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[VOLUME I OF CAPITAL. SEPARATE PAGES

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[24] his labour capacity. Once his labour really starts, it ceases from that moment to belong to him. Hence he can no longer sell it )

Owing to the peculiar nature of this specific commodity, labour capacity, it does not really pass into the hands of the buyer as a use value on the conclusion of the contract between buyer and seller. The exchange value of this commodity, like that of all others, is determined before it enters into circulation, because it is sold as a capacity, as a power, and a specific amount of labour time was required to produce this capacity, this power. The exchange value of this commodity therefore existed before its sale, but its use value only begins to exist with the exercise of that power subsequently. Hence the alienation of that power does not coincide in time with its real manifestation, i.e. its existence as a use value. The situation is the same as it is with a house, the use of which has been sold to me for a month. Here I only receive the use value after I have inhabited the house for a month. In the same way, I only receive the use value of the labour capacity after I have consumed it, in fact after I have had it work for me. But in use values of this kind, where the formal alienation by sale of the commodity does not coincide with the real transfer of its use value to the buyer, the money of the buyer usually serves as means of payment, as we have seen before. The labour capacity is sold for a day, a week, etc., but it is only paid for after it has been consumed throughout a day, a week, etc. In all countries where the capital-relation is fully developed, labour capacity is only paid for after it has performed its function. In all cases, therefore, the worker advances the use of his commodity to the capitalist; he lets the buyer consume it before he receives payment of its exchange value; he provides it on credit This constant allowance of credit by the workers to the capitalists, arising from the special nature of the use value that is sold, is no mere figure of speech, as is shown in times of crisis and even in cases of individual bankruptcy.

However, the nature of the exchange of commodities is not altered by whether money functions as means of purchase or means of payment. The price of the labour capacity is contractually fixed in the sale, although it is not realised until later. Nor does

52) “The worker lends his industry” (Storch, Cours d’économie politique, Vol. II, St. Petersburg edition, 1815, p. 36). But, Storch adds slyly, he “risks nothing” except “the loss ... of his wages... The worker does not hand over anything of a material nature” (I.e., [pp. 36]37).

* “All labour is paid after it has ceased” * (An Inquiry into those Principles, respecting the Nature of Demand etc., London, 1821, [p.] 104). Other practical consequences which emerge from this mode of payment, based, incidentally, on the nature of the relation, are not relevant to our investigation. However, one example may be appropriate here. There are in London two sorts of bakers, the “FULL-PRICED”, who sell the bread at its full price, and the “ UNDERSELLERS”, who sell it below that price. The latter class comprises more than 3/4 of the total number of bakers (see p. XXXII in the report of H. S. Tremenheere, the government commissioner appointed to examine the Grievances Complained of by the Journeymen Bakers etc; London, 1862). These “UNDERSELLERS” for the most part adulterate the bread by mixing it with alum, soap, pearl-ash, chalk, Derbyshire stone flour, etc. (See the BLUE BOOK cited above, as well as the report of the Committee of 1855 on the Adulteration of Bread and Dr. Hassall’s book Adulterations Detected, 2ND EDITION, London, 1861). Sir John Gordon stated before the Committee of 1855 that as a result of these adulterations * “the poor men who lived on 2 lbs of bread a day did not take in one fourth of that amount of nutrition”,* quite apart from the *”injurious effects on [their] health”.* Tremenheere says (I.e., p. XLVIII) that one reason why “a very large proportion of the labouring class” are prepared to put up with the alum, stone flour, etc., despite being aware of the adulteration, is that it is * “a matter of necessity” * for them * “to take from their baker, or from the chandler’s shop, whatever bread may be offered to them”,* because, receiving their wages only at the end of the week, they * “only pay for the week’s supply to the family at the week’s end”.* He adds, supporting this with statements by witnesses, that * “it is notorious that bread composed of those mixtures is made expressly for sale in this manner”.* this form of payment change the fact that this price determination is related to the value of the labour capacity, and not to the value of the product or to the value of labour, which is not a commodity as such at all.

As has been shown, the exchange value of labour capacity is paid when the price of the means of subsistence is paid; these means of subsistence are those customarily necessary at a given state of society for the worker to be able to maintain the level of strength, health, and general vitality needed to exert his labour capacity, as well as to perpetuate himself through his human replacements.’ If man is distinguished from all other animals by the boundless extension of which his needs are capable, there is, inversely, no other animal able to contract its needs to the same

53) petty determines the value of the daily wages as the value of the amount of “DAILY FOOD” sufficient for the worker “TO LIVE, LABOUR, AND GENERATE” (Political Anatomy of Ireland (1672), London, 1691 EDITION, [p.] 64. Quote Dureau de la Malle as well).

* “The price of labour is always constituted of the price of necessaries.” * The worker does not receive proper wages * “whenever the price of necessaries is such, that the labouring man’s wages will not, suitably to his low rank and station, as a labouring man, support such a family as is often the lot of many of them to have” * (Jacob Vanderlint, Money Answers All Things, London, 1734, p. 15).

“The simple worker, who possesses nothing but his arms and his industry, has nothing unless he manages to sell his labour to others... In every kind of labour, it must happen, and it does in fact happen, that the wage of the worker is limited to what he needs to secure his own subsistence” (Turgot, Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses (1766). In: Oeuvres, éd. Daire, Vol. I, Paris, 1844, p. 10). *

“The price of the necessaries of life is, in fact, the cost of producing labour” * (Malthus, Inquiry into etc., Rent, London, 1815, [p.] 48, note). “From a comparative review of corn prices and wages since the reign of Edward III we may draw the inference that during the course of 500 years, the earnings of a day’s labour in this country have been more frequently below than above a peck” ( = 1/4 BUSHEL) “of wheat; that a peck of wheat may be considered as something like a middle point, or a point rather above the middle, about which the corn wages of labour, varying according to the demand and supply, have oscillated” (Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, 2ND EDITION, London, 1836, p[p. 240,] 254).

* “The natural price of any article is that ... bestowed upon its production... Its (labour’s) natural price ... consists in such a quantity of the necessaries and comforts of life as from the nature of the climate and the habits of the country are necessary to support the labourer, and to enable him to rear such a family as may preserve, in the market, an undiminished supply of labour... The natural price of labour ... though it varies under different climates, and with the different stages of national improvement, may, in any given time and place, be regarded as very nearly stationary”* (R. Torrens, An Essay on the External Corn Trade, London, 1815, . pp. 55-65 passim). unbelievable degree, or to restrict itself to the same minimum level of living conditions; in a word, there exists no animal with the same talent for making itself Irish. One cannot however speak of a physical minimum of existence of this kind [25] when the value of labour capacity is involved. With labour capacity, as with every commodity, its price can rise above its value, or fall below it, hence the value can diverge in one direction or the other from the price, which is merely the monetary expression of value itself. The level of the necessaries of life, the total value of which constitutes the value of labour capacity, may itself rise or fall. But the analysis of these variations belongs not to this discussion but to the theory of wages. It will emerge in the course of this investigation that for the analysis of capital it is entirely irrelevant whether the level of the worker’s needs is presupposed to be high or low. As in theory, so in any case in practice, the value of labour capacity is regarded as a given magnitude. E.g., a money owner who wants to convert his money into capital, e.g. into the entrepreneurial capital of a cotton factory, enquires first and foremost about the average level of wages in the place where he intends to set up the factory. He knows that wages, like the price of cotton, constantly diverge from the average, but also that these variations cancel each other out. Hence wages enter into his provisional calculations as a value of a given magnitude. On the other hand, the value of labour capacity forms the conscious and explicit basis of the TRADES ‘ UNIONS, the importance of which for the English working class can hardly be exaggerated. The aim of the TRADES’ UNIONS is nothing other than to prevent wages from falling below the level that is traditional in the different branches of industry. Their aim is to prevent the price of labour capacity from being forced down below its value. They are of course aware that a change in the relation of supply and demand brings about a change in the market price. On the one hand, however, the actual occurrence of such a change is something very different from the unilateral assertion of the buyer, in this case the capitalist, that it has occurred. On the other hand, there is

“a wide difference between the demand and supply rate of wages, or the rate which the FAIR operation of commodity exchange would give, if the buyer and seller of it were on equal terms, and that which the seller, the worker, is compelled to accept if the employer deals with each man singly, and dictates a reduction, taking advantage of the individual workman’s accidental needs” (which do not depend on the general relation of supply and demand). “The workmen combine to put themselves on something like equality in the bargain for the sale of their labour with the capitalist. This is the rationale” (the logical basis) “of TRADES’ UNIONS.”)

Their purpose is to make sure that

“the workman’s present necessities do not compel him to take less than the wages which the demand and supply of labour in the trade have previously adjusted”,)

thereby forcing down the value of labour capacity below its customary level in a particular sphere. This value of labour capacity is “regarded by the workmen themselves as a minimum rate, and by the capitalists as a uniform rate for all workmen in a particular enterprise”. The UNIONS therefore never allow their members to work at less than this minimum rate. They are insurance associations founded by the workers themselves for this purpose. An example may explain the aim of these combinations formed among the workers for the protection of the value of

54) T. J. Dunning (*Secretary to the London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders*), Trades’ Unions and Strikes: Their Philosophy and Intention, London, 1860, pp. 6, 7.

55) L.c, p. 7.

56) L.c, p. 17.

57) It goes without saying that the capitalists denounce this “ UNIFORM RATE OF LABOUR” as an encroachment on the personal freedom of the worker, and an obstacle which hinders the capitalist from following the impulses of his heart and giving special remuneration to people of special talents, etc. Mr. Dunning, in the pamphlet we have just quoted, not only gets to the heart of the matter but treats the issue with pleasing irony; his reply is that the TRADES’ UNIONS allow the capitalist “TO PAY FOR SUPERIOR SKILL, OR WORKING ABILITY, AS MUCH MORE AS HE PLEASES”, but prevent him from forcing down 99/100 of the wages, i.e. the wages of the “COMMON RUN OF MEN”, of the average worker in every business, below the “minimum wage”, i.e. below the customary value of the average labour capacity. It is in order for an EDINBURGH REVIEWER (“Concerning the COMBINATIONS OF TRADE”, I860) to denounce as slavery the combinations of workers against the despotism of capital which these FREE-BORN BRITONS voluntarily submit to out of an incomprehensible delusion. In time of war one always wants the enemy army to refuse to submit to the despotism of discipline. But the REVIEWER, in his moral indignation, discovers something still worse. The TRADES’ UNIONS are sacrilegious, because they infringe the laws of FREE TRADE! Quelle horreur! Mr. Dunning replies, inter alia: * “It would not be a free exchange of blows if one of the parties were to have one arm disabled or tied down while the other had the free use of both ... the employer wishes to deal with his men singly, so that whenever he pleases he may give the ‘sweaters’ price for their labour; their right arm as bargainers being tied down by their necessities in its sale. This he calls free trade, but the freedom is all on his own side. Call it trade, if you will, it is not free exchange”* (I.e., [p.] 48) labour capacity. In all the London businesses there are so-called “SWEATERS” .

“A SWEATER is one who takes out work to do, at the usual rate of wages, and who gets it done by others at a lower price; the difference, which is his profit, being sweated out of those who execute the work.”)

It represents nothing but the difference between the value of the labour capacity, which is paid for by the first entrepreneur, and the price paid by the sweater to the actual workers, which stands below the value of the labour capacity.’ It is, incidentally, a highly characteristic [...]

[259] The form of piece wages is used e.g. in the English POTTERIES to engage young APPRENTICES (who have reached the age of 13) at a low piece wage, with the result that they overwork themselves exactly in the period of their development, “to the great advantage of their masters”. This is officially stated to be one of the causes of the degeneration of the population in the pottery factories.

An increase in the total wage (e.g. the total weekly wage) in

58) L.c, p. 6.

59) “A philanthropic association has been set up in London, the purpose of which is to undertake the contracts for military clothing on the same terms now given by the Government to contractors, and yet to pay the starving needlewomen an advance of 30 p.c. on their present wages. This result is simply obtained by getting rid of the ‘MIDDLEMAN’, and applying his profits to the benefit of the human material out of which they have been hitherto made. With every advantage the society can give, a needlewoman cannot earn more than Is. for 10 hours’ incessant labour at soldiers’ shirts (viz. 2 shirts a day), and at cloth work not more than Is. 6d. a day, for 12 hours’ work. At contract work her wages now vary from 5d. to 8d. per 10 hours’ work and she has in addition to provide the yarn, etc.” (The Times, March 13, 1862 [p. 10]).

41)* “There are. in the employ of the manufacturer, many youths who are taken as apprentices at the early age of 13 and 14 as flat-[ware] pressers and hollow-ware pressers. For the first two years they are paid weekly wages of 2s. to 3s. 6d. per week. After that they begin to work on the piece-work system, earning journeymen’s wages. ‘The practice,’ Mr. Longue says, ‘of employing a great number of apprentices and taking them at the age of 13 and 14 is very common in a certain class of manufactories, a practice which is not only very prejudicial to the interests of the trade, but is probably another great cause to which the bad constitution of the potters is to be attributed. This system, so advantageous to the employer, who requires quantity rather than quality of goods, tends directly to encourage the young potter greatly to overwork himself during the 4 or 5 years during which he is employed on the piece-work system but at low wages.’ The consequences of overwork in the hot stoves at that early age may readily be anticipated”* (Children’s Employment Commission. First Report, London, 1863, [p.] XIII). branches of labour where TASK WORK has been freshly introduced— an increase resulting, say, from a higher intensity of labour—is regarded by the MASTERS as a ground in itself for a reduction in wages, once they reach a certain level, since the masters consider them now to be higher than is good for the worker. TASK WORK as a means of forcing down wages is thus directly denounced.’

It should be clear in itself that the mode in which wages are paid in itself changes nothing in their nature, although the mode of payment—which incidentally may sometimes be restricted to one or the other method by the technical nature of the labour in question—may favour the development of the capitalist production process to a greater or lesser degree.

It is clear that individual differences in wages, which have more room for development with piece wages than with time wages, are only deviations from the [average] level of wages. But piece wages have a tendency to force down the level of wages itself, unless this effect is paralysed by other circumstances.

The wage, as the overall price of daily average labour, contradicts the concept of value. Every price must be reducible to a value, since the price is in and for itself only the monetary expression of value, and the fact that actual prices stand above or below the price which corresponds to their value does not alter anything in the situation that they are a quantitatively incongruent expression of the value of the commodity, even if they are too large or too small quantitatively in the case that has been presupposed. But here, in the price of labour there would be a qualitative incongruence.

Note 16. To add to p. 244.

* “When corn forms a part of the subsistence of the labourer, an increase in its natural price necessarily occasions an increase in the natural price of labour; or, in other words, when it requires a greater quantity of labour to procure subsistence, a greater quantity of labour, or of its produce, must remain with the labourer, as his wages. But, as a greater quantity of his labour, or (what is the same thing) of the produce of his labour, becomes necessary to the subsistence of the labouring manufacturer, and is consumed by him while at work, a smaller quantity of the productions of labour will remain with the employer” * (R. Torrens, An Essay on the External Corn Trade, [London,] 1815, [pp.] 235, 236).

42) * “Indeed, the main objection in different trades to working by the piece is the complaint that, when the men are found to earn good wages at it, the employer wishes to reduce the price of the work, and that it is so often made use of as a means for reducing wages” * (Dunning, I.e., p. 22).

[260] Since the value of a commodity=the necessary labour contained in it, the value of a day’s labour—performed under otherwise adequate conditions of production and with the average, customary social degree of intensity and skill—would be equal to the day of labour contained in it. This is nonsense and does not begin to provide a definition. Hence the value of labour—i.e. the price of labour (qualitatively) stripped of its monetary expression—is an irrational expression and in fact merely a converted and inverted form for the value of labour capacity. (Price, which is not reducible to value, whether directly or through a series of intermediate steps, expresses a merely accidental exchange of something for money. And thus things which are in the nature of the case not commodities and are therefore in this sense extra commercium hominum can be converted into commodities by being exchanged for money. Hence the connection between venality and corruption and the money relation. Since money is the converted shape of the commodity, it is not evident from looking at it where it comes from, what has been converted into it, whether this may be conscience or virginity or potatoes.)

But piece wages, when they have to serve directly as the expression of a value relation, are just as irrational as time wages, the most direct form of wages. Say, for example, that an hour of labour,=6d., has been objectified in an item of a commodity (disregarding the constant capital contained in it). The worker receives 3d., or, in other words, the value of this item with regard to the worker is not determined by the value contained in it, as measured by the labour time. This wage therefore does not in fact directly express a value relation. What is involved here is not the measurement of the value of the item according to the labour time contained in it, but rather the reverse, the measurement of the necessary labour time the worker has performed with reference to the item. The wage he receives is therefore a time wage, since the item only has the task of measuring the time for which he receives the wage, and of serving as a guarantee that he has only employed necessary labour time, hence has worked with the appropriate intensity, and apart from this, that his labour (as a use value) is of the appropriate quality. Piece wages are therefore nothing but a particular form of time wages, which for their part are only the converted form of the value of labour capacity, or respectively the prices of labour capacity which correspond quantitatively to that value or diverge from it. If piece wages have a tendency to allow a great room of manoeuvre for the worker’s individuality, hence to raise the wages of some workers above the general level to a greater or lesser extent, they equally force the wages of other workers below that level, and reduce the level itself, owing to the extreme intensity of the competition to which the workers are spurred on under such a system.

In so far as the intensity of labour—other things being equal—is measured by the amount of product delivered by the worker in a given time, one must, when comparing time wages (e.g. the wage for a working day of a given length) in different countries, compare at the same time the way in which these wages are related to each other when expressed by the piece. Only in that way can one arrive at the true proportion between necessary and surplus labour, or between wages and surplus value. It will then often occur that although time wages are apparently higher in rich countries, piece wages are higher in poor countries, and the worker in fact requires a greater portion of his working day to reproduce his wage in the latter, so that the rate of surplus value is lower here than there, and wages are therefore relatively speaking higher. Hence the real price of labour is in fact higher in poor countries than in rich ones. When one considers a number of countries, one finds that apart from duration, and productivity which is independent of the individual worker, intensity matters as much as does the length of the working day. The more intensive working day in a given country=the less intensive+x If one takes the working day of the gold and silver producing countries as the measure of the international working day, the more intensive English working day of 12 hours, e.g., will be expressed in more gold than the less intensive Spanish day; i.e. it will stand higher in proportion to the average working day realised in gold and silver. A high national wage, if we consider an overall day of a given length, will stand higher not only from the point of view of use value, but also from that of exchange value, and therefore in its monetary expression as well. (If a given value of gold and silver is presupposed, a higher monetary expression must always express more value, and a lower, less value; if the money wages of workers of different countries are considered simultaneously the value of gold and silver is always presupposed as given, since even a change in this value occurs simultaneously in different countries, so that no change takes place as far as their reciprocal ratio is concerned.) A

higher national wage, therefore, does not in fact imply a higher price of labour, seen as the price of a given quantity of labour. If the working day is longer, or, and internationally this amounts to the same thing, if the labour is more intensive, wages in one country may be higher than in another, but, firstly, they may still constitute a smaller portion of the overall day, hence may still be relatively smaller, and, secon.dly, they may even represent a smaller price of labour. If, for example, the worker receives 3s. a day for 12 hours, this is less than if his day’s wage amounted to 2 1/2 S. for 11 hours. For the one hour of surplus labour includes a much greater amount of wear and tear, hence a much more rapid reproduction of labour capacity. The difference would be even greater if the 2 1/2S. were paid for 10 and the 3 for [...]

[263] i.e. to receive back from production a higher value than the total amount of values the capitalist advanced in and for the production process. The production of the commodities themselves only appears as a means to this end, just as the labour process in general only appears as a means of the valorisation process. The term “valorisation process” is not to be taken in its previous sense as a process of the formation of value, but as a process of the formation of surplus value.

This result is however brought about to the extent that the amount of living labour which the worker has to perform, and which therefore is objectified in the product of his labour, is greater than the amount of labour contained in the variable capital or laid out in wages, or, and this is the same thing, is greater than the amount of labour required for the reproduction of labour capacity. In so far as the value advanced becomes capital through the production of surplus value alone, the origin of capital itself, like the capitalist production process, depends above all on 2 moments:

Firstly, the sale and purchase of labour capacity, an act which falls within the sphere of circulation, but from the point of view of the capitalist production process as a whole constitutes not only a moment and a presupposition, but also the constant result of the process. This sale and purchase of labour capacity implies the separation of the objective conditions of labour—hence of the means of subsistence and the means of production—from living labour capacity itself, so that the latter forms the only property which the worker has at his disposal, and the only commodity he “has to sell. This separation proceeds so far that the conditions of labour confront the worker as independent persons, for the capitalist, as owner of the conditions of labour, is only their personification in opposition to the worker as the mere owner of labour capacity. This separation and this achievement of an independent position by the conditions of labour is presupposed before the sale and purchase of labour capacity can take place, hence before living labour can be incorporated into dead labour as means for the latter’s selfpreservation and self-multiplication, hence its self-valorisation. Without the exchange of variable capital for labour capacity, no self-valorisation of capital as a whole could take place, and therefore no capital formation or conversion of means of production and means of subsistence into capital. The second moment is the real production process, i.e. the real consumption process of the labour capacity purchased by the owner of money or commodities.*’

[264] In the real production process, the objective conditions of labour—material and means of labour—not only serve to allow living labour to objectify itself, but also to allow more labour to be objectified than was contained in the variable capital. They therefore serve as means for absorbing and squeezing out surplus labour, which is expressed in surplus value (and SURPLUS PRODUCE). Hence if one considers both moments together, firstly the exchange of labour capacity for variable capital, and secondly the real production process (in which living labour is incorporated into capital as an agens), the process as a whole appears as one in

* [“The employer is interested in keeping down the price of labour; but while that price remains the same, while at a given expense he gets a given amount of work done, his situation remains unaltered. If a farmer can get a field trenched for £12 it is indifferent to him whether he pays the whole of the sum] *to three capital workmen or to 4 ordinary ones... If the three could be hired at £3 10s. a piece, while the 4 required £ 3 a piece, though the wages of the three would be higher, the price of the work done by them would be lower. It is true that the causes which raise the amount of the labourer’s wages often raise the rate of the capitalist’s profits. If, by increased industry, one man performs the work of two, both the amount of wages and the rate of profits will generally be raised; not by the rise of wages, but in consequence of the additional supply of labour having diminished its price, or having diminished the period for which it has previously been necessary to advance that price. The labourer, on the other hand, is principally interested in the amount of wages. The amount of his wages being given, it is certainly his interest that the price of labour should be high, for on that depends the degree of exertion imposed on him”* (I.e. [N. W. Senior, Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages..., London, 1830, pp.] 14, 15). From the same work:

* “The labourer’s situation does not depend on the amount which he receives at any one time, but on his average receipts during a given period ... the longer the period taken, the more accurate will be the estimate” * (I.e., [p.] 7).”The year the best period to take. Includes summer and winter wages” (I.e., [p.] 7). which 1) less objectified labour is exchanged for more living labour, in that what the capitalist in reality receives in return for the wage is living labour; and 2) the objective forms which directly represent capital in the labour process, the means of production (hence objectified labour once again), serve as means for squeezing out and absorbing this living labour. The whole thing appears as a process taking place between objectified and living labour, a process which not only converts living into objectified labour, but also at the same time converts objectified labour, and therefore living labour as well, into capital. It is therefore a process in which not only a commodity is produced, but also surplus value, and therefore capital (cf. [pp.] 96-108).

Here the means of production appear not only as means of realisation of labour, but also, to the same degree, as means of exploitation of alien labour.

[379] Ad b): Different Forms of Centralisation of the Means

of Production Among Different Peoples

* “Although skill and mechanical science may do much, the preponderance of the vital element is essential in the extension of manufactures. The system of morcellement, in preventing a rapid development of the population, has thus tended indirectly to retard the extension of manufactures. It has also had that effect in a direct manner. It has retained a large population attached to and occupied upon the soil. The cultivation of the soil is their primary occupation—that which is followed with pride and contentment—their employment in spinning, weaving, and the like is but a subsidiary one necessary for their support. Their savings are hoarded for the purpose of increasing their inheritance and they are not prone to wander from home in search of fresh occupation or new habits” * [Reports of the Inspectors of Factories ... 31st October 1855, London, 1856, p. 67].

//Hence it is precisely here, where * saving ( = hoarding) still exists to a relatively high degree, and is able to exist under the given circumstances, [that] the formation of capital, relatively speaking, and the development of capitalist production, is prevented, in comparison to England, by the very same economical conditions that are favourable to the hoarding, etc.//

“The position of a proprietor, the possession of a house, of a plot of ground, is the chief object also of the factory operative, and of almost every poor man who has not already a property; in fact, all look to the land... From this description of the character and occupations of a very numerous class of the French people, it will be readily inferred that, unlike that of England, the manufacturing industry of France is represented by small establishments,” * [I.e.]

//this shows how necessary the expropriation of the land is for the development of large-scale industry//

* “some moved by steam and water, many dependent for the moving power upon animal labour and many factories still entirely employing manual labour only.”

This characteristic of French industry is well described by Baron C. Dupin, as consequent upon the system of the tenure of land. He says:

“As France is the country of divided properties, that of small holdings, so it is the country of the division of industry, and of small workshops” * (Reports of the Inspectors of Factories ... 31st October 1855, [pp.] 67-68).

The same FACTORY INSPECTOR [as wrote this report] (A. Redgrave) provides a survey of French TEXTILE MANUFACTURES OF WHATEVER IMPORTANCE, for 1852, from which it appears that [the sources of power there were steam 2,053 (horsepower), water 959 and other mechanical power 2,057] (I.e., p. 69). a)He compare s this RETURN with the * return of the number of factories, etc., presented to the House of Commons in * 1850, and shows on that basis * “the following remarkable difference between the system of textile man -ufacture of England and that of France”,* the result being as follows:

[380] * “The number of factories in France is 3 times as large as those in England, while the number of persons employed in them is only 1/5 greater; but the very different proportions of machinery and moving power will be best shown by the following comparison:

Number of factories Number of persons employed *	France	England
	12,986	4,330	The French figures in fact include FACTORIES which would not be counted under this category at all in England.
	706,450	596,082

a) What appears as preliminary (primitive) accumulation of capital is in fact only the taking up of an independent position by the conditions of production—their separation from the SELF-EMPLOYING PRODUCER and his transformation into a wage labourer. This is shown in the text using the example of manufacture. But it is clear that it also applies e.g. to the relation between the FARMING CAPITALIST and the peasant, etc. “Large-scale cultivation does not require a greater amount of capital than small or medium cultivation; on the contrary, it requires less, but in these different systems capitals must be distributed differently. In large-scale cultivation the capitals applied to agriculture must be available in the hands of a small number of men who pay the wages of the labourers they employ” (Mathieu de Dombasle, Annales agricoles de Rovüle, 2nd instalment, [Paris,] 1825, p. 217).’

* "Average number of persons in each factory	54	137
Average no. of spindles to each person employed *	7	43	Hence 6 times as many in England as in France.
* "Average no. of persons to each loom	2	2	(powerloom only)" *
	(power* and * handloom)

According to this, then, more people are EMPLOYED in France than in England, but only because all HANDLOOM WEAVING is excluded from the English RETURN; but the AVERAGE ESTABLISHMENT employs more than twice as many people in England as in France (54/136=27/68=13/34=almost 1/3), hence there is a greater AGGLOMERATION of people under the direction of the same capital. In France there are 3 times as many factories, but only 1/5 more people employed in them; hence fewer people are employed in proportion to the number of ESTABLISHMENTS. Furthermore, with regard to the MASS OF MACHINERY COMING UPON EACH PERSON, there are 6 times as many SPINDLES in England as in France. If all the persons employed were spinners, there would be 4,945,150 SPINDLES in France, and 1/5 fewer in England. Thus in England, there is 1 POWERLOOM to 2 PERSONS, in France 1 POWER OR 1 HANDLOOM.

PERSONS	596,082 43
	1,788,246 23,843,28
	25,631,526

In England there are 25,631,526 [spindles]. Furthermore, *“the steam power employed in the factories of Great Britain= 108,113 horses; the proportion of persons employed [is] about 5^1/2 persons to each horsepower of steam; the proportion of France upon this estimate should give a steam power=128,409 hordes, whereas the whole of the steam power of France was in 1852 only=75,518 horses, produced by 6,080 steam engines, of the average power of less than 12^1/2 horses to each; while the number of steam engines employed in the textile factories of France appears to have been in 1852, 2,053, and the power of these engines to [have been] equal to 20,282 horses, distributed as follows:

	Factories	Power, in horses
Employed in spinning only	1,438	16,494
weaving only	101	1,738
finishing, etc.	242	612
other processes	272	1,438
	2,053	20,282" (I.e., p. 70).

“The absence, in France, of the bones and sinews of manufactures, coal and iron, must ever retard her progress as a manufacturing country” * (I.e.).

There is far more working machinery, and prime-moving machinery (MECHANIC POWER), per one worker in an English factory, COMPARED TO THE FRENCHMEN; and he therefore works up far more raw material in the same time. * The productive power of his labour is, therefore, much greater, as is the capital that employs him. The number of establishments [is] much smaller in England than in France. The number of workingmen employed on the average, in one single establishment, [is] much greater in England than in France, although the total number employed in France [is] greater than in England, although in a small proportion only, compared to the number of establishments.*

This shows that as a result of historical, etc., circumstances, which have had a varying impact upon the relative degree of concentration of the means of production, corresponding to the greater or lesser expropriation of the mass of the direct producers, there have been very different levels of development of the productive forces and of the capitalist mode of production altogether. But this stands in a precisely inverse relation to the “SAVING” and “HOARDING” of the direct producer himself, which is very great in France as compared with England. The scale on which the SURPLUS LABOUR of the * producers can be “saved” and “hoarded” and “accumulated” and brought together in great masses, i.e. concentrated, can be used as capital, corresponds exactly to the degree in which their surplus labour is hoarded, etc., by their employers instead of by themselves; corresponds, therefore, to the degree in which the great mass of the real producers is precluded from the capacity and the conditions of “saving”, “hoarding”, “accumulating”, is in one word precluded from all power of appropriating its own surplus labour to any important degree, because of their more or less complete expropriation from their means of production. Capitalistic accumulation and concentration are based upon, and correspond to, the facility of appropriating other people’s surplus labour in great masses, and the corresponding inability of these people themselves to lay any claim to their own surplus labour. It is, therefore, the most ludicrous delusion, fallacy, or imposture, to explain, and account for, this capitalistic accumulation, by confounding it with, and, as far as phraseology goes, converting it into, a process quite its opposite, exclusive of it, and corresponding to a mode of production upon whose ruins capitalistic production can alone be reared. This is one of the delusions carefully entertained by political economy. The truth is this, that in this bourgeois society, every workman, if he is an exceedingly clever and shrewd fellow, and gifted with bourgeois instincts, and favoured by an exceptional fortune, can possibly be converted himself into an exploiteur du travail d'autrui But where there was no travail to be exploité, there would be no capitalists] nor [would there be] capitalistic production.*