Surplus value and productive force. Relation when these increase. – Result. – Productive force of labour is productive force of capital. – In proportion as necessary labour is already diminished, the realization of capital becomes more difficult

We have seen: The worker needs to work only e.g. half a working day in order to live a whole one; and hence to be able to begin the same process again the next day. Only half a day’s work is objectified in his labouring capacity – to the extent that it exists in him as someone alive, or as a living instrument of labour. The worker’s entire living day (day of life) is the static result, the objectification of half a day’s work. By appropriating the entire day’s work and then consuming it in the production process with the materials of which his capital consists, but by giving in exchange only the labour objectified in the worker – i.e. half a day’s work – the capitalist creates the surplus value of his capital; in this case, half a day of objectified labour. Now suppose that the productive powers of labour double, i.e. that the same labour creates double the use value in the same time. (For the moment, use value is defined in the present relation as only that which the worker consumes in order to stay alive as a worker; the quantity of the means of life for which, through the mediation of money, he exchanges the labour objectified in his living labouring capacity.) The worker would then have to work only 1/4 day in order to live a full day; the capitalist then needs to give the worker only 1/4 day’s objectified labour in exchange, in order to increase his surplus value in the production process from 1/2 to 3/4; so that he would gain 3/4 day’s objectified labour instead of 1/2. At the end of the production process, the value of the capital would have risen by 3/4 instead of by 2/4. Thus the capitalist would have to make the workers work only 3/4 day, in order to add the same surplus value – that of 1/2 or 2/4 objectified labour – to his capital. However, as representative of the general form of wealth – money – capital is the endless and limitless drive to go beyond its limiting barrier. Every boundary [Grenze] is and has to be a barrier [Schranke] for it. [48] Else it would cease to be capital – money as self-reproductive. If ever it perceived a certain boundary not as a barrier, but became comfortable within it as a boundary, it would itself have declined from exchange value to use value, from the general form of wealth to a specific, substantial mode of the same. Capital as such creates a specific surplus value because it cannot create an infinite one all at once; but it is the constant movement to create more of the same. The quantitative boundary of the surplus value appears to it as a mere natural barrier, as a necessity which it constantly tries to violate and beyond which it constantly seeks to go. * Therefore (quite apart from the factors entering in later, competition, prices etc.) the capitalist will make the worker work not only 3/4 day, because the 3/4 day bring him the same surplus value as the whole day did before, but rather he will make him work the full day; and the increase in the productive force which allows the worker to work for 1/4 day and live a whole day now expresses itself simply in that he now has to work 3/4 day for capital, whereas before he worked for it only 2/4 day. The increased productive force of his labour, to the extent that it is a shortening of the time required to replace the labour objectified in him (for use value, subsistence), appears as a lengthening of the time he labours for the realization of capital (for exchange value). From the worker’s standpoint, he now has to do a surplus labour of 3/4 day in order to live a full day, while before he only had to do a surplus labour of 2/4 day. The increase, the doubling of the productive force, has increased his surplus labour by 1/4 [day]. One remark here: the productive force has doubled, the surplus labour the worker has to do has not doubled, but has only grown by 1/4 [day]; nor has capital’s surplus value doubled; but it, too, has grown by only 1/4 [day]. This shows, then, that surplus labour (from the worker’s standpoint) or surplus value (from capital’s standpoint) does not grow in the same numerical proportion as the productive force. Why? The doubling in the productive force is the reduction of necessary labour (for the worker) by 1/4 [day], hence also the [increase of the] production of surplus value by 1/4, because the original relation was posited as 1/2. If the worker had to work, originally, 2/3 day in order to live one full day, then the surplus value would have been 1/3, and the surplus labour the same. The doubling in the productive force of labour would then have enabled the worker to restrict his necessary labour to half of 2/3 or 2/(3 × 2), 2/6 or 1/3 day, and the capitalist would have gained 1/3 [day] of value. But the total surplus labour would have become 2/3 [day]. The doubling of the productive force, which resulted in 1/4 [day] surplus value and surplus labour in the first example, would now result in 1/3 [day] surplus value or surplus labour. The multiplier of the productive force – the number by which it is multiplied – is therefore not the multiplier of surplus labour or of surplus value; but rather, if the original relation of the labour objectified in the labour price was 1/2 of the labour objectified in 1 working day, which always appears as the limit, † then the doubling is equal to the division of 1/2 by 2 (in the original relation), i.e. 1/4. If the original relation was 2/3, then the doubling equals the division of 2/3 by 2 = 2/6 or 1/3. The multiplier of the productive force is thus never the multiplier but always the divisor of the original relation, not the multiplier of its numerator but of its denominator. If it were the former, then the multiplication of the productive force would correspond to the multiplication of the surplus value. Instead, the surplus value is always equal to the division of the original relation by the multiplier of the productive force. If the original relation was 8/9, i.e. the worker needs 8/9 of a working day to live, so that capital gains only 1/9 in its exchange with living labour, if surplus labour equals 1/9, then the worker can now live from half of 8/9 of a working day, i.e. with 8/18 = 4/9 (whether we divide the numerator or multiply the denominator the same thing), and the capitalist, who orders a full day’s work, would have a total surplus value of 4/9 working day; subtracting the original surplus value of 1/9 from this leaves 3/9 or 1/3. The doubling of the productive force therefore = here an increase in surplus value or surplus time by 1/3. This is simply because the surplus value is always equal to the relation between the whole working day and that part of the working day necessary to keep the worker alive. The unit in which surplus value is calculated is always a fraction, i.e. the given part of a day which exactly represents the price of labour. If that is = 1/2, then the increase in the productive force = the reduction of necessary labour to 1/4; if it is = 1/3, then reduction of necessary labour to 1/6; hence in the first, the total surplus value = 3/4; in the second = 5/6; the relative surplus value, i.e. relative to that present before, in the first case = 1/4, in the second = 2/6 or 1/3. Therefore the value of capital does not grow in the same proportion as the productive force increases, but in the proportion in which the increase in the productive force, the multiplier of productive force, divides the fraction of the working day which expresses the part of the day belonging to the worker. The extent to which the productive force of labour increases the value of capital thus depends on the original relation between the portion of labour objectified in the worker and his living labour. This portion is always expressed as a fractional part of the whole working day, 1/3, 2/3, etc. The increase in productive force, i.e. its multiplication by a given amount, is equal to a division of the numerator or the multiplication of the denominator of this fraction by the same amount. Thus the largeness or smallness of the increase of value depends not only on the number which expresses the multiplication of the productive force, but equally on the previously given relation which makes up the part of the work day belonging to the price of labour. If this relation is 1/3, then the doubling of the productive force of the working day = a reduction of the same to 1/6; if it is 2/3, then reduction to 2/6. The objectified labour contained in the price of labour is always equal to a fractional part of the whole day; always arithmetically expressed as a fraction; always a relation between numbers, never a simple number. If the productive force doubles, multiplies by 2, then the worker has to work only 1/2 of the previous time in order to get the price of labour out of it; but how much labour time he still needs for this purpose depends on the first, given relation, namely on the time which was required before the increase in productive force. The multiplier of the productive force is the divisor of this original fraction. Value or surplus labour therefore does not increase in the same numerical relation as productive force. If the original relation is 1/2 and the productive force is doubled, then the necessary (for the worker) labour time reduces itself to 1/4 and the surplus value grows by only 1/4. If the productive force is quadrupled, then the original relation becomes 1/8 and the value grows by only 1/8. The value can never be equal to the entire working day; i.e. a certain part of the working day must always be exchanged for the labour objectified in the worker. Surplus value in general is only the relation of living labour to that objectified in the worker; one member of the relation must therefore always remain. A certain relation between increase in productive force and increase of value is already given in the fact that the relation is constant as a relation, although its factors vary. We see therefore, on one side, that relative surplus value is exactly equal to relative surplus labour; if the working day was 1/2 and the productive force doubles, then the part belonging to the worker, necessary labour, reduces itself to 1/4 and the new value is also exactly 1/4; but the total value is now 3/4. While surplus value rose by 1/4, i.e. in the relation of 1:4, the total surplus value = 3/4 = 3:4. Now if we assume that 1/4 was the original necessary working day, and a doubling in productive force took place, then necessary labour is reduced to 1/8 and surplus labour or surplus value exactly = 1/8 = 1:8. The total surplus value by contrast = 7:8. In the first example the original total surplus value = 1:2 (1/2) and then rose to 3:4; in the second case the original total surplus value was 3/4 and has now risen to 7:8 (7/8). In the first case it has grown from 1/2 or 2/4 to 3/4; in the second from 3/4 or 6/8 to 7/8; in the first case by 1/4, in the second by 1/8; i.e. in the first case it rose twice as much as in the second: but in the first case the total surplus value is only 3/4 or 6/8 while it is 7/8 in the second, i.e. 1/8 more.

* The barrier appears as an accident which has to be conquered. This is apparent on even the most superficial inspection. If capital increases from 100 to 1,000, then 1,000 is now the point of departure, from which the increase has to begin; the tenfold multiplication, by 1,000% counts for nothing; profit and interest themselves become capital in turn. What appeared as surplus value now appears us simple presupposition etc., as included in its simple composition.

† Messrs the manufacturers have, however, also prolonged it into the night, ten hours’ bill. See the report of Leonard Horner. [49] The working day itself does not recognize daylight as a limit; it can be lengthened deep into the night; this belongs to the chapter on wages.

Let necessary labour be 1/16, then total surplus value = 15/16; which was 5/8 = 10/16 in the previous relation; thus the total surplus value presupposed is by 5/16 higher than in the previous case. [50] Now let the productive force double, then necessary labour = 1/32; which was previously = 2/32 (1/16); hence surplus time has risen by 1/32, surplus value by the same proportion. As regards the total surplus value, which was 15/16 or 30/32, this is now 31/32. Compared to the earlier relation (where necessary labour was 1/4 or 8/32), the total surplus value is now 31/32, whereas it was only 30/32 earlier, hence grew by 1/32. But regarded relatively, the doubling of production increased it in the first case by 1/8 or 4/32, while it has now increased by only 1/32, i.e. by 3/32 less.

If necessary labour had already been reduced to 1/1,000, then the total surplus value would be = 999/1,000. Now if the productive force increased a thousandfold, then necessary labour would decline to 1/1,000,000 working day and the total surplus value would amount to 999,999/1,000,000 of a working day; whereas before this increase in productive force it amounted to only 999/1,000 or 999,000/1,000,000; it would thus have grown by 999/1,000,000 = 1/11 (with the addition of 1/(11 + 1/999), [51] i.e. the thousandfold increase in productive force would have increased the total surplus by not even 1/11, i.e. not even by 3/33, whereas in the previous case it rose by 1/32 owing to a mere doubling of the productive force. If necessary labour falls from 1/1,000 to 1/1,000,000, then it falls by exactly 999/1,000,000 (for 1/1,000 = 1,000/1,000,000), i.e. by the surplus value.

If we summarize this, we find:

Firstly: The increase in the productive force of living labour increases the value of capital (or diminishes the value of the worker) not because it increases the quantity of products or use values created by the same labour – the productive force of labour is its natural force – but rather because it diminishes necessary labour, hence, in the same relation as it diminishes the former, it creates surplus labour or, what amounts to the same thing, surplus value; because the surplus value which capital obtains through the production process consists only of the excess of surplus labour over necessary labour. The increase in productive force can increase surplus labour – i.e. the excess of labour objectified in capital as product over the labour objectified in the exchange value of the working day – only to the extent that it diminishes the relation of necessary labour to surplus labour, and only in the proportion in which it diminishes this relation. Surplus value is exactly equal to surplus labour; the increase of the one [is] exactly measured by the diminution of necessary labour.

Secondly: The surplus value of capital does not increase as does the multiplier of the productive force, i.e. the amount to which the productive force (posited as unity, as multiplicand) increases; but by the surplus of the fraction of the living work day which originally represents necessary labour, in excess over this same fraction divided by the multiplier of the productive force. Thus if necessary labour = 1/4 of the living work day and the productive force doubles, then the value of capital does not double, but grows by 1/8; which is equal to 1/4 or 2/8 (the original fraction of the work day which represents necessary labour) − 1/4 divided by 2, or = 2/8 minus 1/8 = 1/8. (That value doubles itself can also be expressed, it grows 4/2 [-fold] or 16/8 [-fold]. Its growth would relate to that of the productive force by 1:16. (That is it!) [52] If the fraction was 1/1,000 and the productive force increases a thousandfold, then the value of capital does not grow a thousandfold, but rather by far less than 1/11; it grows by 1/1,000 − 1/1,000,000, i.e. by 1,000/1,000,000 − 1/1,000,000 = 999/1,000,000.)

Thus the absolute sum by which capital increases its value through a given increase of the productive force depends on the given fractional part of the working day, on the fractional part of the working day which represents necessary labour, and which therefore expresses the original relation of necessary labour to the living work day. The increase in productive force in a given relation can therefore increase the value of capital differently e.g. in the different countries. A general increase of productive force in a given relation can increase the value of capital differently in the different branches of industry, and will do so, depending on the different relation of necessary labour to the living work day in these branches. This relation would naturally be the same in all branches of business in a system of free competition, if labour were simple labour everywhere, hence necessary labour the same. (If it represented the same amount of objectified labour.)

Thirdly: The larger the surplus value of capital before the increase of productive force, the larger the amount of presupposed surplus labour or surplus value of capital; or, the smaller the fractional part of the working day which forms the equivalent of the worker, which expresses necessary labour, the smaller is the increase in surplus value which capital obtains from the increase of productive force. Its surplus value rises, but in an ever smaller relation to the development of the productive force. Thus the more developed capital already is, the more surplus labour it has created, the more terribly must it develop the productive force in order to realize itself in only smaller proportion, i.e. to add surplus value – because its barrier always remains the relation between the fractional part of the day which expresses necessary labour, and the entire working day. It can move only within these boundaries. The smaller already the fractional part falling to necessary labour, the greater the surplus labour, the less can any increase in productive force perceptibly diminish necessary labour; since the denominator has grown enormously. The self-realization of capital becomes more difficult to the extent that it has already been realized. The increase of productive force would become irrelevant to capital; realization itself would become irrelevant, because its proportions have become minimal, and it would have ceased to be capital. If necessary labour were 1/1,000 and the productive force tripled, then it would fall to only 1/3,000 or surplus labour would have increased by only 2/3,000. But this happens not because wages have increased or the share of labour in the product, but because it has already fallen so low, regarded in its relation to the product of labour or to the living work day. *

* The labour objectified in the worker here shows itself as a fraction of his own living work day; for that is the same as [the proportion] in which the objectified labour which he obtains from capital as wages stands to the entire working day.

(All these statements correct only in this abstraction for the relation from the present standpoint. Additional relations will enter which modify them significantly. The whole, to the extent that it proceeds entirely in generalities, actually already belongs in the doctrine of profit.)

So much in general for the time being: the development of the productive force of labour – first the positing of surplus labour – is a necessary condition for the growth of value or the realization of capital. As the infinite urge to wealth, it strives consistently towards infinite increase of the productive forces of labour and calls them into being. But on the other hand, every increase in the productive force of labour – leaving aside the fact that it increases the use values for the capitalist – is an increase in the productive force of capital and, from the present standpoint, is a productive force of labour only in so far as it is a productive force of capital.

Concerning increases in the value of capital

This much is already clear, can at least be mentioned in anticipation: the increase in the productive force does not in and by itself increase prices. For example the bushel of wheat. If a half of a working day objectifies itself in one bushel of wheat, and if this is the worker’s price, then the surplus labour can only produce 2 bushels of wheat. Thus 2 bushels of wheat [is] the value of one working day, and if that = 26s. in money, = 26s. Each bushel = 13s. Now if the productive force doubles, then the bushel of wheat no more than = 1/4 working day; = 6 1/2s. With the productive force, the price of this fractional part of the commodity fell. But the total price remained; but now a surplus of 3/4 working day. Every fourth = 1 bushel wheat = 6 1/2s. Thus the total product = 26s. = 4 bushels. Same as before. The value of the capital increased from 13s. to 19 1/2s. The value of labour diminished from 13s. to 6 1/2s.; material production rose from 2 bushels to 4. Now 19 1/2. [53] Now, if the force of production were to double also in gold production, so that, if 13s. were the product of half a working day and this half a day were the necessary labour before; now 1/4 [working day] produces 52s. or 52 − 13 = 39s. more. 1 bushel of wheat now = 13s.; the same fractional price afterwards as before; but the total product = 52s.; before only = 26s. On the other hand, the 52s. would now buy 4 bushels, while the 26, earlier, bought only 2.

Well. First of all it is clear that if capital has already raised surplus labour to the point where the entire living work day is consumed in the production process (and we here assume the working day to be the natural amount of labour time which the worker is able to put at the disposal of capital; this is always only for a specific time, i.e. specific labour time), then an increase in the productive force cannot increase labour time, nor, therefore, objectified labour time. The product objectifies one working day, whether the necessary time of labour is represented by 6 or 3 hours, by 1/2 or 1/4 of the working day. The surplus value of capital has grown; i.e. its value relative to the worker – for if it was only = 2/4 before, it is now = to 3/4 of objectified labour time; but its value increased not because the absolute but because the relative amount of labour grew; i.e. the total amount of labour did not grow; the working day is as long before as after; hence no absolute increase in surplus time (surplus labour time); rather the amount of necessary labour decreased, and that is how relative surplus labour increased. The worker in fact worked a whole day before, but only 1/2 day of surplus time; afterwards, as before, he works the whole day, but 3/4 of a day of surplus time. To that extent, therefore, the price (presupposing this as its gold and silver value), or the exchange value of capital, has not increased with the doubling of the productive force. This therefore concerns the rate of profit, not the price of the product or the value of the capital, which became a commodity again in the product. But in fact the absolute values also increase in this manner, because that part of wealth which is posited as capital – as self-realizing value – also increases. (Accumulation of capitals.) Take our earlier example. Let capital = 100 thalers, and let it decompose in the production process into the following parts: 50 thalers cotton, 40 thalers wages, 10 thalers instrument. Assume at the same time, in order to simplify the arithmetic, that the entire instrument of labour is consumed in one act of production (and this is quite beside the point here, so far), so that its entire value would reappear in the form of the product. Suppose in this case that the 40 thalers which go to labour express a labour time objectified in living labouring capacity of, say, 4 hours, giving capital 8 hours. Presupposing the instrument and the raw material, the total product would amount to 100 thalers, if the worker works only 4 hours, i.e. if the raw material and the instrument were his property and he worked for 4 hours only. He would increase the 60 thalers by 40, which he could consume, since firstly he replaces the 60 thalers in raw material and instrument required for production, and then adds a surplus value of 40 thalers as reproduction of his own living labour capacity or of the time objectified in him. He could repeat the work again and again, since he would have reproduced the value of the raw material and of the instrument as well as of the labouring capacity; the latter by constantly increasing the value of the former by 4 hours of objectified labour. But now let him receive the 40 thalers in wages only by working 8 hours, so that he would add to the material and instrument of labour, which now confront him as capital, a surplus value of 80 thalers; while the former surplus value of 40 thalers, which he added, is only exactly the value of his labour. He would thus add a surplus value exactly = to the surplus labour or surplus time. * The value of capital would thus have increased from 100 thalers to 140. †

* It is not in the least necessary at this point to assume that the material and instrument also has to increase along with surplus labour or surplus time. How surplus labour by itself increases the raw material, see Babbage, e.g. the working of gold wire etc. [54]

† Assume further that raw material doubles and the instrument of labour (for the sake of simpler arithmetic) increases by one-half. Then capital costs would amount to 100 thalers cotton, 20 thalers instrument, i.e. 120 thalers; for labour, now as then, 40 thalers; altogether 160 thalers. If a surplus labour of 4 hours increases 100 thalers by 40%, then it increases 160 thalers by 64 thalers. Hence the total product = 224 thalers. We here have presupposed, further, that the rate of profit does not vary with the size of capital; and material and instrument of labour are not regarded as being themselves realizations, capitalizations of surplus labour; as we saw, the greater the already posited surplus time, i.e. the size of capital as such, the more is it presupposed that an absolute increase of labour time is impossible, and that a relative increase, resulting from an increase in the productive force, declines in geometric proportion.

Now, capital regarded as simple exchange value would be absolutely greater, 140 thalers instead of 100; but in fact, a new value would merely have been created, i.e. a value which is not merely necessary to replace the 60 thalers in advances for the materials and the instrument of labour and the 40 thalers for labour, a new value of 40 thalers. The values in circulation would have been increased by 80 thalers, by 40 thalers of additional objectified labour time.

Now assume the same presupposition. 100 thalers capital; specifically, 50 for cotton, 40 for labour, 10 for instrument of production; let the surplus labour time remain as before, i.e. 4 hours, and the total labour time 8 hours. Thus in all cases the product only = 8 hours labour time = 140 thalers. Now suppose the productive force of labour doubles; i.e. 2 hours would be enough for the worker to realize raw materials and instrument to the extent required to maintain his labouring capacity. If 40 thalers were an objectified labour time of 4 hours, then 20 thalers would be the objectified labour time of 2 hours. These 20 thalers now express the same use value as the 40 thalers before. The exchange value of labouring capacity has diminished by half, because half of the original labour time creates the same use value, while the exchange value of the use value is measured purely by the labour time objectified in it. But the capitalist makes the workers work 8 hours now as before, and his product therefore represents now as before a labour time of 8 hours = 80 thalers of labour time, while the value of raw material and material remain the same, namely 60 thalers; altogether, as before, 140 thalers. (In order to live, the worker himself would have had to add to the 60 thalers of raw material and instrument a value of no more than 20 thalers, he would thus have created a value of only 80 thalers. The total value of his product would have diminished, by the doubling of production, from 100 to 80, by 20 thalers, i.e. by 1/5 of 100 = 20%.) But the surplus time or surplus value for capital is now 6 hours instead of 4, or 60 thalers instead of 40. Its increment is 2 hours, 20 thalers. His accounts would now show the following: for raw material, 50; for labour, 20; for instrument, 10; costs = 80 thalers. Gain = 60 thalers. Now as before he would sell the product for 140 thalers, but would show a gain of 60 thalers instead of 40 as before. On one side, therefore, he throws only the same exchange value into circulation as before, 140 thalers. But the surplus value of his capital has grown by 20 thalers. Accordingly, only the share he gets of the 140 thalers [is] the rate of his profit. The worker in fact worked 2 hours more for him free of charge, i.e. 6 hours instead of 4, and this is the same for him as if he had worked 10 hours instead of 8 in the earlier relation, had increased his absolute labour time. But indeed a new value has arisen also; namely 20 additional thalers are posited as autonomous value, as objectified labour which has become free, unbound from the task of serving only in exchange for earlier labour power [Arbeitskraft]. This can present itself in two ways. Either the 20 thalers set as much additional labour into motion as becomes capital and creates larger exchange value: make more objectified labour into the point of departure for the new production process; or the capitalist exchanges the 20 thalers as money for commodities other than those which he needs in its production as industrial capital; all commodities other than labour and money themselves thus are exchanged for 20 more thalers, for 2 more hours of objectified labour time. Their exchange value has thus increased by just this liberated sum. In fact, 140 thalers are 140 thalers, as the very ‘perceptive’ French publisher of the Physiocrats remarks against Boisguillebert. [55] But it is false that these 140 thalers only represent more use value; they represent a greater amount of independent exchange value, of money, of latent capital; i.e. of wealth posited as wealth. The economists themselves admit this later when they allow the accumulation of capitals to accumulate not only the mass of use values, but that of exchange values too; for, according to Ricardo himself, the element of the accumulation of capitals is posited just as completely with relative surplus labour as with absolute – impossible any other way. [56] On the other side, it is already implicit in the thesis best developed by Ricardo, that these excess 20 thalers, which are created purely by the increase in productive force, can become capital again. Earlier, only 40 of the 140 thalers (leaving capital’s consumption aside for now) could become new capital; 100 do not become capital but remain capital; now 60 [can], i.e. the present capital is greater by an exchange value of 20 thalers. Thus, exchange value, wealth as such, has increased, although the total sum of the same has not directly increased. Why has it increased? Because that part of the total sum has increased which was not a mere medium of circulation, but money; or which was not merely equivalent, but exchange value for-itself [für sich seiend]. Either the liberated 20 thalers were accumulated as money, i.e. added to the stock of exchange values in general (abstract) exchange value form; or they all circulated, and then the prices of the commodities bought with them rise; they all represent more money, as well as, since the production cost of gold has not fallen (rather, risen relative to the commodity produced by the more productive capital), more objectified labour (because of this, the excess production, which at first only appeared on the side of the one producing capital, now appears on the side of the others, which produce the more expensive commodities); or the 20 thalers are directly used up as capital by the originally circulating capital. Thus a new capital of 20 thalers is posited – a sum of self-preserving and self-realizing wealth. Capital has risen by the exchange value of 20 thalers. (Circulation actually does not yet concern us here, since we are here dealing with capital in general, and circulation can only mediate between capital in the form of money and capital in its form as capital; the first capital may realize money as such, i.e. exchange it for commodities, consume more than before; but in the hand of the producer of these commodities this money becomes capital. Thus it becomes capital directly in the hands of the first capital, or, via a detour, [in those] of another capital. But the other capital is always in turn capital as such; and we are concerned here with capital as such, [let us] say the capital of the whole society. The differentiation etc. of capitals does not concern us yet.) In general, these 20 thalers can appear only in a double form. As money, so that capital again exists in the character of money which has not yet become capital – its point of departure; the abstract-autonomous form of exchange value or of general wealth; or itself in turn as capital, as a new domination of objectified labour over living labour. * (Every increase in the mass of capital employed can increase the productive force not only at an arithmetical but at a geometrical rate; although it can increase profit at the same time – as increase of productive force – only at a much lower rate. The influence of the increase of capital on the increase of productive force is thus infinitely greater than that of the increase of the productive force on the growth of capital.) As general wealth, materialized in the form of money (of the thing, in its mere abstractness), or of new living labour. The capitalist consumes, say, 20 of the 140 thalers as use values for himself, through the mediation of money as means of circulation. Thus, in the first presupposition, he could begin the process of self-realization only with a larger capital, a larger use value of 120 (as against 100). After the doubling in the productive forces, he can do it with 140 thalers without restricting his consumption. A larger part of the exchange values solidifies as exchange value, instead of vanishing in use value (whether it solidifies as such, through production, directly or indirectly). To create a larger capital means to create a larger exchange value; although exchange value in its direct form as simple exchange value has not been increased by the growth of productivity, it has in its intensified form as capital. This larger capital of 140 thalers represents, absolutely, more objectified labour than the earlier capital of 120 thalers. It therefore also, at least relatively, sets more living labour into motion and therefore also ultimately reproduces more simple exchange value. The capital of 120 thalers at 40% produced a product or simple exchange value of 60 thalers at 40%; the capital of 140 thalers a simple exchange value of 64 thalers. Here, then, the increase in exchange value in the form of capital is still posited directly as an increase in exchange value in its simple form. It is of the highest importance to remember this. It is not enough to say, like Ricardo, that exchange value does not increase; i.e. the abstract form of wealth; but only exchange value as capital. [57] In saying this he is looking only at the original production process. But if relative surplus labour increases – and capital therefore increases absolutely – then there is necessarily also an increase within circulation also of relative exchange value existing as exchange value, money as such, and therefore, through the mediation of the production process, absolute exchange value. In other words, of this same amount of exchange value – or money – and the product of the realization process appears in this simple form – the product is surplus value only relative to capital, to value such as it existed before the production process; for itself, regarded as an independent existence, it is merely quantitatively defined exchange value – a part has become liberated, which does not exist as equivalent for already present exchange values or for already present labour time. If it is exchanged for those already present, it gives them not an equivalent but more than an equivalent, and thus liberates a part of the exchange value on their side. In a static state, this liberated exchange value by which society has become richer can only be money, in which case only the abstract form of wealth has increased; [is] in motion: [it] can realize itself only in new living labour (whether labour which had been dormant is set into motion, or new workers are created (population [growth] is accelerated) or again a new circle of exchange values, of exchange values in circulation, is expanded, which can occur on the production side if the liberated exchange value opens up a new branch of production, i.e. a new object of exchange, objectified labour in the form of a new use value; or the same is achieved when objectified labour is put in the sphere of circulation in a new country, by an expansion of trade). The latter must then be created.

* In the example given, the productive force has doubled, risen by 100%, the value of capital has risen by 20%.

The form in which Ricardo attempts to clarify the matter for himself (and he is very unclear in this regard) says at bottom nothing more than that he just introduces a certain relation, instead of saying, simply, that out of the same sum of simple exchange values a smaller part posits itself in the form of simple exchange value (equivalent) and a larger part in the form of money (money as the original, antediluvian form out of which capital always arises anew; money in its character as money, not as coin etc.); that therefore the part posited as exchange value for-itself, i.e. as value, increases, i.e. wealth in the form of wealth (whereas he comes to just the mistaken conclusion that it increases only in the form of material, physical wealth as use value). The origin of wealth as such, in so far as it arises not from rent, i.e., according to him, not from the increase in productive force, but rather from the decrease of the same, is therefore totally incomprehensible to him, and he entangles himself in the wildest contradictions. Let us take the form of the matter. [58] Capital 1,000 sets 50 workers into motion; or 50 living work days; through a doubling of the productive force, it could set 100 working days into motion. But these latter do not exist in the presupposition, and are introduced arbitrarily, because otherwise – unless more real working days are introduced – he does not grasp the increase in exchange value which arises from increased productivity. At the same time, the growth of population is never developed by him as an element in the increase of exchange values; never clearly and definitely stated. Let the presupposition be capital 1,000 and workers 50. The correct deduction, which he himself also draws (see Notebook) [59] : capital 500 with 25 workers can produce the same use value as before; the other 500 with the other 25 workers establish a new business and likewise produce an exchange value of 500. The profit remains the same, since it arises not from the exchange of 500 for 500, but from the proportions in which profit and wages originally divide in the 500, and since exchange deals in equivalents, which can no more increase value than external trade can, which Ricardo explicitly demonstrates. Since the exchange of equivalents just means nothing more than that the value in the hands of A before the exchange with B still exists in his hands after the exchange with B. The total value or wealth has remained the same. Use value, however, or the material of wealth, has doubled. Now, there is absolutely no reason here why wealth should grow as wealth, exchange value as such – as far as the increase in the productive forces is concerned. If the productive forces again double in both branches, then capital A can again divide into two of 250 with 12 1/2 working days each, capital B can do the same. [60] There are now four capitals with the same total exchange value of £1,000, consuming 50 living work days as before, * producing four times as much use value as before the doubling of consumption value. Ricardo is too classical to commit absurdities, like those who claim to improve on him, who derive the larger value after the increase in productive force from one party selling at a higher price within circulation. As soon as the capital of 500 has become commodity, simple exchange value, instead of exchanging it for 500, he exchanges it for 550 (at 10%), but then the other party obviously only gets 450 in exchange value instead of 500 and the total sum remains 1,000 as before. This happens often enough in commerce, but explains the profit made by one capital only by the loss of the other capital, and not the profit of capital; and without this presupposition there can be profit neither on one nor on the other side. Ricardo’s process can therefore go on without any other limit than the increase of the productive force (and this is again physical, located outside the economic relation itself) possible with a capital of 1,000 and 50 workers. See the following passage: ‘Capital is that part of the wealth of a country which is employed with a view to future production, and may be increased in the same manner as wealth.’ [61] (Wealth for him the abundance of use values; and, seen from the standpoint of simple exchange, the identical objectified labour can express itself in limitless use values and constantly remain the same exchange value, as long as it remains the same amount of objectified labour, for its equivalent is measured not by the mass of use value in which it exists, but rather by its own amount.) ‘An additional capital will be equally efficacious in the formation of future wealth, whether it be obtained from improvements of skill or machinery, or from using more revenue productively; for wealth’ (use value) ‘always depends on the quantity of commodities produced’ (also somewhat on their variety, it seems), ‘without regard to the facility with which the instruments employed in production may have been produced’ (i.e. the labour time objectified in them). ‘A certain quantity of clothes and provisions will maintain and employ the same number of men; but they will be of twice the value’ (exchange value) ‘if 200 have been employed on their production.’ If, owing to an increase in the productive force, 100 produce as much in use values as 200 earlier, then: ‘of the 200, half are let go, so that the remaining 100 produce as much as the 200 did before. Thus a half of the capital can be withdrawn from this branch of business; as much capital has become free as labour. And since one half of the capital now does quite the same service as did the whole, two capitals have now been formed etc.’ (cf. 39, 40 ibid. on national trade, [62] to which we must return). Ricardo does not speak here about the working day; [the fact] that, if the capitalist earlier exchanged half of an objectified working day for the worker’s entire living work day, [he] thus at bottom gains only half a living work day, since he gives the other half in objectified form to the worker, and obtains it from him in the living form, i.e. pays the worker a half of the working day, instead of in the form of simultaneous working days, i.e. of different workers; this does not alter the matter, only its expression. Each one of these working days furnishes so much more surplus time. If the capitalist, before, had the working day as limit, he now has 50 working days etc. As has been said, this form does not posit an increase in exchange values with an increase in the number of capitals through productivity, and, according to Ricardo, it would also be possible for the population to fall from, say, 10,000,000 to 10,000, without a decrease in exchange values or the quantity of use values (see conclusion of his book). [63] We are the last to deny that capital contains contradictions. Our purpose, rather, is to develop them fully. But Ricardo does not develop them, but rather shifts them off by considering the value in exchange as indifferent for the formation of wealth. That is to say, he contends that in a society based upon the value of exchange, and wealth resulting from such value, the contradictions to which this form of wealth is driven with the development of productive powers etc. do not exist, and that a progress of value is not necessary in such a society to secure the progress of wealth, consequently that value as the form of wealth does not at all affect that wealth itself and its development, i.e. he regards exchange value as merely formal. Then, however, he remembers (1) that the capitalists are concerned with value, (2) that, historically, with the progress of the productive forces (of international trade too, he should have noted), there is a growth in wealth as such, i.e. the sum of values. Now, how to explain this? Capitals accumulate faster than the population; thus wages rise; thus population; thus grain prices; thus the difficulty of production and hence the exchange values. The latter are then finally reached by a detour. We will here entirely omit the moment of rent, since we are not yet concerned with increased difficulty of production but rather with its opposite, with increase in the productive forces. With the accumulation of capitals, wages rise unless population grows simultaneously; the worker marries, production is spurred on or his children live better, do not die before their time etc. In short, the population grows. Its growth, however, gives rise to competition among the workers, and thereby forces the worker to sell his labour power to the capitalist at its value again, or momentarily even below it. Now the accumulated capital, which has meanwhile grown up more slowly, again has the surplus which it earlier spent in the form of wages, i.e. as coin, in order to buy the use value of labour, available to it in the form of money, in order to realize it as capital in living labour, and, since it now also disposes over a greater amount of working days, its exchange value grows in turn. (Even this not really developed in Ricardo, but mixed up with the theory of rent; since the surplus which capital earlier lost in the form of wages is now lost to it in the form of rent, owing to the growth of population.) But even the growth of population is not really comprehensible in his theory. At no time has he shown that there is an inherent relation between the whole of the labour objectified in capital and the living work day (whether the latter is represented as one working day of 50 × 12 hours, or as 12 hours of labour by 50 workers, is the same thing as far as the relation goes), and that this inherent relation is just the relation between the fractional part of the living work day, or that between the equivalent of the objectified labour with which the worker is paid, and the living working day; where the whole is the day itself, and the inherent relation is the variable relation (the day itself is a constant) between the fractional part of the necessary hours of labour and the hours of surplus labour. And, just because he has not developed this relation, he has also not developed [the point] (which did not concern us up to now, since we were concerned with capital as such and introduced the development of the productive forces as an external relation) that the development of the productive forces itself presupposes both the increase of capital and the increase of simultaneous working days, which, however, within the given barrier of a capital that sets one working day into motion (even if it be a day of 50 × 12 hours, 600 hours), is itself the barrier to the development of its productive force. The wage covers not only the worker, but also his reproduction; so that when this specimen of the working class dies, another replaces it; after the 50 workers are dead, 50 new ones are there to replace them. The 50 workers themselves – as living labour capacities – represent not only the costs of their own production, but also the costs which had to be paid to their parents above and beyond their wages as individuals, in order to replace themselves with 50 new individuals. Thus the population progresses even without a rise in wages. But now, why does it not progress rapidly enough? and why does it need a special stimulus? Surely only because the aim of capital is not served merely by obtaining more ‘wealth’ in the Ricardian sense, but because it wants more value, to command more objectified labour. But indeed, according to him, it can command the latter only if wages fall; i.e. if more living work days are exchanged for the same capital with objectified labour, and hence a greater value is created. In order to make wages fall, he presupposes increase of population. And in order to prove increase of population here, he presupposes that the demand for working days increases, in other words, that capital can buy more objectified labour (objectified in labouring capacity), hence that its value has grown. Originally, however, he proceeded from just the contrary presupposition, and took the detour only because that is where he began. If £1,000 was able to buy 500 working days, and the productive force increases, then either it can proceed to employ the 500 in the same branch of work, or it can divide up and employ 250 in one branch of work, 250 in another, so that this capital splits into 2 capitals of 500 each. But it can never command more than 500 working days, since otherwise, according to Ricardo, not only the use values it produces but also their exchange value must have multiplied itself, the objectified labour time over which it exercises command. Thus, given his presupposition, an increased demand for labour cannot take place. But if it does take place, then capital’s exchange value has grown. Compare Malthus on value, who senses the contradictions, but falls flat when he himself tries to develop them. [64]

* It is at bottom false to say that living labour consumes capital; capital (objectified labour) consumes the living in the production process.

Labour does not reproduce the value of the material in which, and of the instrument with which, it works. It preserves their value simply by relating to them in the labour process as to their objective conditions. This animating and preserving force costs capital nothing; appears, rather, as its own force etc.

We have always spoken only about the two elements of capital, the two parts of the living work day, of which one represents wages, the other profit; one, necessary labour, the other, surplus labour. But what about the other two parts of capital, which are realized in the material of labour and the instrument of labour? As far as the simple production process is concerned, labour presupposes the existence of an instrument which facilitates the work, and of a material in which it presents itself, which it forms. This form gives it its use value. This use value becomes exchange value through exchange, to the extent that it contains objectified labour. But are they, as components of capital, values which labour must replace? Thus in the above example (and such objections [were] heaped on Ricardo; that he regarded profit and wages only as components of production costs, not the machine and the material), it seems that if the capital is 100, divided 50 for cotton, 40 for wages, 10 for instrument; and if the wages, of 40 thalers, = 4 hours of objectified labour, and capital orders a working day of 8 hours, then the worker who has to reproduce 40 thalers for wages, 40 thalers surplus time (profit), 10 thalers instrument, 50 thalers cotton = 140 thalers, reproduces only 80 thalers. For 40 thalers are the product of half a working day; 40 are the other, surplus half. But the value of the two other component parts of capital is 60 thalers. Since the worker’s real product is 80 thalers, he can reproduce only 80, not 140. He would have, instead, decreased the value of the 60; since 40 of the 80 [is] replacement for his wages; and the remaining 40 of surplus labour [is] smaller by 20 than 60. Instead of a profit of 40, the capitalist would have a loss of 20 on the part of his original capital consisting of instrument and material. How is the worker supposed to create still another 60 on top of the 80 thalers of value, since one half of his working day, as his wages show, creates only 40 thalers out of the instrument and the material; the other half only the same; and he disposes of only one working day, cannot work two days in one? Suppose the 50 thalers in material = x lb. of cotton yarn; the 10 thalers in instrument = spindle. Now, first, as regards the use value, it is clear that if the cotton did not already have the form of yarn and wood and iron the form of the spindle, then the worker could produce no fabric, no higher use value. For him himself, the 50 thalers and the 10 thalers in the production process are nothing but yarn and spindle, not exchange values. His labour has given them a higher use value, and added objectified labour to the amount of 80 thalers to them, i.e. 40 thalers to reproduce his wages, 40 surplus time. The use value – the fabric – contains one additional working day, half of which, however, replaces only that part of capital for which the disposition over the labouring capacity has been exchanged. The worker has not created the objectified labour contained in yarn and spindle, which form a part of the value of the product; for him they were and remain material to which he gave another form and into which he incorporated new labour. The only condition is that he should not waste them, and this he did not do, in so far as his product has use value, and a higher use value than before. It now contains objectified labour in two parts – his working day, and that already contained in his material, yarn and spindle, independent of him and before him. The previously objectified labour was the condition of his labour; it was necessary to make his labour what it is, costs him no labour. Suppose they were not already presupposed as components of capital, as values, and had cost him nothing. Then the value of the product, if he worked a whole day, would be 80, if a half day, 40 thalers. It would just = one objectified working day. Indeed, they cost him nothing in production; however, this does not destroy the labour time objectified in them, which remains and merely obtains another form. If, in addition to the fabric, the worker also had to create the yarn and the spindle in the same working day, then the process would be in fact impossible. The fact, therefore, that they call for his labour neither as use values in their original form, nor as exchange values, but are on hand, makes it possible for the addition of a working day by him to create a product of a value higher than one working day. He succeeds in this, however, to the extent that he does not have to create this additional part, but rather finds it on hand as material, as presupposition. It can therefore only be said that he reproduces these values in so far as without labour they would rot, be useless; but without them, labour would be equally useless. In so far as the worker reproduces these values, he does so not by giving them a higher exchange value, or entering into any process with their exchange value at all, but merely by subordinating them to the simple production process, merely by working. But this costs him no additional labour time besides what he needs for their processing and higher realization. It is a situation into which capital has put him so that he may work. He reproduces the values only by giving them a higher value, and this giving of a higher value is = his working day. Otherwise he lets them be as they are. That their old value is preserved happens because a new one is added to them, not that the old is itself reproduced, created. In so far as they are products of previous labour, a product of previous labour, a sum of previously objectified labour remains an element of his product, so that the product contains, in addition to its new value, the old as well. He therefore in fact produces in this product only the day’s work which he adds to it, and the preservation of the old value costs him absolutely nothing apart from what it costs him to add the new. For him it is only a material, and remains that no matter how it changes its form; therefore [it is] something present independently of his labour. That this material, which remains that, since it only obtains a different form, itself already contains labour time is the business of capital, not his own; similarly, it is independent of his labour and continues on after it, just as it existed before it. This so-called reproduction costs him no labour time, but is rather the condition of his labour time, since it is nothing more than positing the substance on hand as the material of his labour, relating to it as material. He therefore replaces the old labour time by the act of working itself, not by the addition of special labour time for this purpose. He replaces it simply by the addition of the new, by means of which the old is preserved in the product and becomes an element of a new product. Thus the worker in his working day does not replace the raw material and the instrument in so far as they are values. The capitalist thus obtains this preservation of the old value just as free of charge as he obtains surplus labour. But he obtains it free of charge, because it costs the worker nothing, and is, instead, the result of the fact that the material and the instrument of labour are already in his hands as presupposition, and the worker cannot work, therefore, without making this already objectified labour, now in the hands of capital, into the material of his own labour, thereby also preserving the labour objectified in this material. The capitalist, then, pays the worker nothing for the fact that the yarn and the spindle – their value – reappear, as far as their value is concerned, in the fabric, and are thus preserved. This preservation takes place simply by the addition of new labour, which adds a higher value. What arises from the original relation between capital and labour, then, is that the same service which living labour as living labour performs for objectified labour costs capital nothing, just as it costs the worker nothing, but merely expresses the relation that the material and the instrument of labour confront the worker as capital, as presuppositions independent of him. The preservation of the old value is not a separate act from the addition of the new, but happens by itself; appears as a natural result of the same. But the fact that this preservation costs capital nothing and costs the worker nothing either is already posited in the relation of capital and labour, which in itself is already the former’s profit and the latter’s wage.

The individual capitalist may imagine (and for his accounts it serves as well) that, if he owns a capital of 100 thalers, 50 thalers in cotton, 40 thalers to buy labour with, 10 thalers in instrument, plus a profit of 10% counted as part of his production costs, then labour has to replace his 50 thalers of cotton, 40 thalers subsistence, 10 thalers instrument plus 10% of 50, of 40 and of 10; so that in his imagination, labour creates 55 thalers of raw material, 44 thalers subsistence and 11 thalers instrument for him, together = 110. But this is a peculiar notion for economists, even though it has been advanced with great pomp as an innovation against Ricardo. If the worker’s working day = 10 hours, and if he can create 40 thalers in 8 hours, i.e. can create his wage, or, what is the same, can maintain and replace his labour capacity, then he needs 4/5 of a day in order to replace his wages for capital, and he gives capital 1/5 in surplus labour, or 10 thalers. In exchange for the 40 thalers in wages, for 8 hours of objectified labour, therefore, capital obtains 10 hours of living labour, and this excess constitutes the entirety of its profit. The total objectified labour which the worker has created, then, is 50 thalers, and, regardless of the costs of the instrument and of the raw materials, more he cannot add, for his day cannot objectify itself in more labour than that; now, the fact that he adds these 50 thalers – 10 hours of labour (of which only 8 replace the wage) – to the 60 thalers contained in raw material and instrument – and thereby has simultaneously preserved the raw material and the instrument – they are preserved just by coming into contact again with living labour, and being used as instrument and as material – this costs him no labour (and he would have no time available in which to do this), nor does the capitalist pay him for it. Like every other natural or social power of labour unless it is the product of previous labour, or of such previous labour as does not need to be repeated (e.g. the historical development of the worker etc.), this natural animating power of labour – namely that, by using the material and instrument, it preserves them in one or another form, including the labour objectified in them, their exchange value – becomes a power of capital, not of labour. Hence not paid for by capital. As little as the worker is paid for the fact that he can think etc.

We have seen the original presupposition of the coming into being of capital is the existence of money as money, i.e. as money which has withdrawn from circulation and asserts itself negatively towards it, i.e. value which has become independent from and against circulation – i.e. the commodity for which the character of exchange value is not merely a formal, vanishing character, [which it possesses only] before being exchanged for another use value and finally disappearing as an object of consumption. On the other side, money (in its third, adequate form) – as value which no longer enters circulation as equivalent, but is not yet potentiated as capital, i.e. value independent of and relating negatively against circulation – is at the same time the result of capital’s product, in so far as that product is not merely its own reproduction (but this reproduction is merely formal, since, of the three parts of its value, only one is really consumed and hence reproduced, namely that which replaces wages; profit, on the other hand, is not reproduction but addition of value, surplus value). Just as money at first appeared as the presupposition, the cause of capital, so it now appears as its effect. In the first movement, money arose out of simple circulation; in the second it arises from the production process of capital. In the first, it makes a transition to capital; in the second it appears as a presupposition of capital posited by capital itself; and is therefore already posited as capital in itself [an sich], already contains the ideal relation towards capital. It does not simply make a transition to capital, but rather, as money, its potential to be transformed into capital is already posited in it.

Absolute surplus labour time. Relative. – It is not the quantity of living labour, but rather its quality as labour which simultaneously preserves the labour time already contained in the material etc. – The change of form and substance in the direct production process. – The preservation of the previous stage of production by the subsequent one is contained in the simple production process etc. – Preservation of the old use value by new labour etc. – Process of production and process of realization. The quantity of objectified labour is preserved because contact with living labour preserves its quality as use value for new labour. – In the real production process, the separation of labour from its objective conditions of existence is suspended. But in this process labour already incorporated in capital etc. Appears as capital’s power of self-preservation. Eternalization of value

The increase of values is therefore the result of the self-realization of capital; [regardless of] whether this self-realization is the result of absolute surplus time or of relative, i.e. of a real increase in absolute labour time or of an increase in relative surplus labour, i.e. of a decrease in the fractional part of the working day which is required as labour time necessary to preserve the labouring capacity, as necessary labour in general.

Living labour time reproduces nothing more than that part of objectified labour time (of capital) which appears as an equivalent for the power of disposition over living labour capacity, and which, therefore, as an equivalent, must replace the labour time objectified in this labouring capacity, i.e. replace the production costs of the living labour capacities, in other words, must keep the workers alive as workers. What it produces in addition to that is not reproduction but rather new creation, and, more specifically, creation of new values, because it is the objectification of new labour time in a use value. That the labour time contained in the raw material and instrument is preserved at the same time is a result not of the quantity of labour, but of its quality of being labour as such; and there is no special payment for this, its general quality, for the fact that labour, as labour, is labour – leaving aside all special qualifications, all specific kinds of labour – because capital has bought this quality as part of its exchange with the worker.

But the equivalent for this quality (for the specific use value of labour) is measured simply by the quantity of labour time which has produced it. Initially the worker’s use of the instrument as an instrument, and his shaping of the raw material, adds to the value of the raw material and of the instrument as much new form as is = to the labour time contained in his own wage; what he adds additionally is surplus labour time, surplus value. For their part, the raw materials and the instrument are preserved not in their form but in their substance, through the simple relation of being used as instrument and being posited as the raw material of labour, the simple process of coming into contact with labour, being posited as its means and object and therefore as objectification of living labour, moments of labour itself; and, viewed economically, their substance is objectified labour time. By being posited as a material mode of existence – means and end [Objekt] – of living labour, objectified labour time ceases to exist in a one-sided, objective form, in which, as a mere thing, it is at the prey of processes of chemical decay etc. There is an indifference on the part of the substance [Stoff] towards the form, which develops out of merely objectified labour time, in whose objective existence labour has become merely the vanished, external form of its natural substance, existing merely in the external form of the substantial [das Stoffliche] (e.g. the form of the table for wood, or the form of the cylinder for iron); [65] no immanent law of reproduction maintains this form in the way in which the tree, for example, maintains its form as a tree (wood maintains itself in the specific form of the tree because this form is a form of the wood; while the form of the table is accidental for wood, and not the intrinsic form of its substance); it exists only as a form external to the substance, or it exists only as a substance [stofflich]. The dissolution to which its substance is prey therefore dissolves the form as well. However, when they are posited as conditions of living labour, they are themselves reanimated. Objectified labour ceases to exist in a dead state as an external, indifferent form on the substance, because it is itself again posited as a moment of living labour; as a relation of living labour to itself in an objective material, as the objectivity of living labour (as means and end [Objekt]) (the objective conditions of living labour). The transformation of the material by living labour, by the realization of living labour in the material – a transformation which, as purpose, determines labour and is its purposeful activation (a transformation which does not only posit the form as external to the inanimate object, as a mere vanishing image of its material consistency) – thus preserves the material in a definite form, and subjugates the transformation of the material to the purpose of labour. Labour is the living, form-giving fire; it is the transitoriness of things, their temporality, as their formation by living time. In the simple production process – leaving aside the realization process – the transitoriness of the forms of things is used to posit their usefulness. When cotton becomes yarn, yarn becomes fabric, fabric becomes printed etc. or dyed etc. fabric, and this becomes, say, a garment, then (1) the substance of cotton has preserved itself in all these forms. (The chemical process, regulated by labour, has everywhere consisted of an exchange of (natural) equivalents etc.); (2) in each of these subsequent processes, the material has obtained a more useful form, a form making it more appropriate to consumption; until it has obtained at the end the form in which it can directly become an object of consumption, when, therefore, the consumption of the material and the suspension of its form satisfies a human need, and its transformation is the same as its use. The substance of cotton preserves itself in all of these processes; it becomes extinct in one form of use value in order to make way for a higher one, until the object is in being as an object of direct consumption. But when cotton is posited, say, as twist, then it is posited in a specific relation to a further kind of labour. If this labour were not to take place, then not only has the form been posited in it uselessly, i.e. the previous labour is not reaffirmed by new labour, but the material is also spoiled, because, in the form of twist, it has a use value only in so far as it is worked on further: it is a use value only in respect of the use which further labour makes of it; is use value only in so far as its form as twist is suspended in the form of fabric; while cotton in its existence as cotton is capable of an infinite number of useful employments. Thus, without further labour, the use value of cotton and twist, material and form, would be botched; it would be destroyed instead of produced. Material as well as form, substance like form, are preserved by further labour – preserved as use value, until they obtain the form of use value as such, whose use is consumption. It is therefore already a part of the simple production process that the earlier stage of production is preserved by the later, and that positing the higher use value preserves the old, or, the old use value is transformed only to the extent that it is raised to a higher use value. It is living labour which preserves the use value of the incomplete product of labour by making it the material of further labour. It preserves it, however, i.e. protects it from uselessness and decay, only by working it in a purposeful way, by making it the object of new living labour. This preservation of the old use value is not a process taking place separately from the increase or the completion of the use value by new labour; it takes place, rather, entirely in this new labour of raising the use value. When the labour of weaving transforms yarn into fabric, i.e. treats yarn as the raw material of weaving (a particular form of living labour) (and twist has a use value only if it is woven into fabric), it thereby preserves the use value which cotton had as such, as well as that which cotton had obtained specifically as yarn. It preserves the product of labour by making it into the raw material of new labour; but what happens is not that it (1) adds new labour and (2) besides that, by means of additional labour, preserves the use value of the raw material. It preserves the utility of cotton as yarn by weaving the yarn into fabric. (All this belongs already in the first chapter on production in general.) Preserves it by weaving it. This preservation of labour as product – of the use value of the product of labour by its becoming the raw material of new labour, being again posited as material objectivity of purposeful living labour – is given with the simple production process. As regards use value, labour has the property of preserving the existing use value by raising it, and it raises it by making it into the object of new labour as defined by an ultimate aim; by changing it in turn from the form of its indifferent consistency into that of objective material, the body of labour. (The same holds for the instrument. A spindle maintains itself as a use value only by being used up for spinning. If it is not, the specific form which is here posited in iron and wood would be spoiled for use, together with the labour which posited it and the material in which it did the positing. The use value of wood and iron, and of their form as well, are preserved only by being posited as a means of living labour, as an objective moment of the existence of labour’s vitality. As an instrument of labour, it is their destiny [Bestimmung] to be used up, but used up in the process of spinning. The increased productivity which it lends to labour creates more use values and thereby replaces the use value eaten up in the consumption of the instrument. This appears most clearly in agriculture, because there the instrument appears most easily, because most anciently, as a use value, directly as a means of life – in contrast to exchange value. If the hoe allows the tiller to grow twice as much grain as before, then he has to spend less time on the production of the hoe itself; he has enough food to make a new hoe.) Now, in the realization process, the value components of capital – the one in the form of the material, the other in the form of instrument – confront the worker, i.e. living labour (for the labourer exists in the process only as such) not as values, but rather as simple moments of the production process; as use values for labour, as the objective conditions of its efficacity, or as its objective moments. It lies in the nature of labour itself to preserve them by using the instrument as instrument and by giving the raw material a higher form of use value. But, as components of capital, the use values thus obtained from labour are exchange values; as such, determined by the costs of production contained in them, the amount of labour objectified in them. (Use value is concerned only with the quality of the labour already objectified.) The quantity of objectified labour is preserved in that its quality is preserved as use value for further labour, through the contact with living labour. The use value of cotton, as well as its use value as yarn, are preserved by being woven; by existing as one of the objective moments (together with the spinning wheel) in the weaving process. The quantity of labour time contained in the cotton and the cotton yarn are therefore also preserved thereby. The preservation of the quality of previous labour in the simple production process, – hence of its material as well – becomes, in the realization process, the preservation of the quantity of labour already objectified. For capital, this preservation is the preservation of the amount of objectified labour by the production process; for living labour itself, it is merely the preservation of the already present use value. Living labour adds a new amount of labour; however, it is not this quantitative addition which preserves the amount of already objectified labour, but rather its quality as living labour, the fact that it relates as labour to the use values in which the previous labour exists. But living labour is not paid for this quality, which it possesses as living labour – if it were not living labour, it would not be bought at all – rather, it is paid for the amount of labour contained in itself. What is paid for is only the price of its use value, like that of all other commodities. It does not receive payment for its specific quality of adding new amounts of labour to the amounts of labour already objectified, and at the same time preserving labour which is already objectified as objectified labour; and this quality does not cost the worker anything either, since it is a natural property of his labouring capacity. Within the production process, the separation of labour from its objective moments of existence – instruments and material – is suspended. The existence of capital and of wage labour rests on this separation. Capital does not pay for the suspension of this separation which proceeds in the real production process – for otherwise work could not go on at all. (Nor does this suspension take place in the process of exchange with the worker; but rather in the process of work itself, during production. But, as ongoing labour, it is itself already incorporated in capital, and a moment of the same. This preserving force of labour therefore appears as the self-preserving force of capital. The worker has merely added new labour; as for previous labour – owing to the existence of capital – this has an eternal existence as value, quite independent of its material existence. This is how the matter appears to capital and to the worker.) If it had to pay for this quality also, then it would just cease to be capital. This is part of the material role which labour plays by its nature in the production process; of its use value. But as use value, labour belongs to the capitalist; it belongs to the worker merely as exchange value. Its living quality of preserving objectified labour time by using it as the objective condition of living labour in the production process is none of the worker’s business. This appropriation, by means of which living labour makes instrument and material in the production process into the body of its soul and thereby resurrects them from the dead, does indeed stand in antithesis to the fact that labour itself is objectless, is a reality only in the immediate vitality of the worker – and that the instrument and material, in capital, exist as beings-for-themselves [für sich selbst seiende]. (Return to this.) The process of the realization of capital proceeds by means of and within the simple production process, by putting living labour into its natural relation with its moments of material being. But to the extent that labour steps into this relation, this relation exists not for itself, but for capital; labour itself has become already a moment of capital.

Capitalist obtains surplus labour free of charge together with the maintenance of the value of material and instrument. Labour, by adding a new value to the old one, at the same time maintains, eternizes [sic] the latter. – The preservation of values in the product costs capital nothing. – By means of the appropriation of ongoing labour, the capitalist already possesses a claim to (and, respectively) appropriation of future labour

We see therefore that the capitalist, by means of the exchange process with the worker – by indeed paying the worker an equivalent for the costs of production contained in his labour capacity, i.e. giving him the means of maintaining his labour capacity, but appropriating living labour for himself – obtains two things free of charge, first the surplus labour which increases the value of his capital; but at the same time, secondly, the quality of living labour which maintains the previous labour materialized in the component parts of capital and thus preserves the previously existing value of capital. But this preservation does not take place as a result of an increase in the amount of labour objectified by living labour, a creation of value, but simply as a result of its existence as living labour in the proper relation with material and instrument, i.e. through its quality as living labour. As such a quality, it is itself a moment of the simple production process and does not cost the capitalist anything, any more than yarn and spindle do, apart from their price, for having also become moments of the production process.

When e.g. in times of stagnations of trade etc. the mills are shut down, then it can indeed be seen that the machinery rusts away and that the yarn is useless ballast and rots, as soon as their connection with living labour ceases. If the capitalist employs labour only in order to create surplus value – to create value in addition to that already present – then it can be seen as soon as he orders work to stop that his already present capital, as well, becomes devalued; that living labour hence not only adds new value, but, by the very act of adding a new value to the old one, maintains, eternizes it. (This shows clearly the absurdity of the charge against Ricardo, that he conceives only profits and wages as necessary components of the cost of production, and not also the part of capital contained in raw materials and instrument. To the extent that the value which they represent is merely preserved, there are no new production costs. But as far as these present values themselves are concerned, they all dissolve again into objectified labour – necessary labour and surplus labour – wages and profit. The purely natural material in which no human labour is objectified, to the extent that it is merely a material that exists independently of labour, has no value, since only objectified labour is value; as little value as is possessed by the common elements as such.) The maintenance of present capital by the labour which realizes it therefore costs capital nothing and hence does not belong among the production costs; although the present values are preserved in the product and equivalents have therefore to be given for them in exchange. But the maintenance of these values in the product costs capital nothing and cannot therefore be cited among the costs of production. Nor are they replaced by labour, since they are not consumed, except in so far as they are consumed apart from and outside labour, i.e. as labour consumes (suspends) their transitoriness. Only the wage is really consumed.

Let us return once more to our example. 100 thalers capital, i.e. 50 thalers raw material, 40 thalers labour, 10 thalers instrument of production. Let the worker require 4 hours in order to create the fraction of production necessary for his maintenance, the 40 thalers representing the means of his life. Let his working day be 8 hours. The capitalist then obtains a surplus of 4 hours free of charge; his surplus value equals 4 objectified hours, 40 thalers; hence his product = 50 + 10 (preserved, not reproduced values; remained constant, unchanged as values) + 40 thalers (wages, reproduced, because consumed in the form of wage) + 40 thalers of surplus value. Sum: 140 thalers. Of these 140, 40 are excess. The capitalist had to live during production and before he began to produce; say 20 thalers. He had to own the latter apart from his capital of 100 thalers; hence equivalents for them had to be present in circulation. (How these arose does not concern us here.) Capital presupposes circulation as a constant magnitude. These equivalents now present again. Thus consumes 20 thalers of his gain. These enter into simple circulation. The 100 thalers also enter into simple circulation, but only in order to be transformed again into the conditions of new production, 50 thalers of raw material, 40 subsistence for workers, 10 instrument. There remains a surplus value, an addition as such, newly created, of 20 thalers. This is money, posited as a negatively independent value against circulation. It cannot enter into circulation as a mere equivalent, in order to exchange for objects of mere consumption, since circulation is presupposed as constant. But the independent, illusory existence of money is suspended; it now only exists in order to be realized, i.e. to become capital. In order to become that, however, it would again have to be exchanged for the moments of the production process, subsistence for workers, raw material and instrument; all these dissolve into objectified labour, can only be posited by living labour. Money, then, in so far as it now already in itself exists as capital, is therefore simply a claim on future (new) labour. It exists, objectively, merely as money. Surplus value, the new growth of objectified labour, to the extent that it exists for itself, is money; but now, it is money which in itself is already capital; and, as such, it is a claim on new labour. Here capital already no longer enters into relation with ongoing labour, but with future labour. And it no longer appears dissolved into its simple elements in the production process, but as money; no longer, however, as money which is merely the abstract form of general wealth, but as a claim on the real possibility of general wealth – labour capacity, and more precisely, labour capacity in the process of becoming [das werdende Arbeitsvermögen]. As a claim, its material existence as money is irrelevant, and can be replaced by any other title. Like the creditor of the state, every capitalist with his newly gained value possesses a claim on future labour, and, by means of the appropriation of ongoing labour has already at the same time appropriated future labour. (This side of capital to be developed to this point. But already here its property of existing as value separately from its substance can be seen. This already lays the basis for credit.) To stockpile it in the form of money is therefore by no means the same as materially to stockpile the material conditions of labour. This is rather a stockpiling of property titles to labour. Posits future labour as wage labour, as use value for capital. No equivalent on hand for the newly created value; its possibility only in new labour.

In this example, then, an absolute surplus labour time of 4 hours created, added to the old values, to the world of available wealth, a new value of 20 thalers money, and money already in connection with its form as capital (already as posited possibility of capital, not as before, becoming the possibility of capital as such only by ceasing to be money as such).

Now if the productive force doubles, so that instead of 4 hours the worker has to put in only 2 hours of necessary labour, and if the capitalist makes him work 8 hours as before, then the accounts are as follows: 50 thalers material, 20 wages, 10 instrument of labour, 60 surplus value (6 hours, 4 before). New growth of absolute surplus value: 2 hours or 20 thalers. Sum: 140 thalers (in the product).

A total of 140 thalers as before; but now 60 of them are surplus value; of which 40 for absolute increase in surplus time as before, 20 for relative. But the simple exchange value only contains 140 thalers as before. Now, is it only the use values which have increased, or has a new value been created? Before, capital had to begin again with 100 in order to realize itself anew at 40%. What happens to the 20 of surplus value? Before, the capitalist ate up 20 of them; he was left with a value of 20. Now he eats up 20 and is left with 40. On another side, the capital entering into production remained 100; now it has become 80. What is gained in value on one side in one form is lost as value on the other side in another form. The first capital re-enters into the production process; again produces a surplus value (capitalist’s consumption deducted) of 20. At the end of this second operation, a newly created value is present without equivalent. 20 thalers together with the first 40. Now let us take the second capital.

Material, 50; wages (2 hours), 20; instrument, 10. But in the 2 hours he produces a value of 8, i.e. 80 thalers (of which 20 for costs of production). Remainder, 60, since 20 reproduce the wage (disappear as wage). 60 + 60 = 120. At the end of this second operation, 20 thalers for consumption; remainder surplus value 20; together with the first operation, 60. In the third operation with the first capital, 60; with the second, 80; in the fourth operation with the first capital 80, with the second, 100. The first capital has increased as value in proportion as its exchange value, as productive capital, has decreased.

Suppose both capitals together with their surplus can be used as capital; i.e. their surplus exchanged for new labour. We then get the following calculation (leaving consumption aside): the first capital produces 40%, the second 60%. 40% of 140 is 56; 60% of 140 (i.e. capital, 80; surplus value, 60) is 84. The total product in the first case 140 + 56 = 196; in the second 140 + 84 = 224. In the second case absolute surplus value 28 higher than in the first. The first capital has 40 thalers with which to buy new labour time; the value of the hour of labour was presupposed at 10 thalers; therefore, his 40 thalers buy 4 new hours of labour, which produce 80 for him (of which 40 go to replace the wages of 8 hours of labour). At the end it was 140 + 80 (i.e. reproduction of the capital of 100: surplus value of 40, or reproduction of 140; or, in the first case, 100 thalers reproduce themselves as 140; the second 40, since they are spent only to buy new labour, hence do not simply replace value – impossible presupposition, by the way) which produce 80. 140 + 80 = 220. The second capital of 140; the 80 produce 40; or the 80 thalers reproduce themselves as 120; the remaining 60, however, reproduce themselves (since they are spent purely for the purchase of labour, and do not therefore simply replace any value, but reproduce out of themselves and posit the surplus) as 180; then 120 + 120 = 240. (Produced 40 thalers more than the first capital, exactly the surplus time of two hours, for the first is a surplus time of 2 hours as assumed in the first case). Thus the result is a greater exchange value, because more labour objectified; 2 hours more surplus labour.

Something else should be noted here as well: 140 thalers at 40% yield 56; capital and interest together = 140 + 56 = 196; but we have obtained 220; according to which the interest on 140 would be not 56 but 84; which would be 60% on 140 (140:84 = 100:x; x = 8,400/140 = 60). Similarly in the second case: 140 at 60% = 84; capital and interest = 140 + 84 = 224; but we obtain 240; according to which the interest on the 140 is not 84 but 100; (140 + 100 = 240); i.e., %, (140:100 = 100:x; x = 10,000/140); [x = 71 3/7%]. Now where does this come from? (In the first case 60% instead of 40; in the second 71 3/7 instead of 60%.) In the first case, where it was 60 instead of 40, hence 20% too much came out; in the second case 71 3/7 instead of 60, i.e. 11 3/7 too much. Why, then, firstly the difference between the two cases and secondly the difference in each case?

In the first case, the original capital was 100 = 60 (material and instrument of labour) plus 40 in labour; 2/5 labour, 3/5 (material). The first 3/5 bring no interest at all; the last 2/5 bring 100%. But computed on the basis of the whole capital, the increase is only 40%; 2/5 of 100 = 40. But the 100% on the latter amount to only 40% on the whole 100; i.e. an increase of 2/5 in the whole. Now, if only 2/5 of the newly arrived capital of 40 had increased by 100%, then this would yield an increase of the whole by 16 [thalers]. 40 + 16 = 56. This together with the 140 = 196; which is then actually 40% on 156, capital and interest reckoned together. 40 increased by 100%, doubled, is 80; 2/5 of 40 increased by 100% is 16. [66] 40 of the 80 replace capital. Gain of 40.

The account then: 100c + 40 interest + 40c + 40i = 220; or, capital of 140 with an interest of 80; but if we had calculated 100c + 40i + 40c + 16i = 196; or, capital of 140 with interest of 56.

An interest of 24 on a capital of 40 is too much; but 24 = 3/5 of 40 (3 × 8 = 24); i.e. in addition to the capital, only 2/5 of the capital grew by 100%; the whole capital therefore by only 2/5, i.e. 16%. [67] The interest computation on 40 is 24% too high (by 100% on 3/5 of the capital); 24 on 24 is 100% on 3 × 8 (3/5 of 40). But on the whole amount of 140, it is 60% instead of 40; i.e. 24 too much out of 40, 24 out of 40 = 60%. Thus we figured 60% too much on a capital of 40 (60 = 3/5 of 100). But we figured 24 too high on 140 (and this is the difference between 220 and 196); this is first 1/5 of 100 then 1/12 of 100 too much; 1/5 of 100 = 20%; 1/12 of 100 = 8 4/12% or 8 1/3%; thus altogether 28 1/3% too high. Thus on the whole not 60%, as on 40, but only 28 1/3% too much; which makes a difference of 31 2/3, depending on whether we figure 24 too many on the 40 [or on] the capital of 140. Similarly in the other example.

In the first 80 which produce 120, 50 + 10 was simply replaced, but 20 reproduced itself threefold: 60 (20 reproduction, 40 surplus).