied to, England, could have no application to that country, at all events), ‘is the universal law of agricultural industry.’ This is very remarkable, since Mill was ignorant of the reason for this law.” (Liebig, l.c., Bd. I., p. 143 and Note.) Apart from Liebig’s wrong interpretation of the word “labour,” by which word he understands something quite different from what Political Economy does, it is, in any case, “very remarkable” that he should make Mr. John Stuart Mill the first propounder of a theory which was first published by James Anderson in A. Smith’s days, and was repeated in various works down to the beginning of the 19th century; a theory which Malthus, that master in plagiarism (the whole of his population theory is a shameless plagiarism), appropriated to himself in 1815; which West developed at the same time as, and independently of, Anderson; which in the year 1817 was connected by Ricardo with the general theory of value, then made the round of the world as Ricardo’s theory, and in 1820 was vulgarised by James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill; and which, finally, was reproduced by John Stuart Mill and others, as a dogma already quite commonplace, and known to every schoolboy. It cannot be denied that John Stuart Mill owes his, at all events, “remarkable” authority almost entirely to such quid-pro-quos.

1 “The very existence of the master-capitalists, as a distinct class, is dependent on the productiveness of industry.” (Ramsay, l.c., p. 206.) “If each man’s labour were but enough to produce his own food, there could be no property.” (Ravenstone, l.c. p. 14, 15.)

2 According to a recent calculation, there are yet at least 4,000,000 cannibals in those parts of the earth which have already been explored.

3 “Among the wild Indians in America, almost everything is the labourer’s, 99 parts of a hundred are to be put upon the account of labour. In England, perhaps, the labourer has not 2/3.” (The Advantages of the East India Trade, &c., p. 73.)

4 Diodorus, l.c., l. I., c. 80.

5 “The first (natural wealth) as it is most noble and advantageous, so doth it make the people careless, proud, and given to all excesses; whereas the second enforceth vigilancy, literature, arts and policy.” (England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade. Or the Balance of our Foreign Trade is the Rule of our Treasure. Written by Thomas Mun of London, merchant, and now published for the common good by his son John Mun. London, 1669, p. 181, 182.) “Nor can I conceive a greater curse upon a body of people, than to be thrown upon a spot of land, where the productions for subsistence and food were, in great measure, spontaneous, and the climate required or admitted little care for raiment and covering... there may be an extreme on the other side. A soil incapable of produce by labour is quite as bad as a soil that produces plentifully without any labour.” (An Inquiry into the Present High Price of Provisions. Lond. 1767, p. 10.)

6 The necessity for predicting the rise and fall of the Nile created Egyptian astronomy, and with it the dominion of the priests, as directors of agriculture. “Le solstice est le moment de l’année ou commence la crue du Nil, et celui que les Egyptiens ont du observer avec le plus d’attention.... C’était cette année tropique qu’il leur importait de marquer pour se diriger dans leurs opérations agricoles. Ils durent donc chercher dans le ciel un signe apparent de son retour.” [The solstice is the moment of the year when the Nile begins to rise, and it is the moment the Egyptians have had to watch for with the greatest attention ... It was the evolution of the tropical year which they had to establish firmly so as to conduct their agricultural operations in accordance with it. They therefore had to search the heavens for a visible sign of the solstice’s return.] (Cuvier: Discours sur les révolutions du globe, ed. Hoefer, Paris, 1863, p. 141.)

7 One of the material bases of the power of the state over the small disconnected producing organisms in India, was the regulation of the water supply. The Mahometan rulers of India understood this better than their English successors. It is enough to recall to mind the famine of 1866, which cost the lives of more than a million Hindus in the district of Orissa, in the Bengal presidency.

8 “There are no two countries which furnish an equal number of the necessaries of life in equal plenty, and with the same quantity of labour. Men’s wants increase or diminish with the severity or temperateness of the climate they live in; consequently, the proportion of trade which the inhabitants of different countries are obliged to carry on through necessity cannot be the same, nor is it practicable to ascertain the degree of variation farther than by the degrees of Heat and Cold; from whence one may make this general conclusion, that the quantity of labour required for a certain number of people is greatest in cold climates, and least in hot ones; for in the former men not only want more clothes, but the earth more cultivating than in the latter.” (An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest. Lond. 1750. p. 60.) The author of this epoch-making anonymous work is J. Massy. Hume took his theory of interest from it.

9 “Chaque travail doit (this appears also to be part of the droits et devoirs du citoyen [rights and duties of the citizen]) laisser un excédent.” [All labour must leave a surplus] Proudhon.

1⁰ F. Schouw: “Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch,” 2. Ed. Leipz. 1854, p. 148.

1¹ In earlier editions of Capital the quotation from John Stuart Mill, “I assume throughout...of the labourer,” had been given incorrectly, the words “where the labourers and capitalists are separate classes” having been left out. Marx, in a letter dated November 28, 1878, pointed this out to Danielson, the Russian translator of Capital, adding:

“The next two sentences, viz. ‘Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state of things which as yet exists only exceptionally on our earth. But let us finish’ - should be deleted and the following sentence substituted:

“Mr. Mill is good enough to believe that this state of things is not an absolute necessity, even in that economic system in which ‘labourers and capitalists are separate classes.’”

The substance of this note has been taken from the Volksausgabe. The quotation from Mill is from his Principles of Political Economy, Book II, Chap XV, 5.

1² J. St. Mill. Principles of Pol. Econ. Lond. 1868, p. 252-53 passim.

 

1 Note in the 3rd German edition. — The case considered at pages 321-324 is here of course omitted. — F. E.

2 To this third law MacCulloch has made, amongst others, this absurd addition, that a rise in surplus-value, unaccompanied by a fall in the value of labour-power, can occur through the abolition of taxes payable by the capitalist. The abolition of such taxes makes no change whatever in the quantity of surplus-value that the capitalist extorts at first-hand from the labourer. It alters only the proportion in which that surplus-value is divided between himself and third persons. It consequently makes no alteration whatever in the relation between surplus-value and value of labour-power. MacCulloch's exception therefore proves only his misapprehension of the rule, a misfortune that as often happens to him in the vulgarisation of Ricardo, as it does to J. B. Say in the vulgarisation of Adam Smith.

3 “When an alteration takes place in the productiveness of industry, and that either more or less is produced by a given quantity of labour and capital, the proportion of wages may obviously vary, whilst the quantity, which that proportion represents, remains the same, or the quantity may vary, whilst the proportion remains the same.” (“Outlines of Political Economy, &c.,” p. 67.)

4 “All things being equal, the English manufacturer can turn out a considerably larger amount of work in a given time than a foreign manufacturer, so much as to counterbalance the difference of the working days, between 60 hours a week here, and 72 or 80 elsewhere.” (Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1855, p. 65.) The most infallible means for reducing this qualitative difference between the English and Continental working hour would be a law shortening quantitatively the length of the working day in Continental factories.

5 “There are compensating circumstances ... which the working of the Ten Hours' Act has brought to light.” (“Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct. 1848,” p. 7.)

6 “The amount of labour which a man had undergone in the course of 24 hours might be approximately arrived at by an examination of the chemical changes which had taken place in his body, changed forms in matter indicating the anterior exercise of dynamic force.” (Grove: “On the Correlation of Physical Forces.”)

7 “Corn and labour rarely march quite abreast; but there is an obvious limit, beyond which they cannot be separated. With regard to the unusual exertions made by the labouring classes in periods of dearness, which produce the fall of wages noticed in the evidence” (namely, before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, 1814-15), “they are most meritorious in the individuals, and certainly favour the growth of capital. But no man of humanity could wish to see them constant and unremitted. They are most admirable as a temporary relief; but if they were constantly in action, effects of a similar kind would result from them, as from the population of a country being pushed to the very extreme limits of its food.” (Malthus: “Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent,” Lond., 1815, p. 48, note.) All honour to Malthus that he lays stress on the lengthening of the hours of labour, a fact to which he elsewhere in his pamphlet draws attention, while Ricardo and others, in face of the most notorious facts, make invariability in the length of the working day the groundwork of all their investigations. But the conservative interests, which Malthus served, prevented him from seeing that an unlimited prolongation of the working day, combined with an extraordinary development of machinery, and the exploitation of women and children, must inevitably have made a great portion of the working-class “supernumerary,” particularly whenever the war should have ceased, and the monopoly of England in the markets of the world should have come to an end. It was, of course, far more convenient, and much more in conformity with the interests of the ruling classes, whom Malthus adored like a true priest, to explain this “over-population” by the eternal laws of Nature, rather than by the historical laws of capitalist production.

8 “A principal cause of the increase of capital, during the war, proceeded from the greater exertions, and perhaps the greater privations of the labouring classes, the most numerous in every society. More women and children were compelled by necessitous circumstances, to enter upon laborious occupations, and former workmen were, from the same cause, obliged to devote a greater portion of their time to increase production.” (Essays on Pol. Econ., in which are illustrated the principal causes of the present national distress. Lond., 1830, p. 248.)

1 Thus, e.g., in “Dritter Brief an v. Kirchmann von Rodbertus. Widerlegung der Ricardo’schen Lehre von der Grundrente und Begrundung einer neuen Rententheorie.” Berlin, 1851. I shall return to this letter later on; in spite of its erroneous theory of rent, it sees through the nature of capitalist production.

NOTE ADDED IN THE 3RD GERMAN EDITION: It may be seen from this how favorably Marx judged his predecessors, whenever he found in them real progress, or new and sound ideas. The subsequent publications of Robertus’ letters to Rud. Meyer has shown that the above acknowledgement by Marx wants restricting to some extent. In those letters this passage occurs:

“Capital must be rescued not only from labor, but from itself, and that will be best effected, by treating the acts of the industrial capitalist as economic and political functions, that have been delegated to him with his capital, and by treating his profit as a form of salary, because we still know no other social organisation. But salaries may be regulated, and may also be reduced if they take too much from wages. The irruption of Marx into Society, as I may call his book, must be warded off.... Altogether, Marx’s book is not so much an investigation into capital, as a polemic against the present form of capital, a form which he confounds with the concept itself of capital.”
("Briefe, &c., von Dr. Robertus-Jagetzow, herausgg. von Dr. Rud. Meyer,” Berlin, 1881, I, Bd. P.111, 46. Brief von Rodbertus.) To such ideological commonplaces did the bold attack by Robertus in his “social letters” finally dwindle down. — F. E.

2 That part of the product which merely replaces the constant capital advanced is of course left out in this calculation. Mr. L. de Lavergne, a blind admirer of England, is inclined to estimate the share of the capitalist too low, rather than too high.

3 All well-developed forms of capitalist production being forms of co-operation, nothing is, of course, easier, than to make abstraction from their antagonistic character, and to transform them by a word into some form of free association, as is done by A. de Laborde in “De l’Esprit d’Association dans tous les intérêts de la communauté". Paris 1818. H. Carey, the Yankee, occasionally performs this conjuring trick with like success, even with the relations resulting from slavery.

4 Although the Physiocrats could not penetrate the mystery of surplus-value, yet this much was clear to them, viz., that it is “une richesse indépendante et disponible qu’il (the possessor) n’a point achetée et qu’il vend.” [a wealth which is independent and disposable, which he ... has not bought and which he sells] (Turgot: “Réflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses,” p.11.)

1 “Mr.Ricardo ingeniously enough avoids a difficulty which, on a first view, threatens to encumber his doctrine — that value depends on the quantity of labour employed in production. If this principle is rigidly adhered to, it follows that the value of labour depends on the quantity of labour employed in producing it — which is evidently absurd. By a dexterous turn, therefore, Mr. Ricardo makes the value of labour depend on the quantity of labour required to produce wages; or, to give him the benefit of his own language, he maintains, that the value of labour is to be estimated by the quantity of labour required to produce wages; by which he means the quantity of labour required to produce the money or commodities given to the labourer. This is similar to saying, that the value of cloth is estimated, not by the quantity of labour bestowed on its production, but by the quantity of labour bestowed on the production of the silver, for which the cloth is exchanged.” — “A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, &c., of Value,” pp. 50, 51.

2 “If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first produced in order to exchange, and then brought to market where it must exchange with other commodities according to the respective quantities of each which there may be in the market at the time; labour is created the moment it is brought to market; nay, it is brought to market before it is created.” — “Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes,” &c., pp. 75, 76.

3 “Treating labour as a commodity, and capital, the produce of labour, as another, then, if the values of these two commodities were regulated by equal quantities of labour, a given amount of labour would ... exchange for that quantity of capital which had been produced by the same amount of labour; antecedent labour would ... exchange for the same amount as present labour. But the value of labour in relation to other commodities ... is determined not by equal quantities of labour.” — E. G. Wakefield in his edition of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” Vol. I., London, 1836, p. 231, note.

4 “There has to be a new agreement” (a new edition of the social contract!) “that whenever there is an exchange of work done for work to be done, the latter” (the capitalist) “is to receive a higher value than the former” (the worker). — Simonde (de Sismondi), “De la Richesse Commerciale,” Geneva, 1803, Vol I, p. 37.

5 “Labour the exclusive standard of value ... the creator of all wealth, no commodity.” Thomas Hodgskin, “Popul. Polit. Econ.,” p. 186.

6 On the other hand, the attempt to explain such expressions as merely poetic license only shows the impotence of the analysis. Hence, in answer to Proudhon’s phrase; “Labour is called value, not as being a commodity itself, but in view of the values supposed to be potentially embodied in it. The value of labour is a figurative expression,” &c. I have remarked: “In labour, commodity, which is a frightful reality, he (Proudhon) sees nothing but a grammatical ellipsis. The whole of existing society, then, based upon labour commodity, is henceforth based upon a poetic license, on a figurative expression. Does society desire to eliminate all the inconveniences which trouble it, it has only to eliminate all the ill-sounding terms. Let it change the language, and for that it has only to address itself to the Academy and ask it for a new edition of its dictionary.” (Karl Marx, “Misère de la Philosophie,” pp. 34, 35.) It is naturally still more convenient to understand by value nothing at all. Then one can without difficulty subsume everything under this category. Thus, e.g., J. B. Say: “What is value?” Answer: “That which a thing is worth"; and what is “price"? Answer: “The value of a thing expressed in money.” And why has agriculture a value? Answer: “Because one sets a price on it.” Therefore value is what a thing is worth, and the land has its “value,” because its value is “expressed in money.” This is, anyhow, a very simple way of explaining the why and the wherefore of things.

7 Cf. “Zur Kritik &c.,” p. 40, where I state that, in the portion of that work that deals with Capital, this problem will be solved: “How does production, on the basis of exchange-value determined simply by labour-time, lead to the result that the exchange-value of labour is less than the exchange-value of its product?”

8 The “Morning Star,” a London Free-trade organ, naif to silliness, protested again and again during the American Civil War, with all the moral indignation of which man is capable, that the Negro in the “Confederate States” worked absolutely for nothing. It should have compared the daily cost of such a Negro with that of the free workman in the East-end of London.