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Special pages :
Ch. 52: Classes
- Prefaces
- Part I: The Conversion of Surplus Value into Profit and of the Rate of Surplus Value into the Rate of Profit
- Ch. 1: Cost Price and Profit
- Ch. 2: The Rate of Profit
- Ch. 3: The Relation of the Rate of Profit to the Rate of Surplus Value
- Ch. 4: The Effect of the Turnover on the Rate of Profit
- Ch. 5: Economy in the Employment of Constant Capital
- Ch. 6: The Effect of Price Fluctuations
- Ch. 7: Supplementary Remarks
- Part II: Conversion of Profit into Average Profit
- Ch. 8: Different Compositions of Capitals in Different Branches of Production and Resulting Differences in Rates of Profit
- Ch. 9: Formation of a General Rate of Profit (Average Rate of Profit) and Transformation of the Values of Commodities into Prices of Production
- Ch. 10: Equalisation of the General Rate of Profit Through Competition. Market Prices and Market Values. Surplus Profit
- Ch. 11: Effects of General Wage Fluctuations on Prices of Production
- Ch. 12: Supplementary Remarks
- Part III: The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall
- Ch. 13: The Law as Such
- Ch. 14: Counteracting Influences
- Ch. 15: Exposition of the Internal Contradictions of the Law
- Part IV: Conversion of Commodity Capital and Money Capital into Commercial Capital and Money-Dealing Capital (Merchant's Capital)
- Ch. 16: Commercial Capital
- Ch. 17: Commercial Profit
- Ch. 18: The Turnover of Merchant's Capital. Prices
- Ch. 19: Money-Dealing Capital
- Ch. 20: Historical Facts About Merchant's Capital
- Part V: Division of Profit into Interest and Profit of Enterprise. Interest-Bearing Capital
- Ch. 21: Interest-Bearing Capital
- Ch. 22: Division of Profit. Rate of Interest. "Natural" Rate of Interest
- Ch. 23: Interest and Profit of Enterprise
- Ch. 24: Externalisation of the Relations of Capital in the Form of Interest-Bearing Capital
- Ch. 25: Credit and Fictitious Capital
- Ch. 26: Accumulation of Money Capital. Its Influence on the Interest Rate
- Ch. 27: The Role of Credit in Capitalist Production
- Ch. 28: Medium of Circulation and Capital; Views of Tooke and Fullarton
- Ch. 29: Component Parts of Bank Capital
- Ch. 30: Money Capital and Real Capital. I
- Ch. 31: Money Capital and Real Capital. II (Continued)
- Ch. 32: Money Capital and Real Capital. III (Concluded)
- Ch. 33: The Medium of Circulation in the Credit System
- Ch. 34: The Currency Principle and the English Bank Legislation of 1844
- Ch. 35: Precious Metal and Rate of Exchange
- Ch. 36: Precapitalist Relationships
- Part VI: Transformation of Surplus Profit into Ground Rent
- Ch. 37: Introduction
- Ch. 38: Differential Rent: General Remarks
- Ch. 39: First Form of Differential Rent (Differential Rent I)
- Ch. 40: Second Form of Differential Rent (Differential Rent II)
- Ch. 41: Differential Rent II First Case: Constant Price of Production
- Ch. 42: Differential Rent II, Second Case: Failing Price of Production
- Ch. 43: Differential Rent II Third Case: Rising Price of Production
- Ch. 44: Differential Rent Also on the Worst Cultivated Soil
- Ch. 45: Absolute Ground Rent
- Ch. 46: Building Site Rent. Rent in Mining. Price of Land
- Ch. 47: Genesis of Capitalist Ground Rent
- Part VII: Revenues and their Sources
- Ch. 48: The Trinity Formula
- Ch. 49: Concerning the Analysis of the Process of Production
- Ch. 50: Illusions Created by Competition
- Ch. 51: Distribution Relations and Production Relations
- Ch. 52: Classes
- Supplement by Frederick Engels
The owners merely of labour-power, owners of capital, and land-owners, whose respective sources of income are wages, profit and ground-rent, in other words, wage-labourers, capitalists and land-owners, constitute then three big classes of modern society based upon the capitalist mode of production.
In England, modern society is indisputably most highly and classically developed in economic structure. Nevertheless, even here the stratification of classes does not appear in its pure form. Middle and intermediate strata even here obliterate lines of demarcation everywhere (although incomparably less in rural districts than in the cities). However, this is immaterial for our analysis. We have seen that the continual tendency and law of development of the capitalist mode of production is more and more to divorce the means of production from labour, and more and more to concentrate the scattered means of production into large groups, thereby transforming labour into wage-labour and the means of production into capital. And to this tendency, on the other hand, corresponds the independent separation of landed property from capital and labour,[1] or the transformation of all landed property into the form of landed property corresponding to the capitalist mode of production.
The first question to he answered is this: What constitutes a class? — and the reply to this follows naturally from the reply to another question, namely: What makes wage-labourers, capitalists and landlords constitute the three great social classes?
At first glance — the identity of revenues and sources of revenue. There are three great social groups whose members, the individuals forming them, live on wages, profit and ground-rent respectively, on the realisation of their labour-power, their capital, and their landed property.
However, from this standpoint, physicians and officials, e.g., would also constitute two classes, for they belong to two distinct social groups, the members of each of these groups receiving their revenue from one and the same source. The same would also be true of the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords-the latter, e.g., into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners and owners of fisheries.
 | Here the manuscript breaks off. |
- ↑ F. List remarks correctly: "The prevalence of a self-sufficient economy on large estates demonstrates solely the lack of civilisation, means of communication, domestic trades and wealthy cities. It is to be encountered, therefore, throughout Russia, Poland, Hungary and Mecklenburg. Formerly, it was also prevalent in England; with the advance of trades and commerce, however, this was replaced by the breaking up into middle estates and the leasing of land." (Die Ackerverfassung, die Zwergwirtschaft und die Auswanderung, 1842, p.10.)