4) Reconversion of Surplus Value into Capital

• • 1) Transformation of Money into Capital
  • 2) Absolute Surplus Value
  • 3) Relative Surplus Value
  • 3) Relative Surplus Value (continued)
  • 3) Relative Surplus Value (end)
  • 4) Reconversion of Surplus Value into Capital
  • Capital and Profit
  • Miscellanea
  • Mercantile Capital

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a) RECONVERSION OF SURPLUS VALUE INTO CAPITAL

The first result of the capitalist production process—of the absorption of unpaid labour or surplus labour by capital in this process—is that the product contains a higher value than the capital contained before its entry into the process. We shall assume that the product is sold, converted back into money. The closer investigation of this process belongs to the section which follows, on the process of circulation. For the present investigation this is presupposed. If the capital was=5,000, the constant capital=4,000, and the variable capital= 1,000, and if the rate of surplus value amounted to 100%, the product would now = 6,000 (presupposing that the whole of the capital had entered into the valorisation process). If the original value of the capital advanced was 5,000, the value is now 5,000+1,000=6,000. And if we presuppose that it has been reconverted into money, £5,000 represents the capital which has been replaced and preserved, and £1,000 the surplus value which has been turned into gold. The £5,000 has proved itself as capital precisely by preserving and increasing itself as self-valorising value; not only is the £5,000 there again, over and above this it has, unlike itself as the original capital, posited a surplus value of £1,000.

The capitalist—who is not just capital—will consume a part of this surplus value, i.e. he will expend it as means of circulation, so as to convert it into means of subsistence for his own use, and it is a matter of complete indifference whether he also buys “services” on top of the commodities, i.e. whether he buys labour which he needs for the satisfaction of needs of whatever kind, but which is bought for the sake of its use value, not as an element positing exchange value.

Here we shall leave out of account the part of the surplus value which the capitalist expends in this way for the satisfaction of his needs. All that needs to be noted is that in this way the capitalist can expend a certain sum of money or amount of value every year without any resulting reduction in the size of his capital. What he expends here is a part of the surplus value he has appropriated— the objectified unpaid labour—and it does not affect the capital itself. The money is an evanescent form here. The surplus value is represented by a surplus product, a surplus of commodities, which the capitalist can consume entirely or in part without touching his own capital; without being prevented from perpetuating the same sum of £5,000 as capital, i.e. preserving it, and making it produce a surplus value, through another exchange with labour.

The capitalist alone is the active representative of capital. As such, his purpose is not enjoyment, not use value, but the increasing of exchange value. Like the hoarder, he represents the absolute drive for self-enrichment, and any definite limit to his capital is a barrier which must be overcome. We shall see later on that in addition the constant magnification of capital, not merely its preservation, is a necessity for capitalist production—a condition for it.

For the point we are considering here we can entirely make abstraction from the part of the surplus value that is consumed by the capitalist. We are only concerned with the part that enters anew into capitalist production.

If the capital was originally=£5,000, and the surplus value= 1,000, hence the total value=6,000, the £5,000 have been converted into capital by positing a surplus value, distinct from the original sum, of £1,000, through the exchange of the variable capital with labour. If the £1,000 were entirely consumed, the capital entering anew into production would be as before £5,000. But the capital itself would not have been increased. The £5,000 would [XXII-1354] have become capital by positing, by producing, a surplus value of £1,000, and by repetition of this process it could constantly preserve itself as capital, as the same capital; but for this capital to be able to enter into the production process as a larger capital, hence—at a given level of production—to create a still larger surplus value, a new process must take place in addition. The surplus value itself (disregarding the part that is consumed) must again be converted into capital.

How, then, is the surplus value converted into capital? The conditions of this process will be examined in more detail in the next section. Here we shall only establish the purely formal aspect.

The surplus value is not distinguished in any way from the original capital in so far as it is considered from the material point of view. It is the same product; one part of it replaces the original capital, and another part represents surplus product, surplus value, surplus labour. The difference between the two parts is not material, but consists in the fact alone that one part represents an equivalent for paid—objectified and living—labour, the other for unpaid labour. If the product is e.g. twist or corn, and if the surplus value = 1/3 of the product, this 1/3 can be represented just as well in corn or twist as the other 2/3, which replaces the capital. And similarly, once the product has been converted into money (whether actual money or tokens of value) there exists absolutely no difference of form between the part of the money that represents the capital and the part that represents the surplus value. If the value of the capital was 100 and the value of the product is 150, 100 thalers represent the capital and 50 the surplus value, but the one is composed of thalers just as much as the other. The surplus product exists in the same manner as the part of the product that replaces the capital, originally in the shape of the commodity that has been produced, then, once the sale has taken place, in the form of money. (If money functions as means of payment, both can exist in the form of a title to a debt.)

Hence for the surplus value to be converted into capital no other conditions whatever are required except those that were originally required for a given value, hence money, to be converted into capital or to produce a surplus value. In order to convert the surplus value into capital, its owner must find available the conditions he needs to exchange it for labour capacity, i.e. he must find on the commodity market on the one hand the objective conditions of labour—the raw materials, the means of labour, etc.—in short the objective conditions of labour available as purchaseable commodities, and on the other hand the subjective condition of labour, purchaseable labour capacities. If, e.g., the capitalist is a cotton spinner, he must find for his surplus value of £1,000 additional cotton available on the market, additional machinery (unless labour time is prolonged or intensified), etc., and additional spinners. If the working day can neither be increased in intensity nor extended, the number of spinners alone must be increased. If the population does not grow sufficiently for this, the conversion is impossible. On the other hand, the same would apply if he found no additional cotton available, at least in this branch. Similarly if additional machinery is required. However, in cotton spinning, for example, it may be sufficient to extend the machinery and increase the raw material, without any need for new workers. In agriculture new workers alone are necessary, and instruments [too], not more raw materials (seed), etc. But all this does not concern us here. We are not concerned with the conditions which make it possible to convert surplus VALUE into capital, or to convert an additional value into capital, to convert a greater amount of value into capital, i.e. to exchange it for labour capacity and the conditions for the latter’s exploitation. We assume, as with the original conversion of money into capital, that they are available on the market.

With this presupposition, then, the capitalist will now exchange, apart from the old amount of value, the sum of money which=the surplus value, for the conditions of labour (material of labour, means of labour) and for labour capacity itself. And the relations within which this occurs are given by the technological conditions, i.e. the ratio in which the additional money is exchanged for the different elements of production. [XXII-1355] If the surplus value were not big enough to buy the different elements—in their given ratio to each other—it could not be converted into capital (in this sphere). It would be possible, for example, for the surplus value to be big enough to employ 10 new workers, but not big enough to buy the material they require, etc. Or, for the employment of a number of new workers to require an increase in the size of the enterprise as a whole, for which the surplus value was insufficient. Thus if this conversion of surplus value into capital may meet a barrier in the available population, it may equally meet a barrier in its own size and the technological conditions of the employment of more capital. This capitalist would then be unable in his own sphere to reconvert the surplus value into capital. On the other hand, the capitalist might perhaps e.g. improve the machinery alone, add new parts, etc., to make it more effective, without being obliged to employ more labour than before. Or he might in agriculture buy more cattle without needing to employ more workers, etc. Or he might replace his old steam engine with A MORE POWERFUL ONE. In this case relative surplus value might as a result be increased, because the workers would become more productive without any increase in the quantity of labour. The way this would be expressed initially in the case of a single capital would be that the individual value of its commodity would stand below its social value, and therefore the value of labour capacity would thus be reduced relatively for that capitalist.

All these cases and possibilities should be considered under the real reproduction process. For the capitalist to convert surplus value into capital he must be just as able to exchange it for more labour as he could the original capital, hence set in motion AN ADDITIONAL QUANTITY OF LABOUR, whether by squeezing out a greater quantity of labour from the old workers through the payment of an increased wage, or by employing an ADDITIONAL NUMBER OF WORKMEN. And this is the presupposition from which, as a FACT, we must proceed in considering the conversion of surplus value into capital. The special circumstances and modifications which enter here are to be considered later.

It is assumed, therefore, that surplus value is converted into capital in the same manner as money was originally converted into value that posits surplus value. One part of the surplus value is converted into constant capital, the other into variable; i.e. one part buys commodities which figure in the production process as material and instrument, another part buys labour capacity. It is only this latter part which posits surplus value, in exactly the same way as previously, namely by the fact that it is exchanged for more living labour than the amount of objectified labour it contains. The difference between this and the earlier process is that all the elements of the capital now consist of unpaid labour, and the original formation of surplus value, i.e. the appropriation of alien labour without equivalent, appears as a means by which it appropriates more surplus value, appropriates more alien labour without equivalent. This original process of enrichment appears as the means and condition of this kind of enrichment on an increased scale.

In the first process, by which money is converted into capital, hence in the first process of capital formation, the capital advanced appears as itself independent of the labour capacities for which it is exchanged. It is the surplus value alone which consists of unpaid labour. In this process, the capitalist’s money was exchanged partly for the means of labour, for equivalents, partly for labour capacities, which were bought at their value. And thus both parts of the money, the constant and the variable, only represented commodities which were exchanged for equivalent commodities, and both of which existed independently of the workers, as the property of the [XXII-1356] capitalist, who laid out his money in this form. This original sum of money, which was converted into capital, was present independently of the worker, like all the other commodities in the possession of their owners, and in exactly the same way as his own commodity, labour capacity, independendy confronted these conditions of its realisation. It was the surplus value alone which represented alien unpaid labour appropriated by the capitalist.

Now, in this second process, capital itself, the money that is converted into capital anew, appears as objectified alien unpaid labour which serves as a means of appropriating more surplus labour. The money with which the capitalist now buys the objective conditions of labour, the means of labour and material of labour, represents surplus value alone, is only surplus value converted into money.

Whether the capitalist exchanges the surplus value—in so far as it has been converted into variable capital—as capital with the same workers or with additional new workers makes no difference at all to the relation. It does not alter the situation at all. The money with which he buys the new conditions of labour, just like the money with which he buys the new labour capacities, represents unpaid labour which he has appropriated in the exchange with the old labour capacities, and which he now makes into the means of purchasing more labour, hence more surplus labour. If we consider the whole of the capitalist class on one side—i.e. capital—and the working class on the other side—i.e. the worker as a collective person—the product of the worker’s own unpaid labour confronts him now as capital, as the objective power over his labour, as alien wealth, of which he can only re-appropriate a part, by buying back this part with more labour than is present within it, and thus valorising it afresh as capital.

Let us assume that the capital was originally=£5,000, and the surplus value=£l,000. If the capitalist consumes £500 a year and if he converts 500 into capital every year, in 10 years he will have eaten up £5,000, i.e. his original capital; but he now finds himself in possession of a capital of £10,000. And the amount of surplus value he has appropriated in 10 years=£10,000. His total capital therefore now in fact represents nothing other than surplus value converted into capital, i.e. objectified unpaid alien labour, which, in proportion as its amount grows, continuously appropriates growing amounts of alien labour afresh. If the capitalist were to consume only £200 a year, the only resulting change would be that he would expend his original capital in 25 years, and then his capital of £25,000 would represent nothing but surplus value. Thus every capital must after a certain time represent nothing but surplus value. If a worker saves £1,000 and himself becomes a capitalist, making £200 of surplus value every year, of which he consumes 100, in 10 years the surplus value he has saved=£1,000, i.e. = his total capital. The notion that he consumes the surplus value, and not his original capital, instead retaining the latter, naturally does not change in any way the fact that the amount of capital he possesses at the end of the 10 years=the amount of the surplus value he has appropriated, and the amount he has consumed=the amount of his original capital. The expression all political economists are so fond of, that all existing capital is to be viewed as interest and interest on interest, means nothing more than that it is capitalised surplus value, surplus value converted into capital, and that all capital ultimately appears to be a mere form of existence of surplus value. This particular form of surplus value—interest—this name, does not change the situation at all. And here, where we are considering surplus value in general, it is not of course necessary to examine this particular form, the form in which the political economists express capital as a mere form of existence of surplus value, i.e. of unpaid alien labour.

[XXII-1357] The conversion of surplus value into capital is definitely not distinct from the original conversion of money into capital. The conditions are the same, namely: that a definite amount of value (hence value expressed independently, money, whether this functions as money of account or actual money is irrelevant), a sum of money, is converted into capital through the exchange with the conditions of labour and labour capacity. The distinction does not lie in the process itself—for it is the identical process, the conversion of money into capital. The distinction lies in this alone, that the money which is converted into capital in this second process of capital formation represents nothing but surplus value, i.e. surplu s labour , i.e. objectified unpaid alien labour. This conversion of surplus value into capital is called the accumulation of capital.

So far we have noted two points:

1) The whole of the value of the capital into which the surplus value has been reconverted consists of unpaid, alien labour, consists precisely of the surplus labour which was appropriated in the capitalist production process.

2) The value of each capital must represent mere capitalised surplus value after a certain period of time, since after a certain number of years the original amount of value of the capital has been consumed by the capitalist. Here the value alone is to be considered. Therefore the fact that the capitalist imagines that he only consumes a part of the surplus value every year, retaining his capital in contrast, makes no difference here. It does not change in any way the fact that the amount of value of each capital, after a certain number of years,=the accumulated surplus value which has been reconverted into capital, and not an atom of the value of the old capital exists any more.

This second process of capital formation is rightly regarded as so essential and characteristic of capital that capital is depicted, unlike other forms of wealth, as * “wealth saved from revenue (profit) with a view to, etc.”* (See R.Jones, etc.)

Originally, therefore, the labour capacities, or the workers, were confronted with the objective conditions of labour, i.e. objectified labour, in the form of conditions of production (the material of labour and the means of labour) and means of subsistence, as alien commodities in the possession of the keepers of commodities, who are converted into capitalists precisely through the fact that they confront living labour as the personified existence of objectified labour. But now, with this second process of capital formation, the workers are faced with their own labour, objectified in conditions of production and means of subsistence which are capital, i.e. alien property, which confronts labour as a means for the exploitation of labour.

When considering the capitalist production process we saw that 1) absolute surplus value can only be increased at a given stage of the development of production, i.e. at a given level of the productive forces, either by increasing the intensity of labour or extending the working day, or, presupposing both of these as given, by increasing the number of workers employed ; in all of which cases the magnitude of the capital laid out must grow; and that 2) relative surplus value can only be increased through the development of the productive power of labour, through cooperation, division of labour, employment of machinery, etc.; all these things again presuppose a growth in the magnitude of the capital laid out. The magnitude of the capital laid out is increased through the reconversion of surplus value into capital, or, what is the same thing, the accumulation of capital, [XXI1-1358] since now the capital is formed of the original amount of value plus the surplus value (namely the part of the latter which is reconverted into capital), or the product which represents the original capital plus the surplus product; the surplus value as such is no longer distinct from the capital but is instead added to it as additional capital. Or the formation of surplus value now presents itself as an increase in the magnitude of the capital which enters into the production process. This therefore fulfils the condition that both the quantity of labour employed should be increased and the productive power of the labour should be increased. The objective conditions under which labour develops its social powers of production to a heightened degree [are thereby given]. Production on an increased scale therefore takes place, as regards both the quantity of labour employed and the development of the means of production, of the conditions of production, under which this labour presents itself socially. If, therefore, the capitalist mode of production on the one hand increases the conditions for the creation of surplus value for surplus labour, on the other hand, inversely, the reconversion of surplus value into capital, or the accumulation of capital, is a condition for the development of the capitalist mode of production, of the scale of production, of the growing amount of labour which is exploited, and of the material conditions for the development of the productive powers of social labour.

We saw at the same time how the capitalist mode of production continuously produces a relative surplus POPULATION, i.e. it sets free, renders disposable a definite number of labour capacities, ejects them from the different spheres of production as superfluous labour power. Capitalist accumulation, therefore, is not conditioned by the purely natural progress of POPULATION; it produces a larger or smaller quantity of disposable labour capacities for the already available new capital and the capital which is constantly being formed ; these labour capacities can be re-absorbed either by the extension of the old branches of production or by the formation of new branches, depending on whether the additional capital into which the surplus value has been reconverted is used in one way or the other.

If the original capital was=£6,000, and the surplus value is=£1,000, there is no distinction between them, in terms of substance, before they are reconverted into money, for both exist as parts of the same product, in the same commodity form; just as little is there any distinction once they have been converted into money. The conversion of the £1,000 into capital is therefore not at all different from the point of view of its conditions from the conversion of the original £6,000 into capital. The only distinction is that in the £1,000 the workers are now confronted with their own unpaid labour or the product of their own unpaid labour as capital. This is No. 1.

The £6,000 has been converted into capital through producing £1,000 as surplus value, as its valorisation, which differs from its original amount of value. Through the reconversion of the £1,000 into capital this formal antithesis ceases to exist. A capital of £7,000 is now available instead of one of £6,000; i.e. a capital which has grown by 1/6. Or both amounts function as two capitals, one of them as a capital of 6,000. the other as a capital of 1,000. This does not alter the fact that the total capital has increased by 1/6. It merely expresses the fact that the additional 1/6 functions as capital in another sphere of production, or is employed by another capitalist in the same sphere of production. But the one common characteristic remains: what was surplus value as distinct from capital now itself becomes capital, and proves itself to be such by producing surplus value for its part. The surplus value has been converted into additional capital.

The capital has therefore produced capital, by no means merely a commodity, or the capital-relation creates the capital-relation on an increased scale.

[XXII-1359] This increase of capital, i.e. of the amount of wealth produced, which confronts labour as capital, has the following results:

1) the capitalist mode of production is extended over spheres of production which were previously not subjected to capitalist production; i.e. capital increasingly seizes control of the totality of spheres of production;

2) it forms new spheres of production, i.e. it produces new use values and employs new branches of labour;

3) in so far as additional capital is employed in the same sphere of production by the same capitalist, partly to convert the formal subsumption of [labour under] capital into a real subsumption, partly to extend the scale of production, to develop the specifically capitalist mode of production, hence to work with a greater capital, a greater combination of the conditions of labour and the division of labour, etc., this accumulation presents itself as concentration; since a single capital commands more workers and more of the means of production, social wealth appears united in a single hand in greater quantities;

4) in every sphere of production, this formation of capital proceeds at different points on the surface of society. It is different, mutually independent commodity or money owners who first convert this money into capital through the exchange with labour capacity, and then convert the surplus value back into capital or accumulate capital. A formation of different capitals therefore takes place, or there is an increase in the number of capitalists and independent capitals. Accumulation, as opposed to the concentration of capital or its attraction, presents itself as the repulsion of capitals from each other. The relation between these two opposed forms should not be developed here; it should rather be considered under the competition of capitals. This much is clear. All accumulation of capital is concentration of the means of production in a single hand. But at the same time the concentration of many capitals stands opposed to this fragmentation of capitals as a special process.

In considering the production of absolute surplus value, we saw this:

The value of the constant capital, i.e. of the material of labour and the means of labour, is simply preserved in the labour process; it appears again in the product, not because the worker performs a special kind of labour to preserve this value, but because these conditions of production as such are employed by the living workers. By the fact that the worker adds new labour to objectified labour, and more labour than is contained in his wages, he at the same time preserves the value of the constant capital, of the labour already objectified in the conditions of production. The value of the constant capital he preserves therefore stands in no relation at all to the quantity of labour he adds; it depends instead on the magnitude and therefore the extent of the value of the constant capital with which he works. The more productive his labour becomes, the greater e.g. the quantity of raw material treated by a given number of workers, the greater accordingly is the value of the part of the constant capital he preserves, or the part that re-appears in the product. On the other hand, this greater productivity of his labour is conditioned by the extent and therefore the amount of value of the communal means of production and conditions of production which support his labour, the machinery, draught animals, buildings, fertiliser. Drainage and irrigation canals, etc. This part of the constant capital—objectified labour—enters into the labour process in its entire extent as means of production and means for raising the productivity of labour, whereas it enters into the valorisation process only partially and by stages, over a lengthy period, hence does not raise the value of the individual product in the same degree as it does the amount of products, i.e. [XXII-1360] the productivity of labour. And in the same degree as the capitalist mode of production develops, there develops the difference between the amount of constant capital, i.e. of means of labour and conditions of labour, which enters into the labour process, and the part of the value of the constant capital which enters into the valorisation process. The whole of the value of the constant capital—in so far as it consists of means of production—which does not enter into the valorisation process, whereas it does enter into the labour process, hence in its totality increases the productive power of labour, whereas only an aliquot part of it re-appears as value in the product and therefore raises the price of the product, thus performs exactly the same free services as the forces of nature, such as water, wind, etc., forces of nature which are not the product of human labour, and therefore have no exchange value, enter into the labour process without entering into the valorisation process. A machine, e.g., which serves for 15 years, its value therefore only entering into the annual product to an extent of 1/15, functions in the labour process not as.1/15 but as 15/15. The 14/15 cost nothing. Thus the employment on a larger scale of past labour, or labour objectified in the means of production, increases the productivity of living labour. On the other hand, the amount of value which thus enters gradually into the product grows absolutely, although it does not grow at the same time to the same degree as this component of the value of the constant capital increases. It grows absolutely with the extent of the means of production employed. Labour thus preserves this greater part of the value, makes it re-appear in the product, in the same process by which it adds surplus value (and adds value altogether). Apart from this, it should be remarked that the labour process preserves not only the value which re-appears in the product, hence the part of the value of the constant capital which enters into the product, but also the value which does not enter into the valorisation process, but only into the labour process. We are not speaking here of the particular labour which is necessary for the cleaning of machines, buildings, etc. This falls under repair work, and is different from labour itself, which makes use of the machine. The cleaning of a spinning machine is a different kind of labour from spinning itself. In the latter case what is involved is only the preservation of the spinning machine through the fact that spinning is done with it, the fact that it functions as a spinning machine. The labour process itself preserves its use value as a machine and thereby also its exchange value. This conserving (value conserving) quality of labour, which should be regarded as a natural power of labour, itself costing no labour—i.e. in the given case no further, special labour in addition to the labour of spinning is required to preserve the machine— emerges doubly in times of crisis, i.e. in circumstances in which the machine does not function as a machine, in which the use value of its activity is suspended. Negatively, through the machine’s deterioration. Positively, because at such times a certain number of hours are worked merely to keep the machine functioning. //All this should be considered when dealing with the labour process and the valorisation process. // In the case of the soil, if we regard the land as an agricultural machine—and in the process it is nothing more than this, in the material that is worked on, the seed, the animals, etc.—the labour process not only preserves the exchange value given to it by the work done on it previously, but it also raises its use value, improves the machine itself (see Anderson and Carey ), while the cessation of the labour process produces a dépérissement of its use value and of the exchange value which falls to its share as the physical existence of objectified labour. (The relevant passages are to be cited further below.)

Thus the matter can be presented from two sides:

1) a) As we showed in dealing with capitalist production, the productivity of labour develops with the employment, of the means of production—of the objective conditions of labour—on a larger scale; it develops along with the extent of the latter.

But the accumulation of capital, i.e. the reconversion of surplus value into capital, expands, increases the extent of, the objectified means with which living labour functions.

[XXII-1361] ß) The amount of past labour which enters into the labour process without entering into the valorisation process, hence the unrecompensed function of past labour in the production process, increases with the development of the capitalist mode of production, a development which is itself conditioned by the accumulation of capital. These two points are related to the increase of constant capital, the accumulation of which is posited with the accumulation of capital, or, in other words, they are related to the progressive conversion of a part of the surplus value into constant capital. The increase of surplus value as such is limited to the part of surplus value which is converted into variable capital, just as surplus value in general arises from variable capital.

The overall amount of PRODUCE, hence surplus PRODUCE as well, grows with the productivity of labour, even if surplus value remains constant; hence it grows with the productivity of labour. If. necessary labour finds expression in a larger product, this is also true of surplus labour, which is after all not materially different.

2) The two above-mentioned points show how the capitalist mode of production, and therefore the productivity of labour, develops through the entry of objectified labour into the production process to a greater, growing extent; at the same time, as demonstrated previously, this brings about a growth in surplus value. On the other hand, the capitalist mode of production appears as the form of production in which, unlike all earlier forms, objectified labour can enter into the production process to an increasing extent.

Living labour reproduces the variable part of capital, irrespective of the surplus value, and therefore the surplus PRODUCE, it adds. This relation must be determined in more detail below.

What has to be noted here first of all is this:

The portion of the constant part of the capital which enters into the valorisation process—hence the whole of the raw material, all the matières instrumentales, whether they figure as matières instrumentales for the preparation of the raw material, or as accessory materials for the machinery, or the overall requirements of the workshop, such as heating, lighting, etc.—lastly all of the part of the means of production which is used up during the labour process—re-appears in the product through its contact with living labour. In addition to this the part of the value of the means of production which does not enter into the product is preserved.

This re-appearance is expressed doubly: the value of the total product is raised to the amount of this re-appearing part of the value. Secondly: a growing part of the increased quantity of products represents an equivalent for the growing amount of constant capital.

Irrespective, therefore, of the surplus value or the SURPLUS PRODUCE in which it is expressed, we can say that the greater the amount of objectified labour set in motion by a given quantity of living labour //the greater the objectified wealth which serves for reproduction//—the more abundantly the conditions of labour are available—the greater is the value of the total product (and the quantity of products in which this value is expressed) reproduced by the same amount of labour; although, if we presuppose the (extensive and intensive) magnitude of the working day as given, the same amount of labour only adds the same value to the product, hence e.g. a million workers working 12 hours a day add the same value independently of the level of productivity of their labour and the amount of the objective conditions of labour corresponding to this level of labour, or the extent of the material conditions of production corresponding to particular levels of the productivity of labour. The quantity of products depends of course on the level of productivity of labour. But this level of productivity is expressed in, and depends on, the extent of the material conditions [XXII-1362] presupposed when the labour is functioning.

Although under the presupposition mentioned the same amount of labour only adds the same value to the constant capital (necessary labour+surplus labour, and quite independently of the ratio in which the total working day is divided into these two parts), the value of the product (total product) created by the same amount of labour varies a great deal according to the amount of the value of the constant capital which is set in motion by the same amount of living labour. For the value of this product is determined by the total amount of labour contained in it, hence the sum of the objectified+the added living labour. And although the latter has remained the same according to the presupposition, the former has grown with the development of the extent and richness of the conditions of production. And the amount of the value of the constant capital which is preserved by the living labour does not depend on the quantity of living labour but on 2 circumstances, namely 1) the amount of the value of the constant capital which it sets in motion, an amount which grows as the volume of the constant capital grows (even if not in the same proportion, on account of the growing productivity of labour); and 2), the part of that amount of value which enters into the total product. (We should be able to dispense entirely with the 2nd condition if we assumed an epoch of production in which that amount of value entirely entered into the product.) With the growing amount of the value of the constant capital set in motion by it, the same labour therefore reproduces greater amounts of value of objectified labour, which re-appear in the product, greater amounts of value of the total product. However, the progressive conversion of surplus value into capital or the accumulation of capital—in so far as this is at the same time a progressive concentration of quantities of capital in the hands of individual capitalists, the development of the specifically capitalist mode of production—increases the amount of the value of constant capital which is set in motion by the same quantity of labour.

Ricardo is therefore wrong to say that 1 million human beings (under the restrictions mentioned earlier, but not made by him) always produce e.g. every year the same value, independently of the level of the productivity of labour. A million working with machinery, animals, fertiliser, buildings, canals, railways, etc., reproduce an incomparably higher value than 1 million whose living labour takes place without the assistance of this mass of objectified labour. And indeed for the simple reason that they reproduce an incomparably greater amount of objectified labour in the product, a reproduction which is independent of the amount of labour newly added.

Let us take e.g. an English worker who spins in a cotton factory. He spins more [than] 200 Indian or Chinese spinners, who work with distaff and spinning-wheel. And say he spins Indian cotton. One has to assume that the length and the average intensity of the working day are the same—for with comparisons between the working days of different nations modifications of the general law of value arise which we are leaving out of account here as irrelevant.

In this case it would be correct to say that 200 English workers do not create, add, any more value than 200 Indian. Nevertheless, the products of their labour would be very different in value, we mean the total product. Not just that the English spinner converts 200 times as much cotton into yarn as the Indian in the same time, hence creates 200 times as much use value in the same time, hence that his labour is 200 times more productive.

[XXII-1363] 1) The product of the English spinner’s working day contains 200 times as much cotton, hence a value 200 times greater than that of the Indian spinner. 2) Admittedly, the quantity of spindles with which the English spinner spins does not contain more value in the same proportion as they exceed in number the one spindle set in motion by the Indian spinner, and the speed with which the English spinner’s spindles wear out is not greater in the same proportion as the amount of their value is greater, for the one spindle is made of wood and the others are made of iron. Even so, an incomparably greater part of the value of the incomparably more valuable instrument of labour enters into the daily product of the English spinner than into that of the Indian. An incomparably greater amount of value is therefore preserved and in this sense reproduced in the Englishman’s daily product than in the Indian’s. It is precisely for this reason that the part of the product which=the value of the constant capital (in so far as it has entered into the mass of products) can be exchanged again for an amount of machinery and raw materials which is 200 times greater than in the case of the Indian. He starts the new production or reproduction with an infinitely greater wealth of the objective conditions, because his labour started out from an incomparably greater amount of the conditions of production, incomparably more already objectified labour serves it as basis and point of departure and is preserved by the newly added labour. This is true of the product. But there is the additional factor that the use value, and therefore the value, of the instrument of labour preserved by the labour of the Englishman, without entering into the valorisation process, is disproportionately greater than that of the Indian's instrument, for through his labour the latter preserves only the value of his distaff, in so far it does not enter into the valorisation process. And the amount of this objective, past labour, past labour which as machinery, etc., cooperates in the Englishman's labour process for free (free namely for all those components of the machinery which do not enter into the valorisation process), is in turn the condition by which his daily product not only creates afresh an incomparably greater use value, but preserves, and therefore reproduces in the product, incomparably more value. Thus living labour preserves greater amounts of value, which exist as past labour, are objectified, the greater the amount of value of the past labour already is, past labour which enters in part as means of labour, in part as material of labour, into the labour process, whereas on the other hand the greater amount of exchange value and use value, of commodities it reproduces in this way, is in turn the condition and the presupposition of a richer reproduction. Under these conditions the amount of surplus value simultaneously rises. This is in part because the amount of variable capital rises, hence the number of workers employed, in part because the productivity of the workers rises, hence the rate of surplus value, and in part because with the productivity of labour there is a rise in the quantity of use values, the surplus PRODUCE in which the same surplus value is expressed. For all these reasons a large part of the surplus value can be reconverted back into capital, and this could occur even if the rate of surplus value remained unchanged; more capital can therefore be accumulated, and the objective conditions under which the work takes place, the means of labour and material of labour— objectified, past labour—can be extended, hence production on a larger scale can be repeated, quite apart from the fact that this extension and greater scale of the conditions of labour is itself in turn a means of raising the productivity of labour. (An example from the agriculture of Quesnay, exploitation riche et pauvre should also be quoted here.) The greater the amount of objective wealth living labour works with, the greater the extent to which past labour enters into the living labour process as an element of reproduction, the greater therefore is not only the quantity of use values, but also the amount of their exchange value, and the greater is the INCREMENT of production which enters or can enter during reproduction.

It is the wealth expressing the past labour which enters into the production process, that conditions the magnitude of the wealth created by living labour; even disregarding the growing surplus value [XXII-1364] newly added by living labour.

Although the quantity of product of the working day of the Englishman is so much more valuable than that of the Indian, because it reproduces a much greater amount of wealth, i.e. preserves it in the product and as the part of the means of labour which does not enter into the product, the individual product, the individual commodity, is much cheaper. For the Indian adds to perhaps 1 lb. of cotton as much labour time as the Englishman adds to 200 lbs. The Englishman therefore adds only 1/200 of a working day to a lb., where the Indian adds a whole working day. If a greater depreciation of machinery is reproduced in the Englishman’s daily product, this value is spread over 200 lbs, whereas the depreciation of the Indian’s distaff enters in its entirety into 1 lb.

//The whole of the portion of the product which replaces capital can admittedly be resolved into variable capital, i.e. wages, and constant capital, both of which re-enter into the production process, and cannot therefore enter into the consumption of the capitalist, if the mode of production is to be continued on the same scale, and with other circumstances remaining the same. This is even disregarding the fact that this growing amount of the reproduced conditions of production, the growing amount of capital, is the means which permits the exploitation of a growing amount of labour and growing production by the same amount of labour, in addition to which the use values in which the SURPLUS PRODUCE is expressed are increased and differentiated, multiplied. This circumstance, that living labour reproduces more capital in proportion to the increase in the basis of past labour on which it stands, i.e. that it produces more past labour in the form of means of production, is by no means irrelevant for the individual capitalist. The individual capitalist is a commodity owner; the whole capitalist class of course cannot sell its own capital, but the individual capitalist can and does, once he withdraws from business, and he can then expend the growing amount of value of his capital as wealth, if he wishes. For the individual capitalist, therefore, leaving aside surplus value, it is not a matter of indifference that his capital grows alongside surplus value.//

Quesnay, and following him his school, the Physiocrats, quite correctly call this growing weight with which past labour enters as an element into the living labour process richesses d’exploitation. The greater these richesses d’exploitation, the extent of the value and use value of the past labour from which living labour proceeds as its presupposition, the greater the richesses d’exploitation it reproduces as its result, and the easier it is to extend the scale on which living labour can start the labour process afresh under ever richer objective conditions. The accumulation of capital can be resolved into the extension of the scale on which production can be repeated, into the growing wealth of the conditions, of the objective wealth, of the forces and means of production which have already been produced and which serve as living labour’s inorganic body. But these richesses d’exploitation are not only such in Quesnay’s sense, namely riches which serve as means of exploitation in agriculture, etc. They are at the same time richesses of exploitation of living labour, the growing extent of the means for its exploitation and the growing power of past labour over living. The fact that the development of the objective conditions of labour appears as a growing power of these objective conditions for and over living labour, instead of as a growing power of labour, is naturally alien to the production process as such. But it is characteristic of the capitalist production process, in which the objectified conditions of labour confront labour in alienated and independent form, as powers in their own right. On the other hand, it is within the capitalist mode of production that past labour first develops to this extent.

[XXII-1365] //Therefore, even if the law were correct, which as we shall see later on is incorrect, when it is expressed as a permanent law, namely, that as a result of the declining natural productivity of the kinds of land which enter the sphere of production the products of the land serving as major food sources, and a part of the raw materials, become dearer //no one has yet asserted that e.g. cotton has become dearer in the same degree as the cotton industry has developed, or silk; the opposite is the case//, this would not prove that they cost more labour, although they have a higher value and although value is exclusively determined by the quantity of labour which is contained in a commodity. Let us take England, for example. The proportion of workers directly employed in agriculture has fallen since the 11th century from 9 /10 to at least 1/5, hence 2/10, and the number of workers as compared with the product continues to fall every day. Hence in so far as the number of workers directly employed in agriculture is concerned, it has,fallen constantly and is still falling constantly. In 8 centuries it has fallen by at least 7/10. Therefore, in so far as the labour of the agricultural workers comes into consideration, the value of the total product of agriculture has necessarily fallen by 7/10; hence the value of a single item of the product, e.g. of 1 qr of wheat, has also fallen. And the relation between the England of the 19th century and that of the 11th century is the same as the present relation between England and other countries, e.g. Russia. Hence if the value of English corn rose continuously, this would only be possible because more objectified labour, and indeed labour of other spheres of production, had entered into it. It is asserted of these other spheres of production that the labour in them has become more unproductive, or that the same quantity of use value contains more labour and therefore more exchange value. Precisely the reverse. Nevertheless, if the value of the same quantity of corn, of e.g. a quarter, has risen, the quantity of labour contained in it must have increased. The quantity of living agricultural labour contained in it has not increased; hence the quantity of objectified labour coming to it from other spheres must have increased; within this there may also be a quantity of objectified labour which is itself a product of agriculture, such as e.g. cattle. More machinery is necessary, for example, more drainage canals, etc. A greater part of value for machinery, etc., therefore enters into a qr of corn. But the value which is present in the machinery does not consist only of the labour the machine costs, but also of the past labour which is reproduced, contained, in it as a product; and this part of the value which is contained in it does not depend for its reproduction—presupposing that there is no change in the development of the forces of production—on living labour, but on the amount of past labour which enters into the production of a machine and is preserved in it. Similarly with the cattle. If more past labour exists in this form, a greater value component enters into the product for it, although the quantity of living labour remains the same. The value of the means of production which enter into agriculture can therefore increase without any increase in the living labour necessary for agricultural production, because this living labour reproduces more value in the product, without any contribution on its part, than if it had worked with poorer conditions of production. Thus the value of the individual commodity [XXII-1366] of a single, particular sphere of production could increase, hence e.g. a quarter of corn could be dearer in England than in poorer countries—entirely disregarding differences in the value of gold and silver in poorer and richer countries, which are not to be considered here—even though in fact the quarter of wheat was produced more cheaply in England than in countries where it is cheaper—cheaper, in so far as living labour comes into consideration. One cannot draw from this the ridiculous conclusion that all commodities may be dearer in one country, although they are produced more cheaply. For the entry of past labour into the labour process in general on a larger scale is only possible at all — the replacement of past labour by a larger part of the total product is only possible—because living labour has become more productive, hence a larger part of the product can go into production instead of going into consumption. If, e.g., with the increase in the machinery, a corresponding, equally increased part of its value entered into the individual commodity, a simple transposition of living labour would take place. More labour would be necessary to produce the machine in the same degree as less labour was necessary to employ the machine. A greater part of the value of the machinery would be used up to the same extent as more machinery was employed, and it would therefore have to be reproduced. Exactly as many more machine workers would be needed as e.g. fewer spinners. What would be won on one hand would be lost on the other. Machine labour would therefore be unable to drive out hand labour, as both would produce equally dearly. There would therefore be produced neither more use values nor more surplus value, surplus PRODUCE, and it would be impossible for more capital to enter the production process in the form of past labour instead of being laid out as variable capital, i.e in wages; or it would only enter the process in this form because more living labour was employed in this sphere of machine production. However, if in industry proper the productivity of labour grows, hence the quantity of the products of labour which can be converted into means of labour also grows, owing e.g. to a concentration of workers and the implements of labour—a concentration of the latter which also appears physically in machinery—and therefore there is a growth in the objective wealth with which the same quantity of living labour begins the reproduction process, hence also a growth in the value of the total product, although the price and value of the individual commodity falls, all this does not hinder the possibility of employing more objectified labour, hence not only use value but also exchange value, in a particular sphere to produce the same product. In all these spheres the reproduction of the same exchange value costs less, because the same quantity of living labour preserves more objectified labour. More objectified labour can therefore enter into this one sphere in order to replace the declining natural productivity of the land; and the product can therefore become dearer because, although it contains less living labour, it contains more objectified labour than that decline in living labour amounts to, hence it contains more labour altogether, without the nation’s actually having worked more on that account in order to reproduce the same product. The product of agriculture may therefore become dearer, although it in fact costs less labour than in places where it is cheaper, for the greater quantity of objectified labour which enters into it costs the nation in fact nothing, because it is on the one hand reproduced by the same quantity of living labour, and on the other hand the amount of use values is so much increased that a greater part of them can replace this constant capital.//

//That a richer nation can expend more for a particular product, without becoming impoverished, than a poorer nation, is shown among other things by the increasing price of unproductive labour, such as singing, ballet-dancing, etc.//

[XXII-1367] //I shall take up the development again later, but here I want to insert an earlier presentation of the subject, the appropriate passages of which can be retained.

The surplus value is itself posited once more as capital, as objectified labour entering into the process of exchange with living labour and therefore dividing itself into a constant part—the objective conditions of labour, material and instrument—and the subjective conditions for the existence of labour—for the existence of living labour capacity, the worker’s means of subsistence, the variable part of capital.

In the first appearance of capital, these presuppositions themselves appeared outwardly to emerge from circulation, to be given in it; as external presuppositions of the origin of capital, of the conversion of money into capital. These external presuppositions now appear as moments of the movement of capital itself, as results of its own production process, so that it itself presupposes them as its own moments and conditions.

Objectified surplus labour in its totality, hence the surplus product in its totality, now appears as surplus capital—surplus capital, as compared with the original capital, before it has realised itself as capital; i.e. as exchange value become independent, and confronting living labour capacity as its specific use value. All the moments which confronted living labour capacity as alien, external [powers], consuming and using it under certain conditions independent of it, are now posited as its own product and result.

Firstly: Surplus value or surplus product is nothing but a certain sum of unpaid labour—the sum of surplus labour. This new value, which confronts living labour as value independent of it, is the product of labour, which the capitalist has appropriated for himself without giving an equivalent. It is nothing but the objectified surplus quantity of labour over the quantity of necessary labour.

Secondly: The particular forms which this value must adopt to be valorised anew, i.e. to be posited as capital—on the one hand as raw material and instrument, on the other hand as means of subsistence for the workers—are exactly for this reason merely particular forms of surplus labour itself. //(This should actually be considered when dealing with the reproduction process. What the individual capital has produced is a particular commodity, one part of the value of which is now admittedly employed for the purchase of new raw material, another part for the material of labour, etc., but in natura this particular capital does not produce its own conditions of reproduction but only their value. If we consider the whole of the surplus PRODUCE of the total capital, this consists of the material of labour, the means of labour, and the means of subsistence. Hence not only is surplus value reproduced, but also the material forms in which this surplus value can function anew as capital. Here, where the simple form of accumulation is being considered (where in fact it is still being considered formally, for it can only be considered concretely together with the process of circulation and reproduction), what has to be stressed first of all is that in the surplus value the capitalist has the part of the value with which he can buy new material and instrument. Originally the matter appears like this: The capitalist buys instrument and material and labour with his money. In this act of purchase he does nothing but what is done by every purchaser when he converts his money into commodities; the difference lies only in the fact that he’ buys commodities which are consumed productively, instead of buying commodities for his own individual consumption. This isitself a great gain, for which he is duly grateful. But now the situation changes. He in fact makes his purchases with the worker’s money, since this money represents nothing but unpaid alien labour, appropriated without an equivalent. If the worker himself could appropriate his own surplus labour, he would himself be able to sell his surplus PRODUCE, and convert a part of it into means of labour and material of labour. Then these would not confront him as capital. They would present themselves as a greater wealth of his own [XXII-1368] conditions of labour, instead of as the surplus capital of the capitalist.)//

Originally it appeared alien to the worker himself, accomplished without his participation, rather as an act of capital, or a circumstance dependent on the accidental size of the capitalist’s wealth, that instrument or means of labour were available to an extent which made it possible for living labour to realise itself not only as necessary labour but as surplus labour as well. But now the means of surplus production, which allow the absorption of surplus labour, are themselves merely the converted form of SURPLUS LABOUR or SURPLUS VALUE.

Thirdly: The independent being-for-itself of value in the form of money (as value) or materially in the form of productive capital, means of production, which also includes means of subsistence— hence its being as capital — the separateness of the conditions of labour vis-à-vis living labour capacity, which goes so far that these conditions confront the person of the worker in the person of the capitalist—as a personification with its own will and interest—this absolute divorce, separation of property, i.e. of objective wealth, from living labour capacity—that they confront it as alien property, as the reality of another juridical person, as the absolute realm of his will; and that on the other hand, therefore, labour appears as alien labour vis-à-vis the value personified in the capitalist, or vis-à-vis the conditions of labour—this absolute separation between property and labour, between value and value-creating activity—-hence also the fact that the content of labour is alien to the worker himself—this separation now appears as the product of labour itself, as the objectification of its own moments. For through, or in, the act of production itself—which only confirms the exchange between capital and living labour that preceded it—the total result of labour (of both necessary and surplus labour) is posited as capital. Labour capacity has appropriated only the means of subsistence necessary for its reproduction, i.e. for its reproduction as mere labour capacity separated from the conditions of its realisation, and it has posited these conditions themselves as objects, values, which confront it in an alien, commanding personification. It emerges from the process not only no richer but actually poorer than it entered into it. For not only has it created the conditions of living labour as capital; but the valorisation inherent in it as a potentiality, the value-creating potentiality, now also exists as surplus value, surplus product,surplus capital; as value endowed with its own power and will confronting it in its abstract, objectless, purely subjective poverty. Not only has it produced alien wealth and its own poverty, but also the relationship of this wealth as self-sufficient wealth to itself as poverty, which this wealth consumes to draw new life and spirit to itself and to valorise itself anew.

All this arose from the exchange in which the worker exchanged his living labour capacity for an amount of objectified labour, except that now this objectification—these conditions for his being which exist outside him—appear as his own product, as posited by him himself, both as his own objectification and as the objectification of himself as a power independent of himself, indeed dominating him, dominating him through his own actions.

All the moments of surplus capital are the product of alien labour—alien surplus labour converted into capital. It no longer seems here, as it still did when we first considered the production process, as if capital, for its part, brought with it some sort of value from circulation. The objective conditions of labour now appear rather as labour’s product—both in so far as they are value in general, and as use values for production. But if capital thus appears as the product of labour, the product ôf labour for its part appears as capital—objectified labour as dominion, command, over living labour. Labour thus appears to be active in the production process in such a way that it simultaneously rejects its realisation in objective conditions as an alien reality, and therefore posits itself as an insubstantial, merely necessitous labour capacity in face of this reality alienated from it, a reality not belonging to it but to others; that it posits its own reality not as a being-for-itself but as a mere being for something else, and hence also as a mere other-being or as the being of something else confronting it.

[XXII-1369] This process of the realisation of labour is at the same time the process of its de-realisation. It posits itself objectively, but it posits its objectivity as its own non-being, or as the being of its non-being—the being of capital. It returns back into itself as the mere potentiality of positing value or of valorisation, because the totality of real wealth, the world of real values, and equally the real conditions for its own realisation, are posited as independent existences facing it. It is the potentialities resting in living labour’s own womb which come to exist as realities outside it as a result of the production process—but as realities alien to it, which constitute wealth in opposition to it.// //(The continuation of this extract follows immediately below.)//

The whole of the surplus capital= the part of the surplus value which has been reconverted into capital, but it is not entirely exchanged for living labour; what is exchanged is rather only the part which is converted into variable capital. The other part is exchanged for objectified labour in forms of the latter which enter into constant capital as its elements. The details of how this happens are only to be considered later in connection with the circulation process. Just as money was converted into capital by being exchanged for productive labour, the same thing takes place with the surplus capital, which is absolutely nothing but money or commodities converted into capital. But just as, in the case of the original conversion, the money, in order to be exchanged for productive labour, had at the same time to be exchanged for that labour’s objective conditions of production, the same is true of the surplus capital. The statement that the conversion of surplus value into capital=the exchange of surplus value for productive labour misleads (even the most notable political economists) to the incorrect notion that this surplus capital is only exchanged for living labour or is only converted into variable capital. The reverse is the case. As this capital formation progresses, an ever greater part of the surplus capital is exchanged for additional past labour, the conditions of labour, and an ever smaller part is exchanged for living labour. Or an ever smaller part, relatively speaking, of the surplus product is reproduced in means of subsistence for the workers, and an ever larger part in means of labour and material of labour. The variable capital is so to speak converted into the worker’s flesh and blood, into the living material of labour, the constant capital into the objective conditions of that labour. As capital formation progresses, the ratio between constant and variable capital changes. For the capitalist mode of production extends in part to cover new branches of labour not as yet subjected to it (therefore changing the above ratio in those branches); it creates new branches of labour, which are exploited from the outset in the capitalist manner; finally, it develops and extends previous modes of production by extending the capital outlay, the scale of production in them. In all these cases there is a change in the ratio between variable and constant capital, the ratio between the two components through which capital dirempts and reproduces itself. Capital of the same magnitude—in so far as its magnitude reaches the minimum required for the capitalist mode of production, for industrial operation — can be divided into an absolutely larger constant part and an absolutely smaller variable part. If the magnitude of the total capital varies with the capital formation which grows out of the formation of surplus capital, if it increases, there is under all circumstances a relative fall in the variable part of the capital, even though it has increased absolutely. More labour is set in motion by the increased capital, but less labour as compared with the magnitude of the capital.

The magnitude of the variable capital can only increase pari passu with the magnitude of the total capital in so far as the mode of production remains unchanged, in so far as no CHANGE takes place in the development of the productive forces. If, e.g., the surplus capital is large enough to set up a second factory alongside the first one, and productivity remains the same, the capital which is now twice as large will employ twice as much labour as did previously the capital which was half as large. A greater part of the surplus capital can only be converted into variable capital, i.e. more labour can be employed in proportion to the capital laid out, if it is invested in branches of production which require [XXII-1370] more living labour in proportion to objectified labour. This may be the case in a particular sphere. The one compared with the other.

But for the development of capitalist production, which is bound up with the increasing extent of the amount of capital as its material basis, there are changes in the mode of production, in the productivity of labour, and therefore in the technological proportion in which particular amounts of the objective means of labour require a particular quantity of living labour in order to set them in motion. We saw this when considering the capitalist mode of production. The extension of the scale [of production] permits the extension of cooperation, the division of labour, machinery, and other material means of aiding production, and with this a rising productivity of labour is posited. The same labour treats a greater amount of raw material, sets in motion a greater amount of the means of labour, reproduces a greater amount of constant capital in the product, and utilises a greater part of the means of labour not entering into the valorisation process.

The growing productivity of labour, which is developed with the growing extent of capital, hence with the reconversion of surplus value into capital, with the formation of surplus capital, is expressed precisely in, or is identical with, a change in the ratio between constant and variable capital, and the same amount of labour sets in motion more constant capital, or even a smaller amount of labour sets in motion the same or more constant capital; [the growing productivity of labour] is therefore expressed in the fact that the part of the total capital which is converted into variable capital constantly declines in proportion to the part which is converted into constant capital. The quantity of labour employed grows with the growth of the total capital, but in an ever-declining proportion to the growth of the total capital. The variable part of the surplus capital could continuously absorb the whole SURPLUS POPULATION, and yet the relative magnitude of the additional variable capital might still fall constantly, in relation to the total capital. And in the same proportion as capital grows, through the growth of surplus capital and the addition of surplus capital to surplus capital, there develops, excluding short intervals of extension [of production] while the productivity of labour remains the same, with the advance in the productivity of labour which accompanies that growth, a relative and absolute increase in constant capital as compared with variable. In the course of development, therefore, and as a result of accumulation, an ever smaller proportion of the surplus capital is converted into variable capital, or into means of subsistence which are exchanged with living labour. This development is merely identical with the fact that the rise in the scale of production results in a decline in the relative amount of living labour needed to convert a growing quantity of the means of production into the product. If, e.g., the ratio of constant capital [to variable] is as 3:1, 1/3 of the surplus capital will be converted into variable capital, while if it=5:1, 1/5 will be converted, and if it is as 10:1, 1/10 will be converted and this ratio changes with accumulation from 3:1, 4:1 into 5:1, 10:1, The surplus capital changes the ratio for the total capital; it not only changes it for itself, but also for the original capital of which it is the offshoot. For it is precisely through the addition of the surplus capital to the original capital that the objective conditions of the labour process make it possible to raise the productivity of labour, and therefore to reduce the ratio of variable to constant capital. The greater the wealth of the conditions with which the work is being done, the greater the proportion between the part of the total product which is reproduced as constant capital, and the part which is reproduced as variable capital. The same division takes place in surplus capital where production remains the same: a still greater predominance of constant over variable capital. [XXII-1371] Thus the variable capital, i.e. the part of the capital laid out in wages, increases with the accumulation of capital, for this is the sole means of producing absolute surplus value, but it declines relatively, or it increases in a constantly falling ratio as compared with the growth of the total capital and indeed the increasing conversion of unpaid labour into capital, i.e. accumulation of means and necessary producers, is [the cause] of this declining ratio, which not only shows itself in the division of the surplus capital, but reacts back upon the total capital.

All accumulation is the means of greater accumulation, hence the means for the exploitation of more living labour, but at the same time it is the means of employing less living labour in proportion to the total capital.

Hence if a surplus POPULATION is employed and absorbed by the surplus capital, this process of the assimilation or absorption of living labour by objectified labour is, as we saw in considering capitalist production, created and accompanied—with improvements in machinery, etc., and the application of the capitalist mode of production where it did not previously exist—by a continuous expulsion of workers, a releasing of workers, a rendering of them available, with the result that the increasing number of workers attracted by capital is created by an increasing mass of expelled, released workers; a circumstance through which accumulation itself holds in reserve and continuously produces an available surplus POPULATION—living material for a still greater accumulation of capital—over and above the natural increase of the population.

It certainly must not be imagined that the amount of variable capital is identical with the increasing amount of the means of subsistence which, with the development of the amount of capital and the productivity of labour, can be converted into variable capital, i.e. can be exchanged for living labour; nor should one adopt the fantastic notion that a certain part of the product must be converted into variable capital owing to the nature of its use value, or that variable capital has any kind of necessary relation to the amount of the means of subsistence (or the materials for the means of subsistence) which can enter as means of consumption into the reproduction of labour capacity.

Reproduction.

Reproduction in its narrower sense will be developed in the next section. For the present, only the following point needs to be made: Production, considered as a continuously self-renewing act, or considered in the context of its constant renewal, is reproduction. The production process as a whole is always a reproduction process (in so far as new branches of labour are not being set up, and where it cannot be said at the STARTING point of these that the same product is being reproduced). In the total product there is reproduced 1) the constant capital, 2) the variable capital, and finally, 3) it contains a new component—the SURPLUS PRODUCE, which represents the surplus value. The part of the constant capital that does not enter into the valorisation process can be left out of account here. The closer examination of this belongs to the following section. All 3 of these constituents contained in the product exist in the same material shape. It is the same mass of products, the same commodity, each part of which corresponds to the three parts described above. The original value is what is reproduced first, and the surplus value is newly produced. The part that represents surplus value may enter into consumption (although not completely, as will be seen later). To begin with, let us consider the first two [XXII-1372] parts. If production is to be begun again on the same scale, the parts of the product which represent variable capital and constant capital must be reconverted into the use value form they possessed originally. (All this would be better placed in the next section.) In reproduction the starting point is the product; in the simple production process the particular product must first come into existence, or what is reproduced obtains in the product a form it previously did not possess, whereas in reproduction the form is constantly repeated. In reproduction the presuppositions of production themselves appear as its past results and the result of production appears as its presupposition. Every presupposition appears in every reproduction as a result (a positing) and every result appears as a presupposition; the product both as condition and as result of the production process. Seen as a whole, the production process is a constant reproduction process, although, within every particular sphere of production, and for a single capital, 1) its presuppositions may appear as initial conditions, which are the starting point, as with the opening of any new business; and 2) the product may be converted into money without involving any renewal of the production process. Production, conceived in its flux—its truth—always appears as reproduction. Accumulation is nothing but reproduction on an extended scale. If the surplus value were entirely consumed, the scale would remain the same.

The following points are linked with this:

1) Surplus capital is nothing but SURPLUS LABOUR; 2) from the point of view of its value, every original capital, whether accumulated or not, appears after a certain period of time as having arisen from surplus value—hence it disappears as original capital, as independent wealth not derived from the exploitation of alien labour but rather presupposed to it. (Suppose the capital is 100, the surplus value=20. There may or may not be accumulation. If there is not, and the production process is always repeated on the same scale // reproduction 1) implies the constant repetition of the same production process, in so far as its product or the use value that results from it comes into consi ather from the fact that at the same time a part of the value of the product entered as a presupposition into production and emerges from it again as a result, and that the material form which this part of the value possessed in the labour process is restored again through the conversion of the product in that process//, hence the surplus value is consumed, the latter can always [be] expressed in a definite ratio with the capital, just as occurs in the case of profit. E.g. 20:100=1:5. So if this process is repeated 5 times, the surplus value consumed will = the original capital, and, where value is being considered, the situation is not changed at all, whether it is imagined that the surplus value is consumed and the capital preserved, or the value of the capital is consumed and the surplus value accumulated. After 5 years, the value of the capital in the given case=the value of the surplus value grabbed during the 5 years, or, in the value of the capital, the worker is confronted, from the point of view of the value, with no more than the total amount of the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist without equivalent. If the worker had kept his own surplus value for himself and the capitalist had consumed as before an amount equal to that surplus value, the value of the original capital at the end of the 5 years would have been = 0, while the worker would have possessed a value=the original capital. If, however, surplus value is reconverted into capital, let us say in the above case 10%, nothing changes in the calculation except this: the surplus value consumed is now 1/10 of the original capital, instead of being 1/5 as it was previously. The value of the original capital is now consumed in 2x 5 years, in 10 years, instead of in 5 years. But it has been replaced at the same time by a value of 20x 10, i.e. twice the original capital, because the total amount of surplus value capitalised in the 10 years=twice the [XXII-1373] value of the original capital. But the value of the original capital has disappeared, just as happened before, and the value of the whole of the capital is now only equal to the total amount of surplus value accumulated. (If the capital = C, the annual surplus value=y, and if y = C/x (or xy = C, x:C = 1:y) then xy = C. Or if the surplus value c/x. C= xC/x =C Thus if c/x, is the surplus value of one year, the original capital must be replaced by surplus value in x years.) Once more, this fact is not altered in any way whether it is conceived that the value of the original capital has been preserved and half the surplus value has been consumed (over the 10 years), while the other half, which=the original capital, has been accumulated, or that the value of the whole of the capital has been consumed, and on the other hand the whole of the surplus value, = twice the value of the original capital, has been accumulated over the 10 years.) But leaving aside these 2 points, leaving aside accumulation and leaving aside the nature of surplus capital and the ratio between the value of the original capital and the total amount of value of the surplus value that has been consumed, another point, 3), enters the picture:

If we consider the simple reproduction process, the simple repetition of the exchange between the same capital and the same labour capacity, the situation presents itself differently in considering the continuous process, its flux, its constant repetition, in short considering the same process as a reproduction process, from when this process appears as a simple and isolated, a solitary production process. //What converts the production process into a reproduction process—and for this reason the true conception of the production process is to conceive it as a reproduction process—this belongs to the next section—is that the product is reconverted into the elements of its production. I.e. constant capital is again produced in its natural form through the conversion of the product, while another part of the capital, variable capital, is again exchanged for labour capacity. This reconversion of the part of the product which represents capital into the elements of its production is mediated by exchange, and in some branches of industry, e.g. agriculture, it proceeds in a natural form. A part of the product, as seed, manure, cattle, etc., re-enters the same production process as an element.

Within a particular sphere of production—i.e. a sphere which produces a particular commodity, a commodity with a particular use value—reconversion into elements of production of the same material character takes place. The product, in contrast, can be converted from its shape as money into any other elements of production, it can be transferred from one sphere to the other. Then the capital is not reproduced in the same natural form. But this too is reproduction, in so far as the value—which is indeed a product as well—is being considered. Then the form of reproduction changes.// //Rate of profit (average). I showed earlier that if the rate of surplus value=e.g. 50, and we have the following compositions in various spheres of production: C50, V50+S25 (S=surplus value), hence a rate of profit of 25; C90, V10, S5, hence a rate of profit of 5; C80, V20, S10, hence a rate of profit of 10; C20, V80, S40, hence a rate of profit of 40%, the average profit is= 25+5+10+40/4= 80/4=20%. According to this the average rate of profit would be 20%. For a more precise determination it needs to be added that the amount of capital invested in each of the particular spheres also comes into consideration. E.g. if in the above case 2 capitals were invested at 25, 2 at 5, 2 at 10, and 2 at 40%, we would have 8 capitals. Hence 2x80/2x4. The rate of profit would be the same, because the ratio of the total capital to the profit would have remained the same. If the doubling, or indeed any increase at all, of the capital had occurred evenly over every case, the amount of surplus value would have increased in the same proportion; the proportion between the two would therefore have remained the same. However, it is different if we have e.g. 20 capitals of 100 at 5%, 20 at 10, 10 at 25, and 5 at 40. In this case we would have:

would be the same, because the ratio of the total capital to the profit would have remained the same. If the doubling, or indeed any increase at all, of the capital had occurred evenly over every case, the amount of surplus value would have increased in the same proportion; the proportion between the two would therefore have remained the same. However, it is different if we have e.g. 20 capitals of 100 at 5%, 20 at 10, 10 at 25, and 5 at 40. In this case we would have:

	Capital	Surplus Value	Rate of Profit
20x100	=2,000	100
20x100	=2,000	200
10x100	=1,000	250
5x100	=500	200
Hence: Capital,	5,500	750	1314 / 2 2%

[XXII-1374] Thus we see that the average profit is determined 1) by the average of the unequal profit rates of the different spheres of production; and 2) by the proportional division of the total capital among the different spheres of production. Here “different spheres of production” is to be understood to mean the spheres of production as they diverge according to their differing ORGANIC COMPOSITION OF CAPITAL.//

The relation we are referring to is this:

If we consider the simple reproduction process of capital— whether it is reproduced in the same sphere of production or a different one is irrelevant—in the course of the constant repetition of the conversion of variable capital into labour the worker constantly reproduces 1) the variable capital, and 2) the surplus value. What confronts him as variable capital is just as much his own product as the surplus value is. He has reproduced the variable capital and it serves to buy his labour anew. He reproduces it again, and again it buys his labour. It is his labour of yesterday, or of the last six months, which buys and pays for his labour of today or of the next six months. His present labour is bought with his past labour. And if we examine the result, in the product he has reproduced firstly his own future wage, perhaps his present wage (if e.g. the wage is paid weekly and the commodity is sold during the week, the worker thus in fact being paid out of his product converted into money; this does occur, just as much as it occurs that other commodities are only converted into money after a year, hence are only then expressed in a form in which they can function as wages; but the relation is not changed at all by this), and then, equally, the surplus value.

The notion which is very widespread among some political economists (e.g. Ricardo) that the worker and the capitalist share the value of the product—share the product if we take the total product of the total capital, share the value of the product if we take the individual capital—says nothing further. This notion is not an arbitrary one. If we consider the continuous production process, which constantly renews itself, hence if we do not fix on one single production process, the value the worker adds to the means of production forms the fund from which 1) variable capital is renewed, hence wages are paid; 2) surplus value flows, in whatever way it is divided and converted into a consumption fund for the capitalist and an accumulation fund. If the worker is to be continuously employed, this should only be possible in so far as he continuously reproduces the part of the value of the product which serves to pay him, i.e. in so far as he IN FACT constantly reproduces the means of paying for his own labour. And although the relation originally presented itself as the exchange of objectified for living labour, the value of the product not only contains objectified labour but also objectifies living labour. His objectified labour is therefore the fund from which his living labour is paid.

Let us imagine that the worker works with his own means of production, or, and this is the same thing, that he only works with alien means of production as long as is necessary to reproduce his wages (in the latter case the property of the capitalist in the means of production would only be nominal; they would not produce any surplus value for him, and would only serve to reproduce the [worker’s] wages). In that case the fund from which he is paid or which he requires for the reproduction of his labour capacity, the fund of means of subsistence which is the natural condition for the renewal of his labour, would not confront him as capital. This fund would not employ him, he would rather apply the fund, constantly reproducing it, in order to maintain his life as a worker. Therefore the fact that this labour fund confronts him as variable capital—a s a component of capital at all—is merely a specific social form of this fund, a form which has nothing to do with its nature as a labour fund, or with the service it performs for the reproduction of the worker and, therefore, of his product as such. In capitalist production, this labour fund is constantly reproduced as a mass of commodities belonging to the capitalist, which the worker must constantly buy back, and in doing so he gives more labour than is contained in it. But he must constantly buy it back because he constantly reproduces it as capital. If he constantly reproduced it as his own labour fund, it would not confront him as capital. This is therefore only a particular historical form of appearance of his product (or rather of part of his product), which is admittedly very important for the shape of the production process or rather the reproduction process, [XXII-1375] but changes nothing, either in this labour fund, in so far as it is considered as use value, or in its character as the worker’s own product, as the objectification of his own labour.

It is possible for this labour fund not to assume the form of capital, and despite this for the worker constantly to be obliged to provide surplus labour and to hand over a part of the value of his product without equivalent. This applies e.g. to the situation of the peasants on corvée in the Danubian Principalities, which we examined earlier. They do not just reproduce the labour fund itself—this is something all workers do under all forms of society. The labour fund rather assumes the form of capital vis-à-vis them. It appears as not only their product but a product which belongs to them, as the fund for their means of subsistence, which they constantly renew by their labour, but renew for themselves, in order to consume it as their labour fund. The corvée labour they perform for the boyars therefore appears as unpaid labour, while the labour of the wage labourer appears as paid, but it only appears as paid because 1) the labour fund reproduced by the wage labourer constantly passes into the ownership of the capitalist, thus constantly confronts him as variable capital, as alien property, which he must constantly buy back as means of payment from the hands of a third party; 2) the value of his necessary labour, of the part of the labour he does for himself, confronts him as the price for the whole of the working day, necessary+surplus labour, and therefore the whole of the working day appears as paid; 3) his surplus labour therefore does not appear as separated from his necessary labour (separated spatially and temporally). If the worker works 6 hours a day for himself, 6 hours for his capitalist, this is, over 6 days of the week, the same as if he worked 3 days for himself (and during these 3 days used the means of production for himself as his own property) and 3 days for the capitalist, hence worked 3 days for nothing. But since this division does not take place outwardly, he appears to be paid for 6 working days. The corvée worker in Moldavia, on the other hand, works 3 days for himself on his own field, and no one pays him for this; he pays himself; the product of these 3 days of his week’s work is not converted into capital, i.e. it never confronts him as a condition of production in the hands of a third party. He works the other 3 days on the boyar’s estate for nothing. This surplus labour of his appears as what all surplus labour is— unpaidn compulsory labour, provided without an equivalent—but it only appears this way because the product of his necessary labour does not pass into the hands of the boyar, is therefore not given back by the boyar to the corvée peasant in exchange for 6 days [of labour]. If this were the case the whole of his labour would appear as paid, and thus the LABOUR fund he himself produced would confront him as capital. If the boyar were to appropriate the whole of the product of the peasant’s labour, and pay back to him what he needed for his existence, so that he could again 1) buy back, i.e. reproduce, this part, which costs 3 days of labour a week or 6 hours a day, but in addition, 2), work 3 days [a week] or 6 hours a day for nothing, the corvée would have been converted into wage labour, and the labour fund into the specific form of variable capital. On the other hand, in India for example (pre-English India) the RYOT provided a certain part of his product or his surplus labour in the form of rent in natura. But he never alienated his LABOUR fund; it was not for a moment converted into capital; he himself constantly reproduced it for himself. Since capital, if it is to reproduce itself as capital, as self-valorising value, must constantly yield up to labour capacity part of the value of the product=the means of subsistence necessary for labour capacity’s reproduction, and since it must equally constantly appropriate the surplus labour for nothing, just as the boyar or the Mogul does, it is evident that this formal quality of the LABOUR fund of appearing as capital, and in particular as variable capital, is only a particular historical form of appearance of the labour fund, and in and for itself—important as it is for the whole production process and the relation between the worker and the appropriator of surplus labour—it changes nothing in the circumstance that the LABOUR fund [XXII-1376] is nothing but the part of the value of the product or of the product of the worker which he constantly reproduces in order constantly to consume it. All that is different is the way in which he gets into a position to consume it. In the one case it confronts him directly as a product in his possession, and forms a consumption fund which stands directly at his disposal; in the other case this part of the product is first alienated, appears as alien property, as the product of the worker’s labour which has become independent vis-à-vis him, the personification of his past labour, which he can appropriate again and again by buying it back again with more living labour than is contained in it. In the other forms, too, he must constantly buy back this part of the product by renewing his labour, but he does not have to buy it back as a commodity from a third party. If a part of the labour, surplus labour, appears as corvée labour, as unpaid compulsory labour to the corvée worker, or the objectification of surplus labour, the surplus product, appears to the RYOT as a part of his total product which he must hand over without an equivalent, this is so only because in both cases the necessary labour and the product of that necessary labour appear as labour belonging to, and product belonging to, the corvée peasant and the RYOT themselves, and never as labour and product belonging to a third party. With the wage labourer in contrast the whole of his labour appears as paid labour, because no part of his labour appears as belonging to him, and the whole of the product of his labour, even the part that merely forms his own consumption fund, renews his own means of subsistence, constantly presents itself at each moment as a product belonging to the capitalist, as capital. It is only because his necessary labour itself appears as labour alien to him that his total labour appears as paid labour; it is only because the product even of his necessary labour appears as a product which does not belong to him that it can appear as the means of payment for his labour. In order to present itself as means of payment it must pass beforehand into the hands of a third party, and then pass in turn, through purchase and sale, out of his hands and into the hands of the worker. It therefore only appears as means of payment, or the LABOUR fund only appears as capital, because it is directly appropriated, not by the worker, but by the capitalist, because it is first taken, so that it can be given back. This constant divestiture is the condition for its appearance as a fund of means of payment of labour, as capital, instead of as a direct consumption fund.

We have seen, therefore, that:

1) Surplus capital—or capital as surplus capital—consists in all its elements of surplus labour appropriated by the capitalist without an equivalent, and it is the means for the repetition of this appropriation of alien surplus labour;

2) The value of all capital, even where it differs originally from surplus capital, disappears in production as a whole, and is converted simply into capitalised surplus value;

3) Apart from surplus value, variable capital occurs in the production process as a whole as merely a particular historical form of appearance of the LABOUR fund constantly renewed and reproduced by the worker himself for his reproduction.

The political economists express this when they:

1) characterise accumulation as the conversion of income (profit) into capital (this also includes constant capital);

2) characterise the total value of the product //apart from the constant capital// or the product of the worker as the fund from which wages and surplus value are paid, or in which the capitalist and the worker each have a share;

3) conceive variable capital as merely a particular historical form of appearance of the LABOUR fund, as Richard Jones did, who demonstrated how this fund assumes different forms in different epochs.

[XXII-1377] //One of the chief merits of the Physiocrats was their insight into the reproduction process. Thus it is very finely brought out (see Baudeau) that what appear in production as avances appear in reproduction as reprises. Reprises appear in contrast to avances as a direct or mediated (through the circulation process) reconversion of the components of the product from their natural form into elements of production, components of constant capital; the reconversion of the part of the product which=constant capital into raw material, accessory materials and means of labour. As avances on the other hand these presuppositions of the product appear independent of the latter, they appear as derived from circulation. The difference is constantly evident. If a capital is invested in a particular sphere of production, its avances appear as constantly reproduced, as reconverted forms of components of the product. If new capital is productively invested, money is converted into constant and variable capital. For the individual capitalist these are not reprises, but mere avances, although — because this new capital is surplus capital—they are just as much reprises, considered from the point of view of reproduction as a whole.//

//Both the old capital and the surplus capital can be reproduced in an altered natural form. This is possible in a double form. Firstly: The capital (old or surplus capital, original or additional capital) is not reproduced in the shape of the same product as the one of which it originally formed a component, but in the shape of another product, which had already been produced earlier. This is the emigration of capital (ITS TRANSFER) from one sphere of production to another, whether it happens that the distribution merely of the old capital between the different spheres of production is altered, or that the additional capital, the surplus capital, is invested in another sphere of production, already existing previously, instead of the one from which it originates. This is also a metamorphosis of capital, and indeed a very important one, since it underlies the competition between capitals in different spheres of production, hence the formation of the general rate of profit. The most variable part of capital, which can take on the most diverse forms, is variable capital itself, which is exchanged for living labour. For the natural form of this part of capital to alter, nothing else is necessary than that labour capacity should be employed in one manner rather than another. This rests on the CHANGEABILITY of human labour capacity. The simpler the labour—and in all large branches of production the labour is simple—the less specific training is necessary, the easier is this conversion of the form of concrete labour. Furthermore, as far as circulating capital is concerned, its convertibility into any desired form of existing commodity is naturally absolute; this is the character of money. But this convertibility is purely illusory. For money is only a transitory form of circulating capital //taken here in so far as it does not consist of means of subsistence for the worker; hence as the part of the constant capital which does not consist of fixed capital, implements of labour, etc.// and its amount stands in no relation at all to the amount of circulating capital. If e.g. more rye is to be produced rather than more wheat, more money must be converted into rye seed. If the previous rye harvest was precisely sufficient for previous consumption, and no foreign rye was available for purchase, the investment of more capital in rye could only take place if the consumption of rye were reduced by raising the price of rye, thereby setting free part of the rye as seed. As far as the other conditions are concerned, labour would remain the same, so too fixed capital, and there would merely be a different division of the same labour and the same implements between wheat cultivation and rye cultivation. On the other hand, e.g., to change the numbers of twist which are to be spun, etc., would require only a slight modification of the fixed capital. The kind of labour and the material would remain the same. This is in general the case when the dimensions [XXII-1378] of the same branch of production necessitate a change in the total amount of capital employed in it. Hence where the raw material remains the same. It is on the other hand possible for the raw material to change and the fixed capital and the kind of labour to remain the same, or for the latter to change only a little. E.g. when more of one kind of tree or another is felled, when more of one kind of fish or another is caught, when more of one metal or another is extracted from the earth. But where the branch of production is essentially different, a given part of the fixed capital cannot be converted from one form into the other. The buildings may remain the same, but the machinery, etc., is very different, and the same is true of the installations erected on the land. When a CHANGE like this takes place, therefore, the fixed capital may become devalued and worthless. But if it is merely the SURPLUS CAPITAL which changes its employment, the change always amounts to a treatment of the same raw material by different machines, etc. The VARIABILITY OF HUMAN LABOUR always forms the basis of this kind of metamorphosis of capital, whether because a part of the old labour capacities alter their work, or because new labour capacities are predominantly employed, not in the old sphere of production, but in another one.

This metamorphosis of capital concerns merely the real metamorphosis, which takes place in the labour process, the changed form of the raw material, machinery, labour, into which the capital has been reconverted. It has nothing to do with the formal metamorphosis, which consists exclusively in the conversion of commodity capital into money capital, and of money capital into productive capital, in fact in the reconversion of commodity capital, as the commodities which form the elements of the labour process. This second metamorphosis is related purely to the changed natural form (the form of the use values) into which the money is reconverted in the course of its reconversion into capital.

Secondly. Old or additional capital is invested in new branches of production. Either new raw material is needed for this, or the newly discovered use value of an old raw material. E.g. railways. No new material in addition to coal, iron, wood, etc., is required for this purpose. Rubber is a contrasting case. Even with the telegraph, there is merely the employment in a new way of old raw materials. The main variation in the latter case lies only in the method of working.

The more productive the labour, the more possible it is to increase the number of branches of labour; to utilise in a new manner labour which has become superfluous in the old production for its reproduction on the same or an extended scale, whether through a new way of using old raw materials, or through the discovery of, or the extension of trade in, new raw materials. The variety of branches of production grows with the accumulation of capital—hence the differentiation of labour.//

//The use of the excrements of production and consumption extends along with the capitalist branches of production. By excrements of production we mean its waste products, whether those of industry or of agriculture (such as manure, etc.). By excrements of consumption we mean in part the excrements proceeding from the natural reproduction process (faeces, urine, etc., of human beings), in part the form in which the articles of consumption remain behind after they have been consumed (such as rags, etc.). In a chemical factory, for example, the subsidiary products which are lost in the case of small-scale production again form in the case of mass production the raw material for other branches of chemical production; in large-scale engineering iron filings are again converted into iron; in the manufacture of wood on a mass scale the sawdust again yields a return as fertiliser; thus the excrements either re-enter the same sphere of production as means of production, or other spheres of production. The manure of animals, the urine and faeces of human beings, re-enter cultivation, tanneries, etc. Iron waste re-enters the same branch of production as a means of production; rags go into the paper factory; COTTON waste goes into fertiliser; an example should be looked up for chemicals. This is connected partly with the natural interchange of matter, partly with the industrial interchange of form.//

[XXII-1379] Surplus value is always expressed in SURPLUS PRODUCE; i.e. in a part of the product which is at the disposal of the capitalist, and forms a surplus over and above the parts of the product which replace the capital originally laid out. One should not imagine for that reason that surplus PRODUCE arises merely because in reproduction the amount of products increases as compared with the original amount. All surplus value is expressed in surplus PRODUCE, and it is only this that we call the surplus product. (The surplus of use value in which the surplus value is expressed.) On the other hand, not all of the surplus product represents surplus value; this is a confusion found in Torrens a and others. Assume, for example, that the year’s harvest is twice as large this year as the previous year, although the same amount of objectified and living labour was employed to produce it. The value of the harvest (disregarding here all deviations of price from value brought about by supply and demand) is the same. If the same ACRE produces 8 qrs of wheat instead of 4 qrs, 1 qr of wheat will now have half as much value as before, and the 8 qrs will have no more value than the 4 had. In order to exclude all outside influences, assume that the seed was cultivated on specific fields, which yielded the same product as the previous year. Thus a qr of seed would have to be paid for with 2 qrs of wheat, and all the elements of capital as also surplus value would remain the same (similarly the ratio of the surplus value to the total capital). If the situation is different in this example, this is only because a part of the constant capital is replaced in natura from the product; hence a smaller part of the product is needed to replace the seed; hence a part of the constant capital is set free and appears as SURPLUS PRODUCE.

This belongs to reproduction.

The surplus value is expressed as SURPLUS PRODUCE, and the shape of the surplus PRODUCE is the same as that of the total product, i.e. the particular use value capital produces in this particular branch. If the product consists of wheat, boards, machines, twist, locks, violins, etc., the surplus PRODUCE will also be expressed as wheat, boards, machines, twist, locks, violins, etc.

The following process can now take place with the SURPLUS PRODUCE

Firstly, in so far as it is not converted into surplus capital, but consumed: 1) Either the capitalist can consume it in its natural form, entirely or partially. If only partially, it falls under the CASE to be examined in 2). For him to consume it in its natural form, it must exist in a form in which it is able to enter into individual consumption. To this there also belong the instruments, containers, etc., which enter into the consumption process as implements, such as needles, scissors, bottles, etc. Or e.g. semi-manufactures, such as sewing materials, which are worked up in the sphere of consumption itself. 2) He consumes it in the form of other use values; he sells it and buys with the money the various objects which form part of the consumption fund. If his product is the kind that cannot enter into individual consumption, its buyer must buy it for productive consumption, i.e. it must enter for him into his capital as a replacement element, or into his surplus capital as an element of new constant capital. Hence the fact that every part of the value of the surplus PRODUCE which is not converted by its owner into surplus capital is consumed by him does not imply that this surplus PRODUCE itself enters in natura into individual consumption. It may enter into capital. It can in fact be consumed as capital by the buyer of this surplus PRODUCE. And again, two things are possible here: Either it replaces original capital or surplus capital, or it represents for the buyer the conversion of a part of his surplus PRODUCE into SURPLUS CAPITAL. If a greater part of the SURPLUS PRODUCE were produced in a natural form in which it can only serve as constant capital, the part of the SURPLUS PRODUCE which enters into individual consumption (whether in order to be converted into variable capital, or in order to enter into the consumption fund of the capitalist) being correspondingly [small], there would take place an overproduction of constant capital. If on the other hand too large a part of the SURPLUS PRODUCE were reproduced in a form in which it cannot be constant capital, but is destined for individual consumption, whether that of the worker as variable capital, or that of the non-worker, there would have taken place an overproduction of the part of the circulating capital which does not enter into constant capital. These relations could be determined precisely in an enclosed and isolated country. But foreign trade allows a part of the SURPLUS PRODUCE which exists in one country in the form of raw materials, semi-manufactures, accessory materials and machinery, to be converted into the form of the surplus PRODUCE [XXII-1380] of another country, in which it exists in the form of consumable objects. Foreign trade thus breaks through this barrier. It is therefore necessary for capitalist production, which works according to the measure of its means of production without regard to the satisfaction of a definite given need. The domination of production by exchange value appears for the individual in such a way that his production 1) is not directed towards his own needs, 2) does not directly satisfy his needs; in a word, he produces commodities, which can only be converted into use values for him after their conversion into money. But now this appears in such a way that the production of a whole country is not measured by its direct needs, or by such a distribution of the different parts of production as would be required for the valorisation of that production. With this, the reproduction process is dependent not on the production of mutually complementary equivalents in the same country, but on the production of these equivalents on foreign markets, on the power of absorption and the degree of extension of the world market. This provides an increased possibility of non-correspondence, HENCE a possibility of crises.

If a country were isolated, its surplus PRODUCE could only be consumed in the given natural form of that surplus PRODUCE. The sphere within which the surplus PRODUCE could be exchanged would be limited by the multiplicity of different branches of production in the same country. Foreign trade tears down this barrier. A surplus PRODUCE of twist can be represented in wine, raisins, silk, etc. Thus foreign trade multiplies the forms into which the surplus PRODUCE of a country can be converted and in which it can be consumed. But in spite of assuming this foreign form, the SURPLUS PRODUCE continues to represent nothing but the SURPLUS value, the SURPLUS labour, of the indigenous workers.

The larger the scale on which the necessary means of subsistence are produced, and therefore the more productive the labour is (with the correspondingly increased accumulation of capital), the greater the part of the labour that can be employed in the production of a multiplicity of forms in which the surplus PRODUCE can be consumed.

The objects which enter into the consumption fund may be consumed more slowly or more quickly. The richer the production, the more does a wealth of more or less durable use values enter into this consumption fund, so that the consumption fund increases in size and multiplicity. Part of the consumption fund might in emergency be converted into capital.

However, if we are speaking of surplus PRODICE in so far as it is not converted into surplus capital, but consumed by those who possess it, we can disregard any mediation through either internal or foreign trade. Only the part of the product which is expressed in a form appropriate for individual consumption can enter into the consumption fund. The capitalist does not need to consume everything himself: his cats, dogs, horses, birds, servants, mistresses, etc., eat as well. Or a part can also be consumed by unproductive -workers whose services are bought in this way.

II) In so far as the surplus PRODUCE is converted into surplus capital.

The conversion may be into variable capital and constant capital. Variable capital can be increased or reduced (the variable capital in the proportion necessary for the extension of production; this proportion is not however determined by the proportion by which production is extended) without any increase or reduction in the surplus PRODUCE or indeed any change in that part of it alone which exists in the form of necessary means of subsistence entering into the worker’s consumption. More of this part may be consumed by horses, dogs, mistresses, etc., or more or less may be exchanged for the services of unproductive labour. The part of the surplus PRODUCE which is convertible into variable capital may be increased or reduced according to the restriction or the extension of this unproductive consumption. This part of the surplus PRODUCE may be reduced e.g. for the following year (at least it may be reduced in relation to the number of productive workers newly set in motion during that year) if a large part of the surplus PRODUCE is fixed in the kind of constant capital (fixed capital) which rather than entering directly into the reproduction process forms merely a basis for extended reproduction, and is neither by nature exportable nor able to be turned into the components of variable capital on foreign markets. [XXII-1381] Thus e.g. with the conversion of surplus PRODUCE into railways, canals, buildings, bridges, the draining of marshes, docks, and the fixed parts of a factory, forges, coal mines, etc. None of these things can be transported; nor do they directly increase reproduction, although they are all means for extending reproduction. If they are constructed disproportionately, this may result in a deficit of next year’s surplus PRODUCE; in particular a lessening of the part of the surplus PRODUCE which can be expressed as variable capital and as circulating capital in general. Again there is a potentiality for crises arising from the overproduction of fixed capital.

We demonstrated earlier:

If the scale of production remains the same—if reproduction is repeated to the same extent—the product of the producers who produce constant capital, in so far as this product consists of variable capital (wages) and surplus PRODUCE—hence represents in general the income of this class—must be exactly=to the constant capital needed annually by the class which produces the means of consumption. If it were larger, it would have no equivalent—no counter-value corresponding to it—and would be depreciated pro tanto As remarked above, foreign trade breaks through this barrier. The producers can convert a part of their product into variable capital and objects of consumption of income on the foreign markets.

But let us disregard foreign trade. With reproduction remaining the same, therefore, the variable capital and the surplus PRODUCE of class I (which produces constant capital), in particular the surplus PRODUCE, cannot be considered as income. It is income for the capitalists involved in this class I alone, not for capital as a whole. For it is a part of the constant capital of class II. Thus one can look at the matter in this way, that the whole of the product of class II only replaces the constant capital of the society, and the whole of the product of class I forms the income of the society, hence represents, after deduction of the variable capital, of the part that is consumed as wages, the surplus PRODUCE which is consumed annually in various forms; a consumption which is mediated through exchange, purchase and sale, in such a way’that the surplus PRODUCE is divided among its various owners according to need.

But it is different once the surplus PRODUCE is converted into surplus capital.

//This matter must be presented first without regard to money, and then with regard to money.

Without money: For a part of the surplus PRODUCE to be able to be converted into surplus capital, a part of it must d’abord be reproduced in a form in which it can serve as additional variable capital. This is true particularly of those items of the variable capital in which the product of one year must serve for the consumption of the following year, as with corn, etc., and all raw materials from the vegetable kingdom, such as cotton, flax, wool too, etc., where the same thing takes place. The sheep may be shorn at different times of year, but the wool harvest depends on the number of sheep available during the year, etc. It is untrue, in contrast, of those means of subsistence the production of which can itself be increased during the year, parallel with their production, if the conditions of this increased production are available, whether machinery and labour, or machinery, labour and raw material. Coal, iron, metals in general, wood, etc., require more labour, more coal, more machinery, and more implements of labour for increased production, if the number of workers in employment is increased. If, on the other hand, just the working day is increased, nothing more is necessary than in one case more raw material, in the other case more accessory materials and a more rapid production subsequently of the machinery or implements which have been worn out. The surplus capital does not need to be invested simultaneously or evenly in all branches. If e.g. new COTTON FACTORIES are built and filled with machinery (and this is not merely a new distribution of the old capital), the SURPLUS PRODUCE does not need to exist simultaneously in the form of cotton, but only once the new factory SHALL BE PUT TO WORK, perhaps in a year. Then, however, the additional cotton must be procured. What was necessary until then was only the additional conversion of surplus PRODUCE partly into wages (variable capital) and partly into more iron, wood, stones, belts and the additional quantity of accessory materials, machinery [XXII-1382] and implements required for an increased production of those items.

A part of the surplus PRODUCE can be converted in natura directly into constant capital, may enter directly, as such, into its own reproduction. E.g. wheat may enter as seed, coal as an accessory in coal production, machines in machine-building, etc. Or the producers of the constant capital may exchange it among themselves, in which case it serves each of them, once it has changed hands, as constant capital; but this whole part of the surplus PRODUCE, considered as a whole, has been converted directly into constant capital, new, additional constant capital has been created.

Similarly, a part of the SURPLUS PRODUCE is directly convertible into variable capital, and often all that is needed for this is a different distribution of the necessary means of subsistence, their exchange with productive instead of with unproductive workers.

A part of the SURPLUS PRODUCE may be converted for one capitalist into variable, for another into constant, capital. E.g. the FARMER buys new machines, implements, etc. The machine manufacturer employs new workers with the means of subsistence received from the FARMER in exchange for the machines.

Since the constant capital employed by class I (the class that produces the means of subsistence) increases, this makes it possible to increase the part of the product produced by class II which can be resolved into variable capital and SURPLUS PRODUCE. But the constant capital [of class II] can be increased directly, partly in natura, partly through a division of the SURPLUS PRODUCE mediated through exchange, without any exchange with class I, and thus without meeting any direct barrier in the production of class I. Similarly, the exchange of constant capital takes place here directly with the surplus PRODUCE of class I (not with its constant capital). It is converted for class II into additional variable capital, and for class I into additional constant capital. Yet the necessary proportions are abolished thereby, made more accidental, hence new potentialities for crisis.

The difference for class I, however, is this, that if a greater part of its product is consumed as variable capital by class II, a smaller amount of product is consumed in the form of surplus PRODUCE by the non-productive workers and the capitalists themselves; demand thereby falls for the producers of class I who produce the surplus PRODUCE in the form of means of consumption for the non-workers. They are thereby restricted in their reproduction, and a devaluation of part of the capital invested in this class takes place. In reality, the part of the surplus PRODUCE which is consumed in the form of luxury products or for the payment of unproductive workers is relatively small at the beginning of the carrière of a nation producing in the capitalist fashion. The surplus PRODUCE increases in quantity and value with the accumulation of capital; it is therefore possible for an ever greater part to be reproduced in the form of luxury products, or exchanged for the services of unproductive workers, and accordingly a constantly growing part can be converted into surplus capital. Still greater, with this progress in accumulation, is the part of the capital which is converted into constant capital, while the part converted into variable capital constantly declines relatively, hence in the formation of SURPLUS CAPITAL the part of the means of subsistence which is converted into variable capital or withdrawn from unproductive consumption constantly declines, so that there is a constant increase in the amount of products at the disposal of unproductive consumption, despite the growth of capital. The amount of surplus PRODUCE converted in the production of constant capital increases, but while the part of the surplus PRODUCE which exists in the form of means of subsistence grows to the same degree, there is a decline in the share of the working class—in the part of the surplus which is to be converted into additional variable capital.

Since the definite proportion in which the total capital is divided between the 2 classes [of producers], or in which the various components of the product enter into the reproduction process at particular points, is dissolved, partly by foreign trade, partly by the changing conversion of SURPLUS PRODUCE into SURPLUS CAPITAL, there is here a new potentiality OF INADEQUACY and therefore OF CRISES. These disproportions may occur not only between fixed and circulating capital (in their reproduction), between variable and constant capital, and between the different components of constant capital, but also between capital and income.

The CASE of money is to be examined later.//

[XXII-1383] For our present purpose, the conversion of surplus PRODUCE into surplus capital can be conceived most simply as follows: The surplus PRODUCE is expressed in products of varying use value. Part of it takes the form of means of consumption which do not enter into the consumption of the working classes. (Foreign trade would make it possible to express this part too in any form of use value, but here we want entirely to make abstraction from foreign trade.) This part enters entirely into the consumption of the possessor of the surplus PRODUCE. This is the first deduction to be made. A second part consists of means of consumption which enter into general consumption. A greater or lesser part of this is directly consumed by the possessors of the SURPLUS PRODUCE, or indirectly consumed by their dogs, horses, servants or by the unproductive workers whose services are given to the possessors of the SURPLUS PRODUCE in exchange. This second part of the surplus PRODUCE is thus equally to be deducted. Another part of these means of consumption serves to buy labour. It is converted into variable capital. Finally, part of it consists of seed, raw materials, accessory materials, semi-manufactures, cattle, machinery and tools. This part is converted into constant capital. The sum total of the parts of the surplus PRODUCE which are thus converted into variable and constant capital forms the surplus capital, into which a part of the surplus PRODUCE or surplus value has been converted. If, e.g., the SURPLUS PRODUCE thus converted into capital=500 thalers, of which 400 consist of constant and 100 of variable capital; if the day’s work of 100 workers can be bought with the 100 thalers, and the working day of 100 workers is realised in 200 thalers, the 100 thalers would be the means of buying twice as much labour as is contained in them, and thereby of converting the 500 thalers into 600, into capital. The part of the SURPLUS CAPITAL which is converted into variable capital is exchanged for more labour, or is a means of appropriating a part of new additional labour for nothing. But these 100 thalers are themselves alien labour appropriated for nothing, just as are the 400 thalers of additional constant capital, so that the whole of this surplus labour of the worker is, in the hands of the capitalist, a means of appropriating new surplus labour and effecting the reproduction for nothing of the labour already appropriated.

The circumstance that the productivity of labour, and at the same time the value of the product reproduced by it, depends on the wealth of the objective conditions, on the amount of past labour which enters into the production process—hence depends on the accumulation of capital—appears, like all the productive power of labour, as a productive power of capital, independent of labour and confronting it. This stage-by-stage extension of past labour, which is set in motion by living labour in the reproduction process—and which conditions the growing productivity of living labour—is presented as a service performed by this past labour, or it is conceived in such a way that the alienation of this past labour as capital makes it into this essential moment of production; because in fact in capitalist production this past labour constantly confronts living labour as capital, this confrontation, this estranged, socially converted form of labour is regarded as the secret process by which capital makes labour more productive, although naturally this past labour of the worker performed exactly the same service when it functioned as the worker’s property. This view is necessary: 1) because only in capitalist production, as opposed to previous modes of production, does past labour enter into reproduction to this increasing extent; it therefore appears as its mark of distinction from previous modes of production; 2) because the antagonistic form in which objectified labour here appears towards living labour is considered as its immanent character, and as inseparable from the function it fulfils in the reproduction process.

Apart from the accumulation of objectified labour, as it appears in the conversion of surplus PRODUCE into surplus capital, a constant accumulation of the worker’s personal skill takes place, through practice, and through the TRANSFER of acquired skill to the new generation of workers which is growing up. This accumulation costs capital nothing [XXII-1384] although it plays a role of decisive importance in the reproduction process. The accumulation of scientific knowledge should also be added here, in so far as it is applied to the material production process. This accumulation is continuous reproduction on a continuously expanding scale. The results of knowledge achieved are taught and reproduced as the elements of knowledge, and worked on further by the learners as elements of knowledge. Here the cost of reproduction never stands in proportion to the original cost of production.

A warning should be issued here against two notions:

1) confusing saving with accumulation,

2) confusing the accumulation process of capital with accumulation such as occurs in the simple formation of hoards.

Ad 1), saving. The actually disposable part of the product—the surplus PRODUCE—could be consumed by the capitalist individually. Hence by converting a part of it into capital he renounces its enjoyment and saves. The notion that the whole of the SURPLUS PRODUCE can be consumed is d’abord in and for itself incorrect, because the product passes through all kinds of dangers in the production process proper, as also in the circulation process, and a reserve fund is therefore necessary, not only for ordinary depreciation, but for extraordinary accidents. This reserve fund can only be formed from the surplus PRODUCE. Moreover, the capitalist mode of production would be impossible without a constant extension of the division of labour, improved and additional machinery, etc., which likewise requires a part of the SURPLUS PRODUCE. Capitalist production is altogether a production directed towards the increase of exchange value, especially surplus value, and this continuous increase can only be attained by the constant conversion of surplus PRODUCE into capital. The capitalist mode of production is of course only possible with its conditions, and these are very different from those of a mode of production directed towards immediate subsistence. Thus much initially on the illusion that the whole of surplus PRODUCE can be consumed.

But we have here the even more extraordinary notion that the capitalist can consume the whole of his capital, instead of valorising it as capital! First of all, the major part of this capital exists in a non-consumable form, as means of production; it exists in a shape in which it can only be consumed productively. The whole notion rests on the idea of the individual money owner. Instead of converting £1,000 into capital, he can consume it. (He can of course only put it out at interest if he does not consume his £1,000, leaving it instead for others to employ as capital.) But if the total reproduction process were to be interrupted even for only 14 days, that would be the end of the “consumables”.

But the capitalist has one merit in comparison with others. It has nothing to do with labour. What the capitalist saves is the product of unpaid labour, hence a product appropriated from the worker without equivalent. The savings of the rich are made at the expense of the poor (Say). It is accumulated labour, but not his accumulated labour.

2) Accumulation process. The difference between this and HOARDING has already been noted previously.

In so far as accumulation is understood to mean the building up of supplies, or the existence of commodities in the zone intermediate between production and consumption, this belongs to the circulation process.

The phrase that no one is more involved in the accumulation process of capital than the worker himself means in the opinion of the vulgarisers that the worker must be happy if he is paid as low a wage as possible (the rate of surplus value, further the rate of profit, as high as possible), because along with the amount of SURPLUS VALUE or SURPLUS PRODUCE (profits, developed further) the part which is converted into SURPLUS CAPITAL grows, and therefore there is a growth in the amount of * additional variable capital or that part of capital which is converted into wages of productive labour or which is exchanged against labour.* If this part grows more rapidly than the LABOURING POPULATION (and the ADDITIONAL DEMAND FOR LABOUR is determine d by it), the price of labour will increase above its VALUE, or the AVERAGE. First a lessening of the wage (or at least a relatively low wage) is asserted to be something good; in other words, the worker exchanges as large a part as possible of his time with the capitalist for nothing, and therefore obtains as little of the product of his own labour as possible, and this is supposed to be good because the amount of capital employed is thereby increased. Then an increase in the size of this capital is regarded as something good because SURPLUS LABOUR is thereby reduced, or the wage increases. For a greater part of his free labour to flow back to him as wages under particular circumstances he is expected pro-visionally to appropriate a smaller part of his labour as wages. What [XXII-1385] pretty, and particularly for the worker what stupid, circular arguments!

Accumulation brings a relative reduction in the part of the capital that is converted into variable capital. This is No. 5.

Secondly, the mass of the POPULATION made REDUNDANT or the surplus POPULATION constantly created by the capitalist mode of production itself increases with the development of the productive forces associated with accumulation.

But leaving this aside, and these are circumstances of decisive importance, accumulation is in the worker’s interest, however much it must bring him ever repeated misfortune,

1) in so far as surplus capital is increased through the fact that a smaller part of the SURPLUS PRODUCE is consumed by the capitalist and a larger part converted into surplus capital; hence in so far as the growth of SURPLUS CAPITAL does not result from an increase in SURPLUS LABOUR (and therefore in SURPLUS PRODUCE), but from the conversion of a larger part into capital when this SURPLUS PRODUCE is divided into income and capital;

2) but since this depends on the productivity of labour, assuming the magnitude of the SURPLUS PRODUCE remains the same, and the productivity of labour in turn depends on the development of the capitalist mode of production, it is in the worker’s interest (once wage labour exists) for capitals to be employed in large, concentrated quantities, instead of being scattered among many capitalists and employed in an unproductive manner.

In so far as the accumulation process is identical with the concentration process, the inner progress of capitalist production consists in an ever increasing supersession of private production, of the kind of production for which the property of the genuinely isolated producer in his conditions of labour appears as a condition of production itself. The worker’s relation to the conditions of production develops into a relation to common, social magnitudes.

//Conclusion of the quotation from an earlier presentation of the subject:

In so far as the surplus product is valorised anew as surplus capital, enters anew the labour process and the process of self-valorisation, it divides itself into:

1) means of subsistence to be exchanged for labour capacity. This part of the capital can be defined as the wages fund. It serves for the progressive maintenance of labour capacity, since this part of the surplus capital grows continuously, even though by no means in the proportion to which the surplus capital itself grows. This wages fund now appears as alienated labour, converted into capital, just as much as do

2) the objective components, the objective conditions for the employment of additional labour. Both components of capital are now posited by labour, and posited as its presuppositions. What originally appeared as a division of capital within itself now appears in such a way that labour’s own product—objectified surplus labour—is divided into those two components which, considered materially, are the objective conditions of the labour process, and the objective conditions for the maintenance and reproduction of labour capacity; but from the point of view of their form these conditions of the realisation of labour confront it as an alien, independent power, as capital. Labour has itself created a new fund for the employment of new labour, but at the same time it has created the condition that this fund can be appropriated only if new surplus labour is employed on the extra part of surplus capital. Hence, by producing surplus capital, surplus value, labour has simultaneously created the real necessity (and possibility) for new surplus labour, surplus capital thus itself being the real possibility of both new surplus labour and new surplus capital. It becomes evident here how progressively the objective world of wealth is enlarged through labour even as an alien power confronting it, and how it gains an ever wider and fuller existence, so that relatively, in relation to the values created or to the extent of the real conditions for the creation of value, the necessitous subjectivity of living labour capacity stands out in ever more glaring contrast. The more labour objectifies itself, the greater becomes the objective world of values which confronts it as alien—as alien property. By creating surplus capital, labour imposes on itself [XXII-1386] the compulsion to create yet further surplus capital, etc.,. etc.

With regard to the original, not-surplus, capital the relation has changed for labour in so far as 1) the part exchanged for necessary labour is reproduced by this labour itself, i.e. it no longer comes to labour out of circulation but is its own product, and 2) the part of value which represents the real conditions for the utilisation of living labour, in the form of raw material and instrument, has been maintained by living labour itself in the production process. And since every use value by its nature consists of transitory material, and exchange value exists only within use value, this maintenance=protection from destruction, or the negation of the transitory nature of the values owned by the capitalists. In this way, these values are posited as values-forthemselves; as imperishable wealth. Hence only in the production process has living labour posited this original sum of values as capital.

In so far as surplus capital is considered, the capitalist represents value-for-itself obtained by the appropriation of alien labour. For each moment of surplus capital (material, instrument, means of subsistence) resolves into alien labour, which the capitalist has not appropriated by means of exchange for already existing values but which he has appropriated without exchange. True, the exchange of a part of the values belonging to him, or of objectified labour possessed by him, for labour capacity, appears as the original condition for this surplus capital. The possession of values by the capitalist, part of which he formally exchanges for living labour capacity, appears to be the condition for the formation of surplus capital I, if that is what we call the surplus capital arising from the original production process, i.e. the condition for the appropriation of alien labour, of objectified alien labour. In any case, it appears as a condition for the formation of surplus capital I that there be an exchange of values belonging to the capitalist, thrown into circulation by him, and supplied to the workers by him—of values which do not derive from his exchange with living labour, or from his relation as capital to labour, but rather from a prior, so-called original accumulation. As e.g. this is always the case for every individual who steps into the marketplace as a new capitalist.

But now let us think of surplus capital I being thrown again into the production process, realising its surplus value in exchange once more, and appearing once more as new surplus capital II at the beginning of a third production process. This, surplus capital II has different presuppositions from those of surplus capital I. The presupposition of surplus capital I was the existence of values belonging to the capitalist and thrown by him into circulation. The presupposition of surplus capital II is nothing but the existence of surplus capital I; in other words the presupposition that the capital has already appropriated alien labour without exchange. This enables him to begin the process again and again, and on an ever-increasing scale. True, in order to create surplus capital II, he had to exchange a part of surplus capital I in the form of means of subsistence for living labour. But what he thus exchanged were values which he did not originally put into circulation from his own funds, but alien objectified labour which he appropriated without giving any equivalent for it, and which he now exchanges again for alien living labour, just as the means of labour in which this new labour is realised and with which it creates new surplus value have come into his possession without exchange, by means of simple appropriation. Past appropriation of alien labour now appears as the simple condition for new appropriation of alien labour. In other words, his possession of alien labour in objective, physical form, in the form of values already in existence, appears to be the condition for his ability to appropriate alien living labour capacity anew, without giving any equivalent for it. That he should already be confronting living labour as capital appears to be [XXII1387] the sole condition not only for him maintaining himself as capital, but for him as growing capital appropriating alien labour without equivalent on an increasing scale. Property in past or objectified alien labour appears as the sole condition for further appropriation of present or living labour.

In so far as a surplus capital I was created by means of simple exchange between objectified labour (the original capital) and living labour capacity — [a transaction] based on the law of the exchange of commodities as equivalents estimated by the comparative quantity of labour or labour time contained in them—and in so far as this exchange, speaking juridically, presupposed nothing but the right of property of each person in his own products and his right to dispose of them freely (on the side of the worker—the freedom to dispose of his own personal capacities), and in so far as surplus capital II is merely the result of surplus capital I, hence a consequence of that first relationship [that between labour and capital]—the right of property on the side of capital is dialectically transformed into the right to alien products or into the right of property in alien labour, the right to appropriate alien labour without equivalent; and on the side of the worker it is transformed into the duty to relate himself towards his own labour and its product as alien property. But the exchange of equivalents which appeared as the initial operation has been reversed in such a way that on the one side only an apparent exchange takes place, in that the part of capital exchanged for labour capacity is, in the first place, itself alien labour appropriated without equivalent, and in that, secondly, it must be replaced by labour capacity with a SURPLUS, hence it is not IN FACT given away but only transformed from one form into another. The relationship of exchange is therefore p, mere semblance, which belongs to the circulation process. Furthermore, the right to property originally appeared to be based on one’s own labour. Now property appears as the right to alien labour and as the impossibility for labour to appropriate its own product. The separation of property, or wealth, and labour now appears as a consequence of the law which arose from their identity.

Finally, the result of the process of production and valorisation now appears to be above all the reproduction on an ever-increasing scale of the very relationship of capital and labour, of capitalist and worker. The number of necessitous labour capacities, lacking substance, of “the LABOURING POOR”, thus increases along with the amount of capital, and inversely. This antagonistic relation is expressed by Eden, Chalmers, etc. IN FACT, this relationship of production (a relationship of social intercourse, into which the subjects enter as agents of production) appears to be an even more important result of the process than its material results. Each side reproduces itself by reproducing its other, its negation. The capitalist produces labour as alien; labour produces the product as alien. The capitalist produces the worker, and the worker the capitalist. As soon as the mode of production based on capital is presupposed //actually money has been transformed into capital only at the end of the first production process, which resulted in its reproduction (1) and in the new production of surplus capital I (2); but surplus capital I is itself only realised as surplus capital once it has reproduced itself (3) and posited surplus capital II (4), i.e. once the presuppositions of money in the process of becoming capital which still lie outside the movement of real capital have disappeared, and capital therefore has IN FACT itself and in accordance with its immanent essence created the very conditions from which it sets out in reproduction// the condition that the capitalist must bring into circulation values created by his own labour or in some other way—excepting only values created by already existing, past wage labour—belongs to the antediluvian conditions of capital; to its historical presuppositions, which, precisely as such historical presuppositions, have vanished and therefore belong to the history of its formation but by no means to its contemporary history, i.e. do not belong to the real system of the mode of production dominated by it. [XXII-1388] If e.g. the flight of serfs into the cities was one of the historical conditions and presuppositions for the development of the medieval city, it is not a condition, a moment, of the reality of fully developed city life, but belongs to its past presuppositions, to the presuppositions of its becoming, which are superseded in its being. But the conditions of the becoming the emergence, of capital imply that it is not yet in being but is only becoming. Hence they disappear with the development of real capital, the capital which, setting out from its own reality, itself posits the conditions for its realisation. This occurs, e.g., when the process in which money or value-for-itself originally becomes capital presupposes a primitive accumulation by the owner of money or commodities, which he has achieved as a non-capitalist, whether by saving, or by his own labour, etc. Therefore, while the presuppositions for the transformation of money into capital appear as given, external presuppositions for the emergence of capital, as soon as capital has become capital, it creates its own presuppositions, namely the possession of the real conditions for the creation of new values without exchange—by means of its own production process. These presuppositions, which originally appeared as prerequisites of its becoming, and therefore could not arise from its action as capital, now appear as results of its own realisation, reality, as brought into being by it, not as conditions of its emergence, but as results of its being. It no longer sets out from its presuppositions, but is itself presupposed, and, setting out from itself, it itself creates the presuppositions for its maintenance and growth. The conditions, therefore, which preceded the creation of surplus capital I, and which express the becoming of capital, do not fall within the sphere of the mode of production for which capital serves as the presupposition. They lie behind it as preliminary historical stages of its becoming, just as the processes through which the Earth was transformed from a fluid sea of vapour into its present form, lie beyond its life as finished Earth. Note the views of the bourgeois political economists, who consider capital to be an eternal and natural form of production, but still try to justify it by declaring the conditions of its becoming (the imaginary conditions, moreover) to be the conditions of its present realisation, i.e. they” present the moments in which the capitalist appropriates as a non-capitalist—because he is only in the process of becoming—as the VERY CONDITIONS in which he appropriates as a fully-fledged capitalist. //Natural laws of production! Here, it is true, it is a matter of the natural laws of bourgeois production, hence of the laws within which production occurs at a particular historical stage and under particular historical conditions of production. If there were no such laws, the system of bourgeois production would be altogether incomprehensible. What is involved here, therefore, is the presentation of the nature of this particular mode of production, hence its natural laws. But just as it is itself historical, so are its nature and the laws of that nature. The natural laws of the Asiatic, the ancient, or the feudal mode of production were essentially different. On the other hand, it is entirely certain that human production possesses definite laws or relations which remain the same in all forms of production. These identical characteristics are quite simple and can be summarised in a very small number of commonplace phrases.// These attempts at apologetics demonstrate a bad conscience and the inability to bring the specific mode of appropriation of capital into harmony with the general laws of property proclaimed by capitalist society itself. On the other hand—and this is much more important—our method indicates the points at which historical analysis must be introduced, or at which the bourgeois economy as a mere historical form of the production process points beyond itself towards earlier historical modes of production. To present the laws of the bourgeois economy, it is not necessary therefore to write the real history [XXII-1389] of the production relations. But the correct analysis and deduction of these relations always leads to primary equations, which point to a past lying behind this system. If, on the one hand, the pre-bourgeois phases appear as merely historical, i.e. as presuppositions which have been superseded, the present conditions of production [on the other hand] appear as superseding themselves and therefore as positing themselves as historical presuppositions for a future society.//

The above already belongs in part to the examination of the so-called primitive accumulation

But the following should be added here:

The conversion of money into capital and therefore the formation of surplus capital I have two conditions;

Firstly: The money must be able to be exchanged freely for labour; the historical conditions which have to be fulfilled for this to happen will be considered later. The money owner, who now enters the marketplace, comes upon these conditions as the ruling conditions of the mode of production. The money (and what it represents) already in itself confronts labour as capital, and now has only to perform its function as such.

Secondly: If an individual wants to become a capitalist today, [he] must have money. If he is to be a newly formed capitalist, who has neither inherited money (is already in possession of money made in a capitalist way), nor been loaned money //for the identity of the person who confronts the worker with money in his pocket is a matter of complete indifference//, nor stolen it, nor acquired it in another sphere of capital (outside the actual sphere ,of production) as merchant, financier, speculator, etc., and the relation of these secondary functions of capital to productive capital will em erge later (we are not concerned at all here with the division of the available capitals, with their transfer from one hand to another), he must have earned it or worked for it and saved it. (What he gains by putting his savings out to interest, etc., must be deducted from this, for this is already capitalist valorisation.) He first converts his money into capital from the moment when he exploits workers himself. If he was a productive worker himself, the pécule cannot be great. But e.g. doctors, writers, lawyers, etc., who have acquired “capital”, have only acquired it because the capitalist mode of production is dominant. The payment of these unproductive labours depends precisely on the wealth of the real agents of production, and the real use value of the service they render is therefore still entirely independent of its price. Milton DID THE Paradise Lost FOR £5.

Hoard formation proper does not occur. The hoarder is always a usurer at the same time.

The capitalist mode of production constantly reproduces the conditions, in that:

1) in the simple production process it reproduces the relation of the conditions of labour as capital and that of the worker as wage labour.

2) The continuous conversion of surplus value into capital (accumulation) creates the range of these conditions which exist as capital through the increase of the labour capacities available as wage labourers.

3) The extension of the capitalist mode of production to ever new spheres abolishes the unity which still sometimes existed there between the direct producer and his conditions of production; turns the producer into a wage labourer and his means of labour into capital which confronts him as a wage labourer.

4) The concentration (and competition) of capital eliminates small capitals and fuses them together into large ones, although a process of repulsion in newly formed EMPLOYMENTS, etc., runs parallel to this process of attraction in the developed spheres. If this were not the case, bourgeois production would be very simple, and would soon arrive at its catastrophe.

[XXII-1390] //Table of the Reproduction Process

(presented without circulation of money and

at a constant scale of reproduction)

[XXII-1391] The part of the constant capital (hence here the fixed capital) which does not enter into the product, i.e. does not enter into the valorisation process, is discarded in all cases.

Under I) we see the constant capital of 400, which re-occurs in the product in its entirety. The whole of this product consists of means of subsistence, which enter into the consumption fund; although they enter only partially into the consumption fund of class I. The variable capital, = 100, posits a surplus value of 200, in addition to its own reproduction in the product. The 100 of variable capital are paid out in money, in wages; these wages draw out of the total product of 700 products to the value of 100. In this way, the money flows back into the hands of the capitalist of class I. The surplus value appears entirely as profit, but is split into industrial profit, interest, and rent, of which at least the last two are entirely paid in money; the total amount of products is drawn on to the extent of 200 by the owners of this income. Class I has therefore consumed 300 of its own product; at the same time, money has flowed back to the capitalists, with the result that they can pay wages, interest and rent anew in money. There remains an unconsumed and disposable remainder of 400 from the total product, which is the part of the value of the [XXII-1392] product needed to replace the constant capital of 400.

Under II), the whole of the product consists of raw materials and machines.

The variable capital of 133 1/3 is paid out in wages (money), and 133 1/3 is drawn with this money from the total product of class I. Thus 133 1/3 of the money of class II flows to class I, and products to the same value flow from class I to class II. The surplus value of 266 2/3 is paid in money as interest and rent, and a quantity of the products of class I is bought with this money. This sum of money together with the money that has flowed back from the wages, interest and rent of class I and the wages of class II is more than sufficient to provide class I with the 400 in money needed to replace class I’s constant capital of 400 and to allow class II to draw means of subsistence from the total product of class I for its industrial profit. The result is that the whole of the product [of class] I has passed into the consumption fund, and 400 of the total product of class II has passed into class I in replacement of its constant capital, but class II, on the other hand, needs 533 1/3 for the replacement of its own constant capital.

The situation is actually as follows.

Class I. 100 are. paid in money as wages. For this 100 the workers draw 100 out of the total product of I; with this, 100 flows back to the capitalists of I in money, with which they can buy labour- anew. They have already paid a certain part of the 200 of surplus value the year before in interest and rent; with this money interest and rent buy their corresponding parts of the total product of I. The money thus flows back to the capitalists of I, and with this money they pay interest and rent anew or give interest and rent new drafts on the product of the next year. As far as industrial profit is concerned, they partly consume it in natura, and partly exchange [it] among themselves through the mediation of money payments.

Class II has paid 133 1/3 (in money) as wages. For this money, the working class of II buys products from I. These 133 1/3 thus flow back into the hands of class I in money, and class I uses this to buy products of this amount from class II. At the same time, the interest and rent money flows to class I from class II, and the latter similarly draws its share in. return for this from the total product of I. With this money, class I buys products from class II, to which the money has thus flowed back again, allowing it to pay wages again, as well as interest and rent. It gives out one part of this money—a part which=its industrial profit—in order to buy products from I. With this money, class I buys the remainder of the products it requires from II. It has now bought for 400,=its constant ca iable capital of I and II, in part the total amount of income enjoyed by both classes under various categories.//

[XXII-1393] The following should be noted in connection with the foregoing economic tables:

1) The constant CAPITAL consists of fixed and circulating capital. The part of the fixed capital which does not enter into the valorisation process is left out of account. Or, and this is the same thing, that part alone of the fixed capital which enters into annual reproduction, hence into the year’s total product, is here included under the heading of constant capital.

Furthermore, part of the capital consists of money. Here only the variable capital is presented as money capital. Interest and rent, on the other hand, [are presented] as sums of money existing in the hands of their owners. The amount of money to be found in circulation is IN FACT much less than appears here, partly as the monetary expression of variable capital, partly as the monetary expression of interest and rent.

2) Commercial capital and money-dealing capital are not displayed separately, as this would make the table too complicated. 3) For the same reason, reproduction is conceived as remaining constant, since the presentation of the accumulation process would equally tend to confuse the simple conception of the main movement.

4) Tables I and II show how the total product of II appears as the constant capital of the society, whereas the total product of I is realised in the variable capital and the surplus value of both classes. This process is presupposed in Table III, therefore here the product of II appears directly as constant capital, while the product of I appears as the total amount of variable capital and surplus value.

5) The dotted lines always show the ORIGIN of expenditures, the starting point of circulation, where they ascend. The unbroken lines show the ORIGIN of expenditures, where they descend.

The complete table follows on the next page [see p. 244]:

[XXII-1395]

b) SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION

//From an earlier presentation of the, subject.

If we consider first of all the relationship as it has become, value which has become capital (and surplus value which has become surplus capital), and living labour as mere use value confronting it, so that living labour appears as mere means for the valorisation of objectified, dead labour, for its permeation with a life-giving soul while losing its own soul to it—and having produced as a result alien wealth on the one hand, but on the other, as its own property, only the necessitousness of living labour capacity—then we can see clearly that the physical conditions of real labour (the material in which it is valorised, the instrument by means of which it is valorised, and the means of subsistence which kindle the flame of living labour capacity into activity and prevent its being extinguished, and supply the necessary matter for its life process) are posited in and through the process itself as alien, independent existences; in other words as the mode of existence of an alien person, as self-sufficient values-for-themselves, and thus as values which form wealth alien to the living labour capacity which confronts them in subjective isolation, the wealth of the capitalist. The

[XXII-1394] Tableau économique of the Reproduction Process

as a Whole

objective conditions of living labour appear as separate values, become independent as against living labour capacity as subjective being, which therefore appears, as against them, only as value of another kind (distinct from them not as value, but as use value). Once this separation is presupposed, the production process can only produce it anew, reproduce it, and that on a larger scale. How it does this, we have already seen. The objective conditions of living labour capacity are presupposed as independent existences confronting it, as the objectivity of a subject distinct from living labour capacity and independently confronting it. The reproduction and valorisation, i.e. the expansion, of these objective conditions is therefore simultaneously their reproduction and their new production as the wealth of an alien subject, indifferent to and independently confronting labour capacity. What is reproduced and newly produced is not only the being of these objective conditions of living labour but their being as alien to the worker, as independent values, i.e. values belonging to an alien subject, confronting this living labour capacity. The objective conditions of labour gain a subjective existence as against living labour capacity— capital gives rise to the capitalist. On the other hand, the purely subjective being of labour capacity vis-à-vis its own conditions gives it a merely indifferent objective form as against these conditions— it is only a value of a particular use value—a commodity—alongside its own conditions as values of a different use value—other commodities. [XXII-1396] Instead of being reproduced in the production process as conditions for its realisation, they on the contrary emerge from it as conditions for their own valorisation and preservation as values-for-themselves over against it. The material on which it works is alien material; just as the instrument is an alien instrument; its labour appears as a mere accessory to them as substance and therefore objectifies itself in things not belonging to it. Indeed, living labour itself appears as alien vis-à-vis the living labour capacity whose labour it is, whose life it expresses, for it is surrendered to capital in return for objectified labour, for the product of labour itself. Labour capacity relates to it as to something alien, as compulsory labour. Its own labour is alien to it—and, as we see in capitalist production, it really is alien, as regards its content, its ‘direction, and its social form—just as much as material and instrument are. Therefore the product too appears to it as a combination of alien material, alien instrument and alien labour—as alien property, and after production it has become poorer by the life force expended, and it begins the DRUDGERY anew as labour capacity EMPLOYED by the conditions of labour. The recognition of the product as its own, and its awareness that its separation from the conditions of its realisation is an injustice—a relationship imposed by force—is an enormous consciousness, itself the product of the capitalist mode of production and just as much the KNELL TO ITS DOOM as the consciousness of the slave that he could not be the property of another reduced slavery to an artificial, lingering existence, and made it impossible for it to continue to provide the basis of production.

However, if we consider the original relation, before money entered into the process of self-valorisation, we come up against various conditions which must have arisen, or been given, historically, for money to become capital and for labour to become wage labour. The essential conditions are posited in the relationship itself as it originally appeared: 1) On the one side, the existence of living labour capacity as a purely subjective existence, separated from the moments of its objective reality; therefore separated just as much from the conditions of living labour as from the means of existence, the means of subsistence, the means of self-maintenance of living labour capacity; the living possibility of labour on one side in this complete abstraction. 2) On the other side, the value or objectified labour must be an accumulation of use values, sufficiently large to provide the objective conditions not merely for the production of the commodities necessary to maintain or to reproduce living labour capacity, but also to produce surplus labour, to supply the objective material for it. 3) A system of free exchange—money circulation—between the two sides; a relationship between the two extremes which is based upon exchange values, not on the lord-subject relationship, i.e. production which does not directly supply the means of subsistence to the producer but is mediated by exchange; and therefore also does not have direct disposition over alien labour, but must buy it from the vehicle of this labour himself. Finally 4) the side which represents the objective conditions of labour in the form in which they have become independent must present itself as value, and the ultimate aim must be the positing of value, the self-valorisation of value, the creation of money—not immediate enjoyment or the creation of use values.

[XXII-1397] So long as both sides exchange their labour with one another in the form of objectified labour—as products, which are commodities—the relation is impossible. It is equally impossible if the worker himself appears as the property of the other side, himself belongs among the objective conditions of labour, and not as a person engaged in exchange. (That slavery can exist at individual points within the bourgeois system of production, does not contradict this. But slavery is then possible only because it does not exist at other points, and represents an anomaly in relation to the bourgeois system itself.)

The conditions under which the relationship originally appears, or which appear as historical presuppositions for its becoming, exhibit at first glance a dual character—on the one side dissolution of lower forms of living labour, on the other side dissolution of relations more fortunate for the immediate producer. On the one hand, dissolution of slavery and serfdom. On the other, dissolution of the form under which the means of production are immediately available as the property of the immediate producer, whether his work is predominantly directed at use value (agriculture) or exchange value (urban work). Finally, the dissolution of the form of community in which the worker, as organ of this naturally evolved community, is at the same time posited as owner or possessor of his means of production.//