Carlo Cafiero

Karl Marx's Capital

1879

Published: 1879

Translation: © Paul M. Perrone (2018)

Source: »Compendio del Capitale»

HTML: Joonas Laine



Briefly summarized by Carlo Cafiero, 1879

It’s with great pride and anticipation that I present this first complete English translation of Carlo Cafiero’s summary of Karl Marx’s Capital. My ultimate hope is that this work will further Cafiero’s original goal in writing this book: to develop class consciousness and the knowledge of basic Marxian economics among workers, activists, and students. Given the length of Capital, Volume 1, those without the adequate time or skill set may be put off in reading it in its entirety. However, this summary, while not a substitute, is undoubtedly an adequate primer. Not only is it an easily digestible length, but it fully encapsulates the major points of Marx’s analysis of production, accumulation of capital, and the exploitation of labor. Cafiero’s dynamic and impassioned prose is sure to inspire a similar feeling in the hearts of readers, and his inclusion of large portions of Marx’s original volume can also better acquaint modern readers with the masterful writing and research skills embodied in Marx.

For the translation of this work, I tried as best as possible to render Cafiero’s writing as easy to comprehend in English while still maintaining the intentions and structure from the original Italian publication. When it came to the citations Cafiero included from Marx’s Capital, instead of translating into English his Italian translations of the French translations of the original German text, which I figured would be far too contrived, I opted to cite the 1887 English translation, directly from the German, by Samuel Moore and Edward Averling (and notably edited by Friedrich Engels).[1] This way, I ensured that Marx’s original words would be as accurate as possible. The synthesis of the work done by both men is, I find, a comprehensive image of the entire breadth of the original first volume of Capital.

Cafiero, now all but forgotten in English leftist circles, is worthy of further study by those of us in the modern age. Born to a bourgeois family in southern Italy in 1846, he was a devoted revolutionary who furthered the cause of anarcho-communism in Italy during his short life. After being arrested for helping to inspire a failed insurrection in Benevento in 1877, Cafiero drafted his summary of Capital in prison. First published in 1879, this work was highly praised, even by Marx, whose opinion of the work can be read in the Appendix at the end of this translation. Sadly, Cafiero’s life following this publication took a turn for the worse; intermittent periods of exile and return to Italy coincided with the development of a serious mental illness that caused Cafiero to attempt suicide on several occasions. He died of tuberculosis in a mental hospital in Italy in 1892 at only 45.

I therefore dedicate this first English translation of Carlo Cafiero’s summary of Capital to Cafiero himself. In this day and age, 200 years since the birth of Marx and 150 years since the publication of the first volume of Capital, these ideas, and the understanding of them, are more necessary than ever.

Paul M. Perrone

2018

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Marxists Internet Archive, 2008

Carlo Cafiero accomplished an important work in drafting this summary of Capital, approved and looked over by experts and even by Marx himself, not only because it is able to synthesize the thinking of the “master” in a few pages, but also because it is able to convey Capital’s message in an impassioned, yet concise, manner, in a tenacious and complete, as well as illuminating, writing. It is not that this writing is sufficient to ascertain all of the contents of that immense work and milestone that is Marx’s Capital, but it certainly has the value and capacity to better acquaint the reader with the universe of Marxist works, Capital included; this is no small task in an age like ours, in which Marxism unfortunately enjoys a lack of fame, due to the rule of bourgeois capital and to so many preconceptions and false myths surrounding communism.

One cannot blame communist groups and parties for this crisis, but above all one can blame the historical and social doings that have characterized the last twenty years, with the explosion of technology, that has favored globalization and therefore a further reinforcement of the bourgeoisie, which controls politics and media. It is exactly in this context that, around two centuries later, the work that we have in front of us gains tremendous truth, more than many contemporary sociological writings.

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Italy, March 1878

A profound feeling of sadness struck me, studying Capital, when I thought that this work was, and who knows how much longer it would remain, entirely unknown in Italy.

But if that is, I then said to myself, I want to say that my duty is to work for all people, so that this would no longer be. And what to do? A translation? Phew! That wouldn’t help at all. The people who can understand the work of Marx, such that he has written, certainly know French, and can make use of J. Roy’s beautiful translation, fully reviewed by the author, who says it even deserves to be consulted by those who speak the German language. It’s a very different group of people for whom I must work. It’s divided into three categories: the first is composed of workers gifted with intelligence and of a certain education; the second, composed of young people who came out of the bourgeoisie, and have embraced the cause of labor, but who for now don’t have the set of studies or the sufficient intellectual development to understand Capital in its original text; the third, finally, composed of the youngest in schools, still of pure heart, who I can compare to a beautiful nursery of still tender plants, but who will bear the best fruits, if transplanted into fertile soil. My work must therefore be an easy and brief summary of Marx’s book.

This book represents the new true, which completely demolishes, crushes, and disperses to the winds a secular edifice of mistakes and lies. It is all a war. A glorious war, and by the power of the enemy, and by the even greater power of the captain, who undertook it with great quantities of the newest weapons, tools and machinery of every sort, which his genius had known how to portray from all the modern sciences.

My work is a great length shorter and more modest. I must only guide a crowd of willing followers along the shortest and simplest path to the temple of capital; and to tear down that god there, so that all can see with their own eyes and touch with their own hands the elements of which it is composed; and to rip off the vestments from the priests, so that all can see the hidden stains of human blood, and the cruelest weapons, with which they go about, every day, sacrificing an ever-growing number of victims.

And with these intentions I prepare to work. Meanwhile Marx can fulfill his promise, giving us the second volume of Capital, which will deal with The Process of Circulation of Capital (book II), and with The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole (book III), and the fourth and final volume which will explain A History of Economic Theories.

This first book of Capital, originally written in German and afterwards translated into Russian and into French, is now briefly summarized in Italian in the interests of the cause of labor. May the workers read it and think about it carefully because in it is contained not only the story of The Development of Capitalist Production, but also The Martyrdom of the Worker.

And finally, I will also appeal to a class highly interested in the fact of capitalist accumulation, i.e. to the class of small property holders. How is it that this class, once so widespread in Italy, shrinks more and more every day? The reason is very simple. Because since 1860 Italy has set course with more alacrity down the path, which all modern nations must necessarily travel; the path that leads to capitalist accumulation, which has reached that classic form in England, which Italy wishes to reach along with all other modern nations. May the small property holders meditating on these pages about the history of England reported in this book, meditating on capitalist accumulation, increased in Italy by the usurpations of big property holders and by the liquidation of ecclesiastical and state property, shake off the torpor that oppresses their minds and hearts, and once and for all persuade themselves that their cause is the cause of the workers, because they will all inevitably be reduced, by modern capitalist accumulation, to this sad condition: either sell themselves to the government for a loaf of bread, or disappear forever within the dense rows of the proletariat.

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Commodities, Currency, Wealth and Capital

A commodity is an object that has two values; a use value and an exchange value, or an appropriately determined value. If I have, for example, 20 kilos of coffee, I can either consume it for my own use, or exchange it for 20 meters of canvas, or for a suit, or for 250 grams of silver, if, instead of coffee, I need one of these three commodities.

The use value of a commodity is based on the actual qualities of the commodity itself, is meant to equal such qualities based on its qualities, and not any other needs. The use value of 20 kilos of coffee is based on the qualities of the coffee; these qualities being such that they make it clear to all that it is apt for us to drink, but they don’t enable us to clothe ourselves, or give us material for a shirt. It is for this reason that we are able to gain from the use value of 20 kilos of coffee, only if we feel the desire to drink coffee; but if instead we need a shirt, or to wear a suit that costs the use value of 20 kilos of coffee, we don’t know what to do; or, to say it better, we wouldn’t know what to do, if alongside the use value, there wasn’t, in the commodity, the exchange value. We in fact find another who has a suit, but who doesn’t need it, and needs coffee instead. Now one makes a trade right away. We give him the 20 kilos of coffee and he gives us the suit.

But does it follow that the commodities, while they differ completely between themselves because of their different qualities, that is for their use values, can be exchanged one for the other? We have already shown this.

Because, alongside the use value, there is also found an exchange value in the commodity. Now, the foundation of the exchange value, or the appropriately determined value, is the human labor needed for its production. The commodity is made by the worker; human labor is the life-force that gives it existence. All commodities therefore, although they’re different in quality, are substantially the same, because daughters of the same father all have the same blood in their veins. If 20 kilos of coffee are exchanged for a suit, or for 20 meters of canvas, it is indeed because the same amount of human labor is needed to produce 20 kilos of coffee as is needed to produce a suit, or 20 meters of canvas. Therefore, the value’s substance is human labor, and the size of the value is determined from the amount of human labor itself. The value’s substance is the same in all commodities; therefore it does not stand that they must be equal in size, because the commodities are, like expressions of value, all equal to one another, i.e., all able to be exchanged one for the other.

The size of the value depends on the amount of work; in 12 hours of work one produces a value double that which is produced in only six hours of work. Therefore, someone would say, the more one works and the longer one works, save for disability or for laziness, the more value is produced. Nothing is falser. Labor, which forms the substance of value, isn’t the work of a superhuman, but average labor, which is always the same, and that is rightly called social labor. This is that work, which, in a given center of production, can be averaged by a worker, who works with an average ability and an average intensity.

The dual nature of commodities known, being, that is, use value and exchange value, one will see that commodities can be born only by the work of labor, and by labor that is useful to all. Air for example, grasslands, virgin soil, etc. are useful to people, but don’t constitute any value to them, because they aren’t the products of work and, consequentially, aren’t commodities. We can make ourselves objects for our own personal uses, but which can’t be useful for others; in such a case we don’t produce commodities; even less we produce commodities when we work on objects, which do not have any usefulness either for us or for others.

Commodities, therefore, are exchanged for each other; the one, that is, that presents itself as the other’s equivalent. For the greater comfort of exchanges one begins to use always one given commodity as the equivalent; that which so steps out from the rank of all the others, to stand in front of them as a general equivalent; that is currency. Currency therefore is that commodity which, by custom and by legal sanction, has monopolized the position of the general equivalent. Thus has happened for us with silver. While before 20 kilos of coffee, a suit, 20 meters of canvas and 250 grams of silver were four commodities, which were exchanged indistinctly for one another, today instead you have that 20 kilos of coffee, 20 meters of canvas and a suit are three commodities, which are worth 250 grams of silver, i.e. 50 lire.

However, whether the exchange is done immediately from commodity to commodity, or the exchange is done by means of currency, the law of exchange always remains the same. A commodity can never be exchanged with another, if the labor that is needed to produce one is not equal to the labor that is needed to produce the other. This law must be kept well in mind, because above it is founded everything that we will see said afterwards.

With the arrival of currency, immediate or direct exchanges, commodity for commodity, end. Exchanges must all be done, from now on, through currency; so that a commodity that wishes to transform into another, must, first, from a commodity transform into currency, then from currency transform itself again into a commodity. The formula of exchanges, therefore, will not be a chain of commodities anymore, but a chain of commodities and currency. See here:

Commodity-Currency-Commodity-Currency-Commodity-Currency.

Now, if in this formula we find indicated the turns that make the goods, in their successive transformations, we find equally marked the turns of currency. It is from this same formula therefore that we will derive the formula of capital.

When we find ourselves in possession of a certain accumulation of commodities, or of currency, which is the same thing, we are owners of a certain wealth. If we are able to give a body to this wealth, that is an organism able to develop itself, we will have capital. Giving it a body, or an organism able to develop itself, means to be born and to grow; and in fact the essence of capital is placed precisely in the possibly prolific nature of currency.

The resolution of the problem (to find the way to give birth to capital) is contained in the resolution of another problem: to find a way to make money grow progressively.

In the formula, which marks the turns of commodities and of currency, we add, to the term currency, a mark of progressive growth indicating it, for example, with a number and we will have:

Currency–Commodities–Currency1–Commodities–Currency2–Commodities–Currency3.

This is the formula of capital.

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How Capital is Born

Carefully examining the formula of capital, it can be noted in the last analysis that the matter of the accrual of capital is resolved in the following way: finding a commodity that profits more than what it costs; finding a commodity that, in our hands, can give rise to value, so that, by selling it, we come to amass more money than we spent to buy it. In short, it must be an elastic commodity that, stretched however much in our hands, can grow in value. This very singular commodity indeed exists and it is called labor power, or labor force.

For example, here is a money-owner, who possesses a large amount of wealth, and wants to use his wealth to give rise to capital. He comes into the marketplace solely in search of labor power. Let’s follow his process. He walks around the marketplace, and meet a proletarian, who came solely to sell their only commodity: labor power. The worker, however, is not selling his labor power in whole, not completely, but only partly, for a given time, ie for a day, for a week, for a month, etc. If he sold it altogether, of course, he would become a commodity himself; he would no longer be a wage-worker, but the slave of his owner.

The price of labor power is calculated in the following way. One takes the cost of food, daily life, rent, and however many other things are needed every year by a worker to maintain their labor power, always in their normal state; one adds, to this first amount, the amount needed every year by a worker to procreate, raise, and educate, according to their condition, their children; one divides the total by 365, the number of days in a year, and one will have how much, every day, is required to maintain labor power, one’s daily price, that is the daily wages of the worker.

A part of this calculation is also that which is needed for the worker to procreate, raise, and educate his children because these are the future sources of labor power. If the proletarian sold all of his labor power, instead of just a part, of course, he would become a commodity himself, i.e. a slave of his owner, and his children would also be a commodity, i.e. slaves, just like their parent, of their owner; but, by taking only a part of the labor power of the proletarian away, he has the right to keep the rest, which is found partially in himself and partially in his children.

With this calculation we obtain the exact price of labor power. The law of exchange, explained in the previous chapter, says that a commodity cannot be exchanged with another if the labor that is needed to produce the former is not equal to the labor that is needed to produce the latter. Now, the labor that is needed to produce labor power is equal to the labor needed to produce the things needed by the worker, and as a consequence the value of those things necessary to the worker is equal to the value of their labor power. Therefore if the worker needs 3 lire every day for all of their necessities, it’s clear that 3 lire will be the price of their labor power every day.

Now let’s suppose — a supposition never hurt anyone — that the daily wages of a worker, found in the above manner, amount to 3 lire. Let’s also suppose that, in 6 hours of work, one can produce 15 grams of silver, which is equivalent to 3 lire. The money-owner has meanwhile formed a contract with the proletarian, paying him for his labor power at the correct price of 3 lire a day. He’s a perfectly honest and religious member of the bourgeoisie, for whom it may look good to defraud the worker’s wages. He will be able to make the point that the salary is paid to the worker at the end of the day or the end of the week, that is after he has already completed his labor; because this is also how it’s done with other commodities, whose value is realized in use, like, for example, the rent for a house, or a small farm, whose price one is able to pay at the expiring of terms.

There are three elements of the labor process: firstly, labor power; secondly, raw materials; and thirdly, the means of production. Our money-owner, after the labor power, also bought raw materials at the market, namely cotton wool; the means of production, namely the workshop with all of its tools, is good and ready; and, consequently, he has nothing left to do than to make the way clear between his legs for the work to begin.

“[W]e think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 6).

Our characters arrive at the workshop, where the boss hurries to put his worker to task, giving him 10 kilos of cotton wool, since he is a cotton spinner.

Labor is made up of the utilization of the elements that compose it; the utilization of labor power, raw materials, and means of production. The utilization of the means of production is calculated in the following way. From the sum of the value of all the means of production, the building, radiators, coal, etc, one subtracts the sum of the value of all of the raw materials that will remain of the means of production put out by the consumption of use; one divides the result of this subtraction by the number of days that the means of production can last, and one will have the daily consumption of the means of production. Our worker works a 12-hour day. When it’s over, he has transformed the 10 kilos of cotton wool into 10 kilos of thread, which he hands over to his boss, and he leaves the workshop to shrink at home. Along the way, however, for that ugly vice that workers have, to always want to reckon behind the backs of their boss, he tries to find out in his mind how much his boss will be able to earn off of those 10 kilos of thread.

“I don’t rightly know how much the thread costs,” he says to himself, but the amount is soon figured out. “I saw cotton wool when he bought it at the market at 3 lire per kilo. All of the means of production cost 4 lire per day. Therefore:

“10 kilos of cotton wool: ₤30

“Utilization of the means of production: ₤4

“Daily salary: ₤3

“Total: ₤37

“The 10 kilos of thread are worth 37 lire. Now on the cotton wool he certainly didn’t gain anything, because he paid for it at the proper price, neither a cent too much nor a cent too little; as for me, he pays for my labor power 3 lire a day, the price that suits him; therefore it must be the case that he profits by selling his thread for more than it’s worth. It absolutely must be this way; otherwise he would be spending 37 lire just to earn 37 lire, not counting the time that he lost and the inconvenience that it took.

“Now look how the bosses do things! They have a good wish to make out like honest people with the worker from whom they buy labor power, with the merchant from whom they buy raw materials, but they have an eternal flaw, and the rest of us workers, who know how the industry works, shall go on strike. But to sell a commodity for more than it is worth is like selling with false weights, which is illegal. Therefore, if the workers were to expose their bosses’ tricks, they would be forced to close their factories; and to produce goods based on need, maybe they would open large government facilities; that would be much better.”

So the daydreaming worker arrived at home; and there, dined, went to bed, and slept deeply, dreaming of the disappearance of bosses and the creation of government workshops.

Sleep, poor friend, sleep in peace, while hope still rests within you. Sleep in peace, for the disappointing day will soon come. Soon you will learn how your boss can sell their goods for profit, without defrauding anyone. He will make you see how one becomes a capitalist, and a large capitalist, while remaining perfectly honest.

Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane.

Let’s return to our money-owner. This bourgeois, a model of accuracy and of order, has adjusted all of his daily counts; and here is how he has figured the price of his 10 kilos of thread:

For 10 kilos of cotton wool at 3 lire per kilo – ₤30

For the utilization of the means of production – ₤4

But around the third element, fitting into the production of his commodity, he has not noted the salary paid to the worker. He knows very well that a large difference occurs between the price of labor and the product of labor power. A daily salary represents how much is needed to sustain the worker for 24 hours, but it doesn’t by any means represent what the worker produces in one day of work.

Our money-owner knows very well that the 3 lire of salary he paid paid represent the upkeep for 24 hours for his worker, but not that which he produced in the 12 hours that he worked in his factory. He knows all of this, precisely as a farmer knows the difference that occurs between what it costs to maintain a cow in a stable, to feed it, etc, and what is produced in milk, cheese, butter, etc. Labor power has the singular quality to give something more worth than it cost and it is for this exactly this fact that the money-owner went to purchase it in the marketplace.

The worker has nothing to smile about. He took the fair price for his good; the law of exchanges was observed perfectly; and he doesn’t have the right to tell the buyer what to do with the commodity, like how a grocer can’t tell their patron how to use the sugar and pepper bought in their shop.

We have supposed above that, in 6 hours of work, 15 grams of silver are produced, equivalent to 3 lire. Therefore, if in 6 hours the labor power produces a value of 3 lire, in 12 hours it will produce a value of 6 lire. Here therefore is the calculation, which states the value of 10 kilos of thread:

10 kilos of cotton wool at 3 lire per kilo: ₤30

Use of the means of production: ₤4

12 hours of labor power: ₤6

Total: ₤40

The money-owner has therefore spent 37 lire and has obtained a commodity that is worth 40 lire; so he gained 3 lire; his money has increased.

The problem is unraveled. Capital is born.

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The Workday

Capital, just born, feels quickly the need for nourishment to develop itself; and the capitalist, who lives now but for the life of the capital, attentively worries about the needs of this being, which has become his heart and soul, and he finds a way to satisfy himself.

The first method, employed by the capitalist in favor of his capital, is the extension of the workday. It’s certain that the workday has its limits. Foremost, a day only consists of 24 hours; it is then necessary from these 24 hours to cut a certain number, because the worker must satisfy all his physical and moral needs: to sleep, feed himself, rest his strength, etc.

“But both these limiting conditions are of a very elastic nature, and allow the greatest latitude. So we find working-days of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, i.e., of the most different lengths.

“The capitalist has bought the labour-power at its day-rate. To him its use-value belongs during one working-day. He has thus acquired the right to make the labourer work for him during one day. But, what is a working-day?

“At all events, less than a natural day. By how much? The capitalist has his own views of this ultima Thule [the outermost limit], the necessary limit of the working-day. As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour.

“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.

“If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist.

“The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production, rises:

“‘The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c., I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preach to me constantly the gospel of “saving” and “abstinence.” Good! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the working-day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour-power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour-power and the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average time that (doing a reasonable amount of work) an average labourer can live, is 30 years, the value of my labour-power, which you pay me from day to day is 1/(365×30) or 1/10950 of its total value. But if you consume it in 10 years, you pay me daily 1/10950 instead of 1/3650 of its total value, i.e., only 1/3 of its daily value, and you rob me, therefore, every day of 2/3 of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day’s labour-power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our contract and the law of exchanges. I demand, therefore, a working-day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place. You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in the odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you represent face to face with me has no heart in its breast. That which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I demand the normal working-day because I, like every other seller, demand the value of my commodity.’

“We see then, that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working-day, no limit to surplus-labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 10, sec. 1).

We will now see exposed how force acts, as told by the facts, when all is made by and for capital. The facts cited in this book are all taken from England: primarily, because this is the country where capitalist production has reached the greatest development, towards which the rest of all civilized countries tend; and, in the second place, because only in England is there a suitable amount of documents, regarding the conditions of work, collected by regular government commissions. The modest limits of this summary, however, only allow for a reproduction of a small part of the rich materials collected in the work of Marx.

“William Wood, 9 years old, was 7 years and 10 months when he began to work. He ‘ran moulds’ (carried ready-moulded articles into the drying-room, afterwards bringing back the empty mould) from the beginning. He came to work every day in the week at 6 a.m., and left off about 9 p.m. “’ work till 9 o’clock at night six days in the week. I have done so seven or eight weeks.’

“Fifteen hours of labour for a child 7 years old! J. Murray, 12 years of age, says: ‘I turn jigger, and run moulds. I come at 6. Sometimes I come at 4. I worked all night last night, till 6 o’clock this morning. I have not been in bed since the night before last. There were eight or nine other boys working last night. All but one have come this morning. I get 3 shillings and sixpence. I do not get any more for working at night. I worked two nights last week…’

“Mr. Charles Parsons, late house surgeon of the same institution, writes in a letter to Commissioner Longe, amongst other things:

“‘I can only speak from personal observation and not from statistical data, but I do not hesitate to assert that my indignation has been aroused again and again at the sight of poor children whose health has been sacrificed to gratify the avarice of either parents or employers.’ He enumerates the causes of the diseases of the potters, and sums them up in the phrase, ‘long hours…’

“Half the workers [in matchstick factories] are children under thirteen, and young persons under eighteen. The manufacture is on account of its unhealthiness and unpleasantness in such bad odour that only the most miserable part of the labouring class, half-starved widows and so forth, deliver up their children to it, ‘the ragged, half-starved, untaught children.’

“Of the witnesses that Commissioner White examined (1863), 270 were under 18, 50 under 10, 10 only 8, and 5 only 6 years old. A range of the working-day from 12 to 14 or 15 hours, night-labour, irregular meal-times, meals for the most part taken in the very workrooms that are pestilent with phosphorus. Dante would have found the worst horrors of his Inferno surpassed in this manufacture…

“In the manufacture of paper-hangings the coarser sorts are printed by machine; the finer by hand (block-printing). The most active business months are from the beginning of October to the end of April. During this time the work goes on fast and furious without intermission from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. or further into the night.

“J. Leach deposes:

“‘Last winter six out of nineteen girls were away from ill-health at one time from over-work. I have to bawl at them to keep them awake.’ W. Duffy: ‘I have seen when the children could none of them keep their eyes open for the work; indeed, none of us could.’ J. Lightbourne: ‘Am 13 ... We worked last winter till 9 (evening), and the winter before till 10. I used to cry with sore feet every night last winter.’ G. Apsden: ‘That boy of mine when he was 7 years old I used to carry him on my back to and fro through the snow, and he used to have 16 hours a day ... I have often knelt down to feed him as he stood by the machine, for he could not leave it or stop…’

“In the last week of June, 1863, all the London daily papers published a paragraph with the ‘sensational’ heading, ‘Death from simple over-work.’ It dealt with the death of the milliner, Mary Anne Walkley, 20 years of age, employed in a highly-respectable dressmaking establishment, exploited by a lady with the pleasant name of Elise. The old, often-told story, was once more recounted. This girl worked, on an average, 16½ hours, during the season often 30 hours, without a break, whilst her failing labour-power was revived by occasional supplies of sherry, port, or coffee. It was just now the height of the season. It was necessary to conjure up in the twinkling of an eye the gorgeous dresses for the noble ladies bidden to the ball in honour of the newly-imported Princess of Wales. Mary Anne Walkley had worked without intermission for 26½ hours, with 60 other girls, 30 in one room, that only afforded 1/3 of the cubic feet of air required for them. At night, they slept in pairs in one of the stifling holes into which the bedroom was divided by partitions of board. And this was one of the best millinery establishments in London. Mary Anne Walkley fell ill on the Friday, died on Sunday, without, to the astonishment of Madame Elise, having previously completed the work in hand. The doctor, Mr. Keys, called too late to the death-bed, duly bore witness before the coroner’s jury that

“‘Mary Anne Walkley had died from long hours of work in an over-crowded work-room, and a too small and badly ventilated bedroom…’

“In Marylebone, blacksmiths die at the rate of 31 per thousand per annum, or 11 above the mean of the male adults of the country in its entirety. The occupation, instinctive almost as a portion of human art, unobjectionable as a branch of human industry, is made by mere excess of work, the destroyer of the man” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 10, sec. 3).

This is how capital whips labor, which, after much suffering, searches until the end to resist it. The workers unite and demand, to the powers that be, the establishment of a normal workday. One may easily comprehend how much of this they are able to obtain, considering that the law must be made and upheld by the capitalists themselves, against whom the workers would like to contend.

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Relative Surplus Value

Labor power, producing a greater value than how much something is worth, that is a “surplus,” has created capital; enlarging then this surplus value with prolongation of the workday, has given sufficient nourishment to the capital for its infancy. The capital grows, and the surplus value must increase to satisfy the grown need. Increase of surplus value, however, does not mean, like we saw before, the extension of the workday, which eventually also has its necessary limits, although it is a very elastic length. For what little time there is that the capitalist leaves to the worker for the satisfaction of his most basic needs, the workday will always be less than 24 hours. The workday meets then a natural limit, and the surplus value, consequently, an insurmountable obstacle. Let’s represent the workday with the line A-B.

A-------D-------C----------------B

The letter A here represents the beginning and B the end, that natural limit, that is, past which it isn’t possible to go. A-C is the part of the day in which the worker produces the value of the salary received and C-B the part of the day in which the worker produces surplus value. We see that our cotton spinner, in fact, receiving 3 lire in salary, was reproducing the value of his salary with half of his day, and was producing 3 lire of surplus value with the other. The work done from A-C, with which the salary’s value is produced, is necessary labor, while the work done from C-B, which produces surplus value, is called exploitation.

The capitalist is thirsty for exploitation, because it is this that creates surplus value. Prolonged exploitation prolongs the workday, which finishes at its natural limit B, which represents an insurmountable obstacle to exploitation and surplus value. What to do now? The capitalist soon finds the solution. He observes that exploitation has two limits, one B, the end of the workday, the other C, the end of the necessary work; if the limit B is fixed, it won’t be so for limit C. Being able to move the point C all the way to point D, one would grow the exploitation from C-B the length of D-C, exactly how much the necessary work from A-C would decrease. Surplus value would thus find a way to continue growing, not in the absolute way like at first, which is by always prolonging the workday, but in relation to the growth of exploitation with the corresponding decrease in necessary work. The first was absolute surplus value, this is relative surplus value. Relative surplus value is founded upon the decreasing of necessary work; the decreasing of necessary work is founded upon the decreasing of wages; the decreasing of wages is founded upon a decrease in prices of things that are necessary for the worker; therefore relative surplus value is founded on the depreciation of the commodities that the worker uses.

And there would be an even quicker way of producing relative surplus value, someone will say, and that would be to pay the worker a salary less than that which he is due, that is not to pay him the proper price of his commodity, labor power. We cannot consider this expedient, used often in fact, minimally, because we aren’t admitting that it’s the most perfect observance of the law of exchange, according to which all commodities, and consequently labor power as well, must be sold and bought at their proper value.

Our capitalist, like we already saw, is an absolutely honest bourgeois; he will never use, to enlarge his capital, a method that is not entirely worthy of him.

Let’s suppose that, in a workday, a worker produces 6 items of a commodity, that the capitalist sells for the price of ₤7,50, because in the value of this commodity the raw materials and the means of production come to ₤1,50 and 12 hours of labor power come to 6 lire: all three components, therefore, come to ₤7,50. The capitalist finds a surplus value of 3 lire on the value of ₤7,50, the cost of his commodity, and on top of every component a surplus value of ₤0,50, because he spends ₤0,75 and extracts ₤1,25 from each of these. Let’s suppose that with a new system of work, or just with perfection of the old way, production doubles, and that, instead of 6 items a day, the capitalist is able to attain 12. If in 6 items the raw materials and the means of production come to ₤1,50, in 12 he will come to 3 lire, that is every item comes to ₤0,25. Those 3 lire combined with the 6 lire produced by labor power in 12 hours, make 9 lire, that is how much the 12 items cost, each one of which therefore comes to the price of ₤0,75.

Now the capitalist needs to make himself a larger place in the market to sell a double quantity of his commodity; and you can do this by somewhat restricting the price. In other words, the capitalist needs to make a reason arise for which he is able to sell their items on the market in twice the number as before; and the reason is found exactly in price reduction. He will sell, therefore, his items at a price somewhat lower than ₤1,25, which was his price before, but greater than ₤0,75 (how much each one of these is truly worth). He with sell them at a lira each, and so he will have secured doubled sales of his items, from which he now gains 6 lire; 3 lire of surplus value and 3 lire of difference between their value and the price at which they are sold.

As you can see, the capitalist gains a great profit from this growth of production. All capitalists are therefore highly interested in increasing the products of their industries, and it is with this that they are able to make this happen every day in any kind of production. Their extraordinary gain, however, that which represents the difference between the value of the commodity and the price at which it is sold, doesn’t last long, because right away the new or perfected system of production becomes adopted by all out of necessity. So now as a result the value of the commodity lessens by half. At first every item was worth ₤1,25; now instead it’s worth 62 ½ cents. The capitalist however always attains a profit, having doubled production. At first 3 lire of surplus value for 6 items and now 3 lire of surplus value for 12 items; but given that the 12 items are produced in the same time the 6 items were made, that is in 12 hours of work, he always has as a final result 3 lire of surplus value for one 12-hour workday, but double the production.

When this increase in production is regarding goods necessary to the worker, it consequently carries the lowering of the price of labor power, and therefore the lessening of necessary work and the increase of exploitation, which makes up relative surplus value.

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Cooperation

It’s been a bit since we haven’t dealt with the facts of our capitalist, who must have certainly prospered in the meantime. Let’s go back to his workshop, where we may have the pleasure of seeing our friend, the spinner, again. Here we are. Let’s enter.

Oh, surprise! There’s no longer one worker, but now a large number of workers find themselves at work. All quiet and in order as if they were many soldiers. The lack of guards and inspectors is seen as supervisors who walk among the ranks, all observing, giving orders, or overseeing the the execution is by the books. Of the capitalist nothing is seen, not even a shadow. A glass door opens inside, maybe it will be him; let’s see. It’s a solemn person, but it’s not our capitalist. The supervisors carefully stand around him, and they receive his orders with the utmost attention. The sound of an electric doorbell is heard; one of the supervisors runs to put his ear to the mouth of a metal tube, which descends from the doorway along the wall; and and he soon comes to announce to the director that the boss demands a conference with him.

Let’s look in the crowd of workers for our old acquaintance the spinner; and finally we come to find him in a corner, completely devoted to work. He’s become gaunt and pale in the face: on his face one reads a profound thought of sadness. One day we saw him at the market negotiating his labor power peer to peer with the money-owner; but how great the distance between them has grown today! Today he is a worker lost in the crowd of the many that populate the workshop, and oppressed by an extraordinarily long workday; while the money-owner, who’s already become a big capitalist, stands like a god atop Mount Olympus, from where he sends orders to his people through a group of intermediaries. Whatsoever has happened? It’s a piece of cake. The capitalist has prospered. Capital has grown by a lot, and, in order to satisfy his new needs, the capitalist has established cooperative labor, that is labor done with a joining of forces. In this workshop, where at another time only one labor force used to work, today there works a whole cooperation of labor forces. Capital has gone out of its infancy, and presents itself for the first time with its true appearance. The advantages that capital finds in cooperation can be reduced to four. Firstly it’s in cooperation that capital realizes true social labor power. Social labor power being, as we already said, the average taken in a given center of production among a number of workers who labor with an average degree of ability and intensity, it’s clear that every single labor force will move itself more or less from average or social force, which it therefore can only obtain by gathering a great number of labor forces in the same workshop; i.e. in cooperation.

The second advantage is the economics of the means of production. The same workshop, the same heaters, etc., that used to serve only one, now serve many workers.

The third advantage of cooperation is the growth of labor power.

“Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the defensive power of a regiment of infantry is essentially different from the sum of the offensive or defensive powers of the individual cavalry or infantry soldiers taken separately, so the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated workmen differs from the social force that is developed, when many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same undivided operation, such as raising a heavy weight, turning a winch, or removing an obstacle” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 13).

The fourth advantage is the possibility to combine forces that are able to execute tasks in a way that either wouldn’t be able to be accomplished with isolated efforts, or would be able to be accomplished in a very flawed fashion. Who hasn’t seen how 50 workers can move enormous loads in one hour, while one labor force wouldn’t be able to move them, in 50 hours altogether, even one inch? Who hasn’t seen how 12 workers, placed along the scaffolding of a house under construction, go through a quantity of materials in one hour immensely greater than that which one worker would go through in 12 hours? Who doesn’t understand how 20 bricklayers can do much more work in one day than only one can do in 20 days?

“Co-operation ever constitutes the fundamental form of the capitalist mode of production” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 13).

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Division of Labor and Manufacturing

When the Capitalist gathers the workers to perform the various tasks, which make up all of the labor for a commodity, in his workshop, he gives an entirely special nature to simple cooperation; he establishes the division of labor and manufacturing; which is none other than “a productive mechanism whose parts are human beings” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, sec. 1).

Although manufacturing is always based on the division of labor, it also has a double origin. In fact in some cases manufacturing has brought together the different processing needs for the completion of a commodity in the same workshop, which first, like so many special trades, used to be distinct and divided up; in other cases it has divided, while keeping them in the same workshop, the different work operations, that before used to make up a whole of the completion of a commodity.

“A carriage, for example, was formerly the product of the labour of a great number of independent artificers, such as wheelwrights, harness-makers, tailors, locksmiths, upholsterers, turners, fringe-makers, glaziers, painters, polishers, gilders, &c. In the manufacture of carriages, however, all these different artificers are assembled in one building where they work into one another’s hands. It is true that a carriage cannot be gilt before it has been made. But if a number of carriages are being made simultaneously, some may be in the hands of the gilders while others are going through an earlier process” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, sec. 1).

The production of a pin was divided into more than twenty partial processes, which form the parts of the complete manufacture of a pin. Manufacturing, therefore, sometimes brings many trades together into only one, and sometimes divides a trade into many more.

Manufacturing multiplies the forces and instruments of labor, but renders them predominantly technical and simple, constantly applying them to one sole and unique basic operation.

Great are the advantages that capital realizes in manufacturing, allocating different labor forces to the same basic operations constantly. Labor power gains very much in intensity and precision. All of those little intervals, which one finds like pores between the different phases of production of a good created by only one individual, disappear when this individual always executes the same operation. The worker needs no more than an hour to learn all about a trade albeit a simple one, a unique operation of the trade itself, which he learns in much less time and with less expense than how much was needed to learn a trade in its entirety. This diminishing of expense and time is a diminishing of things needed for the worker, i.e. a diminishing of necessary labor, and a corresponding growth of overwork and surplus value. The capitalist, really a parasite, always grows fatter at the expense of labor, and the worker suffers greatly.

“While simple co-operation leaves the mode of working by the individual for the most part unchanged, manufacture thoroughly revolutionises it, and seizes labour-power by its very roots. It converts the labourer into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts; just as in the States of La Plata they butcher a whole beast for the sake of his hide or his tallow. Not only is the detail work distributed to the different individuals, but the individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation, and the absurd fable of Menenius Agrippa, which makes man a mere fragment of his own body, becomes realised” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, sec. 5).

“Dugald Stewart calls manufacturing labourers ‘living automatons ... employed in the details of the work’” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, fn. 40).

“If, at first, the workman sells his labour-power to capital, because the material means of producing a commodity fail him, now his very labour-power refuses its services unless it has been sold to capital. Its functions can be exercised only in an environment that exists in the workshop of the capitalist after the sale. By nature unfitted to make anything independently, the manufacturing labourer develops productive activity as a mere appendage of the capitalist’s workshop. As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, sec. 5).

Heinrich von Storch says: “The worker who is the master of a whole craft can work and find the means of subsistence anywhere; the other (the manufacturing labourer) is only an appendage who, when he is separated from his fellows, possesses neither capability nor independence, and finds himself forced to accept any law it is thought fit to impose” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, fn. 42).

“Intelligence in production expands in one direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is lost by the detail labourers, is concentrated in the capital that employs them. It is a result of the division of labour in manufactures, that the labourer is brought face to face with the intellectual potencies of the material process of production, as the property of another, and as a ruling power. This separation begins in simple co-operation, where the capitalist represents to the single workman, the oneness and the will of the associated labour. It is developed in manufacture which cuts down the labourer into a detail labourer. It is completed in modern industry, which makes science a productive force distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, sec. 5).

“In manufacture, in order to make the collective labourer, and through him capital, rich in social productive power, each labourer must be made poor in individual productive powers.

“‘Ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition. Reflection and fancy are subject to err; but a habit of moving the hand or the foot is independent of either. Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may ... be considered as an engine, the parts of which are men’ (Adam Ferguson).

“As a matter of fact, some few manufacturers in the middle of the 18th century preferred, for certain operations that were trade secrets, to employ half-idiotic persons.

“‘The understandings of the greater part of men,” says Adam Smith, “are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations ... has no occasion to exert his understanding... He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.’

“After describing the stupidity of the detail labourer he goes on:

“‘The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind... It corrupts even the activity of his body and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employments than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems in this manner to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilised society, this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall.’

“For preventing the complete deterioration of the great mass of the people by division of labour, A. Smith recommends education of the people by the State, but prudently, and in homeopathic doses. G. Garnier, his French translator and commentator, who, under the first French Empire, quite naturally developed into a senator, quite as naturally opposes him on this point. Education of the masses, he urges, violates the first law of the division of labour, and with it ‘our whole social system would be proscribed.’ ‘Like all other divisions of labour,’ he says, ‘that between hand labour and head labour is more pronounced and decided in proportion as society (he rightly uses this word, for capital, landed property and their State) becomes richer. This division of labour, like every other, is an effect of past, and a cause of future progress... ought the government then to work in opposition to this division of labour, and to hinder its natural course? Ought it to expend a part of the public money in the attempt to confound and blend together two classes of labour, which are striving after division and separation?’” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, sec. 5).

Ferguson says: “And thinking itself, in this age of separations, may become a peculiar craft” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, fn. 48).

“Some crippling of body and mind is inseparable even from division of labour in society as a whole. Since, however, manufacture carries this social separation of branches of labour much further, and also, by its peculiar division, attacks the individual at the very roots of his life, it is the first to afford the materials for, and to give a start to, industrial pathology” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, sec. 5).

“Ramazzini, professor of practical medicine at Padua, published in 1713 his work ‘De morbis artificum,’ which was translated into French 1781, reprinted 1841 in the ‘Encyclopédie des Sciences Médicales. 7me Dis. Auteurs Classiques.’ The period of Modern Mechanical Industry has, of course, very much enlarged his catalogue of labour’s diseases. See ‘Hygiène physique et morale de l’ouvrier dans les grandes villes en général et dans la ville de Lyon en particulier. Par le Dr. A. L. Fonteret, Paris, 1858,’ and ‘Die Krankheiten, welche verschiednen Ständen, Altern und Geschlechtern eigenthümlich sind. 6 Vols. Ulm, 1860,’ and others. In 1854 the Society of Arts appointed a Commission of Inquiry into industrial pathology. The list of documents collected by this commission is to be seen in the catalogue of the ‘Twickenham Economic Museum.’ Very important are the official ‘Reports on Public Health.’ See also Eduard Reich, M. D. ‘Ueber die Entartung des Menschen,’ Erlangen, 1868” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, fn 50).

David Urquhart says: “To subdivide a man is to execute him, if he deserves the sentence, to assassinate him if he does not... The subdivision of labour is the assassination of a people.” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, sec. 5).

“Hegel held very heretical views on division of labour. In his ‘Rechtsphilosophie’ he says: ‘By well educated men we understand in the first instance, those who can do everything that others do’” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, fn. 51).

“In its specific capitalist form – and under the given conditions, it could take no other form than a capitalistic one – manufacture is but a particular method of begetting relative surplus-value, or of augmenting at the expense of the labourer the self-expansion of capital – usually called social wealth, ‘Wealth of Nations,’ &c. It increases the social productive power of labour, not only for the benefit of the capitalist instead of for that of the labourer, but it does this by crippling the individual labourers. It creates new conditions for the lordship of capital over labour. If, therefore, on the one hand, it presents itself historically as a progress and as a necessary phase in the economic development of society, on the other hand, it is a refined and civilised method of exploitation” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 14, sec. 5).

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Machinery and Modern Industry

John Stuart Mill, in his Principles of Political Economy, says: “Hitherto [1848] it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being” (Mill, Principles of Political Economy, ch. 6).[2] This was not their purpose. Like every other development of the productive force of labor, capitalist use of machinery does not tend to lower the price of commodities, to shorten the part of the day, in which the worker labors for himself, in relation to lengthening the other, in which he works only for the capitalist. It is a particular method for making relative surplus value.

But who is it that ever thinks of the worker? If the capitalist looks after him, it is only to study a better way of exploiting him. The worker sells his labor power, and the capitalist buys it, as the only commodity that, with its surplus value, can enable him to give birth to and grow capital. The capitalist, therefore, is only concerned with making more surplus value. After having exhausted the resources of absolute surplus value, he found relative surplus value. He now sees that with machinery one can obtain in the same time a product two times, four times, ten times, etc. bigger than before; and he begins to use machinery. Cooperation, manufacturing, thus transform into modern industry and his workshop into a factory. That capitalist, after having mutilated and crippled the worker with the division of labor, after having limited him to only one partial task, makes us watch a sadder show yet. He rips from the hands of the worker that special tool, which still reminds him of his art, his old status of a whole man, and entrusts him to the machine. From now on the capitalist has no more need for the worker, as he does a servant of his machinery. With the introduction of machinery, the capitalist realizes an enormous profit at first, one easily understands how, remembering how much we said about relative surplus value. However with the propagation of the mechanical system of production, the extraordinary profit ceases, and only the growth of production remains that, made general by the generalization of machinery, begins to lower the value of the things necessary to the worker, the necessary labor time, and salaries, and to increase overwork and surplus value.

Capital is divided into constant and variable. Constant capital is that which is represented by raw materials and the means of production. The building, the heaters, the tools, the auxiliary materials, like tallow, coal, oil, etc., the means of production, like iron, cotton, silk, silver, wood, etc., are all things that make up parts of constant capital.

Variable capital is that which is represented by salary, by the price that is of labor power. The first is called constant, because its value remains constant in the value of the commodity, of which it is a portion; while the second is called variable, exactly because its value grows coming in to make a portion of the value of the commodity. It is only variable capital that creates surplus value; and the machine only makes up a portion of constant capital.

The capitalist aims, in modern industry, to profit from an enormous mass of past labor, in the same way that he would profit from a mass of natural forces, ie for free. To be able to reach his goal, however, he needs to have a complete mechanism, which will be composed of more or less expensive materials, and will always absorb a certain amount of work. He certainly does not have to buy steam power, or the driving property of water or of air; he certainly does not have to buy mechanical breakthroughs and applications; nor the inventions and improvements of the tools of a trade. He can avail himself of all of this, always as he wishes, without expense; but he just needs to procure all of a mechanism adapted to this. The machine enters therefore, as a means of production, making up a portion of constant capital; and the proportion, in which it comes in to compose the value of the commodity, is in direct proportion with its consumption and with its auxiliary materials, coal, tallow, etc., and in inverse proportion with the value of the commodity. That is to say that the more one wears out a machine with its auxiliary materials in producing a commodity, the more it tells them of its value; while the value of the commodity is larger, for which the machine works, the portion of value that comes from the consumption of the machine is smaller.

“Since [the steam-hammer’s] daily wear and tear, its coal-consumption, &c., are spread over the stupendous masses of iron hammered by it in a day, only a small value is added to a hundred weight of iron; but that value would be very great, if the cyclopean instrument were employed in driving in nails” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 15, sec. 2).

When, for the generalization of the system of modern industry, the machine ceases to be a direct source of extraordinary wealth for the capitalist, he succeeds in finding many other ways, with which he can continue to get very large amounts of relative surplus value from this new way of production.

“In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means of employing labourers of slight muscular strength, and those whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour of women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for by capitalists who used machinery. That mighty substitute for labour and labourers was forthwith changed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every member of the workman’s family, without distinction of age or sex. Compulsory work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children’s play, but also of free labour at home within moderate limits for the support of the family.

“The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult labourer, but also by that necessary to maintain his family. Machinery, by throwing every member of that family on to the labour-market, spreads the value of the man’s labour-power over his whole family. It thus depreciates his labour-power. To purchase the labour-power of a family of four workers may, perhaps, cost more than it formerly did to purchase the labour-power of the head of the family, but, in return, four days’ labour takes the place of one, and their price falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus-labour of four over the surplus-labour of one. In order that the family may live, four people must now, not only labour, but expend surplus-labour for the capitalist. Thus we see, that machinery, while augmenting the human material that forms the principal object of capital’s exploiting power, at the same time raises the degree of exploitation.

“Machinery also revolutionises out and out the contract between the labourer and the capitalist, which formally fixes their mutual relations. Taking the exchange of commodities as our basis, our first assumption was that capitalist and labourer met as free persons, as independent owners of commodities; the one possessing money and means of production, the other labour-power. But now the capitalist buys children and young persons under age. Previously, the workman sold his own labour-power, which he disposed of nominally as a free agent. Now he sells wife and child. He has become a slave-dealer” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 15, sec. 3A).

“If machinery be the most powerful means for increasing the productiveness of labour — i.e., for shortening the working-time required in the production of a commodity, it becomes in the hands of capital the most powerful means, in those industries first invaded by it, for lengthening the working-day beyond all bounds set by human nature …

“In the first place, in the form of machinery, the implements of labour become automatic, things moving and working independent of the workman. The automaton, as capital, and because it is capital, is endowed, in the person of the capitalist, with intelligence and will; it is therefore animated by the longing to reduce to a minimum the resistance offered by that repellent yet elastic natural barrier, man. This resistance is moreover lessened by the apparent lightness of machine work, and by the more pliant and docile character of the women and children employed on it …

“The material wear and tear of a machine is of two kinds. The one arises from use, as coins wear away by circulating, the other from non-use, as a sword rusts when left in its scabbard. The latter kind is due to the elements. The former is more or less directly proportional, the latter to a certain extent inversely proportional, to the use of the machine.

“But in addition to the material wear and tear, a machine also undergoes, what we may call a moral depreciation. It loses exchange-value, either by machines of the same sort being produced cheaper than it, or by better machines entering into competition with it” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 15, sec. 3B).

To repair this damage, the capitalist feels the need to make the machine work as much as possible, and most importantly begins to prolong daily labor, introducing night shifts and the relays system. As the word itself indicates, used to indicate the changing of postal horses, the relays system consists of making two teams of workers carry out labor, that switch off every twelve hours, or three that switch off every eight hours; in a way that labor always proceeds without the slightest interruption for all 24 hours. This system, so advantageous for capital, is also begun to be used in the first moment of the appearance of machinery, when the capitalist is in a great rush to be able to amass the greatest quantity possible of extraordinary profit, that soon must stop for the generalization of the machinery itself. The capitalist, therefore, breaks down all obstacles of time with the machinery, all of the limits of the day that were imposed on labor in manufacturing. And when he is joined with the natural limit of the day, to absorb that is all of the 24 hours of the day, he finds the way to make of only one day two, three, four or more days, intensifying labor two, three, four or more times. In fact, if in one workday one finds a way of making a worker carry out two times, three times, four times, etc. more labor than before, it’s clear that the old workday will correspond to two, three, four or more workdays. And the capitalist finds the way to do this, rendering, as we have already said, labor more intense, squeezing, in other words, into only one day the labor of two, three, four or more days. It is with machinery that he is able to achieve this goal.

“The improvements in the steam-engine have increased the piston speed, and at the same time have made it possible, by means of a greater economy of power, to drive with the same or even a smaller consumption of coal more machinery with the same engine. The improvements in the transmitting mechanism have lessened friction, and, what so strikingly distinguishes modern from the older machinery, have reduced the diameter and weight of the shafting to a constantly decreasing minimum. Finally, the improvements in the operative machines have, while reducing their size, increased their speed and efficiency, as in the modern power-loom; or, while increasing the size of their framework, have also increased the extent and number of their working parts, as in spinning-mules, or have added to the speed of these working parts by imperceptible alterations of detail, such as those which ten years ago increased the speed of the spindles in self-acting mules by one-fifth.

“The reduction of the working-day to 12 hours dates in England from 1832. In 1836 a manufacturer stated: ‘The labour now undergone in the factories is much greater than it used to be ... compared with thirty or forty years ago ... owing to the greater attention and activity required by the greatly increased speed which is given to the machinery.’

“In the year 1844, Lord Ashley, now Lord Shaftesbury, made in the House of Commons the following statements, supported by documentary evidence: ‘The labour performed by those engaged in the processes of manufacture, is three times as great as in the beginning of such operations. Machinery has executed, no doubt, the work that would demand the sinews of millions of men; but it has also prodigiously multiplied the labour of those who are governed by its fearful movements’” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 15, sec. 3C).

“So far as division of labour re-appears in the factory, it is primarily a distribution of the workmen among the specialised machines; and of masses of workmen, not however organised into groups, among the various departments of the factory, in each of which they work at a number of similar machines placed together; their co-operation, therefore, is only simple. The organised group, peculiar to manufacture, is replaced by the connexion between the head workman and his few assistants. The essential division is, into workmen who are actually employed on the machines (among whom are included a few who look after the engine), and into mere attendants (almost exclusively children) of these workmen. Among the attendants are reckoned more or less all ‘Feeders’ who supply the machines with the material to be worked. In addition to these two principal classes, there is a numerically unimportant class of persons, whose occupation it is to look after the whole of the machinery and repair it from time to time; such as engineers, mechanics, joiners, &c. This is a superior class of workmen, some of them scientifically educated, others brought up to a trade; it is distinct from the factory operative class, and merely aggregated to it. This division of labour is purely technical.

“To work at a machine, the workman should be taught from childhood, in order that he may learn to adapt his own movements to the uniform and unceasing motion of an automaton. When the machinery, as a whole, forms a system of manifold machines, working simultaneously and in concert, the co-operation based upon it, requires the distribution of various groups of workmen among the different kinds of machines. But the employment of machinery does away with the necessity of crystallising this distribution after the manner of Manufacture, by the constant annexation of a particular man to a particular function. Since the motion of the whole system does not proceed from the workman, but from the machinery, a change of persons can take place at any time without an interruption of the work. The most striking proof of this is afforded by the relays system, put into operation by the manufacturers during their revolt from 1848-1850. Lastly, the quickness with which machine work is learnt by young people, does away with the necessity of bringing up for exclusive employment by machinery, a special class of operatives. With regard to the work of the mere attendants, it can, to some extent, be replaced in the mill by machines, and owing to its extreme simplicity, it allows of a rapid and constant change of the individuals burdened with this drudgery.

“Although then, technically speaking, the old system of division of labour is thrown overboard by machinery, it hangs on in the factory, as a traditional habit handed down from Manufacture, and is afterwards systematically re-moulded and established in a more hideous form by capital, as a means of exploiting labour-power. The life-long speciality of handling one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long speciality of serving one and the same machine. Machinery is put to a wrong use, with the object of transforming the workman, from his very childhood, into a part of a detail-machine. In this way, not only are the expenses of his reproduction considerably lessened, but at the same time his helpless dependence upon the factory as a whole, and therefore upon the capitalist, is rendered complete. Here as everywhere else, we must distinguish between the increased productiveness due to the development of the social process of production, and that due to the capitalist exploitation of that process. In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage.

“‘The miserable routine of endless drudgery and toil in which the same mechanical process is gone through over and over again, is like the labour of Sisyphus. The burden of labour, like the rock, keeps ever falling back on the worn-out labourer’ (Friedrich Engels).

“At the same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost, it does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activity. The lightening of the labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. Every kind of capitalist production, in so far as it is not only a labour-process, but also a process of creating surplus-value, has this in common, that it is not the workman that employs the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour that employ the workman. But it is only in the factory system that this inversion for the first time acquires technical and palpable reality. By means of its conversion into an automaton, the instrument of labour confronts the labourer, during the labour-process, in the shape of capital, of dead labour, that dominates, and pumps dry, living labour-power. The separation of the intellectual powers of production from the manual labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might of capital over labour, is, as we have already shown, finally completed by modern industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each individual insignificant factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before the science, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of labour that are embodied in the factory mechanism and, together with that mechanism, constitute the power of the ‘master.’ This ‘master,’ therefore, in whose brain the machinery and his monopoly of it are inseparably united, whenever he falls out with his ‘hands,’ contemptuously tells them:

“‘The factory operatives should keep in wholesome remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species of skilled labour; and that there is none which is more easily acquired, or of its quality more amply remunerated, or which by a short training of the least expert can be more quickly, as well as abundantly, acquired.... The master’s machinery really plays a far more important part in the business of production than the labour and the skill of the operative, which six months’ education can teach, and a common labourer can learn’ (‘The Master Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Defence Fund. Report of the Committee’, 1854).

“The technical subordination of the workman to the uniform motion of the instruments of labour, and the peculiar composition of the body of workpeople, consisting as it does of individuals of both sexes and of all ages, give rise to a barrack discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the factory, and which fully develops the before mentioned labour of overlooking, thereby dividing the workpeople into operatives and overlookers, into private soldiers and sergeants of an industrial army. ‘The main difficulty [in the automatic factory] ... lay ... above all in training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton. To devise and administer a successful code of factory discipline, suited to the necessities of factory diligence, was the Herculean enterprise, the noble achievement of Arkwright! Even at the present day, when the system is perfectly organised and its labour lightened to the utmost, it is found nearly impossible to convert persons past the age of puberty, into useful factory hands’ (Andrew Ure). The factory code in which capital formulates, like a private legislator, and at his own good will, his autocracy over his workpeople, unaccompanied by that division of responsibility, in other matters so much approved of by the bourgeoisie, and unaccompanied by the still more approved representative system, this code is but the capitalistic caricature of that social regulation of the labour-process which becomes requisite in co-operation on a great scale, and in the employment in common, of instruments of labour and especially of machinery. The place of the slave-driver’s lash is taken by the overlooker’s book of penalties. All punishments naturally resolve themselves into fines and deductions from wages, and the law-giving talent of the factory Lycurgus so arranges matters, that a violation of his laws is, if possible, more profitable to him than the keeping of them” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 15, sec. 4).

“‘The slavery in which the bourgeoisie has bound the proletariat, comes nowhere more plainly into daylight than in the factory system. In it all freedom comes to an end both at law and in fact. The workman must be in the factory at half past five. If he come a few minutes late, he is punished; if he come 10 minutes late, he is not allowed to enter until after breakfast, and thus loses a quarter of a day’s wage. He must eat, drink and sleep at word of command.... The despotic bell calls him from his bed, calls him from breakfast and dinner. And how does he fare in the mill? There the master is the absolute law-giver. He makes what regulations he pleases; he alters and makes additions to his code at pleasure; and if he insert the veriest nonsense, the courts say to the workman: Since you have entered into this contract voluntarily, you must now carry it out .... These workmen are condemned to live, from their ninth year till their death, under this mental and bodily torture’ (Friedrich Engels). What, ‘the courts say,’ I will illustrate by two examples. One occurs at Sheffield at the end of 1866. In that town a workman had engaged himself for 2 years in a steelworks. In consequence of a quarrel with his employer he left the works, and declared that under no circumstances would he work for that master any more. He was prosecuted for breach of contract, and condemned to two months’ imprisonment. (If the master break the contract, he can be proceeded against only in a civil action, and risks nothing but money damages.) After the workman has served his two months, the master invites him to return to the works, pursuant to the contract. Workman says: No, he has already been punished for the breach. The master prosecutes again, the court condemns again, although one of the judges, Mr. Shee, publicly denounces this as a legal monstrosity, by which a man can periodically, as long as he lives, be punished over and over again for the same offence or crime. This judgment was given not by the ‘Great Unpaid,’ the provincial Dogberries, but by one of the highest courts of justice in London. — [Added in the 4th German edition. — This has now been done away with. With few exceptions, e.g., when public gas-works are involved, the worker in England is now put on an equal footing with the employer in case of breach of contract and can be sued only civilly. — F. E.] The second case occurs in Wiltshire at the end of November 1863. About 30 power-loom weavers, in the employment of one Harrup, a cloth manufacturer at Leower’s Mill, Westbury Leigh, struck work because master Harrup indulged in the agreeable habit of making deductions from their wages for being late in the morning; 6d. for 2 minutes; 1s. for 3 minutes, and 1s. 6d. for ten minutes. This is at the rate of 9s. per hour, and £4 10s. 0d. per diem; while the wages of the weavers on the average of a year, never exceeded 10s. to 12s. weekly. Harrup also appointed a boy to announce the starting time by a whistle, which he often did before six o’clock in the morning: and if the hands were not all there at the moment the whistle ceased, the doors were closed, and those hands who were outside were fined: and as there was no clock on the premises, the unfortunate hands were at the mercy of the young Harrup-inspired time-keeper. The hands on strike, mothers of families as well as girls, offered to resume work if the timekeeper were replaced by a clock, and a more reasonable scale of fines were introduced. Harrup summoned I9 women and girls before the magistrates for breach of contract. To the utter indignation of all present, they were each mulcted in a fine of 6d. and 2s. 6d. for costs. Harrup was followed from the court by a crowd of people who hissed him” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 15, fn. 108).

“The contest between the capitalist and the wage-labourer dates back to the very origin of capital. It raged on throughout the whole manufacturing period. But only since the introduction of machinery has the workman fought against the instrument of labour itself, the material embodiment of capital. He revolts against this particular form of the means of production, as being the material basis of the capitalist mode of production.

“In the 17th century nearly all Europe experienced revolts of the workpeople against the ribbon-loom, a machine for weaving ribbons and trimmings, called in Germany Bandmühle, Schnurmühle, and Mühlenstuhl. These machines were invented in Germany. Abbé Lancellotti, in a work that appeared in Venice in 1636, but which was written in 1579, says as follows:

“‘Anthony Müller of Danzig saw about 50 years ago in that town, a very ingenious machine, which weaves 4 to 6 pieces at once. But the Mayor being apprehensive that this invention might throw a large number of workmen on the streets, caused the inventor to be secretly strangled or drowned.’

“In Leyden, this machine was not used till 1629; there the riots of the ribbon-weavers at length compelled the Town Council to prohibit it.

“‘In this town,” says Boxhorn (Inst. Pol., 1663), referring to the introduction of this machine into Leyden, “about twenty years ago certain people invented an instrument for weaving, with which a single person could weave more cloth, and more easily, than many others in the same length of time. As a result there arose disturbances and complaints from the weavers, until the Town Council finally prohibited the use of this instrument.’

“After making various decrees more or less prohibitive against this loom in 1632, 1639, &c., the States General of Holland at length permitted it to be used, under certain conditions, by the decree of the 15th December, 1661. It was also prohibited in Cologne in 1676, at the same time that its introduction into England was causing disturbances among the workpeople. By an imperial Edict of 19th Feb., 1685, its use was forbidden throughout all Germany. In Hamburg it was burnt in public by order of the Senate. The Emperor Charles VI., on 9th Feb., 1719, renewed the edict of 1685, and not till 1765 was its use openly allowed in the Electorate of Saxony. This machine, which shook Europe to its foundations, was in fact the precursor of the mule and the power-loom, and of the industrial revolution of the 18th century. It enabled a totally inexperienced boy, to set the whole loom with all its shuttles in motion, by simply moving a rod backwards and forwards, and in its improved form produced from 40 to 50 pieces at once.

“About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as it was by Parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by 100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding wool, petitioned Parliament against Arkwright’s scribbling mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing districts during the first 15 years of this century, chiefly caused by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the Luddite movement, gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most reactionary and forcible measures. It took both time and experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 1, sec. 5).

Here, therefore, are the results of machinery and modern industry for the workers. These are, foremost, driven in large part by factories, in which the machine has taken its place. The few people who remain must suffer the humiliation of seeing the last instrument of labor snatched from their hand and being reduced to the condition of servants of machinery; they must bear the burden of an extraordinarily grown workday; the must renounce their wives and children, having become the slaves of capital; and they must suffer, finally, the indescribable spasms, products of the torture of labor progressively intensified by the mad lust, by which the capitalist is taken in the period of modern industry, for surplus value. But the theologians of the god of capital aren’t lacking, who explain all, and justify all with their eternal laws. To the desperate cry of the workers hungered by machinery, they respond with the announcement of a farfetched law of compensation.

“James Mill, MacCulloch, Torrens, Senior, John Stuart Mill, and a whole series besides, of bourgeois political economists, insist that all machinery that displaces workmen, simultaneously and necessarily sets free an amount of capital adequate to employ the same identical workmen.

“Suppose a capitalist to employ 100 workmen, at £30 a year each, in a carpet factory. The variable capital annually laid out amounts, therefore, to £3,000. Suppose, also, that he discharges 50 of his workmen, and employs the remaining 50 with machinery that costs him £1,500. To simplify matters, we take no account of buildings, coal, &c. Further suppose that the raw material annually consumed costs £3,000, both before and after the change. Is any capital set free by this metamorphosis? Before the change, the total sum of £6,000 consisted half of constant, and half of variable capital. After the change it consists of £4,500 constant ( £3,000 raw material and £1,500 machinery), and £1,500 variable capital. The variable capital, instead of being one half, is only one quarter, of the total capital. Instead of being set free, a part of the capital is here locked up in such a way as to cease to be exchanged against labour-power: variable has been changed into constant capital. Other things remaining unchanged, the capital of £6,000, can, in future, employ no more than 50 men. With each improvement in the machinery, it will employ fewer. If the newly introduced machinery had cost less than did the labour-power and implements displaced by it, if, for instance, instead of costing £1,500, it had cost only £1,000, a variable capital of £1,000 would have been converted into constant capital, and locked up; and a capital of £500 would have been set free. The latter sum, supposing wages unchanged, would form a fund sufficient to employ about 16 out of the 50 men discharged; nay, less than 16, for, in order to be employed as capital, a part of this £500 must now become constant capital, thus leaving only the remainder to be laid out in labour-power.

“But, suppose, besides, that the making of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpet-makers, thrown on the streets? At the best, its construction employs fewer men than its employment displaces. The sum of £1,500 that formerly represented the wages of the discharged carpet-makers, now represents in the shape of machinery: (1) the value of the means of production used in the construction of that machinery, (2) the wages of the mechanics employed in its construction, and (3) the surplus-value falling to the share of their “master.” Further, the machinery need not be renewed till it is worn out. Hence, in order to keep the increased number of mechanics in constant employment, one carpet manufacturer after another must displace workmen by machines.

“As a matter of fact the apologists do not mean this sort of setting free.

“They have in their minds the means of subsistence of the liberated work-people. It cannot be denied, in the above instance, that the machinery not only liberates 50 men, thus placing them at others’ disposal, but, at the same time, it withdraws from their consumption, and sets free, means of subsistence to the value of £1,500. The simple fact, by no means a new one, that machinery cuts off the workmen from their means of subsistence is, therefore, in economic parlance tantamount to this, that machinery liberates means of subsistence for the workman, or converts those means into capital for his employment. The mode of expression, you see, is everything. Nominibus mollire licet mala (It’s lawful to hide evil with words)” (Marx, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 15, sec. 6).

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Salary

The supporters of the capitalist mode of production pretend that salary is payment for labor, and surplus value the product of capital.

But what is labor value? Labor, either still in the worker, or already out; that is to say, labor, either the force, the power to do something, or the thing itself already done: in short, labor, either labor power, or the commodity. The worker cannot sell labor that’s already left him, ie the thing he produces, the commodity, because this belongs to the capitalist, and not to him. Because the worker could sell labor that’s already left him, ie the commodity he produced, he would need to possess the means of production and raw materials, and so he would be the merchant of the commodities he produced. But he doesn’t possess anything, he is a proletarian, who, to live, must sell to others the only good that rests in him, that is his power or force to work, labor power. The capitalist therefore can buy nothing besides labor power; which, like all other commodities, has a use value and an exchange value. The capitalist pays the appropriately determined value, i.e. the exchange value, to the worker for the commodity, which he sells. But labor power also has a use value, which belongs to the capitalist who bought it. Now, the use value of this singular commodity has a double quality. The first is that which it has in common with the use value of all other commodities, that is, of satisfying a need; the second is that, completely special to it, of creating value, which distinguishes this commodity from all the others.

Therefore, salary cannot represent the price of labor power. And surplus value cannot be produced by capital, because capital is inert matter, which is always found to have the same amount of value as it did when it was used in the commodity; it is matter that hasn’t any life, and that, remaining by itself, without labor power, would never be able to have it. It is only labor power that is able to produce surplus value. It is this that gives the first seed of life to capital. It is this that supports the whole life of capital. This, more than anything, first sucks, then absorbs with all of its pores, and finally vigorously pumps surplus value from labor.

The two main forms of salary are: time-wages and piece-wages.

Time-wages are those paid for a given time; like for a day, for a week, for a month, etc, of labor. It is simply a transformation of the price of labor power. Instead of saying that the worker has sold his labor power of one day for 3 lire, one says that the worker goes to work for a salary of 3 lire a day.

The salary of 3 lire per day is therefore the price of labor power for a day. But this day can be more or less long. If, for example, a day of 10 hours of labor power is paid 30 cents per hour, then, if it’s 12 hours, labor power is paid 25 cents per hour. Therefore, the capitalist, extending the workday, pays the worker a smaller price for his labor power. The capitalist can also increase salary, while continuing to pay the worker, for his labor power, the same price as before, and even less. If a capitalist increases his worker’s salary from 3 lire to ₤3,60 a day, and at the same time he prolongs the workday from the 10 hours that it was before to 12 hours, he, by increasing daily wages by ₤0,60, will always come out paying the worker ₤0,30 an hour for his labor power. If then the capitalist increases the salary from ₤3 to ₤3,60, but, at the same time, prolongs the day from 10 to 15 hours, he, by increasing the daily wages, will be able to pay the worker less than before for his labor power, ie 24 cents instead of 30 cents an hour. The capitalist obtains the same effect, if, instead of increasing the length of labor, he increases it in volume; as we have already seen he was able to do with machinery. In conclusion, the capitalist, increasing labor, is able to cheat the worker honestly; and he can do it while gaining fame for his generosity, with the increase of his daily wages.

When the capitalist pays the worker by the hour, he still finds means of damaging him, increasing or decreasing labor, but always honestly paying the same price for every hour of labor. Indeed, the salary is 25 cents for an hour of labor. If the capitalist makes the worker labor for 8 hours, instead of 12, he will pay him ₤2, instead of ₤3; he will be losing, that is, one lira, with which the worker must satisfy the third part of his daily needs. Inversely, if the capitalist makes the worker labor for 14 or 16 hours, instead of 12, while paying him ₤3,50 or ₤4 instead of ₤3, he ends up taking 2 or 4 hours of labor from the worker at a smaller price than it’s worth. After 12 hours of labor the worker’s powers have already suffered consumption; and the other 2 or 4 hours of labor, overtime, cost more than the first 12 hours. This rationale, presented by the workers, in fact seems to be accepted by different industries, where they pay a greater price for overtime done after the established hours of the workday