MARX
CAPITAL
2
2

:
ARTES
1817
VERITAS
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
BUNI SHOUTIN
PLURIBUS PACK
SCIENTIA
OF THE
TUEBOR
KYLUSTERKANA
SI QUERIS PENINSULAM AMⱭNAN
CIRCUMSPICE
FREERAMANAU
ZUJIKANHERITE.
TEGERNIKASIKINTIHInufa

HB
501
M392
E5
1887
ܕܚܘܙܢܗܢܝܐ

159 dy
سا کام کیا ہے۔
K
2.
7
'E
ا ا ا ا ا وا داشته
:
{
HB
501
M392
E 5
1887
•
CAPITAL.
H 23
301
M
ES
1587
ار
CAPITAL: 2/44
I
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF CAPITALIST
PRODUCTION
BY KARL MARX
TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION, BY
SAMUEL MOORE AND EDWARD AVELING
AND EDITED BY
FREDERICK ENGELS
VOL. II.

ARDVA QVÆ· PVLCRA
LONDON:
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY, & CO.,
PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
1887.
STATTATO
....
......
004 747 005
747005
.
S. Cowan & Co., Strathmore Printing Works, Perth.
4.999
CAPITALIST PRODUCTION.
PART IV. (Continued.)
PRODUCTION OF RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE.
CHAPTER XV.
MACHINERY AND MODERN INDUSTRY.
SECTION 1.—THE DEVELOPMENT OF MACHINERY.
Jo Economy
OHN STUART MILL says in his Principles of Political
“It is questionable if all the mechanical inven-
tions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human.
being." That is, however, by no means the aim of the capi-
talistic application of machinery. Like every other increase
in the productiveness of labour, machinery is intended to
cheapen commodities, and, by shortening that portion of the
working-day, in which the labourer works for himself, to
1 Mill should have said, "of any human being not fed by other people's labour,"
for, without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.
366
Capitalist Production.
lengthen the other portion that he gives, without an equivalent,
to the capitalist. In short, it is a means for producing surplus-
value.
In manufacture, the revolution in the mode of production
begins with the labour-power, in modern industry it begins
with the instruments of labour. Our first inquiry then is,
how the instruments of labour are converted from tools into
machines, or what is the difference between a machine and the
implements of a handicraft? We are only concerned here with
striking and general characteristics; for epochs in the history
of society are no more separated from each other by hard and
fast lines of demarcation, than are geological epochs.
Mathematicians and mechanicians, and in this they are fol-
lowed by a few English economists, call a tool a simple machine,
and a machine a complex tool. They see no essential differ-
ence between them, and even give the name of machine to the
simple mechanical powers, the lever, the inclined plane, the
screw, the wedge, &c. As a matter of fact, every machine is
a combination of those simple powers, no matter how they
may be disguised. From the economical standpoint this ex-
planation is worth nothing, because the historical element is
wanting. Another explanation of the difference between tool and
machine is that in the case of a tool, man is the motive power,
while the motive power of a machine is something different
from man, is, for instance, an animal, water, wind, and so on.ª
According to this, a plough drawn by oxen, which is a con-
trivance common to the most different epochs, would be a
machine, while Claussen's circular loom, which, worked by a
single labourer, weaves 96,000 picks per minute, would be a
mere tool. Nay, this very loom, though a tool when worked
by hand, would, if worked by steam, be a machine. And since
the application of animal power is one of man's earliest inven-
1 See, for instance, Hutton: "Course of Mathematics."
24 From this point of view we may draw a sharp line of distinction between a tool
and a machine: spades, hammers, chisels, &c., combinations of levers and of screws,
in all of which, no matter how complicated they may be in other respects, man is the
motive power,
all this falls under the idea of a tool; but the plough, which
is drawn by animal power, and windmills, &c., must be classed among machines."
(Wilhelm Schulz: "Die Bewegung der Produktion. Zürich, 1843," p. 38.) In many
respects a book to be recommended.
•
•
Machinery and Modern Industry.
367
tions, production by machinery would have preceded produc-
tion by handicrafts. When in 1735, John Wyalt brought out
his spinning machine, and began the industrial revolution of
the 18th century, not a word did he say about an ass driving
it instead of a man, and yet this part fell to the ass. He de-
scribed it as a machine "to spin without fingers."
All fully developed machinery consists of three essentially
different parts, the motor mechanism, the transmitting mechan-
ism, and finally the tool or working machine. The motor
mechanism is that which puts the whole in motion. It either
generates its own motive power, like the steam engine, the
caloric engine, the electro-magnetic machine, &c., or it receives
its impulse from some already existing natural force, like the
water-wheel from a head of water, the wind-mill from wind,
&c. The transmitting mechanism, composed of fly-wheels,
shafting, toothed wheels, pullies, straps, ropes, bands, pinions,
and gearing of the most varied kinds, regulates the motion,
changes its form where necessary, as for instance, from linear
to circular, and divides and distributes it among the working
machines. These two first parts of the whole mechanism are
there, solely for putting the working machines in motion, by
means of which motion the subject of labour is seized upon
1 Before his time, spinning machines, although very imperfect ones, had already
been used, and Italy was probably the country of their first appearance. A critical
history of technology would show how little any of the inventions of the 18th century
are the work of a single individual. Hitherto there is no such book. Darwin has
interested us in the history of Nature's Technology, i.e., in the formation of the organs
of plants and animals, which organs serve as instruments of production for sustaining
life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man, of organs that are the
material basis of all social organisation, deserve equal attention? And would not
such a history be easier to compile, since, as Vico says, human history differs from
natural history in this, that we have made the former, but not the latter? Techno-
logy discloses man's mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which
he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social
relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them. Every history of re-
ligion even, that fails to take account of this material lasis, is uncritical. It is, in
reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of
religion, than, conversely, it is, to develop from the actual relations of life the corres-
ponding celestialised forms of those relations. The latter method is the only mate-
rialistic, and therefore the only scientific one. The weak points in the abstract
materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process,
are at once evident from the abstract and ideological conceptions of its spokesmen,
whenever they venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality.
368
Capitalist Production.
and modified as desired. The tool or working-machine is that
part of the machinery with which the industrial revolution of
the 18th century started. And to this day it constantly serves
as such a starting point, whenever a handicraft, or a manu-
facture, is turned into an industry carried on by machinery.
On a closer examination of the working-machine proper, we
find in it, as a general rule, though often, no doubt, under very
altered forms, the apparatus and tools used by the handicrafts-
man or manufacturing workman; with this difference, that
instead of being human implements, they are the implements
of a mechanism, or mechanical implements. Either the entire
machine is only a more or less altered mechanical edition of
the old handicraft tool, as, for instance, the power-loom;¹ or
the working parts fitted in the frame of the machine are old.
acquaintances, as spindles are in a mule, needles in a stocking-
loom, saws in a sawing machine, and knives in a chopping
machine. The distinction between these tools and the body
proper of the machine, exists from their very birth; for they
continue for the most part to be produced by handicraft, or by
manufacture, and are afterwards fitted into the body of the
machine, which is the product of machinery. The machine
proper is therefore a mechanism that, after being set in motion,
performs with its tools the same operations that were formerly
done by the workman with similar tools. Whether the motive
power is derived from man, or from some other machine, makes
no difference in this respect. From the moment that the tool
proper is taken from man, and fitted into a mechanism, a
machine takes the place of a mere implement. The difference
strikes one at once, even in those cases where man himself
continues to be the prime mover. The number of implements
that he himself can use simultaneously, is limited by the
2
1 Especially in the original form of the power-loon, we recognise, at the first
glance, the angient loom. In its modern form, the power-loom has undergone essen-
tial alterations.
2 It is only during the last 15 years (i.e., since about 1850), that a constantly
increasing portion of these machine tools have been made in England by machinery,
and that not by the same manufacturers who make the machines. Instances of
machines for the fabrication of these mechanical tools are, the automatic bobbin-
making engine, the card-setting engine, shuttle-making machines, and machines for
forging mule and throstle spindles,
Machinery and Modern Industry.
369
number of his own natural instruments of production, by the
number of his bodily organs. In Germany, they tried at first
to make one spinner work two spinning wheels, that is, to
work simultaneously with both hands and both feet. This
was too difficult. Later, a treddle spinning wheel with two
spindles was invented, but adepts in spinning, who could spin
two threads at once, were almost as scarce as two-headed men.
The Jenny, on the other hand, even at its very birth, spun
with 12-18 spindles, and the stocking-loom knits with many
thousand needles at once. The number of tools that a machine
can bring into play simultaneously, is from the very first
emancipated from the organic limits that hedge in the tools of
a handicraftsman.
In many manual implements the distinction between man ast
mere motive power, and man as the workman or operator
properly so-called, is brought into striking contrast. For in-
stance, the foot is merely the prime mover of the spinning
wheel, while the han, working with the spindle, and drawing
and twisting, performs the real operation of spinning. It is
this last part of the handicraftsman's implement that is first
seized upon by the industrial revolution, leaving to the work-
man, in addition to his new labour of watching the machine
with his eyes and correcting its mistakes with his hands, the
merely mechanical part of being the moving power. On the
other hand, implements, in regard to which man has always
acted as a simple motive power, as, for instance, by turning the
crank of a mill,¹ by pumping, by moving up and down the arm
of a bellows, by pounding with a mortar, &c., such implements
soon call for the application of animals, water, and wind as
1 Moses says: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads the corn." The Christian
philanthropists of Germany, on the contrary, fastened a wooden board round the
necks of the serfs, whom they used as a motive power for grinding, in order to pre-
vent them from putting flour into their mouths with their hands.
2 It was partly the want of streams with a good fall on them, and partly their
battles with superabundance of water in other respects, that compelled the Dutch to
resort to wind as a motive power. The windmill itself they got from Germany, where
its invention was the origin of a pretty squabble between the nobles, the priests, and
the emperor, as to which of those three the wind "belonged." The air makes bond-
age, was the cry in Germany, at the same time that the wind was making Holland
free. What it reduced to bondage in this case, was not the Dutchman, but the land
2 A
370
Capitalist Production.
motive powers. Here and there, long before the period of
manufacture, and also, to some extent, during that period,
these implements pass over into machines, but without creat-
ing any revolution in the mode of production. It becomes
evident, in the period of Modern Industry, that these imple-
ments, even under their form of manual tools, are already
machines. For instance, the pumps with which the Dutch, in
1836-7, emptied the Lake of Harlem, were constructed on the
principle of ordinary pumps; the only difference being, that
their pistons were driven by cyclopean steam-engines, instead
of by men.
The common and very imperfect bellows of the
blacksmith is, in England, occasionally converted into a blowing-
engine, by connecting its arm with a steam-engine. The steam-
engine itself, such as it was at its invention, during the manu-
facturing period at the close of the 17th century, and such as
it continued to be down to 1780, did not give rise to any in-
dustrial revolution. It was, on the contrary, the invention of
machines that made a revolution in the form of steam-engines
necessary. As soon as man, instead of working with an imple-
ment on the subject of his labour, becomes merely the motive
power of an implement-machine, it is a mere accident that
motive power takes the disguise of human muscle; and it may
equally well take the form of wind, water or steam. Of course,
this does not prevent such a change of form from producing
great technical alterations in the mechanism that was originally
constructed to be driven by man alone. Nowadays, all machines
that have their way to make, such as sewing machines, bread-
making machines, &c., are, unless from their very nature their
use on a small scale is excluded, constructed to be driven both
by human and by purely mechanical motive power.
Ada
The machine, which is the starting point of the industrial
revolution, supersedes the workman, who handles a single tool,
by a mechanism operating with a number of similar tools, and
for the Dutchman. In 1836, 12,000 windmills of 6000 horse-power were still em-
ployed in Holland, to prevent two-thirds of the land from being reconverted into
morasses.
1 It was, indeed, very much improved by Watt's first so-called single acting engine;
but, in this form, it continued to be a mere machine for raising water, and the liquor
from salt mines,
**
Machinery and Modern Industry.
37I
1
set in motion by a single motive power, whatever the form of
that power may be. Here we have the machine, but only as
an elementary factor of production by machinery.
Increase in the size of the machine, and in the number of its
working tools, calls for a more massive mechanism to drive it;
and this mechanism requires, in order to overcome its resist-
ance, a mightier moving power than that of man, apart from
the fact that man is a very imperfect instrument for producing
uniform continued motion. But assuming that he is acting
simply as a motor, that a machine has taken the place of his
tool, it is evident that he can be replaced by natural forces.
Of all the great motors handed down from the manufacturing
period, horse-power is the worst, partly because a horse has a
head of his own, partly because he is costly, and the extent to
which he is applicable in factories is very restricted. Never-
theless the horse was extensively used during the infancy of
Modern Industry. This is proved, as well by the complaints of
contemporary agriculturists, as by the term "horse-power,”
which has survived to this day as an expression for mechanical
force.
Wind was too inconstant and uncontrollable, and besides, in
"The union of all these simple instruments, set in motion by a single motor, con-
stitutes a machine.” (Babbage, 1. c.)
2 In January, 1861, John C. Morton read before the Society of Arts a paper on
"The forces employed in agriculture." He there states: "Every improvement that
furthers the uniformity of the land makes the steam-engine more and more applicable
to the production of pure mechanical force.
Horse-power is requisite wherever
crooked fences and other obstructions prevent uniform action. These obstructions
are vanishing day by day. For operations that demand more exercise of will than
actual force, the only power applicable is that controlled every instant by the human
mind-in other words, man-power." Mr. Morton then reduces steam-power, horse-
power, and man-power, to the unit in general use for steam-engines, namely, the
force required to raise 33,000 lbs. one foot in one minute, and reckons the cost of one
horse-power from a steam engine to be 3d., and from a horse to be 5d. per hour.
Further, if a horse must fully maintain its health, it can work no more than 8 hours
a day. Three at the least out of every seven horses used on tillage land during the
year can be dispensed with by using steam-power, at an expense not greater than
that which, the horses dispensed with, would cost during the 3 or 4 months in which
alone they can be used effectively. Lastly, steam-power, in those agricultural opera-
tions in which it can be employed, improves, in comparison with horse-power, the
quality of the work. To do the work of a steam-engine would require 66 men, at a
total cost of 15s. an hour, and to do the work of a horse, 32 men, at a total cost of
Ss. an hour,
372
Capitalist Production.
1
England, the birthplace of Modern Industry, the use of water-
power preponderated even during the manufacturing period.
In the 17th century attempts had already been made to turn
two pairs of millstones with a single water-wheel. But the
increased size of the gearing was too much for the water-
power, which had now become insufficient, and this was one
of the circumstances that led to a more accurate investigation
of the laws of friction. In the same way the irregularity
caused by the motive power in mills that were put in motion
by pushing and pulling a lever, led to the theory, and the
application, of the fly-wheel, which afterwards plays so im-
portant a part in Modern Industry. In this way, during the
manufacturing period, were developed the first scientific and
technical elements of Modern Mechanical Industry. Arkwright's
throstle-spinning mill was from the very first turned by water.
But for all that, the use of water, as the predominant motive
power, was beset with difficulties. It could not be increased at
will, it failed at certain seasons of the year, and, above all, it
was essentially local. Not till the invention of Watt's second
and so called double-acting steam-engine, was a prime mover
found, that begot its own force by the consumption of coal and
water, whose power was entirely under man's control, that was
mobile and a means of locomotion, that was urban and not,
like the water-wheel, rural, that permitted production to be
concentrated in towns instead of, like the water-wheels, being
scattered up and down the country, that was of universal
technical application, and, relatively speaking, little affected in
its choice of residence by local circumstances. The greatness.
3
1 Faulhebr, 1625; De Cous, 1688.
2 The modern turbine frees the industrial exploitation of water-power from many
of its former fetters.
"In the early days of textile manufactures, the locality of the factory depended
upon the existence of a stream having a sufficient fall to turn a water-wheel; and,
although the establishment of the water mills was the commencement of the breaking
up of the domestic system of manufacture, yet the mills necessarily situated upon
streams, and frequently at considerable distances the one from the other, formed part
of a rural, rather than an urban system; and it was not until the introduction of the
steam-power as a substitute for the stream that factories were congregated in towns,
and localities where the coal and water required for the production of steam were found
in sufficient quantities. The steam-engine is the parent of manufacturing towns. (A.
Redgrave in “Reports of the Insp. of Fact. 30th April, 1866,” p. 36.)
>>
Machinery and Modern Industry.
373
of Watt's genius showed itself in the specification of the patent
that he took out in April, 1784. In that specification his steam-
engine is described, not as an invention for a specific purpose,
but as an agent universally applicable in Mechanical Industry.
In it he points out applications, many of which, as for instance,
the steam-hammer, were not introduced till half a century
later. Nevertheless he doubted the use of steam-engines in
navigation. His successors, Boulton and Watt, sent to the
exhibition of 1851 steam-engines of colossal size for ocean
steamers.
As soon as tools had been converted from being manual
implements of man into implements of a mechanical apparatus,
of a machine, the motive mechanism also acquired an indepen-
dent form, entirely emancipated from the restraints of human
strength. Thereupon the individual machine, that we have
hitherto been considering, sinks into a mere factor in produc-
tion by machinery. One motive mechanism was now able to
drive many machines at once. The motive mechanism grows
with the number of the machines that are turned simul-
taneously, and the transmitting mechanism becomes a wide-
spreading apparatus.
We now proceed to distinguish the co-operation of a
number of machines of one kind from a complex system of
machinery.
mal
In the one case, the product is entirely made by a single
machine, which performs all the various operations previously
done by one handicraftsman with his tool; as, for instance, by
a weaver with his loom; or by several handicraftsmen success-
ively, either separately or as members of a system of Manufac-
ture.¹ For example, in the manufacture of envelopes, one
man folded the paper with the folder, another laid on the
1 From the standpoint of division of labour in Manufacture, weaving was not
simple, but, on the contrary, complicated manual labour; and consequently the
power-loom is a machine that does very complicated work. It is altogether erroneous
to suppose that modern machinery originally appropriated those operations alone,
which division of labour had simplified. Spinning and weaving were, during the
manufacturing period, split up into new species, and the implements were modified
and improved; but the labour itself was in no way divided, and it retained its handi-
craft character. It is not the labour, but the instrument of labour, that serves as
the starting-point of the machine.
374
Capitalist Production.
gum, a third turned the flap over, on which the device is
impressed, a fourth embossed the device, and so on; and for
each of these operations the envelope had to change hands.
One single envelope machine now performs all these operations
at once, and makes more than 3000 envelopes in an hour. In
the London exhibition of 1862, there was an American machine
for making paper cornets. It cut the paper, pasted, folded,
and finished 300 in a minute. Here, the whole process, which,
when carried on as Manufacture, was split up into, and carried
out by, a series of operations, is completed by a single machine,
working a combination of various tools. Now, whether such.
a machine be merely a reproduction of a complicated manual
implement, or a combination of various simple implements
specialised by Manufacture, in either case, in the factory, i.e.,
in the workshop in which machinery alone is used, we meet
again with simple co-operation; and, leaving the workman
out of consideration for the moment, this co-operation presents
itself to us, in the first instance, as the conglomeration in one.
place of similar and simultaneously acting machines. Thus, a
weaving factory is constituted of a number of power-looms,
working side by side, and a sewing factory of a number of
sewing machines all in the same building. But there is here.
a technical oneness in the whole system, owing to all the
machines receiving their impulse simultaneously, and in an
equal degree, from the pulsations of the common prime mover,
by the intermediary of the transmitting mechanism; and this
mechanism, to a certain extent, is also common to them all,
since only particular ramifications of it branch off to each
machine. Just as a number of tools, then, form the organs of
a machine, so a number of machines of one kind constitute the
organs of the motive mechanism.
A real machinery system, however, does not take the place
of these independent machines, until the subject of labour goes
through a connected series of detail processes, that are carried
out by a chain of machines of various kinds, the one supple-
menting the other. Here we have again the co-operation by
division of labour that characterises Manufacture; only now,
it is a combination of detail machines. The special tools of
*
**
Machinery and Modern Industry.
375
the various detail workmen, such as those of the beaters,
combers, spinners, &c., in the woollen manufacture, are now
transformed into the tools of specialised machines, each
machine constituting a special organ, with a special function,
in the system. In those branches of industry in which the
machinery system is first introduced, Manufacture itself fur-
nishes, in a general way, the natural basis for the division,
and consequent organisation, of the process of production.¹
Nevertheless an essential difference at once manifests itself. In
Manufacture it is the workmen who, with their manual imple-
ments, must, either singly or in groups, carry on each par-
ticular detail process. If, on the one hand, the workman be-
comes adapted to the process, on the other, the process was
previously made suitable to the workman. This subjective
principle of the division of labour no longer exists in produc-
tion by machinery. Here, the process as a whole is examined
objectively, in itself, that is to say, without regard to the
question of its execution by human hands, it is analysed into
its constituent phases; and the problem, how to execute each
detail process, and bind them all into a whole, is solved by the
aid of machines, chemistry, &c. But, of course, in this case
also, theory must be perfected by accumulated experience on a
1 Before the epoch of Mechanical Industry, the wool manufacture was the pre-
dominating manufacture in England. Hence it was in this industry that, in the first
half of the 18th century, the most experiments were made. Cotton, which required
less careful preparation for its treatment by machinery, derived the benefit of the
experience gained on wool, just as afterwards the manipulation of wool by machin-
ery was developed on the lines of cotton-spinning and weaving by machinery. It
was only during the 10 years immediately preceding 1866, that isolated details
of the wool manufacture, such as wool-combing, were incorporated in the factory
system. "The application of power to the process of combing wool
extensively in operation since the introduction of the combing machine, especially
Lister's undoubtedly had the effect of throwing a very large number of men
out of work. Wool was formerly combed by hand, most frequently in the cottage of
the comber. It is now very generally combed in the factory, and hand-labour is
superseded, except in some particular kinds of work, in which hand-combed wool is
still preferred. Many of the hand-combers found employment in the factories, but the
produce of the hand-combers bears so small a proportion to that-of the machine, that
the employment of a very large number of combers has passed away." (Rep. of Insp.
of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1856, p. 16.)
•
•
•
·
2 "The principle of the factory system, then, is to substitute. . . . the partition
of a process into its essential constituents, for the division or graduation of labour
among artisans." (Andrew Ure: "The Philosophy of Manufactures." Lond., 1835,
p. 20.)
it was the country, form as
376
Capitalist Production.
!
large scale. Each detail machine supplies raw material to the
machine next in order; and since they are all working at the
same time, the product is always going through the various
stages of its fabrication, and is also constantly in a state of
transition, from one phase to another. Just as in Manufacture,
the direct co-operation of the detail labourers establishes a
numerical proportion between the special groups, so in an
organised system of machinery, where one detail machine is
constantly kept employed by another, a fixed relation is estab-
lished between their numbers, their size, and their speed. The
collective machine, now an organised system of various kinds.
of single machines, and of groups of single machines, becomes
more and more perfect, the more the process as a whole be-
comes a continuous one, i.e., the less the raw material is inter-
rupted in its passage from its first phase to its last; in other
words, the more its passage from one phase to another is
effected, not by the hand of man, but by the machinery itself.
In Manufacture the isolation of each detail process is a condi-
tion imposed by the nature of division of labour, but in the
fully developed factory the continuity of those processes is,
on the contrary, imperative.
mover.
A system of machinery, whether it reposes on the mere co-
operation of similar machines, as in weaving, or on a combina-
tion of different machines, as in spinning, constitutes in itself
a huge automaton, whenever it is driven by a self-acting prine
But although the factory as a whole be driven by its
steam-engine, yet either some of the individual machines may
require the aid of the workman for some of their movements
(such aid was necessary for the running in of the mule carriage,
before the invention of the self-acting mule, and is still neces-
sary in fine-spinning mills); or, to enable a machine to do its
work, certain parts of it may require to be handled by the
workman like a manual tool; this was the case in machine-
makers' workshops, before the conversion of the slide rest into
a self-actor. As soon as a machine executes, without man's
help, all the movements requisite to elaborate the raw material,
needing only attendance from him, we have an automatic
system of machinery, and one that is susceptible of constant
Machinery and Modern Industry.
377
improvement in its details. Such improvements as the appa-
ratus that stops a drawing frame, whenever a sliver breaks,
and the self-acting stop, that stops the power-loom so soon as
the shuttle bobbin is emptied of weft, are quite modern inven-
tions. As an example, both of continuity of production, and
of the carrying out of the automatic principle, we may take a
modern paper mill. In the paper industry generally, we may
advantageously study in detail not only the distinctions be-
tween modes of production based on different means of produc-
tion, but also the connexion of the social conditions of
production with those modes: for the old German paper-mak-
ing furnishes us with a sample of handicraft production; that
of Holland in the 17th and of France in the 18th century with
a sample of manufacturing in the strict sense; and that of
modern England with a sample of automatic fabrication of this
article. Besides these, there still exist, in India and China,
two distinct antique Asiatic forms of the same industry.
An organised system of machines, to which motion is com-
municated by the transmitting mechanism from a central
automaton, is the most developed form of production by
machinery. Here we have, in the place of the isolated
machine, a mechanical monster whose body fills whole fac-
tories, and whose demon power, at first veiled under the slow
and measured motions of his giant limbs, at length breaks out
into the fast and furious whirl of his countless working organs.
gr
There were mules and steam-engines before there were any
labourers, whose exclusive occupation it was to make mules
and steam-engines; just as men wore clothes before there were
such people as tailors. The inventions of Vaucanson, Ark-
wright, Watt, and others, were, however, practicable, only
because those inventors found, ready to hand, a considerable
number of skilled mechanical workmen, placed at their dis-
posal by the manufacturing period. Some of these workmen
were independent handicraftsmen of various trades, others were
grouped together in manufactures, in which, as before-men-
tioned, division of labour was strictly carried out. As inven-
tions increased in number, and the demand for the newly
discovered machines grew larger, the machine-making industry
378
Capitalist Production.
split up, more and more, into numerous independent branches,
and division of labour in these manufactures was more and
more developed. Here, then, we see in Manufacture the imme-
diate technical foundation of Modern Industry. Manufacture
produced the machinery, by means of which Modern Industry
abolished the handicraft and manufacturing systems in those
spheres of production that it first seized upon. The factory
system was therefore raised, in the natural course of things, on
an inadequate foundation. When the system attained to a
certain degree of development, it had to root up this ready-made
foundation, which in the meantime had been elaborated on the
old lines, and to build up for itself a basis that should corres-
pond to its methods of production. Just as the individual
machine retains a dwarfish character, so long as it is worked
by the power of man alone, and just as no system of machinery
could be properly developed before the steam-engine took the
place of the earlier motive powers, animals, wind, and even
water; so, too, Modern Industry was crippled in its complete
development, so long as its characteristic instrument of pro-
duction, the machine, owed its existence to personal strength
and personal skill, and depended on the muscular develop-
ment, the keenness of sight, and the cunning of hand, with
which the detail workmen in manufactures, and the manual
labourers in handicrafts, wielded their dwarfish implements.
Thus, apart from the dearness of the machines made in this
way, a circumstance that is ever present to the mind of the
capitalist, the expansion of industries carried on by means of
machinery, and the invasion by machinery of fresh branches of
production, were dependent on the growth of a class of work-
men, who, owing to the almost artistic nature of their employ-
ment, could increase their numbers only gradually, and not by
leaps and bounds. But besides this, at a certain stage of its
development, Modern Industry became technologically incom-
patible with the basis furnished for it by handicraft and Manu-
facture. The increasing size of the prime movers, of the
transmitting mechanism, and of the machines proper, the
greater complication, multiformity and regularity of the details
of these machines, as they more and more departed from the
Machinery and Modern Industry.
379
P
model of those originally made by manual labour, and acquired
a form, untrammelled except by the conditions under which
they worked,' the perfecting of the automatic system, and the
use, every day more unavoidable, of a more refractory material,
such as iron instead of wood-the solution of all these problems,
which sprang up by the force of circumstances, everywhere
met with a stumbling-block in the personal restrictions, which
even the collective labourer of Manufacture could not break
through, except to a limited extent. Such machines as the
modern hydraulic press, the modern powerloom, and the modern
carding engine, could never have been furnished by Manu-
facture.
A radical change in the mode of production in one sphere of
industry involves a similar change in other spheres. This
happens at first in such branches of industry as are connected
together by being separate phases of a process, and yet are
isolated by the social division of labour, in such a way, that
each of them produces an independent commodity. Thus
spinning by machinery made weaving by machinery a necessity;
and both together made the mechanical and chemical revolu-
tion that took place in bleaching, printing, and dyeing, impera-
tive. So too, on the other hand, the revolution in cotton-
spinning called forth the invention of the gin, for separating
the seeds from the cotton fibre; it was only by means of this
invention, that the production of cotton became possible on the
enormous scale at present required. But more especially, the
1 The powerloom was at first made chiefly of wood; in its improved modern form
it is made of iron. To what an extent the old forms of the instruments of production
influenced their new forms at first starting, is shown by, amongst other things, the
most superficial comparison of the present powerloom with the old one, of the modern
blowing apparatus of a blast-furnace with the first inefficient mechanical reproduction
of the ordinary bellows, and perhaps more strikingly than in any other way, by the
attempts before the invention of the present locomotive, to construct a locomotive
that actually had two feet, which after the fashion of a horse, it raised alternately
from the ground. It is only after considerable development of the science of
mechanics, and accumulated practical experience, that the form of a machine be-
comes settled entirely in accordance with mechanical principles, and emancipated
from the traditional form of the tool that gave rise to it.
2 Eli Whitney's cotton gin had until very recent times undergone less essential
changes than any other machine of the 18th century. It is only during the last
decade (i.c., since 1856) that another American, Mr Emery, of Albany, New York,
has rendered Whitney's gin antiquated by an improvement as simple as it is
effective.
380
Capitalist Production.
暑
​revolution in the modes of production of industry and agricul-
ture made necessary a revolution in the general conditions of
the social process of production, i.e., in the means of communi-
cation and of transport. In a society whose pivot, to use an
expression of Fourier, was agriculture on a small scale, with its
subsidiary domestic industries, and the urban handicrafts, the
means of communication and transport were so utterly inade-
quate to the productive requirements of the manufacturing
period, with its extended division of social labour, its concen-
tration of the instruments of labour, and of the workmen, and
its colonial markets, that they became in fact revolutionised.
In the same way the means of communication and transport
handed down from the manufacturing period soon became un-
bearable trammels on Modern Industry, with its feverish haste
of production, its enormous extent, its constant flinging of
capital and labour from one sphere of production into another,
and its newly-created connexions with the markets of the
whole world. Hence, apart from the radical changes intro-
duced in the construction of sailing vessels, the means of
communication and transport became gradually adapted to the
modes of production of mechanical industry, by the creation of
a system of river steamers, railways, ocean steamers, and
telegraphs. But the huge masses of iron that had now to be
forged, to be welded, to be cut, to be bored, and to be shaped,
demanded, on their part, cyclopean machines, for the construc-
tion of which the methods of the manufacturing period were
utterly inadequate.
Modern Industry had therefore itself to take in hand the
machine, its characteristic instrument of production, and to
construct machines by machines. It was not till it did this,
that it built up for itself a fitting technical foundation, and
stood on its own feet. Machinery, simultaneously with the
increasing use of it, in the first decades of this century, appro-
priated, by degrees, the fabrication of machines proper. But
it was only during the decade preceding 1866, that the con-
struction of railways and ocean steamers on a stupendous scale
called into existence the cyclopean machines now employed in
the construction of prime movers.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
381
The most essential condition to the production of machines.
by machines was a prime mover capable of exerting any
amount of force, and yet under perfect control. Such a con-
dition was already supplied by the steam-engine. But at the
same time it was necessary to produce the geometrically accu-
rate straight lines, planes, circies, cylinders, cones, and spheres,
required in the detail parts of the machines. This problem
Henry Maudsley solved in the first decade of this century by
the invention of the slide rest, a tool that was soon made
automatic, and in a modified form was applied to other con-
structive machines besides the lathe, for which it was originally
intended. This mechanical appliance replaces, not some par-
ticular tool, but the hand itself, which produces a given form
by holding and guiding the cutting tool along the iron or other
material operated upon. Thus it became possible to produce
the forms of the individual parts of machinery " with a degree
of ease, accuracy, and speed, that no accumulated experience of
the hand of the most skilled workman could give."¹
If we now fix our attention on that portion of the machinery
employed in the construction of machines, which constitutes
the operating tool, we find the manual implements reappearing,
but on a cyclopean scale. The operating part of the boring
machine is an immense drill driven by a steam-engine; with-
out this machine, on the other hand, the cylinders of large
steam-engines and of hydraulic presses could not be made. The
mechanical lathe is only a cyclopean reproduction of the
ordinary foot-lathe; the planing machine, an iron carpenter,
that works on iron with the same tools that the human car-
penter employs on wood; the instrument that, on the London
wharves, cuts the veneers, is a gigantic razor; the tool of the
shearing machine, which shears iron as easily as a tailor's
scissors cut cloth, is a monster pair of scissors; and the
steam hammer works with an ordinary hammer head, but of
1 "The Industry of Nations, Lond., 1855," Part II., p. 239. This work also re-
marks: "Simple and outwardly unimportant as this appendage to lathes may appear,
it is not, we believe, averring too much to state, that its influence in improving and
extending the use of machinery has been as great as that produced by Watt's im-
provements of the steam-engine itself. Its introduction went at once to perfect all
machinery, to cheapen it, and to stimulate invention and improvement."
382
Capitalist Production.
such a weight that not Thor himself could wield it. These
steam hammers are an invention of Nasmyth, and there is one
that weighs over 6 tons and strikes with a vertical fall of 7
feet, on an anvil weighing 36 tons. It is mere child's-play for
it to crush a block of granite into powder, yet it is no less
capable of driving, with a succession of light taps, a nail into a
piece of soft wood.²
The implements of labour, in the form of machinery, necessi-
tate the substitution of natural forces for human force, and
the conscious application of science, instead of rule of thumb.
In Manufacture, the organisation of the social labour-process is
purely subjective; it is a combination of detail labourers; in its
machinery system, Modern Industry has a productive organism
that is purely objective, in which the labourer becomes a mere
appendage to an already existing material condition of pro-
duction. In simple co-operation, and even in that founded on
division of labour, the suppression of the isolated, by the
collective, workman still appears to be more or less accidental.
Machinery, with a few exceptions to be mentioned later, oper-
ates only by means of associated labour, or labour in common.
Hence the co-operative character of the labour-process is, in
the latter case, a technical necessity dictated by the instrument
of labour itself.
SECTION 2.-THE VALUE TRANSFERRED BY MACHINERY TO THE PRODUCT.
We saw that the productive forces resulting from co-opera-
tion and division of labour cost capital nothing. They are
natural forces of social labour. So also physical forces, like
steam, water, &c., when appropriated to productive processes,
cost nothing. But just as a man requires lungs to breathe with,
so he requires something that is work of man's hand, in order
to consume physical forces productively. A water-wheel is
necessary to exploit the force of water, and a steam engine to
"
1 One of these machines, used for forging paddle-wheel shafts in London, is called
"Thor. It forges a shaft of 163 tons with as much ease as a blacksmith forges a
horse-shoe.
2 Wood working machines that are also capable of being employed on a small scale
are mostly American inventions.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
383
exploit the elasticity of steam. Once discovered, the law of
the deviation of the magnetic needle in the field of an electric.
current, or the law of the magnetisation of iron, around which
an electric current circulates, cost never a penny. But the
exploitation of these laws for the purposes of telegraphy, &c.,
necessitates a costly and extensive apparatus. The tool, as we
have seen, is not exterminated by the machine. From being a
dwarf implement of the human organism, it expands and mul-
tiplies into the implement of a mechanism created by man.
Capital now sets the labourer to work, not with a manual tool,
but with a machine which itself handles the tools. Although,
therefore, it is clear at the first glance that, by incorporating
both stupendous physical forces, and the natural sciences, with
the process of production, Modern Industry raises the produc-
tiveness of labour to an extraordinary degree, it is by no means
equally clear, that this increased productive force is not, on
the other hand, purchased by an increased expenditure of
labour. Machinery, like every other component of constant
capital, creates no new value, but yields up its own value to
the product that it serves to beget. In so far as the machine
has value, and, in consequence, parts with value to the product,
it forms an element in the value of that product. Instead of
being cheapened, the product is made dearer in proportion to
the value of the machine. And it is clear as noon-day, that
machines and systems of machinery, the characteristic instru-
ments of labour of Modern Industry, are incomparably more
loaded with value than the implements used in handicrafts
and manufactures.
In the first place, it must be observed that the machinery,
while always entering as a whole into the labour-process, enters
into the value-begetting process only by bits. It never adds more
value than it loses, on an average, by wear and tear. Hence there
Science, generally speaking, costs the capitalist nothing, a fact that by no means
hinders him from exploiting it. The science of others is as much annexed by capital
as the labour of others. Capitalistic appropriation and personal appropriation,
whether of science or of material wealth, are, however, totally different things. Dr.
Ure himself deplores the gross ignorance of mechanical science existing among his
dear machinery-exploiting manufacturers, and Liebig can a tale unfold about the
astounding ignorance of chemistry displayed by English chemical manufacturers.
384
Capitalist Production.
is a great difference between the value of a machine, and the value
transferred in a given time by that machine to the product. The
longer the life of the machine in the labour-process, the greater is
that difference. It is true, no doubt, as we have already seen,
that every instrument of labour enters as a whole into the
labour-process, and only piece-meal, proportionally to its aver-
age daily loss by wear and tear, into the value-begetting pro-
cess. But this difference between the instrument as a whole
and its daily wear and tear, is much greater in a machine than
in a tool, because the machine, being made from more durable
material, has a longer life; because its employment, being
regulated by strictly scientific laws, allows of greater economy
in the wear and tear of its parts, and in the materials it con-
sumes; and lastly, because its field of production is incom-
parably larger than that of a tool. After making allowance,
both in the case of the machine and of the tool, for their
average daily cost, that is for the value they transmit to the
product by their average daily wear and tear, and for their
consumption of auxiliary substances, such as oil, coal, and so
on, they each do their work gratuitously, just like the forces
furnished by nature without the help of man.
The greater
the productive power of the machinery compared with that of
the tool, the greater is the extent of its gratuitous service com-
pared with that of the tool. In Modern Industry man suc-
ceeded for the first time in making the product of his past
labour work on a large scale gratuitously, like the forces of
-nature.¹
A
In treating of Co-operation and Manufacture, it was shown
that certain general factors of production, such as buildings,
1 Ricardo lays such stress on this effect of machinery (of which, in other connexions,
he takes no more notice than he does of the general distinction between the labour-
process and the process of creating surplus-value), that he occasionally loses sight of
the value given up by machines to the product, and puts machines on the same foot-
ing as natural forces. Thus “Adam Smith nowhere undervalues the services which
the natural agents and machinery perform for us, but he very justly distinguishes
the nature of the value which they add to commodities
as they perform
their work gratuitously, the assistance which they afford us, adds nothing to value
in exchange." (Ric. 1. c., p. 336, 337.) This observation of Ricardo is of course
correct in so far as it is directed against J. B. Say, who imagines that machines
render the "service" of creating value which forms a part of "profits."
Machinery and Modern Industry.
385
are, in comparison with the scattered means of production of
the isolated workman, economised by being consumed in com-
mon, and that they therefore make the product cheaper. In a
system of machinery, not only is the framework of the machine
consumed in common by its numerous operating implements,
but the prime mover, together with a part of the transmitting
mechanism, is consumed in common by the numerous operative
machines.
Given the difference between the value of the machinery,
and the value transferred by it in a day to the product, the
extent to which this latter value makes the product dearer,
depends in the first instance, upon the size of the product; so
to say, upon its area. Mr. Baynes, of Blackburn, in a lecture
published in 1858, estimates that "each real mechanical horse-
power¹ will drive 450 self-acting mule spindles, with pre-
paration, or 200 throstle spindles, or 15 looms for 40 inch
cloth with the appliances for warping, sizing, &c." In the
first case, it is the day's produce of 450 mule spindles, in
the second, of 200 throstle spindles, in the third, of 15 power-
looms, over which the daily cost of one horse-power, and the
wear and tear of the machinery set in motion by that power,
are spread; so that only a very minute value is transferred by
such wear and tear to a pound of yarn or a yard of cloth. The
1 A horse-power is equal to a force of 33,000 foot-pounds per minute, i.c., to a force
that raises 3,000 pounds one foot in a minute, or one pound 33,000 feet. This is
the horse-power meant in the text. In ordinary language, and also here and there
in quotations in this work, a distinction is drawn between the "nominal " and the
"commercial" or "indicated" horse-power of the same engine. The old or nominal
horse-power is calculated exclusively from the length of piston-stroke, and the
diame'er of the cylinder, and leaves pressure of steam and piston speed out of con-
sideration. It expresses practically this: This engine would be one of 50 horse-
power, if it were driven with the same low pressure of steam, and the same slow
piston speed, as in the days of Boulton and Watt. But the two latter factors have
increased enormously since those days. In order to measure the mechanical force
exerted to-day by an engine, an indicator has been invented which shows the pressure
of the steam in the cylinder. The piston speed is easily ascertained. Thus the
"indicated ΟΙ "commercial" horse-power of an engine is expressed by a mathe-
matical formula, involving diameter of cylinder, length of stroke, piston speed, and
steam pressure, simultaneously, and showing what multiple of 33,000 pounds is really
raised by the engine in a minute. Hence, one nominal" horse-power may exert
three, four, or even five "indicated" or "real" horse-powers. This observation is
made for the purpose of explaining various citations in the subsequent pages.-
(The editor.)
>>
CC
2 B
386
Capitalist Production.
same is the case with the steam-hammer mentioned above.
Since its daily wear and tear, its coal-consumption, &c., are
spread over the stupendous masses of iron hammered by it in
a day, only a small value is added to a hundredweight of iron;
but that value would be very great, if the cyclopean instrument
were employed in driving in nails.
Given a machine's capacity for work, that is, the number of
its operating tools, or, where it is a question of force, their
mass, the amount of its product will depend on the velocity of
its working parts, on the speed, for instance, of the spindles, or
on the number of blows given by the hammer in a minute.
Many of these colossal hammers strike seventy times in a
minute, and Ryder's patent machine for forging spindles with
small hammers gives as many as 700 strokes per minute.
1
Given the rate at which machinery transfers its value to the
product, the amount of value so transferred depends on the
total value of the machinery. The less labour it contains, the
less value it imparts to the product. The less value it gives
up, so much the more productive it is, and so much the more
its services approximate to those of natural forces. But the
production of machinery by machinery lessens its value
relatively to its extension and efficacy.
An analysis and comparison of the prices of commodities
produced by handicrafts or manufactures, and of the prices of
the same commodities produced by machinery, shows generally,
that, in the product of machinery, the value due to the instru-
ments of labour increases relatively, but decreases absolutely.
In other words, its absolute amount decreases, but its amount,
relatively to the total value of the product, of a pound of yarn,
for instance, increases.
>>
1 The reader who is imbued with capitalist notions will naturally miss here the
"interest" that the machine, in proportion to its capital value, adds to the product.
It is, however, casily seen that since a machine no more creates new value than any
other part of constant capital, it cannot add any value under the name of "interest.
It is also evident that here, where we are treating of the production of surplus value,
we cannot assume a priori the existence of any part of that value under the name of
interest. The capitalist mode of calculating, which appears, prima facie, absurd,
and repugnant to the laws of the creation of value, will be explained in the third
book of this work.
2 This portion of value which is added by the machinery, decreases both absolutely
and relatively, when the machinery does away with horses and other animals that
Machinery and Modern Industry.
387
It is evident that whenever it costs as much labour to pro-
duce a machine as is saved by the employment of that machine,
there is nothing but a transposition of labour; consequently
the total labour required to produce a commodity is not
lessened or the productiveness of labour is not increased. It
is clear, however, that the difference between the labour a
machine costs, and the labour it saves, in other words, that the
degree of its productiveness does not depend on the difference
between its own value and the value of the implement it re-
places. As long as the labour spent on a machine, and conse-
quently the portion of its value added to the product, remains
smaller than the value added by the workman to the product
with his tool, there is always a difference of labour saved in
favour of the machine. The productiveness of a machine is
therefore measured by the human labour-power it replaces.
According to Mr. Baynes, 21 operatives are required for the 450
mule spindles, inclusive of preparation machinery,' that are
are employed as mere moving forces, and not as machines for changing the form of
matter. It
It may here be incidentally observed, that Descartes, in defining animals as
mere machines, saw with eyes of the manufacturing period, while to eyes of the
middle ages, animals were assistants to man, as they were later to Von Haller in his
Restauration der Staatswissenschaften." That Descartes, like Bacon, anticipated
an alteration in the form of production, and the practical subjugation of Nature by
Man, as a result of the altered methods of thought, is plain from his "Discours de
la Méthode." He there says: "Il est possible (by the methods he introduced in
philosophy) de parvenir à des connaissances fort utiles à la vie, et qu'au lieu de cette
philosophie spéculative qu'on enseigne dans les écoles, on en peut trouver une
pratique, par laquelle, connaissant la force et les actions du feu, de l'eau, de l'air, des
astres, et de tous les autres corps qui nous environnent, aussi distinctement que nous
connaissons les divers métiers de nos artisans, nous les pourrious employer en même
façon à tous les usages auxquels ils sont propres, et ainsi nous rendre comme maîtres
et possesseurs de la nature" and thus "contribuer au perfectionnement de la vie
humaine." In the preface to Sir Dudley North's "Discourses upon Trade" (1691) it
is stated, that Descartes' method had begun to free political economy from the old
fables and superstitious notions of gold, trade, &c. On the whole, however, the
early English economists sided with Bacon and Hobbes as their philosophers; while,
at a later period, the philosopher xar' ox of political economy in England, France,
and Italy, was Locke.
1 According to the annual report (1863) of the Essen chamber of commerce, there
was produced in 1862, at the cast-steel works of Krupp, with its 161 furnaces, thirty-
two steam-engines (in the year 1800 this was about the number of all the steam-
engines working in Manchester), and fourteen steam-hammers (representing in all
1236 horse-power), forty-nine forges, 203 tool-machines, and about 2400 workmen-
thirteen million pounds of cast steel. Here there are not two workmen to each
horse-power.
66
388
Capitalist Production.
driven by one-horse power; each self-acting mule spindle,
working ten hours, produces 13 ounces of yarn (average number
or thickness); consequently 24 operatives spin weekly 365ğ lbs.
of yarn. Hence, leaving waste on one side, 366 lbs. of cotton
absorb, during their conversion into yarn, only 150 hours'
labour, or fifteen days' labour of ten hours each. But with a
spinning-wheel, supposing the hand-spinner to produce thirteen
ounces of yarn in sixty hours, the same weight of cotton would
absorb 2700 days' labour of ten hours each, or 27,000 hours'
labour.¹ Where block-printing, the old method of printing
calico by hand, has been superseded by machine printing, a
single machine prints, with the aid of one man or boy, as much
calico of four colours in one hour, as it formerly took 200 men
to do. Before Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin in 1793,
the separation of the seed from a pound of cotton cost an
average day's labour. By means of his invention one negress
was enabled to clean 100 lbs. daily; and since then, the
efficacy of the gin has been considerably increased. A pound
of cotton wool, previously costing 50 cents to produce, included
after that invention more unpaid labour, and was consequently
sold with greater profit, at 10 cents. In India they employ for
separating the wool from the seed, an instrument, half machine,
half tool, called a churka; with this one man and a woman can
clean 28 lbs. daily. With the churka invented some years ago
by Dr. Forbes, one man and a boy produce 250 lbs. daily. If
oxen, steam, or water, be used for driving it, only a few boys
and girls as feeders are required. Sixteen of these machines
driven by oxen do as much work in a day as formerly 750
people did on an average.3
As already stated, a steam-plough does as much work in one
hour at a cost of threepence, as 66 men at a cost of 15 shillings.
I return to this example in order to clear up an erroneous
1 Babbage estimates that in Java the spinning labour alone adds 117 % to the value
of the cotton. At the same period (1832) the total value added to the cotton by
machinery and labour in the fine-spinning industry, amounted to about 33% of the
value of the cotton. ("On the Economy of Machinery," p. 214.)
2 Machine printing also economises colour.
3 See paper read by Dr. Watson, Reporter on Products to the Government of
India, before the Society of Arts, 17th April, 1860.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
389
notion. The 15 shillings are by no means the expression in
money of all the labour expended in one hour by the 66 men.
If the ratio of surplus labour to necessary labour were 100%,
these 66 men would produce in one hour a value of 30 shillings,
although their wages, 15 shillings, represent only their labour
for half an hour. Suppose, then, a machine cost as much a.:
the wages for a year of the 150 men it displaces, say £3000;
this £3000 is by no means the expression in money of the
labour added to the object produced by these 150 men before the
introduction of the machine, but only of that portion of their
year's labour which was expended for themselves and repre-
sented by their wages. On the other hand, the £3000, the
money value of the machine, expresses all the labour expended
on its production, no matter in what proportion this labour
constitutes wages for the workman, and surplus-value for the
capitalist. Therefore, though a machine cost as much as the
labour-power displaced by it costs, yet the labour materialised
in it is even then much less than the living labour it replaces.'
The use of machinery for the exclusive purpose of cheapen-
ing the product, is limited in this way, that less labour must
be expended in producing the machinery than is displaced by
the employment of that machinery. For the capitalist, how-
ever, this use is still more limited. Instead of paying for the
labour, he only pays the value of the labour-power employed;
therefore, the limit to his using a machine is fixed by the
difference between the value of the machine and the value of
the labour-power replaced by it. Since the division of the
day's work into necessary and surplus-labour differs in differ-
ent countries, and even in the same country at different
periods, or in different branches of industry; and further, since
the actual wage of the labourer at one time sinks below the
value of his labour-power, at another rises above it, it is possible
for the difference between the price of the machinery and the
price of the labour-power replaced by that machinery to vary
very much, although the difference between the quantity of
λ
1 "These mute agents (machines) are always the produce of much less labour than
that which they displace, even when they are of the same money value." (Ricardo,
l. c., p. 40.)
390
Capitalist Production.
:
labour requisite to produce the machine and the total quantity
replaced by it, remain constant. But it is the former differ-
ence alone that determines the cost, to the capitalist, of produc-
ing a commodity, and, through the pressure of competition,
influences his action. Hence the invention now-a-days of
machines in England that are employed only in North America ;
just as in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, machines
were invented in Germany to be used only in Holland, and
just as many a French invention of the eighteenth century was
exploited in England alone. In the older countries, machinery,
when employed in some branches of industry, creates such a
redundancy of labour in other branches that in these latter
the fall of wages below the value of labour-power impedes the
use of machinery, and, from the standpoint of the capitalist,
whose profit comes, not from a diminution of the labour em-
ployed, but of the labour paid for, renders that use superfluous
and often impossible. In some branches of the woollen manu-
facture in England the employment of children has during
recent years been considerably diminished, and in some cases
has been entirely abolished. Why? Because the Factory Acts
made two sets of children necessary, one working six hours, the
other four, or each working five hours. But the parents refused
to sell the "half-timers" cheaper than the "full-timers." Hence
the substitution of machinery for the "half-timers." Before the
labour of women and of children under 10 years of age was
forbidden in mines, capitalists considered the employment
of naked women and girls, often in company with men, so far
sanctioned by their moral code, and especially by their ledgers,
that it was only after the passing of the Act that they had re-
I
1 Hence in a communistic society there would be a very different scope for the em-
ployment of machinery than there can be in a bourgeois society.
2" Employers of labour would not unnecess rily retain two sets of children under
thirteen. . . . In fact one class of manufacturers, the spinners of woollen yarn,
now rarely employ children under thirteen years of age, i.c., half-timers. They have
introduced improved and new machinery of various kinds, which altogether supersedes
the employment of children (i.e., under 13 years); f.i., I will mention one process as
an illustration of this diminution in the number of children, wherein by the addition
of an apparatus, called a piecing machine, to existing machines, the work of six or
four half-times, according to the peculiarity of each machine, can be performed by
one young person (over 13 years)
the half-time system 'stimulated' the
invention of the piecing machine." (Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct.. 1858.)
Machinery and Modern Industry.
391
2
course to machinery. The Yankees have invented a stone-
breaking machine. The English do not make use of it, because
the “wretch" who does this work gets paid for such a small
portion of his labour, that machinery would increase the cost
of production to the capitalist. In England women are still
occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats,³ be-
cause the labour required to produce horses and machines is
an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain
the women of the surplus population is below all calculation.
Hence nowhere do we find a more shameful squandering of
human labour-power for the most despicable purposes than in
England, the land of machinery.
SECTION 3.-—THE PROXIMATE EFFECTS OF MACHINERY ON THE WORKMAN.
The starting point of Modern Industry is, as we have shown,
the revolution in the instruments of labour, and this revolution.
attains its most highly developed form in the organised system of
machinery in a factory. Before we inquire how human material
is incorporated with this objective organism, let us consider
some general effects of this revolution on the labourer himself.
a. Appropriation of supplementary Labour-power by Capital.
The Employment of Women and Children.
In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it
becomes a means of employing labourers of slight muscular
strength, and those whose bodily development is incomplete,
but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour of
women and children was, therefore, the first thing sought for
by capitalists who used machinery. That mighty substitute
for labour and labourers was forthwith changed into a means
for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling,
under the direct sway of capital, every member of the work-
man's family, without distinction of age or sex. Compulsory
work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the
1 "Wretch" is the recognised term in English political economy for the agricultural
labourer.
2 “Machinery
can frequently not be employed until labour (he means
wages) rises." (Ricardo, 1. c., p. 579.)
3 See "Report of the Social Science Congress, at Edinburgh." Oct., 1863.
392
Capitalist Production.
children's play, but also of free labour at home within
moderate limits for the support of the family.
1
The value of labour-power was determined, not only by
the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult
labourer, but also by that necessary to maintain his family.
Machinery, by throwing every member of that family on to
the labour market, spreads the value of the man's labour-
power over his whole family. It thus depreciates his labour-
power. To purchase the labour-power of a family of four
workers may, perhaps, cost more than it formerly did to
purchase the labour-power of the head of the family, but, in
return, four days' labour takes the place of one, and their price
falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus-labour of
four over the surplus-labour of one. In order that the family
may live, four people must now, not only labour, but expend
surplus-labour for the capitalist. Thus we see, that machinery,
while augmenting the human material that forms the principal
object of capital's exploiting power, at the same time raises
the degree of exploitation.
2
1 Dr. Edward Smith, during the cotton crisis caused by the American Civil War,
was sent by the English Government to Lancashire, Cheshire, and other places, to
report on the sanitary condition of the cotton operatives. He reported, that from
a hygienic point of view, and apart from the banishment of the operatives from the
factory atmosphere, the crisis had several advantages. The women now had sufficient
leisure to give their infants the breast, instead of poisoning them with " Godfrey's
cordial." They had time to learn to cook. Unfortunately the acquisition of this
art occurred at a time when they had nothing to cook. But from this we see how
capital, for the purposes of its self-expansion, has usurped the labour necessary in
the home of the family. This crisis was also utilised to teach sewing to the
daughters of the workmen in sewing schools. An American revolution and a univer-
sal crisis, in order that the working girls, who spin for the whole world, might learn
to sew!
2 "The numerical increase of labourers has been great, through the growing substi-
tution of female for male, and above all, of childish for adult labour. Three girls
of 13, at wages of from 6 shillings to 8 shillings a week, have replaced the one man
of mature age, of wages varying from 18 shillings to 45 shillings. (Th. de Quincey :
"The Logic of Political Econ., London, 1845." Note to p. 147.) Since certain family
functions, such as nursing and suckling children, cannot be entirely suppressed, the
mothers confiscated by capital, must try substitutes of some sort. Domestic work,
such as sewing and mending, must be replaced by the purchase of ready-made
articles. Hence, the diminished expenditure of labour in the house is accompanied
by an increased expenditure of money. The cost of keeping the family increases,
and balances the greater income. In addition to this, economy and judgment
in the consumption and preparation of themeans of subsistence becomes impossible.
Abundant material relating to these facts, which are concealed by official political
>>
Machinery and Modern Industry.
393
Machinery also revolutionises out and out the contract be-
tween the labourer and the capitalist, which formally fixes their
mutual relations. Taking the exchange of commodities as our
basis, our first assumption was that capitalist and labourer met
as free persons, as independent owners of commodities; the one
possessing money and means of production, the other labour-
power. But now the capitalist buys children and young
persons under age. Previously, the workman sold his own
Jabour-power, which he disposed of nominally as a free agent.
Now he sells wife and child. He has become a slave dealer.¹
The demand for children's labour often resembles in form the
inquiries for negro slaves, such as were formerly to be read
among the advertisements in American journals. "My at-
tention," says an English factory inspector, " was drawn to an
advertisement in the local paper of one of the most important
manufacturing towns of my district, of which the following is
a copy: Wanted, 12 to 20 young persons, not younger than
what can pass for 13 years. Wages, 4 shillings a week.
Apply &c.," The phrase "what can pass for 13 years," has
reference to the fact, that by the Factory Act, children under
13 years may work only 6 hours. A surgeon officially ap-
pointed must certify their age. The manufacturer, therefore,
asks for children who look as if they were already 13 years
old. The decrease, often by leaps and bounds in the number
of children under 13 years employed in factories, a decrease
economy, is to be found in the Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, of the
Children's Employment Commission, and more especially in the Reports on Public
Health.
2
"C
1 In striking contrast with the great fact, that the shortening of the hours of labour
of women and children in English factories was exacted from capital by the male
operatives, we find in the latest reports of the Children's Employment Commission
traits of the operative parents in relation to the traffic in children, that are truly re-
volting and thoroughly like slave-dealing. But the Pharisee of a capitalist, as may
be seen from the same reports, denounces this brutality which he himself creates,
perpetuates, and exploits, and which he moreover baptizes Freedom of labour."
*C Infant labour has been called into aid even to work for their own daily bread.
Without strength to endure such disproportionate toil, without instruction to guide
their future life, they have been thrown into a situation physically and morally pol-
luted. The Jewish historian has remarked upon the overthrow of Jerusalem by Titus
that it was no wonder it should have been destroyed, with such a signal destruction,
when an inhuman mother sacrificed her own offspring to satisfy the cravings of
absolute hunger." ("Public Economy Concentrated." Carlisle, 1833, p. 56.)
2 A. Redgrave in "Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 31st October, 1858,” pp. 40, 41.
•
394
Capitalist Production.
that is shown in an astonishing manner by the English statistics
of the last 20 years, was for the most part, according to the
evidence of the factory inspectors themselves, the work of the
certifying surgeons, who overstated the age of the children,
agreeably to the capitalist's greed for exploitation, and the
sordid trafficking needs of the parents. In the notorious district
of Bethnal Green, a public market is held every Monday and
Tuesday morning, where children of both sexes from 9 years of
age upwards, hire themselves out to the silk manufacturers.
"The usual terms are 1s. 8d. a week (this belongs to the
parents) and 2d. for myself and tea.' The contract is binding
only for the week. The scene and language while this
market is going on are quite disgraceful." It has also occurred
in England, that women have taken "children from the work-
house and let any one have them out for 2s. 6d. a week.” 2 In
spite of legislation, the number of boys sold in Great Britain
by their parents to act as live chimney-sweeping machines.
(although there exist plenty of machines to replace them) ex-
ceeds 2000. The revolution effected by machinery in the
juridical relations between the buyer and the seller of labour-
power, causing the transaction as a whole to lose the appearance
of a contract between free persons, afforded the English
Parliament an excuse, founded on juridical principles, for the
interference of the state with factories. Whenever the law
limits the labour of children to 6 hours în industries not before
interfered with, the complaints of the manufacturers are always
renewed. They allege that numbers of the parents withdraw
their children from the industry brought under the Act, in order
to sell them where "freedom of labour" still rules, ie., where
children under 13 years are compelled to work like grown-up
people, and therefore can be got rid of at a higher price. But
since capital is by nature a leveller, since it exacts in every
sphere of production equality in the conditions of the ex-
ploitation of labour, the limitation by law of children's labour,
in one branch of industry, becomes the cause of its limitation
in others.
1
1 Children's Employment Commission, Fifth Report, London, 1866, p. 81, n. 31.
2 Children's Employment Commission, Third Report, London, 1864, p. 53, n. 15.
31. c., Fifth Report, p. 22, n. 137.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
395
We have already alluded to the physical deterioration as
well of the children and young persons as of the women, whom
machinery, first directly in the factories that shoot up on its
basis, and then indirectly in all the remaining branches of in-
dustry, subjects to the exploitation of capital. In this place,
therefore, we dwell only on one point, the enormous mortality,
during the first few years of their life, of the children of the
operatives. In sixteen of the registration districts into which
England is divided, there are, for every 100,000 children alive
under the age of one year, only 9000 deaths in a year on an
average (in one district only 7047); in 24 districts the deaths
are over 10,000, but under 11,000; in 39 districts, over 11,000,
but under 12,000; in 48 districts over 12,000, but under 13,000;
in 22 districts over 20,000; in 25 districts over 21,000; in 17
over 22,000; in 11 over 23,000; in Hoo, Wolverhampton,
Ashton-under-Lyne, and Preston, over 24,000; in Nottingham,
Stockport, and Bradford, over 25,000; in Wisbeach, 26,000; and
in Manchester, 26,125. As was shown by an official medical
inquiry in the year 1861, the high death-rates are, apart from
local causes, principally due to the employment of the mothers.
away from their homes, and to the neglect and maltreatment
consequent on her absence, such as, amongst others, insufficient
nourishment, unsuitable food, and dosing with opiates; besides
this, there arises an unnatural estrangement between mother
and child, and as a consequence intentional starving and
poisoning of the children.º In those agricultural districts,
"where a minimum in the employment of women exists, the
death-rate is on the other hand very low." The Inquiry-Com-
mission of 1861 led, however, to the unexpected result, that in
some purely agricultural districts bordering on the North Sea,
the death-rate of children under one year old almost equalled
that of the worst factory districts. Dr. Julian Hunter was
therefore commissioned to investigate this phenomenon on the
1 Sixth Report on Public Health. Lond., 1864, p. 34.
2 "It (the inquiry of 1861) . . . showed, moreover, that while, with the described.
circumstances, infants perish under the neglect and mismanagement which their
mothers' occupations imply, the mothers become to a grievous extent denaturalized
towards their offspring-commonly not troubling themselves much at the death, and
even sometimes. . . taking direct measures to insure it." (1. c.)
11. c., p. 454.
396
Capitalist Production.
spot. His report is incorporated with the "Sixth Report on
Public Health." Up to that time it was supposed, that the
children were decimated by malaria, and other diseases peculiar
to low-lying and marshy districts. But the inquiry showed
the very opposite, namely, that the same cause which drove
away malaria, the conversion of the land, from a morass in
winter and a scanty pasture in summer, into fruitful corn land,
created the exceptional death-rate of the infants.2 The 70
medical men, whom Dr. Hunter examined in that district, were
"wonderfully in accord" on this point. In fact, the revolution
in the mode of cultivation had led to the introduction of the
industrial system. Married women, who work in gangs along
with boys and girls, are, for a stipulated sum of money, placed
at the disposal of the farmer, by a man called the "undertaker,"
who contracts for the whole gang. "These gangs will some-
times travel many miles from their own village; they are to
be met morning and evening on the roads, dressed in short
petticoats, with suitable coats and boots, and sometimes
trousers, looking wonderfully strong and healthy, but tainted
with a customary inmorality, and heedless of the fatal results
which their love of this busy and independent life is bringing
on their unfortunate offspring who are pining at home." Every
phenomenon of the factory districts is here reproduced, includ-
ing, but to a greater extent, ill-disguised infanticide, and dosing
children with opiates. "My knowledge of such evils," says
Dr. Simon, the medical officer of the Privy Council and editor
in chief of the Reports on Public Health, "may excuse the pro-
found misgiving with which I regard any large industrial em-
ployment of adult women." "Happy indeed," exclaims Mr.
Baker, the factory inspector, in his official report, "happy in-
4
11. c., p. 454-463. "Report by Dr. Henry Julian Hunter on the excessive mor-
tality of infants in some rural districts of England."
21. c., p. 35 and pp. 455, 456.
3 1. c., p. 456.
+ In the agricultural as well as in the factory districts the consumption of opium
among the grown-up labourers, both male and female, is extending daily. "To
push the sale of opiate. is the great aim of some enterprising wholesale mer-
chants. By druggists it is considered the leading article." (1. c., p. 459.) Infants
that take opiates "shrank up into little old men," or wizzened like little monkeys."
(1. c., p. 460). We here see how India and China avenge
5 1. c., p. 37.
(C
themselves on England.
+
:
Machinery and Modern Industry.
397
deed will it be for the manufacturing districts of England,
when every married woman having a family is prohibited
from working in any textile works at all."
com-
The moral degradation caused by the capitalistic exploita-
tion of women and children has been so exhaustively depicted
by F. Engels in his "Lage der Arbeitenden Klasse Englands,"
and other writers, that I need only mention the subject in this
place. But the intellectual desolation, artifically produced by
converting immature human beings into mere machines for the
fabrication of surplus-value, a state of mind clearly dis-
tinguishable from that natural ignorance which keeps the
mind fallow without destroying its capacity for development,
its natural fertility, this desolation finally compelled even the
English Parliament to make elementary education a
pulsory condition to the "productive" employment of children
under 14 years, in every industry subject to the Factory Acts.
The spirit of capitalist production stands out clearly in the
ludicrous wording of the so-called education clauses in the
Factory Acts, in the absence of an administrative machinery,
an absence that again makes the compulsion illusory, in the
opposition of the manufacturers themselves to these education
clauses, and in the tricks and dodges they put in practice for
evading them. "For this the legislature is alone to blame, by
having passed a delusive law, which, while it would seem to
provide that the children employed in factories shall be
educated, contains no enactment by which that professed end
can be secured. It provides nothing more than that the
children shall on certain days of the week, and for a certain
number of hours (three) in each day, be inclosed within the
four walls of a place called a school, and that the employer of
the child shall receive weekly a certificate to that effect signed
by a person designated by the subscriber as a schoolmaster or
schoolmistress." Previous to the passing of the amended
Factory Act, 1844, it happened, not unfrequently, that the
certificates of attendance at school were signed by the school-
"Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1862," p. 59. Mr. Baker was formerly a
doctor.
* Leonard Horner in "Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 30th June, 1857,” p. 17.
398
Capitalist Production.
master or schoolmistress with a cross, as they themselves were
unable to write. "On one occasion, on visiting a place called a
school, from which certificates of school attendance had issued,
I was so struck with the ignorance of the master, that I said
to him: "Pray, sir, can you read?" His reply was: "Aye,
summat!" and as a justification of his right to grant certifi-
cates, he added: "At any rate, I am before my scholars." The
inspectors, when the Bill of 1844 was in preparation, did not
fail to represent the disgraceful state of the places called
schools, certificates from which they were obliged to admit as
a compliance with the laws, but they were successful only in
obtaining thus much, that since the passing of the Act of 1844,
the figures in the school certificate must be filled up in the
handwriting of the schoolmaster, who must also sign his
Christian and surname in full." Sir John Kincaid, factory
inspector for Scotland, relates experiences of the same kind.
The first school we visited was kept by a Mrs. Ann Killin.
Upon asking her to spell her name, she straightway made a
mistake, by beginning with the letter C, but correcting herself
immediately, she said her name began with a K. On looking
at her signature, however, in the school certificate books, I
noticed that she spelt it in various ways, while her hand-
writing left no doubt as to her unfitness to teach. She her-
self also acknowledged that she could not keep the register
In a second school I found the schoolroom 15 feet
long, and 10 feet wide, and counted in this space 75 children,
who were gabbling something unintelligible." " But it is not
only in the miserable places above referred to that the chil-
dren obtain certificates of school attendance without having
received instruction of any value, for in many schools where
there is a competent teacher, his efforts are of little avail from
the distracting crowd of children of all ages, from infants of
3 years old and upwards; his livelihood, miserable at the best,
depending on the pence received from the greatest number of
children whom it is possible to cram into the space. To this is
to be added scanty school furniture, deficiency of books, and
2
tr
1 L. Horner in "Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1855," pp. 18, 19.
2 Sir John Kincaid in "Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1858," pp. 31, 32.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
399
<<
other materials for teaching, and the depressing effect upon
the poor children themselves of a close, noisome atmosphere.
I have been in many such schools, where I have seen rows of
children doing absolutely nothing; and this is certified as
school attendance, and, in statistical returns, such children are
set down as being educated." In Scotland the manufacturers
try all they can to do without the children that are obliged to
attend school. It requires no further argument to prove
that the educational clauses of the Factory Act, being held in
such disfavour among mill owners, tend in a great measure to
exclude that class of children alike from the employment and
the benefit of education contemplated by this Act." Horribly
grotesque does this appear in print works, which are regulated
by a special Act. By that Act, "every child, before being em-
ployed in a print work must have attended school for at least 30
days, and not less than 150 hours, during the six months immedi-
ately preceding such first day of employment, and during the
continuance of its employment in the print works, it must attend
for a like period of 30 days, and 150 hours during every suc-
cessive period of six months.
The attendance at
school must be between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. No attendance of
less than 2 hours, nor more than 5 hours on any one day,
shall be reckoned as part of the 150 hours. Under ordinary
circumstances the children attend school morning and after-
noon for 30 days, for at least 5 hours each day, and upon the
expiration of the 30 days, the statutory total of 150 hours
having been attained, having, in their language, made up their
book, they return to the print work, where they continue
until the six months have expired, when another instalment of
school attendance becomes due, and they again seek the
school until the book is again made up.
Many
boys having attended school for the required number of hours,
when they return to school after the expiration of their six
months' work in the print work, are in the same condition as
when they first attended school as print-work boys, that they
have lost all they gained by their previous school attendance.
1 L. Horner in "Reports, &c., for 31st Oct., 1857,” pp. 17, 18.
Sir J. Kincaid in "Reports, &c., 31st Oct., 1856," p. 66.
400
Capitalist Production.
In other print works the children's attendance at
school is made to depend altogether upon the exigencies of the
work in the establishment. The requisite number of hours is
made up each six months, by instalments consisting of from
3 to 5 hours at a time, spreading over, perhaps, the whole six
months.
For instance, the attendance on one day
might be from 8 to 11 a.m., on another day from 1 p.m. to 4
p.m., and the child might not appear at school again for
several days, when it would attend from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. ;
then it might attend for 3 or 4 days consecutively, or for a
week, then it would not appear in school for 3 weeks or a
month, after that upon some odd days at some odd hours when
the operative who employed it chose to spare it; and thus the
child was, as it were, buffeted from school to work, from work
to school, until the tale of 150 hours was told."1
By the excessive addition of women and children to the
ranks of the workers, machinery at last breaks down the re-
sistance which the male operatives in the manufacturing period
continued to oppose to the despotism of capital.
2
b. Prolongation of the working-day.
If machinery be the most powerful means for increasing the
productiveness of labour-i.e., for shortening the working time
required in the production of a commodity, it becomes in the
hands of capital the most powerful means, in those industries
first invaded by it, for lengthening the working day beyond
¹ A. Redgrave in "Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1857," pp. 41-42. In those in-
dustries where the Factory Act proper (not the Print Works Act referred to in the
text) has been in force for some time, the obstacles in the way of the education
clauses have, in recent years, been overcome. In industries not under the Act, the
views of Mr. J. Geddes, a glass manufacturer, still extensively prevail. He informed
Mr. White, one of the Inquiry Commissioners: " As far as I can see, the greater
amount of education which a part of the working class has enjoyed for some years
past is an evil. It is dangerous, because it makes them independent." (Children's
Empl. Comm., Fourth Report, Lond., 1865, p. 253.)
2 "Mr. E., a manufacturer . . . . informed me that he employed females exclusively
at his power-looms. . . gives a decided preference to married females, especially
those who have families at home dependent on them for support; they are atten-
tive, docile, more so than unmarried females, and are compelled to use their utmost
exertions to procure the necessaries of life. Thus are the virtues, the peculiar virtues
of the female character to be perverted to her injury—thus all that is most dutiful
and tender in her nature is made a means of her bondage and suffering." (Ten Hours'
Factory Bill. The Speech of Lord Ashley, March 15th, Lond., 1844, p. 20.)
Machinery and Modern Industry.
401
all bounds set by human nature. It creates, on the one hand,
new conditions by which capital is enabled to give free scope
to this its constant tendency, and on the other hand, new
motives with which to whet capital's appetite for the labour of
others.
In the first place, in the form of machinery, the implements
of labour become automatic, things moving and working inde-
pendent of the workman. They are thenceforth an industrial
perpetuum mobile, that would go on producing forever, did it
not meet with certain natural obstructions in the weak bodies
and the strong wills of its human attendants. The automaton,
as capital, and because it is capital, is endowed, in the person
of the capitalist, with intelligence and will; it is therefore
animated by the longing to reduce to a minimum the resistance
offered by that repellent yet elastic natural barrier, man.¹ This
resistance is moreover lessened by the apparent lightness of
machine work, and by the more pliant and docile character of
the women and children employed on it.ª
The productiveness of machinery is, as we saw, inversely
proportional to the value transferred by it to the product.
The longer the life of the machine, the greater is the mass of
the products over which the value transmitted by the machine
is spread, and the less is the portion of that value added to
1 "Since the general introduction of machinery, human nature has been forced far
beyond its average strength." (Rob. Owen: "Observations on the effects of the
manufacturing system, 2nd Ed., Lond., 1817.")
2 The English, who have a tendency to look upon the earliest form of appearance
of a thing as the cause of its existence, are in the habit of attributing the long hours
of work in factories to the extensive kidnapping of children, practised by capitalists
in the infancy of the factory system, on workhouses and orphanages, by means of
which robbery unresisting material for exploitation was procured. Thus, for in-
stance, Fielden, himself a manufacturer, says: "It is evident that the long hours
of work were brought about by the circumstance of so great a number of destitute
children being supplied from different parts of the country, that the masters were
independent of the hands, and that having once established the custom by means of
the miserable materials they had procured in this way, they could impose it on their
neighbours with the greater facility." (J. Fielden: "The Curse of the Factory
System. Lond., 1836," p. 11.) With reference to the labour of women, Saunders,
the Factory inspector, says in his report of 1844: "Amongst the female operatives
there are some women who, for many weeks in succession, except for a few days,
are employed from 6 a.m. till midnight, with less than 2 hours for meals, so that on
5 days of the week they have only 6 hours left out of the 24, for going to and from
their homes and resting in bed."
20
402
Capitalist Production.
each single commodity. The active lifetime of a machine is,
however, clearly dependent on the length of the working day,
or on the duration of the daily labour-process multiplied by
the number of days for which the process is carried on.
The wear and tear of a machine is not exactly proportional
to its working time. And even if it were so, a machine work-
ing 16 hours daily for 7 years, covers as long a working period
as, and transmits to the total product no more value than, the
same machine would if it worked only 8 hours daily for 15
years. But in the first case the value of the machine would
be reproduced twice as quickly as in the latter, and the capi-
talist would, by this use of the machine, absorb in 7 years as
much surplus-value as in the second case he would in 15.
The material wear and tear of a machine is of two kinds.
The one arises from use, as coins wear away by circulating,
the other from non-use, as a sword rusts when left in its
scabbard. The latter kind is due to the elements. The
former is more or less directly proportional, the latter to a
certain extent inversely proportional, to the use of the
machine.¹
But in addition to the material wear and tear, a machine
also undergoes, what we may call a moral depreciation. It
loses exchange-value, either by machines of the same sort being
produced cheaper than it, or by better machines entering into
competition with it. In both cases, be the machine ever so
young and full of life, its value is no longer determined by
the labour actually materialised in it, but by the labour-time
requisite to reproduce either it or the better machine. It has,
therefore, lost value more or less. The shorter the period
taken to reproduce its total value, the less is the danger of
moral depreciation; and the longer the working day, the shorter
is that period. When machinery is first introduced into an
industry, new methods of reproducing it more cheaply follow
1 "Occasion
inaction.'
2 The "Manchester Spinner" (Times, 26th Nov., 1862) before referred to says in re-
lation to this subject: “It (namely, the “allowance for deterioration of machinery ”)
is also intended to cover the loss which is constantly arising from the superseding
of machines before they are worn out, by others of a new and better construction."
injury to the delicate moving parts of metallic mechanism by
(Ure, 1. c., p. 28).
• •
Machinery and Modern Industry.
403
"
blow upon blow, and so do improvements, that not only affect
individual parts and details of the machine, but its entire build.
It is, therefore, in the early days of the life of machinery that
this special incentive to the prolongation of the working day
makes itself felt most acutely."
3
Given the length of the working day, all other circumstances
remaining the same, the exploitation of double the number of
workmen demands, not only a doubling of that part of constant
capital which is invested in machinery and buildings, but also
of that part which is laid out in raw material and auxiliary
substances. The lengthening of the working day, on the other
hand, allows of production on an extended scale without any
alteration in the amount of capital laid out on machinery and
buildings. Not only is there, therefore, an increase of surplus-
value, but the outlay necessary to obtain it diminishes. It is
true that this takes place, more or less, with every lengthening
of the working day; but in the case under consideration, the
change is more marked, because the capital converted into the
instruments of labour preponderates to a greater degree. The
development of the factory system fixes a constantly increasing
portion of the capital in a form, in which, on the one hand, its
value is capable of continual self-expansion, and in which, on
the other hand, it loses both use-value and exchange-value when-
4
1 "It has been estimated, roughly, that the first individual of a newly-invented
machine will cost about five times as much as the construction of the second." (Bab-
bage, 1. c., p. 211).
2 "The improvements which took place not long ago in frames for making patent
net was so great that a machine in good repair which had cost £1,200, sold a few
years after for £60. improvements succeeded each other so rapidly, that
machines which had never been finished were abandoned in the hands of their
makers, because new improvements had superseded their utility." (Babbage, 1. c.,
p. 233.) In these stormy, go-ahead times, therefore, the tulle manufacturers soon
extended the working day, by means of double sets of hands, from the original S
hours to 24.
•
•
3 "It is self-evident, that, amid the ebbings and flowings of the markets and the
alternate expansions and contractions of demand, occasions will constantly recur, in
which the manufacturer may employ additional floating capital without employing
additional fixed capital. . . if additional quantities of raw material can be worked
up without incurring an additional expense for buildings and machinery." (R. Torrens :
"On Wages and Combinations. London, 1831," p. 63.)
4 This circumstance is mentioned only for the sake of completeness, for I shall
not consider the rate of profit, i.e., the ratio of the surplus-value to the total capital
advanced, until I come to the third book.
404
Capitalist Production.
ever it loses contact with living labour. "When a labourer," said
Mr. Ashworth, a cotton magnate, to Professor Nassau W. Senior,
"lays down his spade, he renders useless, for that period, a capital
worth eighteenpence. When one of our people leaves the mill,
he renders useless a capital that has cost £100,000.¹ Only
fancy! making " useless" for a single moment, a capital that
has cost £100,000! It is, in truth, monstrous, that a single
one of our people should ever leave the factory! The increased
use of machinery, as Senior after the instruction he received
from Ashworth clearly perceives, makes a constantly increasing
lengthening of the working day" desirable.”
S
Machinery produces relative surplus-value; not only by
directly depreciating the value of labour-power, and by in-
directly cheapening the same through cheapening the com-
modities that enter into its reproduction, but also, when it is
first introduced sporadically into an industry, by converting
the labour employed by the owner of that machinery, into
labour of a higher degree and greater efficacy, by raising the
social value of the article produced above its individual value,
and thus enabling the capitalist to replace the value of a day's
labour-power by a smaller portion of the value of a day's pro-
duct. During this transition period, when the use of machinery
is a sort of monopoly, the profits are therefore exceptional, and
the capitalist endeavours to exploit thoroughly "the sunny time
of this his first love," by prolonging the working day as much
as possible. The magnitude of the profit whets his appetite
for more profit.
As the use of machinery becomes more general in a parti-
cular industry, the social value of the product sinks down to
its individul value, and the law that surplus-value does not
1 Senior, "Letters on the Factory Act. London, 1837," pp. 13, 14.
“፡
2The great proportion of fixed to circulating capital .. makes long hours of
work desirable.” With the increased use of machinery, &c., "the motives to long
hours of work will become greater, as the only means by which a large proportion of
fixed capital can be made profitable." (1. c., pp. 11-13.) There are certain ex-
penses upon a mill which go on in the same proportion whether the mill be running
short or full time, as, for instance, rent, rates, and taxes, insurance against fire,
wages of several permanent servants, deterioration of machinery, with various other
charges upon a manufacturing establishment, the proportion of which to profits
increases as the production decreases. ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1862,”
p. 19).
Machinery and Modern Industry.
405
arise from the labour-power that has been replaced by the
machinery, but from the labour-power actually employed in
working with the machinery, asserts itself. Surplus-value
arises from variable capital alone, and we saw that the amount
of surplus-value depends on two factors, viz., the rate of
surplus-value and the number of the workmen simultaneously
employed. Given the length of the working day, the rate of
surplus-value is determined by the relative duration of the
necessary labour and of the surplus-labour in a day. The
number of the labourers simultaneously employed depends, on
its side, on the ratio of the variable to the constant capital.
Now, however much the use of machinery may increase the
surplus-labour at the expense of the necessary labour by
heightening the productiveness of labour, it is clear that it
attains this result, only by diminishing the number of workmen
employed by a given amount of capital. It converts what was
formerly variable capital, invested in labour-power, into
machinery which, being constant capital, does not produce
surplus-value. It is impossible, for instance, to squeeze as
much surplus-value out of 2 as out of 24 labourers. If each of
these 24 men gives only one hour of surplus-labour in 12, the
24 men give together 24 hours of surplus-labour, while 24
hours is the total labour of the two men. Hence, the applica-
tion of machinery to the production of surplus-value implies
a contradiction which is immanent in it, since, of the two
factors of the surplus-value created by a given amount of
capital, one, the rate of surplus-value, cannot be increased, ex-
cept by diminishing the other, the number of workmen. This
contradiction comes to light, as soon as by the general employ-
ment of machinery in a given industry, the value of the
machine-produced commodity regulates the value of all com-
modities of the same sort; and it is this contradiction, that in
its turn, drives the capitalist, without his being conscious of
the fact,¹ to excessive lengthening of the working day, in order
that he may compensate the decrease in the relative number
1 Why it is, that the capitalist, and also the political economists who are embued
with his views, are unconscious of this immanent contradiction, will appear from the
first part of the third book.
406
Capitalist Production.
of labourers exploited, by an increase not only of the relative,
but of the absolute surplus-labour.
If, then, the capitalistic employment of machinery, on the
one hand, supplies new and powerful motives to an excessive
lengthening of the working day, and radically changes, as well
the methods of labour, as also the character of the social work-
ing organism, in such a manner as to break down all opposition.
to this tendency, on the other hand it produces, partly by
opening out to the capitalist new strata of the working class,
previously inaccessible to him, partly by setting free the
labourers it supplants, a surplus working population,' which is
compelled to submit to the dictation of capital. Hence that
remarkable phenomenon in the history of Modern Industry,
that machinery sweeps away every moral and natural restric-
tion on the length of the working day. Hence, too, the
economical paradox, that the most powerful instrument for
shortening labour-time, becomes the most unfailing means for
placing every moment of the labourer's time and that of his
family, at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of
expanding the value of his capital. "If," dreamed Aristotle,
the greatest thinker of antiquity, "if every tool, when sum-
moned, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits
it, just as the creations of Dædalus moved of themselves, or the
tripods of Hephæstos went of their own accord to their sacred
work, if the weavers' shuttles were to weave of themselves,
then there would be no need either of apprentices for the
master workers, or of slaves for the lords." And Antiparos,
a Greek poet of the time of Cicero, hailed the invention of the
water-wheel for grinding corn, an invention that is the
elementary form of all machinery, as the giver of freedom to
female slaves, and the bringer back of the golden age.³ Oh!
1 It is one of the greatest merits of Ricardo to have seen in machinery not only the
means of producing commodities, but of creating a "redundant population.
2 F. Biese. "Die Philosophie des Aristoteles," Vol 2. Berlin, 1842, p. 408.
I give below the translation of this poem by Stolberg, because it brings into relief,
quite in the spirit of former quotations referring to division of labour, the antithesis
between the views of the ancients and the moderns. "Spare the hand that grinds
the corn, Oh, miller girls, and softly sleep. Let Chanticleer announce the morn in
vain! Deo has commanded the work of the girls to be done by the Nymphs, and now
they skip lightly over the wheels, so that the shaken axles revolve with their spokes
Machinery and Modern Industry.
407
those heathens! They understood, as the learned Bastiat, and
before him the still wiser MacCulloch have discovered, nothing
of political economy and Christianity. They did not, for
example, comprehend that machinery is the surest means of
lengthening the working day. They perhaps excused the
slavery of one on the ground that it was a means to the full de-
velopment of another. But to preach slavery of the masses, in
order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus, might be-
come "eminent spinners, "extensive sausage-makers," and
"influential shoe-black dealers," to do this, they lacked the
bump of Christianity.
"}
c. Intensification of Labour.
The immoderate lengthening of the working day, produced
by machinery in the hands of capital, leads to a reaction on
the part of society, the very sources of whose life are menaced;
and, thence, to a normal working day whose length is fixed by
law. Thenceforth a phenomenon that we have already met
with, namely, the intensification of labour, develops into great
importance. Our analysis of absolute surplus-value had refer-
ence primarily to the extension or duration of the labour, its
intensity being assumed as given. We now proceed to con-
sider the substitution of a more intensified labour for labour of
more extensive duration, and the degree of the former.
It is self-evident, that in proportion as the use of machinery
spreads, and the experience of a special class of workmen
habituated to machinery accumulates, the rapidity and inten-
sity of labour increase as a natural consequence. Thus in
and pull round the load of the revolving stones. Let us live the life of our fathers,
and let us rest from work and enjoy the gifts that the Goddess sends us.
33
Co
Schonet der mahlenden Hand, o Müllerinnen und schlafet
Sanft es verkünde der Hahn euch den Morgen umsonst!
Däo hat die Arbeit der Mädchen den Nymphen befohlen,
Und itzt hüpfen sie leicht über die Räder dahin,
Dass die erschütterten Achsen mit ihren Speichen sich wälzen,
Und im Kreise die Last drehen des wälzenden Steins.
Lasst uns leben das Leben der Väter, und lasst uns der Gaben
Arbeitslos uns freun, welche die Göttin uns schenkt.
(Gedichte aus dem Griechischen übersetzt von Christian Graf zu Stolberg, Ham-
burg, 1782.)
4,08
Capitalist Production.
England, during half a century, lengthening of the working
day went hand in hand with increasing intensity of factory
labour. Nevertheless the reader will clearly see, that where
we have labour, not carried on by fits and starts, but repeated
day after day with unvarying uniformity, a point must inevit-
ably be reached, where extension of the working day and in-
tensity of the labour mutually exclude one another, in such a
way that lengthening of the working day becomes compatible
only with a lower degree of intensity, and, a higher degree of
intensity, only with a shortening of the working day. So soon
as the gradually surging revolt of the working class compelled
Parliament to shorten compulsorily the hours of labour, and to
begin by imposing a normal working day on factories proper,
so soon consequently as an increased production of surplus
value by the prolongation of the working day was once for all
put a stop to, from that moment capital threw itself with all
its might into the production of relative surplus-value, by
hastening on the further improvement of machinery. At the
same time a change took place in the nature of relative surplus-
value. Generally speaking, the mode of producing relative
surplus-value consists in raising the productive power of the
workman, so as to enable him to produce more in a given time
with the same expenditure of labour. Labour-time continues
to transmit as before the same value to the total product, but
this unchanged amount of exchange value is spread over more
use-values; hence the value of each single commodity sinks.
Otherwise, however, so soon as the compulsory shortening of
the hours of labour takes place. The immense impetus it gives
to the development of productive power, and to economy in
the means of production, imposes on the workman increased
expenditure of labour in a given time, heightened tension of
labour-power, and closer filling up of the pores of the working
day, or condensation of labour to a degree that is attainable
only within the limits of the shortened working day. This
condensation of a greater mass of labour into a given period
thenceforward counts for what it really is, a greater quantity
of labour. In addition to a measure of its extension, i.e., dura-
tion, labour now acquires a measure of its intensity or of the
Machinery and Modern Industry.
409
-
degree of its condensation or density.' The denser hour
of the ten hours' working-day contains more labour, i.e., ex-
pended labour-power, than the more porous hour of the
twelve hours' working-day. The product therefore of one of
the former hours has as much or more value than has the pro-
duct of 13 of the latter hours. Apart from the increased yield
of relative surplus-value through the heightened productiveness
of labour, the same mass of value is now produced for the cap-
italist say by 3 hours of surplus labour, and 63 hours of neces-
sary labour, as was previously produced by four hours of surplus
labour and eight hours of necessary labour.
We now come to the question: How is the labour intensified?
The first effect of shortening the working day results from
the self-evident law, that the efficiency of labour-power is in
an inverse ratio to the duration of its expenditure. Hence,
within certain limits what is lost by shortening the duration is
gained by the increasing tension of labour-power. That the
workman moreover really does expend more labour-power, is
ensured by the mode in which the capitalist pays him. In
those industries, such as potteries, where machinery plays little
or no part, the introduction of the Factory Acts has strikingly
shown that the mere shortening of the working-day increases
to a wonderful degree the regularity, uniformity, order, con-
tinuity, and energy of the labour. It seemed, however, doubt-
ful whether this effect was produced in the factory proper,
where the dependence of the workman on the continuous and
uniform motion of the machinery had already created the
strictest discipline. Hence, when in 1844 the reduction of the
working-day to less than twelve hours was being debated, the
masters almost unanimously declared "that their overlookers
in the different rooms took good care that the hands lost no
time," that "the extent of vigilance and attention on the part
1
1
¹ There are, of course, always differences in the intensities of the labour in various
industries. But these differences are, as Adam Smith has shown, compensated to a
partial extent by minor circumstances, peculiar to each sort of labour. Labour-time,
as a measure of value, is not, however, affected in this case, except in so far as the
duration of labour, and the degree of its intensity, are two antithetical and mutually
exclusive expressions for one and the same quantity of labour.
2 Especially by piece-work, a form we shall investigate in Part VI. of this book.
8 See "Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st October, 1865."
410
Capitalist Production.
of the workmen was hardly capable of being increased," and,
therefore, that the speed of the machinery and other conditions
remaining unaltered, " to expect in a well-managed factory any
important result from increased attention of the workmen was
an absurdity." This assertion was contradicted by experi-
ments. Mr. Robert Gardner reduced the hours of labour in
his two large factories at Preston, on and after the 20th April,
1844, from twelve to eleven hours a day. The result of about
a year's working was that "the same amount of product for the
same cost was received, and the workpeople as a whole earned
in eleven hours as much wages as they did before in twelve."
I pass over the experiments made in the spinning and carding
rooms, because they were accompanied by an increase of 2% in
the speed of the machines. But in the weaving department,
where, moreover, many sorts of figured fancy articles were
woven, there was not the slightest alteration in the conditions
of the work. The result was: From 6th January to 20th
April, 1844, with a twelve hours' day, average weekly wages of
each hand 10s. 1d., from 20th April to 29th June, 1844, with
day of eleven hours, average weekly wages 10s. 31d." Here
we have more produced in eleven hours than previously in
twelve, and entirely in consequence of more steady application
and economy of time by the workpeople. While they got the
same wages and gained one hour of spare time, the capitalist
got the same amount produced and saved the cost of coal, gas,
and other such items, for one hour. Similar experiments, and
with the like success, were carried out in the mills of Messrs.
Horrocks and Jacson.
3
1
“
The shortening of the hours of labour creates, to begin with,
the subjective conditions for the condensation of labour, by
1 Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 1844 and the quarter ending 30th April 1845, pp.
20-21.
2 1. c., p. 19. Since the wages for piece-work were unaltered, the weekly wages
depended on the quantity produced.
3 1. c., p. 22.
4 The moral element played an important part in the above experiments. The
workpeople told the factory inspector: "We work with more spirit, we have the
reward ever before us of getting away sooner at night, and one active and cheerful
spirit pervades the whole mill, from the youngest piecer to the oldest hand, and we
can greatly help each other " (1. c.)
arya
Machinery and Modern Industry.
4II
enabling the workman to exert more strength in a given time
So soon as that shortening becomes compulsory, machinery be-
comes in the hands of capital the objective means, systemati-
cally employed for squeezing out more labour in a given time.
This is effected in two ways: by increasing the speed of the
machinery, and by giving the workman more machinery to
tent. Improved construction of the machinery is necessary,
partly because without it greater pressure cannot be put on
the workman, and partly because the shortened hours of labour
force the capitalist to exercise the strictest watch over the cost
of production. The improvements in the steam-engine have
increased the piston speed, and at the same time have made it
possible, by means of a greater economy of power, to drive
with the same or even a smaller consumption of coal more
machinery with the same engine. The improvements in the
transmitting mechanism have lessened friction, and, what so
strikingly distinguishes modern from the older machinery,
have reduced the diameter and weight of the shafting to a
constantly decreasing minimum. Finally, the improvements
in the operative machines have, while reducing their size, in-
creased their speed and efficiency, as in the modern power-
loom; or, while increasing the size of their frame-work, have
also increased the extent and number of their working parts,
as in spinning mules, or have added to the speed of these
working parts by imperceptible alterations of detail, such as
those which ten years ago increased the speed of the spindles in
self-acting mules by one-fifth.
The reduction of the working day to 12 hours dates in
England from 1832. In 1836 a manufacturer stated: "The
labour now undergone in the factories is much greater than it
used to be compared with thirty or forty years ago
owing to the greater attention and activity required by the
greatly increased speed which is given to the machinery."
the year 1844, Lord Ashley, now Lord Shaftesbury, made in
the House of Commons the following statements, supported by
documentary evidence:
In
"The labour performed by those engaged in the processes of
1 John Fielden, 1. c., p. 32.
·
412
Capitalist Production.
manufacture, is three times as great as in the beginning of such
operations. Machinery has executed, no doubt, the work that
would demand the sinews of millions of men; but it has also
prodigiously multiplied the labour of those who are governed by
its fearful movements . . . In 1815, the labour of following a
pair of mules spinning cotton of No. 40-reckoning 12 hours
to the working-day-involved a necessity of walking 8 miles.
In 1832, the distance travelled in following a pair of mules,
spinning cotton yarn of the same number, was 20 miles, and
frequently more. In 1835" (query-1815 or 1825?) "the spinner
put up daily, on each of these mules, 820 stretches, making a
total of 1,640 stretches in the course of the day. In 1832, the
spinner put up on each mule 2,200 stretches, making a total of
4,400. In 1844, 2,400 stretches, making a total of 4,800; and
in some cases the amount of labour required is even still
greater... I have another document sent to me in 1842, stat-
ing that the labour is progressively increasing-increasing not
only because the distance to be travelled is greater, but be-
cause the quantity of goods produced is multiplied, while the
hands are fewer in proportion than before; and, moreover, be-
cause an inferior species of cotton is now often spun, which it
is more difficult to work . . . In the carding-room there has
also been a great increase of labour. One person there does
the work formerly divided between two. In the weaving-room,
where a vast number of persons are employed, and principally
females. . . the labour has increased within the last few years
fully 10 per cent, owing to the increased speed of the machinery
in spinning. In 1838, the number of hanks spun per week
was 18,000, in 1843 it amounted to 21,000. In 1819 the num-
ber of picks in power-loom-weaving per minute was 60—in
1842 it was 140, showing a vast increase of labour."¹
In the face of this remarkable intensity of labour which had
already been reached in 1844 under the Twelve Hours' Act, there
appeared to be a justification for the assertion made at that
time by the English manufacturers, that any further progress
in that direction was impossible, and therefore that every
further reduction of the hours of labour meant a lessened pro-
1 Lord Ashley, 1. c., p. 6-9, passim.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
413
duction. The apparent correctness of their reasons will be
best shown by the following contemporary statement by
Leonard Horner, the factory inspector, their ever watchful
censor.
"Now, as the quantity produced must, in the main, be regu-
lated by the speed of the machinery, it must be the interest of
the mill owner to drive it at the utmost rate of speed con-
sistent with these following conditions, viz., the preservation
of the machinery from too rapid deterioration; the preservation
of the quality of the article manufactured; and the capability
of the workman to follow the motion without a greater exer-
tion than he can sustain for a constancy. One of the most
important problems, therefore, which the owner of a factory
has to solve is to find out the maximum speed at which he can
run, with a due regard to the above conditions. It frequently
happens that he finds he has gone too fast, that breakages and
bad work more than counterbalance the increased speed, and
that he is obliged to slacken his pace. I therefore concluded,
that as an active and intelligent millowner would find out the
safe maximum, it would not be possible to produce as much in
eleven hours as in twelve. I further assumed that the opera-
tive paid by piece work, would exert himself to the utmost
consistent with the power of continuing at the same rate."-
Horner, therefore, came to the conclusion that a reduction
of the working hours below twelve would necessarily diminish
production. He himself, ten years later, cites his opinion of
1845 in proof of how much he under-estimated in that year
the elasticity of machinery, and of man's labour-power, both of
which are simultaneously stretched to an extreme by the
compulsory shortening of the working day.
2
We now come to the period that follows the introduction of
the Ten Hours' Act in 1847 into the English cotton, woollen,
silk, and flax mills.
"The speed of the spindles has increased upon throstles 500,
and upon mules 1000 revolutions a minute, i.e., the speed of
1 Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for Quarter ending 30th September, 1844, and from 1st
October, 1844, to 30th April, 1845. p. 20.
21. c., p. 22.
414
Capitalist Production.
"1
the throstle spindle, which in 1839 was 4500 times a minute,
is now (1862) 5000; and of the mule spindle, that was 5000, is
now 6000 times a minute, amounting in the former case to one-
tenth, and in the second case to one-fifth additional increase.'
James Nasmyth, the eminent civil engineer of Patricroft, near
Manchester, explained in a letter to Leonard Horner, written
in 1852, the nature of the improvements in the steam-engine
that had been made between the years 1848 and 1852. After
remarking that the horse-power of steam-engines, being always
estimated in the official returns according to the power of
similar engines in 1828,2 is only nominal, and can serve only
as an index of their real power, he goes on to say: “I am con-
fident that from the same weight of steam-engine machinery,
we are now obtaining at least 50 per cent. more duty or work
performed on the average, and that in many cases the identical
steam-engines which in the days of the restricted speed of 220
feet per minute, yielded 50 horse-power, are now yielding up-
wards of 100."
"The modern steam-engine of 100 horse-
power is capable of being driven at a much greater force than
formerly, arising from improvements in its construction, the
capacity and construction of the boilers, &c." . . . “Although
the same number of hands are employed in proportion to the
horse-power as at former periods, there are fewer hands em-
ployed in proportion to the machinery." "In the year 1850,
the factories of the United Kingdom employed 134,217 nominal ·
horse-power to give motion to 25,638, 716 spindles and 301,445
looms. The number of spindles and looms in 1856 was re-
spectively 33,503,580 of the former, and 369,205 of the latter,
which, reckoning the force of the nominal horse-power required
to be the same as in 1850, would require a force equal to
175,000 horses, but the actual power given in the return for
1 "Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st October, 1862," p. 62.
2 This was altered in the "Parliamentary Return "of 1862. In it the actual horse-
power of the modern steam-engines and water-wheels appears in place of the nominal.
The doubling spindles, too, are no longer included in the spinning spindles (as was
the case in the "Returns" of 1839, 1850, and 1856); further, in the case of woollen
mills, the number of "gigs" is added, a distinction made between jute and hemp
mills on the one hand and flax mills on the other, and finally stocking-weaving is for
the first time inserted in the report.
3" Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st October, 1856," pp. 13-14, 20 and 1852, p. 23.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
415
1856 is 161,435, less by above 10,000 horses than, calculating
upon the basis of the return of 1850, the factories ought to
have required in 1856."¹ "The facts thus brought out by the
Return (of 1856) appear to be that the factory system is in-
creasing rapidly; that although the same number of hands are
employed in proportion to the horse-power as at former periods,
there are fewer hands employed in proportion to the machinery;
that the steam-engine is enabled to drive an increased weight
of machinery by economy of force and other methods, and
that an increased quantity of work can be turned off by im-
provements in machinery, and in methods of manufacture, by
increase of speed of the machinery, and by a variety of other
causes." 2
"The great improvements made in machines of every kind
have raised their productive power very much. Without any
doubt, the shortening of the hours of labour. . . . gave the
impulse to these improvements. The latter, combined with
the more intense strain on the workman, have had the effect,
that at least as much is produced in the shortened (by two
hours or one-sixth) working-day as was previously produced
during the longer one."
One fact is sufficient to show how greatly the wealth of the
manufacturers increased along with the more intense exploita-
tion of labour-power. From 1838 to 1850, the average pro-
portional increase in English cotton and other factories was
32%, while from 1850 to 1856 it amounted to 86 %.
But however great the progress of English industry had
been during the 8 years from 1848 to 1856 under the influence
of a working-day of 10 hours, it was far surpassed during the
next period of 6 years from 1856 to 1862. In silk factories, for
instance, there were in 1856, spindles 1,093,799; in 1862,
1,388,544; in 1856, looms 9,260; in 1862, 10,709. But the
number of operatives was, in 1856, 56,131; in 1862, 52,429.
The increase in the spindles was therefore 26.9%, and in the
looms 15.6%, while the number of the operatives decreased 7%
1. c., p. 14-15.
21. c., p. 20.
3 Reports, &c., for 31st October, 1858, p. 9-10. Compare Reports, &c., for 30th
April, 1860, p. 30, seqq.
416
Capitalist Production.
In the year 1850 there were employed in worsted mills 875,830
spindles; in 1856, 1,324,549 (increase 51.2%), and in 1862,
1,289,172 (decrease 2.7%). But if we deduct the doubling
spindles that figure in the numbers for 1856, but not in those
for 1862, it will be found that after 1856 the number of spindles
remained nearly stationary. On the other hand, after 1850,
the speed of the spindles and looms was in many cases doubled,
The number of power-looms in worsted mills was, in 1850,
32,617; in 1856, 38,956; in 1862, 43,048. The number of the
operatives was, in 1850, 79,737; in 1856, 87,794; in 1862,
86,063; included in these, however, the children under 14
years of age were, in 1850, 9,956; in 1856, 11,228; in 1862,
13,178. In spite, therefore, of the greatly increased number of
looms in 1862, compared with 1856, the total number of the
workpeople employed decreased, and that of the children ex-
ploited increased.¹
r
On the 27th April, 1863, Mr. Ferrand said in the House of
Commons: "I have been informed by delegates from 16
districts of Lancashire and Cheshire, in whose behalf I speak,
that the work in the factories is, in consequence of the improve-
ments in machinery, constantly on the increase. Instead of as
formerly one person with two helps tenting two looms, one
person now tents three looms without helps, and it is no un-
common thing for one person to tent four. Twelve hours'
work, as is evident from the facts adduced, is now compressed
into less than 10 hours. It is therefore self-evident, to what
an enormous extent the toil of the factory operative has in-
creased during the last 10 years.
Although, therefore, the Factory Inspectors unceasingly and
with justice, commend the results of the Acts of 1844 and 1850,
1 "Report of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1862," pp. 100 and 130.
2 On 2 modern power-looms a weaver now makes in a week of 60 hours 26 pieces of
certain quality, length, and breadth; while on the old power-looms he could make no
more than 4 such pieces. The cost of weaving a piece of such cloth had already soon
after 1850 fallen from 2s. 9d. to 5d.
(C
Thirty years ago (1811) one spinner with three piecers was not required to attend
to more than one pair of mules with 300-324 spindles. At the present time (1871) he
has to mind with the help of 5 piecers 2200 spindles, and produces not less than seven
times as much yarn as in 1841." (Alex. Redgrave, Factory Inspector-in the Journal
of Arts, 5th January, 1872.)
Machinery and Modern Industry.
417
yet they admit that the shortening of the hours of labour has
already called forth such an intensification of the labour as is
injurious to the health of the workman and to his capacity for
work. "In most of the cotton, worsted, and silk mills, an ex-
hausting state of excitement necessary to enable the workers
satisfactorily to mind the machinery, the motion of which has
been greatly accelerated within the last few years, seems to me
not unlikely to be one of the causes of that excess of mortality
from lung disease, which Dr. Greenhow has pointed out in his
recent report on this subject."¹ There cannot be the slightest
doubt that the tendency that urges capital so soon as a pro-
longation of the hours of labour is once for all forbidden, to
compensate itself, by a systematic heightening of the intensity
of labour, and to convert every improvement in machinery into
a more perfect means of exhausting the workman, must soon
lead to a state of things in which a reduction of the hours of
labour will again be inevitable." On the other hand, the rapid
advance of English industry between 1848 and the present
time, under the influence of a day of 10 hours, surpasses the
advance made between 1833 and 1847, when the day was 12
hours long, by far more than the latter surpasses the advance
made during the half century after the first introduction of
the factory system, when the working day was without limits.³

1 Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct. 1861, pp. 25, 26.
2 The agitation for a working day of 8 hours has now (1867) begun in Lancashire
among the factory operatives.
3 The following few figures indicate the increase in the "factories" of the United
Kingdom since 1848:
COTTON.
Cotton yarn
135,831,162 lbs. 143,966,106 | lbs.
Sewing thread
lbs. 4,392,176 lbs.
Cotton cloth yds. 1,091,373,930 yds. 1,543,161,789 yds.
lbs.
lbs.
FLAX & HEMP.
Yarn
Cloth
··
SILK.
Yarn..
Cloth
WOOL.
Woollen and
Worsted yarns
Cloth
•
………
Quantity Expor- Quantity Expor-
ted, 1848.
ted, 1851.
lbs. 11,722,182 lbs. 18,841,326 lbs.
yds. 88,901,519 yds. 129,106,753 yds.
lbs.
yds.
Quantity Expor- Quantity Expor-
ted, 1860.
ted, 1865.
lbs.
yds.
466,825 lbs.
462,513 lbs.
yds. 1,181,455 yds.
197,343,655 | lbs. 108,751,455
6,297,554 lbs. 4,648,611
2,776,218,427 yds. 2,015,237,851
31,210,612 lbs. 36,777,834
143,996,773 yds. 247,012,529
S97,402 lbs.
1,307,293 yds.
812,589
2,869,837
lbs. 14,670,SS0 lbs.
27,533,968 lbs. 31,669,267
yds. 241,120,073 | yds. 190,381,537 | yds. 278,837,138
2 D
418
Capitalist Production.
At the commencement of this chapter we considered that
which we may call the body of the factory, i.e., machinery
organised into a system. We there saw how machinery, by
annexing the labour of women and children, augments the
number of human beings who form the material for capitalistic
exploitation, how it confiscates the whole of the workman's
disposable time, by immoderate extension of the hours of
labour, and how finally its progress, which allows of enormous
increase of production in shorter and shorter periods, serves as
a means of systematically getting more work done in a shorter
time, or of exploiting labour-power more intensely. We now
turn to the factory as a whole, and that in its most perfect
form.
COTTON.
Dr. Ure, the Pindar of the automatic factory, describes it, on
the one hand as "Combined co-operation of many orders of
work people, adult and young, in tending with assiduous skill, a
Yarn
Cloth..
FLAX & HEMP.
Yarn
Cloth..
...
SILK.
Yarn
Cloth..
44 D
WOOL.
Yarn
Cloth..
•
SECTION IV.-THE FACTORY.

··
Value Expor-
ted, 1848.
£
5,927,831
16,753,369
493,449
2,802,789
77,789
776,975
5,733,828
Value Expor-
ted, 1851.
£
6,634,026
23,454,810
951,426
4,107,396
195,380
1,13",398
1,484,544
8.377,183
Value Expor-
ted, 1860
£
9,870,875
42,141,505
1,801,272
4,804,803
918,342
1,587,303
3,843,450
12,156,998
Value Expor-
ted, 1865.
£
10,351,04
46,903,796
2,505,497
9,155,318
768,067
1,409,221
5,424,017
20,102,259
See the Bluebooks "Statistical Abstract of the United Kingdom, Nos. 8 and 13."
Lond., 1861 and 1866. In Lancashire the number of mills increased only 4 per cent.
between 1839 and 1850; 19 per cent. between 1850 and 1856; and 33 per cent. be-
tween 1856 and 1862; while the persons employed in them during each of the above
periods of 11 years increased absolutely, but diminished relatively. (See "Rep. of
Insp. of Fact., for 31st Oct., 1862," p. 63.) The cotton trade preponderates in
Lancashire. We may form an idea of the stupendous nature of the cotton trade in
that district, when we consider that, of the gross number of textile factories in the
United Kingdom, it absorbs 45.2 per cent., of the spindles 83.3 per cent., of the
power-looms 81.4 per cent., of the mechanical horse-power 72.6 per cent., and of the
total number of persons employed 58.2 per cent. (1. c., p. 62-63.)
Machinery and Modern Industry.
419
system of productive machines, continuously impelled by a
central power" (the prime mover); on the other hand, as "a
vast automaton, composed of various mechanical and intel-
lectual organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for the produc-
tion of a common object, all of them being subordinate to a
self-regulated moving force." These two descriptions are far
from being identical. In one, the collective labourer, or social
body of labour, appears as the dominant subject, and the me-
chanical automaton as the object; in the other, the automaton
itself is the subject, and the workmen are merely conscious
organs, co-ordinate with the unconscious organs of the automa-
ton, and together with them, subordinated to the central
moving-power. The first description is applicable to every
possible employment of machinery on a large scale, the second
is characteristic of its use by capital, and therefore of the
modern factory system. Ure prefers therefore, to describe the
central machine, from which the motion comes, not only as an
automaton, but as an autocrat. "In these spacious halls the
benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads
of willing menials."1
Along with the tool, the skill of the workman in handling it
passes over to the machine. The capabilities of the tool are
emancipated from the restraints that are inseparable from
human labour-power. Thereby the technical foundation on
which is based the division of labour in Manufacture, is swept
away. Hence, in the place of the hierarchy of specialised
workmen that characterises manufacture, there steps, in the
automatic factory, a tendency to equalise and reduce to one
and the same level every kind of work that has to be done
by the minders of the machines; in the place of the artifi-
cially produced differentiations of the detail workmen, step
the natural differences of age and sex,
So far as division of labour re-appears in the factory, it is
primarily a distribution of the workmen among the specialised
machines; and of masses of workmen, not however organised
into groups, among the various departments of the factory,
1 Ure, 1. c., p. 18.
2 Ure, 1. c., p. 31. See Karl Marx, 1. c., p. 140-141.
420
Capitalist Production.
in each of which they work at a number of similar machines
placed together; their co-operation, therefore, is only simple.
The organised group, peculiar to manufacture, is replaced by
the connexion between the head workman and his few assist-
ants. The essential division is, into workmen who are actually
employed on the machines (among whom are included a few
who look after the engine), and into mere attendants (almost
exclusively children) of these workmen. Among the attend-
ants are reckoned more or less all "Feeders" who supply the
machines with the material to be worked. In addition to
these two principal classes, there is a numerically unimportant
class of persons, whose occupation it is to look after the whole
of the machinery and repair it from time to time; such as
engineers, mechanics, joiners, &c. This is a superior class of
workmen, some of them scientifically educated, others brought
up to a trade; it is distinct from the factory operative class,
and merely aggregated to it. This division of labour is purely
technical.
د.
C
To work at a machine, the workman should be taught from
childhood, in order that he may learn to adapt his own move-
ments to the uniform and unceasing motion of an automaton.
When the machinery, as a whole, forms a system of manifold
machines, working simultaneously and in concert, the co-opera-
tion based upon it, requires the distribution of various groups.
of workmen among the different kinds of machines. But the
employment of machinery does away with the necessity of
crystallizing this distribution after the manner of Manufacture,
by the constant annexation of a particular man to a particular
function.2 Since the motion of the whole system does not
1 It looks very like intentional misleading by statistics (which misleading it would
be possible to prove in detail in other cases too), when the English factory legislation
excludes from its operation the class of labourers last mentioned in the text, while
the parliamentary returns expressly include in the category of factory operatives, not
only engineers, mechanics, &c., but also managers, salesmen, messengers, warehouse-
men, packers, &c., in short everybody, except the owner of the factory himself.
2 Ure grants this.
He says,
"in case of need," the workmen can be moved at the
will of the manager from one machine to another, and he triumphantly exclaims:
Such a change is in flat contradiction with the old routine, that divides the labour,
and to one workman assigns the task of fashioning the head of a needle, to another
the sharpening of the point.' He had much better have asked himself, why this
"old routine" is departed from in the automatic factory, only "in case of need."
ઃઃ
""
Machinery and Modern Industry.
421
3
proceed from the workman, but from the machinery, a change
of persons can take place at any time without an interruption
of the work. The most striking proof of this is afforded by
the relays system, put into operation by the manufacturers.
during their revolt from 1848-1850. Lastly, the quickness
with which machine work is learnt by young people, does away
with the necessity of bringing up for exclusive employment by
machinery, a special class of operatives. With regard to the
work of the mere attendants, it can, to some extent, be replaced
in the mill by machines, and owing to its extreme simplicity,
it allows of a rapid and constant change of the individuals
burdened with this drudgery.
1
Although then, teclinically speaking, the old system of
division of labour is thrown overboard by machinery, it hangs
on in the factory, as a traditional habit handed down from
Manufacture, and is afterwards systematically re-moulded and
established in a more hideous form by capital, as a means of
exploiting labour-power. The life-long speciality of handling
one and the same tool, now becomes the life-long speciality of
serving one and the same machine. Machinery is put to a
1 When distress is very great, as, for instance, during the American civil war, the
factory operative is now and then set by the Bourgeois to do the roughest of work,
such as road-making, &c. The English "ateliers nationaux" of 1862 and the follow
ing years, established for the benefit of the destitute cotton operatives, differ from the
French of 1848 in this, that in the latter the workmen had to do unproductive work
at the expense of the state, in the former they had to do productive municipal work
to the advantage of the bourgeois, and that, too, cheaper than the regular workmen,
with whom they were thus thrown into competition. "The physical appearance of
the cotton operatives is unquestionably improved. This I attribute . . . as to the
men, to outdoor labour on public works." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact.," 31st Oct., 1865,
p. 59.) The writer here alludes to the Preston factory operatives, who were em-
ployed on Preston Moor.
2 An example: The various mechanical apparatus introduced since the Act of 1844
into woollen mills, for replacing the labour of children. So soon as it shall happen
that the children of the manufacturers themselves have to go through a course of
schooling as helpers in the mill, this almost unexplored territory of mechanics will
soon make remarkable progress. "Of machinery, perhaps self-acting mules are as
dangerous as any other kind. Most of the accidents from them happen to little
children, from their creeping under the mules to sweep the floor whilst the mules are
in motion. Several 'minders' have been fined for this offence, but without much
general benefit. If machine makers would only invent a self-sweeper, by whose use
the necessity for these little children to creep under the machinery might be pre-
vented, it would be a happy addition to our protective measures." ("Reports of Insp.
of Fact." for 31st Oct., 1866, p. 63.)
422
Capitalist Production.
wrong use, with the object of transforming the workman, from
his very childhood, into a part of a detail-machine.¹ In this
way, not only are the expenses of his re-production considerably
lessened, but at the same time his helpless dependence upon
the factory as a whole, and therefore upon the capitalist, is
rendered complete. Here as everywhere else, we must dis-
tinguish between the increased productiveness due to the
development of the social process of production, and that due
to the capitalist exploitation of that process. In handicrafts
and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the
factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements
of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the
movements of the machine that he must follow. In manu-
facture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the
factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the work-
man, who becomes its mere living appendage. 'The miserable
routine of endless drudgery and toil in which the same
mechanical process is gone through over and over again, is like
the labour of Sisyphus. The burden of labour, like the rock,
keeps ever falling back on the worn-out labourer." At the
same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to
the uttermost, it does away with the many-sided play of the
muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily
and intellectual activity. The lightening of the labour, even,
becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the
labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest.
Every kind of capitalist production, in so far as it is not only
a labour-process, but also a process of creating surplus-value,
has this in common, that it is not the workman that employs
the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour that
3
1 So much then for Proudhon's wonderful idea: he "construes" machinery not
as a synthesis of instruments of labour, but as a synthesis of detail operations for the
benefit of the labourer himself.
2 F. Engels, 1. c. p. 217. Even an ordinary and optimist freetrader, like Mr.
Molinari, goes so far as to say, "Un homme s'use plus vite en surveillant, quinze
heures par jour, l'évolution uniforme d'un mécanisme, qu'on exerçant, dans le même
espace de temps, sa force physique. Ce travail de surveillance qui servirait peut-
être d'utile gymnastique à l'intelligence, s'il n'était pas trop prolongé, détruit à la
longue, par son excès, et l'intelligence et le corps même." (G. de Molinari : "Études
Économiques." Paris 1846).
3 F. Engels. 1. c. p. 216.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
423
employ the workman. But it is only in the factory system
that this inversion for the first time acquires technical and
palpable reality. By means of its conversion into an automa-
ton, the instrument of labour confronts the labourer, during
the labour-process, in the shape of capital, of dead labour, that
dominates, and pumps dry, living labour-power. The separa-
tion of the intellectual powers of production from the manual
labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might of
capital over labour, is, as we have already shown, finally com-
pleted by modern industry erected on the foundation of
machinery. The special skill of each individual insignificant
factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before
the science, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of
labour that are embodied in the factory mechanism and,
together with that mechanism, constitute the power of the
"master." This "master," therefore, in whose brain the
machinery and his monopoly of it are inseparably united,
whenever he falls out with his "hands," contemptuously tells
them: "The factory operatives should keep in wholesome
remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species of
skilled labour; and that there is none which is more easily
acquired, or of its quality more amply remunerated, or which
by a short training of the least expert can be more quickly, as
well as abundantly, acquired. . . .
. . The master's machinery
really plays a far more important part in the business of pro-
duction than the labour and the skill of the operative, which
six months' education can teach, and a common labourer can
learn."
The technical subordination of the workman to the
uniform motion of the instruments of labour, and the peculiar
composition of the body of workpeople, consisting as it does of
individuals of both sexes and of all ages, give rise to a barrack
discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the
factory, and which fully developes the before mentioned labour
of overlooking, thereby dividing the workpeople into operatives
and overlookers, into private soldiers and sergeants of an
1 "The Master Spinners' and Manufacturers' Defence Fund. Report of the Com-
mittee."
Manchester, 1854, p. 17. We shall see hereafter, that the " master can
sing quite another song, when he is threatened with the loss of his "living
automaton.
>>
>>
424
Capitalist Production.
3
1
industrial army.
"The main difficulty [in the automatic
factory]. . . lay . . . above all in training human beings to
renounce their desultory habits of work, and to identify them-
selves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton.
To devise and administer a successful code of factory discipline,
suited to the necessities of factory diligence, was the Herculean
enterprise, the noble achievement of Arkwright! Even at the
present day, when the system is perfectly organised and its
labour lightened to the utmost, it is found nearly impossible
to convert persons past the age of puberty, into useful factory
hands." The factory code in which capital formulates, like a
private legislator, and at his own good will, his autocracy over
his workpeople, unaccompanied by that division of responsi-
bility, in other matters so much approved of by the bourgeoisie,
and unaccompanied by the still more approved representative
system, this code is but the capitalistic caricature of that social
regulation of the labour-process which becomes requisite in
co-operation on a great scale, and in the employment in
common, of instruments of labour and especially of machinery.
The place of the slave driver's lash is taken by the over-
looker's book of penalties. All punishments naturally resolve
themselves into fines and deductions from wages, and the law-
giving talent of the factory Lycurgus.so arranges matters,
that a violation of his laws is, if possible, more profitable to
him than the keeping of them.¹
1 Ure. 1. c. p. 15. Whoever knows the life history of Arkwright, will never dub
this barber-genius "noble." Of all the great inventors of the 18th century, he was
incontestably the greatest thiever of other people's inventions and the meanest
fellow.
2 “The slavery in which the bourgeoisie has bound the proletariat, comes nowhere
more plainly into daylight than in the factory system. In it all freedom comes to an
end both at law and in fact. The workman must be in the factory at half past five.
If he come a few minutes late, he is punished; if he come 10 minutes late, he is not
allowed to enter until after breakfast, and thus loses a quarter of a day's wage. He
must eat, drink and sleep at word of command. The despotic bell calls him from
his bed, calls him from breakfast and dinner. And how does he fare in the mill ?
There the master is the absolute law-giver. He makes what regulations he pleases;
he alters and makes additions to his code at pleasure; and if he insert the veriest
nonsense, the courts say to the workman: Since you have entered into this contract
voluntarily, you must now carry it out. These workmen are condemned to live,
from their ninth year till their death, under this mental and bodily torture." (F.
Engels 1. c. p. 217, sq.) What, "the courts say," I will illustrate by two examples.
One occurs at Sheffield at the end of 1866. In that town a workman had engaged
•
Machinery and Modern Industry.
425
We shall here merely allude to the material conditions under
which factory labour is carried on. Every organ of sense is
himself for 2 years in a steelworks. In consequence of a quarrel with his employer he
left the works, and declared that under no circumstances would he work for that
master any more. He was prosecuted for breach of contract, and condemned to two
months' imprisonment. (If the master break the contract, he can be proceeded
against only in a civil action, and risks nothing but money damages). After the
workman has served his two months, the master invites him to return to the works,
pursuant to the contract. Workman says; No: he has already been punished for
the breach. The master prosecutes again, the court condemns again, although one of
the judges, Mr. Shee, publicly denounces this as a legal monstrosity, by which
a man can periodically, as long as he lives, be punished over and over again for the
same offence or crime. This judgment was given not by the "Great Unpaid," the
provincial Dogberries, but by one of the highest courts of justice in Loudon.-The
second case occurs in Wiltshire at the end of November 1863. About 30 power-
loom weavers, in the employment of one Harrup, a cloth manufacturer at Leower's
Mill, Westbury Leigh, struck work because master Harrup indulged in the agreeable
habit of making deductions from their wages for being late in the morning; 6d. for
2 minutes; 1s. for 3 minutes, and 1s. 6d. for ten minutes. This is at the rate of 9s.
per hour, and £4 10s. Od. per diem; while the wages of the weavers on the average of
a year, never exceeded 10s. to 12s. weekly. Harrup also appointed a boy to announce
the starting time by a whistle, which he often did before six o'clock in the morning:
and if the hands were not all there at the moment the whistle ceased, the doors were
closed, and those hands who were outside were fined: and as there was no clock on
the premises, the unfortunate hands were at the mercy of the young Harrup-inspired
time-keeper. The hands on strike, mothers of families as well as girls, offered to
resume work if the time-keeper were replaced by a clock, and a more reasonable scale
of fines were introduced. Harrup summoned 19 women and girls before the magis-
trates for breach of contract. To the utter indignation of all present, they were each
mulcted in a fine of 6d. and 2s. 6d. for costs. Harrup was followed from the court
by a crowd of people who hissed him.—A favourite operation with manufacturers is to
punish the workpeople by deductions made from their wages on account of faults in
the material worked on. This method gave rise in 1866 to a general strike in the
English pottery districts. The reports of the Ch. Empl. Com. (1863-1866), give
cases where the worker not only receives no wages, but becomes, by means of his
labour, and of the penal regulations, the debtor to boot, of his worthy master. The
late cotton crisis also furnished edifying examples of the sagacity shown by the
factory autocrats in making deductions from wages. Mr. R. Baker, the Inspector of
Factories, says, "I have myself had lately to direct prosecutions against one cotton
mill occupier for having in these pinching and painful times deducted 10d. a piece
from some of the young workers employed by him, for the surgeon's certificate (for
which he himself had only paid 6d.), when only allowed by the law to deduct 3d.,
and by custom nothing at all. . . And I have been informed of another, who, in
order to keep without the law, but to attain the same object, charges the poor
children who work for him a shilling each, as a fee for learning them the art and
mystery of cotton spinning, so soon as they are declared by the surgeon fit and proper
persons for that occupation. There may therefore be undercurrent causes for such
extraordinary exhibitions as strikes, not only wherever they arise, but particularly
at such times as the present, which without explanation, render them inexplicable to
the public understanding." He alludes here to a strike of power-loom weavers at
Darwen, June, 1863. ("Reports of Insp. of Fact. for 30 April, 1863," pp. 50-51.)
The reports always go beyond their official dates.
426
Capitalist Production.
injured in an equal degree by artificial elevation of the tem-
perature, by the dust-laden atmosphere, by the deafening noise,
not to mention danger to life and limb among the thickly
crowded machinery, which, with the regularity of the seasons,
issues its list of the killed and wounded in the industrial
battle.¹ Economy of the social means of production, matured
and forced as in a hothouse by the factory system, is turned, in
the hands of capital, into systematic robbery of what is neces-
sary for the life of the workman while he is at work, robbery
of space, light, air, and of protection to his person against the
dangerous and unwholesome accompaniments of the productive
process, not to mention the robbery of appliances for the com-
fort of the workman. Is Fourier wrong when he calls factories
tempered bagnos?" 3
(C
2
The protection afforded by the Factory Acts against dangerous machinery has
had a beneficial effect.
"But...
there are other sources of accident which did
not exist twenty years since; one especially, viz., the increased speed of the ma-
chinery. Wheels, rollers, spindles and shuttles are now propelled at increased and
increasing rates; fingers must be quicker and defter in their movements to take up
the broken thread, for, if placed with hesitation or carelessness, they are sacrificed.
. . . A large number of accidents are caused by the eagerness of the workpeople to
get through their work expeditiously. It must be remembered that it is of the
highest importance to manufacturers that their machinery should be in motion, i.e.,
producing yarns and goods. Every minute's stoppage is not only a loss of power,
but of production, and the workpeople are urged by the overlookers, who are inter-
ested in the quantity of work turned off, to keep the machinery in motion; and it is
no less important to those of the operatives who are paid by the weight or piece, that
the machines should be kept in motion. Consequently, although it is strictly for-
bidden in many, nay in most factories, that machinery should be cleaned while in
motion, it is nevertheless the constant practice in most if not in all, that the work-
people do, unreproved, pick out waste, wipe rollers and wheels, &c., while their
frames are in motion. Thus from this cause only, 906 accidents have occurred during
the six months.
Although a great deal of cleaning is constantly going on day
by day, yet Saturday is generally the day set apart for the thorough cleaning of the
machinery, and a great deal of this is done while the machinery is in motion." Since
cleaning is not paid for, the workpeople seek to get done with it as speedily as pos-
sible. Hence "the number of accidents which occur on Fridays, and especially on
Saturdays, is much larger than on any other day. On the former day the excess is
nearly 12 per cent. over the average number of the four first days of the week, and
on the latter day the excess is 25 per cent. over the average of the preceding five
days; or, if the number of working-hours on Saturday being taken into account-73
hours on Saturday as compared with 10 on other days-there is an excess of 65 per
cent. on Saturdays over the average of the other five days." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact.,
31st Oct., 1866," p. 9, 15, 16, 17.)
2 In Part I. of Book III. I shall give an account of a recent campaign by the English
manufacturers against the Clauses in the Factory Acts that protect the "hands"
against dangerous machinery. For the present, let this one quotation from the official
report of Leonard Horner suffice: "I have heard some millowners speak with inex-
◄
Machinery and Modern Industry.
427
SECTION 5--THE STRIFE BETWEEN WORKMAN AND MACHINE.
PAGES
The contest between the capitalist and the wage-labourer
dates back to the very origin of capital. It raged on through-
out the whole manufacturing period.' But only since the intro-
duction of machinery has the workman fought against the instru-
ment of labour itself, the material embodiment of capital. He
revolts against this particular form of the means of production,
as being the material basis of the capitalist mode of production.
In the 17th century nearly all Europe experienced revolts
of the workpeople against the ribbon-loom, a machine for
weaving ribbons and trimmings, called in Germany Bandmühle,
Schnurmühle, and Mühlenstuhl, These machines were in-
vented in Germany. Abbé Lancellotti, in a work that ap-
peared in Venice in 1636, but which was written in 1579, says
as follows: "Anthony Müller of Danzig, saw about 50 years
ago in that town, a very ingenious machine, which weaves 4 to
6 pieces at once. But the Mayor being apprehensive that this
>>
cusable levity of some of the accidents; su h, for instance, as the loss of a finger
being a trifling matter. A working-man's living and prospects depend so much upon
his fingers, that any loss of them is a very serious matter to him. When I have heard
such inconsiderate remarks made, I have usually put this question: Suppose you
were in want of an additional workman, and two were to apply, both equally well
qualified in other respects, but one had lost a thumb or a forefinger, which would
you engage? There never was a hesitation as to the answer.
The manufac-
turers have "mistaken prejudices against what they have heard represented as a
pseudo-philanthropic legislation." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1855 " These
manufacturers are clever folk, and not without reason were they enthusiastic for the
slave-holders' rebellion.
•
In those factories that have been longest subject to the Factory Acts, with their
compulsory limitation of the hours of labour, and other regulations, many of the
older abuses have vanished. The very improvement of the machinery demands to a
certain extent "improved construction of the buildings," and this is an advantage to
the workpeople. (See "Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct., 1863," p. 109.)
2 See amongst others, John Houghton: "Husbandry and Trade improved. Lon-
don, 1727." "The Advantages of the East India Trade, 1720." John Bellers, 1. c.
"The masters and their workmen are, unhappily, in a perpetual war with each other
The invariable object of the former is to get their work done as cheaply as possible;
and they do not fail to employ every artifice to this purpose, whilst the latter are
equally attentive to every occasion of distressing their masters into a compliance with
higher demands." ("An Inquiry into the Causes of the Present High Prices of Pro-
visions," p. 61-62. Author, the Rev. Nathaniel Forster, quite on the side of the
workmen.)
,
428
Capitalist Production.
invention might throw a large number of workmen on the
streets, caused the inventor to be secretly strangled or
drowned." In Leyden, this machine was not used till 1629;
there the riots of the ribbon-weavers at length compelled the
Town Council to prohibit it. "In hac urbe," says Boxhorn
(Inst. Pol., 1663), referring to the introduction of this machine
into Leyden," ante hos viginti circiter annos instrumentum
quidam invenerunt textorium, quo solus plus panni et facilius
conficere poterat, quam plures aequali tempore. Hinc turbæ
ortæ et querulæ textorum, tandemque usus hujus instrumenti
a magistratu prohibitus est." After making various decrees
more or less prohibitive against this loom in 1632, 1639, &c.,
the States General of Holland at length permitted it to be
used, under certain conditions, by the decree of the 15th De-
cember, 1661. It was also prohibited in Cologne in 1676, at
the same time that its introduction into England was causing
disturbances among the workpeople. By an imperial Edict of
19th Feb., 1685, its use was forbidden throughout all Germany.
In Hamburg it was burnt in public by order of the Senate.
The Emperor Charles VI., on 9th Feb., 1719, renewed the edict
of 1685, and not till 1765 was its use openly allowed in the
Electorate of Saxony. This machine, which shook Europe to
its foundations, was in fact the precursor of the mule and the
power-loom, and of the industrial revolution of the 18th cen-
tury. It enabled a totally inexperienced boy, to set the whole
loom with all its shuttles in motion, by simply moving a rod
backwards and forwards, and in its improved form produced
from 40 to 50 pieces at once.
About 1630, a wind-sawmill, erected near London by a
Dutchman, succumbed to the excesses of the populace. Even
as late as the beginning of the 18th century, sawmills driven
by water overcame the opposition of the people, supported as
it was by parliament, only with great difficulty. No sooner
had Everet in 1758 erected the first wool-shearing machine
that was driven by water-power, than it was set on fire by
100,000 people who had been thrown out of work. Fifty
thousand workpeople, who had previously lived by carding
wool, petitioned parliament against Arkwright's scribbling
Machinery and Modern Industry.
429
mills and carding engines. The enormous destruction of
machinery that occurred in the English manufacturing dis-
tricts during the first 15 years of this century, chiefly caused
by the employment of the power-loom, and known as the
Luddite movement, gave the anti-jacobin governments of a
Sidmouth, a Castlereagh, and the like, a pretext for the most
re-actionary and forcible measures. It took both time and
experience before the workpeople learnt to distinguish between
machinery and its employment by capital, and to direct their
attacks, not against the material instruments of production,
but against the mode in which they are used.¹
The contests about wages in Manufacture, presuppose manu-
facture, and are in no sense directed against its existence. The
opposition against the establishment of new manufactures, pro-
ceeds from the guilds and privileged towns, not from the work-
people. Hence the writers of the manufacturing period treat
the division of labour chiefly as a means of virtually supplying
a deficiency of labourers, and not as a means of actually dis-
placing those in work. This distinction is self-evident. If it be
said that 100 millions of people would be required in England
to spin with the old spinning-wheel the cotton that is now spun
with mules by 500,000 people, this does not mean that the mules
took the place of those millions who never existed. It means
only this, that many millions of workpeople would be required
to replace the spinning machinery. If, on the other hand, we
say, that in England the power-loom threw 800,000 weavers
on the streets, we do not refer to existing machinery, that
would have to be replaced by a definite number of work-
people, but to a number of weavers in existence who were
actually replaced or displaced by the looms. During the manu-
facturing period, handicraft labour, altered though it was by
division of labour, was yet the basis. The demands of the
new colonial markets could not be satisfied owing to the
relatively small number of town operatives handed down from
the middle ages, and the manufactures proper opened out new
C
1 In old-fashioned manufactures the revolts of the workpeople against machinery,
even to this day, occasionally assume a savage character, as in the case of the Shef-
field file cutters in 1865.
430
Capitalist Production.
fields of production to the rural population, driven from the
land by the dissolution of the feudal system. At that time,
therefore, division of labour and co-operation in the workshops,
were viewed more from the positive aspect, that they made
the workpeople more productive. Long before the period of
Modern Industry, co-operation and the concentration of the
instruments of labour in the hands of a few, gave rise, in
numerous countries where these methods were applied in agri-
culture, to great, sudden and forcible revolutions in the modes
of production, and consequentially, in the conditions of exist-
ence, and the means of employment of the rural populations.
But this contest at first takes place more between the large
and the small landed proprietors, than between capital and
wage-labour; on the other hand, when the labourers are dis-
placed by the instruments of labour, by sheep, horses, &c., in
this case force is directly resorted to in the first instance as the
prelude to the industrial revolution. The labourers are first
driven from the land, and then come the sheep. Land grabbing
on a great scale, such as was perpetrated in England, is the
first step in creating a field for the establishment of agriculture
on a great scale. Hence this subversion of agriculture puts on,
at first, more the appearance of a political revolution.
The instrument of labour, when it takes the form of a
machine, immediately becomes a competitor of the workman
himself. The self-expansion of capital by means of machinery
is thenceforward directly proportional to the number of the
workpeople, whose means of livelihood have been destroyed by
Je con-
1 Sir James Stewart also understands machinery quite in this sense.
sidère donc les machines comme des moyens d'augmenter (virtuellement) le nombre
des gens industrieux qu'on n'est pas obligé de nourrir. En quoi l'effet d'une
machine diffère-t-il de celui de nouveaux habitants?" (French trans. t. I., 1. I., ch.
XIX.) More naïve is Petty, who says, it replaces "Polygamy." The above point
of view is, at the most, admissible only for some parts of the United States. On the
other hand, "machinery can seldom be used with success to abridge the labour of an
individual; more time would be lost in its construction than could be saved by its
application. It is only really useful when it acts on great masses, when a single
machine can assist the work of thousands. It is accordingly in the most populous
It is not
countries, where there are most idle men, that it is most abundant.
called into use by a scarcity of men, but by the facility with which they can be brought
to work in masses." (Piercy Ravenstone: "Thoughts on the Funding System and its
Effects." London, 1824, p. 15.)
2.44 Machinery and labour are in constant competition." Ricardo, 1. c., p. 479.
•
•
CC
Machinery and Modern Industry.
431
that machinery. The whole system of capitalist production is
based on the fact that the workman sells his labour-power as a
commodity. Division of labour specialises this labour-power,
by reducing it to skill in handling a particular tool. So soon
as the handling of this tool becomes the work of a machine,
then, with the use-value, the exchange-value too, of the work-
man's labour-power vanishes; the workman becomes unsale-
able, like paper money thrown out of currency by legal enact-
ment. That portion of the working class, thus by machinery
rendered superfluous, i.e., no longer immediately necessary for
the self-expansion of capital, either goes to the wall in the
unequal contest of the old handicrafts and manufactures with
machinery, or else floods all the more easily accessible branches
of industry, swamps the labour market, and sinks the price of
labour-power below its value. It is impressed upon the work-
people, as a great consolation, first, that their sufferings are
only temporary ("a temporary inconvenience "), secondly, that
machinery acquires the mastery over the whole of a given field
of production, only by degrees, so that the extent and intensity
of its destructive effect is diminished. The first consolation
neutralizes the second. When machinery seizes on an industry
by degrees, it produces chronic misery among the operatives
who compete with it. Where the transition is rapid, the effect
is acute and felt by great masses. History discloses no tragedy
more horrible than the gradual extinction of the English hand-
loom weavers, an extinction that was spread over several decades,
and finally sealed in 1838. Many of them died of starvation,
many with families vegetated for a long time on 2d. a day.¹
On the other hand, the English cotton machinery produced an
1
-
1 The competition between hand-weaving and power-weaving in England, before
the passing of the Poor Law of 1833, was prolonged by supplementing the wages,
which had fallen considerably below the minimum, with parish relief.
"The Rev.
Mr. Turner was, in 1827, rector of Wilmslow, in Cheshire, a manufacturing district.
The questions of the Committee of Emigration, and Mr. Turner's answers, show how
the competition of human labour is maintained against machinery. 'Question: Has
not the use of the power-loom superseded the use of the hand-loom? Answer: Un-
doubtedly; it would have superseded them much more than it has done, if the hand-
loom weavers were not enabled to submit to a reduction of wages. Question: But
in submitting he has accepted wages which are insufficient to support him, and looks
to parochial contribution as the remainder of his support? Answer: Yes, and in
fact the competition between the hand-loom and the power-loom is maintained out
432
Capitalist Production.
(C
acute effect in India. The Governor General reported 1834-35:
"The misery hardly finds a parallel in the history of com-
merce. The bones of the cotton-weavers are bleaching the
plains of India." No doubt, in turning them out of this
temporal" world, the machinery caused them no more than
a temporary inconvenience." For the rest, since machinery
is continually seizing upon new fields of production, its tem-
porary effect is really permanent. Hence, the character of
independance and estrangement which the capitalist mode of
production as a whole gives to the instruments of labour and
to the product, as against the workman, is developed by means
of machinery into a thorough antagonism. Therefore, it is
with the advent of machinery, that the workman for the first
time brutally revolts against the instruments of labour.
The instrument of labour strikes down the labourer. This
direct antagonism between the two comes out most strongly,
whenever newly introduced machinery competes with handi-
crafts or manufactures, handed down from former times. But
even in Modern Industry the continual improvement of
machinery, and the development of the automatic system, has
an analogous effect. "The object of improved machinery is to
diminish manual labour, to provide for the performance of a
process or the completion of a link in a manufacture by the
aid of an iron instead of the human apparatus."
"The
adaptation of power to machinery heretofore moved by hand,
is almost of daily occurrence the minor improvements in
<C
•
1
2
of the poor-rates.' Thus degrading pauperism or expatriation, is the benefit which
the industrious receive from the introduction of machinery, to be reduced from the
respectable and in some degree independent mechanic, to the cringing wretch who
lives on the debasing bread of charity. This they call a temporary inconvenience."
("A Prize Essay on the comparative merits of Competition and Co-operation."
Lond., 1834, p. 29.)
1"The same cause which may increase the revenue of the country" (i.e., as
Ricardo explains in the same passage, the revenues of landlords and capitalists, whose
wealth, from the economical point of view, forms the Wealth of the Nation), " may
at the same time render the population redundant and deteriorate the condition of
the labourer." (Ricardo, l. c., p. 469). "The constant aim and the tendency of every
improvement in machinery is, in fact, to do away entirely with the labour of man, or
to lessen its price by substituting the labour of women and children for that of grown-
up men, or of unskilled for that of skilled workmen." (Ure, 1. c., t. I., p. 35).
"Rep. Insp. Fact. for 31st October, 1858," p. 43.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
433
machinery having for their object economy of power, the pro-
duction of better work, the turning off more work in the same
time, or in supplying the place of a child, a female, or a man,
are constant, and although sometimes apparently of no great
moment, have somewhat important results."¹ Whenever a
process requires peculiar dexterity and steadiness of hand, it is
withdrawn, as soon as possible, from the cunning workman,
who is prone to irregularities of many kinds, and it is placed
in charge of a peculiar mechanism, so self-regulating that a
child can superintend it."2 "On the automatic plan skilled
labour gets progressively superseded." "The effect of im-
provements in machinery, not merely in superseding the
necessity for the employment of the same quantity of adult
labour as before, in order to produce a given result, but in
substituting one description of human labour for another, the
less skilled for the more skilled, juvenile for adult, female for
male, causes a fresh disturbance in the rate of wages. The
effect of substituting the self-acting mule for the common mule,
is to discharge the greater part of the men spinners, and to retain
adolescents and children." The extraordinary power of expan-
sion of the factory system owing to accumulated practical ex-
perience, to the mechanical means at hand, and to constant tech-
nical progress, was proved to us by the giant strides of that system
under the pressure of a shortened working day. But who, in
1860, the Zenith year of the English cotton industry, would
have dreamt of the galloping improvements in machinery, and
the corresponding displacement of working people, called
into being during the following 3 years, under the stimulus of
>> 4 (C
5
3
cr
1 "Rep. Insp. Fact, for 31st October, 1856,” p. 15.
2 Ure, 1. c., p. 19. "The great advantage of the machinery employed in brick-
making consists in this, that the employer is made entirely independent of skilled
labourers," ("Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Report," Lond., 1866, p. 180, n. 46.) Mr. A.
Sturrock, superintendent of the machine department of the Great Northern Railway,
says, with regard to the building of locomotives, &c. : "Expensive English workmen
are being less used every day. The production of the workshops of England is being
increased by the use of improved tools, and these tools are again served by a low class of
labour. . . Formerly their skilled labour necessarily produced all the parts of engines.
Now the parts of engines are produced by labour with less skill, but with good tools.
By tools, I mean engineer's machinery, lathes, planing machines, drills, and so on.
("Royal Com. on Railways." Lond., 1867, Minutes of Evidence, n. 17,862 and 17,863.)
3 Ure, 1. c., p. 20.
4 Ure, 1. c., p. 321.
5 Ure 1. c. p. 23.
2 E
434
Capitalist Production.
the American Civil War? A couple of examples from the
Reports of the Inspectors of Factories will suffice on this point.
A Manchester manufacturer states: "We formerly had 75 card-
ing engines, now we have 12, doing the same quantity of work. .
We are doing with fewer hands by 14, at a saving in wages of
£10 a-week. Our estimated saving in waste is about 10%
in the quantity of cotton consumed.” "In another fine-spinning
mill in Manchester, I was informed that through increased
speed and the adoption of some self-acting processes, a reduc-
tion had been made, in number, of a fourth in one department,
and of above half in another, and that the introduction of the
combing machine in place of the second carding, had consider-
ably reduced the number of hands formerly employed in the
carding-room." Another spinning mill is estimated to effect a
saving of labour of 10% The Messrs. Gilmour, spinners at
Manchester, state: "In our blowing-room department we con-
sider our expense with new machinery is fully one-third less
in wages and hands. . . in the jack-frame and drawing-frame
room, about one-third less in expense, and likewise one-third less
in hands; in the spinning-room about one-third less in expenses.
But this is not all; when our yarn goes to the manufacturers, it
is so much better by the application of our new machinery, that
they will produce a greater quantity of cloth, and cheaper than
from the yarn produced by old machinery. Mr. Redgrave
further remarks in the same Report: "The reduction of hands
against increased production is, in fact, constantly taking place;
in woollen mills the reduction commenced some time since, and
is continuing; a few days since, the master of a school in the
neighbourhood of Rochdale said to me, that the great falling
off in the girls' school is not only caused by the distress, but by
the changes of machinery in the woollen mills, in consequence
of which a reduction of 70 short-timers had taken place."
"}
166 Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st Oct., 1863," pp. 108, 109.
2 1. c., p. 109. The rapid improvement of machinery, during the crisis, allowed the
English manufacturers, immediately after the termination of the American civil war,
and almost in no time, to glut the markets of the world again. Cloth, during the
last six months of 1866, was almost unsaleable. Thereupon began the consignment
of goods to India and China, thus naturally making the glut more intense. At the
beginning of 1867 the manufacturers resorted to their usual way out of the difficulty,
viz., reducing wages 5 per cent. The workpeople resisted, and said that the only
Machinery and Modern Industry.
435
The following table shows the total result of the mechanical
improvements in the English cotton industry due to the
American civil war.
England and Wales.
Scotland..
Ireland.....
England and Wales.
Scotland...
Ireland.
***
United Kingdom....
NUMBER OF FACTORIES.
1858
2,046
152
12
2,210
NUMBER OF POWER-LOOMS.
United Kingdom........
England and Wales
Scotland
Ireland.
England and Wales.....
Scotland...
Ireland...
1858
275,590
21,624
1,633
298,847
NUMBER OF SPINDLES.
United Kingdom.......
1861
2,715
163
9
1858
25,818,576
2,041,129
150,512
28,010,217
NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED.
1858
341,170
34,698
3,345
379,213
2,887
1861
368,125
30,110
1,757
399,992
1861
28,352,152
1,915,398
119,944
30,387,494
1861
407,598
41,237
2,734
451,569
1868
2,405
131
13
2,549
1868
344,719
31,864
2,746
379,329
1868
30,478,228
1,397,546
124,240
32,000,014
1868
357,052
39,809
4,203
401,064
United Kingdom..
Hence, between 1861 and 1868, 338 cotton factories disap-
peared, in other words more productive machinery on a larger
scale was concentrated in the hands of a smaller number of
capitalists. The number of power-looms decreased by 20,663;
but since their product increased in the same period, an im-
proved loom must have yielded more than an old one. Lastly
the number of spindles increased by 1,612,541, while the
number of operatives decreased by 50,505. The "temporary "
misery, inflicted on the workpeople by the cotton-crisis, was
heightened, and from being temporary made permanent, by the
rapid and persistent progress of machinery.
remedy was to work short time, 4 days a-week; and their theory was the correct
one. After holding out for some time, the self-elected captains of industry had to
make up their minds to short time, with reduced wages in some places, and in others
without.
436
Capitalist Production.
But machinery not only acts as a competitor who gets the
better of the workman, and is constantly on the point of
making him superfluous. It is also a power inimical to him,
and as such capital proclaims it from the roof tops, and as such
makes use of it. It is the most powerful weapon for repress-
ing strikes, those periodical revolts of the working class against
the autocracy of capital. According to Gaskell, the steam
engine was from the very first an antagonist of human power,
an antagonist that enabled the capitalist to tread under foot
the growing claims of the workmen, who threatened the newly
born factory system with a crisis. It would be possible to
write quite a history of the inventions, made since 1830, for
the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the
revolts of the working class. At the head of these in import-
ance, stands the self-acting mule, because it opened up a new
epoch in the automatic system.³
Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer, gives the
following evidence before the Trades Union Commission, with
regard to the improvements made by him in machinery and
introduced in consequence of the wide-spread and long strikes
of the engineers in 1851. "The characteristic feature of our
modern mechanical improvements, is the introduction of self-
acting tool machinery. What every mechanical workman has
now to do, and what every boy can do, is not to work himself
but to superintend the beautiful labour of the machine. The
whole class of workmen that depend exclusively on their skill,
is now done away with. Formerly, I employed four boys to
every mechanic.
Thanks to these new mechanical com-
binations, I have reduced the number of grown-up men from
1500 to 750. The result was a considerable increase in my
profits."
Ure says of a machine used in calico printing: "At length
Gy
1 "The relation of master and man in the blown-flint bottle trades amounts to a
chronic strike." Hence the impetus given to the manufacture of pressed glass, in
which the chief operations are done by machinery. One firm in Newcastle, who
formerly produced 350,000 lbs. of blown-flint glass, now produces in its place 3,000,500
bs. of pressed glass. ("Ch Empl. Comm., Fourth Rep.," 1865, pp. 262, 263.)
2 Gaskell. "The Manufacturing Population of England, London, 1833," pp. 3, 4.
3 W. Fairbairn discovered several very important applications of machinery to the
construction of machines, in consequence of strikes in his own workshops.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
437
capitalists sought deliverance from this intolerable bondage"
[namely the, in their eyes, burdensome terms of their contracts
with the workmen] "in the resources of science, and were
speedily re-instated in their legitimate rule, that of the head
over the inferior members." Speaking of an invention for
dressing warps: "Then the combined malcontents, who fancied
themselves impregnably intrenched behind the old lines of
division of labour, found their flanks turned and their defences
rendered useless by the new mechanical tactics, and were
obliged to surrender at discretion." With regard to the in-
vention of the self-acting mule, he says: "A creation destined
to restore order among the industrious classes.
This
invention confirms the great doctrine already propounded, that
when capital enlists science into her service, the refractory
hand of labour will always be taught docility." Although
Ure's work appeared 30 years ago, at a time when the factory
system was comparatively but little developed, it still perfectly
expresses the spirit of the factory, not only by its undisguised
cynicism, but also by the naïveté with which it blurts out the
stupid contradictions of the capitalist brain. For instance,
after propounding the "doctrine" stated above, that capital,
with the aid of science taken into its pay, always reduces the
refractory hand of labour to docility, he grows indignant be-
cause "it (physico-mechanical science) has been accused of
lending itself to the rich capitalist as an instrument for
harrassing the poor." After preaching a long sermon to show
how advantageous the rapid development of machinery is to
the working classes, he warns them, that by their obstinacy
and their strikes they hasten that development. "Violent re-
vulsions of this nature," he says, "display short-sighted man in
the contemptible character of a self-tormentor."
A few pages
before he states the contrary. Had it not been for the
violent collisions and interruptions resulting from erroneous
views among the factory operatives, the factory system would
have been developed still more rapidly and beneficially for all
concerned." Then he exclaims again: "Fortunately for the
stat of society in the cotton districts of Great Britain, the
1 Ure, 1. c., pp. 368-370.
<<
"? 1
438
Capitalist Production.
improvements in machinery are gradual." "It" (improvement
in machinery) "is said to lower the rate of earnings of adults
by displacing a portion of them, and thus rendering their
number superabundant as compared with the demand for their
labour. It certainly augments the demand for the labour of
children and increases the rate of their wages." On the
other hand, this same dispenser of consolation defends the
lowness of the children's wages on the ground that it pre-
vents parents from sending their children at too early an age
into the factory. The whole of his book is a vindication of a
working day of unrestricted length; that Parliament should
forbid children of 13 years to be exhausted by working 12
hours a day, reminds his liberal soul of the darkest days of the
middle ages. This does not prevent him from calling upon the
factory operatives to thank Providence, who by means of
machinery has given them the leisure to think of their
"immortal interests."1
SECTION 6.
6.-THE
THE THEORY OF COMPENSATION AS REGARDS THE WORK-
PEOPLE DISPLACED BY MACHINERY.
James Mill, MacCulloch, Torrens, Senior, John Stuart Mill,
and a whole series besides, of bourgeois political economists,
insist that all machinery that displaces workmen, simul-
taneously and necessarily sets free an amount of capital
adequate to employ the same identical workmen.*
Suppose a capitalist to employ 100 workmen, at £30 a year
each, in a carpet factory. The variable capital annually
laid out amounts, therefore, to £3000. Suppose, also, that he
discharges 50 of his workmen, and employs the remaining 50
with machinery that costs him £1500. To simplify matters,
we take no account of buildings, coal, &c. Further suppose
that the raw material annually consumed costs £3000, both
before and after the change. Is any capital set free by this
3
1 Ure, 1. c. pp. 368, 7, 370, 280, 321, 281, 370, 475.
2 Ricardo originally was also of this opinion, but afterwards expressly disclaimed
it, with the scientific impartiality and love of truth characteristic of him. See 1.c.
ch. xxxi. "On Machinery."
3 Nota bene. My illustration is entirely on the lines of those given by the above
named economists.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
439
metamorphosis? Before the change, the total sum of £6000
consisted half of constant, and half of variable capital. After
the change it consists of £4500 constant (£3000 raw material
and £1500 machinery), and £1500 variable capital. The vari-
able capital, instead of being one half, is only one quarter, of the
total capital. Instead of being set free, a part of the capital
is here locked up in such a way as to cease to be exchanged
against labour-power: variable has been changed into constant
capital. Other things remaining unchanged, the capital of
£6000, can, in future, employ no more than 50 men. With
each improvement in the machinery, it will employ fewer. If
the newly introduced machinery had cost less than did the
labour-power and implements displaced by it, if, for instance,
instead of costing £1500, it had cost only £1000, a variable
capital of £1000 would have been converted into constant
capital, and locked up; and a capital of £500 would have been
set free. The latter sum, supposing wages unchanged, would
form a fund sufficient to employ about 16 out of the 50 men
discharged; nay, less than 16, for, in order to be employed as
capital, a part of this £500 must now become constant capital,
thus leaving only the remainder to be laid out in labour-
power.
But, suppose, besides, that the making of the new
machinery affords employment to a greater number of
mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpet
makers, thrown on the streets? At the best, its construction
employs fewer men than its employment displaces. The sum
of £1500 that formerly represented the wages of the discharged
carpet-makers, now represents in the shape of machinery: (1)
the value of the means of production used in the construction
of that machinery, (2) the wages of the mechanics employed in
its construction, and (3) the surplus-value falling to the share
of their "master." Further, the machinery need not be re-
newed till it is worn out. Hence, in order to keep the in-
creased number of mechanics in constant employment, one
carpet manufacturer after another must displace workmen by
machines.
As a matter of fact, the apologists do not mean this sort of
440
Capitalist Production.
setting free. They have in their minds the means of sub-
sistence of the liberated workpeople. It cannot be denied, in
the above instance, that the machinery not only liberates 50
men, thus placing them at others' disposal, but, at the same time,
it withdraws from their consumption, and sets free, means of
subsistence to the value of £1500. The simple fact, by no
means a new one, that machinery cuts off the workmen from
their means of subsistence is, therefore, in economical parlance
tantamount to this, that machinery liberates means of sub-
sistence for the workman, or converts those means into capital
for his employment. The mode of expression, you see, is
everything. Nominibus mollire licet mala.
This theory implies that the £1500 worth of means of sub-
sistence was capital that was being expanded by the labour of
the 50 men discharged. That, consequently, this capital falls
out of employment so soon as they commence their forced
holidays, and never rests till it has found a fresh investment,
where it can again be productively consumed by these same 50
men. That sooner or later, therefore, the capital and the
workmen must come together again, and that, then, the com-
pensation is complete. That the sufferings of the workmen.
displaced by machinery are therefore as transient as are the
riches of this world.
In relation to the discharged workmen, the £1500 worth of
means of subsistence never was capital. What really con-
fronted them as capital, was the sum of £1500, afterwards laid
out in machinery. On looking closer it will be seen that this
sum represented part of the carpets produced in a year by the
50 discharged men, which part they received as wages from
their employer in money instead of in kind. With the carpets
in the form of money, they bought means of subsistence to the
value of £1500. These means, therefore, were to them, not
capital, but commodities, and they, as regards these commo-
dities, were not wage-labourers, but buyers. The circumstance
that they were freed" by the machinery, from the means of
purchase, changed them from buyers into non-buyers. Hence
a lessened demand for those commodities-voilà tout. If this
diminution be not compensated by an increase from some other
"(
Machinery and Modern Industry.
44I
quarter, the market price of the commodities falls. If this state of
things lasts for some time, and extends, there follows a discharge
of workmen employed in the production of these commodities.
Some of the capital that was previously devoted to production
of necessary means of subsistence, has to become reproduced in
another form. While prices fall, and capital is being displaced,
the labourers employed in the production of necessary means of
subsistence are in their turn "freed" from a part of their wages.
Instead, therefore, of proving that, when machinery frees the
workman from his means of subsistence, it simultaneously con-
verts those means into capital for his further employment, our
apologists, with their cut-and-dried law of supply and demand,
prove, on the contrary, that machinery throws workmen on the
streets, not only in that branch of production in which it is in-
troduced, but also in those branches in which it is not introduced,
The real facts, which are travestied by the optimism of
economists, are as follows: The labourers, when driven out of
the workshop by the machinery, are thrown upon the labour
market, and there add to the number of workmen at the dis-
posal of the capitalists. In Part VII. of this book it will be
seen that this effect of machinery, which, as we have seen, is
represented to be a compensation to the working class, is on
the contrary a most frightful scourge. For the present I will
only say this: The labourers that are thrown out of work in
any branch of industry, can no doubt seek for employment in
some other branch. If they find it, and thus renew the bond
between them and the means of subsistence, this takes place
only by the intermediary of a new and additional capital that
is seeking investment; not at all by the intermediary of the
capital that formerly employed them and was afterwards con-
verted into machinery. And even should they find employment,
what a poor look-out is theirs! Crippled as they are by divi-
sion of labour, these poor devils are worth so little outside their
old trade, that they cannot find admission into any industries,
except a few of inferior kind, that are over-supplied with
underpaid workmen.¹ Further, every branch of industry
1 A disciple of Ricardo, in answer to the insipidities of J. B. Say, remarks on this
point : "Where division of labour is well developed, the skill of the labourer is
442
Capitalist Production.
attracts each year a new stream of men, who furnish a con-
tingent from which to fill up vacancies, and to draw a supply
for expansion. So soon as machinery sets free a part of the
workmen employed in a given branch of industry, the reserve
men are also diverted into new channels of employment, and
become absorbed in other branches; meanwhile the original
victims, during the period of transition, for the most part starve
and perish.
It is an undoubted fact that machinery, as such, is not re-
sponsible for "setting free" the workman from the means of
subsistence. It cheapens and increases production in that
branch which it seizes on, and at first makes no change in the
mass of the means of subsistence produced in other branches.
Hence, after its introduction, the society possesses as much, if
not more, of the necessaries of life than before, for the labourers
thrown out of work; and that quite apart from the enormous
share of the annual produce wasted by the non-workers. And
this is the point relied on by our apologists! The contradic-
tions and antagonisms inseparable from the capitalist employ-
ment of machinery, do not exist, they say, since they do not
arise out of machinery, as such, but out of its capitalist em-
ployment! Since therefore machinery, considered alone,
shortens the hours of labour, but, when in the service of capital,
lengthens them; since in itself it lightens labour, but when
employed by capital, heightens the intensity of labour; since
in itself it is a victory of man over the forces of nature, but in
the hands of capital, makes man the slave of those forces ;
since in itself it increases the wealth of the producers, but in
the hands of capital, makes them paupers for all these reasons
and others besides, says the bourgeois economist without more
ado, it is clear as noonday that all these contradictions are a
mere semblance of the reality, and that, as a matter of fact,
they have neither an actual nor a theoretical existence. Thus
available only in that particular branch in which it has been acquired; he himself is
a sort of machine. It does not therefore help matters one jot, to repeat in parrot
fashion, that things have a tendency to find their level. On looking around us we
cannot but see, that they are unable to find their level for a long time; and that when
they do find it, the level is always lower than at the commencement of the process."
("An Inquiry into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand," &c. Lond.
1821, p. 72.)
Machinery and Modern Industry.
443
he saves himself from all further puzzling of the brain, and
what is more, implicitly declares his opponent to be stupid
enough to contend against, not the capitalistic employment of
machinery, but machinery itself.
man.
No doubt he is far from denying that temporary incon-
venience may result from the capitalist use of machinery. But
where is the medal without its reverse! Any employment
of machinery, except by capital, is to him an impossibility.
Exploitation of the workman by the machine is therefore, with
him, identical with exploitation of the machine by the work-
Whoever, therefore, exposes the real state of things in
the capitalistic employment of machinery, is against its em-
ployment in any way, and is an enemy of social progress!
Exactly the reasoning of the celebrated Eill Sykes. Gentle-
men of the jury, no doubt the throat of this commercial
traveller has been cut. But that is not my fault, it is the fault
of the knife? Must we, for such a temporary inconvenience,
abolish the use of the knife? Only consider! where would
agriculture and trade be without the knife? Is it not as
salutary in surgery, as it is knowing in anatomy? And in
addition a willing help at the festive board? If you abolish
the knife-you hurl us back into the depths of barbarism."
Although machinery necessarily throws men out of work in
those industries into which it is introduced, yet it may, not-
withstanding this, bring about an increase of employment in
other industries. This effect, however, has nothing in common
with the so-called theory of compensation. Since every article
produced by a machine is cheaper than a similar article pro-
duced by hand, we deduce the following infallible law: If the
total quantity of the article produced by machinery, be equal
*(
1 MacCulloch, amongst others, is a past master in this pretentious cretinism
"If," he says, with the affected naiveté of a child of 8 years, "if it be advantageous,
to develope the skill of the workman more and more, so that he is capable of produc-
ing, with the same or with a less quantity of labour, a constantly increasing quantity
of commodities, it must also be advantageous, that he should avail himself of the help
of such machinery as will assist him most effectively in the attainment of this result."
(MacCulloch: "Princ. of Pol. Econ.," Lond. 1830, p. 166).
2 "The inventor of the spinning machine has ruined India, a fact, however, that
touches us but little." A. Thiers: De la propriété.-M. Thiers here confounds the
spinning machine with the power-loom, "a fact, however, that touches us but
little."
444
Capitalist Production.
to the total quantity of the article previously produced by a
handicraft or by manufacture, and now made by machinery,
then the total labour expended is diminished. The new labour
spent on the instruments of labour, on the machinery, on the
coal, and so on, must necessarily be less than the labour dis-
placed by the use of the machinery; otherwise the product of
the machine would be as dear, or dearer, than the product of
the manual labour. But, as a matter of fact, the total quantity
of the article produced by machinery with a diminished num-
ber of workmen, instead of remaining equal to, by far exceeds
the total quantity of the hand-made article that has been dis-
placed. Suppose that 400,000 yards of cloth have been pro-
duced on power-looms by fewer weavers than could weave
100,000 yards by hand. In the quadrupled product there lies
four times as much raw material. Hence the production of
raw material must be quadrupled. But as regards the instru-
ments of labour, such as buildings, coal, machinery, and so on,
it is different; the limit up to which the additional labour
required for their production can increase, varies with the
difference between the quantity of the machine-made article,
and the quantity of the same article that the same number of
workmen could make by hand.
Hence, as the use of machinery extends in a given industry,
the immediate effect is to increase production in the other in-
dustries that furnish the first with means of production. How
far employment is thereby found for an increased number of
men, depends, given the length of the working-day and the
intensity of labour, on the composition of the capital employed,
i.e., on the ratio of its constant to its variable component. This
ratio, in its turn, varies considerably with the extent to which
machinery has already seized on, or is then seizing on, those
trades. The number of the men condemned to work in coal
and metal mines increased enormously owing to the progress
of the English factory system; but during the last few decades
this increase of number has been less rapid, owing to the use
of new machinery in mining.¹ A new type of workman springs
1 According to the census of 1861 (Vol. II., Lond., 1863), the number of people
employed in coal mines in England and Wales, amounted to 246,613, of which 73,545
Machinery and Modern Industry.
445
1
2
into life along with the machine, namely, its maker. We have
already learnt that machinery has possessed itself even of this
branch of production on a scale that grows greater every day.¹
As to raw material, there is not the least doubt that the
rapid strides of cotton spinning, not only pushed on with
tropical luxuriance the growth of cotton in the United States,
and with it the African slave trade, but also made the breed-
ing of slaves the chief business of the border slave-states.
When, in 1790, the first census of slaves was taken in the
United States, their number was 697,000; in 1861 it had
nearly reached four millions. On the other hand, it is no less
certain that the rise of the English woollen factories, together
with the gradual conversion of arable land into sheep pasture,
brought about the superfluity of agricultural labourers that
led to their being driven in masses into the towns. Ireland,
having during the last twenty years reduced its population by
nearly one half, is at this moment undergoing the process of
still further reducing the number of its inhabitants, so as
exactly to suit the requirements of its landlords and of the
English woollen manufacturers.
When machinery is applied to any of the preliminary or
intermediate stages through which the subject of labour has
to pass on its way to completion, there is an increased yield
of material in those stages, and simultaneously an increased
demand for labour in the handicrafts or manufactures supplied
by the produce of the machines. Spinning by machinery, for
example, supplied yarn so cheaply and so abundantly that the
were under, and 173,067 were over 20 years. Of those under 20, 835 were between
5 and 10 years, 30,701 between 10 and 15 years, 42,010 between 15 and 19 years. The
number employed in iron, copper, lead, tin, and other mines of every description,
was 319,222.
1 In England and Wales, in 1861, there were employed in making machinery,
60,807 persons, including the masters and their clerks, &c., also all agents and
business people connected with this industry, but excluding the makers of small
machines, such as sewing machines, &c., as also the makers of the operative parts
of machines, such as spindles. The total number of civil engineers amounted to
3329.
2 Since iron is one of the most important raw materials, let me here state that, in
1861, there were in England and Wales 125,771 operative iron founders, of whom
123,430 were males, 2341 females. Of the former 30,810 were under, and 92,620
over 20 years.
"
446
Capitalist Production.
hand-loom weavers were, at first, able to work full time with-
out increased outlay. Their earnings accordingly rose.' Hence
a flow of people into the cotton-weaving trade, till at length
the 800,000 weavers, called into existence by the Jenny, the
throstle and the mulc, were overwhelmed by the power-loom.
So also, owing to the abundance of clothing materials produced
by machinery, the number of tailors, seamstresses and needle-
women, went on increasing until the appearance of the sewing
machine.
In proportion as machinery, with the aid of a relatively
small number of workpeople, increases the mass of raw
materials, intermediate products, instruments of labour, &c.,
the working-up of these raw materials and intermediate pro-
ducts becomes split up into numberless branches; social pro-
duction increases in diversity. The factory system carries the
social division of labour immeasurably further than does
manufacture, for it increases the productiveness of the in-
dustries it seizes upon, in a far higher degree.
The immediate result of machinery is to augment surplus-
value and the mass of products in which surplus-value is
embodied. And, as the substances consumed by the capitalists
and their dependants become more plentiful, so too do these
orders of society. Their growing wealth, and the relatively
diminished number of workmen required to produce the neces-
saries of life beget, simultaneously with the rise of new and
luxurious wants, the means of satisfying those wants. A
larger portion of the produce of society is changed into surplus
produce, and a larger part of the surplus produce is supplied
for consumption in a multiplicity of refined shapes. In other
words, the production of luxuries increases. The refined and
varied forms of the products are also due to new relations with
the markets of the world, relations that are created by Modern
1 "A family of four grown up persons, with two children as winders, earned at the
end of the last, and the beginning of the present century, by ten hours' daily labour,
£4 a week. If the work was very pressing, they could earn more
Before
that, they had always suffered from a deficient supply of yarn." (Gaskell, 1. c., pp.
25-27.j
•
F. Engels in "Lage, &c.," points out the miserable condition of a large number of
those who work on these very articles of luxury. See also numerous instances in the
("
Reports of the Childrens' Employment Commission."
Machinery and Modern Industry.
447
Industry. Not only are greater quantities of foreign articles.
of luxury exchanged for home products, but a greater mass of
foreign raw materials, ingredients, and intermediate products,
are used as means of production in the home industries.
Owing to these relations with the markets of the world, the
demand for labour increases in the carrying trades, which
split up into numerous varieties.¹
The increase of the means of production and subsistence,
accompanied by a relative diminution in the number of
labourers, causes an increased demand for labour in making
canals, docks, tunnels, bridges, and so on, works that can only
bear fruit in the far future. Entirely new branches of pro-
duction, creating new fields of labour, are also formed, as the
direct result either of machinery or of the general industrial
changes brought about by it. But the place occupied by these
branches in the general production is, even in the most de-
veloped countries, far from important. The number of
labourers that find employment in them is directly propor-
tional to the demand, created by those industries, for the
crudest form of manual labour. The chief industries of this
kind are, at present, gas works, telegraphs, photography,
steam navigation, and railways. According to the census of
1861 for England and Wales, we find in the gas industry
(gasworks, production of mechanical apparatus, servants of
the gas companies, &c.), 15,211 persons; in telegraphy, 2399;
in photography, 2366; steam navigation, 3570; and in rail-
ways, 70,599, of whom the unskilled "navvies," more or less
permanently employed, and the whole administrative and
commercial staff, make up about 28,000. The total number of
persons, therefore, employed in these five new industries
amounts to 94,145.
J
Lastly, the extraordinary productiveness of modern in-
dustry, accompanied as it is by both a more extensive and a
more intense exploitation of labour-power in all other spheres
of production, allows of the unproductive employment of a
larger and larger part of the working class, and the consequent
1 In 1861, in England and Wales, there were 94,665 sailors in the merchant
service.
448
Capitalist Production.
1
reproduction, on a constantly extending scale, of the ancient
domestic slaves under the name of a servant class, including
men-servants, women-servants, lackeys, &c. According to the
census of 1861, the population of England and Wales was
20,066,244; of these, 9,776,259 males, and 10,289,965 female.
If we deduct from this population all who are too old or too
young for work, all unproductive women, young persons and
children, the "ideological" classes, such as government officials,
priests, lawyers, soldiers, &c.; further, all who have no occu-
pation but to consume the labour of others in the form of
rent, interest, &c.; and, lastly, paupers, vagabonds, and cri-
minals, there remain in round numbers eight millions of the
two sexes of every age, including in that number every capi-
talist who is in any way engaged in industry, commerce, or
finance. Among these, 8 millions are:
Agricultural labourers (including shep-
herds, farm servants, and maidservants
living in the houses of farmers),
All who are employed in cotton, woollen,
worsted, flax, hemp, silk, and jute fac-
tories, in stocking making and lace
making by machinery,
All who are employed in coal mines and
metal mines,
All who are employed in metal works
(blast-furnaces, rolling mills, &c.), and
metal manufactures of every kind,
The servant class,
•
PERSONS.
1,098,261
642,607¹
565,835
396,998
1,208,6483
All the persons employed in textile factories and in mines,
taken together, number 1,208,442; those employed in tex-
tile factories and metal industries, taken together, number
1 Of these only 177,596 are males above 13 years of age.
2 Of these, 30,501 are females.
3 Of these, 137,447 males. None are included in the 1,208,648 who do not serve
in private houses. Between 1861 and 1870 the number of male servants nearly.
doubled itself. It increased to 267,671. In the year 1847 there were 2694 game-
keepers (for the landlords' preserves), in 1869 there were 4921. The young servant
girls in the houses of the London lower middle class are in common parlance called
slaveys."
Machinery and Modern Industry.
449
1,039,605; in both cases less than the number of modern
domestic slaves. What a splendid result of the capitalist
exploitation of machinery!
SECTION 7.-REPULSION AND ATTRACTION OF WORKPEOPLE BY THE FAC-
TORY SYSTEM. CRISES IN THE COTTON TRADE.
All political economists of any standing admit that the
introduction of new machinery has a baneful effect on the
workmen in the old handicrafts and manufactures with which
this machinery at first competes. Almost all of them bemoan
the slavery of the factory operative. And what is the great
trump-card that they play? That machinery, after the
horrors of the period of introduction and development have
subsided, instead of diminishing, in the long run increases
the number of the slaves of labour! Yes, political economy
revels in the hideous theory, hideous to every "philanthro-
pist" who believes in the eternal nature-ordained necessity for
capitalist production, that after a period of growth and transi-
tion, even its crowning success, the factory system based on
machinery, grinds down more workpeople than on its first
introduction it throws on the streets.¹
It is true that in some cases, as we saw from instances of
English worsted and silk factories, an extraordinary extension
1 Ganilh, on the contrary, considers the final result of the factory system to be an
absolutely less number of operatives, at whose expense an increased number of "gens
honnêtes" live and develop their well-known "perfectibilité perfectible." Little as
he understands the movement of production, at least he feels, that machinery must
needs be a very fatal institution, if its introduction converts busy workmen into
paupers, and its development calls more slaves of labour into existence than it has
suppressed. It is not possible to bring out the cretinism of his standpoint, except by
his own words: "Les classes condamnées à produire et à consommer diminuent, et
les classes qui dirigent le travail, qui soulagent, consolent, et éclairent toute la
population, se multiplient.
et s'approprient tous les bienfaits qui résultent
de la diminution des frais du travail, de l'abondance des productions, et du bon
marché des consommations. Dans cette direction, l'espèce humaine s'élève aux
plus hautes conceptions du génie, pénètre dans les profondeurs mystérieuses de la
religion, établit les principes salutaires de la morale (which consists in 's'approprier
tous les bienfaits,' &c.), les lois tutélaires de la liberté (liberty of 'les classes con-
damnées à produire?') et du pouvoir, de l'obéissance et de la justice, du devoir et
de l'humanité." For this twaddle see "Des Systèmes d'Economie Politique, &c.,
Par M. Ch. Ganilh." 2ème ed., Paris, 1821, t. II., p. 224, and see p. 212.
•
2 F
450
Capitalist Production.
of the factory system may, at a certain stage of its develop-
ment, be accompanied not only by a relative, but by an
absolute decrease in the number of operatives employed. In
the year 1860, when a special census of all the factories in the
United Kingdom was taken by order of Parliament, the
factories in those parts of Lancashire, Cheshire, and York-
shire, included in the district of Mr. Baker, the factory in-
spector, numbered 652; 570 of these contained 85,622 power-
looms, 6,819,146 spindles (exclusive of doubling spindles),
cmployed 27,439 horse-power (steam), and 1390 (water), and
94,119 persons.
In the year 1865, the same factories con-
tained, looms 95,163, spindles 7,025,031, had a steam-power of
28,925 horses, and a water-power of 1445 horses, and em-
ployed 88,913 persons. Between 1860 and 1865, therefore, the
increase in looms was 11%, in spindles 3%, and in engine-
power 3%, while the number of persons employed decreased
54%¹ Between 1852 and 1862, considerable extension of the
English woollen manufacture took place, while the number of
hands employed in it remained almost stationary, showing how
greatly the introduction of new machines had superseded the
labour of preceding periods. In certain cases, the increase in
the number of hands employed is only apparent; that is, it is
not due to the extension of the factories already established,
but to the gradual annexation of connected trades; for in-
stance, the increase in power-looms, and in the hands em-
ployed by them between 1838 and 1856, was, in the cotton
trade, simply owing to the extension of this branch of in-
dustry; but in the other trades to the application of steam-
1
—
2
1 "(
Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31 Oct., 1865,” p. 58, sq. At the same time, how-
ever, means of employment for an increased number of hands was ready in 110 new
mills with 11,625 looms, 628,756 spindles and 2695 total horse-power of steam and
water (1. c.)
2.
Reports, &c., for 31 Oct., 1862," p. 79. At the end of 1871, Mr. A. Redgrave, the
factory i spector, in a lecture given at Bradford, in the New Mechanics' Institution,
said: "What has struck me for some time past is the altered appearance of the
woollen factories Formerly they were filled with women and children, now
machinery seems to do all the work. At my asking for an explanation of this from
a manufacturer, he gave me the following: Under the old system I employed 63
persons; after the introduction of improved machinery I reduced my hands to 33,
and lately, in consequence of new and extensive alterations, I have been in a position
to reduce those 33 to 13
}}}
Machinery and Modern Industry.
451
power to the carpet-loom, to the ribbon-loom, and to the linen-
loom, which previously had been worked by the power of
men.¹ Hence the increase of the hands in these latter trades
was merely a symptom of a diminution in the total number
employed. Finally, we have considered this question entirely
apart from the fact, that everywhere, except in the metal
industries, young persons (under 18), and women and children
form the preponderating element in the class of factory
hands.
Nevertheless, in spite of the mass of hands actually dis-
placed and virtually replaced by machinery, we can under-
stand how the factory operatives, through the building of
more mills and the extension of old ones in a given industry,
may become more numerous than the manufacturing work-
men and handicraftsmen that have been displaced. Suppose,
for example, that in the old mode of production, a capital of
£500 is employed weekly, two-fifths being constant and three-
fifths variable capital, i.e., £200 being laid out in means of
production, and £300, say £1 per man, in labour-power. On
the introduction of machinery the composition of this capital
becomes altered. We will suppose it to consist of four-fifths
constant and one-fifth variable, which means that only £100 is
now laid out in labour-power. Consequently, two-thirds of
the workmen are discharged. If now the business extends,
and the total capital employed grows to £1500 under un-
changed conditions, the number of operatives employed will
increase to 300, just as many as before the introduction of the
machinery. If the capital further grows to £2000, 400 men
will be employed, or one-third more than under the old system.
Their numbers have, in point of fact, increased by 100, but
relatively, i.e., in proportion to the total capital advanced,
they have diminished by 800, for the £2000 capital would, in the
old state of things, have employed 1200 instead of 400 men.
Hence, a relative decrease in the number of hands is con-
sistent with an actual increase. We assumed above that
while the total capital increases, its composition remains the
same, because the conditions of production remain constant.
1 See "Reports, &c., 31 Oct., 1856,” p. 16.
2
7
-
452
Capitalist Production.
4-0
But we have already seen that, with every advance in the use
of machinery, the constant component of capital, that part
which consists of machinery, raw material, &c., increases,
while the variable component, the part laid out in labour-
power, decreases. We also know that in no other system of pro-
duction is improvement so continuous, and the composition of
the capital employed so constantly changing as in the factory
system. These changes are, however, continually interrupted
by periods of rest, during which there is a mere quantitative
extension of the factories on the existing technical basis.
During such periods the operatives increase in number. Thus,
in 1835, the total number of operatives in the cotton, woollen,
worsted, flax, and silk factories of the United Kingdom was
only 354,684; while in 1861 the number of the power-loom
weavers alone (of both sexes and of all ages, from eight years
upwards), amounted to 230,654. Certainly, this growth
appears less important when we consider that in 1838 the
hand-loom weavers with their families still numbered 800,000,¹
not to mention those thrown out of work in Asia, and on the
Continent of Europe.
In the few remarks I have still to make on this point, I
shall refer to some actually existing relations, the existence of
which our theoretical investigation has not yet disclosed.
So long as, in a given branch of industry, the factory system
extends itself at the expense of the old handicrafts or of manu-
facture, the result is as sure as is the result of an encounter
between an army furnished with breach-loaders, and one
armed with bows and arrows. This first period, during
which machinery conquers its field of action, is of decisive
importance owing to the extraordinary profits that it helps to
produce. These profits not only form a source of accelerated
accumulation, but also attract into the favoured sphere of pro-
duction a large part of the additional social capital that is
1 "The sufferings of the hand-loom weavers were the subject of an inquiry by a
Royal Commission, but although their distress was acknowledged and lamented, the
amelioration of their condition was left, and probably necessarily so, to the chances
and changes of time, which it may now be hoped " [20 years later!] "have nearly
obliterated those miseries, and not improbably by the present great extension of the
power-loom." ("Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31 Oct., 1856," p. 15.)
Machinery and Modern Industry.
453
being constantly created, and is ever on the look-out for new
investments. The special advantages of this first period of fast
and furious activity are felt in every branch of production
that machinery invades. So soon, however, as the factory
system has gained a certain breadth of footing and a definite
degree of maturity, and, especially, so soon as its technical
basis, machinery, is itself produced by machinery; so soon as
coal mining and iron mining, the metal industries, and the
means of transport have been revolutionised; so soon, in short,
as the general conditions requisite for production by the
modern industrial system have been established, this mode
of production acquires an elasticity, a capacity for sudden
extension by leaps and bounds that finds no hindrance except
in the supply of raw material and in the disposal of the pro-
duce. On the one hand, the immediate effect of machinery is
to increase the supply of raw material in the same way, for
example, as the cotton gin augmented the production of
cotton. On the other hand, the cheapness of the articles pro-
duced by machinery, and the improved means of transport
and communication furnish the weapons for conquering foreign
markets. By ruining handicraft production in other countries,
machinery forcibly converts them into fields for the supply of
its raw material. In this way East India was compelled to
produce cotton, wool, hemp, jute, and indigo for Great
Britain. By constantly making a part of the hands "super-
numerary," modern industry, in all countries where it has
taken root, gives a spur to emigration and to the colonization
of foreign lands, which are thereby converted into settlements
for growing the raw material of the mother country; just as
Australia, for example, was converted into a colony for growing
wool.3 A new and international division of labour, a division
1 Other ways in which machinery affects the production of raw material will be
mentioned in the third book.
2 EXPORT OF COTTON FROM INDIA TO GREAT BRITAIN.
1846.-34,540,143 lbs. 1860.-204,141,168 lbs. 1865.-445,947,600 lbs.
3 EXPORT OF WOOL FROM INDIA TO GREAT BRITAIN.
1846.-4,570,581 lbs. 1860.-20,214,173 lbs. 1865.-20,679,111 lbs.
EXPORT OF WOOL FROM THE CAPE TO GREAT BRITAIN.
1846.-2,958,457 lbs. 1860.-16,574,345 lbs. 1865.-29,920,623 lbs.
EXPORT OF WOOL FROM AUSTRALIA TO GREAT BRITAIN.
1846.-21,789,346 lbs. 1860.-59,166,616 lbs. 1865.-109,734,261 lbs.
454
Capitalist Production.
suited to the requirements of the chief centres of modern
industry springs up, and converts one part of the globe into a
chiefly agricultural field of production, for supplying the other
part which remains a chiefly industrial field. This revolution
hangs together with radical changes in agriculture which we
need not here further inquire into.¹
On the motion of Mr. Gladstone, the House of Commons
ordered, on the 17th February, 1867, a return of the total
quantities of grain, corn, and flour, of all sorts, imported into,
and exported from, the United Kingdom, between the years
The
1831 and 1866. I give below a summary of the result.
flour is given in quarters of corn.
QUINQUENNIAL FERIODS AND THE YEAR 1866.
ANNUAL AVERAGE.
Import (Qrs.)
Export
Excess of Import over ex-
port.
>>
POPULATION.
Yearly average in each
period,
Average quantity of corn,
&c., in qrs., consumed an-
nually per head over and
above the home produce
consumed,
Wheat, cwts.
Barley,
Oats,
""
""
Rye,
Flour,
Buckwheat, cwts.
""
""
TOD
I The economical development of the United States is itself a product of European,
more especially of English modern industry. In their present form (1866) the States
must still be considered a European colony.
EXPORT OF COTTON FROM THE UNITED STATES TO GREAT BRITAIN.
1846.-401,949,393 lbs.
1,115,890,608 lbs.
1852.—765,630,543 lbs.
EXPORT OF CORN, &C., FROM THE UNITED STATES TO GREAT BRITAIN.
1862.
...
***
...
***
...
...
•**
1831-1835. | 1836-1840. | 1841-1845. | 1846-1850.
:
1,096,373 2,389,729 2,843,865 8,776,552
225,363 251,770 139,056 155,461
871,110 2,137,959 2,704,809 8,621,091
24,621,107 25,929,507 | 27,262,569 27,797,598
0.036
0.082
1850.
16,202,312
3,669,653
3,174,801
388,749
3,819,440
1054
:
1859.-961,707,264 lbs. 1860.-
...
•
...
...
...
...
0·099
•••
0.310
:
41,033,503
6,624,800
4,426,994
7,108
7,207,113
19,571
T
Machinery and Modern Industry.
455
QUINQUENNIAL PERIODS, &c.-(CONTINUED.)


ANNUAL Average.
Import (Qrs.)
Export
Excess of Import over Ex-
port,
""
POPULATION.
Yearly average in each
period,
Average quantity of corn,
&c., in Qrs., consumed an-
nually per head over and
above the home produce
consumed,
Maize, cwts.
Bere or Bigg (a sort of
of }
Barley), cwts.
Peas, cwts.
Beans,
>>
Total exports,
...
...
...
···
-
The enormous power, inherent in the factory system, of ex-
panding by jumps, and the dependence of that system on the
markets of the world, necessarily beget feverish production,
followed by over-filling of the markets, whereupon contraction
of the markets brings on crippling of production. The life of
modern industry becomes a series of periods of moderate
activity, prosperity, over-production, crisis and stagnation.
The uncertainty and instability to which machinery subjects
the employment, and consequently the conditions of existence,
of the operatives become normal, owing to these periodic
changes of the industrial cycle. Except in the periods of pros-
perity, there rages between the capitalists the most furious.
combat for the share of each in the markets. This share is
directly proportional to the cheapness of the product. Besides
the rivalry that this struggle begets in the application
of improved machinery for replacing labour-power, and of new
methods of production, there also comes a time in every indus-
:
...
1851-1855. 1856-1860. 1861-1865. 1866.
8,345,237 10,912,612 15,009,871 16,457,340
307,491 341,150 302,754 216, 218
8,037,746 10,572,462 14,707,117 16,241,122
27,572,923 28,391,544 29,381,460 29,935,404
0.291
1850.
5,473,161
2039
0.372
811,620
1,822,972
34,365,801
...
...
...
···
...
...
..
...
...
0.543
...
1862.
11,694,818
7675
1,024,722
2,037,137
74,083,351
0.543
455
Capitalist Production.
trial cycle, when a forcible reduction of wages beneath the
value of labour-power, is attempted for the purpose of
cheapening commodities.'
A necessary condition, therefore, to the growth of the number
of factory hands, is a proportionally much more rapid growth of
the amount of capital invested in mills. This growth, however,
is conditioned by the ebb and flow of the industrial cycle. It
is, besides, constantly interrupted by the technical progress
that at one time virtually supplies the place of new workmen,
at another, actually displaces old ones. This qualitative change
in mechanical industry continually discharges hands from
the factory, or shuts its doors against the fresh stream of recruits,
while the purely quantitative extension of the factories absorbs
not only the men thrown out of work, but also fresh contin-
gents. The workpeople are thus continually both repelled and
attracted, hustled from pillar to post, while, at the same time,
constant changes take place in the sex, age, and skill of the levies.
The lot of the factory operatives will be best depicted by tak-
ing a rapid survey of the course of the English cotton industry.
27
1 In an appeal made in July, 1866, to the Trade Societies of England, by the shoe-
makers of Leicester, who had been thrown on the streets by a lock-out, it is stated :
"Twenty years ago the Leicester shoe trade was revolutionised by the introduction.
of riveting in the place of stitching. At that time good wages could be earned.
Great competition was shown between the different firms as to which could turn out
the neatest article. Shortly afterwards, however, a worse kind of competition sprang
up, namely, that of underselling one another in the market. The injurious con-
sequences soon manifested themselves in reductions of wages, and so sweepingly
quick was the fall in the price of labour, that many firms now pay only one half of
the original wages. And yet, though wages sink lower and lower, profits appear,
with each alteration in the scale of wages, to increase. Even bad times are utilized
by the manufacturers, for making exceptional profits by excessive lowering of wages,
i.e., by a direct robbery of the labourer's means of subsistence. One example (it has
reference to the crisis in the Coventry silk weaving): "From information I have received
from manufacturers as well as workmen, there seems to be no doubt that wages have
been reduced to a greater extent than either the competition of the foreign producers, or
other circumstances have rendered necessary the majority of weavers are
working at a reduction of 30 to 40 per cent. in their wages. A piece of ribbon for
making which the weaver got 6s. or 7s, five years back, now only brings them 3s. 3d.
or 3s. 6d. ; other work is now priced at 2s. and 2s. 3d. which was formerly priced at
4s. and 4s 3d. The reduction in wage seems to have been carried to a greater extent
than is necessary for increasing demand. Indeed, the reduction in the cost of weav-
ing, in the case of many descriptions of ribbons, has not been accompanied by any
corresponding reduction in the selling price of the manufactured article." (Mr. F.
D. Longe's Report. "Ch. Emp. Com., V. Rep., 1866," p. 114, 1.)
•
Machinery and Modern Industry.
457
From 1770 to 1815 this trade was depressed or stagnant for
5 years only. During this period of 45 years the English
manufacturers had a monopoly of machinery and of the markets
of the world. From 1815 to 1821 depression; 1822 and 1823
prosperity; 1824 abolition of the laws against Trades' Unions,
great extension of factories everywhere; 1825 crisis; 1826
great misery and riots among the factory operatives; 1827
slight improvement; 1828 great increase in power-looms, and
in exports; 1829 exports, especially to India, surpass all
former years; 1830 glutted markets, great distress; 1831 to
1833 continued depression, the monopoly of the trade with
India and China withdrawn from the East India Company;
1834 great increase of factories and machinery, shortness of
hands. The new poor law furthers the migration of agricultural
labourers into the factory districts. The country districts
swept of children. White slave trade; 1835 great prosperity,
contemporaneous starvation of the handloom weavers; 1836
great prosperity; 1837 and 1838 depression and crisis; 1839
revival; 1840 great depression, riots, calling out of the
military; 1841 and 1842 frightful suffering among the factory
operatives; 1842 the manufacturers lock the hands out of
the factories in order to enforce the repeal of the Corn Laws.
The operatives stream in thousands into the towns of Lanca-
shire and Yorkshire, are driven back by the military, and
their leaders brought to trial at Lancaster; 1843 great misery;
1844 revival; 1845 great prosperity; 1846 continued improve-
ment at first, then reaction. Repeal of the Corn Laws; 1847
crisis, general reduction of wages by 10 and more per cent.
in honour of the "big loaf;" 1848 continued depression;
Manchester under military protection; 1849 revival; 1850
prosperity; 1851 falling prices, low wages, frequent strikes;
1852 improvement begins, strikes continue, the manu-
facturers threaten to import foreign hands; 1853 increasing
exports. Strike for 8 months, and great misery at Preston;
1854 prosperity, glutted markets; 1855 news of failures
stream in from the United States, Canada, and the Eastern
markets; 1856 great prosperity; 1857 crisis; 1858 improve-
ment; 1859 great prosperity, increase in factories; 1860
>>
458
Capitalist Production.
Zenith of the English cotton trade, the Indian, Australian, and
other markets so glutted with goods that even in 1863 they
had not absorbed the whole lot; the French Treaty of Commerce,
enormous growth of factories and machinery; 1861 prosperity
continues for a time, reaction, the American civil war, cotton
famine; 1862 to 1863 complete collapse.
The history of the cotton famine is too characteristic to dis-
pense with dwelling upon it for a moment. From the indi-
cations as to the condition of the markets of the world in 1860
and 1861, we see that the cotton famine came in the nick of
time for the manufacturers, and was to some extent advan-
tageous to them, a fact that was acknowledged in the reports
of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, proclaimed in Par-
liament by Palmerston and Derby, and confirmed by events.¹
No doubt, among the 2887 cotton mills in the United Kingdom
in 1861, there were many of small size. According to the
report of Mr. A. Redgrave, out of the 2109 mills included in
his district, 392 or 19% employed less than ten horse-power
each; 345, or 16% employed 10 H. P., and less than 20 H. P.;
while 1372 employed upwards of 20 H. P. The majority of
the small mills were weaving sheds, built during the period of
prosperity after 1858, for the most part by speculators, of
whom one supplied the yarn, another the machinery, a third
the buildings, and were worked by men who had been over-
lookers, or by other persons of small means. These small
manufacturers mostly went to the wall. The same fate would
have overtaken them in the commercial crisis that was staved
off only by the cotton famine. Although they formed one-
third of the total number of manufacturers, yet their mills
absorbed a much smaller part of the capital invested in the
cotton trade. As to the extent of the stoppage, it appears
from authentic estimates, that in October 1862, 60.3% of the
spindles, and 58% of the looms were standing. This refers to
the cotton trade as a whole, and, of course, requires consider-
able modification for individual districts. Only very few mills
worked full time (60 hours a week), the remainder worked at
intervals. Even in those few cases where full time was
1 Conf. Reports of Insp. of Fact. 31st October, 1862, p. 30. 2 1. c., p. 19.
N
1
Machinery and Modern Industry.
459
worked, and at the customary rate of piece-wage, the weekly
wages of the operatives necessarily shrank, owing to good
cotton being replaced by bad, Sea Island by Egyptian (in fine.
spinning mills), American and Egyptian by Surat, and pure
cotton by mixings of waste and Surat. The shorter fibre of
the Surat cotton and its dirty condition, the greater fragility
of the thread, the substitution of all sorts of heavy ingredients
for flour in sizing the warps, all these lessened the speed of the
machinery, or the number of the looms that could be superin-
tended by one weaver, increased the labour caused by defects
in the machinery, and reduced the piece-wage by reducing the
mass of the product turned off. Where Surat cotton was used,
the loss to the operatives when on full time, amounted to 20,
30, and more per cent. But besides this, the majority of the
manufacturers reduced the rate of piece-wage by 5, 71, and 10
per cent. We can therefore conceive the situation of those
hands who were employed for only 3, 3 or 4 days a week, or
for only 6 hours a day. Even in 1863, after a comparative
improvement had set in, the weekly wages of spinners and of
weavers were 3s. 4d., 3s. 10d., 4s. 6d. and 5s. 1d. Even in
this miserable state of things, however, the inventive spirit of
the master never stood still, but was exercised in making
deductions from wages. These were to some extent inflicted
as a penalty for defects in the finished article that were really
due to his bad cotton and to his unsuitable machinery. More-
over, where the manufacturer owned the cottages of the work-
people, he paid himself his rents by deducting the amount
from these miserable wages. Mr. Redgrave tells us of self-
acting minders (operatives who manage a pair of self-acting
mules) "earning at the end of a fortnight's full work Ss. 11d.,
and that from this sum was deducted the rent of the house,
the manufacturer, however, returning half the rent as a gift.
The minders took away the sum of 6s. 11d. In many places.
the self-acting minders ranged from 5s. to 9s. per week, and
the weavers from 2s. to 6s. per week, during the latter part of
1862." Even when working short time the rent was fre-
quently deducted from the wages of the operatives.
No
2
1 "Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1865," pp. 41-45.
2 "Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1863,“
3 1. c., p. 51.
460
Capitalist Production.
wonder that in some parts of Lancashire a kind of famine
fever broke out. But more characteristic than all this, was
the revolution that took place in the process of production at
the expense of the workpeople. Experimenta in corpore vili,
like those of anatomists on frogs, were formally made. "Al-
though," says Mr. Redgrave, “ I have given the actual earnings
of the operatives in the several mills, it does not follow that
they earn the same amount week by week. The operatives
are subject to great fluctuation from the constant experi-
mentalizing of the manufacturers. . . . the earnings of the
operatives rise and fall with the quality of the cotton mixings;
sometimes they have been within 15 per cent. of former
earnings, and then, in a week or two, they have fallen off from
50 to 60 per cent." These experiments were not made solely
at the expense of the workman's means of subsistence. His
five senses also had to pay the penalty. 'The people who are
employed in making up Surat cotton complain very much.
They inform me, on opening the bales of cotton there is an
intolerable smell, which causes sickness . . . . In the mixing,
scribbling and carding rooms, the dust and dirt which are
disengaged, irritate the air passages, and give rise to cough
and difficulty of breathing. A disease of the skin, no doubt
from the irritation of the dirt contained in the Surat cotton,
also prevails... The fibre being so short, a great amount of
size, both animal and vegetable, is used. . . . Bronchitis is
more prevalent owing to the dust. Inflammatory sore throat
is common, from the same cause. Sickness and dyspepsia are
produced by the frequent breaking of the weft, when the
weaver sucks the weft through the eye of the shuttle." On
the other hand, the substitutes for flour were a Fortunatus'
purse to the manufacturers, by increasing the weight of the
yarn. They caused “15 lbs. of raw material to weigh 26 lbs.
after it was woven." In the Report of Inspectors of Factories
for 30th April, 1864, we read as follows: "The trade is avail-
ing itself of this resource at present to an extent which is
even discreditable. I have beard on good authority of a cloth
weighing 8 lbs. which was made of 51 lbs. cotton and 2 lbs.
2 1. c., pp., 62-63.
1 1. c., pp. 50-51.
CC
Machinery and Modern Industry.
461
size; and of another cloth weighing 51 lbs., of which 2 lbs.
was size. These were ordinary export shirtings. In cloths of
other descriptions, as much as 50 per cent. size is sometimes
added; so that a manufacturer may, and does truly boast, that
he is getting rich by selling cloth for less money per pound
than he paid for the mere yarn of which they are composed."¹
But the workpeople had to suffer, not only from the experi-
ments of the manufacturers inside the mills, and of the muni-
cipalities outside, not only from reduced wages and absence of
work, from want and from charity, and from the eulogistic
speeches of lords and commons. "Unfortunate females who,
in consequence of the cotton famine, were at its commence-
ment thrown out of employment, and have thereby become
outcasts of society; and now, though trade has revived, and
work is plentiful, continue members of that unfortunate class,
and are likely to continue so. There are also in the borough
more youthful prostitutes than I have known for the last 25
years."
KAT
2
We find then, in the first 45 years of the English cotton
trade, from 1770 to 1815, only 5 years of crisis and stagnation;
but this was the period of monopoly. The second period from
1815 to 1863 counts, during its 48 years, only 20 years of
revival and prosperity against 28 of depression and stagnation.
Between 1815 and 1830 the competition with the continent of
Europe and with the United States sets in. After 1833, the
extension of the Asiatic markets is enforced by "destruction of
the human race" (the wholesale extinction of Indian handloom
weavers). After the repeal of the Corn Laws, from 1846 to 1863,
there are 8 years of moderate activity and prosperity against 9
years of depression and stagnation. The condition of the adult
male operatives, even during the years of prosperity, may be
judged from the note subjoined.³
1 Rep. &c. 30th April, 1864., p. 27.
2 From a letter of Mr. Harris, Chief Constable of Bolton, in Rep. of Insp. of Fact.
31st October, 1865, pp. 61-62.
3 In an appeal, dated 1863, of the factory operatives of Lancashire, &c., for the
"That
purpose of forming a society for organised emigration, we find the following:
a large emigration of factory workers is now absolutely essential to raise them from
their present prostrate condition, few will deny; but to show that a continuous
stream of emigration is at all times demanded, and, without which it is impossible
462
Capitalist Production.
SECTION 8.— REVOLUTION EFFECTED IN MANUFACTURE, HANDICRAFTS, AND
DOMESTIC INDUSTRY BY MODERN INDUSTRY.
a. Overthrow of Co-operation based on Handicraft and on the
Division of Labour.
We have seen how machinery does away with co-operation
based on handicrafts, and with manufacture based on the divi-
sion of handicraft labour. An example of the first sort is the
mowing-machine; it replaces co-operation between mowers.
A striking example of the second kind, is the needle-making
machine. According to Adam Smith, 10 men, in his day, made
in co-operation, over 48,000 needles a-day. On the other hand,
a single needle-machine makes 145,000 in a working day of 11
hours. One woman or one girl superintends four such machines,
and so produces near upon 600,000 needles in a day, and up-
wards of 3,000,000 in a week. A single machine, when it
takes the place of co-operation or of manufacture, may itself
serve as the basis of an industry of a handicraft character.
Still, such a return to handicrafts is but a transition to the
for them to maintain their position in ordinary times, we beg to call attention to the
subjoined facts :-In 1814 the official value of cotton goods exported was £17,665,378,
whilst the real marketable value was £20,070,824. In 1858 the official value of cotton
goods exported, was £182,221,681; but the real or marketable value was only
£43,001,322, being a ten-fold quantity sold for little more than double the former
price. To produce results so disadvantageous to the country generally, and to the
factory workers in particular, several causes have co-operated, which, had circum-
stances permitted, we should have brought more proininently under your notice;
suffice it for the present to say that the most obvious one is the constant redundancy
of labour, without which a trade so ruinous in its effects never could have been carried
on, and which requires a constantly extending market to save it from annihilation.
Our cotton mills may be brought to a stand by the periodical stagnations of trade,
which, under present arrangements, are as inevitable as death itself; but the human
mind is constantly at work, and although we believe we are under the mark in stating
that six millions of persons have left these shores during the last 25 years, yet, from
the natural increase of population, and the displacement of labour to cheapen pro-
duction, a large percentage of the male adults in the most prosperous times find it
impossible to obtain work in factories on any conditions whatever." ("Reports of Insp.
of Fact., 30th April, 1863," pp. 51-52.) We shall, in a later chapter, see how our
friends, the manufacturers, endeavoured, during the catastrophe in the cotton trade,
to prevent by every means, including State interference, tho emigration of the
operatives.
1"Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Report, 1864," p. 108, n. 447.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
463
factory system, which, as a rule, makes its appearance so soon
as the human muscles are replaced, for the purpose of driving
the machines, by a mechanical motive power, such as steam or
water. Here and there, but in any case only for a time, an
industry may be carried on, on a small scale, by means of
mechanical power. This is effected by hiring steam power, as
is done in some of the Birmingham trades, or by the use of
small caloric-engines, as in some branches of weaving. In the
Coventry silk weaving industry the experiment of “ cottage
factories" was tried. In the centre of a square surrounded by
rows of cottages, an engine-house was built and the engine
connected by shafts with the looms in the cottages. In all
cases the power was hired at so much per loom. The rent
was payable weekly, whether the looms worked or not. Each
cottage held from 2 to 6 looms; some belonged to the weaver,
some were bought on credit, some were hired. The struggle
between these cottage factories and the factory proper, lasted
over 12 years. It ended with the complete ruin of the 300
cottage-factories. Wherever the nature of the process did not
involve production on a large scale, the new industries that
have sprung up in the last few decades, such as envelope mak-
ing, steel-pen making, &c., have, as a general rule, first passed
through the handicraft stage, and then the manufacturing
stage, as short phases of transition to the factory stage. The
transition is very difficult in those cases where the production
of the article by manufacture consists, not of a series of
graduated processes, but of a great number of disconnected ones.
This circumstance formed a great hindrance to the establishment
of steel-pen factories. Nevertheless, about 15 years ago, a
machine was invented that automatically performed 6 separate
operations at once. The first steel-pens were supplied by the
handicraft system, in the year 1820, at £7 4s. the gross; in 1830
they were supplied by manufacture at Ss., and to-day the factory
2
1 In the United States the restoration in this way, of handicrafts based on machinery
is frequent; and therefore, when the inevitable transition to the factory system shall
take place, the ensuing concentration will, compared with Europe and even with
England, stride on in seven-league boots.
See "Rep. of Insp. of Fact, 31st Oct., 1865," p. 64.
464
Capitalist Production.
system supplies them to the trade at from 2s. to 6d. the
gross.¹
b. Re-action of the Factory System on Manufacture and
Domestic Industries.
Along with the development of the factory system and of
the revolution in agriculture that accompanies it, production
in all the other branches of industry not only extends, but
alters its character. The principle, carried out in the factory
system, of analysing the process of production into its con-
stituent phases, and of solving the problems thus proposed by
the application of mechanics, of chemistry, and of the whole
range of the natural sciences, becomes the determining prin-
ciple everywhere. Hence, machinery squeezes itself into the
manufacturing industries first for one detail process, then for
another. Thus the solid crystal of their organisation, based on
the old division of labour, becomes dissolved, and makes way
for constant changes. Independently of this, a radical change
takes place in the composition of the collective labourer, a
change of the persons working in combination. In contrast
with the manufacturing period, the division of labour is thence-
forth based, wherever possible, on the employment of women,
of children of all ages, and of unskilled labourers, in one word,
on cheap labour, as it is characteristically called in England.
This is the case not only with all production on a large scale,
whether employing machinery or not, but also with the so-
called domestic industry, whether carried on in the houses of
the workpeople or in small workshops. This modern so-called
domestic industry has nothing, except the name, in common
with the old-fashioned domestic industry, the existence of
which presupposes independent urban handicrafts, independent
peasant farming, and above all, a dwelling-house for the labourer
1 Mr. Gillott erected in Birmingham the first steel-pen factory on a large scale. It
produced, so early as 1851, over 180,000,000 of pens yearly, and consumed 120 tons of
steel. Birmingham has the monopoly of this industry in the United Kingdom, and
at present produces thousands of millions of steel pens. According to the Census of
1861, the number of persons employed was 1428, of whom 1268 females from 5 years
of age upwards.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
465
and his family. That old-fashioned industry has now been
converted into an outside department of the factory, the manu-
factory, or the warehouse. Besides the factory operatives, the
manufacturing workmen and the handicraftsmen, whom it
concentrates in large masses at one spot, and directly com-
mands, capital also sets in motion, by means of invisible
threads, another army; that of the workers in the domestic
industries, who dwell in the large towns and are also scattered
over the face of the country. An example: The shirt factory
of Messrs. Tillie at Londonderry, which employs 1000 opera-
tives in the factory itself, and 9000 people spread up and down
the country and working in their own houses.¹
The exploitation of cheap and immature labour-power is
carried out in a more shameless manner in modern Manufacture
than in the factory proper. This is because the technical
foundation of the factory system, namely, the substitution of
machines for muscular power, and the light character of the
labour, is almost entirely absent in Manufacture, and at the
same time women and over-young children are subjected, in a
most unconscionable way, to the influence of poisonous or in-
jurious substances. This exploitation is more shameless in the
so-called domestic industry than in manufactures, and that
because the power of resistance in the labourers decreases with
their dissemination; because a whole series of plundering
parasites insinuate themselves between the employer and the
workman; because a domestic industry has always to compete.
either with the factory system, or with manufacturing in the
same branch of production; because poverty robs the workman
of the conditions most essential to his labour, of space, light and
ventilation; because employment becomes more and more irre-
gular; and, finally, because in these the last resorts of the
masses made "redundant" by Modern Industry and Agricul-
ture, competition for work attains its maximum. Economy in
the means of production, first systematically carried out in
the factory system, and there, from the very beginning, co-
incident with the most reckless squandering of labour-power,
and robbery of the conditions normally requisite for labour-this
1 Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep. 1864, p. LXVIII., n. 415.
2 G
466
Capitalist Production.
economy now shows its antagonistic and murderous side more
and more in a given branch of industry, the less the social
productive power of labour and the technical basis for a com-
bination of processes are developed in that branch.
c. Modern Manufacture.
1
I now proceed, by a few examples, to illustrate the principles
laid down above. As a matter of fact, the reader is already
familiar with numerous instances given in the chapter on the
working day. In the hardware manufactures of Birmingham
and the neighbourhood, there are employed, mostly in very
heavy work, 30,000 children and young persons, besides 10,000
women. There they are to be seen in the unwholesome brass-
foundries, button factories, enamelling, galvanizing, and lacker-
ing works. Owing to the excessive labour of their work-
people, both adult and non-adult, certain London houses where
newspapers and books are printed, have got the ill-omened
name of "slaughter-houses." 2 Similar excesses are practised
in bookbinding, where the victims are chiefly women, girls, and
children; young persons have to do heavy work in rope-walks
and night-work in salt mines, candle manufactories, and
chemical works; young people are worked to death at turning
the looms in silk weaving, when it is not carried on by
machinery. One of the most shameful, the most dirty, and
the worst paid kinds of labour, and one on which women and
young girls are by preference employed, is the sorting of rags.
It is well known that Great Britain, apart from its own im-
mensc store of rags, is the emporium for the rag trade of the
whole world. They flow in from Japan, from the most remote
States of South America, and from the Canary Islands. But
the chief sources of their supply are Germany, France, Russia,
Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Belgium, and Holland. They are used
for manure, for making bed-flocks, for shoddy, and they
3
1 And now forsooth children are employed at file-cutting in Sheffield.
2 Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. 1866, p. 3, n. 24, p. 6, n. 55, 56, p. 7, n. 59, 60.
3 L.c. pp. 114, 115, n. 6, 7. The commissioner justly remarks that though as a
rule machines take the place of men, here literally young persons replace machines.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
467
serve as the raw material of paper. The rag-sorters are the
medium for the spread of small-pox and other infectious
diseases, and they themselves are the first victims.¹ A classical
example of over-work, of hard and inappropriate labour, and
of its brutalising effects on the workman from his childhood
upwards, is afforded not only by coal-mining and miners
generally, but also by tile and brick making, in which industry
the recently invented machinery is, in England, used only here
and there. Between May and September the work lasts from
5 in the morning till 8 in the evening, and where the drying
is done in the open air, it often lasts from 4 in the morning till
9 in the evening. Work from 5 in the morning till 7 in the
evening is considered "reduced" and "moderate." Both boys.
and girls of 6 and even of 4 years of age are employed. They
work for the same number of hours, often longer, than the
adults. The work is hard and the summer heat increases the
exhaustion. In a certain tile field at Mosley, e.g., a young
woman, 24 years of age, was in the habit of making 2000 tiles
a day, with the assistance of 2 little girls, who carried the clay
for her, and stacked the tiles. These girls carried daily 10 tons
up the slippery sides of the clay pits, from a depth of 30 feet,
and then for a distance of 210 feet. "It is impossible for a
child to pass through the purgatory of a tile-field without great
moral degradation
the low language, which they are
accustomed to hear from their tenderest years, the filthy, in-
decent, and shameless habits, amidst which, unknowing, and
half wild, they grow up, make them in after life lawless,
abandoned, dissolute.
A frightful source of demora-
lization is the mode of living. Each moulder, who is always a
skilled labourer, and the chief of a group, supplies his 7 sub-
ordinates with board and lodging in his cottage. Whether
members of his family or not, the men, boys, and girls all sleep
in the cottage, which contains generally two, exceptionally 3
rooms, all on the ground floor, and badly ventilated. These
people are so exhausted after the day's hard work, that neither
the rules of health, of cleanliness, nor of decency are in the
1 See the Report on the rag trade, and numerous details in Public Health, VIII.
Rep. Lond. 1866, app. pp. 196, 208.
468
Capitalist Production.
least observed. Many of these cottages are models of untidi-
ness, dirt, and dust.
The greatest evil of the system
that employs young girls on this sort of work, consists in this,
that, as a rule, it chains them fast from childhood for the whole
of their after-life to the most abandoned rabble. They become
rough, foul-mouthed boys, before Nature has taught them that
they are women. Clothed in a few dirty rags, the legs naked
far above the knees, hair and face besmeared with dirt, they
learn to treat all feelings of decency and of shame with con-
tempt. During meal-times they lie at full length in the fields,
or watch the boys bathing in a neighbouring canal. Their
heavy day's work at length completed, they put on better
clothes, and accompany the men to the public houses." That
excessive insobriety is prevalent from childhood upwards among
the whole of this class, is only natural. "The worst is that the
brickmakers despair of themselves. You might as well, said
one of the better kind to a chaplain of Southallfield, try to
raise and improve the devil as a brickie, sir!" 1
As to the manner in which capital effects an economy in the
requisites of labour, in modern Manufacture (in which I in-
clude all workshops of larger size, except factories proper),
official and most ample material bearing on it is to be found in
the Public Health Reports IV. (1863) and VI. (1864). The
description of the workshops, more especially those of the
London printers and tailors, surpasses the most loathsome
phantasies of our romance writers. The effect on the health of
the workpeople is self-evident. Dr. Simon, the chief medical
officer of the Privy Council and the official editor of the
"Public Health Reports," says: "In my fourth Report (1863)
I showed, how it is practically impossible for the workpeople
to insist upon that which is their first sanitary right, viz., the
right that, no matter what the work for which their employer
brings them together, the labour, so far as it depends upon
him, should be freed from all avoidably unwholesome conditions.
I pointed out, that while the workpeople are practically in-
capable of doing themselves this sanitary justice, they are
1 ('h. Empl. Comm. V. Rep., 1866, xvi., n. 96, 97, and p. 130, n. 39, 61. See also
III. Rep., 1864, p. 48, 56.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
469
unable to obtain any effective support from the paid
administrations of the sanitary police.
The life of
myriads of workmen and workwomen is now uselessly tortured
and shortened by the never-ending physical suffering that their
mere occupation begets." In illustration of the way in which
the workrooms influence the state of health, Dr. Simon gives
the following table of mortality."
Number of persons of all
ages em loyed in the re-
spective industries.
958,265
22,301 men
12,379 women
13,803
1
Industries compared
as regards
health.
Death rate per 100,000 men in
the respective industries be-
tween the stated ages.
AGE 25-35. AGE 35-15. AGE 45-55.
Agriculture in
England & Wales 743
805
London tailors 958
1,145
1,262 2,093
London printers 894 1,747 2,367
d. Modern Domestic Industry.
I now come to the so-called domestic industry. In order to
get an idea of the horrors of this sphere, in which capital con-
ducts its exploitation in the background of modern mechanical
industry, one must go to the apparently quite idyllic trade of
nail-making, carried on in a few remote villages of England.
In this place, however, it will be enough to give a few examples
from those branches of the lace-making and straw-plaiting
3
1 Public Health. Sixth Rep. Lond. 1864, p. 31.
21. c., p. 30. Dr. Simon remarks that the mortality among the London tailors and
printers between the ages of 25 and 35 is in fact much greater, because the employers
in London obtain from the country a great number of young people up to 30 years of
age, as "apprentices" and "improvers," who come for the purpose of being perfected
in their trade. These figure in the census as Londoners, they swell out the number
of heads on which the London death-rate is calculated, without adding proportionally
to the number of deaths in that place. The greater part of them in fact return to the
country, and especially in cases of severe illness. (1. c.)
3 I allude here to hammered nails, as distinguished from nails cut out and made by
machinery. See Child. Empl. Comm., Third Rep. p. xi. p. xix. n. 125-130, p. 53, n.
11, p. 114, n. 487, p. 137, n. 674.
470
Capitalist Production.
industries that are not yet carried on by the aid of machinery,
and that as yet do not compete with branches carried on in
factories or in manufactories.
Of the 150,000 persons employed in England in the produc-
tion of lace, about 10,000 fall under the authority of the
Factory Act, 1861. Almost the whole of the remaining
140,000 are women, young persons, and children of both sexes,
the male sex, however, being weakly represented. The state
of health of this cheap material for exploitation will be seen
from the following table, computed by Dr. Trueman, physician
to the Nottingham General Dispensary. Out of 686
female patients who were lace makers, most of them between
the ages of 17 and 24, the number of consumptive ones were:
1852.-1 in 45.
1853-1 in 28.
1854.-1 in 17.
1855.-1 in 18.
1856.-1 in 15.
1857.-1 in 13.
1861.-1 in 8.¹
1858.-1 in 15.
1859.-1 in 9.
1860.-1 in 8.
This progress in the rate of consumption ought to suffice for
the most optimist of progressists, and for the biggest hawker
of lies among the Free Trade bagmen of Germany.
The Factory Act of 1861 regulates the actual making of the
lace, so far as it is done by machinery, and this is the rule in
England. The branches that we are now about to examine,
solely with regard to those of the work people who work at
home, and not those who work in manufactories or ware-
houses, fall into two divisions, viz. (1), finishing; (2), mending.
The former gives the finishing touches to the machine-made
lace, and includes numerous sub-divisions.
"}
The lace finishing is done either in what are called "Mis-
tresses' Houses," or by women in their own houses, with or
without the help of their children. The women who keep the
"Mistresses' Houses are themselves poor. The workroom is
in a private house. The mistresses take orders from manufac-
turers, or from warehousemen, and employ as many women,
girls, and young children as the size of their rooms and the
fluctuating demand of the business will allow. The number
1 Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep., p. xxii., n. 166.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
471
of the work women employed in these workrooms varies from
20 to 40 in some, and from 10 to 20 in others. The average
age at which the children commence work is six years, but in
many cases it is below five. The usual working hours are
from 8 in the morning till eight in the evening, with 1 hours
for meals, which are taken at irregular intervals, and often in
the foul workrooms. When business is brisk, the labour fre-
quently lasts from 8 or even 6 o'clock in the morning till 10,
11, or 12 o'clock at night. In English barracks the regulation
space allotted to each soldier is 500-600 cubic feet, and in the
military hospitals 1200 cubic feet. But in those finishing
styes there are but 67 to 100 cubic feet to each person. At
the same time the oxygen of the air is consumed by gas-lights.
In order to keep the lace clean, and although the floor is tiled
or flagged, the children are often compelled, even in winter, to
pull off their shoes. It is not at all uncommon in Notting-
ham to find 14 to 20 children huddled together in a small
room, of, perhaps, not more than 12 feet square, and employed
for 15 hours out of the 24, at work that of itself is exhausting,
from its weariness and monotony, and is besides carried on under
every possible unwholesome condition. . . . . Even the
very
youngest children work with a strained attention and a
rapidity that is astonishing, hardly ever giving their fingers
rest or slowering their motion. If a question be asked them,
they never raise their eyes from their work from fear of losing
a single moment." The "long stick" is used by the mistresses
as a stimulant more and more as the working hours are pro-
longed. "The children gradually tire and become as restless
as birds towards the end of their long detention at an occupa-
tion that is monotonous, eye-straining, and exhausting from
the uniformity in the posture of the body. Their work is like
slavery." When women and their children work at home,
which now-a-days means in a hired room, often in a garret,
the state of things is, if possible, still worse. This sort of
work is given out within a circle of 80 miles radius from Not-
tingham. On leaving the warehouses at 9 or 10 o'clock at
night, the children are often given a bundle of lace to take
1 Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep., 1864, pp. xix., xx., xxi.
472
Capitalist Production.
I
home with them and finish. The Pharisee of a capitalist
represented by one of his servants, accompanies this action, of
course, with the unctuous phrase: "That's for mother," yet he
knows well enough that the poor children must sit up and help.¹
Pillow lace making is chiefly carried on in England in two
agricultural districts; one, the Honiton lace district, extending
from 20 to 30 miles along the south coast of Devonshire, and
including a few places in North Devon; the other comprising a
great part of the counties of Buckingham, Bedford, and North-
ampton, and also the adjoining portions of Oxfordshire and
Huntingdonshire. The cottages of the agricultural labourers
are the places where the work is usually carried on. Many
manufacturers employ upwards of 3000 of these lace makers,
who are chiefly children and young persons of the female sex
exclusively. The state of things described as incidental to
lace finishing is here repeated, save that instead of the "mis-
tresses' houses," we find what are called "lace schools," kept by
poor women in their cottages. From their fifth year and
often earlier, until their twelfth or fifteenth year, the children
work in these schools; during the first year the very young
ones work from four to eight hours, and later on, from six in
the morning till eight and ten o'clock at night.
The rooms
are generally the ordinary living rooms of small cottages, the
chimney stopped up to keep out draughts, the inmates kept
warm by their own animal heat alone, and this frequently in
winter. In other cases, these so-called school-rooms are like
small store-rooms without fire-places.
The overcrowd-
ing in these dens and the consequent vitiation of the air are
often extreme. Added to this is the injurious effect of drains,
privies, decomposing substances, and other filth usual in the
purlieus of the smaller cottages." With regard to space: "In
one lace school 18 girls and a mistress, 35 cubic feet to each
person; in another, where the smell was unbearable, 18 per-
sons and 24 cubic feet per head. In this industry are to be
found employed children of 2 and 2 years.'
Where lace-making ends in the counties of Buckingham and
Bedford, straw-plaiting begins, and extends over a large part
21. c., pp. xxix., xxx.
¹ 1, c., pp. xxi., xxvi.
"12
(C
"
Machinery and Modern Industry.
473
of Hertfordshire and the westerly and northerly parts of Essex.
In 1861, there were 40,043 persons employed in straw-plaiting
and straw-hat making; of these 3815 were males of all ages,
the rest females, of whom 14,913, including about 7000 children,
were under 20 years of age. In the place of the lace-schools
we find here the "straw-plait schools." The children com-
mence their instruction in straw-plaiting generally in their
4th, often between their 3rd and 4th year. Education, of
course, they get none. The children themselves call the ele-
mentary schools, "natural schools," to distinguish them from
these blood-sucking institutions, in which they are kept at
work simply to get through the task, generally 30 yards daily,
prescribed by their half-starved mothers. These same mothers
often make them work at home, after school is over, till 10, 11,
and 12 o'clock at night. The straw cuts their mouths, with
which they constantly moisten it, and their fingers. Dr.
Ballard gives it as the general opinion of the whole body of
medical officers in London, that 300 cubic feet is the minimum
space proper for each person in a bedroom or work-room. But
in the straw-plait schools space is more sparingly allotted than
in the lace-schools, "123, 17, 18 and below 22 cubic feet
for each person." The smaller of these numbers, says one of
the commissioners, Mr. White, represents less space than the half
of what a child would occupy if packed in a box measuring 3
feet in each direction. Thus do the children enjoy life till the
age of 12 or 14. The wretched half-starved parents think of
nothing but getting as much as possible out of their children.
The latter, as soon as they are grown up, do not care a farthing,
and naturally so, for their parents, and leave them. "It is no
wonder that ignorance and vice abound in a population so
brought up..
Their morality is at the lowest ebb,
... a great number of the women have illegitimate children,
and that at such an immature age that even those most con-
versant with criminal statistics are astounded."
"1 And the
native land of these model families is the pattern Christian
country for Europe; so says at least Count Montalembert, cer-
tainly a competent authority on Christianity!
11. c. pp. xl. xli,
474
Capitalist Production.
Wages in the above industries, miserable as they are (the
maximum wages of a child in the straw-plait schools rising in
rare cases to 3 shillings), are reduced far below their nominal
amount by the prevalence of the truck system everywhere, but
especially in the lace districts.¹
e. Passage of modern Manufacture, and Domestic Industry into
Modern Mechanical Industry. The hastening of this revo-
lution by the application of the Factory Acts to those
Industries.
The cheapening of labour-power, by sheer abuse of the
labour of women and children, by sheer robbery of every nor-
mal condition requisite for working and living, and by the
sheer brutality of over-work and night-work, meets at last
with natural obstacles that cannot be overstepped. So also,
when based on these methods, do the cheapening of com-
modities and capitalist exploitation in general. So soon as
this point is at last reached-and it takes many years-the
hour has struck for the introduction of machinery, and for the
thenceforth rapid conversion of the scattered domestic indus-
tries and also of manufactures into factory industries.
An example, on the most colossal scale, of this movement is
afforded by the production of wearing apparel. This industry,
according to the classification of the Childrens' Employment
Commission, comprises straw-hat makers, ladies'-hat makers,
cap-makers, tailors, milliners and dressmakers, shirt-makers,
corset-makers, glove-makers, shoemakers, besides many minor
branches, such as the making of neck-ties, collars, &c. In
1861, the number of females employed in these industries, in
England and Wales, amounted to 586,299, of these 115,242 at
the least were under 20, and 16,650 under 15 years of age.
The number of these work women in the United Kingdom in
1861, was 750,334. The number of males employed in Eng-
land and Wales, in hat-making, shoe-making, glove-making and
tailoring was 437,969; of these 14,964 under 15 years, 89,285
between 15 and 20, and 333,117 over 20 years. Many of the
1 Child. Empl. Comm. I. Rep. 1863, p. 185.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
475
smaller branches are not included in these figures. But take
the figures as they stand; we then have for England and
Wales alone, according to the census of 1861, a total of
1,024,277 persons, about as many as are absorbed by agricul-
ture and cattle breeding. We begin to understand what be-
comes of the immense quantities of goods conjured up by the
magic of machinery, and of the enormous masses of work-
people, which that machinery sets free.
W
The production of wearing apparel is carried on partly in
manufactories in whose workrooms there is but a reproduction
of that division of labour, the membra disjecta of which were
found ready to hand; partly by small master-handicraftsmen;
these, however, do not, as formerly, work for individual con-
sumers, but for manufactories and warehouses, and to such an
extent that often whole towns and stretches of country carry
on certain branches, such as shoe-making, as a speciality;
finally, on a very great scale by the so-called domestic workers,
who form an external department of the manufactories, ware-
houses, and even of the workshops of the smaller masters.¹
The raw material, &c., is supplied by mechanical industry,
the mass of cheap human material (taillable à merci et miséri-
corde) is composed of the individuals "liberated" by mechanical
industry and improved agriculture. The manufactures of this
class owed their origin chiefly to the capitalist's need of having
at hand an army ready equipped to meet any increase of
demand." These manufactures, nevertheless, allowed the
scattered handicrafts and domestic industries to continue to
exist as a broad foundation. The great production of surplus-
value in these branches of labour, and the progressive cheapen-
ing of their articles, were and are chiefly due to the minimum
wages paid, no more than requisite for a miserable vegetation,
and to the extension of working time up to the maximum en-
durable by the human organism. It was in fact by the
1 In England millinery and dressmaking are for the most part carried on, on the
premises of the employer, partly by work women who live there, partly by women.
who live off the premises.
2 Mr. White, a commissioner, visited a military clothing manufactory that employed
1000 to 1200 persons, almost all females, and a shoe manufactory with 1300 persons;
of these nearly one half were children and young persons.
476
Capitalist Production.
cheapness of the human sweat and the human blood, which
were converted into commodities, that the markets were
constantly being extended, and continue daily to be extended;
more especially was this the case with England's colonial
markets, where, besides, English tastes and habits prevail. At
last the critical point was reached. The basis of the old
method, sheer brutality in the exploitation of the workpeople,
accompanied more or less by a systematic division of labour,
no longer sufficed for the extending markets and for the still
more rapidly extending competition of the capitalists. The
hour struck for the advent of machinery. The decisively
revolutionary machine, the machine which attacks in an equal
degree the whole of the numberless branches of this sphere of
production, dressmaking, tailoring, shoe-making, sewing, hat-
making, and many others, is the sewing-machine.
Its immediate effect on the workpeople is like that of all
machinery, which, since the rise of modern industry, has seized
upon new branches of trade. Children of too tender an age are
sent adrift. The wage of the machine hands rises compared
with that of the house-workers, many of whom belong to the
poorest of the poor. That of the better situated handicraftsmen,
with whom the machine competes, sinks. The new machine
hands are exclusively girls and young women. With the help
of mechanical force, they destroy the monopoly that male
labour had of the heavier work, and they drive off from the
lighter work numbers of old women and very young children.
The overpowering competition crushes the weakest of the
manual labourers. The fearful increase in death from starvation
during the last 10 years in London runs parallel with the
extension of machine sewing. The new work women turn the
machines by hand and foot, or by hand alone, sometimes sitting,
sometimes standing, according to the weight, size, and special
make of the machine, and expend a great deal of labour-power.
Their occupation is unwholesome, owing to the long hours,
although in most cases they are not so long as under the old
1 An instance. The weekly report of deaths by the Registrar General dated 26th
Feb., 1864, contains 5 cases of death from starvation. On the same day the "Times'
reports another case. Six victims of starvation in one week!
>>
Machinery and Modern Industry.
477
system. Wherever the sewing machine locates itself in narrow
and already over-crowded workrooms, it adds to the unwhole-
some influences. "The effect," says Mr. Lord, "on entering
low-ceiled workrooms in which 30 to 40 machine hands are
working is unbearable.
The heat, partly due to the
gas stoves used for warming the irons, is horrible.
Even when moderate hours of work, i.e., from 8 in the morning
till 6 in the evening, prevail in such places, yet 3 or 4 persons
fall into a swoon regularly every day.”¹
The revolution in the industrial methods which is the
necessary result of the revolution in the instruments of pro-
duction, is effected by a medley of transition forms. These
forms vary according to the extent to which the sewing
machine has become prevalent in one branch of industry or the
other, to the time during which it has been in operation, to the
previous condition of the workpeople, to the preponderance of
manufacture, of handicrafts or of domestic industry, to the rent
of the workrooms, &c. In dressmaking, for instance, where
the labour for the most part was already organised, chiefly by
simple co-operation, the sewing machine at first formed merely
a new factor in that manufacturing industry. In tailoring,
shirtmaking, shoemaking, &c., all the forms are intermingled.
Here the factory system proper. There middlemen receive
the raw material from the capitalist en chef, and group around
their sewing machines, in "chambers" and "garrets," from 10
to 50 or more work women. Finally, as is always the case with
machinery when not organised into a system, and when it can
also be used in dwarfish proportions, handicraftsmen and
domestic workers, along with their families, or with a little
extra labour from without, make use of their own sewing
machines. The system actually prevalent in England is, that
3
1 Child. Empl. Comm., Second Rep., 1864, p. lxvii. n. 406-9, p. 84, n. 124, p. lxxiii.
n. 441, p. 66, n. 6, p. 84, n. 126, p. 78, n. 85, p. 76, n. 69, p. lxxii. n. 483.
2 "The rental of premises required for workrooms seems the element which
ultimately determines the point; and consequently it is in the metropolis, that the
old system of giving work out to small employers and families has been longest re-
tained, and earliest returned to." (1. c. p. 83, n. 123.) The concluding statement in
this quotation refers exclusively to shoemaking.
3 In glove-making and other industries where the condition of the workpeople is
hardly distinguishable from that of paupers, this does not occur,
478
Capitalist Production.
the capitalist concentrates a large number of machines on his
premises, and then distributes the produce of those machines.
for further manipulation amongst the domestic workers. The
variety of the transition forms, however, does not conceal the
tendency to conversion into the factory system proper. This
tendency is nurtured by the very nature of the sewing
machine, the manifold uses of which push on the concentration,
under one roof, and one management, of previously separated
branches of a trade. It is also favoured by the circumstance.
that preparatory needlework, and certain other operations, are
most conveniently done on the premises where the machine is
at work; as well as by the inevitable expropriation of the hand
sewers, and of the domestic workers who work with their own
inachines. This fate has already in part overtaken them.
The constantly increasing amount of capital invested in sewing
machines, gives the spur to the production of, and gluts the
markets with, machine-made articles, thereby giving the signal
to the domestic workers for the sale of their machines. The
overproduction of sewing machines themselves, causes their
producers, in bad want of a sale, to let them out for so much a
week, thus crushing by their deadly competition the small
owners of machines. Constant changes in the construction of
the machines, and their ever-increasing cheapness, depreciate
day by day the older makes, and allow of their being sold in
great numbers, at absurd prices, to large capitalists, who alone
can thus employ them at a profit. Finally, the substitution of the
steam-engine for man gives in this, as in all similar revolutions,
the finishing blow. At first, the use of steam power meets
with mere technical difficulties, such as unsteadiness in the
machines, difficulty in controlling their speed, rapid wear and
tear of the lighter machines, &c., all of which are soon overcome
by experience. If, on the one hand, the concentration of
many machines in large manufactories leads to the use of steam
4
1
11. c. p. 2, n. 122.
2 In the wholesale boot and shoe trade of Leicester alone, there were in 1864, 800
sewing machines already in use.
3 1. c. p. 84, n. 124.
4 Instances: The Army Clothing Depot at Pimlico, London, the Shirt factory of
Tillie and Henderson at Londonderry, and the clothes factory of Messrs. Tait at
Limerick which employs about 1200 hands.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
479
power, on the other hand, the competition of steam with
human muscles hastens on the concentration of work people and
machines in large factories. Thus England is at present ex-
periencing, not only in the colossal industry of making wearing
apparel, but in most of the other trades mentioned above, the
conversion of manufacture, of handicrafts, and of domestic work
into the factory system, after each of those forms of production,
totally changed and disorganized under the influence of modern
industry, has long ago reproduced, and even overdone, all the
horrors of the factory system, without participating in any of
the elements of social progress it contains.¹
This industrial revolution which takes place spontaneously,
is artificially helped on by the extension of the Factory Acts
to all industries in which women, young persons and children
are employed. The compulsory regulation of the working
day as regards its length, pauses, beginning and end, the sys-
tem of relays of children, the exclusion of all children under a
certain age, &c., necessitate on the one hand more machinery2
and the substitution of steam as a motive power in the place
of muscles. On the other hand, in order to make up for the
loss of time, an expansion occurs of the means of production
used in common, of the furnaces, buildings, &c.; in one word,
greater concentration of the means of production and a corres-
pondingly greater concourse of workpeople. The chief objec-
tion, repeatedly and passionately urged on behalf of each
3
1 "Tendency to factory system" (1. c. p. lxvii). "The whole employment is at
this time in a state of transition, and is undergoing the same change as that effected
in the lace trade, weaving, &c." (1. c. n. 405.) "A complete revolution" (1. c. p.
xlvi. n. 318). At the date of the Child. Empl. Comm. of 1840, stocking making was
still done by manual labour. Since 1843 various sorts of machines have been intro-
duced, which are now driven by steam. The total number of persons of both sexes
and of all ages from 3 years upwards, employed in stocking making in England, was
in 1862 about 129,000. Of these only 4063 were, according to the Parliamentary
Return of the 11th February, 1862, working under the Factory Acts,
2 Thus, e.g., in the earthenware trade, Messrs. Cochrane, of the Britain Pottery,
Glasgow, report: "To keep up our quantity we have gone extensively i to machines
wrought by unskilled labour, and every day convinces us that we can produce a
greater quantity than by the old method." ("Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865,"
p. 13.)
"The effect of the Fact. Acts is to force on the further introduction of
machinery" (1. c., p. 13-14).
3 Thus, after the extension of the Factory Act to the potteries, great increase of
power-jiggers in place of hand-moved jiggers.
480
Capitalist Production.
manufacture threatened with the Factory Act, is in fact this,
that in order to continue the business on the old scale a
greater outlay of capital will be necessary. But as regards
labour in the so-called domestic industries and the inter-
mediate forms between them and Manufacture, so soon as
limits are put to the working day and to the employment of
children, those industries go to the wall. Unlimited exploita-
tion of cheap labour-power is the sole foundation of their
power to compete.
One of the essential conditions for the existence of the fac-
tory system, especially when the length of the working day is
fixed, is certainty in the result, i.e., the production in a given
time of a given quantity of commodities, or of a given useful
effect. The statutory pauses in the working day, moreover,
imply the assumption that periodical and sudden cessation of
the work does no harm to the article undergoing the process of
production. This certainty in the result, and this possibility
of interrupting the work are, of course, easier to be attained
in the purely mechanical industries than in those in which
chemical and physical processes play a part; as, for instance,
in the earthenware trade, in bleaching, dyeing, baking, and in
most of the metal industries. Wherever there is a working
day without restriction as to length, wherever there is night
work and unrestricted waste of human life, there the slightest
obstacle presented by the nature of the work to a change for the
better is soon looked upon as an everlasting barrier erected by
Nature. No poison kills vermin with more certainty than the
Factory Act removes such everlasting barriers. No one made
a greater outcry over "impossibilities" than our friends
the earthenware manufacturers. In 1864, however, they were
brought under the Act, and within sixteen months every “im-
possibility" had vanished. "The improved method," called
forth by the Act, "of making slip by pressure instead of by
evaporation, the newly-constructed stoves for drying the ware
in its green state, &c., are each events of great importance in
the pottery art, and mark an advance which the preceding
century could not rival.
It has even considerably re-
duced the temperature of the stoves themselves with a consi-
Machinery and Modern Industry.
481
2
derable saving of fuel, and with a readier effect on the ware.'
In spite of every prophecy, the cost price of earthenware did
not rise, but the quantity produced did, and to such an extent
that the export for the twelve months, ending December,
1865, exceeded in value by £138,628 the average of the pre-
ceding three years.
In the manufacture of matches it was
thought to be an indispensable requirement, that boys, even
while bolting their dinner, should go on dipping the matches
in melted phosphorus, the poisonous vapour from which rose
into their faces. The Factory Act (1864) made the saving of
time a necessity, and so forced into existence a dipping
machine, the vapour from which could not come in contact
with the workers. So, at the present time, in those branches
of the lace manufacture not yet subject to the Factory Act, it is
maintained that the meal times cannot be regular owing to
the different periods required by the various kinds of lace for
drying, which periods vary from three minutes up to an hour
and more. To this the Children's Employment Commissioners
answer: The circumstances of this case are precisely analo-
gous to that of the paper-stainers, dealt with in our first
report. Some of the principal manufacturers in the trade.
urged that in consequence of the nature of the materials used,
and their various processes, they would be unable, without
serious loss, to stop for meal times at any given moment. But
it was seen from the evidence that, by due care and previous
arrangement, the apprehended difficulty would be got over;
and accordingly, by clause 6 of section 6 of the Factory Acts
Extension Act, passed during this Session of Parliament, an
interval of eighteen months is given to them from the passing
of the Act before they are required to conform to the meal
hours, specified by the Factory Acts." Hardly had the Act
been passed when our friends the manufacturers found out:
"The inconveniences we expected to arise from the introduc-
((
ܕ
"1
1 <<
Report of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865," pp. 96 and 127.
2 The introduction of this and other machinery into match-making caused in one
department alone 230 young persons to be replaced by 32 boys and girls of 14 to 17
years of age. This saving in labour was carried still further in 1865, by the employ-
ment of steam-power.
3 "Ch. Empl. Comm., II. Rep., 1864," p. ix., n. 50.
2 H
482
Capitalist Production.
tion of the Factory Acts into our branch of manufacture, I am
happy to say, have not arisen. We do not find the produc-
tion at all interfered with; in short, we produce more in the
same time."¹ It is evident that the English legislature, which
certainly no one will venture to reproach with being over-
dosed with genius, has been led by experience to the conclu-
sion that a simple compulsory law is sufficient to enact away
all the so-called impediments, opposed by the nature of the
process, to the restriction and regulation of the working day.
Hence, on the introduction of the Factory Act into a given
industry, a period varying from six to eighteen months is fixed
within which it is incumbent on the manufacturers to remove
all technical impediments to the working of the Act. Mira-
beau's "Impossible! ne me dites jamais ce bête de mot!" is
particularly applicable to modern technology. But though
the Factory Acts thus artificially ripen the material elements
necessary for the conversion of the manufacturing system into
the factory system, yet at the same time, owing to the neces-
sity they impose for greater outlay of capital, they hasten on
the decline of the small masters, and the concentration of
capital.2
Besides the purely technical impediments that are removable
by technical means, the irregular habits of the workpeople
themselves obstruct the regulation of the hours of labour.
This is especially the case where piece wage predominates,
and where loss of time in one part of the day or week can be
made good by subsequent overtime, or by night work, a pro-
cess which brutalises the adult workman, and ruins his wife
and children.³ Although this absence of regularity in the
Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865," p. 22.
C
2 "But it must be borne in mind that those improvements, though carried out fully
in some establishments, are by no means general, and are not capable of being
brought into use in many of the old manufactories without an expenditure of capital
beyond the means of many of the present occupiers." I cannot but rejoice," writes
Sub-Insp. May, "that notwithstanding the temporary disorganization which inevi-
tably follows the introduction of such a measure (as the Factory Act Extension Act),
and is, indeed, directly indicative of the evils which it was intended to remedy, &c."
(Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1865.)
3 With blast furnaces, for instance, "work towards the end of the week being
generally much increased in duration in consequence of the habit of the men of
idling on Monday and occasionally during a part or the whole of Tuesday also."
1
، ،
Machinery and Modern Industry.
483
*
expenditure of labour-power is a natural and rude reaction
against the tedium of monotonous drudgery, it originates, also,
to a much greater degree from anarchy in production, anarchy
that in its turn pre-supposes unbridled exploitation of labour-
power by the capitalist. Besides the general periodic changes
of the industrial cycle, and the special fluctuations in the
markets to which each industry is subject, we may also reckon
what is called "the season," dependent either on the perio-
dicity of favourable seasons of the year for navigation; or on
fashion, and the sudden placing of large orders that have to
be executed in the shortest possible time. The habit of giving
such orders becomes more frequent with the extension of
railways and telegraphs. "The extension of the railway sys-
tem throughout the country has tended very much to en-
courage giving short notice. Purchasers now come up from
Glasgow, Manchester, and Edinburgh once every fortnight or
so to the wholesale city warehouses which we supply, and
give small orders requiring immediate execution, instead of
buying from stock as they used to do. Years ago we were
always able to work in the slack times, so as to meet the
demand of the next season, but now no one can say before-
hand what will be the demand then."1
In those factories and manufactories that are not yet subject
to the Factory Acts, the most fearful overwork prevails
periodically during what is called the season, in consequence of
sudden orders. In the outside department of the factory, of
the manufactory, and of the warehouse, the so-called domestic
workers, whose employment is at the best irregular, are en-
tirely dependent for their raw material and their orders on the
caprice of the capitalist, who, in this industry, is not hampered
(Child. Empl. Comm., III. Rep., p. vi.) "The little masters generally have very
irregular hours. They lose two or three days, and then work all night to make it
up.
They always employ their own children, if they have any." (1. c., p.
vii.) "The want of regularity in coming to work, encouraged by the possibility and
practice of making up for this by working longer hours." (1. c., p. xviii.) "In Bir-
mingham. . . an enormous amount of time is lost
idling part of the time,
slaving the rest.” (1. c., p. xi.)
J "Child Empl. Comm., IV. Rep., p. xxxii., "The extension of the railway sys-
tem is said to have contributed greatly to this custom of giving sudden orders, and
the consequent hurry, neglect of meal times, and late hours of the workpeople."
(1. c., p. xxxi.)
•
ور
•
484
Capitalist Production.
by any regard for depreciation of his buildings and machinery,
and risks nothing by a stoppage of work, but the skin of the
worker himself. Here then he sets himself systematically to
work to form an industrial reserve force that shall be ready at a
moment's notice; during one part of the year he decimates this
force by the most inhuman toil, during the other part, he lets
it starve for want of work. "The employers avail themselves
of the habiti al irregularity in the home-work, when any extra
work is wanted at a push, so that the work goes on till 11, and
12 p.m. or 2 a.m., or as the usual phrase is, "all hours," and
that in localities where "the stench is enough to knock you
down, you go to the door, perhaps, and open it, but shudder to
go further."
They are curious men," said one of the
witnesses, a shoemaker, speaking of the masters, "they think
it does a boy no harın to work too hard for half the year, if he
is nearly idle for the other half."
((
In the same way as technical impediments, so, too, those
usages which have grown with the growth of trade" were and
still are proclaimed by interested capitalists as obstacles due to
the nature of the work. This was a favourite cry of the
cotton lords at the time they were first threatened with the
Factory Acts. Although their industry more than any other
depends on navigation, yet experience has given them the lie.
Since then, every pretended obstruction to business has been
treated by the Factory inspectors as a mere sham.3 The
thoroughly conscientious investigations of the Children's Em-
ployment Commission prove that the effect of the regulation
of the hours of work, in some industries, was to spread the
mass of labour previously employed more evenly over the
whole year that this regulation was the first rational bridle
.4
<C
1 Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. p. xxxv. n. 235, 237.
2 Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. p. 127. n. 56.
3 "With respect to the loss of trade by non-completion of shipping orders in time,
I remember that this was the pet argument of the factory masters in 1832 and 1833.
Nothing that can be advanced now on this subject, could have the force that it had
then, before steam had halved all distances and established new regulations for
transit. It quite failed at that time of proof when put to the test, and again it will
certainly fail should it have to be tried." (Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31 Oct., 1862,
pp. 54., 55,
Ch. Empl. Comm. IV. Rep. p. xviii. n. 118.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
485
2
on the murderous, meaningless caprices of fashion,' caprices
that consort so badly with the system of modern industry;
that the development of ocean navigation and of the means of
communication generally, has swept away the technical basis
on which season-work was really supported, and that all other
so-called unconquerable difficulties vanish before larger build-
ings, additional machinery, increase in the number of work-
people employed, and the alterations caused by all these in the
mode of conducting the wholesale trade. But for all that,
capital never becomes reconciled to such changes-and this is
admitted over and over again by its own representatives-ex-
cept "under the pressure of a General Act of Parliament " for
the compulsory regulation of the hours of labour.
3
4
SECTION 9.—THE FACTORY ACTS.
SAME. THEIR GENERAL EXTENSION IN ENGLAND.
SANITARY AND EDUCATION CLAUSES OF THE
Factory legislation, that first conscious and methodical re-
1 John Bellers remarked as far back as 1699: "The uncertainty of fashions does
increase necessitous poor. It has two great mischiefs in it. 1st, The journeymen are
miserable in winter for want of work, the mercers and master weavers not daring to
lay out their stocks to keep the journeymen employed before the spring comes, and
they know what the fashion will then be 2ndly, In the spring the journeymen are
not sufficient, but the master-weavers must draw in many prentices, that they may
supply the trade of the kingdom in a quarter or half a year, which robs the plough of
hands, drains the country of labourers, and in a great part stocks the city with
beggars, and starves some in winter that are ashamed to beg." (Essays about the
Poor, Manufactures, &c., p. 9.)
2 Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. p. 171, n. 34.
3 The evidence of some Bradford export-houses is as follows: "Under these cir
cumstances, it seems clear that no boys need be worked longer than from 8 a.m. to
7 or 7.30 p.m., in making up. It is merely a question of extra hands and extra out-
lay. If some masters were not so greedy, the boys would not work late; an extra
machine costs only £16 or £18; much of such overtime as does occur is to be referred
to an insufficiency of appliances, and a want of space." Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep.
p. 171, n. 31, 36, 38.
41. c. A London manufacturer, who in other respects looks upon the compulsory
regulation of the hours of labour as a protection for the workpeople against the manu-
facturers, and for the manufacturers themselves against the wholesale trade, states:
"The pressure in our business is caused by the shippers, who want, e.g., to send the
goods by sailing vessel so as to reach their destination at a given season, and at the
same time want to pocket the difference in freight between a sailing vessel and a
steamship, or who select the earlier of two steamships in order to be in the foreign
market before their competitors.
5 "This could be obviated," says a manufacturer, "at the expense of an enlarge-
ment of the works under the pressure of a General Act of Parliament." 1. c. p. x. n. 38.
486
Capitalist Production.
action of society against the spontaneously developed form of
the process of production, is, as we have seen, just as much
the necessary product of modern industry as cotton yarn, self-
actors, and the electric telegraph. Before passing to the con-
sideration of the extension of that legislation in England, we
shall shortly notice certain clauses contained in the Factory
Acts, and not relating to the hours of work.
Apart from their wording, which makes it easy for the
capitalist to evade them, the sanitary clauses are extremely
meagre, and, in fact, limited to provisions for whitewashing the
walls, for insuring cleanliness in some other matters, for ven-
tilation, and for protection against dangerous machinery. In
the third book we shall return again to the fanatical opposition
of the masters to those clauses which imposed upon them a
slight expenditure on appliances for protecting the limbs of
their workpeople, an opposition that throws a fresh and glaring
light on the free trade dogma, according to which, in a society
with conflicting interests, each individual necessarily furthers
the common weal by seeking nothing but his own personal
advantage! One example is enough. The reader knows that
during the last 20 years, the flax industry has very much ex-
tended, and that, with that extension, the number of scutching
mills in Ireland has increased. In 1864 there were in that
country 1800 of these mills. Regularly in autumn and winter
women and "young persons," the wives, sons, and daughters of
the neighbouring small farmers, a class of people totally unac-
customed to machinery, are taken from field labour to feed the
rollers of the scutching mills with flax. The accidents, both as
regards number and kind, are wholly unexampled in the history
of machinery. In one scutching mill, at Kildinan, near Cork,
there occurred between 1852 and 1856, six fatal accidents and
sixty mutilations; every one of which might have been pre-
vented by the simplest appliances, at the cost of a few shillings.
Dr. W. White, the certifying surgeon for factories at Down-
patrick, states in his official report, dated the 15th December,
1865: "The serious accidents at the scutching mills are of the
most fearful nature. In many cases a quarter of the body is
torn from the trunk, and either involves death, or a future of
Machinery and Modern Industry.
487
wretched incapacity and suffering. The increase of mills in
the country will, of course, extend these dreadful results, and
it will be a great boon if they are brought under the legislature.
I am convinced that by proper supervision of scutching mills
a vast sacrifice of life and limb would be averted." 1
What could possibly show better the character of the capi-
talist mode of production, than the necessity that exists for
forcing upon it, by Acts of Parliament, the simplest appliances
for maintaining cleanliness and health? In the potteries the
Factory Act of 1864 "has whitewashed and cleansed upwards
of 200 workshops, after a period of abstinence from any such
cleaning, in many cases of 20 years, and in some, entirely," (this
is the "abstinence" of the capitalist!) "in which were employed
27,800 artisans, hitherto breathing through protracted days and
often nights of labour, a mephitic atmosphere, and which
rendered an otherwise comparatively innocuous occupation,
pregnant with disease and death. The Act has improved the
ventilation very much."2 At the same time, this portion of
the Act strikingly shows that the capitalist mode of production,
owing to its very nature, excludes all rational improvement
beyond a certain point. It has been stated over and over
again that the English doctors are unanimous in declaring
that where the work is continuous, 500 cubic feet is the very
least space that should be allowed for each person. Now, if
the Factory Acts, owing to their compulsory provisions, in-
directly hasten on the conversion of small workshops into
factories, thus indirectly attacking the proprietary rights of the
smaller capitalists, and assuring a monopoly to the great ones, so,
if it were made obligatory to provide the proper space for each
workman in every workshop, thousands of small employers
would, at one full swoop, be expropriated directly! The very
root of the capitalist mode of production, i.e., the self-expan-
sion of all capital, large or small, by means of the "free"
free" pur-
chase and consumption of labour-power, would be attacked.
Factory legislation is therefore brought to a dead-lock before
these 500 cubic feet of breathing space. The sanitary officers,
11. c. p. xv. n. 72. sqq.
2 Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st October, 1865, p. 127.
488
Capitalist Production.
the industrial inquiry commissioners, the factory inspectors, all
harp, over and over again, upon the necessity for those 500
cubic feet, and upon the impossibility of wringing them out of
capital. They thus, in fact, declare that consumption and
other lung diseases among the workpeople are necessary con-
ditions to the existence of capital.¹
2
Paltry as the education clauses of the Act appear on the
whole, yet they proclaim elementary education to be an indis-
pensable condition to the employment of children. The suc-
cess of those clauses proved for the first time the possibility of
combining education and gymnastics with manual labour, and,
consequently, of combining manual labour with education and
gymnastics. The factory inspectors soon found out by ques-
tioning the schoolmasters, that the factory children, although
receiving only one half the education of the regular day
scholars, yet learnt quite as much and often more.
This can
be accounted for by the simple fact that, with only being at
school for one half of the day, they are always fresh, and
nearly always ready and willing to receive instruction. The
system on which they work, half manual labour, and half
school, renders each employment a rest and a relief to the
other; consequently, both are far more congenial to the child,
((
¹ It has been found out by experiment, that with each respiration of average in-
tensity made by a healthy average individual, about 25 cubic inches of air are con-
sumed, and that about 20 respirations are made in each minute. Hence the air
inhaled in 24 hours by each individual is about 720,000 cubic inches, or 416 cubic
feet. It is clear, however, that air which has been once breathed, can no longer
serve for the same process until it has been purified in the great workshop of Nature.
According to the experiments of Valentin and Brunner, it appears that a healthy
man gives off about 1300 cubic inches of carbonic acid per hour; this would give
about 8 ounces of solid carbon thrown off from the lungs in 24 hours. "Every man
should have at least 800 cubic feet." (Huxley.)
2 According to the English Factory Act, parents cannot send their children under
14
years of age into Factories under the control of the Act, unless at the same time
they allow them to receive elementary education. The manufacturer is responsible
for compliance with the Act. Factory education is compulsory, and it is a con-
dition of labour." (Rep. Insp. Fact. 31st Oct., 1863, p. 111.
(6
3 On the very advantageous results of combining gymnastics (and drilling in the
case of boys) with compulsory education for factory children and pauper scholars,
see the speech of N. W. Senior at the seventh annual congress of "The National
Association for the Promotion of Social Science," in "Report of Proceedings, &c.,
Lond. 1863,” p. 63, 64, also the Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st Oct., 1865, p. 118, 119, 120, 126
sqq.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
489
than would be the case were he kept constantly at one. It is
quite clear that a boy who has been at school all the morning,
cannot (in hot weather particularly) cope with one who comes
fresh and bright from his work." Further information on this
point will be found in Senior's speech at the Social Science
Congress at Edinburgh in 1863. He there shows, amongst
other things, how the monotonous and uselessly long school
hours of the children of the upper and middle classes, use-
lessly add to the labour of the teacher, "while he not only
fruitlessly but absolutely injuriously, wastes the time, health,
and energy of the children." From the Factory system
budded, as Robert Owen has shown us in detail, the germ of
the education of the future, an education that will, in the case
of every child over a given age, combine productive labour
with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the
methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the
only method of producing fully developed human beings.
Modern Industry, as we have seen, sweeps away by techni-
cal means the manufacturing division of labour, under which
each man is bound hand and foot for life to a single detail-
operation. At the same time, the capitalistic form of that in-
dustry reproduces this same division of labour in a still more
monstrous shape; in the factory proper, by converting the
workman into a living appendage of the machine; and every-
1 Rep. Insp. Fact. 31st Oct. 1865, p. 118. A silk manufacturer naïvely states to
the Childrens' Employment Commissioners: "I am quite sure that the true secret
of producing efficient workpeople is to be found in uniting education and labour from
a period of childhood. Of course the occupation must not be too severe, nor irksome,
or unhealthy. But of the advantage of the union I have no doubt. I wish my own
children could have some work as well as play to give variety to their schooling."
(Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. p. 82. n. 36.)
2 Senior, 1. c. p. 66. How Modern Industry, when it has attained to a certain
pitch, is capable, by the revolution it effects in the mode of production and in the
social conditions of production, of also revolutionizing people's minds, is strikingly
shown by a comparison of Senior's speech in 1863, with his philippic against the
Factory Act of 1833; or by a comparison, of the views of the congress above referred
to, with the fact that in certain country districts of England poor parents are for-
bidden, on pain of death by starvation, to educate their children. Thus, e.g., Mr.
Snell reports it to be a common occurrence in Somersetshire that, when a poor per-
son claims parish relief, he is compelled to take his children from school. Mr.
Wollarton, the clergyman at Feltham, also tells of cases where all relief was denied
to certain families" because they were sending their children to school!”
490
Capitalist Production.
1
where outside the Factory, partly by the sporadic use of
machinery and machine workers,' partly by re-establishing the
division of labour on a fresh basis by the general introduction
of the labour of women and children, and of cheap unskilled
labour.
The antagonism between the manufacturing division of
labour and the methods of Modern Industry makes itself
forcibly felt. It manifests itself, amongst other ways, in the
frightful fact that a great part of the children employed in
modern factories and manufactures, are from their earliest
years riveted to the most simple manipulations, and exploited
for years, without being taught a single sort of work that
would afterwards make them of use, even in the same manu-
factory or factory. In the English letter press printing trade,
for example, there existed formerly a system, corresponding to
that in the old manufactures and handicrafts, of advancing the
apprentices from easy to more and more difficult work. They
went through a course of teaching till they were finished
printers. To be able to read and write was for every one of
them a requirement of their trade. All this was changed by
the printing machine. It employs two sorts of labourers, one
grown up, tenters, the other, boys mostly from 11 to 17 years
of age whose sole business is either to spread the sheets of
paper under the machine, or to take from it the printed sheets.
They perform this weary task, in London especially, for 14, 15,
and 16 hours at a stretch, during several days in the week, and
frequently for 36 hours, with only 2 hours' rest for meals and
sleep! A great part of them cannot read, and they are, as a
1 Wherever handicraft-machines, driven by men, compete directly or indirectly
with more developed machines driven by mechanical power, a great change takes
place with regard to the labourer who drives the machine. At first the steam-engine
replaces this labourer, afterwards he must replace the steam-engine. Consequently
the tension and the amount of labour-power expended become monstrous, and
especially so in the case of the children who are condemned to this torture. Thus
Mr Longe, one of the commissioners, found in Coventry and the neighbourhood boys
of from 10 to 15 years employed in driving the ribbon looms, not to mention younger
children who had to drive smaller machines. "It is extraordinarily fatiguing work.
The boy is a mere substitute for steam-power." (Ch. Empl. Comm. V. Rep. 1866, p.
114, n. 6.) As to the fatal consequences of "this system of slavery," as the official
report styles it, see 1. c. p. 114 sqq.
21. c. p. 3, n. 24.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
491
"To
rule, utter savages and very extraordinary creatures.
qualify them for the work which they have to do, they require
no intellectual training; there is little room in it for skill, and
less for judgment; their wages, though rather high for boys, do
not increase proportionately as they grow up, and the majority
of them cannot look for advancement to the better paid and
more responsible post of machine minder, because while each
machine has but one minder, it has at least two, and often four
boys attached to it." As soon as they get too old for such
child's work, that is about 17 at the latest, they are discharged
from the printing establishments. They become recruits of
crime. Several attempts to procure them employment else-
where, were rendered of no avail by their ignorance and
brutality, and by their mental and bodily degradation.
+
2
As with the division of labour in the interior of the
manufacturing workshops, so it is with the division of
labour in the interior of society. So long as handicraft
and manufacture form the general groundwork of social
production, the subjection of the producer to one branch
exclusively, the breaking up of the multifariousness of his
employment, is a necessary step in the development. On
that ground-work each separate branch of production acquires
empirically the form that is technically suited to it, slowly
perfects it, and, so soon as a given degree of maturity has
been reached, rapidly crystallizes that form. The only thing,
that here and there causes a change, besides new raw material
supplied by commerce, is the gradual alteration of the instru-
ments of labour. But their form, too, once definitely settled
by experience, petrifies, as is proved by their being in many
cases handed down in the same form by one generation to
1 1. c. p. 7., n. 60.
2 "In some parts of the Highlands of Scotland, not many years ago, every peasant,
according to the Statistical Account, made his own shoes of leather tanned by him-
self. Many a shepherd and cottar too, with his wife and children, appeared at
Church in clothes which had been touched by no hands but their own,
since they
were shorn from the sheep and sown in the flaxfield. In the preparation of these,
it is added, scarcely a single article had been purchased, except the awl, needle,
thimble, and a very few parts of the iron-work employed in the weaving. The dyes,
too, were chiefly extracted by the women from trees, shrubs and herbs." (Dugald
Stewart's Works. Hamilton's Ed., Vol. viii. p. 327-328.)
492
Capitalist Production.
Ad
another during thousands of years. A characteristic feature
is, that, even down into the eighteenth century, the different
trades were called "mysteries" (mystères)¹; into their secrets
none but those duly initiated could penetrate. Modern In-
dustry rent the veil that concealed from men their own social
process of production, and that turned the various, spontane-
ously divided branches of production into so many riddles, not
only to outsiders, but even to the initiated. The principle
which it pursued, of resolving each process into its constituent
movements, without any regard to their possible execution by
the hand of man, created the new modern science of technology.
The varied, apparently unconnected, and petrified forms of the
industrial processes now resolved themselves into so many
conscious and systematic applications of natural science to the
attainment of given useful effects. Technology also discovered
the few main fundamental forms of motion, which, despite the
diversity of the instruments used, are necessarily taken by
every productive action of the human body; just as the science
of mechanics sees in the most complicated machinery nothing
but the continual repetition of the simple mechanical powers.
Modern Industry never looks upon and treats the existing
form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry
is therefore revolutionary, while all earlier modes of produc-
tion were essentially conservative. By means of machinery,
¹ In the celebrated "Livre des métiers" of Etienne Boileau, we find it prescribed
that a journeyman on being admitted among the masters had to swear "to love his
brethren with brotherly love, to support them in their respective trades, not wilfully
to betray the secrets of the trade, and besides, in the interests of all, not to recom-
mend his own wares by calling the attention of the buyer to defects in the articles
made by others."
2"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionizing the instru-
ments of production, and thereby the relations of production and all the social
relations. Conservation, in an unaltered form, of the old modes of production was
on the contrary the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.
Constant revolution in production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,
everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all
earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and
venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become.
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is
profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions
of life, and his relations with his kind. (F. Engels and Karl Marx: Manifest der
Kommunistischen Partei. Lond. 1848, p. 5.)
Machinery and Modern Industry.
493
We
chemical processes and other methods, it is continually causing
changes not only in the technical basis of production, but also
in the functions of the labourer, and in the social combinations
of the labour-process. At the same time, it thereby also
revolutionizes the division of labour within the society, and
incessantly launches masses of capital and of workpeople from
one branch of production to another. But if Modern Industry,
by its very nature, therefore necessitates variation of labour,
fluency of function, universal mobility of the labourer, on the
other hand, in its capitalistic form, it reproduces the old
division of labour with its ossified particularisations.
have seen how this absolute contradiction between the techni-
cal necessities of Modern Industry, and the social character
inherent in its capitalistic form, dispels all fixity and security
in the situation of the labourer; how it constantly threatens,
by taking away the instruments of labour, to snatch from his
hands his means of subsistence,' and, by suppressing his detail-
function, to make him superfluous. We have seen, too, how
this antagonism vents its rage in the creation of that monstro-
sity, an industrial reserve army, kept in misery in order to be
always at the disposal of capital; in the incessant human
sacrifices from among the working class, in the most reckless
squandering of labour-power, and in the devastation caused by
a social anarchy which turns every economical progress into a
social calamity. This is the negative side. But if, on the one
hand, variation of work at present imposes itself after the
manner of an overpowering natural law, and with the blindly
destructive action of a natural law that meets with resis-
tance 2 at all points, Modern Industry, on the other hand,
1 "You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live."
SHAKESPEARE.
2 A French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as follows: "I
never could have believed, that I was capable of working at the various occupations I
was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing
but letter-press printing.
Once in the midst of this world of adventurers,
who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others.
As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in
succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, &c. In consequence of thus
finding out that I am fit for any sort of wo k, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a
man.'
" (A. Courbon. De l'enseignement professionnel, 2ème ed. P. 50.)
494
Capitalist Production.
t-
through its catastrophes imposes the necessity of recognising,
as a fundamental law of production, variation of work, conse-
quently fitness of the labourer for varied work, consequently
the greatest possible development of his varied aptitudes. It
becomes a question of life and death for society to adapt the
mode of production to the normal functioning of this law.
Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of
death, to replace the detail-worker of to-day, crippled by life-
long repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus
reduced to the mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed
individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any
change of production, and to whom the different social func-
tions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope
to his own natural and acquired powers.
One step already spontaneously taken towards effecting this
revolution is the establishment of technical and agricultural
schools, and of "écoles d'enseignement professionnel," in which
the children of the working-men receive some little instruction
in technology and in the practical handling of the various
implements of labour. Though the Factory Act, that first and
meagre concession wrung from capital, is limited to combining
elementary education with work in the factory, there can be
no doubt that when the working class comes into power, as
inevitably it must, technical instruction, both theoretical and
practical, will take its proper place in the working-class
schools. There is also no doubt that such revolutionary
ferments, the final result of which is the abolition of the old
division of labour, are diametric ly opposed to the capitalistic
form of production, and to the economic status of the labourer
corresponding to that form. But the historical development of
the antagonisms, immanent in a given form of production, is the
only way in which that form of production can be dissolved
and a new form established. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam"-
this nec plus ultra of handicraft wisdom became sheer nonsense,
from the moment the watchmaker Watt invented the steam-
engine, the barber Arkwright, the throstle, and the working-
jeweller, Fulton, the steamship.'
1 John Bellers, a very phenomenon in the history of political economy, saw most
Machinery and Modern Industry.
495
So long as Factory legislation is confined to regulating
the labour in factories, manufactories, &c., it is regarded as a
mere interference with the exploiting rights of capital. But
when it comes to regulating the so-called "home-labour," 1 it is
immediately viewed as a direct attack on the patria potestas,
on parental authority. The tender-hearted English Parlia-
ment long affected to shrink from taking this step. The force
of facts, however, compelled it at last to acknowledge that
modern industry, in overturning the economical foundation on
which was based the traditional family, and the family labour
corresponding to it, had also unloosened all traditional family
ties. The rights of the children had to be proclaimed. The
final report of the Ch. Empl. Comm. of 1866, states: "It is un-
happily, to a painful degree, apparent throughout the whole of
the evidence, that against no persons do the children of both
sexes so much require protection as against their parents." The
system of unlimited exploitation of childrens' labour in general,
and the so-called home-labour in particular is "maintained only
because the parents are able, without check or control, to
exercise this arbitrary and mischievous power over their young
and tender offspring.
Parents must not possess the
absolute power of making their children mere 'machines to
earn so much weekly wage.'
The children and
young persons, therefore, in all such cases may justifiably
claim from the legislature, as a natural right, that an exemption
should be secured to them, from what destroys prematurely
their physical strength, and lowers them in the scale of in-
clearly at the end of the 17th century, the necessity for abolishing the present system
of education and division of labour, which beget hypertrophy and atrophy at the
two opposite extremities of society. Amongst other things he says this: "An idle
learning being little better than the learning of idleness. Bodily labour, it's a
primitive instituticu of God . . . Labour being as proper for the bodies' health as
eating is for its living; for what pains a man saves by ease, he will find in disease.
Labour adds oyl to the lamp of life, when thinking inflames it.
A childish silly employ" (a warning this, by presentiment, against the Basedows
and their modern imitators) "leaves the children's minds silly." (Proposals for
raising a colledge of industry of all useful trades and husbandry. Lond., 1696, p. 12,
14, 18.)
1 This sort of labour goes on mostly in small workshops, as we have seen in the
lace-making and straw-plaiting trades, and as could be shown more in detail from
the metal trades of Sheffield, Birmingham, &c.
•
•
496
Capitalist Production.
tellectual and moral beings." It was not, however, the misuse
of parental authority that created the capitalistic exploitation,
whether direct or indirect, of children's labour; but, on the
contrary, it was the capitalistic mode of exploitation which, by
sweeping away the economical basis of parental authority, made
its exercise degenerate into a mischievous misuse of power. How-
ever terrible and disgusting the dissolution, under the capitalist
system, of the old family ties may appear, nevertheless, modern
industry, by assigning as it does an important part in the
process of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women,
to young persons, and to children of both sexes, creates a new
economical foundation for a higher form of the family and of
the relations between the sexes. It is, of course, just as absurd
to hold the Teutonic-christian form of the family to be absolute
and final as it would be to apply that character to the ancient
Roman, the ancient Greek, or the Eastern forms which, more-
over, taken together form a series in historic development,
Moreover, it is obvious that the fact of the collective working
group being composed of individuals of both sexes and all ages
must necessarily, under suitable conditions, become a source of
humane development; although in its spontaneously developed,
brutal, capitalistic form, where the labourer exists for the process
of production, and not the process of production for the labourer,
that fact is a pestiferous source of corruption and slavery.2
The necessity for a generalization of the Factory Acts, for
transforming them from an exceptional law relating to
mechanical spinning and weaving-those first creations of
machinery-into a law affecting social production as a whole,
arose, as we have seen, from the mode in which Modern
Industry was historically developed. In the rear of that
industry, the traditional form of manufacture, of handicraft,
and of domestic industry, is entirely revolutionised; manufac-
tures are constantly passing into the factory system, and
handicrafts into manufactures; and lastly, the spheres of handi-
1 Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep., p. xxv., n. 162, and II. Rep., p. xxxviii., n.
285, 289, p. xxv., xxvi., n. 191.
2 "Factory labour may be as pure and as excellent as domestic labour, and perhaps
""
more so. (Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st October, 1865, p. 127.)
Machinery and Modern Industry.
497
craft and of the domestic industries become, in a, comparatively
speaking, wonderfully short time, dens of misery in which
capitalistic exploitation obtains free play for the wildest
excesses. There are two circumstances that finally turn the
scale: first, the constantly recurring experience that capital, so
soon as it finds itself subject to legal control at one point,
compensates itself all the more recklessly at other points; 1
secondly, the cry of the capitalists for equality in the conditions.
of competition, i.e., for equal restraint on all exploitation of
labour.2 On this point let us listen to two heart-broken cries.
Messrs. Cooksley of Bristol, nail and chain, &c., manufacturers,
spontaneously introduced the regulations of the Factory Act
into their business. "As the old irregular system prevails in
neighbouring works, the Messrs. Cooksley are subject to the
disadvantage of having their boys enticed to continue their
labour elsewhere after 6 p.m. This,' they naturally say, 'is
an unjustice and loss to us, as it exhausts a portion of the boy's
strength, of which we ought to have the full benefit.'"3 Mr.
J. Simpson (paper box and bagmaker, London) states before
the commissioners of the Ch. Empl. Comm.: "He would sign
any petition for it" (legislative interference)
<
"As
"C
it was, he always felt restless at night, when he had closed his
place, lest others should be working later than him and getting
away his orders."4 Summarising, the Ch. Empl. Comm. says:
'It would be unjust to the larger employers that their factories
should be placed under regulation, while the hours of labour
in the smaller places in their own branch of business were
under no legislative restriction. And to the injustice arising
from the unfair conditions of competition, in regard to hours,
that would be created if the smaller places of work were
exempt, would be added the disadvantage to the larger manu-
facturers, of finding their supply of juvenile and female labour
drawn off to the places of work exempt from legislation.
Further, a stimulus would be given to the multiplication of the
smaller places of work, which are almost invariably the least
1 Rep. Insp. of Fact., 31st October, 1865, p. 27-32.
2 Numerous instances will be found in Rep. of Insp. of Fact.
3 Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep., p. x., n. 35.
4 Ch. Empl. Comm., V. Rep., p. ix., n. 28.
2 I
498
Capitalist Production.
favourable to the health, comfort, education, and general im-
provement of the people.":
In its final report the Commission proposes to subject to the
Factory Act more than 1,400,000 children, young persons, and
women, of which number about one half are exploited in small
industries and by the so-called home-work.2 It says, "But if
it should seem fit to Parliament to place the whole of that
large number of children, young persons and females under the
protective legislation above adverted to . . . . it cannot be
doubted that such legislation would have a most beneficent
effect, not only upon the young and the feeble, who are its
more immediate objects, but upon the still larger body of adult
workers, who would in all these employments, both directly
and indirectly, come immediately under its influence. It
would enforce upon them regular and moderate hours; it
would lead to their places of work being kept in a healthy and
cleanly state; it would therefore husband and improve that
store of physical strength on which their own well-being and
that of the country so much depends; it would save the rising
generation from that over-exertion at an early age which
undermines their constitutions and leads to premature decay;
finally, it would ensure them-at least up to the age of 13—
the opportunity of receiving the elements of education, and
would put an end to that utter ignorance. . . so faithfully
exhibited in the Reports of our Assistant Commissoners, and
which cannot be regarded without the deepest pain, and a pro-
found sense of national degradation."
11. c., p. xxv., n. 165-167. As to the advantages of large scale, compared with
small scale, industries, see Ch. Empl. Comm., III. Rep., p. 13, n. 144, p. 25, n. 121,
p. 26, n. 125, p. 27, n. 140, &c.
2 The trades proposed to be brought under the Act were the following: Lace-
making, stocking-weaving, straw-plaiting, the manufacture of wearing apparel with
its numerous subdivisions, artificial flower-making, shoemaking, hat-making, glove-
making, tailoring, all metal works, from blast furnaces down to needleworks, &c.,
paper-mills, glass-works, tobacco factories, india-rubber works, braid-making (for
weaving), hand-carpet-making, umbrella and parasol making, the manufacture of
spindles and spools, letter-press printing, book-binding, manufacture of stationery
(including paper bags, cards, coloured paper, &c.,) rope-making, manufacture of jet
ornaments, brick-making, silk manufacture by hand, Coventry weaving, salt works,
tallow chandlers, cement works, sugar refineries, biscuit-making, various industries
connected with timber, and other mixed trades.
3 l. c. p xxv. n. 169.
Machinery and Modern Industry.
499
Twenty-four years before, another Commission of Inquiry on
the labour of children had already, as Senior remarks, dis-
closed "the most frightful picture of avarice, selfishness and
cruelty on the part of masters and of parents, and of juvenile
and infantile misery, degradation and destruction ever pre-
sented.
It may be supposed that it describes the
horrors of a past age. But there is unhappily evidence that
those horrors continue as intense as they were. A pamphlet
published by Hardwicke about 2 years ago states that the
abuses complained of in 1842, are in full bloom at the present
day. It is a strange proof of the general neglect of the
morals and health of the children of the working class, that
this report lay unnoticed for 20 years, during which the
children, 'bred up without the remotest sign of comprehension
as to what is meant by the term morals, who had neither
knowledge, nor religion, nor natural affection,' were allowed to
become the parents of the present generation." 1
The social conditions having undergone a change, Parliament
could not venture to shelve the demands of the Commission of
1862, as it had done those of the Commission of 1840. Hence
in 1864, when the Commission had not yet published more
than a part of its reports, the earthenware industries (in-
cluding the potteries), makers of paper-hangings, matches,
cartridges, and caps, and fustian cutters were made subject to
the Acts in force in the textile industries. In the speech from
the Throne, on 5th February, 1867, the Tory Cabinet of the
day announced the introduction of Bills, founded on the final
recommendations of the Commission, which had completed its
labours in 1866.
On the 15th August, 1867, the Factory Acts Extension Act,
and on the 21st August, the Workshops' Regulation Act re-
ceived the Royal Assent; the former Act having reference to
large industries, the latter to small.
The former applies to blast-furnaces, iron and copper mills,
foundries, machine shops, metal manufactories, gutta-percha
works, paper mills, glass works, tobacco manufactories, letter-
press printing (including newspapers) book-binding, in short
1 Senior Social Science Congress, pp. 55-58
*
500
Capitalist Production.
to all industrial establishments of the above kind, in which 50
individuals or more are occupied simultaneously, and for not
less than 100 days during the year.
To give an idea of the extent of the sphere embraced by the
Workshops' Regulation Act in its application, we cite from its
interpretation clause, the following passages:
Handicraft shall mean any manual labour exercised by
way of trade, or for purposes of gain in, or incidental to, the
making any article or part of an article, or in, or incidental to,
the altering, repairing, ornamenting, finishing, or otherwise
adapting for sale any article.”
<<
(C
Workshop shall mean any room or place whatever in the
open air or under cover, in which any handicraft is carried on
by any child, young person, or woman, and to which and over
which the person by whom such child, young person, or woman
is employed, has the right of access and control.”
Employed shall mean occupied in any handicraft, whether
for wages or not, under a master or under a parent as herein
defined."
(C
"Parent shall mean parent, guardian, or
the custody of, or control over, any. . .
person."
Clause 7, which imposes a penalty for employment of
children, young persons, and women, contrary to the provisions
of the Act, subjects to fines, not only the occupier of the work-
shop, whether parent or not, but even "the parent of, or the
person deriving any direct benefit from the labour of, or having
the control over, the child, young person or woman."
The Factory Acts Extension Act, which affects the large
establishments, derogates from the Factory Act by a crowd of
vicious exceptions and cowardly compromises with the masters.
The Workshops' Regulation Act, wretched in all its details,
remained a dead letter in the hands of the municipal and
local authorities who were charged with its execution. When,
in 1871, Parliament withdrew from them this power, in order
to confer it on the Factory Inspectors, to whose province it
thus added by a single stroke more than one hundred thousand
workshops, and three hundred brickworks, care was taken at
person, having
child or young
Machinery and Modern Industry.
501
the same time not to add more than eight assistants to their
already undermanned staff.¹
What strikes us, then, in the English legislation of 1867, is,
on the one hand, the necessity imposed on the parliament of
the ruling classes, of adopting in principle measures so extra-
ordinary, and on so great a scale, against the excesses of
capitalistic exploitation; and on the other hand, the hesitation,
the repugnance, and the bad faith, with which it lent itself to
the task of carrying those measures into practice.
The Inquiry Commission of 1862 also proposed a new regu-
lation of the mining industry, an industry distinguished from
others by the exceptional characteristic that the interests of
landlord and capitalist there join hands. The antagonism of
these two interests had been favourable to Factory legislation,
while on the other hand the absence of that antagonism is
sufficient to explain the delays and chicanery of the legislation
on mines.
The Inquiry Commission of 1840 had made revelations so
terrible, so shocking, and creating such a scandal all over
Europe, that to salve its conscience Parliament passed the
Mining Act of 1842, in which it limited itself to forbidding
the employment underground in mines of children under 10
years of age and females.
Then another Act, The Mines' Inspecting Act of 1860, pro-
vides that mines shall be inspected by public officers
nominated specially for that purpose, and that boys between
the ages of 10 and 12 years shall not be employed, unless they
have a school certificate, or go to school for a certain number of
hours. This Act was a complete dead letter owing to the
ridiculously small number of inspectors, the meagreness of their
powers, and other causes that will become apparent as we
proceed.
One of the most recent blue books on mines is the "Report
from the Select Committee on Mines, together with &c.
1 The "personnel "of this staff consisted of 2 inspectors, 2 assistant inspectors and
41 sub-inspectors. Eight additional sub-inspectors were appointed in 1871. The
total cost of administering the Acts in England, Scotland, and Ireland amounted for
the year 1871-72 to no more than £25,347, inclusive of the law expenses incurred by
prosecutions of offending masters.
502
Capitalist Production.
Evidence, 23rd July, 1866." This Report is the work of a
Parliamentary Committee selected from members of the House
of Commons, and authorised to summon and examine witnesses.
It is a thick folio volume in which the Report itself occupies
only five lines to this effect; that the committee has nothing
to say, and that more witnesses must be examined!
The mode of examining the witnesses reminds one of the
cross-examination of witnesses in English courts of justice,
where the advocate tries, by means of impudent, unexpected,
equivocal and involved questions, put without connexion, to
intimidate, surprise, and confound the witness, and to give a
forced meaning to the answers extorted from him. In this
inquiry the members of the committee themselves are the
cross-examiners, and among them are to be found both mine
owners and mine exploiters; the witnesses are mostly working
coalminers. The whole farce is too characteristic of the spirit
of capital, not to call for a few extracts from this Report. For
the sake of conciseness I have classified them. I may also
add that every question and its answer are numbered in the
English Blue Books.
I. EMPLOYMENT IN MINES OF BOYS OF 10 YEARS AND UP-
WARDS. In the mines the work, inclusive of going and re-
turning, usually lasts 14 or 15 hours, sometimes even from 3,
4, and 5 o'clock a.m., till 5 and 6 o'clock p.m., (n. 6., 452, 83).
The adults work in two shifts, of eight hours each; but there
is no alteration with the boys, on account of the expense
(n. 80, 203, 204). The younger boys are chiefly employed in
opening and shutting the ventilating doors in the various parts
of the mine; the older ones are employed on heavier work, in
carrying coal, &c. (n. 122, 739, 1747). They work these long
hours underground until their 18th or 22nd year, when they
are put to miner's work proper. (n. 161.) Children and young
persons are at present worse treated, and harder worked than
at any previous period (n. 1663-1667). And now Hussey
Vivian (himself an exploiter of mines) asks: "Would not the
opinion of the workman depend upon the poverty of the
workman's family?" Mr. Bruce: "Do you not think it would be
a very hard case, where a parent had been injured, or where
Machinery and Modern Industry.
503
he was sickly, or where a father was dead, and there was only
a mother, to prevent a child between 12 and 14 earning 1s. 7d.
a day for the good of the family?
You must lay
down a general rule?
Are you prepared to recom-
mend legislation which would prevent the employment of
children under 12 and 14, whatever the state of their parents
might be?" "Yes." (ns. 107-110). Vivian: "Supposing that an
enactment were passed preventing the employment of
children under the age of 14, would it not be probable that
the parents of children would seek employment for
their children in other directions, for instance, in manufacture ?”
"Not generally I think," (n. 174). Kinnaird: "Some of the
boys are keepers of doors?" "Yes." "Is there not generally
a very great draught every time you open a door or close it?"
"Yes, generally there is." It sounds a very easy thing,
but it is in fact rather a painful one?" He is imprisoned
there just the same as if he was in a cell of a gaol." Bourgeois
Vivian: "Whenever a boy is furnished with a lamp cannot he
read?" "Yes, he can read, if he finds himself in candles
I suppose he would be found fault with if he were
discovered reading; he is there to mind his business, he has a
duty to perform, and he has to attend to it in the first place,
and I do not think it would be allowed down the pit."
(ns. 139, 141, 143, 158, 160.)
66
(C
•
II. EDUCATION.-The working miners want a law for the
compulsory education of their children, as in factories. They
declare the clauses of the Act of 1860, which require a school
certificate to be obtained before employing boys of 10 and 12
years of age, to be quite illusory. The examination of the
witnesses on this subject is truly droll. "Is it (the Act)
required more against the masters or against the parents?"
It is required against both I think." "You cannot say
whether it is required against one more than against the
other?" No; I can hardly answer that question." (ns. 115,
116.) "Does there appear to be any desire on the part of the
employers that the boys should have such hours as to enable
them to go to school?" No; the hours are never shortened
for that purpose." (n. 137.) Mr. Kinnaird: "Should you say
CC
(C
504
Capitalist Production.
(C
(C
that the colliers generally improve their education; have you
any instances of men who have, since they began to work,
greatly improved their education, or do they not rather go
back, and lose any advantage that they may have gained?"
They generally become worse: they do not improve; they
acquire bad habits; they get on to drinking and gambling and
such like, and they go completely to wreck," (n. 211). "Do
they make any attempt of the kind (for providing instruction)
by having schools at night?" "There are few collieries
where night schools are held, and perhaps at those collieries a
few boys do go to those schools; but they are so physically
exhausted that it is to no purpose that they go there.”
(n. 454.) You are then," concludes the bourgeois, "against
te
"But
education?" "Most certainly not; but," &c. (n. 443.)
are they (the employers) not compelled to demand them
(school certificates)? "By law they are; but I am not aware
that they are demanded by the employers." "Then it is your
opinion, that this provision of the Act as to requiring certifi-
cates, is not generally carried out in the collieries?" It is
not carried out." (ns. 443, 444.) Do the men take a great in-
terest in this question " (of education)? "The majority of them
do." (n. 717.) "Are they very anxious to see the law en-
forced?" "The majority are." (n. 718.) "Do you think
that in this country any law that you pass.
really be effectual unless the population themselves assist in
putting it into operation?" "Many a man might wish to ob-
ject to employing a boy, but he would perhaps become marked
by it." (n. 720.) "Marked by whom?" "By his employers."
(n. 721.) “Do you think that the employers would find any
fault with a man who obeyed the law. . . ?"
?" "I believe
they would." (n. 722.) "Have you ever heard of any work-
man objecting to employ a boy between 10 and 12, who could
not write or read?" "It is not left to men's option." (n.
123) "Would you call for the interference of Parliament ?"
'I think that if anything effectual is to be done in the edu-
cation of the colliers' children, it will have to be made compul-
sory by Act of Parliament." (n. 1634.) "Would you lay that
obligation upon the colliers only, of all the work people of
CC
can
((
tr
""
Machinery and Modern Industry.
505
ด
1
Great Britain? "I came to speak for the colliers."
(n. 1636.) "Why should you distinguish them (colliery boys)
from other boys?
“Because I think they are an exception
to the rule." (n. 1638.) "In what respect?" "In a physical
respect." (n. 1639.)
to them than to other classes of lads ?"
Why should education be more valuable
""
})
""
(C
CC
I do not know that
tr
<<
No"
it is more valuable; but through the over-exertion in mines
there is less chance for the boys that are employed there to get
education, either at Sunday schools, or at day schools."
(n. 1640.) "It is impossible to look at a question of this sort
absolutely by itself?" (n. 1644.) "Is there a sufficiency of
schools?
(n. 1646).
If the state were to
require that every child should be sent to school, would there
be schools for the children to go to ?" "No; but I think if the
circumstances were to spring up, the schools would be forth-
coming." (n. 1647.) "Some of them (the boys) cannot read
and write at all, I suppose?" "The majority cannot.
The majority of the men themselves cannot." (ns. 705, 725).
CC
III. EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN.-Since 1842 women are no
more employed underground, but are occupied on the surface
in loading the coal, &c., in drawing the tubs to the canals and
railway waggons, in sorting, &c. Their numbers have consider-
ably increased during the last three or four years. (n. 1727.)
They are mostly the wives, daughters, and widows of the
working miners, and their ages range from 12 to 50 or 60
years. (ns. 645, 1779.) "What is the feeling among the
working miners as to the employment of women?' I think
they generally condemn it." (n. 648.) "What objection do
you see to it ?
"I think it is degrading to the sex." (n.
649.) "There is a peculiarity of dress?” Yes. . it is
rather a man's dress, and I believe in some cases, it drowns all
sense of decency." Do the women smoke? Some do."
"And I suppose it is very dirty work? Very dirty."
"They get black and grimy?" "As black as those who are
down the mines ... I believe that a woman having children
(and there are plenty on the banks that have) cannot do her
duty to her children." (ns. 650-654, 701.) "Do you think
that those widows could get employment anywhere else, which
""
<<
tr
>>
>>
((
>>
mandag
506
Capitalist Production.
((
(C
would bring them in as much wages as that (from 8s. to 10s. a
week)?" "I cannot speak to that." (n. 709.) "You would
still be prepared, would you," (flint-hearted fellow ! ) " to pre-
vent their obtaining a livelihood by these means?" I would."
(n. 710.) "What is the general feeling in the district. . . as
to the employment of women? The feeling is that it is
degrading; and we wish as miners to have more respect to the
fair sex than to see them placed on the pit bank . . .
.. Some
part of the work is very hard; some of these girls have raised
as much as 10 tons of stuff a day." (ns. 1715, 1717.) "Do
you think that the women employed about the collieries are
less moral than the women employed in the factories?"
the percentage of bad ones may be a little more . . . than with
the girls in the factories." (n. 1237.) "But you are not quite
satisfied with the state of morality in the factories?" "No."
(n. 1733) Would you prohibit the employment of women in
factories also?" "No, I would not." (n. 1734.) Why not?"
"I think it a more honourable occupation for them in the
mills." (n. 1735.) "Still it is injurious to their morality, you
think?" "Not so much as working on the pit bank; but it
is more on the social position I take it; I do not take it on its
moral ground alone. The degradation, in its social bearing on.
the girls, is deplorable in the extreme. When these 400 or
500 girls become colliers' wives, the men suffer greatly from
this degradation, and it causes them to leave their homes and
drink." (n. 1736.) "You would be obliged to stop the em-
ployment of women in the ironworks as well, would you not,
if you stopped it in the collieries?" "I cannot speak for any
other trade." (n. 1737.) "Can you see any difference in the
circumstances of women employed in iron-works, and the
circumstances of women employed above ground in collieries?"
"I have not ascertained anything as to that." (n. 1740.)
CC
er
re
>>
<<
CC
Can you see anything that makes a distinction between one
class and the other?" "I have not ascertained that, but I
know from house to house visitation, that it is a deplorable
state of things in our district. . . (n. 1741.) Would you
interfere in every case with the employment of women where
that employment was degrading?" "It would become in-
>>
CC
Machinery and Modern Industry.
507
A
¦
}
!
}
..
•
jurious, I think, in this way: the best feelings of Englishmen
have been gained from the instruction of a mother . . ." (n.
1750.) "That equally applies to agricultural employments,
does it not?" 'Yes, but that is only for two seasons, and we
have work all the four seasons." (n. 1751). "They often
work day and night, wet through to the skin, their constitu-
tion, undermined and their health ruined." "You have not
inquired into that subject perhaps?" "I have certainly taken
note of it as I have gone along, and certainly I have seen
nothing parallel to the effects of the employment of women on
the pit bank . . . It is the work of a man . a strong man.”
(ns. 1753, 1793, 1794.) "Your feeling upon the whole subject
is that the better class of colliers who desire to raise them-
selves and humanise themselves, instead of deriving help from
the women, are pulled down by them?" "Yes." (n. 1808.)
After some further crooked questions from these bourgeois, the
secret of their "sympathy" for widows, poor families, &c.,
comes out at last. The coal proprietor appoints certain
gentlemen to take the oversight of the workings, and it is their
policy, in order to receive approbation, to place things on the
most economical basis they can, and these girls are employed
at from 1s. up to 1s. 6d. a day, where a man at the rate of 2s.
6d. a day would have to be employed." (n. 1816.)
IV. CORONER'S INQUESTS." With regard to coroner's in-
quests in your district, have the workmen confidence in the
proceedings at those inquests when accidents occur?"
"No;
they have not." (n. 360.) Why not?" Chiefly because
the men who are generally chosen, are men who know nothing
about mines and such like." "Are not workmen summoned
at all upon the juries?" "Never but as witnesses to my
knowledge." "Who are the people who are generally sum-
moned upon these juries?" "Generally tradesmen in the
neighbourhood. . .
... from their circumstances they are some-
times liable to be influenced by their employers. the
owners of the works. They are generally men who have no
knowledge, and can scarcely understand the witnesses who are
called before them, and the terms which are used and such
like." "Would you have the jury composed of persons who
CC
(C
•
508
Capitalist Production.
""
had been employed in mining?" Yes, partly.... they (the
workmen) think that the verdict is not in accordance with the
evidence given generally." (ns. 361, 364, 366, 368, 371, 375.)
“One great object in summoning a jury is to have an impartial
one, is it not? "Yes, I should think so." "Do you think
that the juries would be impartial if they were composed to a
considerable extent of workmen ?" 'I cannot see any motive
which the workmen would have to act partially .. they
necessarily have a better knowledge of the operations in con-
nection with the mine." "You do not think there would be a
tendency on the part of the workmen to return unfairly severe
verdicts?" No, I think not." (ns. 378, 379, 380.)
(C
(C
V. FALSE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.-The workmen demand
to be paid weekly instead of fortnightly, and by weight instead
of by cubical contents of the tubs; they also demand protec-
tion against the use of false weights, &c. (n. 1071.) "If the
tubs were fraudulently increased, a man could discontinue
working by giving 14 days' notice?" "But if he goes to
another place, there is the same thing going on there." (n.
1071.) "But he can leave that place where the wrong has
been committed?" "It is general; wherever he goes, he has
to submit to it." (n. 1072.) "Could a man leave by giving
14 days' notice ?" "Yes." (n. 1073.) And yet they are not
satisfied!
(C
•
VI. INSPECTION OF MINES. Casualties from explosions are
not the only things the workmen suffer from. (n. 234, sqq.)
"Our men complained very much of the bad ventilation of the
collieries . . . the ventilation is so bad in general that the men
can scarcely breathe; they are quite unfit for employment of
any kind after they have been for a length of time in connec-
tion with their work; indeed, just at the part of the mine
where I am working, men have been obliged to leave their
employment and come home in consequence of that . .
some of them have been out of work for weeks just in conse-
quence of the bad state of the ventilation where there is not
explosive gas there is plenty of air generally in the main
courses, yet pains are not taken to get air into the workings
where men are working." Why do you not apply to the
66
T
1
Machinery and Modern Industry.
509
(C
(C
CC
>>
inspector?"
"To tell the truth there are many men who are
timid on that point; there have been cases of men being sacri-
ficed and losing their employment in consequence of applying
to the inspector." Why is he a marked man for having
complained?" "Yes." And he finds it difficult to get em-
ployment in another mine?" Yes." "Do you think the
mines in your neighbourhood are sufficiently inspected to
insure a compliance with the provisions of the Act?" "No;
they are not inspected at all . . . the inspector has been down
just once in the pit, and it has been going seven years..
In the district to which I belong there are not a sufficient
number of inspectors. We have one old man more than 70
years of age to inspect more than 130 collieries." You wish
to have a class of sub-inspectors?" "Yes."
"Yes." (ns. 234, 241,
251, 254, 274, 275, 554, 276, 293.) But do you think it would
be possible for government to maintain such an army of in-
spectors as would be necessary to do all that you want them
to do, without information from the men?" 'No, I should
think it would be next to impossible." "It would be
desirable the inspectors should come oftener?" Yes, and
without being sent for." (n. 280, 277.) "Do you not think
that the effect of having these inspectors examining the
collieries so frequently would be to shift the responsibility (!)
of supplying proper ventilation from the owners of the collieries
to the Government officials?" "No, I do not think that, I
think that they should make it their business to enforce the
Acts which are already in existence." (n. 285.)
(n. 285.) “When you
speak of sub-inspectors, do you mean men at a less salary, and
of an inferior stamp to the present inspectors?" "I would
not have them inferior, if you could get them otherwise." (n.
294.) "Do you merely want more inspectors, or do you want
a lower class of men as an inspector? A man who would
knock about, and see that things are kept right; a man who
would not be afraid of himself." (n. 295.) "If you obtained
your wish in getting an inferior class of inspectors appointed,
do you think that there would be no danger from want of skill,
&c. ? " 'I think not, I think that the Government would see
after that, and have proper men in that position." (n. 297.)
CC
CC
(<
CC
510
Capitalist Production.
This kind of examination becomes at last too much even for
the chairman of the committee, and he interrupts with the
observation: "You want a class of men who would look into
all the details of the mine, and would go into all the holes and
corners, and go into the real facts
into the real facts. . . they would report to
the chief inspector, who would then bring his scientific know-
ledge to bear on the facts they have stated?" (ns. 298, 299.)
"Would it not entail very great expense if all these old work-
ings were kept ventilated?" "Yes, expense might be in-
curred, but life would be at the same time protected." (n.
531.) A working miner objects to the 17th section of the Act.
of 1860; he says, "At the present time, if the inspector of
mines finds a part of the mine unfit to work in, he has to report
it to the mine owner and the Home Secretary. After doing
that, there is given to the owner 20 days to look over the
matter; at the end of 20 days he has the power to refuse
making any alteration in the mine; but, when he refuses, the
mine owner writes to the Home Secretary, at the same time
nominating five engineers, and from those five engineers named
by the mine owner himself, the Home Secretary appoints one,
I think, as arbitrator, or appoints arbitrators from them; now
we think in that case the mine owner virtually appoints his
own arbitrator." (n. 581.) Bourgeois examiner, himself a
mine owner: "But... is this a merely speculative objection ?”
(n. 586.) "Then you have a very poor opinion of the integrity
of mining engineers? It is most certainly unjust and in-
equitable." (n. 588.) Do not mining engineers possess a sort
of public character, and do not you think that they are above
making such a partial decision as you apprehend? I do
not wish to answer such a question as that with respect to the
personal character of those men. I believe that in many cases
they would act very partially indeed, and that it ought not to
be in their hands to do so, where men's lives are at stake."
(n. 589.) This same bourgeois is not ashamed to put this
question : "Do you not think that the mine owner also suffers
loss from an explosion?" Finally, "Are not you workmen in
Lancashire able to take care of your own interests without
calling in the Government to help you?" "No." (n. 1042.)
(C
(C
>>
(C
>>
Machinery and Modern Industry.
511
In the year 1865 there were 3217 coal mines in Great
Britain, and 12 inspectors. A Yorkshire mine owner himself
calculates ("Times," 26th January, 1867), that putting on one
side their office work, which absorbs all their time, each mine.
can be visited but once in ten years by an inspector. No
wonder that explosions have increased progressively, both in
number and extent (sometimes with a loss of 200-300 men),
during the last ten years.
The very defective Act, passed in 1872, is the first that
regulates the hours of labour of the children employed in
mines, and makes exploiters and owners, to a certain extent,
responsible for so-called accidents.
The Royal Commission appointed in 1867, to inquire into
the employment in agriculture of children, young persons, and
women, has published some very important reports. Several
attempts to apply the principles of the Factory Acts, but in a
modified form, to agriculture have been made, but have so far
resulted in complete failure. All that I wish to draw attention
to here is the existence of an irresistible tendency towards the
general application of those principles.
If the general extension of factory legislation to all trades.
for the purpose of protecting the working class both in mind.
and body has become inevitable, on the other hand, as we
have already pointed out, that extension hastens on the
general conversion of numerous isolated small industries into a
few combined industries carried on upon a large scale; it there-
fore accelerates the concentration of capital and the exclusive
predominance of the factory system. It destroys both the
ancient and the transitional forms, behind which the dominion
of capital is still in part concealed, and replaces them by the
direct and open sway of capital; but thereby it also generalises
the direct opposition to this sway. While in each individual
workshop it enforces uniformity, regularity, order, and
economy, it increases by the immense spur which the limi-
tation and regulation of the working day give to technical
improvement, the anarchy and the catastrophes of capitalist
production as a whole, the intensity of labour, and the com-
petition of machinery with the labourer. By the destruction of
512
Capitalist Production.
petty and domestic industries it destroys the last resort of the
"redundant population," and with it the sole remaining
safety-valve of the whole social mechanism. By maturing the
material conditions, and the combination on a social scale of
the processes of production, it matures the contradictions and
antagonisms of the capitalist form of production, and thereby
provides, along with the eleinents for the formation of a new
society, the forces for exploding the old one.¹
SECTION 10.—MODERN INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE.
The revolution called forth by modern industry in agricul-
ture, and in the social relations of agricultural producers, will
be investigated later on. In this place we shall merely indi-
cate a few results by way of anticipation. If the use of
machinery in agriculture is for the most part free from the
injurious physical effect it has on the factory operative, its
action in superseding the labourers is more intense, and finds
less resistance, as we shall see later in detail. In the counties
of Cambridge and Suffolk, for example, the area of cultivated
land has extended very much within the last 20 years (up to
1868), while in the same period the rural population has
diminished, not only relatively, but absolutely. In the United
States it is as yet only virtually that agricultural machines
replace labourers; in other words, they allow of the culti-
vation by the farmer of a larger surface, but do not actually
expel the labourers employed. In 1861 the number of persons
occupied in England and Wales in the manufacture of agricul-
tural machines was 1034, whilst the number of agricultural
labourers employed in the use of agricultural machines and
steam engines did not exceed 1205.
1 Robert Owen, the father of Co-operative Factories and Stores, but who, as before
remarked, in no way shared the illusions of his followers with regard to the bear-
ing of these isolated elements of transformation, not only practically made the fac-
tory system the sole foundation of his experiments, but also declared that system
to be theoretically the starting point of the social revolution. Herr Vissering, Pro-
fessor of Political Economy in the University of Leyden, appears to have a suspicion
of this when, in his "Handboek van Praktische Staatshuishoudkunde, 1860-62,"
which reproduces all the platitudes of vulgar economy, he strongly supports handi-
crafts against the factory system.
i
Machinery and Modern Industry.
513
In the sphere of agriculture, modern industry has a more
revolutionary effect than elsewhere, for this reason, that it
annihilates the peasant, that bulwark of the old society, and
replaces him by the wage labourer. Thus the desire for social
changes, and the class antagonisms are brought to the same
level in the country as in the towns. The irrational, old
fashioned methods of agriculture are replaced by scientific
ones. Capitalist production completely tears asunder the
old bond of union which held together agriculture and manu-
facture in their infancy. But at the same time it creates
the material conditions for a higher synthesis in the future,
viz., the union of agriculture and industry on the basis of the
more perfected forms they have each acquired during their
temporary separation. Capitalist production, by collecting the
population in great centres, and causing an ever increasing
preponderance of town population, on the one hand concen-
trates the historical motive-power of society; on the other
hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and
the soil, ie., prevents the return to the soil of its elements con-
sumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore
violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the
soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health
of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural
labourer. But while upsetting the naturally grown condi-
tions for the maintenance of that circulation of matter, it
imperiously calls for its restoration as a system, as a re-
gulating law of social production, and under a form appro-
priate to the full development of the human race.
In agri-
culture as in manufacture, the transformation of production
under the sway of capital, means, at the same time, the
martyrdom of the producer; the instrument of labour becomes
the means of enslaving, exploiting, and impoverishing the
1
1 "You divide the people into two hostile camps of clownish boors and emascu-
lated dwarfs. Good heavens! a nation divided into agricultural and commercial
interests, calling itself sane; nay, styling itself enlightened and civilized, not only
in spite of, but in consequence of this monstrous and unnatural division." (David
Urquhart, 1. c., p. 119.) This passage shows, at one and the same time, the strength
and the weakness of that kind of criticism which knows how to judge and condemn
the present, but not how to comprehend it.
2 K
514
Capitalist Production.
labourer; the social combination and organization of labour-
processes is turned into an organised mode of crushing
out the workman's individual vitality, freedom, and inde-
pendence. The dispersion of the rural labourers over larger
areas breaks their power of resistance while concentration
increases that of the town operatives. In modern agriculture,
as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness and
quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of
laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself.
Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress
in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the
soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a
given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of
that fertility. The more a country starts its development on
the foundation of modern industry, like the United States,
for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction.'
(6
1 See Liebig: "Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie, 7.
Auflage, 1862," and especially the " Einleitung in die Naturgesetze des Feldbaus,"
in the 1st Volume. To have developed from the point of view of natural science,
the negative, i.e., destructive side of modern agriculture, is one of Liebig's immortal
merits. His summary, too, of the history of agriculture, although not free from
gross errors, contains flashes of light. It is, however, to be regretted that he ven-
tures on such hap-hazard assertions as the following: "By greater pulverising and
more frequent ploughing, the circulation of air in the interior of porous soil is aided,
and the surface exposed to the action of the atmosphere is increased and renewed;
but it is easily seen that the increased yield of the land cannot be proportional to
the labour spent on that land, but increases in a much smaller proportion. This
law," adds Liebig, was first enunciated by John Stuart Mill in his Principles of
Pol. Econ.', Vol. I., p. 17, as follows: 'That the produce of land increases, cætcris
paribus, in a diminishing ratio to the increase of the labourers employed" (Mill
here introduces in an erroneous form the law enunciated by Ricardo's school, for
since the decrease of the labourers employed,' kept even pace in England with the
advance of agriculture, the law discovered in, and applied to, England, could have no
application to that country, at all events), "is the universal law of agricultural in-
dustry.' This is very remarkable, since Mill was ignorant of the reason for this law.”
(Liebig, 1. c., Bd. I., p. 143 and Note.) Apart from Liebig's wrong interpretation of
the word "labour," by which word he understands something quite different from what
political economy does, it is, in any case, very remarkable" that he should make
Mr. John Stuart Mill the first propounder of a theory which was first published by
James Anderson in A. Smith's days, and was repeated in various works down to the
beginning of the 19th century; a theory which Malthus, that master in plagiarism
(the whole of his population theory is a shameless plagiarism), appropriated to
himself in 1815; which West developed at the same time as, and independently of,
Anderson; which in the year 1817 was connected by Ricardo with the general
theory of value, then made the round of the world as Ricardo's theory, and in
CC
Machinery and Modern Industry.
515
Capitalist production, therefore, developes technology, and the
combining together of various processes into a social whole,
only by sapping the original sources of all wealth-the soil
and the labourer.
1820 was vulgarised by James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill; and which,
finally, was reproduced by John Stuart Mill and others, as a dogma already quite
common-place, and known to every school-boy. It cannot be denied that John
Stuart Mill owes his, at all events, "remarkable" authority almost entirely to such
quid-pro-quos.
:
PART V.
THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE AND OF
RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE
CHAPTER XVI.
ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE.
IN
N considering the labour-process, we began (see Chapter V.)
by treating it in the abstract, apart from its historical
forms, as a process between man and nature. We there stated,
p. 160: "If we examine the whole labour-process, from the
point of view of its result, it is plain that both the instruments
and the subject of labour are means of production, and that
the labour itself is productive labour." And in Note 2, same
page, we further added: "This method of determining, from
the standpoint of the labour-process alone, what is productive
labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case of the
capitalist process of production." We now proceed to the
further development of this subject.
So far as the labour-process is purely individual, one and the
same labourer unites in himself all the functions, that later on
become separated. When an individual appropriates natural
objects for his livelihood, no one controls him but himself.
Afterwards he is controlled by others. A single man cannot
operate upon nature without calling his own muscles into play
under the control of his own brain. As in the natural body
head and hand wait upon each other, so the labour-process
unites the labour of the hand with that of the head. Later on
they part company and even become deadly foes. The product
ceases to be the direct product of the individual, and becomes
Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value.
517
a social product, produced in common by a collective labourer,
i.e., by a combination of workmen, each of whom takes only a
part, greater or less, in the manipulation of the subject of their
labour. As the co-operative character of the labour-process
becomes more and more marked, so, as a necessary consequence,
does our notion of productive labour, and of its agent the pro-
ductive labourer, become extended. In order to labour pro-
ductively, it is no longer necessary for you to do manual work
yourself; enough, if you are an organ of the collective labourer,
and perform one of its subordinate functions. The first defini-
tion given above of productive labour, a definition deduced
from the very nature of the production of material objects, still
remains correct for the collective labourer, considered as a whole.
But it no longer holds good for each member taken individually.
On the other hand, however, our notion of productive labour
becomes narrowed. Capitalist production is not merely the
production of commodities, it is essentially the production of
surplus-value. The labourer produces, not for himself, but for
capital. It no longer suffices, therefore, that he should simply
produce. He must produce surplus-value. That labourer
alone is productive, who produces surplus-value for the capita-
list, and thus works for the self-expansion of capital. If we
may take an example from outside the sphere of production of
material objects, a schoolmaster is a productive labourer, when,
in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works
like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter
has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a
sausage factory, does not alter the relation. Hence the notion
of a productive labourer implies not merely a relation between
work and useful effect, between labourer and product of labour,
but also a specific, social relation of production, a relation that
has sprung up historically and stamps the labourer as the
direct means of creating surplus-value. To be a productive
labourer is, therefore, not a piece of luck, but a misfortune.
In Book IV. which treats of the history of the theory, it will
be more clearly seen, that the production of surplus-value has
at all times been made, by classical political economists, the
distinguishing characteristic of the productive labourer. Hence
518
Capitalist Production.
their definition of a productive labourer changes with their
comprehension of the nature of surplus-value. Thus the
Physiocrats insist that only agricultural labour is productive,
since that alone, they say, yields a surplus-value. And they
say so because, with them, surplus-value has no existence
except in the form of rent.
The prolongation of the working day beyond the point at
which the labourer would have produced just an equivalent
for the value of his labour-power, and the appropriation of
that surplus-labour by capital, this is production of absolute
surplus-value. It forms the general groundwork of the capita-
list system, and the starting point for the production of relative
surplus-value. The latter presupposes that the working day is
already divided into two parts, necessary labour, and surplus-
labour. In order to prolong the surplus-labour, the necessary
labour is shortened by methods whereby the equivalent for
the wages is produced in less time. The production of ab-
solute surplus-value turns exclusively upon the length of the
working day; the production of relative surplus-value, revolu-
tionises out and out the technical processes of labour, and the
composition of society. It therefore presupposes a specific
mode, the capitalist mode of production, a mode which, along
with its methods, means, and conditions, arises and developes
itself spontaneously on the foundation afforded by the formal
subjection of labour to capital. In the course of this develop-
ment, the formal subjection is replaced by the real subjection
of labour to capital.
It will suffice merely to refer to certain intermediate forms,
in which surplus-labour is not extorted by direct compulsion
from the producer, nor the producer himself yet formally sub-
jected to capital. In such forms capital has not yet acquired
the direct control of the labour-process. By the side of inde-
pendent producers who carry on their handicrafts and agricul
ture in the traditional old-fashioned way, there stands the
usurer or the merchant, with his usurer's capital or merchant's
capital, feeding on them like a parasite. The predominance, in
a society, of this form of exploitation excludes the capitalist
mode of production; to which mode, however, this form may
Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value.
519
serve as a transition, as it did towards the close of the Middle
Ages. Finally, as is shown by modern "domestic industry,"
some intermediate forms are here and there reproduced in the
background of Modern Industry, though their physiognomy is
totally changed.
If, on the one hand, the mere formal subjection of labour to
capital suffices for the production of absolute surplus-value, if,
e.g., it is sufficient that handicraftsmen who previously worked
on their own account, or as apprentices of a master, should
become wage labourers under the direct control of a capitalist;
so, on the other hand, we have seen, how the methods of pro-
ducing relative surplus-value, are, at the same time, methods of
producing absolute surplus-value. Nay, more, the excessive
prolongation of the working day turned out to be the peculiar
product of Modern Industry. Generally speaking, the specifi-
cally capitalist mode of production ceases to be a mere means
of producing relative surplus-value, so soon as that mode has
conquered an entire branch of production; and still more so,
so soon as it has conquered all the important branches. It
then becomes the general, socially predominant form of pro-
duction. As a special method of producing relative surplus-
value, it remains effective only, first, in so far as it seizes upon
industries that previously were only formally subject to capital,
that is, so far as it is propagandist; secondly, in so far as the
industries that have been taken over by it, continue to be
revolutionized by changes in the methods of production.
From one standpoint, any distinction between absolute and re-
lative surplus-value appears illusory. Relative surplus-value is
absolute, since it compels the absolute prolongation of the work-
ing day beyond the labour-time necessary to the existence of
the labourer himself. Absolute surplus-value is relative, since
it makes necessary such a development of the productiveness
of labour, as will allow of the necessary labour-time being con-
fined to a portion of the working day. But if we keep in
mind the behaviour of surplus-value, this appearance of iden-
tity vanishes. Once the capitalist mode of production es-
tablished and become general, the difference between absolute
and relative surplus-value makes itself felt, whenever there is
520
Capitalist Production.
a question of raising the rate of surplus-value. Assuming that
labour-power is paid for at its value, we are confronted by this
alternative given the productiveness of labour and its normal
intensity, the rate of surplus-value can be raised only by the
actual prolongation of the working day; on the other hand,
given the length of the working day, that rise can be effected
only by a change in the relative magnitudes of the components
of the working day, viz., necessary labour and surplus-labour;
a change which, if the wages are not to fall below the value of
labour-power, presupposes a change either in the productive-
ness or in the intensity of the labour.
If the labourer wants all his time to produce the necessary
means of subsistence for himself and his race, he has no time
left in which to work gratis for others. Without a certain de-
gree of productiveness in his labour, he has no such superfluous
time at his disposal; without such superfluous time, no
surplus-labour, and therefore no capitalists, no slave-owners, no
feudal lords, in one word, no class of large proprietors.¹
2
Thus we may say that surplus-value rests on a natural
basis; but this is permissible only in the very general sense,
that there is no natural obstacle absolutely preventing one man
from disburdening himself of the labour requisite for his own
existence, and burdening another with it, any more, for in-
stance, than unconquerable natural obstacles prevent one man
from eating the flesh of another. No mystical ideas must in
any way be connected, as sometimes happens, with this his-
torically developed productiveness of labour. It is only after
men have raised themselves above the rank of animals, when
therefore their labour has been to some extent socialised,
that a state of things arises in which the surplus-labour
of the one becomes a condition of existence for the other.
At the dawn of civilisation the productiveness acquired
by labour is small, but so too
too are the wants which
develop with and by the means of satisfying them.
1 "The very existence of the master-capitalists, as a distinct class, is dependent
on the productiveness of industry." (Ramsay, 1. c. p. 206.) "If each man's labour
were but enough to produce his own food, there could be no property." (Raven-
stone, 1. c. p. 14, 15).
2 According to a recent calculation, there are yet at least 4,000,000 cannibals in
those parts of the earth which have already been explored.
→
Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value.
521
Further, at that early period, the portion of society that lives
on the labour of others is infinitely small compared with the
mass of direct producers. Along with the progress in the
productiveness of labour, that small portion of society in-
creases both absolutely and relatively. Besides, capital with
its
accompanying relations springs up from an economic soil
that is the product of a long process of development. The
productiveness of labour that serves as its foundation and
starting point, is a gift, not of nature, but of a history embrac-
ing thousands of centuries.
Apart from the degree of development, greater or less, in the
form of social production, the productiveness of labour is fettered
by physical conditions. These are all referable to the constitution
of man himself (race, &c.), and to surrounding nature. The
external physical conditions fall into two great economical
classes, (1) Natural wealth in means of subsistence, i.e., a fruit-
ful soil, waters teeming with fish, &c., and (2), natural wealth
in the instruments of labour, such as waterfalls, navigable
rivers, wood, metal, coal, &c. At the dawn of civilisation, it is
the first class that turns the scale; at a higher stage of de-
velopment, it is the second. Compare, for example, England
with India, or in ancient times, Athens and Corinth with the
shores of the Black Sea.
The fewer the number of natural wants imperatively calling
for satisfaction, and the greater the natural fertility of the soil
and the favourableness of the climate, so much less is the
labour-time necessary for the maintenance and reproduction of
the producer. So much greater therefore can be the excess of
his labour for others over his labour for himself. Diodorus
long ago remarked this in relation to the ancient Egyptians.
"It is altogether incredible how little trouble and expense the
bringing up of their children causes them. They cook for
them the first simple food at hand; they also give them the
lower part of the papyrus stem to eat, so far as it can be
roasted in the fire, and the roots and stalks of marsh plants,
1 <<
Among the wild Indians in America, almost everything is the labourer's, 99
parts of a hundred are to be put upon the account of labour. In England, perhaps,
the labourer has not ." (The Advantages of the East India Trade, &c. p. 73.)
522
Capitalist Production.
some raw, some boiled and roasted. Most of the children go
without shoes and unclothed, for the air is so mild. Hence a
child, until he is grown up, costs his parents not more, on the
whole, than twenty drachmas. It is this, chiefly, which ex-
plains why the population of Egypt is so numerous, and, there-
fore, why so many great works can be undertaken." Never-
theless the grand structures of ancient Egypt are less due to
the extent of its population than to the large proportion of it
that was freely disposable. Just as the individual labourer
can do more surplus-labour in proportion as his necessary
labour-time is less, so with regard to the working population.
The smaller the part of it which is required for the production
of the necessary means of subsistence, so much the greater is
the part that can be set to do other work.
Capitalist production once assumed, then, all other circum-
stances remaining the same, and given the length of the work-
ing day, the quantity of surplus-labour will vary with the
physical conditions of labour, especially with the fertility of
the soil. But it by no means follows from this that the most
fruitful soil is the most fitted for the growth of the capitalist
mode of production. This mode is based on the dominion of
man over nature. Where nature is too lavish, she "keeps him
in hand, like a child in leading-strings." She does not impose
upon him any necessity to develop himself." It is not the
tropics with their luxuriant vegetation, but the temperate
zone, that is the mother country of capital. It is not the mere
fertility of the soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the
variety of its natural products, the changes of the seasons,
1 Diodorus, 1. c. 1. I. c. 80.
2 "The first (natural wealth) as it is most noble and advantageous, so doth it make
the people careless, proud, and given to all excesses; whereas the second enforceth
vigilancy, literature, arts and policy." (England's Treasure by Foreign Trade. Or
the Balance of our Foreign Trade is the Rule of our Treasure. Written by Thomas
Mun of London, merchant, and now published for the common good by his son John
Mun. London. 1669, p. 181, 182.) "Nor can I conceive a greater curse upon a body
of people, than to be thrown upon a spot of land, where the productions for sub-
sistence and food were, in great measure, spontaneous, and the climate required or
admitted little care for raiment and covering there may be an extreme on the
other side. A soil incapable of produce by labour is quite as bad as a soil that pro-
duces plentifully without any labour." (An Inquiry into the present High Price of
Provisions. Lond. 1767. p. 10.)
1
•
• ·
Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value.
523
which form the physical basis for the social division of labour,
and which, by changes in the natural surroundings, spur man
on to the multiplication of his wants, his capabilities, his
means and modes of labour. It is the necessity of bringing a
natural force under the control of society, of economising, of
appropriating or subduing it on a large scale by the work of
man's hand, that first plays the decisive part in the history of
industry. Examples are, the irrigation works in Egypt,' Lom-
bardy, Holland, or in India and Persia where irrigation by
means of artificial cana's, not only supplies the soil with the
water indispensable to it, but also carries down to it, in the
shape of sediment from the hills, mineral fertilizers. The
secret of the flourishing state of industry in Spain and Sicily
under the dominion of the Arabs lay in their irrigation works.2
Favourable natural conditions alone, give us only the possi-
bility, never the reality, of surplus-labour, nor, consequently,
of surplus-value and a surplus-product. The result of differ-
ence in the natural conditions of labour is this, that the same
quantity of labour satisfies, in different countries, a different
mass of requirements, consequently, that under circumstances.
3
1 The necessity for predicting the rise and fall of the Nile created Egyptian as-
tronomy, and with it the dominion of the priests, as directors of agriculture. "Le
solstice est le moment de l'année où commence la crue du Nil, et celui que les
Egyptiens ont dû observer avec le plus d'attention . . . C'était cette ann´e tropique
qu'il leur importait de marquer pour se diriger dans leurs opérations agricoles. Ils
durent donc chercher dans le ciel un signe apparent de son retour." (Cuvier: Dis-
cours sur les révolutions du globe, ed. Hoefer. Paris, 1863, p. 141.)
2 One of the material bases of the power of the state over the small disconnected
producing organisms in India, was the regulation of the water supply. The Mahome-
tan rulers of India understood this better than their English successors. It is enough
to recall to mind the famine of 1866, which cost the lives of more than a million
Hindoos in the district of Orissa, in the Bengal presidency.
37
There are no two countries which furnish an equal number of the necessaries of
life in equal plenty, and with the same quantity of labour. Men's wants increase or
diminish with the severity or temperateness of the climate they live in; consequently,
the proportion of trade which the inhabitants of different countries are obliged to
carry on through necessity cannot be the same, nor is it practicable to ascertain the
degree of variation farther than by the degrees of Heat and Cold; from whence one
may make this general conclusion, that the quantity of labour required for a certain
number of people is greatest in cold climates, and least in hot ones; for in the former
men not only want more clothes, but the earth more cultivating than in the latter."
(An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest. Lond. 1750. p.
60.) The author of this epoch-making anonymous work is J. Massey. Hume took
his theory of interest from it.
524
Capitalist Production.
ent.
in other respects analogous, the necessary labour-time is differ-
These conditions affect surplus-labour only as natural
limits, i.e., by fixing the points at which labour for others can
begin. In proportion as industry advances, these natural
limits recede. In the midst of our West European society,
where the labourer purchases the right to work for his own
livelihood only by paying for it in surplus-labour, the idea
easily takes root that it is an inherent quality of human labour
to furnish a surplus-product.' But consider, for example, an
inhabitant of the eastern islands of the Asiatic Archipelago,
where sago grows wild in the forests. "When the inhabitants
have convinced themselves, by boring a hole in the tree, that
the pith is ripe, the trunk is cut down and divided into several
pieces, the pith is extracted, mixed with water and filtered:
it is then quite fit for use as sago. One tree commonly yields
300 lbs., and occasionally 500 to 600 lbs. There, then, people
go into the forests, and cut bread for themselves, just as with
us they cut firewood."2 Suppose now such an eastern bread-
cutter requires 12 working hours a week for the satisfaction of
all his wants. Nature's direct gift to him is plenty of leisure
time. Before he can apply this leisure time productively for
himself, a whole series of historical events is required; before
he spends it in surplus-labour for strangers, compulsion is
necessary. If capitalist production were introduced, the honest
fellow would perhaps have to work six days a week, in order
to appropriate to himself the product of one working day.
The bounty of Nature does not explain why he would then
have to work 6 days a week, or why he must furnish 5 days
of surplus-labour. It explains only why his necessary labour-
time would be limited to one day a week. But in no case
would his surplus-product arise from some occult quality
inherent in human labour.
Thus, not only does the historically developed social pro-
ductiveness of labour, but also its natural productiveness,
appear to be productiveness of the capital with which that
labour is incorporated.
1 c
Chaque travail doit (this appears also to be part of the droits et devoirs du
citoyen) laisser un excédant." Proudhon.
2 F. Shouw: "Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch, 2. Ed. Leipz. 1854, p. 148.
Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value.
525
Ricardo never concerns himself about the origin of surplus-
value. He treats it as a thing inherent in the capitalist mode
of production, which mode, in his eyes, is the natural form of
social production. Whenever he discusses the productiveness
of labour, he seeks in it, not the cause of surplus-value, but
the cause that determines the magnitude of that value. On
the other hand, his school has openly proclaimed the produc-
tiveness of labour to be the originating cause of profit (read:
Surplus-value). This at all events is a progress as against the
mercantilists who, on their side, derived the excess of the price
over the cost of production of the product, from the act of
exchange, from the product being sold above its value. Never-
theless, Ricardo's school simply shirked the problem, they did
not solve it. In fact these bourgeois economists instinctively
saw, and rightly so, that it is very dangerous to stir too deeply
the burning question of the origin of surplus-value. But what
are we to think of John Stuart Mill, who, half a century after
Ricardo, solemnly claims superiority over the mercantilists, by
clumsily repeating the wretched evasions of Ricardo's earliest
vulgarisers?
Mill says: "The cause of profit is that labour produces more
than is required for its support." So far, nothing but the old
story; but Mill wishing to add something of his own, pro-
ceeds: "To vary the form of the theorem; the reason why
capital yields a profit, is because food, clothing, materials and
tools, last longer than the time which was required to produce
them." He here confounds the duration of labour-time with
the duration of its products. According to this view, a baker
whose product lasts only a day, could never extract from his
workpeople the same profit, as a machine maker whose pro-
ducts endure for 20 years and more. Of course it is very true,
that if a bird's nest did not last longer than the time it takes
in building, birds would have to do without nests.
>>
This fundamental truth once established, Mill establishes
his own superiority over the mercantilists. "We thus see,'
he proceeds, "that profit arises, not from the incident of ex-
change, but from the productive power of labour; and the
general profit of the country is always what the productive
526
Capitalist Production.
power of labour makes it, whether any exchange takes place
or not. If there were no division of employments, there would
be no buying or selling, but there would still be profit." For
Mill then, exchange, buying and selling, those general condi-
tions of capitalist production, are but an incident, and there
would always be profits even without the purchase and sale
of labour-power!
"If," he continues, "the labourers of the country collectively
produce twenty per cent more than their wages, profits will be
twenty per cent, whatever prices may or may not be." This
is, on the one hand, a rare bit of tautology; for if labourers
produce a surplus-value of 20% for the capitalist, his profit
will be to the total wages of the labourers as 20: 100. On
the other hand, it is absolutely false to say that "profits will
be 20%." They will always be less, because they are cal-
culated upon the sum total of the capital advanced. If, for
example, the capitalist have advanced £500, of which £400 is
laid out in means of production and £100 in wages, and if the
rate of surplus-value be 20%, the rate of profit will be 20: 500,
i.e., 4% and not 20%.
Then follows a splendid example of Mill's method of hand-
ling the different historical forms of social production. "I
assume, throughout, the state of things which, where the
labourers and capitalists are separate classes, prevails, with few
exceptions, universally; namely, that the capitalist advances
the whole expenses, including the entire remuneration of the
labourer." Strange optical illusion to see everywhere a state
of things which as yet exists only exceptionally on our earth.
But let us finish-Mill is willing to concede, "that he should
do so is not a matter of inherent necessity." On the con-
trary: "the labourer might wait, until the production is com-
plete, for all that part of his wages which exceeds mere neces-
saries; and even for the whole, if he has funds in hand
sufficient for his temporary support. But in the latter case,
the labourer is to that extent really a capitalist in the concern,
by supplying a portion of the funds necessary for carrying it
on." Mill might have gone further and have added, that the
labourer who advances to himself not only the necessaries of
L
Changes of Magnitude.
527
>
life but also the means of production, is in reality nothing but
his own wage-labourer. He might also have said that the
American peasant proprietor is but a serf who does enforced
labour for himself instead of for his lord.
After thus proving clearly, that even if capitalist production
had no existence, still it would always exist, Mill is consistent
enough to show, on the contrary, that it has no existence, even
when it does exist. “And even in the former case" (when the
workman is a wage labourer to whom the capitalist advances
all the necessaries of life, he the labourer), " may be looked
upon in the same light," (i.e., as a capitalist), " since, contribu-
ting his labour at less than the market price, (!) he may be
regarded as lending the difference (?) to his employer and
receiving it back with interest, &c." In reality, the labourer
advances his labour gratuitously to the capitalist during, say
one week, in order to receive the market price at the end of
the week, &c., and it is this which, according to Mill, trans-
forms him into a capitalist. On the level plain, simple mounds
look like hills; and the imbecile flatness of the present bour-
geoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHANGES OF MAGNITUDE IN THE PRICE OF LABOUR-POWER AND
IN SURPLUS-VALUE.
THE value of labour-power is determined by the value of the
necessaries of life habitually required by the average labourer.
The quantity of these necessaries is known at any given epoch
of a given suciety, and can therefore be treated as a constant
magnitude. What changes, is the value of this quantity.
There are, besides, two other factors that enter into the de-
termination of the value of labour-power. One, the expenses
J. St. Mill. Principles of Pol. Econ. Lond. 1868, p. 252-53 passim.
528
Capitalist Production.
of developing that power, which expenses vary with the mode
of production; the other, its natural diversity, the difference
between the labour-power of men and women, of children and
adults. The employment of these different sorts of labour-
power, an employment which is, in its turn, made necessary by
the mode of production, makes a great difference in the cost of
maintaining the family of the labourer, and in the value of the
labour-power of the adult male. Both these factors, however,
are excluded in the following investigation.¹
I assume (1) that commodities are sold at their value; (2)
that the price of labour-power rises occasionally above its
value, but never sinks below it.
On this assumption we have seen that the relative magnitudes.
of surplus-value and of price of labour-power are determined
by three circumstances; (1) the length of the working day, or
the extensive magnitude of labour; (2) the normal intensity of
labour, its intensive magnitude, whereby a given quantity of
labour is expended in a given time; (3) the productiveness of
labour, whereby the same quantum of labour yields, in a given
time, a greater or less quantum of product, dependent on the
degree of development in the conditions of production. Very
different combinations are clearly possible, according as one of
the three factors is constant and two variable, or two constant
and one variable, or lastly, all three simultaneously variable.
And the number of these combinations is augmented by the
fact that, when these factors simultaneously vary, the amount
and direction of their respective variations may differ. In
what follows the chief combinations alone are considered.
1. Length of the working day and intensity of labour constant.
Productiveness of labour variable.
On these assumptions the value of labour-power, and the
magnitude of surplus-value, are determined by three laws.
(1). A working day of given length always creates the same
amount of value, no matter how the productiveness of labour,
1 The case considered at pages 305-308 is here of course omitted. (Note by editor
of third edition.)
Changes of Magnitude.
529
、
and, with it, the mass of the product, and the price of each
single commodity produced, may vary.
If the value created by a working day of 12 hours be, say,
six shillings, then, although the mass of the articles produced
varies with the productiveness of labour, the only result is that
the value represented by six shillings is spread over a greater
or less number of articles.
(2.) Surplus-value and the value of labour-power vary in
opposite directions. A variation in the productiveness of
labour, its increase or diminution, causes a variation in the
opposite direction in the value of labour-power, and in the
same direction in surplus-value.
The value created by a working day of 12 hours is a constant
quantity, say, six shillings. This constant quantity is the sum
of the surplus-value plus the value of the labour-power, which
latter value the labourer replaces by an equivalent. It is
self-evident, that if a constant quantity consist of two parts,
neither of them can increase without the other diminishing.
Let the two parts at starting be equal; 3 shillings value of
labour-power, 3 shillings surplus-value. Then the value of
the labour-power cannot rise from three shillings to four, with-
out the surplus-value falling from three shillings to two; and
the surplus-value cannot rise from three shillings to four,
without the value of labour-power falling from three shillings
to two. Under these circumstances, therefore, no change can
take place in the absolute magnitude, either of the surplus-
value, or of the value of labour-power, without a simultaneous
change in their relative magnitudes, i.e., relatively to each
other. It is impossible for them to rise or fall simultaneously.
Further, the value of labour-power cannot fall, and con-
sequently surplus-value cannot rise, without a rise in the pro-
ductiveness of labour. For instance, in the above case, the
value of the labour-power cannot sink from three shillings
to two, unless an increase in the productiveness of labour
makes it possible to produce in 4 hours the same quantity of
necessaries as previously required 6 hours to produce. On
the other hand, the value of the labour-power cannot rise.
from three shillings to four, without a decrease in the pro-
J
2 L
530
Capitalist Production.
T
ductiveness of labour, whereby eight hours become requisite
to produce the same quantity of necessaries, for the production
of which six hours previously sufficed. It follows from this,
that an increase in the productiveness of labour causes a fall
in the value of labour-power and a consequent rise in surplus-
value, while, on the other hand, a decrease in such productive-
ness causes a rise in the value of labour-power, and a fall in
surplus-value.
In formulating this law, Ricardo overlooked one circumstance;
although a change in the magnitude of the surplus-value or
surplus-labour causes a change in the opposite direction in the
magnitude of the value of labour-power, or in the quantity of
necessary labour, it by no means follows that they vary in the
same proportion. They do increase or diminish by the same
quantity. But their proportional increase or diminution de-
pends on their original magnitudes before the change in the
productiveness of labour took place. If the value of the labour-
power be 4 shillings, or the necessary labour-time 8 hours, and
the surplus-value be 2 shillings, or the surplus-labour 4 hours,
and if, in consequence of an increase in the productiveness of
labour, the value of the labour-power fall to 3 shillings, or the
necessary labour to 6 hours, the surplus-value will rise to 3
shillings, or the surplus-labour to 6 hours. The same quantity,
1 shilling or 2 hours, is added in one case and subtracted in
the other. But the proportional change of magnitude is
different in each case. While the value of the labour-power
falls from 4 shillings to 3, i.e., by or 25%, the surplus-value
rises from 2 shillings to 3, i.e., by or 50%. It therefore
follows that the proportional increase or diminution in surplus-
value, consequent on a given change in the productiveness of
labour, depends on the original magnitude of that portion of
the working day which embodies itself in surplus-value; the
smaller that portion, the greater is the proportional change;
the greater that portion, the less is the proportional change.
(3.) Increase or diminution in surplus-value is always conse-
quent on, and never the cause of, the corresponding diminution
or increase in the value of labour-power.¹
1 To this third law MacCulloch has made, amongst others, this absurd addition,
Changes of Magnitude.
531.
Since the working-day is constant in magnitude, and is
represented by a value of constant magnitude, since, to every
variation in the magnitude of surplus-value, there corresponds
an inverse variation in the value of labour-power, and since
the value of labour-power cannot change, except in consequence
of a change in the productiveness of labour, it clearly follows,
under these conditions, that every change of magnitude in
surplus-value arises from an inverse change of magnitude in the
value of labour-power. If, then, as we have already seen, there
can be no change of absolute magnitude in the value of labour-
power, and in surplus-value, unaccompanied by a change in
their relative magnitudes, so now it follows that no change in
their relative magnitudes is possible, without a previous change
in the absolute magnitude of the value of labour-power.
According to the third law, a change in the magnitude of
surplus-value, presupposes a movement in the value of labour-
power, which movement is brought about by a variation in the
productiveness of labour. The limit of this change is given by
the altered value of labour-power. Nevertheless, even when
circumstances allow the law to operate, subsidiary movements
may occur. For example: if in consequence of the increased
productiveness of labour, the value of labour-power fall from 4
shillings to 3, or the necessary labour-time from 8 hours to 6,
the price of labour-power may possibly not fall below 3s. Sd.,
3s. 6d., or 3s. 2d., and the surplus-value consequently not rise
above 3s. 4d., 3s. 6d., or 3s. 10d. The amount of this fall, the
lowest limit of which is 3 shillings (the new value of labour-
power), depends on the relative weight, which the pressure of
capital on the one side, and the resistance of the labourer on
the other, throws into the scale.
The value of labour-power is determined by the value of a
that a rise in surplus-value, unaccompanied by a fall in the value of labour-power,
can occur through the abolition of taxes payable by the capitalist. The abolition of
such taxes makes no change whatever in the quantity of surplus-value that the capi-
talist extorts at first-hand from the labourer. It alters only the proportion in which
that surplus-value is divided between himself and third persons. It consequently
makes no alteration whatever in the relation between surplus-value and value of
labour-power. MacCulloch's exception therefore proves only his misapprehension of
the rule, a misfortune that as oftens happens to him in the vulgarisation of Ricardo,
as it does to J. B. Say in the vulgarisation of Adam Smith.
532
Capitalist Production
given quantity of necessaries. It is the value and not the
mass of these necessaries that varies with the productiveness
of labour. It is, however, possible that, owing to an increase
of productiveness, both the labourer and the capitalist may
simultaneously be able to appropriate a greater quantity of
these necessaries, without any change in the price of labour-
power or in surplus-value. If the value of labour-power be 3
shillings, and the necessary labour-time amount to 6 hours, if
the surplus-value likewise be 3 shillings, and the surplus-
labour 6 hours, then if the productiveness of labour were
doubled without altering the ratio of necessary labour to
surplus-labour, there would be no change of magnitude in
surplus-value and price of labour-power. The only result
would be that each of them would present twice as many
use-values as before; these use-values being twice as cheap as
before. Although labour-power would be unchanged in price,
it would be above its value. If, however, the price of labour-
power had fallen, not to 1s. 6d., the lowest possible point con-
sistent with its new value, but to 2s. 10d. or 2s. 6d., still this
lower price would represent an increased mass of necessaries.
In this way it is possible with an increasing productiveness of
labour, for the price of labour-power to keep on falling, and
yet this fall to be accompanied by a constant growth in the
mass of the labourer's means of subsistence. But even in such
case, the fall in the value of labour-power would cause a corre-
sponding rise of surplus-value, and thus the abyss between the
labourer's position and that of the capitalist would keep
widening.¹
Ricardo was the first who accurately formulated the three
laws we have above stated. But he falls into the following
errors: (1) he looks upon the special conditions under which
these laws hold good as the general and sole conditions of
capitalist production. He knows no change, either in the
length of the working day, or in the intensity of labour; con-
1 "When an alteration takes place in the productiveness of industry, and that
either more or less is produced by a given quantity of labour and capital, the propor-
tion of wages may obviously vary, whilst the quantity, which that proportion repre-
sents, remains the same, or the quantity may vary, whilst the proportion remains
the same." ("Outlines of Political Economy," &c., p. 67.)
Changes of Magnitude.
533
sequently with him there can be only one variable factor, viz.,
the productiveness of labour; (2), and this error vitiates his
analysis much more than (1), he has not, any more than have
the other economists, investigated surplus-value as such, i.e., in-
dependently of its particular forms, such as profit, rent, &c. He
therefore confounds together the laws of the rate of surplus-
value and the laws of the rate of profit. The rate of profit is,
as we have already said, the ratio of the surplus-value to the
total capital advanced; the rate of surplus-value is the ratio
of the surplus-value to the variable part of that capital.
Assume that a capital C of £500 is made up of raw material,
instruments of labour, &c. (c) to the amount of £400; and of
wages (v) to the amount of £100; and further, that the surplus-
value (s) £100. Then we have rate of surplus-value =
£100
100% But the rate of profit s
20% It is,
besides, obvious that the rate of profit may depend on circum-
stances that in no way affect the rate of surplus-value. I
shall show in Book III. that, with a given rate of surplus-
value, we may have any number of rates of profit, and that various
rates of surplus-value may, under given conditions, express
themselves in a single rate of profit.
£500
£100
£100
Productiveness of labour constant.
Intensity of labour variable.
Increased intensity of labour means increased expenditure
of labour in a given time. Hence a working-day of more
intense labour is embodied in more products than is one of less
intense labour, the length of each day being the same. In-
creased productiveness of labour also, it is true, will supply
more products in a given working-day. But in this latter case,
the value of each single product falls, for it costs less labour
than before; in the former case, that value remains unchanged,
for each article costs the same labour as before. Here we have
an increase in the number of products, unaccompanied by a
fall in their individual prices: as their number increases, so
does the sum of their prices. But in the case of increased
II. Working-day constant.
534
Capitalist Production.
productiveness, a given value is spread over a greater mass of
products. Hence the length of the working-day being con-
stant, a day's labour of increased intensity will be incorporated
in an increased value, and, the value of money remaining un-
changed, in more money. The value created varies with the
extent to which the intensity of labour deviates from its
normal intensity in the society. A given working-day, there-
fore, no longer creates a constant, but a variable value; in a
day of 12 hours of ordinary intensity, the value created is, say
6 shillings, but with increased intensity, the value created may
be 7, 8, or more shillings. It is clear that, if the value created
by a day's labour increases from, say, 6 to 8 shillings, then the
two parts into which this value is divided, viz., price of labour-
power and surplus-value, may both of them increase simul-
taneously, and either equally or unequally. They may both
simultaneously increase from 3 shillings to 4. Here, the rise
in the price of labour-power does not necessarily imply that
the price has risen above the value of labour-power. On the
contrary, the rise in price may be accompanied by a fall in
value. This occurs whenever the rise in the price of labour-
power does not compensate for its increased wear and tear.
We know that, with transitory exceptions, a change in the
productiveness of labour does not cause any change in the
value of labour-power, nor consequently in the magnitude of
surplus-value, unless the products of the industries affected are
articles habitually consumed by the labourers. In the present
case this condition no longer applies. For when the variation
is either in the duration or in the intensity of labour, there is
always a corresponding change in the magnitude of the value
created, independently of the nature of the article in which
that value is embodied.
If the intensity of labour were to increase simultaneously
and equally in every branch of industry, then the new and
higher degree of intensity would become the normal degree for
the society, and would therefore cease to be taken account of.
But still, even then, the intensity of labour would be different
in different countries, and would modify the international
application of the law of value. The more intense working-
Changes of Magnitude.
535
day of one nation would be represented by a greater sum of
money than would the less intense day of another nation.¹
III. Productiveness and Intensity of Labour constant. Length
of the working-day variable.
The working-day may vary in two ways. It may be made
either longer or shorter. From our present data, and within
the limits of the assumptions made on p. 528 we obtain the
following laws:
(1.) The working-day creates a greater or less amount of
value in proportion to its length-thus, a variable and not a
constant quantity of value.
(2.) Every change in the relation between the magnitudes
of surplus value and of the value of labour-power arises from
a change in the absolute magnitude of the surplus-labour, and
consequently of the surplus-value.
(3.) The absolute value of labour-power can change only in
consequence of the reaction exercised by the prolongation of
surplus-labour upon the wear and tear of labour-power. Every
change in this absolute value is therefore the effect, but never
the cause, of a change in the magnitude of surplus-value.
We begin with the case in which the working-day is
shortened.
(1.) A shortening of the working-day under the conditions
given above, leaves the value of labour-power, and with it, the
necessary labour-time, unaltered. It reduces the surplus-
labour and surplus-value. Along with the absolute magnitude
of the latter, its relative magnitude also falls, i.e., its magnitude
relatively to the value of labour-power whose magnitude re-
mains unaltered. Only by lowering the price of labour-power
below its value could the capitalist save himself harmless.
1 "All things being equal, the English manufacturer can turn out a considerably
larger amount of work in a given time than a foreign manufacturer, so much as to
counterbalance the difference of the working-days, between 60 hours a week here,
and 72 or 80 elsewhere." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 31st Oct. 1855, p. 65.) The
most infallible means for reducing this qualitative difference between the English
and Continental working hour would be a law shortening quantitatively the length
of the working-day in Continental factories.
536
Capitalist Production.
All the usual arguments against the shortening of the
working-day, assume that it takes place under the conditions
we have here supposed to exist; but in reality the very con-
trary is the case: a change in the productiveness and intensity
of labour either precedes, or immediately follows, a shortening
of the working-day.¹
(2.) Lengthening of the working-day.
Let the necessary
labour-time be 6 hours, or the value of labour-power 3 shillings;
also let the surplus-labour be 6 hours or the surplus-value 3
shillings. The whole working-day then amounts to 12 hours
and is embodied in a value of 6 shillings. If, now, the working-
day be lengthened by 2 hours and the price of labour-power
remain unaltered, the surplus-value increases both absolutely
and relatively. Although there is no absolute change in the
value of labour-power, it suffers a relative fall. Under the
conditions assumed in I. there could not be a change of relative
magnitude in the value of labour-power without a change in
its absolute magnitude. Here, on the contrary, the change of
relative magnitude in the value of labour-power is the result of
the change of absolute magnitude in surplus-value.
Since the value in which a day's labour is embodied, increases
with the length of that day, it is evident that the surplus-
value and the price of labour-power may simultaneously in-
crease, either by equal or unequal quantities. This simul-
taneous increase is therefore possible in two cases, one, the
actual lengthening of the working-day, the other, an increase
in the intensity of labour unaccompanied by such lengthening.
When the working-day is prolonged, the price of labour-
power may fall below its value, although that price be nomin-
ally unchanged or even rise. The value of a day's labour-
power, is, as will be remembered, estimated from its normal
average duration, or from the normal duration of life among
the labourers, and from corresponding normal transformations
of organised bodily matter into motion, in conformity with the
1 "There are compensating circumstances. . . . which the working of the Ten
Hours' Act has brought to light." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact. for 1st Dec. 1>48, p. 7.)
2 "The amount of labour which a man had undergone in the course of 24 hours
might be approximately arrived at by an examination of the chymical changes which
had taken place in his body, changed forms in matter indicating the anterior exercise
of dynamic force." (Grove: "On the Correlation of Physical Forces.")
Changes of Magnitude.
537
nature of man. Up to a certain point, the increased wear and
tear of labour-power, inseparable from a lengthened working-
day, may be compensated by higher wages. But beyond this
point the wear and tear increases in geometrical progression,
and every condition suitable for the normal reproduction and
functioning of labour-power is suppressed. The price of
labour-power and the degree of its exploitation cease to be
commensurable quantities.
IV.-Simultaneous variations in the duration, productiveness,
and intensity of labour.
It is obvious that a large number of combinations are here
possible. Any two of the factors may vary and the third
remain constant, or all three may vary at once.
They may
vary either in the same or in different degrees, in the same or in
opposite directions, with the result that the variations counter-
act one another, either wholly or in part. Nevertheless the
analysis of every possible case is easy in view of the results
given in I., II., and III. The effect of every possible combin-
ation may be found by treating each factor in turn as variable,
and the other two constant for the time being. We shall,
therefore, notice, and that briefly, but two important cases.
(1). Diminishing productiveness of labour with a simultaneous
lengthening of the working-day.
In speaking of diminishing productiveness of labour, we here
refer to diminution in those industries whose products deter-
mine the value of labour-power; such a diminution, for
example, as results from decreasing fertility of the soil, and
from the corresponding dearness of its products. Take the
working-day at 12 hours and the value created by it at 6
shillings, of which one half replaces the value of the labour-
power, the other forms the surplus-value. Suppose, in conse-
quence of the increased dearness of the products of the soil,
that the value of labour-power rises from 3 shillings to 4, and
therefore the necessary labour-time from 6 hours to S. If there
538
Capitalist Production.
be no change in the length of the working-day, the surplus-
labour would fall from 6 hours to 4, the surplus-value from 3
shillings to 2. If the day be lengthened by 2 hours, i.e., from
12 hours to 14, the surplus-labour remains at 6 hours, the
surplus-value at 6 shillings, but the surplus-value decreases
compared with the value of labour-power, as measured by
the necessary labour-time. If the day be lengthened by 4
hours, viz., from 12 hours to 16, the proportional magnitudes
of surplus-value and value of labour-power, of surplus-labour
and necessary labour, continue unchanged, but the absolute
magnitude of surplus-value rises from 3 shillings to 4, that of
the surplus-labour from 6 hours to 8, an increment of 333%.
Therefore, with diminishing productiveness of labour and a
simultaneous lengthening of the working-day, the absolute
magnitude of surplus-value may continue unaltered, at the
same time that its relative magnitude diminishes; its relative
magnitude may continue unchanged, at the same time that its
absolute magnitude increases; and, provided the lengthening
of the day be sufficient, both may increase.
1
In the period between 1799 and 1815 the increasing price of
provisions led in England to a nominal rise in wages, although
the real wages, expressed in the necessaries of life, fell. From
this fact West and Ricardo drew the conclusion, that the
diminution in the productiveness of agricultural labour had
brought about a fall in the rate of surplus-value, and they
made this assumption of a fact that existed only in their
imaginations, the starting-point of important investigations.
into the relative magnitudes of wages, profits, and rent. But,
as a matter of fact, surplus-value had at that time, thanks to
the increased intensity of labour, and to the prolongation of the
working-day, increased both in absolute and relative magnitude.
This was the period in which the right to prolong the hours of
labour to an outrageous extent was established; the period
1 "Corn and labour rarely march quite abreast; but there is an obvious limit, be-
yond which they cannot be separated. With regard to the unusual exertions made
by the labouring classes in periods of dearness, which produce the fall of wages noticed
in the evidence" (namely, before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, 1814-15),
"they are most meritorious in the individuals, and certainly favour the growth of
capital. But no man of humanity could wish to see them constant and unremitted.
Changes of Magnitude.
539
that was especially characterised by an accelerated accumula-
tion of capital here, by pauperism there."
C
(2) Increasing intensity and productiveness of labour with
simultaneous shortening of the working-day.
Increased productiveness and greater intensity of labour,
both have a like effect. They both augment the mass of
articles produced in a given time. Both, therefore, shorten that
portion of the working-day which the labourer needs to produce
his means of subsistence or their equivalent. The minimum
length of the working-day is fixed by this necessary but contrac-
tile portion of it. If the whole working-day were to shrink to the
length of this portion, surplus-labour would vanish, a consum-
mation utterly impossible under the régime of capital. Only
by suppressing the capitalist form of production could the
length of the working-day be reduced to the necessary labour-
time. But, even in that case, the latter would extend its
limits. On the one hand, because the notion of " means of
subsistence" would considerably expand, and the labourer
They are most admirable as a temporary relief; but if they were constantly in action,
effects of a similar kind would result from them, as from the population of a country
being pushed to the very extreme limits of its food." (Malthus: "Inquiry into the
Nature and Progress of Rent," Lond., 1815., p. 48, note.) All honour to Malthus
that he lays stress on the lengthening of the hours of labour, a fact to which he else-
where in his pamphlet draws attention, while Ricardo and others, in face of the most
notorious facts, make invariability in the length of the working-day the ground-work
of all their investigations. But the conservative interests, which Malthus served, pre-
vented him from seeing that an unlimited prolongation of the working-day, combined
with an extraordinary development of machinery, and the exploitation of women and
children, must inevitably have made a great portion of the working class " super-
numerary," particularly whenever the war should have ceased, and the monopoly of
England in the markets of the world should have come to an end. It was, of course,
far more convenient, and much more in conformity with the interests of the ruling
classes, whom Malthus adored like a true priest, to explain this " over-population
by the eternal laws of Nature, rather than by the historical laws of capitalist
production.
1 "A principal cause of the increase of capital, during the war, proceeded from the
greater exertions, and perhaps the greater privations of the labouring classes, the most
numerous in every society. More women and children were compelled by necessitous
circumstances, to enter upon laborious occupations, and former workmen were, from
the same cause, obliged to devote a greater portion of their time to increase produc-
tion."
(Essays on Pol. Econ., in which are illustrated the principal causes of the
present national distress. Lond., 1830, p. 248.)
2)}
540
Capitalist Production.
would lay claim to an altogether different standard of life.
On the other hand, because a part of what is now surplus-
labour, would then count as necessary labour; I mean the
labour of forming a fund for reserve and accumulation.
The more the productiveness of labour increases, the more
can the working-day be shortened; and the more the working-
day is shortened, the more can the intensity of labour increase.
From a social point of view, the productiveness increases in
the same ratio as the economy of labour, which, in its turn,
includes not only economy of the means of production, but also
the avoidance of all useless labour. The capitalist mode of
production, while on the one hand, enforcing economy in each
individual business, on the other hand, begets, by its anarchical
system of competition, the most outrageous squandering of
labour-power and of the social means of production, not to
mention the creation of a vast number of employments, at
present indispensable, but in themselves superflucus.
The intensity and productiveness of labour being given, the
time which society is bound to devote to material production
is shorter, and as a consequence, the time at its disposal for
the free development, intellectual and social, of the in-
dividual is greater, in proportion as the work is more and more
evenly divided among all the able-bodied members of society,
and as a particular class is more and more deprived of the
power to shift the natural burden of labour from its own
shoulders to those of another layer of society. In this direc-
tion, the shortening of the working-day finds at last a limit in
the generalisation of labour. In capitalist society spare time
is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of
the masses into labour-time.
1
į
- ܦܘ
A
}
A
;
Various Formula for Rate of Surplus-Value. 541
CHAPTER XVIII.
VARIOUS FORMULÆ FOR THE RATE OF SURPLUS-VALUE.
WE have seen that the rate of surplus-value is represented by
the following formulæ.
Surplus-value
Surplus-labour
Necessary labour
(+) = Value of labour-power
I. Surplus-value
Variable Capital
The two first of these formulæ represent, as a ratio of values,
that which, in the third, is represented as a ratio of the times
during which those values are produced. These formulæ,
supplementary the one to the other, are rigorously definite and
We therefore find them substantially, but not con-
sciously, worked out in classical political economy. There
we meet with the following derivative formulæ.
II.
One and the same ratio is here expressed as a ratio of
labour-times, of the values in which those labour-times are
embodied, and of the products in which those values exist. It
is of course understood that, by "Value of the Product," is
meant only the value newly created in a working-day, the
constant part of the value of the product being excluded.
-
In all of these formulæ (II.), the actual degree of exploita-
tion of labour, or the rate of surplus-value, is falsely expressed.
Let the working-day be 12 hours. Then, making the same
assumptions as in former instances, the real degree of ex-
ploitation of labour will be represented in the following pro-
portions.
Surplus-labour
Working-day
Surplus-value
Value of the Product
Surplus-product
Total Product
6 hours surplus-labour
6 hours necessary labour
From formulæ II. we get very
50%
6 hours surplus-labour
Working-day of 12 hours
These derivative formulæ express, in reality, only the pro-
portion in which the working-day, or the value produced by
Surplus-value of 3 sh.
Variable Capital of 3 sh.
differently,
Surplus-value of 3 sh.
Value created of 6 sh.
=
=
100%
•
542
Capitalist Production.
it, is divided between capitalist and labourer. If they are to
be treated as direct expressions of the degree of self-expansion
of capital, the following erroneous law would hold good: Sur-
plus-labour or surplus-value can never reach 100%¹ Since
the surplus-labour is only an aliquot part of the working-day,
or since surplus-value is only an aliquot part of the value
created, the surplus-labour must necessarily be always less
than the working-day, or the surplus-value always less than
the total value created. In order, however, to attain the
ratio of 100: 100 they must be equal. In order that the
surplus-labour may absorb the whole day (i.e., an average day
of any week or year), the necessary labour must sink to zero.
But if the necessary labour vanish, so too does the surplus-
labour, since it is only a function of the former. The ratio
can therefore never reach the limit of
or
Surplus value
Value created
100 >
100
Surplus-labour
Working-day
100 still less rise to 100+x But not so the rate of surplus-
value, the real degree of exploitation of labour. Take, e.g., the
estimate of L. de Lavergne, according to which the English
agricultural labourer gets only, the capitalist (farmer) on the
other hand of the product or of its value, apart from the
question of how the booty is subsequently divided between the
1 Thus, e.g., in "Dritter Brief an v. Kirchmann von Rodbertus. Widerlegung der
Ricardo'schen Theorie von der Grundrente und Begründung einer neuen Renten-
theorie. Berlin, 1851." I shall return to this letter later on; in spite of its
erroneous theory of rent, it sees through the nature of capitalist production.
Note by the Editor of the 3rd Edition. It may be seen from this how favourably
Marx judged his predecessors, whenever he found in them real progress, or new and
sound ideas. The subsequent publication of Rodbertus' letters to Rud. Meyer has
shown that the above acknowledgment by Marx wants restricting to some extent.
In those letters this passage occurs: "Capital must be rescued not only from labour,
but from itself, and that will be best effected, by treating the acts of the industrial
capitalist as economical and political functions, that have been delegated to him
with his capital, and by treating his profit as a form of salary, because we still know
no other social organisation. But salaries may be regulated, and may also be reduced
if they take too much from wages. The irruption of Marx into Society, as I may call
his book, must be warded off. Altogether, Marx's book is not so much an in-
vestigation into capital, as a polemic against the present form of capital, a form
which he confounds with the concept itself of capital." (Briefe, &c., von Dr. Rodbertus-
Jagetzow, herausgg. von Dr. Rud. Meyer, Berlin, 1881, I. Bd. p. 111., 48. Brief von
Rodbertus.). To such ideological commonplaces did the bold attack by Rodbertus in
his "social letters" finally dwindle down.
•
•
•
2 That part of the product which merely replaces the constant capital advanced, is
of course left out in this calculation. Mr L. de Lavergne, a blind admirer of Eng-
land, is inclined to estimate the share of the capitalist too low, rather than too high.
1
|
•
Various Formulæ for Rate of Surplus-Value. 543
capitalist, the landlord and others. According to this, the sur-
plus-labour of the English agricultural labourer is to his
necessary labour as 3: 1, which gives a rate of exploitation of
300%
The favourite method of treating the working-day as con-
stant in magnitude became, through the use of the formulæ
II., a fixed usage, because in them surplus-labour is always
compared with a working-day of given length. The same
holds good when the repartition of the value produced is ex-
clusively kept in sight. The working-day that has already
been realised in a given value, must necessarily be a day of
given length.
The habit of representing surplus-value and value of labour-
power as fractions of the value created-a habit that originates
in the capitalist mode of production itself, and whose import
will hereafter be disclosed-conceals the very transaction that
characterises capital, namely the exchange of variable capital
for living labour-power, and the consequent exclusion of the
labourer from the product. Instead of the real fact, we have
the false semblance of an association, in which labourer and
capitalist divide the product in proportion to the different ele-
ments which they respectively contribute towards its for-
mation.¹
Moreover, the formulæ II. can at any time be reconverted
into formulæ I. If, for instance, we have Surplus-labour of 6 hours then
the necessary labour-time being 12 hours less the surplus-
labour of 6 hours, we get the following result,
Working-day of 12 hours
Surplus-labour of 6 hours
100
Necessary labour of 6 hours 100
There is a third formula which I have occasionally already
anticipated; it is
III.
Surplus-value
Value of labour-power
1 All well-developed forms of capitalist production being forms of co-operation,
nothing is, of course, easier, than to make abstraction from their antagonistio
character, and to transform them by a word into some form of free association, as is
done by A. de Laborde in "De l'Esprit de l'Association dans tous les intérêts de la
communauté." Paris 1818. H. Carey, the Yankee, occasionally performs this con-
juring trick with like success, even with the relations resulting from slavery.
(
Surplus labour
Necessary labour
Unpaid labour
Paid labour
544
Capitalist Production.
Paid
Necessary labour.
After the investigations we have given above, it is no longer
possible to be misled, by the formula Unpaid labour, into con-
cluding, that the capitalist pays for labour and not for labour-
power. This formula is only a popular expression for
Surplus-labour The capitalist pays the value, so far as price co-
incides with value, of the labour-power, and receives in ex-
change the disposal of the living labour-power itself. His
usufruct is spread over two periods. During one the labourer
produces a value that is only equal to the value of his labour-
power: he produces its equivalent. Thus the capitalist re-
ceives in return for his advance of the price of the labour-
power, a product of the same price. It is the same as if he
had bought the product ready made in the market. During
the other period, the period of surplus-labour, the usufruct of
the labour-power creates a value for the capitalist, that costs
him no equivalent.¹ This expenditure of labour-power
comes to him gratis. In this sense it is that surplus-labour
can be called unpaid labour.
Capital, therefore, is not only, as Adam Smith says, the com-
mand over labour. It is essentially the command over unpaid
labour. All surplus-value, whatever particular form (profit,
interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallise into, is in sub-
stance the materialisation of unpaid labour. The secret of the
self-expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal
of a definite quantity of other people's unpaid labour.
1 Although the Physiocrats could not penetrate the mystery of surplus-value, yet
this much was clear to them, viz., that it is "une richesse indépendante et disponible
qu'il (the possessor) n'a point achetée et qu'il vend." (Turgot: "Réflexions sur'
Formation et la Distribution des Richesses," p. 11.)
|!
PART VI.
WAGES.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE VALUE (AND RESPECTIVELY THE
PRICE) OF LABOUR-POWER INTO WAGES.
O
N the surface of bourgeois society the wage of the labourer
appears as the price of labour, a certain quantity of
money
that is paid for a certain quantity of labour. Thus people
speak of the value of labour and call its expression in money
its necessary or natural price. On the other hand they speak
of the market prices of labour, i.e., prices oscillating above or
below its natural price.
But what is the value of a commodity? The objective form
of the social labour expended in its production. And how do
we measure the quantity of this value? By the quantity of
the labour contained in it. How then is the value, e.g., of a 12
hours' working day to be determined? By the 12 working
hours contained in a working day of 12 hours, which is an
absurd tautology.¹
In order to be sold as a commodity in the market, labour
1"Mr. Ricardo, ingeniously enough, avoids a difficulty which, on a first view,
threatens to encumber his doctrine, that value depends on the quantity of labour em-
ployed in production. If this principle is rigidly adhered to, it follows that the value
of labour depends on the quantity of labour employed in producing it—which is
evidently absurd. By a dexterous turn, therefore, Mr. Ricardo makes the value of
labour depend on the quantity of labour required to produce wages; or, to give him
the benefit of his own language, he maintains, that the value of labour is to be
estimated by the quantity of labour required to produce wages; by which he means
the quantity of labour required to produce the money or commodities given to the
labourer. This is similar to saying, that the value of cloth is estimated, not by the
quantity of labour bestowed on its production, but by the quantity of labour bestowed
on the production of the silver, for which the cloth is exchanged." (A Critical Dis-
course on the Nature, &c., of Value, p. 50, 51.)
2 M
546
Capitalist Production.
must at all events exist before it is sold. But could the
labourer give it an independent objective existence, he would
sell a commodity and not labour.¹
Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of money,
i.e., of realized labour, with living labour would either do away
with the law of value which only begins to develop itself freely
on the basis of capitalist production, or do away with capitalist
production itself, which rests directly on wage-labour. The
working day of 12 hours embodies itself, e.g., in a money value
of 6s. Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the labourer
receives 6s. for 12 hours' labour; the price of his labour would
be equal to the price of his product. In this case he produces
no surplus-value for the buyer of his labour, the 6s. are not
transformed into capital, the basis of capitalist production
vanishes. But it is on this very basis that he sells his labour
and that his labour is wage-labour. Or else he receives for 12
hours' labour less than 6s., i.e., less than 12 hours' labour.
Twelve hours' labour are exchanged against 10, 6, &c., hours'
labour. This equalisation of unequal quantities not merely
does away with the determination of value. Such a self-de-
structive contradiction cannot be in any way even enunciated
or formulated as a law. 2
It is of no avail to deduce the exchange of more labour
against less, from their difference of form, the one being
realized, the other living. This is the more absurd as the
1 "If you call labour a commodity, it is not like a commodity which is first pro-
duced in order to exchange, and then brought to market where it must exchange with
other commodities according to the respective quantities of each which there may be
in the market at the time; labour is created the moment it is brought to market;
nay, it is brought to market before it is created.' (Observations on some Verbal
Disputes, etc., pp. 75, 76.)
2 "Treating labour as a commodity, and capital, the produce of labour, as another,
then, if the values of these two commodities were regulated by equal quantities of
labour, a given amount of labour would . . . exchange for that quantity of capital
which had been produced by the same amount of labour; antecedent labour would
exchange for the same amount as prescut labour. But the value of labour in
relation to other commodities . . . is determined not by equal quantities of labour."
(E. G. Wakefield in his edition of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," vol. i., London,
1836, p. 231, note.)
3 "Il a fallu convenir (a new edition of the contrat social !) que toutes les fois qu'il
échangerait du travail fait contre du travail à faire, le dernier (le capitaliste) aurait
une valeur supérieure au premier" (le travailleur). Simonde (i.e., Sismondi), "De
la Richesse Commerciale," Genève, 1803, t. 1, p. 37.
>>
Value of Labour-Power and Wages.
547
:
value of a commodity is determined not by the quantity of
labour actually realized in it, but by the quantity of living
labour necessary for its production. A commodity represents,
say 6 working hours. If an invention is made by which it can be
produced in 3 hours, the value, even of the commodity already
produced, falls by half. It represents now 3 hours of social
labour instead of the 6 formerly necessary. It is the quantity
of labour required for its production, not the realized form of
that labour, by which the amount of the value of a commodity
is determined.
That which comes directly face to face with the possessor of
money on the market, is in fact not labour, but the labourer.
What the latter sells is his labour-power. As soon
as his
labour actually begins, it has already ceased to belong to him ;
it can therefore no longer be sold by him. Labour is the sub-
stance, and the immanent measure of value, but has itself no
value.1
In the expression "value of labour," the idea of value is not
only completely obliterated, but actually reversed. It is an
expression as imaginary as the value of the earth. These
imaginary expressions, arise, however, from the relations of
duction themselves. They are categories for the phenomenal
forms of essential relations. That in their appearance things
often represent themselves in inverted form is pretty well
known in every science except political economy.2
pro-
the creator of all wealth, no com-
1 "Labour the exclusive standard of value
modity." Th. Hodgskin, 1. c. p. 186.
2 On the other hand, the attempt to explain such expressious as merely poetic
license only shows the impotence of the analysis. Herce, in answer to Proudhon's
phrase; "Le travail est dit valoir, non pas en tant que marchandise lui même, mais
en vue des valeurs qu'on suppose renfermées puissanciellement en lui. La valeur du
travail est une expression figurée," &c., I have remarked: "Dans le travail-marchandise
qui est d'une réalité effrayante, il (Proudhon) ne voit qu'une ellipse grammaticale.
Done, toute la société actuelle, fondée sur le travail-marchandise, est désormais
fondée sur une license poétique, sur une expression figurée. La société veut-elle
'éliminer tous les inconvénients,' qui la travaillent, eh bien! qu'elle élimine les
termes malsonnants, qu'elle change de langage, et pour cela elle n'a qu'à s'adresser
à l'Académie pour lui demander une nouvelle édition de son dictionnaire."
Marx. "Misère de la Philosophie," p. 34, 35.)
(Karl
It is naturally still more convenient
to understand by value nothing at all. Then one can without difficulty subsume
everything under this category. Thus, e.g., J. B. Say; what is "valeur?" Answer:
"C'est ce qu'une chose vaut," and what is "prix ?" Answer: "La valeur d'une
548
Capitalist Production.
Classical political economy borrowed from every-day life the
category "price of labour" without further criticism, and then
simply asked the question, how is this price determined? It
soon recognized that the change in the relations of demand
and supply explained in regard to the price of labour, as of all
other commodities, nothing except its changes, i.e., the oscilla-
If
tions of the market price above or below a certain mean.
demand and supply balance, the oscillation of prices ceases, all
other conditions remaining the same. But then demand and
supply also cease to explain anything. The price of labour, at
the moment when demand and supply are in equilibrium, is its
natural price, determined independently of the relation of de-
mand and supply. And how this price is determined, is just
the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-
price is taken, e.g., a year, and they are found to cancel one the
other, leaving a mean average quantity, a relatively constant
magnitude. This had naturally to be determined otherwise
than by its own compensating variations. This price which
always finally predominates over the accidental market-prices
of labour and regulates them, this "necessary price" (physio-
erats) or "natural price " of labour (Adam Smith) can, as with
all other commodities, be nothing else than its value expressed
in money. In this way political economy expected to pene-
trate athwart the accidental prices of labour, to the value of
labour. As with other commodities, this value was determined
by the cost of production. But what is the cost of production
—of the labourer, i.e., the cost of producing or reproducing the
labourer himself? This question unconsciously substituted
itself in political economy for the original one; for the search
after the cost of production of labour as such turned in a circle
and never left the spot. What economists therefore call value of
labour, is in fact the value of labour-power, as it exists in the
personality of the labourer, which is as different from its
function, labour, as a machine is from the work it performs.
Occupied with the difference between the market-price of
chose exprimée en monnaie." And why has "le travail de la terre
valeur? Parce qu'on y met un prix." Therefore value is what a thing is worth, and
the land has its value," because its value is "expressed in money.' This is,
anyhow, a very simple way of explaining the why and the wherefore of things.
une
•
CC
Value of Labour-Power and Wages.
549
labour and its so-called value, with the relation of this value
to the rate of profit, and to the values of the commodities pro-
duced by means of labour, &c., they never discovered that the
course of the analysis had led not only from the market prices
of labour to its presumed value, but had led to the resolution
of this value of labour itself into the value of labour-power.
Classical economy never arrived at a consciousness of the re-
sults of its own analysis; it accepted uncritically the categories
"value of labour," "natural price of labour," &c., as final and
as adequate expressions for the value-relation under con-
sideration, and was thus led, as will be seen later, into inex-
tricable confusion and contradiction, while it offered to the
vulgar economists a secure basis of operations for their shallow-
ness, which on principle worships appearances only.
Let us next see how value (and price) of labour-power,
present themselves in this transformed condition as wages.
We know that the daily value of labour-power is calculated
upon a certain length of the labourer's life, to which, again,
corresponds a certain length of working-day. Assume the
habitual working-day as 12 hours, the daily value of labour-
power as 3s., the expression in money of a value that embodies
6 hours of labour. If the labourer receives 3s., then he receives
the value of his labour-power functioning through 12 hours.
If, now, this value of a day's labour-power is expressed as the
value of a day's labour itself, we have the formula: Twelve
hours' labour has a value of 3s. The value of labour-power
thus determines the value of labour, or, expressed in money, its
necessary price. If, on the other hand, the price of labour-
power differs from its value, in like manner the price of labour
differs from its so-called value.
P
As the value of labour is only an irrational expression for
the value of labour-power, it follows, of course, that the value
of labour must always be less than the value it produces, for
the capitalist always makes labour-power work longer than is
necessary for the reproduction of its own value. In the above
example, the value of the labour-power that functions through
12 hours is 3s., a value for the reproduction of which 6 hours
are required. The value which the labour-power produces is,
550
Capitalist Production.
on the other hand, 6s., because it, in fact, functions during 12
hours, and the value it produces depends, not on its own
value, but on the length of time it is in action. Thus, we have
a result absurd at first sight-that labour which creates a value
of 6s. possesses a value of 3s.¹
1
We see, further: The value of 3s. by which a part only of the
working-day-i.e., 6 hours' labour-is paid for, appears as the
value or price of the whole working-day of 12 hours, which
thus includes 6 hours unpaid for. The wage-form thus ex-
tinguishes every trace of the division of the working-day into
necessary labour and surplus-labour, into paid and unpaid
labour. All labour appears as paid labour. In the corvée,
the labour of the worker for himself, and his compulsory labour
for his lord, differ in space and time in the clearest possible
way. In slave-labour, even that part of the working-day in
which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means
of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself
alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave's labour
appears as unpaid labour. In wage-labour, on the contrary,
even surplus labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There
the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for him-
self; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour
of the wage-labourer.
Hence, we may understand the decisive importance of the
transformation of value and price of labour-power into the
form of wages, or into the value and price of labour itself.
This phenomenal form, which makes the actual relation invis-
ible, and, indeed, shows the direct opposite of that relation,
forms the basis of all the juridical notions of both labourer and
capitalist, of all the mystifications of the capitalistic mode of
1 Cf. Zur Kritik der Politischen Ekonomie, p. 40, where I state that, in the por-
tion of that work that deals with Capital, this problem will be solved: "How does
production, on the basis of exchange-value determined simply by labour-time, lead to
the result that the exchange-value of labour is less than the exchange-value of its
product?"
2 The "Morning Star," a London free-trade organ, naïf to silliness, protested again
and again during the American civil war, with all the moral indignation of which
man is capable, that the negro in the "Confederate States" worked absolutely for
nothing. It should have compared the daily cost of such a negro with that of the
free workman in the East end of London.
}
Value of Labour-Power and Wages.
551
production, of all its illusions as to liberty, of all the apologetic
shifts of the vulgar economists.
If history took a long time to get at the bottom of the
mystery of wages, nothing, on the other hand, is more easy
to understand than the necessity, the raison d'être, of this
phenomenon.
The exchange between capital and labour at first presents
itself to the mind in the same guise as the buying and selling
of all other commodities. The buyer gives a certain sum of
money, the seller an article of a nature different from money.
The jurist's consciousness recognises in this, at most, a material
difference, expressed in the juridically equivalent formulæ :
"Do ut des, do ut facias, facio ut des, facio ut facias."
Further. Exchange-value and use-value, being intrin-
sically incommensurable magnitudes, the expressions" value of
labour," "price of labour," do not seem more irrational than the
expressions "value of cotton," "price of cotton." Moreover,
the labourer is paid after he has given his labour. In its
function of means of payment, money realises subsequently
the value or price of the article supplied-i.e., in this particular
case, the value or price of the labour supplied. Finally, the
use-value supplied by the labourer to the capitalist is not, in
fact, his labour-power, but its function, some definite useful
labour, the work of tailoring, shoemaking, spinning, &c.
That this same labour is, on the other hand, the universal
value-creating element, and thus possesses a property by which
it differs from all other commodities, is beyond the cognisance
of the ordinary mind.
Let us put ourselves in the place of the labourer who
receives for 12 hours' labour, say the value produced by 6
hours' labour, say 3s. For him, in fact, his 12 hours' labour
is the means of buying the 3s. The value of his labour-
power may vary, with the value of his usual means of subsist-
ence, from 3 to 4 shillings, or from 3 to 2 shillings; or, if the
value of his labour-power remains constant, its price may, in
consequence of changing relations of demand and supply, rise
to 4s. or fall to 2s. He always gives 12 hours of labour.
Every change in the amount of the equivalent that he receives.
552
Capitalist Production.
appears to him, therefore, necessarily as a change in the value
or price of his 12 hours' work. This circumstance misled
Adam Smith, who treated the working-day as a constant
quantity,¹ to the assertion that the value of labour is constant,
although the value of the means of subsistence may vary, and
the same working-day, therefore, may represent itself in more
or less money for the labourer.
Let us consider, on the other hand, the capitalist. He
wishes to receive as much labour as possible for as little
money as possible. Practically, therefore, the only thing that
interests him is the difference between the price of labour-
power and the value which its function creates. But, then, he
tries to buy all commodities as cheaply as possible, and always
accounts for his profit by simple cheating, by buying under,
and selling over the value. Hence, he never comes to see that,
if such a thing as the value of labour really existed, and he
really paid this value, no capital would exist, his money
would not be turned into capital.
Moreover, the actual movement of wages presents pheno-
mena which seem to prove that not the value of labour-power
We may
is paid, but the value of its function, of labour itself.
reduce these phenomena to two great classes: (1.) Change of
wages with the changing length of the working-day. One
might as well conclude that not the value of a machine is paid,
but that of its working, because it costs more to hire a machine
for a week than for a day. (2.) The individual difference in
the wages of different labourers who do the same kind of work.
We find this individual difference, but are not deceived by it,
in the system of slavery, where, frankly and openly, without any
circumlocution, labour-power itself is sold. Only, in the slave
system, the advantage of a labour-power above the average,
and the disadvantage of a labour-power below the average,
affects the slave-owner; in the wage-labour system it affects
the labourer himself, because his labour-power is, in the one
case, sold by himself, in the other, by a third person.
For the rest, in respect to the phenomenal form, “value and
1 Adam Smith only accidentally alludes to the variation of the working-day when
he is referring to piece-wages.
!
Time-Wages.
553
price of labour," or "wages," as contrasted with the essential
relation manifested therein, viz., the value and price of labour-
power, the same difference holds that holds in respect to all
phenomena and their hidden substratum. The former appear
directly and spontaneously as current modes of thought; the
latter must first be discovered by science. Classical political
economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without,
however, consciously formulating it. This it cannot so long as
it sticks in its bourgeois skin.
CHAPTER XX.
TIME-WAGES.
WAGES themselves again take many forms, a fact not recogniz-
able in the ordinary economical treatises which, exclusively
interested in the material side of the question, neglect every
difference of form. An exposition of all these forms however,
belongs to the special study of wage-labour, not therefore to
this work. Still the two fundamental forms must be briefly
worked out here.
The sale of labour-power, as will be remembered, takes place
for a definite period of time. The converted form under which
the daily, weekly, &c., value of labour-power presents itself, is
hence that of time-wages, therefore day-wages, &c.
Next it is to be noted that the laws set forth, in the 17th
chapter, on the changes in the relative magnitudes of price of
labour-power and surplus-value, pass by a simple transforma-
tion of form, into laws of wages. Similarly the distinction
between the exchange-value of labour-power, and the sum of
the necessaries of life into which this value is converted, now
reappears as the distinction between nominal and real wages.
It would be useless to repeat here, with regard to the pheno-
menal form, what has been already worked out in the sub-
554
Capitalist Production.
s
·
stantial form. We limit ourselves therefore to a few points
characteristic of time-wages.
1
The sum of money ¹ which the labourer receives for his daily
or weekly labour, forms the amount of his nominal wages, or of
his wages estimated in value. But it is clear that according
to the length of the working-day, that is, according to the
amount of actual labour daily supplied, the same daily or
weekly wage may represent very different prices of labour, ie.,
very different sums of money for the same quantity of labour."
We must, therefore, in considering time-wages, again dis-
tinguish between the sum total of the daily or weekly
wages, &c., and the price of labour. How then to find this
price, ie., the money-value of a given quantity of labour? The
average price of labour is found, when the average daily value
of the labour-power is divided by the average number of hours
in the working-day. If, e.g., the daily value of labour-power is
3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 working hours, and if
the working-day is 12 hours, the price of 1 working hour is
11/23/24
shillings 3d. The price of the working hour thus found
serves as the unit measure for the price of labour.
It follows therefore that the daily and weekly wages, &c.,
may remain the same, although the price of labour falls con-
stantly. If, e.g., the habitual working-day is 10 hours and the
daily value of the labour-power 3s., the price of the working
hour is 33d. It falls to 3d. as soon as the working-day rises
to 12 hours, to 2 d. as soon as it rises to 15 hours. Daily or
weekly wages remain, despite all this, unchanged. On the
contrary, the daily or weekly wages may rise, although the
price of labour remains constant or even falls. If, e.g., the
working day is 10 hours, and the daily value of labour-
power 3 shillings, the price of one working hour is 3gd.
If the labourer in consequence of increase of trade works 12
hours, the price of labour remaining the same, his daily wage
1 The value of money itself is here always supposed constant.
44
2
(Sir Edward
The price of labour is the sum paid for a given quantity of labour."
West, "Price of Corn and Wages of Labour." London, 1836, p. 67). West is the
author of the anonymous "Essay on the Application of Capital to Land. By a
Fellow of the University College of Oxford, London, 1815." An epoch making work
in the history of political economy.
:
Time-Wages.
555
•
now rises to 3 shillings 74d. without any variation in the price
of labour. The same result might follow if, instead of the ex-
tensive amount of labour, its intensive amount increased.¹ The
rise of the nominal daily or weekly wages may therefore be
accompanied by a price of labour that remains stationary or
falls. The same holds as to the income of the labourer's family,
as soon as the quantity of labour expended by the head of the
family is increased by the labour of the members of his family.
There are, therefore, methods of lowering the price of labour
independent of the reduction of the nominal daily or weekly
wages.2
As a general law it follows that, given the amount of daily,
weekly labour, &c., the daily or weekly wages depend on the
price of labour which itself varies either with the value of
labour-power, or with the difference between its price and its
value. Given, on the other hand, the price of labour, the
daily or weekly wages depend on the quantity of the daily or
weekly labour.
The unit measure for time-wages, the price of the working-
hour, is the quotient of the value of a day's labour-power,
divided by the number of hours of the average working-day.
Let the latter be 12 hours, and the daily value of labour-power
3 shillings, the value of the product of 6 hours of labour.
1 "The wages of labour depend upon the price of labour and the quantity of labour
performed.. An increase in the wages of labour does not necessarily imply an
enhancement of the price of labour. From fuller employment, and greater exertions,
the wages of labour may be considerably increased, while the price of labour may
continue the same. West, 1. c. pp. 67, 68, 112. The main question: "How is the
price of labour determined?" West, however, dismisses with mere banalities.
2 This is perceived by the fanatical representative of the industrial bourgeoisie of
the 18th century, the author of the "Essay on Trade and Commerce " often quoted
by us, although he puts the matter in a confused way: "It is the quantity of labour
and not the price of it (he means by this the nominal daily or weekly wages) that is
determined by the price of provisions and other necessaries: reduce the price of
necessaries very low, and of course you reduce the quantity of labour in proportion.
Master manufacturers know that there are various ways of raising and felling the
price of labour, besides that of altering its nominal amount." (1. c. pp. 48, 61.) In
his "Three Lectures on the rate of Wages," London, 1830, in which N. W. Senior
uses West's work without mentioning it, he says: 'The labourer is principally
interested in the amount of wages," (p. 14), that is to say the labourer is principally
interested in what he receives, the nominal sum of his wages, not in that which he
gives, the amount of labour !
<C
•
>>
556
Capitalist Production.
Under these circumstances the price of a working-hour is 3d.,
the value produced in it is 6d. If the labourer is now em-
ployed less than 12 hours (or less than 6 days in the week), e.g.,
only 6 or 8 hours, he receives, with this price of labour, only
2s. or 1s. 6d. a day. As on our hypothesis he must work on
the average 6 hours daily, in order to produce a day's wage
corresponding merely to the value of his labour-power, as
according to the same hypothesis he works only half of every
hour for himself, and half for the capitalist, it is clear that he
cannot obtain for himself the value of the product of 6 hours
if he is employed less than 12 hours. In previous chapters we
saw the destructive consequences of over-work; here we find
the sources of the sufferings that result to the labourer from his
insufficient employment.
If the hour's wage is fixed so that the capitalist does not
bind himself to pay a day's or a week's wage, but only to pay
wages for the hours during which he chooses to employ the
labourer, he can employ him for a shorter time than that which
is originally the basis of the calculation of the hour-wage, or
the unit-measure of the price of labour. Since this unit is
determined by the ratio
it, of course,
loses all meaning as soon as the working-day ceases to con-
tain a definite number of hours. The connexion between
daily value of labour-power
working-day of a given number of hours,
A
the paid and the unpaid labour is destroyed. The capita-
list can now wring from the labourer a certain quantity
of surplus - labour without allowing him the labour-time
necessary for his own subsistence. He can annihilate all
regularity of employment, and according to his own con-
venience, caprice, and the interest of the moment, make the
most enormous over-work alternate with relative or absolute
cessation of work. He can, under the pretence of paying “the
normal price of labour," abnormally lengthen the working-day
1 The effect of such an abnormal lessening of employment is quite different from
that of a general reduction of the working-day, enforced by law. The former has
nothing to do with the absolute length of the working-day, and may occur just as
well in a working-day of 15, as of 6 hours. The normal price of labour is in the first
case calculated on the labourer working 15 hours, in the second case on his working
6 hours a day on the average. The result is therefore the same if he in the one case
is employed only for 74, in the other only for 3 hours.
1
1
↓
Time-Wages.
557
without any corresponding compensation to the labourer.
Hence the perfectly rational revolt in 1860 of the London
labourers, employed in the building trades, against the attempt
of the capitalists to impose on them this sort of wage by the
hour. The legal limitation of the working-day puts an end
to such mischief, although not, of course, to the diminution of
employment caused by the competition of machinery, by
changes in the quality of the labourers employed, and by crises
partial or general.
working day
With an increasing daily or weekly wage the price of labour
may remain nominally constant, and yet may fall below its
normal level. This occurs every time that, the price of labour
(reckoned per working-hour) remaining constant, the work-
ing-day is prolonged beyond its customary length. If in
the fraction: daily value of labour-power the denominator increases, the
numerator increases yet more rapidly. The value of labour-
power, as dependent on its wear and tear, increases with the
duration of its functioning, and in more rapid proportion than
the increase of that duration. In many branches of industry
where time-wage is the general rule without legal limits to the
working-time, the habit has, therefore, spontaneously grown
up of regarding the working-day as normal only up to a cer-
tain point, e.g., up to the expiration of the tenth hour (“normal
working-day," "the day's work," "the regular hours of work ").
Beyond this limit the working-time is over-time, and is, taking
the hour as unit-measure, paid better ("extra pay "), although
often in a proportion ridiculously small. The normal working-
day exists here as a fraction of the actual working-day, and
the latter, often during the whole year, lasts longer than the
former. The increase in the price of labour with the exten-
1
1 "The rate of payment for overtime (in lace-making) is so small, from 3d. and 3d. to
2d. per hour, that it stands in painful contrast to the amount of injury produced to
the health and stamina of the workpeople. . . . . The small amount thus earned is
also often obliged to be spent in extra nourishment." ("Child Emp. Com., II. Rep.,"
p. xvi., n. 117.)
<<
2 E.g., in paper-staining before the recent introduction into this trade of the Factory
Act. We work on with no stoppage for meals, so that the day's work of 103 hours
is finished by 4.30 p.m., and all after that is overtime, and we seldom leave off work-
ing before 6 p.m., so that we are really working overtime the whole year round."
'Mr Smith's "Evidence in Child. Emp. Com., I. Rep.," p. 125.)
558
Capitalist Production.
sion of the working-day beyond a certain normal limit, takes
such a shape in various British industries that the low price
of labour during the so-called normal time compels the labourer
to work during the better paid over-time, if he wishes to ob-
tain a sufficient wage at all. Legal limitation of the working-
day puts an end to these amenities.²
1
It is a fact generally known that, the longer the working-
days, in any branch of industry, the lower are the wages.³ A.
Redgrave, factory-inspector, illustrates this by a comparative
review of the 20 years from 1839-1859, according to which
wages rose in the factories under the 10 hours' law, whilst
they fell in the factories in which the work lasted 14 to 15
hours daily."
4
From the law: "the price of labour being given, the daily
or weekly wage depends on the quantity of labour expended,"
<<
1 E.g., in the Scotch bleaching-works. "In some parts of Scotland this trade
[before the introduction of the Factory Act in 1862] was carried on by a system of
overtime, i.e., ten hours a day were the regular hours of work, for which a nominal
wage of 1s. 2d. per day was paid to a man, there being every day overtime for three or
four hours, paid at the rate of 3d. per hour. The effect of this system. . . a man could
not earn more than 8s. per week when working the ordinary hours. without
overtime they could not earn a fair day's wages." ("Rept. of Insp. of Factories,"
April 30th, 1863, p. 10.) The higher wages, for getting adult males to work
longer hours, are a temptation too strong to be resisted." ("Rept. of Insp. of Fact.,'
April 30th, 1848, p. 5.) The bookbinding trade in the city of London employs very
many young girls from 14 to 15 years old, and that under indentures which prescribe
certain definite hours of labour. Nevertheless, they work in the last week of each
month until 10, 11, 12, or 1 o'clock at night, along with the older labourers, in a very
mixed company.
The masters tempt them by extra pay and supper," which they
eat in neighbouring public-houses. The great debauchery thus produced among
these young immortals' ("Children's Employment Comm., V. Rept.," p. 44, n.
191) is compensated by the fact that among the rest many Bibles and religious books
are bound by them.
CC
>>
2 See "C
Reports of Insp. of Fact.," 30th April, 1863, 1. c. With very accurate ap-
preciation of the state of things, the London labourers employed in the building
trades declared, during the great strike and lockout of 1860, that they would only
accept wages by the hour under two conditions (1) that, with the price of the work-
ing-hour, a normal working-day of 9 and 10 hours respectively should be fixed, and
that the price of the hour for the 10 hours' working-day should be higher than that
for the hour of the 9 hours' working-day; (2), that every hour beyond the normal
working-day should be reckoned as overtime and proportionally more highly paid.
""
3"It is a very notable thing, too, that where long hours are the rule, small wages
are also so. ("Report of Insp. of Fact.," 31st Oct., 1863, p. 9.) "The work which
obtains the scanty pittance of food, is, for the most part, excessively prolonged.'
("Public Health, Sixth Report," 1864, p. 15.)
4 "Reports of Inspectors of Fact.," 30th April, 1860, pp. 31, 32.
>>
1
I
Time-Wages.
559
it follows, first of all, that, the lower the price of labour, the
greater must be the quantity of labour, or the longer must be
the working-day for the labourer to secure even a miserable
average-wage. The lowness of the price of labour acts here
as a stimulus to the extension of the labour-time.¹
On the other hand, the extension of the working-time pro-
duces, in its turn, a fall in the price of labour, and with this a
fall in the day's or week's wages.
The determination of the price of labour by:
daily value of labour-power
working-day of a given number of hours,
shows that a mere prolongation of the working-day lowers the
price of labour, if no compensation steps in. But the same
circumstances which allow the capitalist in the long run to
prolong the working-day, also allow him first, and compel him
finally, to nominally lower the price of labour, until the total
price of the increased number of hours is lowered, and, therefore,
the daily or weekly wage. Reference to two circumstances is
sufficient here. If one man does the work of 1 or 2 men, the
supply of labour increases, although the supply of labour-
power on the market remains constant. The competition thus
created between the labourers allows the capitalist to beat
down the price of labour, whilst the falling price of labour
allows him, on the other hand, to screw up still further the
working-time. Soon, however, this command over abnormal
quantities of unpaid labour, i.e., quantities in excess of the
average social amount, becomes a source of competition amongst
2
1 The hand-nail makers in England, e.g., have, on account of the low price of
labour, to work 15 hours a day in order to hammer out their miserable weekly wage.
It's a great many hours in a day (6 a.m. to S p.m.), and he has to work hard all the
time to get 11d. or 1s., and there is the wear of the tools, the cost of firing, and some-
thing for waste iron to go out of this, which takes off altogether 21d. or 3d."
("Children's Employment Com., III. Report," p. 136, n. 671.) The women earn by
the same working-time a week's wage of only 5 shillings (1. c., p. 137, n. 674.)
2 If a factory-hand, e.g., refused to work the customary long hours," he would very
shortly be replaced by somebody who would work any length of time, and thus be
thrown out of employment." ("Report of Inspectors of Fact.," 31st Oct., 1848.
Evidence, p. 39. n. 58.) "If one man performs the work of two
CC
profits will generally be raised
labour having diminished its price."
•
•
•
.... the rate of
in consequence of the additional supply of
(Senior, 1. c., p. 14.)
·
#
560
Capitalist Production.
the capitalists themselves. A part of the price of the com-
modity consists of the price of labour. The unpaid part of
the labour-price need not be reckoned in the price of the com-
modity. It may be presented to the buyer. This is the first
step to which competition leads. The second step to which it
drives, is to exclude also from the selling-price of the commo-
dity, at least a part of the abnormal surplus-value created by
the extension of the working-day. In this way an abnormally
low selling-price of the commodity arises, at first sporadically,
and becomes fixed by degrees; a lower selling-price which
henceforward becomes the constant basis of a miserable wage
for an excessive working-time, as originally it was the product
of these very circumstances. This movement is simply indi-
cated here, as the analysis of competition does not belong to
this part of our subject. Nevertheless, the capitalist may, for
a moment, speak for himself. "In Birmingham there is so
much competition of masters one against another, that many
are obliged to do things as employers that they would other-
wise be ashamed of; and yet no more money is made, but only
the public gets the benefit." The reader will remember the
two sorts of London bakers, of whom one sold the bread at its
full price (the "full-priced" bakers), the other below its normal
price ("the underpriced," the undersellers "). The full-
priced" denounced their rivals before the Parliamentary Com-
inittee of Inquiry: "They only exist now by first defrauding
the public, and next getting 18 hours' work out of their men
for 12 hours' wages. . . . The unpaid labour of the men was
made. . . the source whereby the competition was carried on,
and continues so to this day. . . . The competition among the
master bakers is the cause of the difficulty in getting rid of
night-work. An underseller, who sells his bread below the
cost price according to the price of flour, must make it up by
getting more out of the labour of the men. . . . If I got only
12 hours' work out of my men, and my neighour got 18 or 20,
he must beat me in the selling price. If the men could insist
on payment for over-work, this would be set right. . . . . A
large number of those employed by the undersellers are
1 "Children's Employment Com., III. Rep.," Evidence, p. 66, n. 22.
CC
:
Piece-Wages.
561
foreigners, and youths, who are obliged to accept almost any
wages they can obtain."
This jeremiad is also interesting because it shows, how
the appearance only of the relations of production mirrors itself
in the brain of the capitalist. The capitalist does not know
that the normal price of labour also includes a definite quantity
of unpaid labour, and that this very unpaid labour is the
normal source of his gain. The category, surplus-labour-time,
does not exist at all for him, since it is included in the normal
working-day, which he thinks he has paid for in the day's
wages. But overtime does exist for him, the prolongation of
the working day beyond the limits corresponding with the
usual price of labour. Face to face with his underselling com-
petitor, he even insists upon extra pay for this overtime. He
again does not know that this extra pay includes unpaid
labour, just as well as does the price of the customary hour of
labour. For example, the price of one hour of the 12 hours'
working-day is 3d., say the value-product of half a working-
hour, whilst the price of the overtime working-hour is 4d., or
the value-product of of a working-hour. In the first case
the capitalist appropriates to himself one-half, in the second,
one-third of the working-hour without paying for it.
CHAPTER XXI.
PIECE-WAGES.
WAGES by the piece are nothing else than a converted form of
wages by time, just as wages by time are a converted form
of the value or price of labour-power.
In piece-wages it seems at first sight as if the use-value
1 "Report, &c., relative to the Grievances complained of by the Journeymen Bakers."
Lond. 1862, p. 411, and ib. Evidence, notes 479, 359, 27. Anyhow the full-priced
also, as was mentioned above, and as their spokesman, Bennett, himself admits, make
their men generally begin work at 11 p.m. up to 8 o'clock the next morning
as late as 7 o'clock in the evening."
they are then engaged all day long
(1. c., p. 22.)
•
•
1
•
1
2 N
562
Capitalist Production.
bought from the labourer was, not the function of his labour-
power, living labour, but labour already realised in the pro-
duct, and as if the price of this labour was determined, not as
with time-wages, by the fraction:
but
by the capacity for work of the producer.¹
The confidence that trusts in this appearance ought to re-
ceive a first severe shock from the fact that both forms of
wages exist side by side, simultaneously, in the same branches
of industry; e.g., "the compositors of London, as a general rule,
work by the piece, time-work being the exception, while those
in the country work by the day, the exception being work by
the piece. The shipwrights of the port of London work by the
job or piece, while those of all other parts work by the day."
>> 2
In the same saddlery shops of London, often for the same
work, piece-wages are paid to the French, time-wages to the
English. In the regular factories in which throughout piece-
wages predominate, particular kinds of work are unsuitable to
this form of wage, and are therefore paid by time.s But
it is moreover self-evident that the difference of form in the
payment of wages alters in no way their essential nature,
daily value of labour.power
working day of given number of hours
1
1 The system of piece-work illustrates an epoch in the history of the working
man; it is halfway between the position of the mere day labourer depending upon
the will of the capitalist and the co-operative artizan, who in the not distant future
promises to combine the artizan and the capitalist in his own person. Piece-workers
are in fact their own masters, even whilst working upon the capital of the employer."
(John Watts: "Trade Societies and Strikes, Machinery and Co-operative Societies."
Manchester, 1865, p. 52, 53.) I quote this little work because it is a very sink of all
long-ago-rotten, apologetic commonplaces. This same Mr. Watts earlier traded in
Owenism and published in 1842 another pamphlet: "Facts and Fictions of Political
Economists," in which among other things he declares that "property is robbery."
That is long ago.
2 T. J. Dunning: "Trade's Unions and Strikes," Lond. 1860. p. 22.
3 How the existence, side by side and simultaneously, of these two forms of wage
favours the masters' cheating: "A factory employs 400 people, the half of which
work by the piece, and have a direct interest in working longer hours. The other
200 are paid by the day, work equally long with the others, and get no more money
for their overtime. . . . The work of these 200 people for half an hour a day is equal
to one person's work for 50 hours, or of one person's labour in a week, and is a
positive gain to the employer." ("Reports of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1860," p. 9.)
"Overworking to a very considerable extent still prevails; and, in most instances, with
that security against detection and punishment which the law itself affords. I have
in many former reports shown.. the injury to workpeople who are not em-
ployed on piece-work, but receive weekly wages." Leonard Horner in "Reports of
Insp. of Fact." 30th April, 1859, pp. 8, 9.)
Piece-Wages.
563
although the one form may be more favourable to the develop-
ment of capitalist production than the other.
Let the ordinary working day contain 12 hours of which 6
are paid, 6 unpaid. Let its value-product be 6 shillings, that
of one hour's labour therefore 6d. Let us suppose that, as the
result of experience, a labourer who works with the average
amount of intensity and skill, who, therefore, gives in fact only
the time socially necessary to the production of an article,
supplies in 12 hours 24 pieces, either distinct products or
measurable parts of a continous whole. Then the value of
these 24 pieces, after subtraction of the portion of constant
capital contained in them, is 6 shillings, and the value of a
single piece 3d. The labourer receives 1d. per piece, and thus
earns in 12 hours 3 shillings. Just as, with time-wages, it does
not matter whether we assume that the labourer works 6
hours for himself and 6 hours for the capitalist, or half of
every hour for himself, and the other half for the capitalist, so
here it does not matter whether we say that each individual
piece is half paid, and half unpaid for, or that the price of 12
pieces is the equivalent only of the value of the labour-power,
whilst in the other 12 pieces surplus-value is incorporated.
The form of piece-wages is just as irrational as that of time-
wages. Whilst in our example two pieces of a commodity,
after subtraction of the value of the means of production con-
sumed in them, are worth 6d as being the product of one hour,
the labourer receives for them a price of 3d.
Piece-wages
do not, in fact, distinctly express any relation of value. It is
not, therefore, a question of measuring the value of the piece
by the working time incorporated in it, but on the contrary of
measuring the working-time the labourer has expended, by the
number of pieces he has produced. In time-wages the labour
is measured by its immediate duration, in piece-wages by the
quantity of products in which the labour has embodied itself
during a given time. The price of labour-time itself is finally
determined by the equation; value of a day's labour = daily
1
1 "Le salaire peut se mesurer de deux manières; ou sur la durée du travail, ou sur
son produit." ("Abrégé élémentaire des principes de l'Economie Politique.
>> Paris
1796, p. 32.) The author of this anonymous work: G. Garnier.
564
Capitalist Production.
value of labour-power. Piece-wage is, therefore, only a modi-
fied form of time-wage.
Let us now consider a little more closely the characteristic
peculiarities of piece-wages.
The quality of the labour is here controlled by the work
itself, which must be of average perfection if the piece-price is
to be paid in full. Piece-wages become, from this point of
view, the most fruitful source of reductions of wages and capi-
talistic cheating.
They furnish to the capitalist an exact measure for the
intensity of labour. Only the working-time which is em-
bodied in a quantum of commodities determined beforehand
and experimentally fixed, counts as socially necessary working
time, and is paid as such. In the larger workshops of the
London tailors, therefore, a certain piece of work, a waistcoat
e.g., is called an hour, or half an hour, the hour at 6d. By
practise it is known how much is the average product of
one hour. With new fashions, repairs, etc., a contest arises
between master and labourer, whether a particular piece of
work is one hour, and so on, until here also experience decides.
Similarly in the London furniture workshops, etc. If the
labourer does not possess the average capacity, if he cannot in
consequence supply a certain minimum of work per day, he is
dismissed.¹
Since the quality and intensity of the work are here con-
trolled by the form of wage itself, superintendence of labour
becomes in great part superfluous. Piece-wages therefore lay
the foundation of the modern "domestic labour," described above,
as well as of a hierarchically organised system of exploitation
and oppression. The latter has two fundamental forms. On
the one hand piece-wages facilitate the interposition of parasites
between the capitalist and the wage-labourer, the "sub-letting
of labour." The gain of these middle-men comes entirely from
1 "So much weight of cotton is delivered to him [the spinner], and he has to return
by a certain time, in lieu of it, a given weight of twist or yarn, of a certain degree of
fineness, and he is paid so much per pound for all that he so returns. If his work is
defective in quality, the penalty falls on him, if less in quantity than the minimum
fixed for a given time, he is dismissed and an abler operative procured." (Ure 1. c.
p. 317.)
Piece-Wages.
565
the difference between the labour price which the capitalist
pays, and the part of that price which they actually allow to
reach the labourer. In England this system is characteristi-
cally called the "Sweating system." On the other hand piece-
wage allows the capitalist to make a contract for so much per
piece with the head labourer-in manufactures with the chief
of some group, in mines with the extractor of the coal, in the
factory with the actual machine-worker-at a price for which
the head labourer himself undertakes the enlisting and pay-
ment of his assistant workpeople. The exploitation of the
labourer by capital is here effected through the exploitation
of the labourer by the labourer.2
Given piece-wage, it is naturally the personal interest of the
labourer to strain his labour-power as intensely as possible;
this enables the capitalist to raise more easily the normal de-
gree of intensity of labour. It is moreover now the personal
interest of the labourer to lengthen the working day, since
with it his daily or weekly wages rise. This gradually brings
3
1"It is when work passes through several hands, each of which is to take its share
of profits, while only the last does the work, that the pay which reaches the work-
woman is miserably disproportioned." (Child. Emp. Com. II. Report, p. lxx, n. 424.)
2 Even Watts, the apologetic, remarks: "It would be a great improvement to the
system of piece-work, if all the men employed on a job were partners in the contract,
each according to his abilities, instead of one man being interested in overworking
his fellows for his own benefit." (1. c. p. 53.) On the vileness of this system, cf.
Child. Emp. Com. Rep. III. p. 66, n. 22, p. 11, n. 124, p. xi. n. 13, 53, 59, etc.
3 This spontaneous result is often artificially helped along, c.g., in the Engineering
Trade of London, a customary trick is "the selecting of a man who possesses superior
physical strength and quickness, as the principal of several workmen, and paying him
an additional rate, by the quarter or otherwise, with the understanding that he is to
exert himself to the utmost to induce the others, who are only paid the ordinary
wages, to keep up to him. Without any comment this will go far to explain
many of the complaints of stinting the action, superior skill, and working-power,
made by the employers against the men " (in Trades-Unions. Dunning, 1. c. pp. 22, 23).
As the author is himself a labourer and secretary of a Trade's Union, this might be
taken for exaggeration. But the reader may compare the "highly respectable"
Cyclopedia of Agriculture of J. Ch. Morton, Art. "Labourer," where this method is
recommended to the farmers as an approved one.
4"All those who are paid by piece-work. profit by the transgression of the
legal limits of work. This observation as to the willingness to work overtime is
especially applicable to the women employed as weavers and reelers." (Rept. of
Insp. of Fact, 30th April, 1858, p. 9). "This system (piece-work), so advantageous
to the employer tends directly to encourage the young potter greatly to over-
work himself during the four or five years during which he is employed in the piece-
work system, but at low wages . . . This is . . . another great cause to which the bad
constitutions of the potters are to be attributed." (Child. Empl. Com. I. Rept., p. xiii.)
•
•
•
566
Capitalist Production.
on a reaction like that already described in time-wages, without
reckoning that the prolongation of the working day, even if
the piece-wage remains constant, includes of necessity a fall in
the price of the labour.
In time-wages, with few exceptions, the same wage holds for
the same kind of work, whilst in piece-wages, though the price
of the working time is measured by a certain quantity of
product, the day's or week's wage will vary with the indi-
vidual differences of the labourers, of whom one supplies in a
given time the minimum of product only, another the average,
a third more than the average. With regard to actual receipts
there is, therefore, great variety according to the different skill,
strength, energy, staying-power, etc., of the individual lab-
ourers.¹ Of course this does not alter the general relations be-
tween capital and wage-labour. First, the individual differ-
ences balance one another in the workshop as a whole, which
thus supplies in a given working-time the average product,
and the total wages paid will be the average wages of that
particular branch of industry. Second, the proportion between
wages and surplus-value remains unaltered, since the mass of
surplus-labour supplied by each particular labourer corres-
sponds with the wage received by him. But the wider scope
that piece-wage gives to individuality, tends to develop on
the one hand that individuality, and with it the sense of
liberty, independence, and self-control of the labourers, on the
other, their competition one with another. Piece-work has,
therefore, a tendency, while raising individual wages above
the average, to lower this average itself. But where a
particular rate of piece-wage has for a long time been fixed by
tradition, and its lowering, therefore, presented especial diffi-
culties, the masters, in such exceptional cases, sometimes had
recourse to its compulsory transformation into time-wages.
Hence, e.g., in 1860 a great strike among the ribbon-weavers
But in work by the day there is
1 "Where the work in any trade is paid for by the piece at so much per job
wages may very materially differ in amount
generally an uniform rate recognized by both employer and employed as the
standard of wages for the general run of workmen in the trade." (Dunning, 1. c.
p. 17.)
•
•
•
•
•
Piece-Wages.
567
of Coventry.¹ Piece-wage is finally one of the chief supports
of the hour-system described in the preceding chapter.2
From what has been shown so far, it follows that piece-wage
is the form of wages most in harmony with the capitalist
mode of production. Although by no means new-it figures
side by side with time-wages officially in the French and
English labour statutes of the 14th century-it only conquers
a larger field for action during the period of Manufacture,
properly so-called. In the stormy youth of Modern Industry,
especially from 1797 to 1815, it served as a lever for the
lengthening of the working day, and the lowering of wages.
Very important materials for the fluctuation of wages during
that period are to be found in the Blue-books: "Report and
Evidence from the Select Committee on Petitions respecting
the Corn Laws," (Parliamentary Session of 1813-14), and
"Report from the Lords' Committee, on the state of the
Growth, Commerce, and Consumption of Grain, and all Laws
relating thereto," (Session of 1814-15). Here we find docu-
mentary evidence of the constant lowering of the price of
1 "Le travail des Compagnons-artisans sera réglé à la journée ou à la pièce
Ces maîtres-artisans savent à peu près combien d'ouvrage un compagnon-artisan peut
faire par jour dans chaque métier, et les payent souvent à proportion de l'ouvrage
qu'ils font; ainsi ces compagnons travaillent autant qu'ils peuvent, pour leur propre
intérêt, sans autre inspection. (Cantillon, Essai sur la Nature du Commerce
en général, Amst. Ed., 1756, pp. 185 and 202. The first edition appeared in 1755.)
Cantillon, from whom Quesnay, Sir James Steuart & A. Smith have largely drawn,
already here represents piece-wage as simply a modified form of time-wage. The
French edition of Cantillon professes in its title to be a translation from the English,
but the English edition: "The analysis of Trade, Commerce, etc., by Philip Can-
tillon, late of the city of London, Merchant," is not only of later date (1759), but
proves by its contents that it is a later and revised edition; e.g., in the French edition,
Hume is not yet mentioned, whilst in the English, on the other hand, Petty
hardly figures any longer. The English edition is theoretically less important, but
it contains numerous details referring specifically to English commerce, bullion trade,
etc., that are wanting in the French text. The words on the title-page of the English
edition, according to which the work is "Taken chiefly from the manuscript of a
very ingenious gentleman, deceased, and adapted, etc.," seem, therefore, a pure
fiction, very customary at that time.
2 (C
Combien de fois n'avons-nous pas vu, dans certains ateliers, embaucher beaucoup
plus d'ouvriers que ne le demandait le travail à mettre en main? Souvent, dans la
prévision d'un travail aléatoire, quelquefois même imaginaire, on admet des ouvriers:
comme on les paie aux pièces, on se dit qu'on ne court aucun risque, parceque toutes
les pertes de temps seront à la charge des inoccupés." (H. Grégoir: "Les Typo-
graphes devant le Tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles," Bruxelles, 1865, p. 9.)
>>
568
Capitalist Production.
66
labour from the beginning of the Anti-Jacobin War. In the
weaving industry, e.g., piece-wages had fallen so low that in
spite of the very great lengthening of the working day, the
daily wages were then lower than before. "The real earnings
of the cotton weaver are now far less than they were; his
superiority over the common labourer, which at first was very
great, has now almost entirely ceased. Indeed
the
difference in the wages of skilful and common labour is far less
now than at any former period." How little the increased in-
tensity and extension of labour through piece-wages benefited
the agricultural proletariat, the following passage borrowed
from a work on the side of the landlords and farmers shows:
By far the greater part of agricultural operations is done by
people, who are hired for the day or on piece-work. Their
weekly wages are about 12s., and although it may be assumed
that a man earns on piece-work under the greater stimulus to
labour, 1s. or perhaps 2s. more than on weekly wages, yet it is
found, on calculating his total income, that his loss of employ-
ment, during the year, outweighs this again . . . Further, it
will generally be found that the wages of these men bear a
certain proportion to the price of the necessary means of
subsistence, so that a man with two children is able to bring
his family without recourse to parish relief." Malthus at
that time remarked with reference to the facts published by
Parliament: "I confess that I see, with misgiving, the great
extension of the practice of piece-wage. Really hard work
during 12 or 14 hours of the day, or for any longer time, is
too much for any human being."s
up
In the workshops under the Factory Acts, piece-wage be-
comes the general rule, because capital can there only increase
the efficacy of the working day by intensifying labour.*
With the changing productiveness of labour the same quan-
tum of product represents a varying working time. There-
fore, piece-wage also varies, for it is the money expression of a
1 Remarks on the Commercial Policy of Great Britain, London, 1815.
2 A Defence of the Land-owners and Farmers of Great Britain, 1814, pp. 4, 5.
•
* Malthus, Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, Lond., 1815.
4 "Those who are paid by piece-work constitute probably four-fifths of the
workers in the factories." Report of Insp. of Fact., 30th April, 1858."
"C
•
•
A
Piece-Wages.
569
1
determined working time. In our example above, 24 pieces
were produced in 12 hours, whilst the value of the product
of the 12 hours was 6s., the daily value of
daily value of the labour-
power 3s., the price of the labour-hour 3d., and the wage
for one piece 13d. In one piece half-an-hour's labour was
absorbed. If the same working day now supplies, in conse-
quence of the doubled productiveness of labour, 48 pieces
instead of 24, and all other circumstances remain unchanged,
then the piece-wage falls from 1d. to 2d., as every piece now
only represents, instead of of a working hour. 24 by 14d.
3s., and in like manner 48 by 2d. 3s. In other words,
piece-wage is lowered in the same proportion as the number of
the pieces produced in the same time rises,¹ and therefore as
the working time spent on the same piece falls. This change
in piece-wage, so far purely nominal, leads to constant battles
between capitalist and labour. Either because the capitalist
uses it as a pretext for actually lowering the price of labour,
or because increased productive power of labour is accompanied
by an increased intensity of the same. Or because the labourer
takes seriously the appearance of piece-wages, viz., that his pro-
duct is paid for, and not his labour-power, and therefore revolts
against a lowering of wages, unaccompanied by a lowering in
the selling price of the commodity. "The operatives . . .
carefully watch the price of the raw material and the price of
manufactured goods, and are thus enabled to form an accurate
estimate of their master's profits." 2
The capitalist rightly knocks on the head such pretensions
1 "The productive power of his spinning-machine is accurately measured, and the
rate of pay for work done with it decreases with, though not as, the increase of its pro-
ductive power." (Ure, 1. c., p. 317.) This last apolegetic phrase Ure himself again
cancels. The lengthening of the mule causes some increase of labour, he admits.
The labour does therefore not diminish in the same ratio as its productivity increases.
Further: "By this increase the productive power of the machine will be augmented
one-fifth. When this event happens the spinner will not be paid at the same rate
for work done as he was before, but as that rate will not be diminished in the ratio
of one-fifth, the improvement will augment his money earnings for any given number
of hours' work," but "the foregoing statement requires a certain modification.
The spinner has to pay something additional for juvenile aid out of his additional
sixpence, accompanied by displacing a portion of adults" (1. c., p. 321), which has
in no way a tendency to raise wages.
2 H. Fawcett: "The Economic Position of the British Labourer. Cambridge and
London, 1865,” p. 178.
•
•
570
Capitalist Production.
1
as gross errors as to the nature of wage-labour.¹ He cries out
against this usurping attempt to lay taxes on the advance of
industry, and declares roundly that the productiveness of
labour does not concern the labourer at all2
CHAPTER XXII.
NATIONAL DIFFERENCES OF WAGES.
IN the 17th chapter we were occupied with the manifold
combinations which may bring about a change in magnitude
of the value of labour-power-this magnitude being considered
either absolutely or relatively, i.e., as compared with surplus-
value; whilst on the other hand, the quantum of the means of
subsistence in which the price of labour is realised might
again undergo fluctuations independent of, or different from,
the changes of this price.3 As has been already said, the simple
translation of the value, or respectively of the price, of labour-
power into the exoteric form of wages transforms all these
laws into laws of the fluctuations of wages. That which
appears in these fluctuations of wages within a single country
as a series of varying combinations, may appear in different
countries as contemporaneous difference of national wages.
In
1 In the London Standard of October 26, 1861, there is a report of proceedings of the
firm of John Bright & Co., before the Rochdale magistrates "to prosecute for inti-
midation the agents of the Carpet Weavers Trades' Union. Bright's partners had
introduced new machinery which would turn out 240 yards of carpet in the time and
with the labour (!) previously required to produce 160 yards. The workmen had no
claim whatever to share in the profits made by the investment of their employer's
capital in mechanical improvements. Accordingly, Messrs. Bright proposed to lower
the rate of pay from 1d. per yard to 1d., leaving the earnings of the men exactly
the same as before for the same labour. But there was a nominal reduction, of
which the operatives, it is asserted, had not fair warning before hand."
2 "Trades' Unions, in their desire to maintain wages, endeavour to share in the
benefits of improved machinery. (Quelle horreur !). the demanding higher
wages, because labour is abbreviated, is in other words the endeavour to establish a
duty on mechanical improvements." ("On Combination of Trades, new ed., London,
1834," p. 42.)
3 "It is not accurate to say that wages" (he deals here with their money expres-
sion) "are increased, because they purchase more of a cheaper article." (David
Buchanan in his edition of Adam Smith's "Wealth," &c., 1814, Vol. I., p. 417.
Note.)
•
National Differences of Wages.
571
*
the comparison of the wages in different nations, we must
therefore take into account all the factors that determine
changes in the amount of the value of labour-power; the price
and the extent of the prime necessaries of life as naturally and
historically developed, the cost of training the labourers, the
part played by the labour of women and children, the produc-
tiveness of labour, its extensive and intensive magnitude.
Even the most superficial comparison requires the reduction
first of the average day-wage for the same trades, in different
countries, to a uniform working day. After this reduction to
the same terms of the day-wages, time-wage must again be trans-
lated into piece-wage, as the latter only can be a measure both
of the productivity and the intensity of labour.
In every country there is a certain average intensity of
labour, below which the labour for the production of a com-
modity requires more than the socially necessary time, and
therefore does not reckon as labour of normal quality. Only
a degree of intensity above the national average affects, in a
given country, the measure of value by the mere duration of
the working time. This is not the case on the universal
market, whose integral parts are the individual countries. The
average intensity of labour changes from country to country;
here it is greater, there less. These national averages form a
scale, whose unit of measure is the average unit of universal
labour. The more intense national labour, therefore, as com-
pared with the less intense, produces in the same time more
value, which expresses itself in more money.
But the law of value in its international application is yet
more modified by this, that on the world-market the more
productive national labour reckons also as the more intense, so
long as the more productive nation is not compelled by com-
petition to lower the selling price of its commodities to the
level of their value.
In proportion as capitalist production is developed in a
country, in the same proportion do the national intensity and
productivity of labour there rise above the international level.¹
1 We shall inquire, in another place, what circumstances in relation to productivity
may modify this law for individual branches of industry.
572
Capitalist Production.
The different quantities of commodities of the same kind, pro-
duced in different countries in the same working time, have,
therefore, unequal international values, which are expressed in
different prices, i.e., in sums of money varying according to
international values. The relative value of money will, there-
fore, be less in the nation with more developed capitalist
mode of production than in the nation with less developed.
It follows, then, that the nominal wages, the equivalent of
labour-power expressed in money, will also be higher in the
first nation than in the second; which does not at all prove
that this holds also for the real wages, i.e, for the means of
subsistence placed at the disposal of the labourer.
But even apart from these relative differences of the value
of money in different countries, it will be found, frequently,
that the daily or weekly, &c., wage in the first nation is higher
than in the second, whilst the relative price of labour, ie., the
price of labour as compared both with surplus-value and with
the value of the product, stands higher in the second than in
the first.¹
J. W. Cowell, member of the Factory Commission of 1833,
after careful investigation of the spinning trade, came to
the conclusion that, " in England wages are virtually lower to
the capitalist, though higher to the operative than on the
Continent of Europe." (Ure, p. 314.) The English Factory
Inspector, Alexander Redgrave, in his Report of Oct. 31st,
1866, proves by comparative statistics with Continental states,
1 James Anderson remarks in his polemic against Adam Smith: "It deserves,
likewise, to be remarked, that although the apparent price of labour is usually lower
in poor countries, where the produce of the soil, and grain in general, is cheap; yet
it is in fact for the most part really higher than in other countries. For it is not
the wages that is given to the labourer per day that constitutes the real price of
labour, although it is its apparent price. The real price is that which a certain quantity
of work performed actually costs the employer; and considered in this light, labour
is in almost all cases cheaper in rich countries than in those that are poorer, although
the price of grain, and other provisions, is usually much lower in the last than in
the first . . . Labour estimated by the day, is much lower in Scotland than in
England. Labour by the piece is generally cheaper in England." (James Ander-
son, Observations on the means of exciting a spirit of National Industry, &c., Edin.
1777, pp. 350, 351). On the contrary, lowness of wages produces, in its turn, dear-
ness of labour.
"Labour being dearer in Ireland than it is in England . . . because
the wages are so much lower." (N. 2079 in Royal Commission on Railways,
Minutes, 1867.
•
!
:
National Differences of Wages.
that in spite of lower wages and much longer working-time,
Continental labour is, in proportion to the product, dearer than
English. An English manager of a cotton factory in Olden-
burg, declares that the working-time there lasted from 5.30. a.m.
to 8. p.m., Saturdays included, and that the workpeople there,
when under English overlookers, did not supply during this
time quite so much product as the English in 10 hours, but
under German overlookers much less. Wages are much lower
than in England, in many cases 50%, but the number of hands
in proportion to the machinery was much greater, in certain
departments in the proportion of 5:3.-Mr. Redgrave gives
very full details as to the Russian cotton factories. The data
were given him by an English manager until recently em-
ployed there. On this Russian soil, so fruitful of all infamies,
the old horrors of the early days of English factories are in full
swing. The managers are, of course, English, as the native
Russian capitalist is of no use in factory business. Despite
all over-work, continued day and night, despite the most
shameful under-payment of the workpeople, Russian manu-
facture manages to vegetate only by prohibition of foreign
competition. I give, in conclusion, a comparative table of Mr.
Redgrave's, on the average number of spindles per factory and
per spinner in the different countries of Europe. He, himself,
remarks that he had collected these figures a few years ago,
and that since that time the size of the factories and the
number of spindles per labourer in England has increased.
He supposes, however, an approximately equal progress in the
Continental countries mentioned, so that the numbers given
would still have their value for purposes of comparison.
AVERAGE NUMBER OF SPINDLES PER FACTORY.
England, average of spindles per factory
France,
Prussia,
Belgium,
Saxony,
Austria,
Switzerland,
39
>>
>>
"}
در
>>
JJ
»
"
>>
در
>>
>>
در
})
3153
در
12,600
1,500
1,500
4,000
4,500
7,000
8,000
573
574
Capitalist Production.
AVERAGE NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED TO SPINDLES.
14 spindles
28
France, one person to
Russia,
Prussia,
Bavaria,
Austria,
در
""
در
در
Belgium,
Saxony,
>>
Switzerland,
Smaller States of Germany,
Great Britain, "
""
"}
37
46
49
50
50
55
55
74
""
12
>>
"}
رد
""
د,
""
>>
در
"This comparison," says Mr. Redgrave, "is yet more un-
favourable to Great Britain, inasmuch as there is so large a
number of factories in which weaving by power is carried on
in conjunction with spinning [whilst in the table the weavers
are not deducted], and the factories abroad are chiefly spinning
factories; if it were possible to compare like with like, strictly,
I could find many cotton spinning factories in my district in
which mules containing 2,200 spindles are minded by one
man (the "minder ") and two assistants only, turning off daily
220lbs. of yarn, measuring 400 miles in length." (Reports of
Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1866, p. 31-33, passim.)
It is well known that in Eastern Europe as well as in Asia,
English companies have undertaken the construction of rail-
ways, and have, in making them, employed side by side with
the native labourers, a certain number of English working-
men. Compelled by practical necessity, they thus have had to
take into account the national difference in the intensity of
labour, but this has brought them no loss. Their experience
shows that even if the height of wages corresponds more or
less with the average intensity of labour, the relative price of
labour varies generally in the inverse direction.
In an "Essay on the Rate of Wages," "¹ one of his first econo-
mic writings, H. Carey tries to prove that the wages of the
different nations are directly proportional to the degree of
P
1 (C
Essay on the Rate of Wages, with an Examination of the Causes of the Differ-
ences in the Conditions of the Labouring Population throughout the World," Phila-
delphia, 1835.
National Differences of Wages.
575
productiveness of the national working days, in order to draw
from this international relation, the conclusion that wages
everywhere rise and fall in proportion to the productiveness
of labour. The whole of our analysis of the production of
surplus-value shows the absurdity of this conclusion, even if
Carey himself had proved his premises, instead of, after his usual
uncritical and superficial fashion, shuffling to and fro a confused
mass of statistical materials. The best of it is that he does
not assert that things actually are as they ought to be accord-
ing to his theory. For State intervention has falsified the
natural economic relations. The different national wages must
be reckoned, therefore, as if that part of each that goes to the
State in the form of taxes, came to the labourer himself.
Ought not Mr. Carey to consider further whether those "State
expenses" are not the "natural" fruits of capitalistic develop-
ment? The reasoning is quite worthy of the man who first
declared the relations of capitalist production to be eternal laws
of nature and reason, whose free, harmonious working is only
disturbed by the intervention of the State, in order after-
wards to discover that the diabolical influence of England on
the world-market (an influence which, it appears, does not
spring from the natural laws of capitalist production) necessi-
tates State intervention, i.e., the protection of those laws of
nature and reason by the State, alias the System of Protection.
He discovered further, that the theorems of Ricardo and others,
in which existing social antagonisms and contradictions are
formulated, are not the ideal product of the real economic
movement, but on the contrary, that the real antagonisms of
capitalist production in England and elsewhere are the result
of the theories of Ricardo and others! Finally, he discovered
that it is, in the last resort, commerce that destroys the inborn
beauties and harmonies of the capitalist mode of production.
A step further, and he will, perhaps, discover that the one
evil in capitalist production is capital itself. Only a man
with such atrocious want of the critical faculty and such
spurious erudition deserved, in spite of his Protectionist heresy,
to become the secret source of the harmonious wisdom of a
Bastiat, and of all the other Free Trade optimists of to-day.
PART VII.
THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL.
THE conversion of a sum of money into means of production
and labour-power, is the first step taken by the quantum of
value that is going to function as capital. This conversion
takes place in the market, within the sphere of circulation.
The second step, the process of production, is complete so soon
as the means of production have been converted into commodi-
ties whose value exceeds that of their component parts, and,
therefore, contains the capital originally advanced, plus a
surplus-value. These commodities must then be thrown into
circulation. They must be sold, their value realised in money,
this money afresh converted into capital, and so over and over
again. This circular movement, in which the same phases are
continually gone through in succession, forms the circulation of
capital.
The first condition of accumulation is that the capitalist
must have contrived to sell his commodities, and to reconvert
into capital the greater part of the money so received. In the
following pages we shall assume that capital circulates in its
normal way. The detailed analysis of the process will be found
in Book II.
The capitalist who produces surplus-value-i.e., who extracts
unpaid labour directly from the labourers, and fixes it in com-
modities, is, indeed, the first appropriator, but by no means the
ultimate owner, of this surplus-value. He has to share it with
capitalists, with landowners, &c., who fulfil other functions in
the complex of social production. Surplus-value, therefore,
splits up into various parts. Its fragments fall to various cate-
Simple Reproduction.
577
gories of persons, and take various forms, independent the one
of the other, such as profit, interest, merchants' profit, rent, &c.
It is only in Book III. that we can take in hand these modified
forms of surplus-value.
On the one hand, then, we assume that the Capitalist sells
at their value the commodities he has produced, without con-
cerning ourselves either about the new forms that capital
assumes while in the sphere of circulation, or about the con-
crete conditions of reproduction hidden under these forms. On
the other hand, we treat the capitalist producer as owner of
the entire surplus-value, or, better perhaps, as the representa-
tive of all the sharers with him in the booty. We, there-
fore, first of all consider accumulation from an abstract
point of view-ie., as a mere phase in the actual process of
production.
So far as accumulation takes place, the capitalist must have
succeeded in selling his commodities, and in reconverting the
sale-money into capital. Moreover, the breaking-up of surplus-
value into fragments neither alters its nature nor the conditions
under which it becomes an element of accumulation. What-
ever be the proportion of surplus-value which the industrial
capitalist retains for himself, or yields up to others, he is the
one who, in the first instance, appropriates it. We, therefore,
assume no more than what actually takes place. On the other
hand, the simple fundamental form of the process of accumula-
tion is obscured by the incident of the circulation which brings
it about, and by the splitting up of surplus-value. An exact
analysis of the process, therefore, demands that we should, for
a time, disregard all phenomena that hide the play of its inner
mechanism.
CHAPTER XXIII.
SIMPLE REPRODUCTION.
WHATEVER the form of the process of production in a society,
it must be a continuous process, must continue to go periodi-
cally through the same phases. A society can no more cease
20
578
Capitalist Production.
to produce than it can cease to consume. When viewed, there-
fore, as a connected whole, and as flowing on with incessant
renewal, every social process of production is, at the same time,
a process of reproduction.
The conditions of production are also those of reproduction.
No society can go on producing, in other words, no society can
reproduce, unless it constantly reconverts a part of its products
into means of production, or elements of fresh products. All
other circumstances remaining the same, the only mode by
which it can reproduce its wealth, and maintain it at one level,
is by replacing the means of production-i.e., the instruments
of labour, the raw material, and the auxiliary substances con-
sumed in the course of the year-by an equal quantity of the
same kind of articles; these must be separated from the mass
of the yearly products, and thrown afresh into the process of
production. Hence, a definite portion of each year's product
belongs to the domain of production. Destined for productive
consumption from the very first, this portion exists, for the
most part, in the shape of articles totally unfitted for individual
consumption.
If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be reproduc-
tion. Just as in the former the labour-process figures but as a
means towards the self-expansion of capital, so in the latter it
figures but as a means of reproducing as capital—i.e., as self-
expanding value, the value advanced. It is only because hist
money constantly functions as capital that the economical guise
of a capitalist attaches to a man. If, for instance, a sum of
£100 has this year been converted into capital, and produced a
surplus-value of £20, it must continue during next year, and
subsequent years, to repeat the same operation. As a periodic
increment of the capital advanced, or periodic fruit of capital
in process, surplus-value acquires the form of a revenue flowing
out of capital.¹
1 "Mais ces riches, qui consomment les produits du travail des autres, ne peu-
vent les obtenir que par des échanges [purchases of commodities]. S'ils donnent ce-
pendant leur richesse acquise et accumulée en retour contre ces produits nouveaux qui
sont l'objet de leur fantaisie, ils semblent exposés à épuiser bientôt leur fonds de
réserve; ils ne travaillent point, avons-nous dit, et ils ne peuvent même travailler;
on croirait donc que chaque jour doit voir diminuer leurs vieilles richesses, et que lors-
:
Simple Reproduction.
579
If this revenue serve the capitalist only as a fund to provide
for his consumption, and be spent as periodically as it is gained,
then, cæteris paribus, simple reproduction will take place.
And although this reproduction is a mere repetition of the pro-
cess of production on the old scale, yet this mere repetition, or
continuity, gives a new character to the process, or, rather,
causes the disappearance of some apparent characteristics
which it possessed as an isolated discontinuous process.
The purchase of labour-power for a fixed period is the pre-
lude to the process of production; and this prelude is constantly
repeated when the stipulated term comes to an end, when a
definite period of production, such as a week or a month, has
elapsed. But the labourer is not paid until after he has ex-
pended his labour-power, and realised in commodities not only
its value, but surplus-value. He has, therefore, produced not
only surplus-value, which we for the present regard as a fund
to meet the private consumption of the capitalist, but he has
also produced, before it flows back to him in the shape of
wages, the fund out of which he himself is paid, the variable
capital; and his employment lasts only so long as he continues
to reproduce this fund. Hence, that formula of the economists,
referred to in Chapter XVIII., which represents wages as a
share in the product itself.¹ What flows back to the labourer
in the shape of wages is a portion of the product that is con-
tinuously reproduced by him. The capitalist, it is true, pays
him in money, but this money is merely the transmuted form
of the product of his labour. While he is converting a portion
of the means of production into products, a portion of his for-
mer product is being turned into money. It is his labour of
M
qu'il ne leur en restera plus, rien ne sera offert en échange aux ouvriers qui travaillent
exclusivement pour eux. . . . Mais dans l'ordre social, la richesse a acquis la propriété
de se reproduire par le travail d'autrui, et sans que son propriétaire y concoure. La
richesse, comme le travail, et par le travail, donne un fruit annuel qui peut être
détruit chaque année sans que le riche en devienne plus pauvre. Ce fruit est le revenu
qui naît du capital." (Sismondi: Nouv. Princ. d'Econ. Fol. Paris, 1819.
pp. 81-82.)
t. I.
1 "Wages as well as profits are to be considered, each of them, as really a por-
tion of the finished product." (Ramsay, 1.c., p. 142.) "The share of the product
which comes to the labourer in the form of wages." (J. Mill, Elements, &c. Trans-
lated by Parissot. Paris, 1823. p. 34.)
580
Capitalist Production.
last week, or of last year, that pays for his labour-power this
week or this year. The illusion begotten by the intervention
of money vanishes immediately, if, instead of taking a single
capitalist and a single labourer, we take the class of capitalists
and the class of labourers as a whole. The capitalist class is
constantly giving to the labouring class order-notes, in the form
of money, on a portion of the commodities produced by the
latter and appropriated by the former. The labourers give
these order-notes back just as constantly to the capitalist class,
and in this way get their share of their own product. The
transaction is veiled by the commodity-form of the product
and the money-form of the commodity.
Variable capital is therefore only a particular historical form
of appearance of the fund for providing the necessaries of life,
or the labour-fund which the labourer requires for the main-
tenance of himself and family, and which, whatever be the
system of social production, he must himself produce and repro-
duce. If the labour-fund constantly flows to him in the form
of money that pays for his labour, it is because the product
he has created moves constantly away from him in the form
of capital. But all this does not alter the fact, that it is the
labourer's own labour, realised in a product, which is advanced
to him by the capitalist.¹ Let us take a peasant liable to do
compulsory service for his lord. He works on his own land,
with his own means of production, for, say, 3 days a week.
The 3 other days he does forced work on the lord's domain.
He constantly reproduces his own labour-fund, which never,
in his case, takes the form of a money payment for his labour,
advanced by another person. But in return, his unpaid forced
labour for the lord, on its side, never acquires the character of
voluntary paid labour. If one fine morning the lord appro-
priates to himself the land, the cattle, the seed, in a word, the
means of production of this peasant, the latter will thenceforth
be obliged to sell his labour-power to the lord. He will, cæteris
paribus, labour 6 days a week as before, 3 for himself, 3 for
1 "When capital is employed in advancing to the workman his wages, it adds
nothing to the funds for the maintenance of labour." (Cazenove in note to his
edition of Malthus, Definitions in Pol. Econ. London, 1853, p. 22.)
Simple Reproduction.
581
his lord, who thenceforth becomes a wages-paying capitalist.
As before, he will use up the means of production as means of
production, and transfer their value to the product. As before,
a definite portion of the product will be devoted to reproduc-
tion. But from the moment that the forced labour is changed
into wage-labour, from that moment the labour-fund, which
the peasant himself continues as before to produce and repro-
duce, takes the form of a capital advanced in the form of
wages by the lord. The bourgeois economist whose narrow
mind is unable to separate the form of appearance from the
thing that appears, shuts his eyes to the fact, that it is but here
and there on the face of the earth, that even now-a-days the
labour-fund crops up in the form of capital.¹
1
Variable capital, it is true, only then loses its character of a
value advanced out of the capitalist's funds, when we view
the process of capitalist production in the flow of its constant
renewal. But that process must have had a beginning of some
kind. From our present stand-point it therefore seems likely
that the capitalist, once upon a time, became possessed of
money, by some accumulation that took place independently
of the unpaid labour of others, and that this was, therefore,
how he was enabled to frequent the market as a buyer of
labour-power. However this may be, the mere continuity of
the process, the simple reproduction, brings about some other
wonderful changes, which affect not only the variable, but the
total capital.
If a capital of £1000 beget yearly a surplus-value of £200,
and if this surplus-value be consumed every year, it is clear
that at the end of 5 years the surplus-value consumed will
amount to 5 × £200 or the £1000 originally advanced. If only
a part, say one half, were consumed, the same result would
follow at the end of 10 years, since 10 x £100-£1000.
1 "The wages of labour are advanced by capitalists in the case of less than one
fourth of the labourers of the earth." (Rich. Jones: Textbook of Lectures on the
Pol. Econ. of Nations. Hertford, 1852, p. 16.)
9 44
Though the manufacturer" (i.c. the labourer) "has his wages advanced to him
by his master, he in reality costs him no expense, the value of these wages being
generally reserved, together with a profit, in the improved value of the subject upon
which his labour is bestowed." (A. Smith 1. c. Book II. ch. III. p. 311.)
*
582
Capitalist Production.
A
General Rule The value of the capital advanced divided by
the surplus-value annually consumed, gives the number of
years, or reproduction periods, at the expiration of which the
capital originally advanced has been consumed by the capitalist
and has disappeared. The capitalist thinks, that he is con-
suming the produce of the unpaid labour of others, i.c., the
surplus-value, and is keeping intact his original capital; but
what he thinks cannot alter facts. After the lapse of a certain
number of years, the capital value he then possesses is equal
to the sum total of the surplus-value appropriated by him
during those years, and the total value he has consumed is
equal to that of his original capital. It is true, he has in hand
a capital whose amount has not changed, and of which a part,
viz., the buildings, machinery, &c., were already there when
the work of his business began. But what we have to do with
here, is not the material elements, but the value, of that capital.
When a person gets through all his property, by taking upon
himself debts equal to the value of that property, it is clear
that his property represents nothing but the sum total of his
debts. And so it is with the capitalist; when he has con-
sumed the equivalent of his original capital, the value of his
present capital represents nothing but the total amount of the
surplus-value appropriated by him without payment. Not a
single atom of the value of his old capital continues to exist.
Apart then from all accumulation, the mere continuity of
the process of production, in other words simple reproduction,
sooner or later, and of necessity, converts every capital into
accumulated capital, or capitalised surplus-value. Even if that
capital was originally acquired by the personal labour of its
employer, it sooner or later becomes value appropriated with-
out an equivalent, the unpaid labour of others materialised
either in money or in some other object. We saw in chapter
IV. that in order to convert money into capital something more
is required than the production and circulation of commodities.
We saw that on the one side the possessor of value or money,
on the other, the possessor of the value-creating substance;
on the one side, the possessor of the means of production and
subsistence, on the other, the possessor of nothing but labour-
1
Simple Reproduction.
583
power, must confront one another as buyer and seller. The
separation of labour from its product, of subjective labour-power
from the objective conditions of labour, was therefore the real
foundation in fact, and the starting point of capitalist production,
But that which at first was but a starting point, becomes,
by the mere continuity of the process, by simple reproduction,
the peculiar result, constantly renewed and perpetuated, of
capitalist production. On the one hand, the process of pro-
duction incessantly converts material wealth into capital, into
means of creating more wealth and means of enjoyment for the
capitalist. On the other hand the labourer, on quitting the
process, is what he was on entering it, a source of wealth, but
devoid of all means of making that wealth his own. Since,
before entering on the process, his own labour has already been
alienated from himself by the sale of his labour-power, has
been appropriated by the capitalist and incorporated with
capital, it must, during the process, be realised in a product
that does not belong to him. Since the process of pro-
duction is also the process by which the capitalist consumes
labour-power, the product of the labourer is incessantly con-
verted, not only into commodities, but into capital, into value
that sucks up the value-creating power, into means of sub-
sistence that buy the person of the labourer, into means of
production that command the producers. The labourer there-
fore constantly produces material, objective wealth, but in the
form of capital, of an alien power that dominates and exploits
him; and the capitalist as constantly produces labour-power,
but in the form of a subjective source of wealth, separated from
the objects in and by which it can alone be realised; in short he
produces the labourer, but as a wage-labourer.2 This incessant
1 "This is a remarkably peculiar property of productive labour. Whatever is
productively consumed is capital, and it becomes capital by consumption." (James
Mill 1. c. p. 242.) James Mill, however, never got on the track of this "remarkably
peculiar property."
2 "It is true indeed, that the first introducing a manufacture employes many poor,
but they cease not to be so, and the continuance of it makes many." (Reasons for a
limited Exportation of Wool. London, 1677, p. 19.) "The farmer now absurdly
asserts, that he keeps the poor. They are indeed kept in misery." (Reasons for the
late increase of the Poor Rates: or a comparative view of the prices of labour and
provisions. London, 1777, p. 37.)
!
584
Capitalist Production.
reproduction, this perpetuation of the labourer, is the sine quâ
non of capitalist production.
The labourer consumes in a twofold way. While producing
he consumes by his labour the means of production, and con-
verts them into products with a higher value than that of the
capital advanced. This is his productive consumption. It is
at the same time consumption of his labour-power by the
capitalist who bought it. On the other hand, the labourer
turns the money paid to him for his labour-power, into means
of subsistence: this is his individual consumption. The
labourer's productive consumption, and his individual con-
sumption, are therefore totally distinct. In the former, he acts
as the motive power of capital, and belongs to the capitalist.
In the latter, he belongs to himself, and performs his necessary
vital functions outside the process of production. The result
of the one is, that the capitalist lives; of the other, that the
labourer lives.
When treating of the working-day, we saw that the labourer
is often compelled to make his individual consumption a mere
incident of production. In such a case, he supplies himself
with necessaries in order to maintain his labour-power, just as
coal and water are supplied to the steam engine and oil to the
wheel. His means of consumption, in that case, are the mere
means of consumption required by a means of production; his
individual consumption is directly productive consumption.
This, however, appears to be an abuse not essentially apper-
taining to capitalist production.¹
The matter takes quite another aspect, when we contemplate,
not the single capitalist, and the single labourer, but the
capitalist class and the labouring class, not an isolated process
of production, but capitalist production in full swing, and on
its actual social scale. By converting part of his capital into
labour-power, the capitalist augments the value of his entire
capital. He kills two birds with one stone. He profits, not
only by what he receives from, but by what he gives to, the
labourer. The capital given in exchange for labour-power is
1 Rossi would not declaim so emphatically against this, had he really penetrated
the secret of "productive consumption."
Simple Reproduction.
585
converted into necessaries, by the consumption of which the
muscles, nerves, bones, and brains of existing labourers are
reproduced, and new labourers are begotten. Within the
limits of what is strictly necessary, the individual consumption
of the working class is, therefore, the reconversion of the means
of subsistence given by capital in exchange for labour-power,
into fresh labour-power at the disposal of capital for exploita-
tion. It is the production and reproduction of that means of
production so indispensible to the capitalist: the labourer
himself. The individual consumption of the labourer, whether
it proceed within the workshop or outside it, whether it be part
of the process of production or not, forms therefore a factor of
the production and reproduction of capital; just as cleaning
machinery does, whether it be done while the machinery is
working or while it is standing. The fact that the labourer
consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and
not to please the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. The
consumption of food by a beast of burden is none the less a
necessary factor in the process of production, because the beast
enjoys what it eats. The maintenance and reproduction of the
working-class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to thei
reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave
its fulfilment to the labourer's instincts of self-preservation and
of propagation. All the capitalist cares for, is to reduce the
labourer's individual consumption as far as possible to what is
strictly necessary, and he is far away from imitating those
brutal South Americans, who force their labourers to take the
more substantial, rather than the less substantial, kind of food.¹
Hence both the capitalist and his ideological representative, the
political economist, consider that part alone of the labourer's
individual consumption to be productive, which is requisite for
the perpetuation of the class, and which therefore must take
1 "The labourers in the mines of S. America, whose daily task (the heaviest per-
haps in the world) consists in bringing to the surface on their shoulders a load of
metal weighing from 180 to 200 pounds, from a depth of 450 feet, live on bread and
beans only; they themselves would prefer the bread alone for food, but their
masters, who have found out that the men cannot work so hard on bread, treat them
like horses, and compel them to eat beans; beans, however, are relatively much
richer in bone-earth (phosphate of lime) than is bread" (Liebig, 1. c., vol. 1, p. 194,
note).
586
Capitalist Production.
place in order that the capitalist may have labour-power to
consume; what the labourer consumes for his own pleasure
beyond that part, is unproductive consumption.¹ If the
accumulation of capital were to cause a rise of wages and an
increase in the labourer's consumption, unaccompanied by
increase in the consumption of labour-power by capital, the
additional capital would be consumed unproductively.2 In
reality, the individual consumption of the labourer is unproduc-
tive as regards himself, for it reproduces nothing but the needy
individual; it is productive to the capitalist and to the State,
since it is the production of the power that creates their
wealth.3
From a social point of view, therefore, the working-class,
even when not directly engaged in the labour-process, is just
as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments
of labour. Even its individual consumption is, within certain
limits, a mere factor in the process of production. That process,
however, takes good care to prevent these self-conscious instru-
ments from leaving it in the lurch, for it removes their product,
as fast as it is made, from their pole to the opposite pole of
capital. Individual consumption provides, on the one hand,
the means for their maintenance and reproduction: on the
other hand, it secures by the annihilation of the necessaries of
life, the continued reappearance of the workman in the labour-
market. The Roman slave was held by fetters: the wage-
The
labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads.
appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant
change of employers, and by the fictio juris of a contract.
In former times, capital resorted to legislation, whenever
necessary, to enforce its proprietary rights over the free
labourer. For instance, down to 1815, the emigration of
1 James Mill, 1. c., p. 238.
2 "If the price of labour should rise so high that, notwithstanding the increase of
capital, no more could be employed, I should say that such increase of capital would
be still unproductively consumed." (Ricardo, l. c., p. 163.)
3 "The only productive consumption, properly so-called, is the consumption or
destruction of wealth" (he alludes to the means of production) "by capitalists with
a view to re roduction
The workman . . . . is a productive consumer to the
person who employs him, and to the State, but not, strictly speaking, to himself."
(Malthus' Definitions, &c., p. 30.)
•
F
Simple Reproduction.
587
>
mechanics employed in machine making was, in England, for-
bidden, under grievous pains and penalties.
The reproduction of the working class carries with it the
accumulation of skill, that is handed down from one generation
to another.¹ To what extent the capitalist reckons the exis-
tence of such a skilled class among the factors of production
that belong to him by right, and to what extent he actually
regards it as the reality of his variable capital, is seen so soon
as a crisis threatens him with its loss.
In consequence of the
civil war in the United States and of the accompanying cotton
famine, the majority of the cotton operatives in Lancashire
were, as is well known, thrown out of work. Both from the
working-class itself, and from other ranks of society, there arose
a cry for State aid, or for voluntary national subscriptions, in
order to enable the "superfluous" hands to emigrate to the
colonies or to the United States. Thereupon, the "Times"
published on the 24th March, 1863, a letter from Edmund
Potter, a former president of the Manchester Chamber of
Commerce. This letter was rightly called in the House of
Commons, the manufacturers' manifesto.2 We cull here a few
characteristic passages, in which the proprietary rights of
capital over labour-power are unblushingly asserted.
tr
He" (the man out of work) "may be told the supply of
cotton-workers is too large
and . . must . . . . in
fact be reduced by a third, perhaps, and that then there will be
a healthy demand for the remaining two-thirds . . . . Public
opinion urges emigration
The master cannot
willingly see his labour supply being removed; he may think,
and perhaps justly, that it is both wrong and unsound ..
But if the public funds are to be devoted to assist emigration,
he has a right to be heard, and perhaps to protest." Mr.
Potter then shows how useful the cotton trade is, how the
•
1 "The only thing, of which one can say, that it is stored up and prepared before-
hand, is the skill of the labourer
The accumulation and storage of skilled
labour, that most important operation, is, as regards the great mass of labourers,
accomplished without any capital whatever." (Tho. Hodgskin: Labour Defended, &c.,
p. 13.)
:
•
•
•
2"That letter might be looked upon as the manifesto of the manufacturers."
(Ferrand Motion on the Cotton Famine, H. o. C., 27th April, 1863.)
588
Capitalist Production.
trade has undoubtedly drawn the surplus-population from
Ireland and from the agricultural districts," how immense is its
extent, how in the year 1860 it yieldedths of the total English
exports, how, after a few years, it will again expand by the
extension of the market, particularly of the Indian market, and
by calling forth a plentiful supply of cotton at 6d. per lb. He
then continues: "Some time. one, two, or three years, it
may be, will produce the quantity. . . The question I would
put then is this-Is the trade worth retaining? Is it worth
while to keep the machinery (he means the living labour
machines) in order, and is it not the greatest folly to think of
parting with that? I think it is. I allow that the workers
are not a property, not the property of Lancashire and the
masters; but they are the strength of both; they are the
mental and trained power which cannot be replaced for a gene-
ration; the mere machinery which they work might much of
it be beneficially replaced, nay improved, in a twelvemonth.¹
Encourage or allow (!) the working-power to emigrate, and
what of the capitalist?
Take away the cream of
the workers, and fixed capital will depreciate in a great degree,
and the floating will not subject itself to a struggle with the
short supply of inferior labour
We are told the
workers wish it" (emigration). "Very natural it is that they
should do so
Reduce, compress the cotton trade
by taking away its working power and reducing their wages
expenditure, say one-fifth, or five millions, and what then would
happen to the class above, the small shopkeepers; and what of
the rents, the cottage rents
Trace out the effects
upward to the sinall farmer, the better householder, and . . .
((
•
1 It will not be forgotten that this same capital sings quite another song, under
ordinary circumstances, when there is a question of reducing wages. Then the
masters exclaim with one voice: "The factory operatives should keep in wholesomo
remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species of skilled labour; and that
there is none which is more easily acquired, or of its quality more amply remuner-
ated, or which, by a short training of the least expert, can be more quickly, as well
as abundantly, acquired . . The master's machinery "( which we now learn can be
replaced with advantage in 12 months) "really plays a far more important part in
the business of production than the labour and skill of the operative" (who cannot
now be replaced under 30 years), "which six months' education can teach, and a
common labourer can learn." (See ante, p. 423.)
'
!
Simple Reproduction.
589
}
the landowner, and say if there could be any suggestion more
suicidal to all classes of the country than by enfeebling a
nation by exporting the best of its manufacturing population,
and destroying the value of some of its most productive
capital and enrichment
I advise a loan (of five or
six millions sterling), .. extending it may be over two or
three years, administered by special commissioners added to the
Boards of Guardians in the cotton districts, under special legis-
lative regulations, enforcing some occupation or labour, as a
means of keeping up at least the moral standard of the recipients
of the loan
can anything be worse for landowners or
masters than parting with the best of the workers, and demora-
lising and disappointing the rest by an extended depletive
emigration, a depletion of capital and value in an entire
province ?"
•
CC
•
Potter, the chosen mouthpiece of the manufacturers, distin-
guishes two sorts of "machinery," each of which belongs to the
capitalist, and of which one stands in his factory, the other at
night-time and on Sundays is housed outside the factory, in
cottages. The one is inanimate, the other living. The inani-
mate machinery not only wears out and depreciates from day
to day, but a great part of it becomes so quickly super-annu-
ated, by constant technical progress, that it can be replaced
with advantage by new machinery after a few months. The
living machinery, on the contrary, gets better the longer it
lasts, and in proportion as the skill, handed from one genera-
tion to another, accumulates. The Times" answered the
cotton lord as follows:
Mr. Edmund Potter is so impressed with the exceptional
and supreme importance of the cotton masters that, in order
to preserve this class and perpetuate their profession, he would
keep half a million of the labouring class confined in a great
moral workhouse against their will. Is the trade worth re-
taining?' asks Mr. Potter. Certainly by all honest means it
is,' we answer. 'Is it worth while keeping the machinery in
order?' again asks Mr. Potter. Here we hesitate. By the
'machinery' Mr. Potter means the human machinery, for he
goes on to protest that he does not mean to use them as an
<<
590
Capitalist Production.
absolute property. We must confess that we do not think it
'worth while,' or even possible, to keep the human machinery
in order that is to shut it up and keep it oiled till it is
wanted. Human machinery will rust under inaction, oil and
rub it as you may. Moreover, the human machinery will, as
we have just seen, get the steam up of its own accord, and
burst or run a muck in our great towns. It might, as Mr.
Potter says, require some time to reproduce the workers, but,
having machinists and capitalists at hand, we could always find
thrifty, hard, industrious men wherewith to improvise more
master manufacturers than we can ever want. Mr. Potter
talks of the trade reviving 'in one, two, or three years,' and
he asks us not 'to encourage or allow (!) the working power to
emigrate.' He says that it is very natural the workers should
wish to emigrate; but he thinks that in spite of their desire,
the nation ought to keep this half million of workers with
their 700,000 dependents, shut up in the cotton districts; and
as a necessary consequence, he must of course think that the
nation ought to keep down their discontent by force, and sus-
stain them by alins-and upon the chance that the cotton
masters may some day want them ... The time is come
when the great public opinion of these islands must operate to
save this working power' from those who would deal with it
as they would deal with iron, and coal, and cotton."
The "Times'" article was only a jeu d'esprit. The "great
public opinion" was, in fact, of Mr. Potter's opinion, that the
factory operatives are part of the movable fittings of a factory.
Their emigration was prevented. They were locked up in
that “moral workhouse," the cotton districts, and they form,
as before," the strength" of the cotton manufacturers of Lan-
cashire.
1
1 Parliament did not vote a single farthing in aid of emigration, but simply passed
some Acts empowering the municipal corporations to keep the operatives in a half-
starved state, i.e., to exploit them at less than the normal wages. On the other
hand, when 3 years later, the cattle disease broke out, Parliament broke wildly
through its usages and voted, straight off, millions for indemnifying the millionaire
landlords, whose farmers in any event came off without loss, owing to the rise in the
price of meat. The bull-like bellow of the landed proprietors at the opening of Par-
liament, in 1866, showed that a man can worship the cow Sabala without being a
Hindoo, and can change himself into an ox without being a Jupiter.
收藏
​Simple Reproduction.
591
1
Capitalist production, therefore, of itself reproduces the
separation between labour-power and the means of labour. It
thereby reproduces and perpetuates the condition for exploit-
ing the labourer. It incessantly forces him to sell his labour-
power in order to live, and enables the capitalist to purchase
labour-power in order that he may enrich himself. It is no
longer a mere accident, that capitalist and labourer confront
each other in the market as buyer and seller. It is the process
itself that incessantly hurls back the labourer on to the market
as a vendor of his labour-power, and that incessantly converts
his own product into a means by which another man can pur-
chase him. In reality, the labourer belongs to capital, before
he has sold himself to capital. His economical bondage² is
both brought about and concealed by the periodic sale of him-
self, by his change of masters, and by the oscillations in the
market price of labour-power.3
Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a con-
tinuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, pro-
duces not only commodities, not only surplus-value, but it also
produces and reproduces the capitalist relation; on the one
side the capitalist, on the other the wage-labourer.
1 "L'ouvrier demandait de la subsistence pour vivre, le chef demandait du travail
pour gagner." (Sismondi, 1. c., p. 91.)
2 A boorishly clumsy form of this bondage exists in the county of Durham. This
is one of the few counties, in which circumstances do not secure to the farmer
undisputed proprietary rights over the agricultural labourer. The mining industry
allows the latter some choice. In this county, the farmer, contrary to the custom
elsewhere, rents only such farms as have on them labourers' cottages. The rent of
the cottage is a part of the wages. These cottages are known as "hinds' houses."
They are let to the labourers in consideration of certain feudal services, under a con-
tract called "bondage," which, amongst other things, binds the labourer, during the
time he is employed elsewhere, to leave some one, say his daughter, &c., to supply his
place. The labourer himself is called a "bondsman." The relationship here set up
also shows how individual consumption by the labourer becomes consumption on be-
half of capital-or productive consumption-from quite a new point of view: "It is
curious to observe that the very dung of the hind and bondsman is the perquisite of
the calculating lord . . . and the lord will allow no privy but his own to exist in the
neighbourhood, and will rather give a bit of manure here and there for a garden than
bate any part of his seigneurial right." (Public Health, Report VII., 1864, p. 188.)
3 It will not be forgotten, that, with respect to the labour of children, &c., even
the formality of a voluntary sale disappears.
4 Capital pre-supposes wage-labour, and wage-labour pre-supposes capital. One
is a necessary condition to the existence of the other; they mutually call each other
592
Capitalist Production.
CONVERSION OF SURPLUS-VALUE INTO CAPITAL.
SECTION I.
CHAPTER XXIV.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
- CAPITALIST PRODUCTION ON A PROGRESSIVELY INCREASING
TRANSITION OF THE LAWS OF PROPERTY THAT CHARACTERISE
PRODUCTION OF COMMODITIES INTO LAWS OF CAPITALIST APPROPRIATION.
SCALE.
HITHERTO We have investigated how surplus-value emanates
from capital; we have now to see how capital arises from
surplus-value. Employing surplus-value as capital, reconver-
ting it into capital, is called accumulation of capital¹
First let us consider this transaction from the standpoint of
the individual capitalist. Suppose a spinner to have advanced
a capital of £10,000, of which four-fifths (£8000) are laid out
in cotton, machinery, &c., and one-fifth (£2000) in wages. Let
him produce 240,000 lbs. of yarn annually, having a value
of £12,000. The rate of surplus-value being 100%, the surplus-
value lies in the surplus or net product of 40,000 lbs. of yarn,
one sixth of the gross product, with a value of £2000 which
will be realised by a sale.
We can neither
see nor smell in this sum of money a trace of surplus-value.
When we know that a given value is surplus-value, we know
how its owner came by it; but that does not alter the nature
either of value or of money.
In order to convert this additional sum of £2000 into capital,
the master spinner will, all circumstances remaining as before,
advance four-fifths of it (£1600) in the purchase of cotton, &c.,
and one-fifth (£400) in the purchase of additional spinners, who
will find in the market the necessaries of life whose value the
master has advanced to them. Then the new capital of £2000
into existence. Does an operative in a cotton-factory produce nothing but cotton
goods? No, he produces capital. He produces values that give fresh command over
his labour, and that, by means of such command, create fresh values." (Karl Marx:
Lohnarbeit und Kapital, in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 266, 7th April 1849.)
The articles published under the above title in the N. Rh. Z. are parts of some
lectures given by me on that subject, in 1847, in the German "Arbeiter-Verein " at
Brussels, the publication of which was interrupted by the revolution of February.
1 "Accumulation of capital; the employment of a portion of revenue as capital."
(Malthus: Definitions &c., ed. Cazenove p. 11.) "Conversion of revenue into capi-
tal." (Malthus: Princ. of Pol. Econ., 2nd Ed., Lond., 1836, p. 319.)
£2000 is £2000.
£2000 is £2000.

Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital.
593
functions in the spinning mill, and brings in, in its turn, a
surplus-value of £400.
The capital-value was originally advanced in the money
form. The surplus-value on the contrary is, originally, the
value of a definite portion of the gross product. If this gross
product be sold, converted into money, the capital-value re-
gains its original form. From this moment the capital-
value and the surplus-value are both of them sums of money,
and their reconversion into capital takes place in precisely
the same way. The one, as well as the other, is laid out
by the capitalist in the purchase of commodities that place
him in a position to begin afresh the fabrication of his goods,
and this time, on an extended scale. But in order to be able
to buy those commodities, he must find them ready in the
market.
His own yarns circulate, only because he brings his annual
product to market, as all other capitalists likewise do with
their commodities. But these commodities, before coming to
market, were part of the general annual product, part of the
total mass of objects of every kind, into which the sum of the
individual capitals, .e., the total capital of society, had been
converted in the course of the year, and of which each capi-
talist had in hand only an aliquot part. The transactions in
the market effectuate only the interchange of the individua!
components of this annual product, transfer them from one
hand to another, but can neither augment the total annual
production, nor alter the nature of the objects produced.
Hence the use that can be made of the total annual product,
depends entirely upon its own composition, but in no way
upon circulation.

The annual production must in the first place furnish all
those objects (use-values) from which the material components
of capital, used up in the course of the year, have to be re-
placed. Deducting these there remains the net or surplus-
product, in which the surplus-value lies. And of what does.
this surplus-product consist? Only of things destined to
satisfy the wants and desires of the capitalist class, things
which, consequently, enter into the consumption fund of the
2 P
594
Capitalist Production.
capitalists? Were that the case, the cup of surplus-value
would be drained to the very dregs, and nothing but simple
reproduction would ever take place.
To accumulate it is necessary to convert a portion of the
surplus-product into capital. But we cannot, except by a
miracle, convert into capital anything but such articles as can
be employed in the labour-process (ie., means of production),
and such further articles as are suitable for the sustenance of
the labourer, (i.c., means of subsistence.) Consequently, a part
of the annual surplus-labour must have been applied to the
production of additional means of production and subsistence,
over and above the quantity of these things required to replace
the capital advanced. In one word, surplus-value is conver-
tible into capital solely because the surplus-product, whose
value it is, already comprises the material elements of new
capital
Now in order to allow of these elements actually functioning
as capital, the capitalist class requires additional labour. If
the exploitation of the labourers already employed do not in-
crease, either extensively or intensively, then additional labour-
power must be found. For this the mechanism of capitalist
production provides beforehand, by converting the working
class into a class dependent on wages, a class whose ordinary
wages suffice, not only for its maintenance, but for its increase.
It is only necessary for capital to incorporate this additional
labour-power, annually supplied by the working class in the
shape of labourers of all ages, with the surplus means of pro-
duction comprised in the annual produce, and the conversion
of surplus-value into capital is complete. From a concrete
point of view, accumulation resolves itself into the re-
production of capital on a progressively increasing scale.
The circle in which simple reproduction moves, alters its




1 We here take no account of export trade, by means of which a nation can change
articles of luxury either into means of production or means of subsistence, and vice
verså. In order to examine the object of our investigation in its integrity, free from
all disturbing subsidiary circumstances, wo must treat the whole world as one nation,
and assume that capitalist production is everywhere established and has possessed
itself of every branch of industry.
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 595
form, and, to use Sismondi's expression, changes into a
spiral.¹
Let us now return to our illustration. It is the old story :
Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on. The original
capital of £10,000 brings in a surplus-value of £2000, which is
capitalised. The new capital of £2000 brings in a surplus-
value of £400, and this, too, is capitalised, converted into a
second additional capital, which, in its turn, produces a further
surplus-value of £80. And so the ball rolls on.

We here leave out of consideration the portion of the sur-
plus-value consumed by the capitalist. Just as little does it
concern us, for the moment, whether the additional capital is
joined on to the original capital, or is separated from it to
function independently; whether the same capitalist, who
accumulated it, employs it, or whether he hands it over to
another. This only we must not forget, that by the side of
the newly-formed capital, the original capital continues to re-
produce itself, and to produce surplus-value, and that this is
also true of all accumulated capital, and the additional capital
engendered by it.

The original capital was formed by the advance of £10,000.
How did the owner become possessed of it? "By his own
labour and that of his forefathers," answer unanimously the
spokesmen of political economy.2 And, in fact, their supposi-
tion appears the only one consonant with the laws of the pro-
duction of commodities.


But it is quite otherwise with regard to_the_additional
capital of £2000. How that originated we know perfectly
well. There is not one single atom of its value that does not
owe its existence to unpaid labour. The means of production
with which the additional labour-power is incorporated, as well
as the necessaries with which the labourers are sustained, are
nothing but component parts of the surplus product, of the
tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capi-

ܡܪܢ
Key
1 Sismondi's analysis of accumulation suffers from the great defect, that he con-
tents himself, to too great an extent, with the phrase "conversion of revenue into
capital,” without fathoming the material conditions of this operation.
2 "Le travail primitif auquel son capital a dû sa naissance." Sismondi, 1. c., ed.
Paris, t. I., p. 109.
• S
MA__d
596
Capitalist Production.
To bein
talist class. Though the latter with a portion of that tribute
purchases the additional labour-power even at its full price, so
that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the transac-
tion is for all that only the old dodge of every conqueror who
buys commodities from the conquered with the money he
has robbed them of.

If the additional capital employs the person who produced
it, this producer must not only continue to augment the value
of the original capital, but must buy back the fruits of his
previous labour with more labour than they cost. When
viewed as a transaction between the capitalist class and the
working class, it makes no difference that additional labourers
are employed by means of the unpaid labour of the previously
employed labourers. The capitalist may even convert the
additional capital into a machine that throws the producers of
that capital out of work, and that replaces them by a few
children. In every case the working class creates by the surplus-
labour of one year the capital destined to employ additional
labour in the following year. And this is what is called:
creating capital out of capital
The accumulation of the first additional capital of £2000
presupposes a value of £10,000 belonging to the capitalist by
virtue of his "primitive labour," and advanced by him. The
second additional capital of £400 presupposes, on the con-
trary, only the previous accumulation of the £2000, of which
the £400 is the surplus-value capitalised. The ownership of past
unpaid labour is thenceforth the sole condition for the appro-
priation of living unpaid labour on a constantly increasing
scale. The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more is he
able to accumulate.

In so far as the surplus-value, of which the additional
capital, No. 1, consists, is the result of the purchase of labour-
power with part of the original capital, a purchase that con-
formed to the laws of the exchange of commodities, and that,
from a legal stand-point, presupposes nothing beyond the free
disposal, on the part of the labourer, of his own capacities, and
1 "Labour creates capital before capital employs labour." E. G. Wakefield, Eng-
land and America. Lond., 1833, Vol. II., p. 110,
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital.
597
on the part of the owner of money or commodities, of the values
that belong to him; in so far as the additional capital, No. 2,
&c., is the mere result of No. 1, and, therefore, a consequence
of the above conditions; in so far as each single transaction
invariably conforms to the laws of the exchange of commodi-
ties, the capitalist buying labour-power, the labourer selling it,
and we will assume at its real value; in so far as all this is
true, it is evident that the laws of appropriation or of private
property, laws that are based on the production and circula-
tion of commodities, become by their own inner and inexorable
dialectic changed into their very opposite. The exchange of
equivalents, the original operation with which we started, has
now become turned round in such a way that there is only an
apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the
capital which is exchanged for labour-power is itself but a
portion of the product of others' labour appropriated without
an equivalent; and, secondly, that this capital must not only
be replaced by its producer, but replaced together with an
added surplus. The relation of exchange subsisting between
capitalist and labourer becomes a mere semblance appertaining
to the process of circulation, a mere form, foreign to the real
nature of the transaction, and only mystifying it. The ever re-
peated purchase and sale of labour-power is now the mere form ;
what really takes place is this-the capitalist again and again
appropriates, without equivalent, a portion of the previously
materialised labour of others, and exchanges it for a greater
quantity of living labour At first the rights of property
seemed to us to be based on a man's own labour. At least,
some such assumption was necessary since only commodity
owners with equal rights confronted each other, and the sole
means by which a man could become possessed of the commo-
dities of others, was by alienating his own commodities; and
SUPE



ܘܐܺ ܀

1 Just as at a given stage in its development, commodity production necessarily
passes into capitalistic commodity production (in fact, it is only on the basis of
capitalistic production that products take the general and predominant form of com-
modities), so the laws of property that are based on commodity production, necessarily
turn into the laws of capitalist app opriation. We may well, therefore, feel astonish d
at the cleverness of Proudhon, who would abolish capitalistic property by enforcing
the eternal laws of property that are based on commodity production !
598
Capitalist Production.
Digef
Entra
these could be replaced by labour alone. Now, however, pro-
perty turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist,
to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product, and
to be the impossibility, on the part of the labourer, of appropri-
ating his own product. The separation of property from
labour has become the necessary consequence of a law that
apparently originated in their identity."
PS - FINA
TANA
We have seen that even in the case of simple reproduction,
all capital, whatever its original source, becomes converted into
accumulated capital, capitalised surplus-value But in the
flood of production all the capital originally advanced becomes
a vanishing quantity (magnitudo evanescens, in the mathema-
tical sense), compared with the directly accumulated capital,
i.e., with the surplus-value or surplus-product that is recon-
verted into capital, whether it function in the hands of
its accumulator, or in those of others. Hence, political
economy describes capital in general as "accumulated wealth"
converted surplus-value or revenue) "that is employed over
again in the production of surplus-value," and the capitalist
as "the owner of surplus-value." It is merely another way
of expressing the same thing to say that all existing capital is
accumulated or capitalised interest, for interest is a mere
fragment of surplus-value
3
D", a brated Metall


2
SECTION 2.-ERRONEOUS CONCEPTION BY POLITICAL ECONOMY OF REPRO-
DUCTION ON A PROGRESSIVELY INCREASING SCALE.
Before we further investigate accumulation or the reconver-
1 The property of the capitalist in the product of the labour of others "is a strict
consequence of the law of appropriation, the fundamental principle of which was, on
the contrary, the exclusive title of every labourer to the product of his own labour."
(Cherbuliez, Riche ou Pauvre. Paris, 1841, p. 58, where, however, the dialectical
reversal is not properly developed.)
2 "Capital, viz., accumulated wealth employed with a view to profit." (Malthus,
1. c.) "Capital. consists of wealth saved from revenue, and used with a view
to profit." (R. Jones: An Introductory Lecture on Polit. Econ., Lond., 1833, p.
16.)
•
3 "The possessors of surplus produce or capital." (The Source and Remedy of the
National Difficulties. A Letter to Lord John Russell. Lond., 1821.)
4. Capital, with compound interest on every portion of capital saved, is so all
engrossing that all the wealth in the world from which income is derived, has long
ago become the interest on capital." (London Economist, 19th July, 1859.)
Para


Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital.
599
sion of surplus-value into capital, we must brush on one side
an ambiguity introduced by the classical economists.
((
Just as little as the commodities that the capitalist buys
with a part of the surplus-value for his own consumption,
serve the purpose of production and of creation of value, so
little is the labour that he buys for the satisfaction of his
natural and social requirements, productive labour. Instead of
converting surplus-value into capital, he, on the contrary, by
the purchase of those commodities and that labour, consumes
or expends it as revenue. In the face of the habitual mode of
life of the old feudal nobility, which, as Hegel rightly says,
consists in consuming what is in hand," and more especially
displays itself in the luxury of personal retainers, it was ex-
tremely important for bourgeois economy to promulgate the
doctrine that accumulation of capital is the first duty of every
citizen, and to preach without ceasing, that a man cannot accumu-
late, if he eats up all his revenue, instead of spending a good
part of it in the acquisition of additional productive labourers,
who bring in more than they cost. On the other hand the
economists had to contend against the popular prejudice, that
confuses capitalist production with hoarding,¹ and fancies that
accumulated wealth is either wealth that is rescued from being
destroyed in its existing form, i.e., from being consumed, or
wealth that is withdrawn from circulation. Exclusion of
money from circulation would also exclude absolutely its self-
expansion as capital, while accumulation of a hoard in the
shape of commodities would be sheer tomfoolery.2 The
accumulation of commodities in great masses is the result either
of overproduction or of a stoppage of circulation. It is true
that the popular mind is impressed by the sight, on the one
1 "No political economist of the present day can by saving mean mere hoarding :
and beyond this contracted and insufficient proceeding, no use of the term in reference
to the national wealth can well be imagined, but that which must arise from a
different application of what is saved, founded upon a real distinction between the
different kinds of labour maintained by it." (Malthus, 1.c., p. 38, 39.)
2 Thus for instance, Balzac, who so thoroughly studied every shade of avarice, re-
presents the old usurer Gobsec as in his second childhood when he begins to heap up
a hoard of commodities.
3 “Accumulation of stocks. . . non-exchange . . . over-production." (Th. Corbet
1. c., p. 14.)
600
Capitalist Production.
(C
hand, of the mass of goods that are stored up for gradual con-
sumption by the rich,¹ and on the other hand, by the formation
of reserve stocks; the latter, a phenomenon that is common to
all modes of production, and on which we shall dwell for a
moment, when we come to analyse circulation. Classical
economy is therefore quite right, when it maintains that the
consumption of surplus-products by productive, instead of by
unproductive labourers, is a characteristic feature of the process
of accumulation. But at this point the mistakes also begin.
Adam Smith has made it the fashion, to represent accumulation
as nothing more than consumption of surplus-products by
productive labourers, which amounts to saying, that the
capitalising of surplus-value consists in merely turning
surplus-value into labour-power. Let us see what Ricardo
e.g., says: It must be understood that all the pro-
ductions of a country are consumed; but it makes the
greatest difference imaginable whether they are consumed by
those who reproduce, or by those who do not reproduce another
value. When we say that revenue is saved, and added to
capital, what we mean is, that the portion of revenue, so said
to be added to capital, is consumed by productive instead of
unproductive labourers. There can be no greater error than
in supposing that capital is increased by non-consumption." 2
There can be no greater error than that which Ricardo and all
subsequent economists repeat after A. Smith, viz., that "the
part of revenue, of which it is said, it has been added to
capital, is consumed by productive labourers." According to
this, all surplus-value that is changed into capital becomes
variable capital. So far from this being the case, the surplus-
value, like the original capital, divides itself into constant
capital and variable capital, into means of production and
labour-power. Labour-power is the form under which variable
capital exists during the process of production. In this process
the labour-power is itself consumed by the capitalist while the
1 In this sense Necker speaks of the "objets de faste et de somptuosité," of which
"le temps a grossi l'accumulation," and which "les lois de propriété ont rassemblés
dans une seule classe de la société." (Oeuvres de M. Necker, Paris and Lausanne,
1789, t. ii. p. 291.)
2 Ricardo, l. c., p. 163, note.
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 601
means of production are consumed by the labour-power in the
exercise of its function, labour. At the same time, the money
paid for the purchase of the labour-power, is converted into
necessaries, that are consumed, not by "productive labour," but
by the "productive labourer." Adam Smith, by a fundamentally
perverted analysis, arrives at the absurd conclusion, that even
though each individual capital is divided into a constant and
a variable part, the capital of society resolves itself only into
variable capital, i.e., is laid out exclusively in payment of wages.
For instance, suppose a cloth manufacturer converts £2000 into
capital. One portion he lays out in buying weavers, the other
in woollen yarn, machinery, &c. But the people, from whom
he buys the yarn and the machinery, pay for labour with a
part of the purchase money, and so on until the whole £2000
are spent in the payment of wages, i.e., until the entire product
represented by the £2000 has been consumed by productive
labourers. It is evident that the whole gist of this argument
lies in the words "and so on," which send us from pillar to
post. In truth, Adam Smith breaks his investigation off, just
where its difficulties begin.¹
The annual process of reproduction is easily understood, so
long as we keep in view merely the sum total of the year's
production. But every single component of this product must
be brought into the market as a commodity, and there the diffi-
culty begins. The movements of the individual capitals, and
of the personal revenues, cross and intermingle and are lost in
the general change of places, in the circulation of the wealth of
society; this dazes the sight, and propounds very complicated
problems for solution. In the third part of Book II. I shall
give the analysis of the real bearings of the facts. It is one of
the great merits of the Physiocrats, that in their Tableau
économique they were the first to attempt to depict the annual
1 In spite of his "Logic," John St. Mill never detects even such faulty analysis as
this when made by his predecessors, an analysis which, even from the bourgeois stand-
point of the science, cries out for rectification. In every case he registers with the
dogmatism of a disciple, the confusion of his master's thoughts. So here: "The
capital itself in the long run becomes entirely wages, and when replaced by the sale
of produce becomes wages again.”
"
602
Capitalist Production.
production in the shape in which it is presented to us after
passing through the process of circulation.¹
For the rest, it is a matter of course, that political economy,
acting in the interests of the capitalist class, has not failed to
exploit the doctrine of Adam Smith, viz., that the whole of
that part of the surplus product which is converted into capital,
is consumed by the working class.
SECTION 3.-SEPARATION OF SURPLUS-VALUE INTO CAPITAL AND REVENUE.
THE ABSTINENCE THEORY.
In the last preceding chapter, we treated surplus-value (or the
surplus product) solely as a fund for supplying the individual
consumption of the capitalist. In this chapter we have, so far,
treated it solely as a fund for accumulation. It is, however,
neither the one nor the other, but is both together. One por-
tion is consumed by the capitalist as revenue, the other is
employed as capital, is accumulated.
Given the mass of surplus-value, then, the larger the one of
these parts, the smaller is the other. Cæteris paribus, the ratio
of these parts determines the magnitude of the accumulation.
But it is by the owner of the surplus-value, by the capitalist
alone, that the division is made. It is his deliberate act. That
part of the tribute exacted by him which he accumulates, is
1 In his description of the process of reproduction, and of accumulation, Adam
Smith, in many ways, not only made no advance, but even lost considerable
ground, compared with his predecessors, especially the Physiocrats. Connected with
the illusion mentioned in the text, is the really wonderful dogma, left by him as an in-
heritance to political economy, the dogma, that the price of commodities is made up
of wages, profit (interest) and rent, i.c., of wages and surplus-value. Starting from
this basis, Storch naively confesses, "Il est impossible de résoudre le prix nécessaire
11
dans ses éléments les plus simples." (Storch, 1. c. Petersb. Edit. 1815, t. i. p. 140,
note.) A fine science of economy this, which declares it impossible to resolve the
price of a commodity into its simplest elements! This point will be further investi-
gated in the seventh part of Book iii.
F
2 The reader will notice, that the word revenue is used in a double sense: first, to desig-
nate surplus-value so far as it is the fruit periodically yielded by capital; secondly,
to designate the part of that fruit which is periodically consumed by the capitalist,
or added to the fund that supplies his private consumption. I have retained this
double meaning because it harmonises with the language of the English and French
economists.
.
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital.
603
said to be saved by him, because he does not eat it, i.e.,
because he performs the function of a capitalist, and enriches
himself.
Except as personified capital, the capitalist has no historical
value, and no right to that historical existence, which, to use
an expression of the witty Lichnowsky, "hasn't got no date."
And so far only is the necessity for his own transitory
existence implied in the transitory necessity for the capitalist
mode of production. But, so far as he is personified capital, it
is not values in use and the enjoyment of them, but exchange-
value and its augmentation, that spur him into action. Fan-
atically bent on making value expand itself, he ruthlessly
forces the human race to produce for production's sake; he
thus forces the development of the productive powers of society,
and creates those material conditions, which alone can form
the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which
the full and free development of every individual forms the
ruling principle. Only as personified capital is the capitalist
respectable. As such, he shares with the miser the passion
for wealth as wealth. But that which in the miser is a mere
idiosyncrasy, is, in the capitalist, the effect of the social
mechanism, of which he is but one of the wheels. Moreover,
the development of capitalist production makes it constantly
necessary to keep increasing the amount of the capital laid
out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition makes
the immanent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each
individual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels
him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to pre-
serve it, but extend it he cannot, except by means of progres-
sive accumulation.
So far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of capital
-endowed as capital is, in his person, with consciousness and
a will-his own private consumption is a robbery perpe-
trated on accumulation, just as in book-keeping by double
entry, the private expenditure of the capitalist is placed
on the debtor side of his account against his capital.
To accumulate, is to conquer the world of social wealth, to
increase the mass of human beings exploited by him, and thus
604
Capitalist Production.
to extend both the direct and the indirect sway of the
capitalist.¹
But original sin is at work everywhere. As capitalist pro-
duction, accumulation, and wealth, become developed, the
capitalist ceases to be the mere incarnation of capital. He has
a fellow-feeling for his own Adam, and his education gradually
enables him to smile at the rage for asceticism, as a mere
prejudice of the old-fashioned miser. While the capitalist of
the classical type brands individual consumption as a sin
against his function, and as "abstinence" from accumulating,
the modernised capitalist is capable of looking upon accumula-
tion as "abstinence" from pleasure.
1 Taking the usurer, that old-fashioned but ever renewed specimen of the capitalist
for his text, Luther shows very aptly that the love of power is an element in the
desire to get rich. The heathen were able, by the light of reason, to conclude that
a usurer is a double-dyed thief and murderer. We Christians, however, hold them in
such honour, that we fairly worship them for the sake of their money. . . Whoever eats
up, robs, and steals the nourishment of another, that man commits as great a murder
(so far as in him lies) as he who starves a man or utterly undoes him. Such does a
usurer, and sits the while safe on his stool, when he ought rather to be hanging on
the gallows, and be eaten by as many ravens as he has stolen guilders, if only there
were so much flesh on him, that so many ravens could stick their beaks in and share
it. Meanwhile, we hang the small thieves
great thieves go flaunting in gold and silk Therefore is there, on this earth, no
greater enemy of man (after the devil) than a gripe-money, and usurer, for he wants
to be God over all men. Turks, soldiers, and tyrants are also bad men, yet must
they let the people live, and confess that they are bad, and enemies, and do,
nay, must, now and then show pity to some. But a usurer and money-glutton,
such a one would have the whole world perish of hunger and thirst, misery and
want, so far as in him lies, so that he may have all to himself, and every one
may receive from him as from a God, and be his serf for ever. To wear fine cloaks,
golden chains, rings, to wipe his mouth, to be deemed and taken for a worthy,
pious man Usury is a great huge monster, like a were-wolf, who lays waste all,
Little thieves are put in the stocks,
•
·
"Two souls, alas, do dwell within his breast;
The one is ever parting from the other.""
•
"C
•
•
•
•
•
more than any Cacus, Gerion or Antus. And yet decks himself out, and would be
thought pious, so that people may not see where the oxen have gone, that he drags
backwards into his den. But Hercules shall hear the cry of the oxen and of his prisoners,
and shall seek Cacus even in cliffs and among rocks, and shall set the oxen loose
again from the villain. For Cacus means the villain that is a pious usurer, and
steals, robs, eats everything. And will not own that he has done it, and thinks no
one will find him out, because the oxen, drawn backwards into his den, make it
seem, from their foot-prints, that they have been let out. So the usurer would de-
ceive the world, as though he were of use and gave the world oxen, which he, how-
ever, rends, and eats all alone . . . And since we break on the wheel, and behead
highwaymen, murderers and housebreakers, how much more ought we to break on
the wheel and kill, . . . hunt down, curse and behead all usurers." (Martin Luther, 1. c.)
2 See Goethe's Faust.
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 605
At the historical dawn of capitalist production, and every
capitalist upstart has personally to go through this historical
stage—avarice, and desire to get rich, are the ruling passions.
But the progress of capitalist production not only creates a world
of delights; it lays open, in speculation and the credit system,
a thousand sources of sudden enrichment. When a certain
stage of development has been reached, a conventional degree of
prodigality, which is also an exhibition of wealth, and conse-
quently a source of credit, becomes a business necessity to the
"unfortunate" capitalist. Luxury enters into capital's expenses
of representation. Moreover, the capitalist gets rich, not like the
miser, in proportion to his personal labour and restricted con-
sumption, but at the same rate as he squeezes out the labour-
power of others, and enforces on the labourer abstinence from
all life's enjoyments. Although, therefore, the prodigality of
the capitalist never possesses the bonâ-fide character of the
open-handed feudal lord's prodigality, but, on the contrary, has
always lurking behind it the most sordid avarice and the most
anxious calculation, yet his expenditure grows with his accum-
ulation, without the one necessarily restricting the other.
But along with this growth, there is at the same time developed
in his breast, a Faustian conflict between the passion for
accumulation, and the desire for enjoyment.
Dr. Aikin says in a work published in 1795: "The trade of
Manchester may be divided into four periods. First, when
manufacturers were obliged to work hard for their livelihood."
They enriched themselves chiefly by robbing the parents, whose
children were bound as apprentices to them: the parents paid
a high premium, while the apprentices were starved. On the
other hand, the average profits were low, and to accumulate,
extreme parsimony was requisite. They lived like misers, and
were far from consuming even the interest on their capital.
"The second period, when they had begun to acquire little
fortunes, but worked as hard as before,"-for direct exploitation
of labour costs labour, as every slave-driver knows-" and lived
in as plain a manner as before.
The third, when
luxury began, and the trade was pushed by sending out riders
for orders into every market town in the Kingdom.
606
Capitalist Production.
It is probable that few or no capitals of £3000 to £4000 ac-
quired by trade existed here before 1690. However, about
that time, or a little later, the traders had got money before-
hand, and began to build modern brick houses, instead of those
of wood and plaster." Even in the early part of the 18th
century, a Manchester manufacturer, who placed a pint of
foreign wine before his guests, exposed himself to the remarks
and headshakings of all his neighbours. Before the rise of
machinery, a manufacturer's evening expenditure at the public-
house where they all met, never exceeded sixpence for a glass
of punch, and a penny for a screw of tobacco. It was not till
1758, and this marks an epoch, that a person actually engaged
in business was seen with an equipage of his own.
fourth period," the last 30 years of the 18th century, "is that in
which expense and luxury have made great progress, and was
supported by a trade extended by means of riders and factors
through every part of Europe." What would the good Dr.
Aikin say if he could rise from his grave and see the Manchester
of to-day?
((
The
1
Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!
'Industry furnishes the material which saving accumulates." 2
Therefore, save, save, i.e., reconvert the greatest possible portion
of surplus-value, or surplus-product into capital! Accumulation
for accumulation's sake, production for production's sake: by
this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission
of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself
over the birth-throes of wealth.3 But what avails lamentation
in the face of historical necessity? If to classical economy,
the proletarian is but a machine for the production of surplus-
value; on the other hand, the capitalist is in its eyes only a
machine for the conversion of this surplus-value into additional
re
¹ Dr. Aikin: Description of the country from 30 to 40 miles round Manchester.
Lond., 1795, p. 182, sqq.
2 A. Smith: I. c., bk. iii., ch. iii.
3 Even J. B. Say says: "Les épargnes des riches se font aux dépens des pauvres."
"The Roman proletarian lived almost entirely at the expense of society.
It can almost be said that modern society lives at the expense of the proletarians, on
what it keeps out of the remuneration of labour." (Sismondi: Etudes, &c., t. i.,
p. 24.)
·
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital.
607
-
capital. Political economy takes the historical function of the
capitalist in bitter earnest. In order to charm out of his bosom
the awful conflict between the desire for enjoyment and the
chase after riches, Malthus, about the year 1820, advocated a
division of labour, which assigns to the capitalist actually en-
gaged in production, the business of accumulating, and to the
other sharers in surplus-value, to the landlords, the place-men,
the beneficed clergy, &c., the business of spending. It is of the
highest importance, he says, "to keep separate the passion for
expenditure and the passion for accumulation."
The capital-
ists having long been good livers and men of the world, uttered
loud cries. What, exclaimed one of their spokesmen, a disciple
of Ricardo, Mr. Malthus preaches high rents, heavy taxes, &c.,
so that the pressure of the spur may constantly be kept on
the industrious by unproductive consumers! By all means,
production, production on a constantly increasing scale, runs
the shibboleth; but " production will, by such a process, be far
more curbed in than spurred on. Nor is it quite fair thus to
maintain in idleness a number of persons, only to pinch others,
who are likely, from their characters, if you can force them to
work, to work with success. Unfair as he finds it to spur on
the industrial capitalist, by depriving his bread of its butter,
yet he thinks it necessary to reduce the labourer's wages to a
minimum "to keep him industrious." Nor does he for a
moment conceal the fact, that the appropriation of unpaid
labour is the secret of surplus-value. "Increased demand on
the part of the labourers means nothing more than their
willingness to take less of their own product for themselves,
and leave a greater part of it to their employers; and if it be
said, that this begets glut, by lessening consumption" (on the
part of the labourers), "I can only reply that glut is synony-
mous with large profits." 3
The learned disputation, how the booty pumped out of the
labourer may be divided, with most advantage to accumulation,
between the industrial capitalist and the rich idler, was hushed
))
1 Malthus, 1. c., p. 319, 320.
2 An Inquiry into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand, &c., p. 67.
3 1. c., p. 50.
608
Capitalist Production.
in face of the revolution of July. Shortly afterwards, the
town proletariat at Lyons sounded the tocsin of revolution,
and the country proletariat in England began to set fire to
farmyards and cornstacks. On this side of the Channel Owen-
ism began to spread; on the other side, St. Simonism and
Fourierism. The hour of vulgar economy had struck. Exactly
a year, before Nassau W. Senior discovered at Manchester,
that the profit (including interest) of capital is the product of
the last hour of the twelve, he had announced to the world
another discovery. "I substitute," he proudly says, "for the
word capital, considered as an instrument of production, the
word abstinence."1 An unparalleled sample this, of the discover-
ies of vulgar economy! It substitutes for an economic category,
a sycophantic phrase-voilà tout. "When the savage," says
Senior, "makes bows, he exercises an industry, but he does not
practise abstinence." This explains how and why, in the
earlier states of society, the implements of labour were fabri-
cated without abstinence on the part of the capitalist. "The
more society progresses, the more abstinence is demanded," 2
namely, from those who ply the industry of appropriating
the fruits of others' industry. All the conditions for carrying
on the labour-process are suddenly converted into so many acts
of abstinence on the part of the capitalist. If the corn is not
all eaten, but part of it also sown-abstinence of the capitalist.
If the wine gets time to mature-abstinence of the capitalist.³
CC
1 (Senior, Principes fondamentaux de l'Écon. Pol. trad. Arrivabeue. Paris, 1836,
p. 308). This was rather too much for the adherents of the old classical school.
Mr. Senior has substituted for it" (the expression, labour and profit)" the expres
sion Labour and Abstinence. He who converts his revenue abstains from the
enjoyment which its expenditure would afford him. It is not the capital, but the
use of the capital productively, which is the cause of profits." (John Cazenove, 1. c.
p. 130, Note.) John St. Mill, on the contrary, accepts on the one hand Ricardo's
theory of profit, and annexes on the other hand Senior's "remuneration of abstin-
ence. He is as much at home in absurd contradictions, as he feels at sea in the
Hegelian contradiction, the source of all dialectic. It has never occurred to the
vulgar economist to make the simple reflexion, that every human action may be
viewed, as abstinence" from its opposite. Eating is abstinence from fasting, walk-
ing, abstinence from standing still, working, abstinence from idling, idling, abstinence
from working, &c. These gentlemen would do well, to ponder, once in a way, over
Spinoza's: "Determinatio est Negatio.”
CC
""
2 Senior, 1. c. p. 342.
3 "No one
•
•
will sow his wheat, for instance, and allow it to remain a twelve-
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 609
CC
1
The capitalist robs his own self, whenever he "lends (!) the
instruments of production to the labourer," that is, whenever by
incorporating labour-power with them, he uses them to extract
surplus-value out of that labour-power, instead of eating them
up, steam-engines, cotton, railways, manure, horses, and all; or
as the vulgar economist childishly puts it, instead of dissipat-
ing their value" in luxuries and other articles of consump-
tion. How the capitalists as a class are to perform that feat,
is a secret that vulgar economy has hitherto obstinately re-
fused to divulge. Enough, that the world still jogs on, solely
through the self-chastisement of this modern penitent of
Vishnu, the capitalist. Not only accumulation, but the simple
"conservation of a capital requires a constant effort to resist
the temptation of consuming it." The simple dictates of
humanity therefore plainly enjoin the release of the capitalist
from this martyrdom and temptation, in the same way that the
Georgian slave-owner was lately delivered, by the abolition of
slavery, from the painful dilemma, whether to squander the
surplus-product lashed out of his niggers, entirely in cham-
pagne, or whether to reconvert a part of it into more niggers
and more land.
2
In economic forms of society of the most different kinds,
there occurs, not only simple reproduction, but, in varying
degrees, reproduction on a progressively increasing scale. By
degrees more is produced and more consumed, and consequently
more products have to be converted into means of production.
This process, however, does not present itself as accumulation
of capital, nor as the function of a capitalist, so long as the
labourer's means of production, and with them, his product and
month in the ground, or leave his wine in a cellar for years, instead of consuming
these things or their equivalent at once . . . unless he expects to acquire additional
value, &c." (Scrope, Polit. Econ. edit. by A. Potter, New York, 1841, p. 133-
134.)
1 "La privation que s'impose le capitaliste, en prêtant (this euphemism used, for
the purpose of identifying, according to the approved method of vulgar economy,
the labourer who is exploited, with the industrial capitalist who exploits, and to
whom other capitalists lend money) ses instruments de production au travailleur,
au lieu d'en consacrer la valeur à son propre usage, en la transforment en objets
d'utilité ou d'agrément." (G. de Molinari, 1. c. p. 49.)
2 "La conservation d'un capital exige un effort constant pour résister à la
tentation de le consommer." (Courcelles-Seneuil, 1. c. p. 57.)
→
•
2 Q
610
Capitalist Production.
1
means of subsistence, do not confront him in the shape of
capital. Richard Jones, who died a few years ago, and was
the successor of Malthus in the chair of political economy at
Haileybury College, discusses this point well in the light of
two important facts. Since the great mass of the Hindoo
population are peasants cultivating their land themselves,
their products, their instruments of labour and means of sub-
sistence never take "the shape of a fund saved from revenue,
which fund has, therefore, gone through a previous process of
accumulation.” 2 On the other hand, the non-agricultural
labourers in those provinces where the English rule has least
disturbed the old system, are directly employed by the mag-
nates, to whom a portion of the agricultural surplus-product is
rendered in the shape of tribute or rent. One portion of this
product is consumed by the magnates in kind, another is con-
verted, for their use, by the labourers, into articles of luxury
and such like things; while the rest forms the wages of the
labourers, who own their implements of labour. Here, pro-
duction and reproduction on a progressively increasing scale,
go on their way without any intervention from that queer
saint, that knight of the woeful countenance, the capitalist
'abstainer."
"
SECTION 4.-CIRCUMSTANCES THAT, INDEPENDENTLY OF THE PROPORTIONAL
DIVISION OF SURPLUS-VALUE INTO CAPITAL AND REVENUE, DETERMINE
THE AMOUNT OF ACCUMULATION. DEGREE OF EXPLOITATION OF
LABOUR-POWER. PRODUCTIVITY OF LABOUR. GROWING DIFFERENCE
IN AMOUNT BETWEEN CAPITAL EMPLOYED AND CAPITAL CONSUMED.
MAGNITUDE OF CAPITAL ADVANCED.
The proportion in which surplus-value breaks up into
capital and revenue being given, the magnitude of the capital
accumulated clearly depends on the absolute magnitude of the
1 "The particular classes of income which yield the most abundantly to the pro-
gress of national capital, change at different stages of their progress, and are, there-
fore, entirely different in nations occupying different positions in that progress
Profits. . . unimportant source of accumulation, compared with wages and rents,
in the earlier stages of society
national industry has actually
as a source of accumulation."
2 1. c. p. 36. sq.
When a considerable advance in the powers of
taken place, profits rise into comparative importance
(Richard Jones. Textbook, &c., p. 16. 21.)
•
·
·
•
·
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 611
surplus-value. Suppose that 80 per cent. were capitalised and
20 per cent. eaten up, the accumulated capital will be £2,400
or £1,200, according as the total surplus-value has amounted
to £3,000 or £1,500. Hence all the circumstances that deter-
mine the mass of surplus-value, operate to determine the
magnitude of the accumulation. We sum them up once again,
but only in so far as they afford new points of view in regard
to accumulation.
It will be remembered that the rate of surplus-value depends,
in the first place, on the degree of exploitation of labour-power.
Political economy values this fact so highly, that it occasionally
identifies the acceleration of accumulation due to increased.
productiveness of labour, with its acceleration due to increased
exploitation of the labourer. In the chapters on the produc-
tion of surplus-value it was constantly presupposed that wages
are at least equal to the value of labour-power. Forcible
reduction of wages below this value plays, however, in practice
too important a part, for us not to pause upon it for a moment.
It, in fact, transforms, within certain limits, the labourer's
necessary consumption-fund into a fund for the accumulation
of capital.
Wages," says John Stuart Mill, "have no productive
power; they are the price of a productive power. Wages do not
contribute, along with labour, to the production of commodities,
no more than the price of tools contributes along with the tools
themselves. If labour could be had without purchase, wages
might be dispensed with."2 But if the labourers could live on
air they could not be bought at any price. The zero of their
cost is therefore a limit in a mathematical sense, always
<<
1"Ricardo says: "In different stages of society the accumulation of capital or of the
means of employing" (i.e., exploiting) "labour is more or less rapid, and must in all
cases depend on the productive powers of labour. The productive powers of labour
are generally greatest where there is an abundance of fertile land.' If, in the first
sentence, the productive powers of labour mean the smallness of that aliquot part of
any produce that goes to those whose manual labour produced it, the sentence is
nearly identical, because the remaining aliquot part is the fund whence capital can, if
the owner pleases, be accumulated. But then this does not generally happen, where
there is most fertile land." ("Observations on certain verbal disputes, &c.,” pp. 74, 75.)
Essays on some unsettled questions of Political Economy
2 J. Stuart Mill: <<
Lond., 1849," p. 90.
612
Capitalist Production.
beyond reach, although we can always approximate more and
more nearly to it. The constant tendency of capital is to force
the cost of labour back towards this zero. A writer of the
18th century, often quoted already, the author of the "Essay
on Trade and Commerce," only betrays the innermost secret
soul of English capitalism, when he declares the historic
mission of England to be the forcing down of English wages to
the level of the French and the Dutch. With other things he
says naïvely: "But if our poor" (technical term for labourers)
“will live luxuriously . . . . then labour must, of course, be
dear..... When it is considered what luxuries the manufac-
turing populace consume, such as brandy, gin, tea, sugar, foreign
fruit, strong beer, printed linens, snuff, tobacco, &c." He quotes
the work of a Northamptonshire manufacturer, who, with eyes
squinting heavenward, moans: "Labour is one-third cheaper
in France than in England; for their poor work hard, and fare
hard, as to their food and clothing. Their chief diet is bread,
fruit, herbs, roots, and dried fish; for they very seldom eat
flesh; and when wheat is dear, they eat very little bread." 3
"To which may be added," our essayist goes on, “that their
drink is either water or other small liquors, so that they spend
very little money . . . These things are very difficult to be
brought about; but they are not impracticable, since they have
been effected both in France and in Holland." Twenty years.
•
4
1"An Essay on Trade and Commerce, Lond., 1770," p. 44. The "Times" of
December, 1866, and January, 1867, in like manner published certain outpourings of
the heart of the English mineowner, in which the happy lot of the Belgian miners
was pictured, who asked and received no more than was strictly necessary for them
to live for their "masters." The Belgian labourers have to suffer much, but to figure
in the "Times as model labourers! In the beginning of February, 1867, came the
answer strike of the Belgian miners at Marchienne, put down by powder and lead.
21. c., pp. 44, 46.
3 The Northamptonshire manufacturer commits a pious fraud, pardonable in one
whose heart is so full. He nominally compares the life of the English and French
manufacturing labourer, but in the words just quoted he is painting, as he himself
confesses in his confused way, the French agricultural labourers.
41. c., p. 70, 71. Note to the 3rd edition: To-day, thanks to the competition on the
world-market, established since then, we have advanced much further. "If China,"
says Mr. Stapleton, M.P., to his constituents, "should become a great manufacturing
country, I do not see how the manufacturing population of Europe could sustain the
contest without descending to the level of their competitors." ("Times," Sept. 9, 1873,
p. 8.) The wished-for goal of English capital is no longer Continental wages but
Chinese.
""
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 613
later, an American humbug, the baronised Yankee, Benjamin
Thomson (alias Count Rumford) followed the same line of
philanthropy to the great satisfaction of God and man. His
Essays are a cookery book with receipts of all kinds for
replacing by some succedaneum the ordinary dear food of the
labourer. The following is a particulary successful receipt of
this wonderful philosopher: "5 lbs. of barley meal, 7½d.; 5 lbs.
of Indian corn, 61d.; 3d. worth of red herring, 1d. salt, 1d. vine-
gar, 2d. pepper and sweet herbs, in all 203d.; make a soup for 64
men, and at the medium price of barley and of Indian corn
this soup may be provided at d, the portion of 20
ounces." 1
With the advance of capitalistic production, the
adulteration of food rendered Thompson's ideal superfluous.2
At the end of the 18th and during the first ten years of the
19th century, the English farmers and landlords enforced the
absolute minimum of wage, by paying the agricultural labourers
less than the minimum in the form of wages, and the remainder
in the shape of parochial relief. An example of the waggish
way in which the English Dogberries acted in their "legal
fixing of a wages tariff: "The squires of Norfolk had dined,
says Mr. Burke, when they fixed the rate of wages; the squires
of Berks evidently thought the labourers ought not to do so,
when they fixed the rate of wages at Speenhamland, 1795.
. . . There they decide that income (weekly) should be 3s.
<<
•
>>
}}
¹ Benjamin Thompson Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, &c., 3
vols., Lond., 1796-1802, vol. i., p. 288. In his "The State of the Poor, or an History
of the Labouring Classes in England, &c.," Sir F. M. Eden strongly recommends the
Rumfordian beggar-soup to workhouse overseers, and reproachfully warns the English
labourers that many poor people, particularly in Scotland, live, and that very com-
fortably, for months together, upon oat-meal and barley-meal, mixed with only water
and salt." (1. c., vol. i., book i., ch. 2., p. 503.) The same sort of hints in the 19th
century. "The most wholesome mixtures of flour having been refused (by the
English agricultural labourer) . . . . in Scotland, where education is better, this
prejudice is, probably, unknown." (Charles H. Parry, M.D.: The question of the
necessity of the existing Corn Laws considered. London, 1816, p. 69.) This same
Parry, however, complains that the English labourer is now (1815) in a much worse
condition than in Eden's time (1787).
CC
2 From the reports of the last Parliamentary Commission on adulteration of means
of subsistence, it will be seen that the adulteration even of medicines is the rule, not
the exception in England. E.g., the examination of 34 specimens of opium, purchased
of as many different chemists in London, showed that 31 were adulterated with
poppy heads, wheat-four, gum, clay, sand, &c. Several did not contain an atom of
morphia.
614
Capitalist Production.
for a man,' when the gallon or half-peck loaf of 8 lbs. 11 oz. is
at 1s., and increase regularly till bread is 1s. 5d.; when it is
above that sum, decrease regularly till it be at 2s., and then
his food should be 4th less." 1 Before the Committee of Inquiry
of the House of Lords, 1814, a certain A. Bennett, a large
farmer, magistrate, poor-law guardian, and wage-regulator, was
asked: "Has any proportion of the value of daily labour been
made up to the labourers out of the poors' rate?" Answer:
"Yes, it has; the weekly income of every family is made up to
the gallon loaf (8 lbs. 11 oz.), and 3d. per head. ... . The
gallon loaf per week is what we suppose sufficient for the
maintenance of every person in the family for the week; and
the 3d. is for clothes, and if the parish think proper to find
clothes, the 3d. is deducted. This practice goes through all the
western part of Wiltshire, and, I believe, throughout the
country." 2 "For years," exclaims a bourgeois author of
that time, "they (the farmers) have degraded a respectable
class of their countrymen, by forcing them to have recourse to
the workhouse . . . . the farmer, while increasing his own
gains, has prevented any accumulation on the part of his
labouring dependants."3 The part played in our days by the
direct robbery from the labourer's necessary consumption-
fund in the formation of surplus-value, and, therefore, of the
accumulation fund of capital, the so-called domestic industry
has served to show. (Ch. xv., sect. 8, c.)
(Ch. xv., sect. 8, c.) Further facts on this
subject will be given later.
Although in all branches of industry that part of the
constant capital consisting of instruments of labour must
be sufficient for a certain number of labourers (determined
by the magnitude of the undertaking), it by no means
always necessarily increases in the same proportion as the
quantity of labour employed. In a factory, suppose that 100
labourers working 8 hours a day yield 800 working-hours,
1G. B. Newnham (barrister-at-law): "A Review of the Evidence before the Com-
mittee of the two Houses of Parliament on the Corn Laws. Lond., 1815," p. 28, note.
21. c., pp. 19, 20.
3 C. H. Parry, 1. c., pp. 77, 69. The landlords, on their side, not only "indemnified
themselves for the Anti-jacobin war, which they waged in the name of England, but
enriched themselves enormously. Their rents doubled, trebled, quadrupled, "and in
one instance, increased sixfold in eighteen years." (1. c., pp. 100, 101.)
"9
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 615
If the capitalist wishes to raise this sum by one half, he can
employ 50 more workers; but then he must also advance more
capital, not merely for wages, but for instruments of labour.
But he might also let the 100 labourers work 12 hours instead
of 8, and then the instruments of labour already to hand would
be enough. These would then simply be more rapidly con-
sumed. Thus additional labour, begotten of the greater tension
of labour-power, can augment surplus-product and surplus-
value (i.e., the subject matter of accumulation), without corres-
ponding augmentation in the constant part of capital.
In the extractive industries, mines, &c., the raw materials
form no part of the capital advanced. The subject of labour
is in this case not a product of previous labour, but is furnished
by Nature gratis, as in the case of metals, minerals, coal, stone,
&c. In these cases the constant capital consists almost
exclusively of instruments of labour, which can very well
absorb an increased quantity of labour (day and night shifts of
labourers, e.g.). All other things being equal, the mass and
value of the product will rise in direct proportion to the labour
expended. As on the first day of production, the original pro-
duce-formers, now turned into the creators of the material
elements of capital-man and Nature-still work together.
Thanks to the elasticity of labour-power, the domain of
accumulation has extended without any previous enlargement
of constant capital.
In agriculture the land under cultivation cannot be increased
without the advance of more seed and manure. But this
advance once made, the purely mechanical working of the
soil itself produces a marvellous effect on the amount of the
product. A greater quantity of labour, done by the same
number of labourers as before, thus increases the fertility,
without requiring any new advance in the instruments of
labour. It is once again the direct action of man on Nature
which becomes an immediate source of greater accumulation,
without the intervention of any new capital.
Finally, in what is called manufacturing industry, every
additional expenditure of labour presupposes a corresponding
additional expenditure of raw materials, but not necessarily of
and f
616
Capitalist Production.
instruments of labour. And as extractive industry and agri-
culture supply manufacturing industry with its raw materials
and those of its instruments of labour, the additional product
the former have created without additional advance of capital,
tells also in favour of the latter.
General result: by incorporating with itself the two primary
creators of wealth, labour-power and the land, capital acquires
a power of expansion that permits it to augment the elements
of its accumulation beyond the limits apparently fixed by its
own magnitude, or by the value and the mass of the means of
production, already produced, in which it has its being.
Another important factor in the accumulation of capital is
the degree of productivity of social labour.
With the productive power of labour increases the mass of
the products, in which a certain value, and, therefore, a surplus-
value of a given magnitude, is embodied. The rate of surplus-
value remaining the same or even falling, so long as it only
falls more slowly, than the productive power of labour rises,
the mass of the surplus-product increases. The division of this
product into revenue and additional capital remaining the
same, the consumption of the capitalist may, therefore, increase
without any decrease in the fund of accumulation. The relative
magnitude of the accumulation fund may even increase at the
expense of the consumption fund, whilst the cheapening of
commodities places at the disposal of the capitalist as many
means of enjoyment as formerly, or even more than formerly.
But hand-in-hand with the increasing productivity of labour,
goes, as we have seen, the cheapening of the labourer, there-
fore a higher rate of surplus-value, even when the real wages
are rising. The latter never rise proportionally to the produc-
tive power of labour. The same value in variable capital there-
fore sets in movement more labour-power, and, therefore, more
labour. The same value in constant capital is embodied in
more means of production, i.e., in more instruments of labour,
materials of labour and auxiliary materials; it therefore also
supplies more elements for the production both of use-value
and of value, and with these more absorbers of labour. The
value of the additional capital, therefore, remaining the same
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 617
İ
or even diminishing, accelerated accumulation still takes place.
Not only does the scale of reproduction materially extend, but
the production of surplus-value increases more rapidly than
the value of the additional capital.
The development of the productive power of labour reacts
also on the original capital already engaged in the process of
production. A part of the functioning constant capital con-
sists of instruments of labour, such as machinery, &c., which
are not consumed, and therefore not reproduced, or replaced
by new ones of the same kind, until after long periods of time.
But every year a part of these instruments of labour perishes or
reaches the limit of its productive function. It reaches, there-
fore, in that year, the time for its periodical reproduction, for
its replacement by new ones of the same kind. If the pro-
ductiveness of labour has, during the using up of these instru-
ments of labour, increased (and it developes continually with
the uninterrupted advance of science and technology), more
efficient and (considering their increased efficiency), cheaper
machines, tools, apparatus, &c., replace the old. The old
capital is reproduced in a more productive form, apart from
the constant detail improvements in the instruments of labour
already in use. The other part of the constant capital, raw
material and auxiliary substances, is constantly reproduced in
less than a year; those produced by agriculture, for the most
part annually. Every introduction of improved methods,
therefore, works almost simultaneously on the new capital and
on that already in action. Every advance in Chemistry not
only multiplies the number of useful materials and the useful
applications of those already known, thus extending with the
growth of capital its sphere of investment. It teaches at the
same time how to throw the excrements of the processes of
production and consumption back again into the circle of the
process of reproduction, and thus, without any previous outlay
of capital, creates new matter for capital. Like the increased
exploitation of natural wealth by the mere increase in the
tension of labour-power, science and technology give capital a
power
of expansion independent of the given magnitude of the
capital actually functioning. They react at the same time on
618
Capitalist Production.
that part of the original capital which has entered upon its
stage of renewal. This, in passing into its new shape, incor-
porates gratis the social advance made while its old shape was
being used up. Of course, this development of productive
power is accompanied by a partial depreciation of functioning
capital. So far as this depreciation makes itself acutely felt
in competition, the burden falls on the labourer, in the increased
exploitation of whom the capitalist looks for his indemnification.
Labour transmits to its product the value of the means of
production consumed by it. On the other hand, the value and
mass of the means of production set in motion by a given
quantity of labour increase as the labour becomes more pro-
ductive. Though the same quantity of labour adds always to
its products only the same sum of new value, still the old
capital-value, transmitted by the labour to the products, in-
creases with the growing productivity of labour.
An English and a Chinese spinner, e.g., may work the same
number of hours with the same intensity; then they will both
in a week create equal values. But in spite of this equality,
an immense difference will obtain between the value of the
week's product of the Englishman, who works with a mighty
automaton, and that of the Chinaman, who has but a spinning
wheel. In the same time as the Chinaman spins one pound of
cotton, the Englishman spins several hundreds of pounds. A
sum, many hundred times as great, of old values swells the
value of his product, in which those reappear in a new, useful
form, and can thus function anew as capital. "In 1782," as
Frederick Engels teaches us, "all the wool crop in England of
the three preceding years, lay untouched for want of labourers,
and so it must have lain, if newly invented machinery had not
come to its aid and spun it." 1 Labour embodied in the form
of machinery of course did not directly force into life a single
man, but it made it possible for a smaller number of labourers,
with the addition of relatively less living labour, not only to
consume the wool productively, and put into it new value, but
to preserve in the form of yarn, &c., its old value. At the
same time, it caused and stimulated increased reproduction of
1 Frederick Engels, "Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England," p. 20.
Ja
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 619
wool. It is the natural property of living labour, to transmit
old value, whilst it creates new. Hence, with the increase in
efficacy, extent and value of its means of production, conse-
quently with the accumulation that accompanies the develop-
ment of its productive power, labour keeps up and eternises
an always increasing capital-value in a form ever new.¹ This
1 Classic economy has, on account of a deficient analysis of the labour-process,
and
of the process of creating value, never properly grasped this weighty element of repro-
duction, as may be seen in Ricardo; he says, e.g., whatever the change in productive
power, "a million men always produce in manufactures the same value." This is
accurate, if the extension and degree of intensity of their labour are given. But it
does not prevent (this Ricardo overlooks in certain conclusions he draws) a million
men with different powers of productivity in their labour, turning into products very
different masses of the means of production, and therefore preserving in their pro-
ducts very different masses of value; in consequence of which the values of the pro-
ducts yielded may vary considerably. Ricardo has, it may be noted in passing, tried
in vain to make clear to J. B. Say, by that very example, the difference between use-
value (which he here calls wealth or material riches) and exchange-value. Say
answers : Quant à la difficulté qu'élève Mr. Ricardo en disant que, par des procédés
mieux entendus, un million de personnes peuvent produire deux fois, trois fois autant
de richesses, sans produire plus de valeurs, cette difficulté n'est pas une lorsque l'on
considère, ainsi qu'on le doit, la production comme un échange dans lequel on
donne les services productifs de son travail, de sa terre, et de ses capitaux,
pour obtenir des produits. C'est par le moyen de ces services productifs, que
nous acquérons tous les produits qui sont au monde. Or
sommes d'autant plus riches, nos services productifs ont d'autant plus de valeur
qu'ils obtiennent dans l'échange appelé production une plus grande quantité de choses
utiles." (J. B. Say; "Lettres à M. Malthus, Paris, 1820,” pp. 168, 169.)
CC
nous
The
difficulté "—it exists for him, not for Ricardo-that Say means to clear up is this:
Why does not the exchange-value of the use-values increase, when their quantity
increases in consequence of increased productive power of labour? Answer: the
difficulty is met by calling use-value, exchange-value, if you please. Exchange-value
is a thing that is connected one way or another with exchange. If therefore pro-
duction is called an exchange of labour and means of production against the product,
it is clear as day that you obtain more exchange-value in proportion as the production
yields more use-value. In other words, the more use-values, e.g.. stockings, a working
day yields to the stocking-manufacturer, the richer is he in stockings. Suddenly,
however, Say recollects that "with a greater quantity" of stockings their "price
(which of course has nothing to do with their exchange-value !) falls "parce que la
concurrence les (les producteurs) oblige à donner les produits pour ce qu'ils leur
coûtent." But whence does the profit come, if the capitalist sells the commodities
at cost-price? Never mind! Say declares that, in consequence of increased pro-
ductivity, every one now receives in return for a given equivalent two pairs of stock-
ings instead of one as before. The result he arrives at, is precisely that proposition
of Ricardo that he aimed at disproving. After this mighty effort of thought, he
triumphantly apostrophises Malthus in the words: "Telle est, monsieur, la doctrine
bien liée, sans laquelle il est impossible, je le déclare, d'expliquer les plus grandes
difficultés de l'économie politique, et notamment, comment il se peut qu'une nation
soit plus riche lorsque ses produits diminuent de valeur, quoique la richesse scit de la
(C
>>
:
620
Capitalist Production.
ļ
natural power of labour takes the appearance of an intrinsic
property of capital, in which it is incorporated, just as the pro-
ductive forces of social labour take the appearance of inherent
properties of capital, and as the constant appropriation of
surplus-labour by the capitalists, takes that of a constant self-
expansion of capital.
With the increase of capital, the difference between the
capital employed and the capital consumed increases. In other
words, there is increase in the value and the material mass of
the instruments of labour, such as buildings, machinery, drain-
pipes, working-cattle, apparatus of every kind that function
for a longer or shorter time in processes of production constantly
repeated, or that serve for the attainment of particular useful
effects, whilst they themselves only gradually wear out, there-
fore only lose their value piecemeal, therefore transfer that
value to the product only bit by bit. In the same proportion
as these instruments of labour serve as product-formers without
adding value to the product, i.e, in the same proportion as they
are wholly employed but only partly consumed, they perform,
as we saw earlier, the same gratuitous service as the natural
forces, water, steam, air, electricity, etc. This gratuitous service
of past labour, when seized and filled with a soul by living
labour, increases with the advancing stages of accumulation.
Since past labour always disguises itself as capital, i.e., since
the passive of the labour of A, B, C, etc., takes the form of the
active of the non-labourer X, bourgeois and political economists
are full of praises of the services of dead and gone labour,
which, according to the Scotch genius M'Culloch, ought to
receive a special remuneration in the shape of interest, profit,
etc. The powerful and ever-increasing assistance given by
valeur." (1. c. p. 170.) An English economist remarks upon the conjuring tricks of
the same nature that appear in Say's "Lettres": "Those affected ways of talking
make up in general that which M. Say is pleased to call his doctrine and which he
earnestly urges Malthus to teach at Hertford, as it is already taught 'dans plusieurs
parties de l'Europe.' He says, 'Si vous trouvez une physionomie de paradoxe à
toutes ces propositions, voyez les choses qu'elles expriment, et j'os croire qu'elles
vous paraîtront fort simples et fort raisonnables.' Doubtless, and in consequence of
the same process, they will appear everything else, except original." (An Inquiry
into those Principles respecting the Nature of Demand, &c., p. 116, 110.)
1
1 M'Culloch took out a patent for "wages of past labour," long before Senior did
for " wages of abstinence."
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 621
past labour to the living labour process under the form of means
of production is, therefore, attributed to that form of past
labour in which it is alienated, as unpaid labour, from the
worker himself, i.e., to its capitalistic form. The practical agents.
of capitalistic production and their pettifogging ideologists are as
unable to think of the means of production as separate from the
antagonistic social mask they wear to-day, as a slave-owner to
think of the worker himself as distinct from his character as a
slave.
With a given degree of exploitation of labour-power, the
mass of the surplus-value produced is determined by the number
of workers simultaneously exploited; and this corresponds,
although in varying proportions, with the magnitude of the
capital. The more, therefore, capital increases by means of
successive accumulations, the more does the sum of the value
increase that is divided into consumption-fund and accumu-
lation-fund. The capitalist can, therefore, live a more jolly
life, and at the same time show more “abstinence.” And,
finally, all the springs of production act with greater elasticity,
the more its scale extends with the mass of the capital
advanced.
SECTION 5.-THE SO-CALLED LABOUR fund.
C
It has been shown in the course of this inquiry that capital is
not a fixed magnitude, but is a part of social wealth, elastic and
constantly fluctuating with the division of fresh surplus-value
into revenue and additional capital. It has been seen further
that, even with a given magnitude of functioning capital, the
labour-power, the science, and the land (by which are to be
understood, economically, all conditions of labour furnished by
Nature independently of man), embodied in it, form elastic
powers of capital, allowing it, within certain limits, a field of
action independent of its own magnitude. In this inquiry we
have neglected all effects of the process of circulation, effects
which may produce very different degrees of efficiency in the
same mass of capital. And as we pre-supposed the limits set by
capitalist production, that is to say, pre-supposed the process of
622
Capitalist Production.
-
social production in a form developed by purely spontaneous
growth, we neglected any more rational combination, directly
and systematically practicable with the means of production,
and the mass of labour-power at present disposable. Classical
economy always loved to conceive social capital as a fixed
magnitude of a fixed degree of efficiency. But this prejudice
was first established as a dogma by the arch-Philistine, Jeremy
Bentham, that insipid, pedantic, leather-tongued oracle of the
ordinary bourgeois intelligence of the 19th century. Bentham
is among philosophers what Martin Tupper is among poets.
Both could only have been manufactured in England.2 In the
light of his dogma the commonest phenomena of the process of
production, as, e.g., its sudden expansions and contractions, nay,
even accumulation itself, become perfectly inconceivable. The
dogma was used by Bentham himself, as well as by Malthus,
1
1 Compare among others, Jeremy Bentham: "Théorie des Peines et des Récom-
penses, traduct. d'Et. Dumont, 3ème édit. Paris, 1826," p. II., L. IV., ch. II.
2 Bentham is a purely English phenomenon. Not even excepting our philosopher,
Christian Wolf, in no time and in no country has the most homespun common-place
ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no dis-
covery of Bentham.
He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvetius and
other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful
for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced
from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all
human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal
with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each
historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the dryest naïveté he
takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man.
Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful.
This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian
religion, e.g., is "useful," because it forbids in the name of religion the same faults
that the penal code condemns in the name of the law. Artistic criticism is "harm-
ful," because it disturbs worthy people in their enjoyment of Martin Tupper, etc.
With such rubbish has the brave fellow, with his motto, "nulla dies sine lineâ," piled
up mountains of books. Had I the courage of my friend, Heinrich Heine, I should
call Mr. Jeremy a genius in the way of bourgeois stupidity.
3
3
Political economists are too apt to consider a certain quantity of capital and a
certain number of labourers as productive instruments of uniform power, or operating
with a certain uniform intensity . . . Those . . who maintain . . . that commodi-
ties are the sole agents of production . prove that production could never be en-
larged, for it requires as an indispensable condition to such an enlargement that food,
raw materials, and tools should be previously augmented; which is in fact maintain-
ing that no increase of production can take place without a previous increase, or, in
other words, that an increase is impossible." (S. Bailey: "Money and its vicissi-
tudes," pp. 26 and 70.) Bailey criticises the dogma mainly from the point of view of
the process of circulation.
•
་
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital. 623
James Mill, M'Culloch, etc., for an apologetic purpose, and
especially in order to represent one part of capital, namely,
variable capital, or that part convertible into labour-power, as
a fixed magnitude. The material of variable capital, i.e., the
mass of the means of subsistence it represents for the labourer,
or the so-called labour fund, was fabled as a separate part of
social wealth, fixed by natural laws and unchangeable. To set in
motion the part of social wealth which is to function as constant
capital, or, to express it in a material form, as means of pro-
duction, a definite mass of living labour is required. This mass
is given technologically. But neither is the number of labourers
required to render fluid this mass of labour-power given (it
changes with the degree of exploitation of the individual
labour-power), nor is the price of this labour-power given, but
only its minimuni limit, which is moreover very variable. The
facts that lie at the bottom of this dogma are these: on the one
hand, the labourer has no right to interfere in the division of
social wealth into means of enjoyment for the non-labourer
and means of production.¹ On the other hand, only in
favourable and exceptional cases, has he the power to enlarge
the 'so-called labour-fund at the expense of the "revenue" of
the wealthy.
What silly tautology results from the attempt to represent the
capitalistic limits of the labour-fund as its natural and social
limits may be seen, e.g., in Professor Fawcett. "The circulating
capital of a country," he says, "is its wage-fund. Hence, if we
desire to calculate the average money wages received by each
labourer, we have simply to divide the amount of this capital
CC
1 John Stuart Mill, in his "Principles of Political Economy," says:
"The really
exhausting and the really repulsive labours instead of being better paid than others,
are almost invariably paid the worst of all . . . The more revolting the occupation,
the more certain it is to receive the minimum of remuneration . The hardships
and the earnings, instead of being directly proportional, as in any just arrangements
of society they would be, are generally in an inverse ratio to one another." To avoid
misunderstanding, let me say that although men e John Stuart Mill are to blame
for the contradiction between their traditional economic dogmas and their modern
tendencies, it would be very wrong to class them with the herd of vulgar economic
apologists.
2 H. Fawcett, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge. "The Economic Posi-
tion of the British Labourer." London, 1865, p. 120.
•
•
624
Capitalist Production.
by the number of the labouring population.” 1 That is to say,
we first add together the individual wages actually paid, and
then we affirm that the sum thus obtained, forms the total
value of the "labour-fund" determined and vouchsafed to us by
God and Nature. Lastly, we divide the sum thus obtained by
the number of labourers to find out again how much may come
to each on the average. An uncommonly knowing dodge this. It
did not prevent Mr. Fawcett saying in the same breath: "The
aggregate wealth which is annually saved in England, is
divided into two portions; one portion is employed as capital
to maintain our industry, and the other portion is exported to
foreign countries . . . Only a portion, and perhaps, not a large
portion of the wealth which is annually saved in this country,
is invested in our own industry."
"2
The greater part of the yearly accruing surplus-product,
embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent,
from the English labourer, is thus used as capital, not in
England, but in foreign countries. But with the additional
capital thus exported, a part of the "labour-fund" invented by
God and Bentham is also exported.3
1 I must here remind the reader that the categories, "variable and constant capital,"
were first used by me. Political Economy since the time of Adam Smith has con-
fusedly mixed up the essential distinctions involved in these categories, with the
inere formal differences, arising out of the process of circulation, of fixed and
circulating capital. For further details on this point, see Book II., Part II.
2 Fawcett, 1. c. pp. 122, 123.
3 It might be said that not only capital, but also labourers, in the shape of emigrants,
are annually exported from England. In the text, however, there is no question of
the peculium of the emigrants, who are in great part not labourers.
The sons
of farmers make up a great part of them. The additional capital annually trans-
ported abroad to be put out at interest is in much greater proportion to the annual
accumulation than the yearly emigration is to the yearly increase of population.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 625
CHAPTER XXV.
THE GENERAL LAW OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION.
SECTION 1.-THE INCREASED DEMAND FOR LABOUR-POWER THAT ACCOM-
PANIES ACCUMULATION, THE COMPOSITION OF CAPITAL REMAINING THE
SAME.
IN this chapter we consider the influence of the growth of
capital on the lot of the labouring class. The most important
factor in this inquiry, is the composition of capital and the
changes it undergoes in the course of the process of accumu-
lation.

The composition of capital is to be understood in a twofold
sense. On the side of value, it is determined by the proportion
in which it is divided into constant capital or value of the
means of production, and variable capital or value of labour-
power, the sum total of wages. On the side of material, as it
functions in the process of production, all capital is divided
into means of production and living labour-power. This latter
composition is determined by the relation between the mass of
the means of production employed, on the one hand, and the
mass of labour necessary for their employment on the other.
I call the former the value-composition, the latter the technical
composition of capital. Between the two there is a strict
correlation. To express this, I call the value-composition of
capital, in so far as it is determined by its technical composi-
tion and mirrors the changes of the latter, the organic
composition of capital. Wherever I refer to the composition
of capital, without further qualification, its organic composition
is always understood.
The many individual capitals invested in a particular branch
of production have, one with another, more or less different
compositions. The average of their individual compositions
gives us the composition of the total capital in this branch of
production. Lastly, the average of these averages, in all
branches of production, gives us the composition of the total
2 R
626
Capitalist Production.
social capital of a country, and with this alone are we, in the
last resort, concerned in the following investigation.
Growth of capital involves growth of its variable constituent
or of the part invested in labour-power. A part of the surplus-
value turned into additional capital must always be re-trans-
formed into variable capital, or additional labour-fund. If we
suppose that, all other circumstances remaining the same, the
composition of capital also remains constant (i.e., that a definite
mass of means of production constantly needs the same mass
of labour-power to set it in motion), then the demand for
labour and the subsistence-fund of the labourers clearly in-
crease in the same proportion as the capital, and the more
rapidly, the more rapidly the capital increases. Since the
capital produces yearly a surplus-value, of which one part is
yearly added to the original capital; since this increment
itself grows yearly along with the augmentation of the capital
already functioning; since lastly, under special stimulus to
enrichment, such as the opening of new markets, or of new
spheres for the outlay of capital in consequence of newly
developed social wants, &c., the scale of accumulation may be
suddenly extended, merely by a change in the division of
the surplus-value or surplus-product into capital and revenue,
the requirements of accumulating capital may exceed the
increase of labour-power or of the number of labourers; the
demand for labourers may exceed the supply, and, therefore,
wages may rise. This must, indeed, ultimately be the case if
the conditions supposed above continue. For since in each
year more labourers are employed than in its predecessor,
sooner or later a point must be reached, at which the require-
ments of accumulation begin to surpass the customary supply
of labour, and, therefore, a rise of wages takes place. A
lamentation on this score was heard in England during the
whole of the fifteenth, and the first half of the eighteenth
centuries. The more or less favourable circumstances in which
the wage-working class supports and multiplies itself, in no
way alter the fundamental character of capitalist production. Ast
simple reproduction constantly reproduces the capital-relation
itself, ie, the relation of capitalists on the one hand, and wage-
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 627
workers on the other, so reproduction on a progressive scale, i.e.
accumulation, reproduces the capital-relation on a progressive
scale, more capitalists or larger capitalists at this pole, more
wage-workers at that. The reproduction of a mass of labour-
power, which must incessantly re-incorporate itself with
capital for that capital's self-expansion; which cannot get
free from capital, and whose enslavement to capital is only
concealed by the variety of individual capitalists to whom it
sells itself, this reproduction of labour-power forms, in fact, an
essential of the reproduction of capital itself. Accumulation
of capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat.¹
Classical economy grasped this fact so thoroughly that Adam
Smith, Ricardo, &c., as mentioned earlier, inaccurately identi-
fied accumulation with the consumption, by the productive
labourers, of all the capitalised part of the surplus-product, or
with its transformation into additional wage-labourers. As
early as 1696 John Bellers says: "For if one had a hundred
thousand acres of land and as many pounds in money, and as
many cattle, without a labourer, what would the rich man be,
but a labourer? And as the labourers make men rich, so the
more labourers, there will be the more rich men . . . the labour
of the poor being the mines of the rich." So also Bernard
de Mandeville at the beginning of the eighteenth century: "It
would be easier, where property is well secured, to live with-
out money than without poor; for who would do the work ?
As they [the poor] ought to be kept from starving, so
they should receive nothing worth saving. If here and there
1 Karl Marx, 1. c. "A égalité d'oppression des masses, plus un pays a de prolé-
taires et plus il est riche." (Colins. L'Economie politique, Source des Révolutions
et des Utopies prétendues Socialistes. Paris, 1857, t. III. p. 331.) Our "prolet-
arian "is economically none other than the wage-labourer, who produces and increases
capital, and is thrown out on the streets, as soon as he is superfluous for the needs
of aggrandisement of "Monsieur capital," as Pecqueur calls this person.
"The
sickly proletarian of the primitive forest," is a pretty Roscherian fancy. The
primitive forester is owner of the primitive forest, and uses the primitive forest as
his property with the freedom of an orang-utang. He is not, therefore, a prolet-
arian. This would only be the case, if the primitive forest exploited him, instead of
being exploited by him. As far as his health is concerned, such a man would
well bear comparison, not only with the modern proletarian, but also with the
syphilitic and scrofulous upper classes. But, no doubt, Herr Wilhelm Roscher,
by "primitive forest" means his native heath of Lüneburg.
2 John Bellers, 1. c. p. 2.
628
Capitalist Production.
one of the lowest class by uncommon industry, and pinching
his belly, lifts himself above the condition he was brought up
in, nobody ought to hinder him; nay, it is undeniably the
wisest course for every person in the society, and for every
private family to be frugal; but it is the interest of all rich
nations, that the greatest part of the poor should almost never
be idle, and yet continually spend what they get . . . Those
that get their living by their daily labour . . . have nothing
to stir them up to be serviceable but their wants which it is
prudence to relieve, but folly to cure. The only thing then
that can render the labouring man industrious, is a moderate
quantity of money, for as too little will, according as his temper
is, either dispirit or make him desperate, so too much will
make him insolent and lazy. . . From what has been said, it is
manifest, that, in a free nation, where slaves are not allowed
of, the surest wealth consists in a multitude of laborious.
poor; for besides, that they are the never-failing nursery of
fleets and armies, without them there could be no enjoyment,
and no product of any country could be valuable. To make
the society" [which of course consists of non-workers] "happy
and people easier under the meanest circumstances, it is
requisite that great numbers of them should be ignorant as
well as poor; knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our
desires, and the fewer things a man wishes for, the more easily
his necessities may be supplied." 1 What Mandeville, an
honest, clear-headed man, had not yet seen, is that the mech-
anism of the process of accumulation itself increases, along
with the capital, the mass of "labouring poor," ie., the wage-
labourers, who turn their labour-power into an increasing
power of self-expansion of the growing capital, and even by
doing so must eternize their dependent relation on their own
product, as personified in the capitalists. In reference to this
relation of dependence, Sir F. M. Eden in his "The State of
K
1 Bernard de Mandeville: "The Fable of the Bees," 5th edition, London, 1728.
Remarks, pp. 212, 213, 328. "Temperate living and constant employment is the
direct road, for the poor, to rational happiness "[by which he most probably means
long working days and little means of subsistence], and to riches and strength for
the state" (viz., for the landlords, capitalists, and their political dignitaries and
agents). (An Essay on Trade and Commerce, London, 1770, p. 54.)
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 629
the Poor, an History of the Labouring Classes in England,"
says, "the natural produce of our soil is certainly not fully
adequate to our subsistence; we can neither be clothed, lodged
nor fed but in consequence of some previous labour. A portion
at least of the society must be indefatigably employed.
There are others who, though they 'neither toil nor spin,' can
yet command the produce of industry, but who owe their
exemption from labour solely to civilisation and order. . .
They are peculiarly the creatures of civil institutions,¹ which
have recognised that individuals may acquire property by
various other means besides the exertion of labour. . . Persons
of independent fortune owe their superior advantages by
no means to any superior abilities of their own, but almost
cntirely. . . . to the industry of others. It is not the posses-
sion of land, or of money, but the command of labour which
distinguishes the opulent from the labouring part of the com-
munity. . . This [scheme approved by Eden] would give the
people of property sufficient (but by no means too much)
influence and authority over those who... work for them;
and it would place such labourers, not in an abject or servile.
condition, but in such a state of easy and liberal dependence
as all who know human nature, and its history, will allow to
be necessary for their own comfort."2 Sir F. M. Eden, it may
be remarked in passing, is the only disciple of Adam Smith
during the eighteenth century that produced any work of
importance.3
•
·
1 Eden should have asked, whose creatures then are "the civil institutions?
From his standpoint of juridical illusion, he does not regard the law as a product of
the material relations of production, but conversely the relations of production as
products of the law. Linguet overthrew Montesquieu's illusory "Esprit des lois "
with one word; "L'esprit des lois, c'est la propriété.
2 Eden 1. c. Vol. I, book I. chapter I. pp. 1, 2, and preface, p. xx.
3 If the reader reminds me of Malthus, whose "Essay on Population" appeared in
1798, I remind him that this work in its first form is nothing more than a school-
boyish, superficial plagiary of De Foe, Sir James Steuart, Townsend, Franklin,
Wallace, &c., and does not contain a single sentence thought out by himself. The
great sensation this pamphlet caused, was due solely to party interest. The French
Revolution had found passionate defenders in the United Kingdom; the "principle
of population," slowly worked-out in the eighteenth century, and then, in the midst
of a great social crisis, proclaimed with drums and trumpets as the infallible antidote
to the teachings of Condorcet, &c., was greeted with jubilance by the English
oligarchy as the great destroyer of all hankerings after human development. Malthus,
>>
**
630
Capitalist Production.
Under the conditions of accumulation supposed thus far,
which conditions are those most favourable to the labourers,
their relation of dependence upon capital takes on a form
endurable, or, as Eden says: easy and liberal." Instead of be-
coming more intensive with the growth of capital, this relation
CC
""
hugely astonished at his success, gave himself to stuffing into his book materials
superficially compiled, and adding to it new matter, not discovered but annexed by
him. Note further: Although Malthus was a parson of the English State Church,
he had taken the monastic vow of celibacy-one of the conditions of holding a
Fellowship in Protestant Cambridge University: "Socios collegiorum maritos esse
non permittimus, sed statim postquam quis uxorem duxerit, socius collegii desinat
esse. (Reports of Cambridge University Commission, p. 172.) This circumstance
favourably distinguishes Malthus from the other Protestant parsons, who have
shuffled off the command enjoining celibacy of the priesthood and have taken,
65
CC
Be fruitful and multiply," as their special Biblical mission in such a degree that
they generally contribute to the increase of population to a really unbecoming extent,
whilst they preach at the same time to the labourers the "principle of population.
It is characteristic that the economic fall of man, the Adam's apple, the urgent
appetite, the checks which tend to blunt the shafts of Cupid," as Parson Townsend
waggishly puts it, that this delicate question was and is monopolised by the Reverends
of Protestant Theology, or rather of the Protestant Church. With the exception
of the Venetian monk, Ortes, an original and clever writer, most of the population-
theory teachers are Protestant parsons. For instance, Bruckner, "Théorie du Système
animal," Leyden, 1767, in which the whole subject of the modern population theory
is exhausted, and to which the passing quarrel between Quesnay and his pupil, the
elder Mirabeau, furnished ideas on the same topic; then Parson Wallace, Parson
Townsend, Parson Malthus and his pupil, the arch-Parson Thomas Chalmers, to say
nothing of lesser reverend scribblers in this line. Originally, political economy was
studied by philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Hume; by business men and statesmen,
like Thomas More, Temple, Sully, De Witt, North, Law, Vanderlint, Cantillon,
Franklin; and especially, and with the greatest success, by medical men like Petty,
Barbon, Mandeville, Quesnay. Even in the middle of the eighteenth century, the
Rev. Mr. Tucker, a notable economist of his time, excused himself for meddling with
the things of Mammon. Later on, and in truth with this very "principle of popu-
lation," struck the hour of the Protestant parsons. Petty, who regarded the
population as the basis of wealth, and was, like Adam Smith, an outspoken foe to
parsons, says, as if he had a presentiment of their bungling interference, "that
Religion best flourishes when the Priests are most mortified, as was before said of the
Law, which best flourisheth when lawyers have least to do." He advises the Protestant
priests, therefore, if they, once for all, will not follow the Apostle Paul and "mortify"
themselves by celibacy, "not to breed more Churchmen than the Benefices, as they
now stand shared out, will receive, that is to say, if there be places for about twelve
thousand in England and Wales, it will not be safe to breed up 24000 ministers, for
then the twelve thousand which are unprovided for, will seek ways how to get them-
selves a livelihood, which they cannot do inore easily then by persuading the people
that the twelve thousand incumbents do poison or starve their souls, and misguide
them in their way to Heaven." (Petty; "A Treatise on Taxes and Contributions.
London, 1667," p. 57.) Adam's Smith's position with the Protestant priesthood of
his time is shown by the following. In "A Letter to A. Smith, L.L.D. On the
,,
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 631
!
of dependence only becomes more extensive, i.e., the sphere of
capital's exploitation and rule merely extends with its own
dimensions and the number of its subjects. A larger part of
their own surplus-product, always increasing and continually
transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the
shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle
of their enjoyments; can make some additions to their con-
jumption-fund of clothes, furniture, &c., and can lay by small
reserve-funds of money. But just as little as better clothing,
food, and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the
exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the
wage-worker. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence
of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length
and weight of the golden chain the wage-worker has already
forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it. In
the controversies on this subject the chief fact has generally
Life, Death and Philosophy of his Friend, David Hume. By one of the People
called Christians, 4th Edition, Oxford, 1784," Dr. Horne, Bishop of Norwich, re-
proves Adam Smith, because in a published letter to Mr. Strahan, he "embalmed
his friend David " (sc. Hume); because he told the world how "Hume amused him-
self on his deathbed with Lucian and Whist," and because he even had the impud-
ence to write of Hume: "I have always considered him, both in his life-time and since
his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man,
as, perhaps, the nature of human frailty will permit." The bishop cries out, in a
passion: "Is it right in you, Sir, to hold up to our view as 'perfectly wise and
virtuous,' the character and conduct of one, who seems to have been possessed with
an incurable antipathy to all that is called Religion; and who strained every nerve
to explode, suppress and extirpate the spirit of it among men, that it's very name, if
he could effect it, might no more be had in remembrance?" (1. c. p. 6). "But let not
the lovers of truth be discouraged. Atheism cannot be of long continuance." (p. 17.)
Adam Smith, "had the atrocious wickedness to propagate atheism through the land
(viz. by his "Theory of moral sentiments.") Upon the whole, Doctor, your meaning
is good; but I think you will not succeed this time. You would persuade us, by
the example of David Hume, Esq., that atheism is the only cordial for low spirits,
and the proper antidote against the fear of death. . . You may smile over Babylon
in ruins and congratulate the hardened Pharaoh on his overthrow in the Red Sea. '
(1. c. pp. 21, 22.) One orthodox individual, amongst Adam Smith's college friends,
writes after his death: "Smith's well-placed affection for Hume . . . hindered him
from being a Christian... When he met with honest men whom he liked . . . he
would believe almost anything they said. Had he been a friend of the worthy in-
genious Horrox he would have believed that the moon sometimes disappeared in a
clear sky without the interposition of a cloud. . He approached to republicanism
in his political principles." (The Bee. By James Anderson, 18 Vols., Vol 3, pp. 165,
164, Edinburgh, 1791-93.) Parson Thomas Chalmers has his suspicions as to Adam
Smith having invented the category of "unproductive labourers," solely for the
Protestant parsons, in spite of their blessed work in the vineyard of the Lord.
D
632
Capitalist Production.
}
been overlooked, viz., the differentia specifica of capitalistic
production. Labour-power is sold to-day, not with a view of
satisfying, by its service or by its product, the personal needs.
of the buyer. His aim is augmentation of his capital, produc-
tion of commodities containing more labour than he pays for,
containing therefore a portion of value that costs him nothing,
and that is nevertheless realised when the commodities are sold.
Production of surplus-value is the absolute law of this mode
of production. Labour-power is only saleable so far as it pre-
serves the means of production in their capacity of capital,
reproduces its own value as capital, and yields in unpaid labour
a source of additional capital.¹ The conditions of its sale,
whether more or less favourable to the labourer, include there-
fore the necessity of its constant re-selling, and the constantly
extended reproduction of all wealth in the shape of capital.
Wages, as we have seen, by their very nature, always imply
the performance of a certain quantity of unpaid labour on the
part of the labourer. Altogether, irrespective of the case of
a rise of wages with a falling price of labour, &c., such an
increase only means at best a quantitative diminution of the
unpaid labour that the worker has to supply. This diminution
can never reach the point at which it would threaten the
system itself. Apart from violent conflicts as to the rate of
wages (and Adam Smith has already shown that in such a con-
flict, taken on the whole, the master is always master), a rise
in the price of labour resulting from accumulation of capital
implies the following alternative :
Either the price of labour keeps on rising, because its rise
does not interfere with the progress of accumulation. In this
there is nothing wonderful, for, says Adam Smith, "after these
(profits) are diminished, stock may not only continue to
increase, but to increase much faster than before.. A
great stock, though with small profits, generally increases
faster than a small stock with great profits." (1. c. ii., p. 189.)
·
1 "The limit, however, to the employment of both the operative aud the labourer
is the same; namely, the possibility of the employer realising a profit on the produce
of their industry. If the rate of wages is such as to reduce the master's gains below
the average profit of capital, he will cease to employ them, or he will only employ their
on condition of submission to a reduction of wages." (John Wade, 1. c., p. 241).
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 633
In this case it is evident that a diminution in the unpaid
labour in no way interferes with the extension of the domain
of capital. Or, on the other hand, accumulation slackens in
consequence of the rise in the price of labour, because the
stimulus of gain is blunted. The rate of accumulation lessens;
but with its lessening, the primary cause of that lessening
vanishes, ie., the disproportion between capital and exploitable
labour-power. The mechanism of the process of capitalist
production removes the very obstacles that it temporarily
creates. The price of labour falls again to a level correspond-
ing with the needs of the self-expansion of capital, whether the
level be below, the same as, or above the one which was normal
before the rise of wages took place. We see thus: In the first
case, it is not the diminished rate either of the absolute, or of the
proportional, increase in labour-power, or labouring population,
which causes capital to be in excess, but conversely the excess
of capital that makes exploitable labour-power insufficient. In
the second case, it is not the increased rate either of the absolute,
or of the proportional, increase in labour-power, or labouring
population, that makes capital insufficient; but, conversely,
the relative diminution of capital that causes the exploitatable
labour-power, or rather its price, to be in excess. It is these
absolute movements of the accumulation of capital which are
reflected as relative movements of the mass of exploitable labour-
power, and therefore seem produced by the latter's own inde-
pendent movement. To put it mathematically: the rate of
accumulation is the independent, not the dependent, variable;
the rate of wages, the dependent, not the independent, vari-
able. Thus, when the industrial cycle is in the phase of crisis,
a general fall in the price of commodities is expressed as a rise
in the value of money, and, in the phase of prosperity, a general
rise in the price of commodities, as a fall in the value of money.
The so-called currency school concludes from this that with
high prices too little, with low prices too much money is in
circulation. Their ignorance and complete misunderstand-
ing of facts are worthily paralleled by the economists,
1 Cf. Karl Marx: Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie, pp. 166, seq.
634
Capitalist Production.
who interpret the above phenomena of accumulation by
saying that there are now too few, now too many wage
labourers.
The law of capitalist production, that is at the bottom of the
pretended "natural law of population," reduces itself simply
to this: The correlation between accumulation of capital and
rate of wages is nothing else than the correlation between the
unpaid labour transformed into capital, and the additional paid
labour necessary for the setting in motion of this additional
capital. It is therefore in no way a relation between two
magnitudes, independent one of the other: on the one hand,
the magnitude of the capital; on the other, the number of
the labouring population; it is rather, at bottom, only the
relation between the unpaid and the paid labour of the same
labouring population. If the quantity of unpaid labour
supplied by the working-class, and accumulated by the
capitalist class, increases so rapidly that its conversion into
capital requires an extraordinary addition of paid labour, then
wages rise, and, all other circumstances remaining equal, the un-
paid labour diminishes in proportion. But as soon as this
diminution touches the point at which the surplus-labour that
nourishes capital is no longer supplied in normal quantity, a
reaction sets in: a smaller part of revenue is capitalised, accumu-
lation lags, and the movement of rise in wages receives a
check. The rise of wages therefore is confined within limits
that not only leave intact the foundations of the capitalistic
system, but also secure its reproduction on a progressive scale.
The law of capitalistic accumulation, metamorphosed by econo-
mists into a pretended law of nature, in reality merely states
that the very nature of accumulation excludes every diminu-
tion in the degree of exploitation of labour, and every rise in
the price of labour, which could seriously imperil the continual
reproduction, on an ever enlarging scale, of the capitalistic
relation. It cannot be otherwise in a mode of production in
which the labourer exists to satisfy the needs of self-expansion
of existing values, instead of, on the contrary, material wealth
existing to satisfy the needs of development on the part of the
labourer. As, in religion, man is governed by the products of
S
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 635
his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by
the products of his own hand.¹
1
SECTION 2.-RELATIVE DIMINUTION OF THE VARIABLE PART OF CAPITAL
SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH THE PROGRESS OF ACCUMULATION AND OF THE
CONCENTRATION THAT ACCOMPANIES IT.
According to the economists themselves, it is neither the
actual extent of social wealth, nor the magnitude of the capital
already functioning, that lead to a rise of wages, but only the
constant growth of accumulation and the degree of rapidity of
that growth. (Adam Smith, Book I., chapter 8.) So far, we
have only considered one special phase of this process, that in
which the increase of capital occurs along with a constant
technical composition of capital. But the process goes beyond
this phase.
(c
Once given the general basis of the capitalistic system, then,
in the course of accumulation, a point is reached at which the
development of the productivity of social labour becomes the
most powerful lever of accumulation. The same cause," says
Adam Smith, "which raises the wages of labour, the increase of
stock, tends to increase its productive powers, and to make a
smaller quantity of labour produce a greater quantity of work."
Apart from natural conditions, such as fertility of the soil,
&c., and from the skill of independent and isolated producers.
(shown rather qualitatively in the goodness than quantitatively
in the mass of their products), the degree of productivity of
labour, in a given society, is expressed in the relative extent
of the means of production that one labourer, during a given
time, with the same tension of labour-power, turns into pro-
ducts. The mass of the means of production which he thus
transforms, increases with the productiveness of his labour.
1"If we now return to our first inquiry, wherein it was shown that capital itself is
only the result of human labour
it seems quite incomprehensible that man
can have fallen under the domination of capital, his own product; can be subordinated
to it; and as in reality this is beyond dispute the case, involuntarily the question
arises: How has the labourer been able to pass from being master of capital-as its
creator-to being its slave?" (Von Thünen. "Der isolirte Staat." Part ii., Section
ii. Rostock, 1863, pp. 5, 6.) It is Thünen's merit to have asked this question. His
answer is simply childish.
•
636
Capitalist Production.
But those means of production play a double part. The in-
crease of some is a consequence, that of the others a condition
of the increasing productivity of labour. E.g., with the divi-
sion of labour in manufacture, and with the use of machinery,
more raw material is worked up in the same time, and, there-
fore, a greater mass of raw material and auxiliary substances
enter into the labour-process. That is the consequence of the
increasing productivity of labour. On the other hand, the
mass of machinery, beasts of burden, mineral manures, drain-
pipes, &c., is a condition of the increasing productivity of
labour. So also is it with the means of production concen-
trated in buildings, furnaces, means of transport, &c. But
whether condition or consequence, the growing extent of the
means of production, as compared with the labour-power in-
corporated with them, is an expression of the growing produc-
tiveness of labour. The increase of the latter appears, there-
fore, in the diminution of the mass of labour in proportion to
the mass of means of production moved by it, or in the dimi-
nution of the subjective factor of the labour process as compared
with the objective factor.
This change in the technical composition of capital, this
growth in the mass of means of production, as compared with
the mass of the labour-power that vivifies them, is reflected
again in its value-composition, by the increase of the constant
constituent of capital at the expense of its variable constituent.
There may be, e.g., originally 50 per cent. of a capital laid
out ir means of production, and 50 per cent. in labour-power;
later on, with the development of the productivity of labour,
80 per cent. in means of production, 20 per cent. in labour-
power, and so on. This law of the progressive increase in
constant capital, in proportion to the variable, is confirmed at
every step (as already shown) by the comparative analysis of
the prices of commodities, whether we compare different econ-
omic epochs or different nations in the same epoch. The rela-
tive magnitude of the element of price, which represents the
value of the means of production only, or the constant part of
capital consumed, is in direct, the relative magnitude of the
other element of price that pays labour (the variable part of
G
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 637
capital) is in inverse proportion to the advance of accumula-
tion.
1
This diminution in the variable part of capital as compared
with the constant, or the altered value-composition of the
capital, however, only shows approximately the change in the
composition of its material constituents. If, e.g., the capital-
value employed to-day in spinning is constant and variable,
whilst at the beginning of the 18th century it was constant
and variable, on the other hand, the mass of raw material,
I p
instruments of labour, &c., that a certain quantity of spinning
labour consumes productively to-day, is many hundred times
greater than at the beginning of the 18th century. The reason
is simply that, with the increasing productivity of labour, not
only does the mass of the means of production consumed by it
increase, but their value compared with their mass diminishes.
Their value therefore rises absolutely, but not in proportion to
their mass.
The increase of the difference between constant
and variable capital is, therefore, much less than that of the
difference between the mass of the means of production into
which the constant, and the mass of the labour-power into.
which the variable, capital is converted. The former difference
increases with the latter, but in a smaller degree.
But, if the progress of accumulation lessens the relative
magnitude of the variable part of capital, it by no means, in
doing this, excludes the possibility of a rise in its absolute
magnitude. Suppose that a capital-value at first is divided
into 50 per cent. of constant and 50 per cent. of variable
capital; later into 80 per cent. of constant and 20 per cent.
of variable. If in the meantime the original capital, say £6,000,
has increased to £18,000, its variable constituent has also
increased. It was £3,000, it is now £3,600. But whereas
formerly an increase of capital by 20 per cent. would have
sufficed to raise the demand for labour 20 per cent., now this
latter rise requires a tripling of the original capital.
In Part IV. it was shown, how the development of the
productiveness of social labour presupposes co-operation on
a large scale; how it is only upon this supposition that divi-
sion and combination of labour can be organised, and the means
638
Capitalist Production.
of production economised by concentration on a vast scale; how
instruments of labour which, from their very nature, are only
fit for use in common, such as a system of machinery, can be
called into being; how huge natural forces can be pressed into the
service of production; and how the transformation can be effected
of the process of production into a technological application of
science. On the basis of the production of commodities, where
the means of production are the property of private persons,
and where the artisan therefore either produces commodities,
isolated from and independent of others, or sells his labour-
power as a commodity, because he lacks the means for inde-
pendent industry, co-operation on a large scale can realise itself
only in the increase of individual capitals, only in proportion as
the means of social production and the means of subsistence
are transformed into the private property of capitalists. The
basis of the production of commodities can admit of production
on a large scale in the capitalistic form alone. A certain accu-
mulation of capital, in the hands of individual producers of
commodities, forms therefore the necessary preliminary of the
specifically capitalistic mode of production. We had, there-
fore, to assume that this occurs during the transition from
handicraft to capitalistic industry. It may be called primiti-
tive accumulation, because it is the historic basis, instead of
the historic result of specifically capitalist production. How
it itself originates, we need not here inquire as yet. It is
enough that it forms the starting-point. But all methods
for raising the social productive power of labour that are
developed on this basis, are at the same time methods for the
increased production of surplus-value or surplus-product, which
in its turn is the formative element of accumulation. They
are, therefore, at the same time methods of the production of
capital by capital, or methods of its accelerated accumulation.
The continual re-transformation of surplus-value into capital
now appears in the shape of the increasing magnitude of the
capital that enters into the process of production. This in
turn is the basis of an extended scale of production, of the
methods for raising the productive power of labour that accom-
pany it, and of accelerated production of surplus-value. If,
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 639
therefore, a certain degree of accumulation of capital appears
as a condition of the specifically capitalist mode of production,
the latter causes conversely an accelerated accumulation of
capital. With the accumulation of capital, therefore, the speci-
fically capitalistic mode of production developes, and with the
capitalist mode of production the accumulation of capital.
Both these economic factors bring about, in the compound
ratio of the impulses they reciprocally give one another, that
change in the technical composition of capital by which the
variable constituent becomes always smaller and smaller as
compared with the constant.
Every individual capital is a larger or smaller concentration
of means of production, with a corresponding command over a
larger or smaller labour-army. Every accumulation becomes
the means of new accumulation. With the increasing mass of
wealth which functions as capital, accumulation increases the
concentration of that wealth in the hands of individual capita-
lists, and thereby widens the basis of production on a large
scale and of the specific methods of capitalist production. The
growth of social capital is effected by the growth of many
individual capitals. All other circumstances remaining the
same, individual capitals, and with them the concentration of
the means of production, increase in such proportion as they
form aliquot parts of the total social capital. At the same
time portions of the original capitals disengage themselves and
function as new independent capitals. Besides other causes,
the division of property, within capitalist families, plays a
great part in this. With the accumulation of capital, there-
fore, the number of capitalists grows to a greater or less ex-
tent. Two points characterise this kind of concentration.
which grows directly out of, or rather is identical with, ac-
cumulation. First: The increasing concentration of the social
means of production in the hands of individual capitalists is,
other things remaining equal, limited by the degree of increase
of social wealth. Second: The part of social capital domiciled
in each particular sphere of production is divided among many
capitalists who face one another as independent commodity-
producers competing with each other. Accumulation and the
640
Capitalist Production.
concentration accompanying it are, therefore, not only scattered
over many points, but the increase of each functioning capital
is thwarted by the formation of new and the sub-division of old
capitals. Accumulation, therefore, presents itself on the one
hand as increasing concentration of the means of production,
and of the command over labour; on the other, as repulsion of
many individual capitals one from another.
This splitting-up of the total social capital into many indi-
vidual capitals or the repulsion of its fractions one from an-
other, is counteracted by their attraction. This last does not
mean that simple concentration of the means of production
and of the command over labour, which is identical with ac-
cumulation. It is concentration of capitals already formed,
destruction of their individual independence, expropriation of
capitalist by capitalist, transformation of many small into few
large capitals. This process differs from the former in this,
that it only presupposes a change in the distribution of capital
already to hand, and functioning; its field of action is there-
fore not limited by the absolute growth of social wealth, by
the absolute limits of accumulation. Capital grows in one
place to a huge mass in a single hand, because it has in another
place been lost by many. This is centralisation proper, as dis-
tinct from accumulation and concentration.
The laws of this centralisation of capitals, or of the attrac-
tion of capital by capital, cannot be developed here. A brief
hint at a few facts must suffice. The battle of competition is
fought by cheapening of commodities. The cheapness of
commodities depends, cæteris paribus, on the productiveness of
labour, and this again on the scale of production. Therefore,
the larger capitals beat the smaller. It will further be re-
membered that, with the development of the capitalist mode
of production, there is an increase in the minimum amount of
individual capital necessary to carry on a business under its
normal conditions. The smaller capitals, therefore, crowd into
spheres of production which Modern Industry has only spor-
adically or incompletely got hold of. Here competition rages
in direct proportion to the number, and in inverse proportion
to the magnitudes, of the antagonistic capitals. It always ends
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 641
in the ruin of many small capitalists, whose capitals partly
pass into the hand of their conquerors, partly vanish. Apart
from this, with capitalist production an altogether new force
comes into play-the credit system. Not only is this itself a
new and mighty weapon in the battle of competition. By
unseen threads it, moreover, draws the disposable money,
scattered in larger or smaller masses over the surface of society,
into the hands of individual or associated capitalists. It is
the specific machine for the centralisation of capitals.
The centralisation of capitals or the process of their attrac-
tion becomes more intense, in proportion as the specifically
capitalist mode of production developes along with accumula-
tion. In its turn; centralisation becomes one of the greatest
levers of this development. It shortens and quickens the
transformation of separate processes of production into pro-
cesses socially combined and carried out on a large scale.
The increasing bulk of individual masses of capital becomes.
the material basis of an uninterrupted revolution in the mode of
production itself. Continually the capitalist mode of produc-
tion conquers branches of industry not yet wholly, or only
sporadically, or only formally, subjugated by it. At the same
time there grow up on its soil new branches of industry, such
as could not exist without it. Finally, in the branches of in-
dustry already carried on upon the capitalist basis, the pro-
ductiveness of labour is made to ripen, as if in a hothouse. In
all these cases, the number of labourers falls in proportion to
the mass of the means of production worked up by them. An
ever increasing part of the capital is turned into means of
production, an ever decreasing one into labour-power. With
the extent, the concentration and the technical efficiency of
the means of production, the degree lessens progressively, in
which the latter are means of employment for labourers. A
steam plough is an incomparably more efficient means of pro-
duction than an ordinary plough, but the capital-value laid
out in it is an incomparably smaller means for employing men
than if it were laid out in ordinary ploughs. At first, it is
the mere adding of new capital to old, which allows of the
expansion and technical revolution of the material conditions
2 s
642
Capitalist Production.
of the process of production. But soon the change of com-
position and the technical transformation get more or less
completely hold of all old capital that has reached the term of
its reproduction, and therefore has to be replaced. This
metamorphosis of old capital is independent, to a certain extent,
of the absolute growth of social capital, in the same way as
its centralisation. But this centralisation which only redistri-
butes the social capital already to hand, and melts into one a
number of old capitals, works in its turn as a powerful agent
in this metamorphosis of old capital.
On the one hand, therefore, the additional capital formed in
the course of accumulation attracts fewer and fewer labourers
in proportion to its magnitude. On the other hand, the old
capital periodically reproduced with change of composition,
repels more and more of the labourers formerly employed by
it.
SECTION 3.-PROGRESSIVE PRODUCTION OF A RELATIVE SURPLUS-POPULA-
TION OR INDUSTRIAL RESERVE ARMY,
The accumulation of capital, though originally appearing as
its quantitative extension only, is effected, as we have seen,
under a progressive qualitative change in its composition,
under a constant increase of its constant, at the expense of its
variable constituent.¹
The specifically capitalist mode of production, the develop-
ment of the productive power of labour corresponding to it,
and the change thence resulting in the organic composition of
capital, do not merely keep pace with the advance of accumu-
lation, or with the growth of social wealth. They develop at
a much quicker rate, because mere accumulation, the absolute
increase of the total social capital, is accompanied by the cen-
tralisation of the individual capitals of which that total is
"Here
1 Note to the 3rd edition. In Marx's copy there is here the marginal note:
note for working out later; if the extension is only quantitative, then for a greater
and a smaller capital in the same branch of business the profits are as the magnitudes
of the capitals advanced. If the quantitative extension induces qualitative change,
then the rate of profit on the larger capital rises simultaneously."
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 643
made up; and because the change in the technological com-
position of the additional capital goes hand in hand with a
similar change in the technological composition of the original
capital. With the advance of accumulation, therefore, the
proportion of constant to variable capital changes. If it was
originally say 1: 1, it now becomes successively 2: 1, 3: 1, 4:1,
5: 1, 7: 1, &c., so that, as the capital increases, instead of of
its total value, only 1, 1, 1, 1, &., is transformed into labour-
1,
3
power, and, on the other hand, 3, 3, 4, 5, into means of pro-
duction. Since the demand for labour is determined not by
the amount of capital as a whole, but by its variable constitu-
ent alone, that demand falls progressively with the increase of
the total capital, instead of, as previously assumed, rising in
proportion to it. It falls relatively to the magnitude of the
total capital, and at an accelerated rate, as this magnitude in-
creases. With the growth of the total capital, its variable
constituent or the labour incorporated in it, also does increase,
but in a constantly diminishing proportion. The intermediate
pauses are shortened, in which accumulation works as simple
extension of production, on a given technical basis. It is not
merely that an accelerated accumulation of total capital,
accelerated in a constantly growing progression, is needed to
absorb an additional number of labourers, or even, on account
of the constant metamorphosis of old capital, to keep employed
those already functioning. In its turn, this increasing accumu-
lation and centralisation becomes a source of new changes in
the composition of capital, of a more accelerated diminution of
its variable, as compared with its constant constituent. This
accelerated relative diminution of the variable constituent,
that goes along with the accelerated increase of the total
capital, and moves more rapidly than this increase, takes the
inverse form, at the other pole, of an apparently absolute in-
crease of the labouring population, an increase always moving
more rapidly than that of the variable capital or the means of
employment. But in fact, it is capitalistic accumulation itself
that constantly produces, and produces in the direct ratio of its
own energy and extent, a relatively redundant population
of labourers, i.e., a population of greater extent than suffices
ܝܕܝ
7
8
:
BİLİNENSENGUGATAN
644
Capitalist Production.
for the average needs of the self-expansion of capital, and
therefore a surplus-population. X
Considering the social capital in its totality, the movement
of its accumulation now causes periodical changes, affecting it
more or less as a whole, now distributes its various phases
simultaneously over the different spheres of production. In
some spheres a change in the composition of capital occurs
without increase of its absolute magnitude, as a consequence of
simple centralisation; in others the absolute growth of capital
is connected with absolute diminution of its variable con-
stituent, or of the labour-power absorbed by it; in others.
again, capital continues growing for a time on its given technical
basis, and attracts additional labour-power in proportion to
its increase, while at other times it undergoes organic change,
and lessens its variable constituent in all spheres, the increase
of the variable part of capital, and therefore of the number of
labourers employed by it, is always connected with violent
fluctuations and transitory production of surplus-population,
whether this takes the more striking forin of the repulsion of
labourers already employed, or the less evident but not less.
real form of the more difficult absorption of the additional
labouring population through the usual channels. With
the magnitude of social capital already functioning, and
the degree of its increase, with the extension of the scale of
1 The census of England and Wales shows: all persons employed in agriculture
(landlords, farmers, gardeners, shepherds, &c., included): 1851, 2,011,447: 1861,
1,924,110. Fall, 87,337. Worsted manufacture: 1851, 102,714 persons: 1861,
79,242. Silk weaving: 1851, 111,940: 1861, 101,678. Calico-printing: 1851, 12,098 :
1861, 12,556. A small rise that, in the face of the enormous extension of this indus-
try and implying a great fall proportionally in the number of labourers employed.
Hat-making 1851, 15,957: 1861, 13,814. Straw-hat and bonnet-making: 1851,
20,393: 1861, 18,176. Malting 1851, 10,566: 1861, 10,677. Chandlery, 1851,
4949: 1861, 4686. This fall is due, besides other causes, to the increase in lighting
by gas. Comb-making: 1851, 2,038: 1861, 1,478. Sawyers: 1851, 30,552: 1861,
31,647-a small rise in consequence of the increase of sawing-machines. Nail-
making 1851, 26,940: 1861, 26,130-fall in consequence of the competition of
machinery. Tin and copper-mining: 1851, 31,360: 1861, 32,041. On the other
hand: Cotton-spinning and weaving: 1851, 371,777: 1861, 456,646. Coal-mining:
1851, 183,389: 1861, 246,613. "The increase of labourers is generally greatest,
since 1851, in such branches of industry in which machinery has not up to the present
been employed with success. (Census of England and Wales for 1862. Vol III.
London, 1863, p. 36.)
>>
i
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 645
production, and the mass of the labourers set in motion, with
the development of the productiveness of their labour, with the
greater breadth and fulness of all sources of wealth, there is
also an extension of the scale on which greater attraction of
labourers by capital is accompanied by their greater repulsion;
the rapidity of the change in the organic composition of
capital, and in its technical form increases, and an increasing
number of spheres of production becomes involved in this
change, now simultaneously, now alternately. The labouring
population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of
capital produced by it, the means by which itself is made re-
latively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus population;
and it does this to an always increasing extent. This is a law
of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production;
and in fact every special historic mode of production has its own
special laws of population, historically valid within its limits
alone. An abstract law of population exists for plants and
animals only, and only in so far as man has not interfered
with them.
1
Thi
The demand for labour depends on the increase of circulating, and not of fixed
capital. Were it true that the proportion between these two sorts of capital is the
same at all times, and in all circumstances, then, indeed, it follows that the number
of labourers employed is in proportion to the wealth of the state. But such a pro-
position has not the semblance of probability. As arts are cultivated, and civilization is
extended, fixed capital bears a larger and larger proportion to circulating capital. The
amount of fixed capital employed in the production of a piece of British muslin is at
least a hundred, probably a thousand times greater than that employed in a similar
piece of Indian muslin. And the proportion of circulating capital is a hundred or
thousand times less.
the whole of the annual savings, added to the fixed
capital, would have no effect in increasing the demand for labour." (John Barton.
Observations on the Circumstances which Influence the Condition of the Labouring
Classes of Society." London, 1817, pp. 16, 17.) "The same cause which may in-
crease the net revenue of the country may at the same time render the population
redundant, and deteriorate the condition of the labourer." (Ricardo, 1. c., p. 469.)
With increase of capital, "the demand [for labour] will be in a diminishing ratio."
(ibid. p. 480, Note.) "The amount of capital devoted to the maintenance of labour
may vary, independently of any changes in the whole amount of capital
Great fluctuations in the amount of employment, and great suffering may become
more frequent as capital itself becomes more plentiful." (Richard Jones. 'An
Introductory Lecture on Pol. Econ., Lond. 1833,” p. 13.) "Demand [for labour]
will rise
not in proportion to the accumulation of the general capital. . . .
Every augmentation, therefore, in the national stock destined for reproduction,
comes, in the progress of society, to have less and less influence upon the condition of
the labourer." (Ramsay, 1. c., pp. 90, 91.)
<<
<<
•
-
•
646
Capitalist Production.
it
But if a surplus labouring population is a necessary product
of accumulation or of the development of wealth on a capitalist
basis, this surplus population becomes, conversely, the lever of
capitalistic accumulation, nay, a condition of existence of the
capitalist mode of production. It forms a disposable industrial
reserve army, that belongs to capital quite as absolutely as
if the latter had bred it at its own cost. Independently of the
limits of the actual increase of population, it creates, for the chang-
ing needs of the self-expansion of capital, a mass of human
material always ready for exploitation. With accumulation,
and the development of the productiveness of labour that accom-
panies it, the power of sudden expansion of capital grows also;
grows, not merely because the elasticity of the capital already
functioning increases, not merely because the absolute wealth
of society expands, of which capital only forms an elastic part,
not merely because credit, under every special stimulus, at once
places an unusual part of this wealth at the disposal of produc-
tion in the form of additional capital; it grows, also, because
the technical conditions of the process of production them-
selves-machinery, means of transport, &c.-now admit of the
rapidest transformation of masses of surplus product into addi-
tional means of production. The mass of social wealth, over-
flowing with the advance of accumulation, and transformable
into additional capital, thrusts itself frantically into old
branches of production, whose market suddenly expands, or
into newly formed branches, such as railways, &c., the need for
which grows out of the development of the old ones. In all
such cases, there must be the possibility of throwing great
masses of men suddenly on the decisive points without injury
to the scale of production_in_other spheres. Over-population
supplies these masses. The course characteristic of modern
industry, viz., a decennial cycle (interrupted by smaller oscil-
lations), of periods of average activity, production at high
pressure, crisis and stagnation, depends on the constant forma-
tion, the greater or less absorption, and the re-formation of the
industrial reserve army or surplus population. In their turn,
the varying phases of the industrial cycle recruit the surplus
population, and become one of the most energetic agents of its
11





The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 647
reproduction. This peculiar course of modern industry, which
occurs in no earlier period of human history, was also impos-
sible in the childhood of capitalist production. The composition
of capital changed but very slowly. With its accumula-
tion, therefore, there kept pace, on the whole, a corresponding
growth in the demand for labour. Slow as was the advance
of accumulation compared with that of more modern times,
it found a check in the natural limits of the exploitable
labouring population, limits which could only be got rid of by
forcible means to be mentioned later. The expansion by fits
and starts of the scale of production is the preliminary to its
equally sudden contraction; the latter again evokes the former,
but the former is impossible without disposable human
material, without an increase in the number of labourers
independently of the absolute growth of the population. This
increase is effected by the simple process that constantly "sets
free" a part of the labourers; by methods which lessen the
number of labourers employed in proportion to the increased
production. The whole form of the movement of modern in-.
dustry depends, therefore, upon the constant transformation of
a part of the labouring population into unemployed or half-
employed hands. The superficiality of Political Economy
shows itself in the fact that it looks upon the expansion and
contraction of credit, which is a mere symptom of the periodic
changes of the industrial cycle, as their cause. As the heavenly
bodies, once thrown into a certain definite motion, always
repeat this, so is it with social production as soon as it is once
thrown into this movement of alternate expansion and con-
traction. Effects, in their turn, become causes, and the vary-
ing accidents of the whole process, which always reproduces
its own conditions, take on the form of periodicity. When this
periodicity is once consolidated, even Political Economy then
sees that the production of a relative surplus population-i.e.,
surplus with regard to the average needs of the self-expansion
of capital—is a necessary condition of modern industry.
Suppose," says H. Merivale, formerly Professor of Political
Economy at Oxford, subsequently employed in the English
Colonial Office, "suppose that, on the occasion of some of these

CC
648
Capitalist Production.
7
crises, the nation were to rouse itself to the effort of getting
rid by emigration of some hundreds of thousands of superfluous
arms, what would be the consequence? That, at the first
returning demand for labour, there would be a deficiency.
However rapid reproduction may be, it takes, at all events, the
space of a generation to replace the loss of adult labour. Now,
the profits of our manufacturers depend mainly on the power
of making use of the prosperous moment when demand is
brisk, and thus compensating themselves for the interval dur-
ing which it is slack. This power is secured to them only by
the command of machinery and of manual labour. They must
have hands ready by them, they must be able to increase the
activity of their operations when required, and to slacken it
again, according to the state of the market, or they cannot
possibly maintain that pre-eminence in the race of competition
on which the wealth of the country is founded." Even Mal-
thus recognises over-population as a necessity of modern in-
dustry, though, after his narrow fashion, he explains it by the
absolute over-growth of the labouring population, not by their
becoming relatively supernumerary. He says: "Prudential
habits with regard to marriage, carried to a considerable extent
among the labouring class of a country mainly depending upon
manufactures and commerce, might injure it. From the
nature of a population, an increase of labourers cannot be
brought into market in consequence of a particular demand till
after the lapse of 16 or 18 years, and the conversion of revenue
into capital, by saving, may take place much more rapidly; a
country is always liable to an increase in the quantity of the
funds for the maintenance of labour faster than the increase of
population."-After Political Economy has thus demonstrated
the constant production of a relative surplus-population of
labourers to be a necessity of capitalistic accumulation, she very
aptly, in the guise of an old maid, puts in the mouth of her


•

1 H. Merivale: "Lectures on Colonization and Colonies, 1841." Vol. I., p. 146.
2 Malthus. "Principles of Political Economy," pp. 254, 319, 320. In this work,
Malthus finally discovers, with the help of Sismondi, the beautiful Trinity of capital-
istic production: over-production, over-population, over-consumption-three very
delicate monsters, indeed. Cf. F. Engels. "Umrisse zu einer Kritik der National-
Oekonomie," 1.c., p. 107, et seq.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 649
"beau ideal" of a capitalist the following words addressed to
those supernumeraries thrown on the streets by their own
creation of additional capital:-"We manufacturers do what
we can for you, whilst we are increasing that capital on which
you must subsist, and you must do the rest by accommodating
your numbers to the means of subsistence.”
Capitalist production can by no means content itself with
the quantity of disposable labour-power which the natural
increase of population yields. It requires for its free play an
industrial reserve army independent of these natural limits.
Up to this point it has been assumed that the increase or
diminution of the variable capital corresponds rigidly with
the increase or diminution of the number of labourers em-
ployed.
The number of labourers commanded by capital may remain
the same, or even fall, while the variable capital increases.
This is the case if the individual labourer yields more labour,
and therefore his wages increase, and this although the price of
labour remains the same or even falls, only more slowly than
the mass of labour rises. Increase of variable capital, in this
case, becomes an index of more labour, but not of more labourers
employed. It is the absolute interest of every capitalist to
press a given quantity of labour out of a smaller, rather than
a greater number of labourers, if the cost is about the same.
In the latter case, the outlay of constant capital increases in
proportion to the mass of labour set in action; in the former
that increase is much smaller. The more extended the scale of
production, the stronger this motive. Its force increases with
the accumulation of capital.
We have seen that the development of the capitalist mode of
production and of the productive power of labour-at once the
cause and effect of accumulation-enables the capitalist, with
the same outlay of variable capital, to set in action more labour
by greater exploitation (extensive or intensive) of each in-
dividual labour-power. We have further seen that the
capitalist buys with the same capital a greater mass of
labour-power, as he progressively replaces skilled labourers by
1 Harriet Martineau. "The Manchester Strike," 1842, p. 101.
*4444



650
Capitalist Production.
less skilled, mature labour-power by immature, male by female,
that of adults by that of young persons or children.
On the one hand, therefore, with the progress of accumula-
tion, a larger variable capital sets more labour in action with-
qut enlisting more labourers; on the other, a variable capital
of the same magnitude sets in action more labour with the
same mass of labour-power; and, finally, a greater number of
inferior labour-powers by displacement of higher. †


The production of a relative surplus-population, or the set-
ting free of labourers, goes on therefore yet more rapidly than
the technical revolution of the process of production that ac-
companies, and is accelerated by, the advance of accumulation;
and more rapidly than the corresponding diminution of
the variable part of capital as compared with the constant.
If the means of production, as they increase in extent and
effective power, become to a less extent means of employment
of labourers, this state of things is again modified by the
fact that in proportion as the productiveness of labour increases,
capital increases its supply of labour more quickly than its de-
mand for labourers. The over-work of the employed part of
the working class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst con-
versely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition
exerts on the former, forces these to submit to over-work and
to subjugation under the dictates of capital. The condemnation
of one part of the working-class to enforced idleness by the
over-work of the other part, and the converse, becomes a means
of enriching the individual capitalists,¹ and accelerates at the


1 Even in the cotton famine of 1863 we find, in a pamphlet of the operative cotton-
spinners of Blackburn, fierce denunciations of overwork, which, in consequence of
the Factory Acts, of course only effected adult male labourers. "The adult operatives
at this mill have been asked to work from 12 to 13 hours per day, while there are
hundreds who are compelled to be idle who would willingly work partial time, in
order to maintain their families and save their brethren from a premature grave
through being overworked. . . We," it goes on to say, "would ask if the practice
of working overtime by a number of hands, is likely to create a good feeling between
masters and servants. Those who are worked overtime feel the injustice equally
with those who are condemned to forced idleness. There is in the district almost
sufficient work to give to all partial employment if fairly distributed. We are only
asking what is right in requesting the masters generally to pursue a system of short
hours, particularly until a better state of things begins to dawn upon us, rather than
to work a portion of the hands overtime, while others, for want of work, are com-
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 651
l

same time the production of the industrial reserve army on
a scale corresponding with the advance of social accumu-
lation. How important is this element in the formation of
the relative surplus-population, is shown by the example of
England. Her technical means for saving labour are colossal.
Nevertheless, if to-morrow morning labour generally were
reduced to a rational amount, and proportioned to the different
sections of the working-class according to age and sex, the
working population to hand would be absolutely insufficient
for the carrying on of national production on its present scale.
The great majority of the labourers now "unproductive" would
have to be turned into " productive" ones.
-

Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are
exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the
industrial reserve army, and these again correspond to the
periodic changes of the industrial cycle. They are, therefore,
not determined by the variations of the absolute number of
the working population, but by the varying proportions in
which the working class is divided into active and reserve
army, by the increase or diminution in the relative amount of
the surplus-population, by the extent to which it is now ab-
sorbed, now set free. For Modern Industry with its decennial
cycles and periodic phases, which, moreover, as accumulation
advances, are complicated by irregular oscillations following
each other more and more quickly, that would indeed be a
beautiful law, which pretends to make the action of capital
dependent on the absolute variation of the population, instead
of regulating the demand and supply of labour by the alternate
expansion and contraction of capital, the labour-market now
appearing relatively under-full, because capital is expanding,
pelled to exist upon charity." (Reports of Insp. of Fact., Oct. 31, 1863, p. 8.) The
author of the " Essay on Trade and Commerce" grasps the effect of a relative
surplus-population on the employed labourers with his usual unerring bourgeois in-
stinct. "Another cause of idleness in this kingdom is the want of a sufficient
number of labouring hands . . . Whenever from an extraordinary demand for
manufactures, labour grows scarce, the labourers feel their own consequence, and
will make their masters feel it likewise-it is amazing; but so depraved are the dis-
positions of these people, that in such cases a set of workmen have combined to dis-
tress the employer, by idling a whole day together." (Essay, &c., pp. 27, 28.) The
cows in fact were hankering after a rise in wages.
C
652
Capitalist Production.
now again over-full, because it is contracting. Yet this is the
+
dogma of the economists. According to them, wages rise in con-
sequence of accumulation of capital. The higher wages stimulate
the working population to more rapid multiplication, and this
goes on until the labour-market becomes too full, and therefore
capital, relatively to the supply of labour, becomes insufficient.
Wages fall, and now we have the reverse of the medal. The
working population is little by little decimated as the result
of the fall in wages, so that capital is again in excess rela-
tively to them, or, as others explain it, falling wages and
the corresponding increase in the exploitation of the labourer
again accelerates accumulation, whilst, at the same time, the
Tower wages hold the increase of the working-class in check.
Then comes again the time, when the supply of labour is less
than the demand, wages rise, and so on. A beautiful mode of
motion this for developed capitalist production! Before, in
consequence of the rise of wages, any positive increase of the
population really fit for work could occur, the time would
have been passed again and again, during which the industrial
campaign must have been carried through, the battle fought
and won.
Between 1849 and 1859, a rise of wages practically insignifi-
cant, though accompanied by falling prices of corn, took place in
the English agricultural districts. In Wiltshire, e.g., the weekly
wages rose from 7s. to 8s.; in Dorsetshire from 7s. or Ss., to 9s.,
&c. This was the result of an unusual exodus of the agricul-
tural surplus-population caused by the demands of war, the
vast extension of railroads, factories, mines, &c. The lower the
wages, the higher is the proportion in which ever so insignifi-
cant a rise of them expresses itself. If the weekly wage, e.g., is
20s. and it rises to 22s., that is a rise of 10 per cent.; but if it
is only 7s. and it rises to 9s., that is a rise of 28 per cent.,
which sounds very fine. Everywhere the farmers were howl-
ing, and the "London Economist," with reference to these
starvation-wages, prattled quite seriously of "a general and
substantial advance." What did the farmers do now? Did
they wait until, in consequence of this brilliant remuneration,
A
1 Economist. Jan. 21. 1860.
ܡܵܟܣܸ
S
ان
|
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 653
the agricultural labourers had so increased and multiplied that
their wages must fall again, as prescribed by the dogmatic
economic brain? They introduced more machinery, and in a
ì
moment the labourers were redundant again in a propor-
tion satisfactory even to the farmers. There was now more
capital" laid out in agriculture than before, and in a more
productive form. With this the demand for labour fell, not
only relatively, but absolutely.
The above economic fiction confuses the laws that regulate
the general movement of wages, or the ratio between the
working-class-i.e., the total labour-power--and the total
social capital, with the laws that distribute the working popu-
lation over the different spheres of production. If, e.g., in con-
sequence of favourable circumstances, accumulation in a parti-
cular sphere of production becomes especially active, and
profits in it, being greater than the average profits, attract
additional capital, of course the demand for labour rises and
wages also rise. The higher wages draw a larger part of the
working population into the more favoured sphere, until it is
glutted with labour-power, and wages at length fall again to
their average level or below it, if the pressure is too great.
Then, not only does the immigration of labourers into the
branch of industry in question cease; it gives place to their
emigration. Here the political economist thinks he sees the
why and wherefore of an absolute increase of workers accom-
panying an increase of wages, and of a diminution of wages
accompanying an absolute increase of labourers. But he sees
really only the local oscillation of the labour-market in a
particular sphere of production-he sees only the phenomena
accompanying the distribution of the working population into
the different spheres of outlay of capital, according to its vary-
ing needs.
·
CC
-
The industrial reserve army, during the periods of stagnation
and average prosperity, weighs down the active labour-army;
during the periods of over-production and paroxysm, it holds
its pretensions in check. Relative surplus-population is there-
fore the pivot upon which the law of demand and supply of
labour works. It confines the field of action of this law within
"`dan dan Peng, Z

654
Capitalist Production.
the limits absolutely convenient to the activity of exploitation
and to the domination of capital.
>>
j
This is the place to return to one of the grand exploits of
economic apologetics. It will be remembered that if through
the introduction of new, or the extension of old, machinery, a
portion of variable capital is transformed into constant, the
economic apologist interprets this operation which "fixes"
capital and by that very act set labourers "free," in exactly
the opposite way, pretending that it sets free capital for the
labourers. Only now can one fully understand the effrontery
of these apologists. What are set free are not only the
labourers immediately turned out by the machines, but also
their future substitutes in the rising generation, and the addi-
tional contingent, that with the usual extension of trade on
the old basis would be regularly absorbed. They are now
all "set free," and every new bit of capital looking out for
employment can dispose of them. Whether it attracts them
or others, the effect on the general labour demand will be nil,
if this capital is just sufficient to take out of the market as
many labourers as the machines threw upon it. If it employs
a smaller number, that of the supernumeraries increases; if it
employs a greater, the general demand for labour only in-
creases to the extent of the excess of the employed over those
"set free." The impulse that additional capital, seeking an
outlet, would otherwise have given to the general demand for
labour, is therefore in every case neutralised to the extent of
the labourers thrown out of employment by the machine.
That is to say, the mechanism of capitalistic production so
manages matters that the absolute increase of capital is accom-
panied by no corresponding rise in the general demand for
labour. And this the apologist calls a compensation for the
misery, the sufferings, the possible death of the displaced
labourers during the transition period that banishes them into
the industrial reserve army! The demand for. labour is not
identical with increase of capital, nor supply of labour with
increase of the working class. It is not a case of two inde-
pendent forces working on one another. Les dés sont pipés.
Capital works on both sides at the same time. If its accumu-



Q

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 655
lation, on the one hand, increases the demand for labour, it in-
creases on the other the supply of labourers by the "setting
free" of them, whilst at the same time the pressure of the un-
employed compels those that are employed to furnish more
labour, and therefore makes the supply of labour, to a certain
extent, independent of the supply of labourers. The action of
the law of supply and demand of labour on this basis com-
pletes the despotism of capital. As soon, therefore, as the
labourers learn the secret, how it comes to pass that in the
same measure as they work more, as they produce more wealth
for others, and as the productive power of their labour increases,
so in the same measure even their function as a means of the
self-expansion of capital becomes more and more precarious for
them; as soon as they discover that the degree of intensity of
the competition among themselves depends wholly on the
pressure of the relative surplus-population; as soon as, by
Trades' Unions, &c., they try to organise a regular co-operation
between employed and unemployed in order to destroy or
to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of capi-
talistic production on their class, so soon capital and its syco-
phant, political economy, cry out at the infringement of the
"eternal" and so to say "sacred" law of supply and demand.
Every combination of employed and unemployed disturbs the
"harmonious" action of this law. But, on the other hand, as
soon as (in the colonies, e.g.) adverse circumstances prevent
the creation of an industrial reserve army and, with it, the ab-
solute dependence of the working class upon the capitalist
class, capital, along with its commonplace Sancho Panza, rebels
against the “sacred" law of supply and demand, and tries to
check its inconvenient action by forcible means and State in-
terference.

SECTION 4.-DIFFERENT FORMS OF THE RELATIVE SURPLUS-POPULATION.
THE GENERAL LAW OF CAPITALISTIC ACCUMULATION.
The relative surplus population exists in every possible form.
Every labourer belongs to it during the time when he is only
partially employed or wholly unemployed. Not taking into
656
Capitalist Production.
account the great periodically recurring forms that the chang-
ing phases of the industrial cycle impress on it, now an acute
form during the crisis, then again a chronic form during dull
times-it has always three forms, the floating, the latent, the
stagnant.
In the centres of modern industry-factories, manufactures,
ironworks, mines, &c.-the labourers are sometimes repelled,
sometimes attracted again in greater masses, the number of those
employed increasing on the whole, although in a constantly
decreasing proportion to the scale of production. Here the
surplus population exists in the floating form.
In the automatic factories, as in all the great workshops,
where machinery enters as a factor, or where only the modern
division of labour is carried out, large numbers of boys are
employed up to the age of maturity. When this term is
once reached, only a very small number continue to find em-
ployment in the same branches of industry, whilst the majority
are regularly discharged. This majority forms an element of the
floating surplus-population, growing with the extension of
those branches of industry. Part of them emigrates, following
in fact capital that has emigrated. Oue consequence is that
the female population grows more rapidly than the male, teste
England. That the natural increase of the number of labourers
does not satisfy the requirements of the accumulation of
capital, and yet all the time is in excess of them, is a contra-
diction inherent to the movement of capital itself. It wants
larger numbers of youthful labourers, a smaller number of
adults. The contradiction is not more glaring than that other
one that there is a complaint of the want of hands, while at
the same time many thousands are out of work, because
the division of labour chains them to a particular branch of
industry.¹
The consumption of labour-power by capital is, besides, so
1 Whilst during the last six months of 1866, 80-90,000 working people in London
were thrown out of work, the Factory Report for that same half year says: "It does
not appear absolutely true to say that demand will always produce supply just at the
moment when it is needed. It has not done so with labour, for much machinery has
been idle last year for want of hands." (Rep. of Insp. of Fact., 31st Oct., 1866,
p. 81.)
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 657
rapid that the labourer, half-way through his life, has already
more or less completely lived himself out. He falls into the
ranks of the supernumeraries, or is thrust down from a higher
to a lower step in the scale. It is precisely among the work-
people of modern industry that we meet with the shortest
duration of life. Dr. Lee, Medical Officer of Health for Man-
chester, stated "that the average age at death of the Man-
chester
upper middle class was 38 years, while the
average age at death of the labouring class was 17; while at
Liverpool those figures were represented as 35 against 15. It
thus appeared that the well-to-do classes had a lease of life which
was more than double the value of that which fell to the lot of
the less favoured citizens.” 1 In order to conform to these
circumstances, the absolute increase of this section of the
proletariat must take place under conditions that shall swell
their numbers, although the individual elements are used
up rapidly. Hence, rapid renewal of the generations of
labourers (this law does not hold for the other classes of the
population). This social need is met by early marriages, a
necessary consequence of the conditions in which the labourers.
of modern industry live, and by the premium that the exploita-
tion of children sets on their production.
•
G
As soon as capitalist production takes possession of agri-
culture, and in proportion to the extent to which it does so,
the demand for an agricultural labouring population falls
absolutely, while the accumulation of the capital employed in
agriculture advances, without this repulsion being, as in non-
agricultural industries, compensated by a greater attraction.
Part of the agricultural population is therefore constantly on
the point of passing over into an urban or manufacturing
proletariat, and on the look-out for circumstances favourable
to this transformation. (Manufacture is used here in the sense
of all non-agricultural industries). This source of relative
1 Opening address to the Sanitary Conference, Birmingham, January 15th, 1875, by
J. Chamberlain, Mayor of the town, now (1883) President of the Board of Trade.
2 781 Towns given in the census for 1861 for England and Wales "contained
10,960,998 inhabitants, while the villages and country parishes contained 9,105,226. In
1851, 580 towns were distinguished, and the population in them and in the surrounding
country was nearly equal. But while in the subsequent ten years the population in
2 T
658
Capitalist Production.
surplus-population is thus constantly flowing. But the con-
stant flow towards the towns presupposes, in the country itself,
a constant latent surplus-population, the extent of which
becomes evident only when its channels of outlet open to
exceptional width. The agricultural labourer is therefore
reduced to the minimum of wages, and always stands with one
foot already in the swamp of pauperism.
The third category of the relative surplus-population, the
stagnant, forms a part of the active labour army, but with
extremely irregular employment. Hence it furnishes to capital
an inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labour-power. Its
conditions of life sink below the average normal level of the
working class; this makes it at once the broad basis of special
branches of capitalist exploitation. It is characterized by
maximum of working time, and minimum of wages. We have
learnt to know its chief form under the rubric of "domestic
industry." It recruits itself constantly from the supernumerary
forces of modern industry and agriculture, and specially from
those decaying branches of industry where handicraft is yielding
to manufacture, manufacture to machinery. Its extent grows,
as with the extent and energy of accumulation, the creation of
a surplus population advances. But it forms at the same time
a self-reproducing and self-perpetuating element of the
working class, taking a proportionally greater part in the
general increase of that class than the other elements. In fact,
not only the number of births and deaths, but the absolute size
of the families stand in inverse proportion to the height of
wages, and therefore to the amount of means of subsistence of
which the different categories of labourers dispose. This law
of capitalistic society would sound absurd to savages, or even
civilized colonists. It calls to mind the boundless reproduction.
of animals individually weak and constantly hunted down.¹
the villages and the country increased half a million, the population in the 580 towns
increased by a million and a half (1,554,067). The increase of the population of the
country parishes is 6.5 per cent., and of the towns 17.3 per cent.
the rates of increase is due to the migration from country to town.
the total increase of population has taken place in the towns.
11 and 12.)
The difference in
Three-fourths of
(Census, &c., pp.
1 "Poverty seems favourable to generation." (A. Smith.) This is even a specially
wise arrangement of God, according to the gallant and witty Abbé Galiani.
"Iddio
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 659
The lowest sediment of the relative surplus-population
finally dwells in the sphere of pauperism. Exclusive of vaga-
bonds, criminals, prostitutes, in a word, the "dangerous" classes,
this layer of society consists of three categories. First, those
able to work. One need only glance superficially at the
statistics of English pauperism to find that the quantity of
paupers increases with every crisis, and diminishes with every
revival of trade. Second, orphans and pauper children. These
are candidates for the industrial reserve-army, and are, in times
of great prosperity, as 1860, e.g., speedily and in large numbers
enrolled in the active army of labourers. Third, the de-
moralized and ragged, and those unable work, chiefly people
who succumb to their incapacity for adaptation, due to the
division of labour; people who have passed the normal
age of the labourer; the victims of industry, whose number
increases with the increase of dangerous machinery, of
mines, chemical works, &c., the mutilated, the sickly, the
widows, &c. Pauperism is the hospital of the active labour-
army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve-army. Its
production is included in that of the relative surplus-popula-
tion, its necessity in theirs; along with the surplus-population,
pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the
capitalist development of wealth. It enters into the faux
frais of capitalist production; but capital knows how to throw
these, for the most part, from its own shoulders on to those of
the working-class and the lower middle class.
The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the
extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute
mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the
greater is the industrial reserve-army. The same causes which
develope the expansive power of capital, develope also the
labour-power at its disposal. The relative mass of the indus-
trial reserve-army increases therefore with the potential energy
of wealth. But the greater this reserve-army in proportion to
af che gli uomini che esercitano mestieri di prima utilità nascono abbondantemente."
(Galiani, 1. c., p. 78.) Misery up to the extreme point of famine and pestilence,
instead of checking, tends to increase population." (S. Laing: National Distress,
1844, p. 69.) After Laing has illustrated this by statistics, he continues: "If the
people were all in easy circumstances, the world would soon be depopulated."
*C
660
Capitalist Production.
the active labour-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated
surplus-population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its
torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazurus-
layers of the working-class, and the industrial reserve-army,
the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general
law of capitalist accumulation. Like all other laws it is
modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis
of which does not concern us here.
The folly is now patent of the economic wisdom that
preaches to the labourers the accommodation of their number to
the requirements of capital. The mechanism of capitalist pro-
duction and accumulation constantly effects this adjustment.
The first word of this adaptation is the creation of a relative
surplus-population, or industrial reserve-army. Its last word
is the misery of constantly extending strata of the active army
of labour, and the dead weight of pauperism.
The law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means
of production, thanks to the advance in the productiveness of
social labour, may be set in movement by a progressively
diminishing expenditure of human power, this law, in a
capitalist society-where the labourer does not employ the
means of production, but the means of production employ the
labourer-undergoes a complete inversion and is expressed thus;
the higher the productiveness of labour, the greater is the
pressure of the labourers on the means of employment, the more
precarious, therefore, becomes their condition of existence, viz.,
the sale of their own labour-power for the increasing of another's
wealth, or for the self-expansion of capital. The fact that the
means of production, and the productiveness of labour, increase
more rapidly than the productive population, expresses itself,
therefore, capitalistically in the inverse form that the labouring
population always increases more rapidly than the conditions
under which capital can employ this increase for its own self-
expansion.
We saw in Part IV., when analysing the production of rela-
tive surplus-value: within the capitalist system all methods
for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought
about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 661
for the development of production transform themselves into
means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers;
they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade
him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every
remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil;
they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the
labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorpor-
ated in it as an independant power; they distort the condi-
tions under which he works, subject him during the labour-
process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they
transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife
and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital. But
all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same
time methods of accumulation; and every extension of ac-
cumulation becomes again a means for the development of
those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as
capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high
or low, must grow worse. The law, finally, that always equi-
librates the relative surplus-population, or industrial reserve
army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets
the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan
did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation
of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Ac-
cumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time
accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance,
brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the
side of the class that produces its own product in the form of
capital.
This antagonistic character of capitalistic accumulation¹ is
enunciated in various forms by political economists, although
by them it is confounded with phenomena, certainly to some
1 "De jour en jour il devient donc plus clair que les rapports de production dans
lesquels se meut la bourgeoisie n'ont pas un caractère un, un caractère simple, mais
un caractère de duplicité; que dans les mêmes rapports dans lesquels se produit la
richesse, la misère se produit aussi; que dans les mêmes rapports dans lesquels il y a
développement des forces productives, il y a une force productive de répression; que
ces rapports ne produisent la richesse bourgeoise, c'est-à-dire la richesse de la classe
bourgeoise, qu'en anéantissant continuellement la richesse des membres intégrants de
cette classe et en produisant un prolétariat toujours croissant." (Karl Marx:
Misère de la Philosophie, p. 116.)
662
Capitalist Production.
extent analogous, but nevertheless essentially distinct, and be-
longing to precapitalistic modes of production.
1
The Venetian monk Ortes, one of the great economic writers
of the 18th century, regards the antagonism of capitalist pro-
duction as a general natural law of social wealth. "In the
economy of a nation, advantages and evils always balance one
another (il bene ed il male economico in una nazione sempre
all, istessa misura): the abundance of wealth with some people,
is always equal to the want of it with others (la copia dei
beni in alcuni sempre eguale alla mancanza di essi in altri):
the great riches of a small number are always accompanied by
the absolute privation of the first necessaries of life for many
others. The wealth of a nation corresponds with its popu-
lation, and its misery corresponds with its wealth. Diligence.
in some compels idleness in others. The poor and idle are a
necessary consequence of the rich and active," &c.¹ In
a thoroughly brutal way about 10 years after Ortes, the
Church of England parson, Townsend, glorified misery as a ne-
cessary condition of wealth. "Legal constraint (to labour) is
attended with too much trouble, violence, and noise,
whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted
pressure, but as the most natural motive to industry and
labour, it calls forth the most powerful exertions." Everything
therefore depends upon making hunger permanent among the
working class, and for this, according to Townsend, the prin-
ciple of population, especially active among the poor, provides.
'It seems to be a law of nature that the poor should be
to a certain degree improvident" [i.e. so improvident as to
be born without a silver spoon in the mouth], "that there
may always be some to fulfil the most servile, the most sordid,
and the most ignoble offices in the community. The stock of
human happiness is thereby much increased, whilst the more
delicate are not only relieved from drudgery.
but are
left at liberty without interruption to pursue those callings
•
—
1 G. Ortes: Della Economia Nazionale libri sei, 1777, in Custodi, Parte Moderna,
t. xxi, pp. 6, 9, 22, 25, etc. Ortes says, 1. c., p. 32: "In luoco di progettar sistemi
inutili per la felicità de'popoli, mi limiterò a investigare la ragione della loro in-
felicità."
1
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 663
. it
which are suited to their various dispositions.
[the Poor Law] tends to destroy the harmony and beauty, the
symmetry and order of that system which God and Nature
have established in the world." If the Venetian monk found
in the fatal destiny that makes misery eternal, the raison d'être
of Christian charity, celibacy, monasteries and holy houses, the
Protestant prebendary finds in it a pretext for condemning the
laws in virtue of which the poor possessed a right to a miser-
able public relief.
"The progress of social wealth," says Storch, "begets this
useful class of society.. which performs the most weari-
some, the vilest, the most disgusting functions, which takes, in
a word, on its shoulders all that is disagreeable and servile in
life, and procures thus for other classes leisure, serenity of
mind and conventional [c'est bon !] dignity of character."
Storch asks himself in what then really consist the progress
of this capitalistic civilization with its misery and its degrada-
tion of the masses, as compared with barbarism. He finds
but one answer: security!
"Thanks to the advance of industry and science," says
Sismondi, "every labourer can produce every day much more
than his consumption requires. But at the same time, whilst
his labour produces wealth, that wealth would, were he called
on to consume it himself, make him less fit for labour." Ac-
cording to him, "men" [i.e., non-workers] "would probably
prefer to do without all artistic perfection, and all the enjoy-
ments that manufactures procure for us, if it were necessary
that all should buy them by constant toil like that of the
¹ A Dissertation on the Poor Laws. By a Well-wisher of Mankind. (The Rev. J.
parson,
Townsend) 1786, republished Lond. 1817, pp. 15, 39, 41. This "delicate"
from whose work just quoted, as well as from his "Journey through Spain,"
Malthus often copies whole pages, himself borrowed the greater part of his doctrine
from Sir James Steuart, whom he however alters in the borrowing. E.g., when
Steuart says: "Here, in slavery, was a forcible method of making mankind diligent,"
[for the non-workers]
"Men were then forced to work "[¿.e. to work gratis
for others], "because they were slaves of others; men are now forced to work "[i.e.,
to work gratis for non-workers] "because they are the slaves of their necessities," he
does not thence conclude, like the fat holder of benefices, that the wage-labourer must
always go fasting. He wishes, on the contrary, to increase their wants and to make the
increasing number of their wants a stimulus to their labour for the "more delicate."
2 Storch, 1. c. t. iii., p. 223.
664
Capitalist Production.
labourer.
Exertion to-day is separated from its re-
compense; it is not the same man that first works, and then
reposes; but it is because the one works that the other rests.
The indefinite multiplication of the productive powers
of labour can then only have for result the increase of luxury
and enjoyment of the idle rich."1
Finally Destutt de Tracy, the fish-blooded bourgeois
doctrinaire, blurts out brutally: "In poor nations the people
are comfortable, in rich nations they are generally poor."2
SECTION 5.-ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE GENERAL LAW OF CAPITALIST
ACCUMULATION.
(a.) England from 1846-1866.
No period of modern society is so favourable for the study of
capitalist accumulation as the period of the last 20 years. It
is as if this period had found Fortunatus' purse. But of all
countries England again furnishes the classical example, because
it holds the foremost place in the world-market, because capi-
talist production is here alone completely developed, and lastly,
because the introduction of the Free Trade millennium since
1846 has cut off the last retreat of vulgar economy. The titanic
advance of production-the latter half of the 20 years period
again far surpassing the former-has been already pointed out
sufficiently in Part IV.
Although the absolute increase of the English population in
the last half century was very great, the relative increase or rate
of growth fell constantly, as the following table borrowed from
the census shows.
Annual increase per cent. of the population of England and
Wales in decimal numbers:
1811-1821
1821-1831
1831-1841
1841-1851
1851-1861
1.533 per cent.
1.446
1.326
1.216
1.141
در
در
در
>"}
1 Sismondi 1. c. pp. 79, 80, 85.
2 Destutt de Tracy, 1. c. p. 231: "Les nations pauvres, c'est là où le peuple est à
son aise; et les nations riches, c'est là où il est ordinairement pauvre."
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 665
Let us now, on the other hand, consider the increase of
wealth. Here the movement of profit, rent of land, &c., that
come under the income tax, furnishes the surest basis. The
increase of profits liable to income tax (farmers and some other
categories not included) in Great Britain from 1853 to 1864
amounted to 50.47% or 4.58% as the annual average,¹ that of
the population during the same period to about 12%. The
augmentation of the rent of land subject to taxation (including
houses, railways, mines, fisheries, &c.), amounted for 1853 to
1864 to 38% or 3% annually. Under this head the following
categories show the greatest increase:
Excess of annual income of 1864 over that of 1853.
Houses, 38.60%
Quarries, 84.76%
Mines, 68.85%
Iron-works, 39.92%
Fisheries, 57.37%
Gasworks, 126.02%
Railways, 83-29%
Increase per year.
3.50%
7.70%
6.26°
3.63
5.21%
11.45%
7.57%
2
1 Tenth Report of the Commissioners of H.M. Inland Revenue. Lond. 1866,
p. 38.
1
If we compare the years from 1853 to 1864 in three sets of
four consecutive years each, the rate of augmentation of the
income increases constantly. It is, e.g., for that arising from
profits between 1853 to 1857, 173% yearly; 1857-1861, 2·74%,
and for 1861-64, 9.30% yearly. The sum of the incomes of the
United Kingdom that come under the income tax was in 1856
£307,068,898; in 1859, £328,127,416; in 1862, £351,745,241; in
1863, £359,142,897; in 1864, £362,462,279; in 1865, £385,530,020.3
The accumulation of capital was attended at the same time by
its concentration and centralisation. Although no official
v
2 Ibidem.
3 These figures are sufficient for comparison, but, taken absolutely, are false, since,
perhaps, £100,000,000 of income are annually not declared. The complaints of the
Inland Revenue Commissioners of systematic fraud, especially on the part of the
commercial and industrial classes, are repeated in each of their reports. So e.g., "A
Joint-stock company returns £6000 as assessable profits, the surveyor raises the
amount to £88,000, and upon that sum duty is ultimately paid. Another company
which returns £190,000 is finally compelled to admit that the true return should be
£250,000." (Ibid., p. 42.)
1
666
Capitalist Production.
statistics of agriculture existed for England (they did for Ireland),
they were voluntarily given in 10 counties. These statistics
gave the result that from 1851 to 1861 the number of farms of
less than 100 acres had fallen from 31,583 to 26,597, so that 5016
had been thrown together into larger farms.¹ From 1815 to
1825 no personal estate of more than £1,000,000 came under the
succession duty; from 1825 to 1855, however, 8 did; and 4 from
1856 to June, 1859, i.e., in 4 years.2 The centralisation will,
however, be best seen from a short analysis of the Income Tax
Schedule D (profits, exclusive of farms, &c.), in the years 1864
and 1865. I note beforehand that incomes from this source
pay income tax on everything over £60. These incomes liable
to taxation in England, Wales, and Scotland, amounted in 1864
to £95,844,222, in 1865 to £105,435,579.3 The number of
persons taxed were in 1864, 308,416, out of a population of
23,891,009; in 1865, 332,431 out of a population of 24,127,003.
The following table shows the distribution of these incomes in
the two years:
YEAR ENDING APRIL 5TH, 1864.
INCOME FROM PROFITS.
Total Income £95,844,222
of these
57,028,289
36,415,225
22,809,781
8,744,762
""
""
15
PERSONS.
308,416
23,334
3,619
832
91
YEAR ENDING APRIL 5TH, 1865.

INCOME FROM PROFITS.
Total Income £105,435,738
332,431
of these 64,554,297 24,265
42,535,576
4,021
27,555,313
973
11,077,238
""
""
PERSONS.
"2
107
In 1855 there were produced in the United Kingdom
61,453,079 tons of coal, of value £16,113,167; in 1864,
92,787,873 tons, of value £23,197,968; in 1855, 3,218,154 tons
of pig-iron, of value £8,045,385; 1864, 4,767,951 tons, of value
1 Census, &c., 1. c., p. 29. John Bright's assertion that 150 landlords own half of
England, and 12 half the Scotch soil, has never been refuted.
2 Fourth Report, &c., of Inland Revenue. Lond., 1860, p. 17.
3 These are the net incomes after certain legally authorized abatements.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 667
£11,919,877. In 1854 the length of the railroads worked in
the United Kingdom was 8054 miles, with a paid-up capital of
£286,068,794; in 1864 the length was 12,789 miles, with
capital paid up of £425,719,613. In 1854 the total sum of the
exports and imports of the United Kingdom was £268,210,145;
in 1865, £489,923,285. The following table shows the move-
ment of the exports :
1846
1849
1856
1860
1865
1866
£58,842,377
63,596,052
115,826,948
135,842,817
165,862,402
188,917,563¹
After these few examples one understands the cry of triumph.
of the Registrar-General of the British people: "Rapidly as
the population has increased, it has not kept pace with the
progress of industry and wealth.” 2
Let us turn now to the direct agents of this industry, or the
producers of this wealth, to the working class. "It is one of
the most melancholy features in the social state of this country,"
says Gladstone, "that while there was a decrease in the con-
suming powers of the people, and while there was an increase
in the privations and distress of the labouring class and opera-
tives, there was at the same time a constant accumulation of
wealth in the upper classes, and a constant increase of capital. "
Thus spake this unctuous minister in the House of Commons
on February 13th, 1843. On April 16th, 1863, 20 years later,
1 At this moment, March, 1867, the Indian and Chinese market is again overstocked
by the consignments of the British cotton manufacturers. In 1866 a reduction in
wages of 5 per cent. took place amongst the cotton operatives. In 1867, as conse-
quence of a similar operation, there was a strike of 20,000 men at Preston.
2 Census, &c., 1. c., p. 11.
3 Gladstone in the House of Commons, Feb. 13th, 1843. "Times," Feb. 14th, 1843.
"It is one of the most melancholy features in the social state of this country that we
see, beyond the possibility of denial, that while there is at this moment a decrease in
the consuming powers of the people, an increase of the pressure of privations and dis-
tress; there is at the same time a constant accumulation of wealth in the upper
classes, an increase of the luxuriousness of their habits, and of their means of enjoy-
ment." (Hansard, 13th Feb.)
668
Capitalist Production.
!
<
]
in the speech in which he introduced his Budget: "From 1842
to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per
cent.
In the 8 years from 1853 to 1861 it had in-
creased from the basis taken in 1853 by 20 per cent! The
fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible . . . this
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power entirely
confined to classes of property . . must be of indirect
benefit to the labouring population, because it cheapens the
commodities of general consumption. While the rich have been
growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. At any-
rate, whether the extremes of poverty are less, I do not presume
to say." How lame an anti-climax! If the working-class
has remained "poor," only "less poor" in proportion as it
produces for the wealthy class "an intoxicating augmentation
of wealth and power," then it has remained relatively just as
poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have
increased, because the extremes of wealth have. As to the
cheapening of the means of subsistence, the official statistics, c.g.,
the accounts of the London Orphan Asylum, show an increase in
price of 20% for the average of the three years 1860-1862,
compared with 1851-1853. In the following three years, 1863-
1865, there was a progressive rise in the price of meat, butter,
milk, sugar, salt, coals, and a number of other necessary means
of subsistence.2 Gladstone's next Budget speech of April 7th,
1864, is a Pindaric dithyrambus on the advance of surplus-value-
making and the happiness of the people tempered by "poverty."
He speaks of masses "on the border" of pauperism, of branches
of trade in which "wages have not increased," and finally sums
up the happiness of the working class in the words: “human
life is but, in nine cases out of ten, a struggle for existence."3
•
*
"Morning Star,"
1 Gladstone in the House of Commons, April 16th, 1863.
April 17th.
2 See the official accounts in the Blue Book: "Miscellaneous statistics of the United
Kingdom," Part vi., London, 1866, pp. 260-273, passim. Instead of the statistics
of orphan asylums, &c., the declamations of the ministerial journals in recommend-
ing dowries for the Royal children might also serve. The greater dearness of the
means of subsistence is never forgotten there.
፡፡
3 Gladstone, House of Commons, 7th April, 1864.—“The Hansard version runs :
Again, and yet more at large-what is human life, but, in the majority of cases, a
struggle for existence." The continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's Budget
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 669
Professor Fawcett, not bound like Gladstone by official con-
siderations, declares roundly: "I do not, of course, deny that
money wages have been augmented by this increase of capital
(in the last ten years), but this apparent advantage is to a great
extent lost, because many of the necessaries of life are becoming
dearer" (he believes because of the fall in value of the precious
metals) . . . "the rich grow rapidly richer, whilst there is no
perceptible advance in the comfort enjoyed by the industrial
classes
They (the labourers) become almost the
slaves of the tradesman, to whom they owe money." 1
In the chapters on the "working day" and "machinery," the
reader has seen under what circumstances the British working-
class created an "intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power" for the propertied classes. There we were chiefly
concerned with the social functioning of the labourer. But
for a full elucidation of the law of accumulation, his condition.
outside the workshop must also be looked at, his condition as to
food and dwelling. The limits of this book compel us to
concern ourselves chiefly with the worst paid part of the
industrial proletariat, and with the agricultural labourers, who
together form the majority of the working-class.
But first, one word on official pauperism, or on that part of
the working-class which has forfeited its condition of existence
(the sale of labour-power), and vegetates upon public alms. The
official list of paupers numbered in England 2 851,369 persons ;
in 1856, 877,767; in 1865, 971,433. In consequence of the
cotton famine, it grew in the years 1863 and 1864 to 1,079,382
and 1,014,978. The crisis of 1866, which fell most heavily on
London, created in this centre of the world-market, more
speeches of 1863 and 1864 were characterised by an English writer by the following
quotation from Molière :
CC
Voilà l'homme en effet. Il va du blanc au noir,
Il condamne au matin ses sentiments du soir.
Importun à tout autre, à soi-même incommode,
Il change à tout moment d'esprit comme de mode."
(The Theory of Exchanges, &c., London, 1864, p. 135.)
1 H. Fawcett, 1. c., pp. 67-82. As to the increasing dependence of labourers on the
retail shopkeepers, this is the consequence of the frequent oscillations and interrup-
tions of their employment.
2 Wales here is always included in England.
670
Capitalist Production.
populous than the kingdom of Scotland, an increase of pauperism
for the year 1866 of 19.5% compared with 1865, and of 244%
compared with 1864, and a still greater increase for the first
months of 1867 as compared with 1866. From the analysis of
the statistics of pauperism, two points are to be taken. On
the one hand, the fluctuation up and down of the number of
paupers, reflects the periodic changes of the industrial cycle.
On the other, the official statistics become more and more mis-
leading as to the actual extent of pauperism in proportion as,
with the accumulation of capital, the class-struggle, and, there-
fore, the class-consciousness of the working-men, develope.
E.g., the barbarity in the treatment of the paupers, at which the
English Press (The Times, Pall Mull Gazette, etc.) have cried
out so loudly during the last two years, is of ancient date.
F. Engels showed in 1844 exactly the same horrors, exactly
the same transient canting outcries of "sensational litera-
ture." But frightful increase of "deaths by starvation" in
London during the last ten years proves beyond doubt the
growing horror in which the working-people hold the slavery
of the workhouse, that place of punishment for misery.1
(b.) The badly paid Strata of the British Industrial Class.
During the Cotton famine of 1862, Dr. Smith was charged
by the Privy Council with an inquiry into the conditions of
nourishment of the distressed operatives in Lancashire and
Cheshire. His observations during many preceding years had
led him to the conclusion that "to avert starvation diseases,"
the daily food of an average woman ought to contain at least
3,900 grains of carbon with 180 grains of nitrogen; the daily
food of an average man, at least 4,300 grains of carbon with
200 grains of nitrogen; for women, about the same quantity of
nutritive elements as are contained in 2 lbs of good wheaten
፡፡
1 A peculiar light is thrown on the advance made since the time of Adam Smith,
by the fact that by him the word "workhouse" is still occasionally used as synony-
mous with manufactory; e.g., the opening of his chapter on the division of
labour; those employed in every different branch of the work can often be col-
lected into the same workhouse."
<<
رد
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 671
bread, for men more; for the weekly average of adult men
and women, at least 28,600 grains of carbon and 1,330 grains
of nitrogen. His calculation was practically confirmed in a sur-
prising manner by its agreement with the miserable quantity
of nourishment to which want had forced down the consump-
tion of the cotton operatives. This was, in December, 1862,
29,211 grains of carbon, and 1,295 grains of nitrogen weekly.
In the year 1863, the Privy Council ordered an inquiry into
the state of distress of the worst-nourished part of the English
working-class. Dr. Simon, medical officer to the Privy Council,
chose for this work the above-mentioned Dr. Smith. His
inquiry ranges on the one hand over the agricultural labourers,
on the other, over silk-weavers, needle-women, kid-glovers,
stocking-weavers, glove-weavers, and shoe-makers. The latter
categories are, with the exception of the stocking-weavers,
exclusively town-dwellers. It was made a rule in the inquiry
to select in each category the most healthy families, and those
comparatively in the best circumstances.
As a general result it was found that "in only one of the
examined classes of in-door operatives did the average nitrogen-
supply just exceed, while in another it nearly reached, the
estimated standard of bare sufficiency [i.e., sufficient to avert
starvation diseases], and that in two classes there was defect-
in one a very large defect-of both nitrogen and carbon.
Moreover, as regards the examined families of the agricultural
population, it appeared that more than a fifth were with less
than the estimated sufficiency of carbonaceous food, that more
than one third were with less than the estimated sufficiency of
nitrogenous food, and that in three counties (Berkshire, Ox-
fordshire, and Somersetshire), insufficiency of nitrogenous food
was the average local diet." Among the Agricultural labourers,
those of England, the wealthiest part of the United Kingdom,
were the worst fed. The insufficiency of food among the
agricultural labourers, fell, as a rule, chiefly on the women
and children, for "the man must eat to do his work." Still
greater penury ravaged the town-workers examined.
2
"They
1 Public Health. Sixth Report, 1864, p. 13.
21. c. p. 17.
Ca
672
Capitalist Production.
are so ill fed that assuredly among them there must be many
cases of severe and injurious privation."1 ("Privation" of the
capitalist all this! i.e., "abstinence "
abstinence" from paying for the
means of subsistence absolutely necessary for the mere vegeta-
tion of his "hands.")
The following table shows the conditions of nourishment
of the above-named categories of purely town-dwelling work-
people, as compared with the minimum assumed by Dr. Smith,
and with the food-allowance of the cotton operatives during
the time of their greatest distress:
BOTH SEXES.
Five in-door occupations
Unemployed Lancashire Operatives
Minimum quantity to be allowed to
the Lancashire Operatives, equal
number of males and females.
AVERAGE WEEKLY AVERAGE WEEKLY
CARBON.
28,876 grains
28,211
28,000
""
""
NITROGEN.
11. c. p. 13.
21. c., Appendix p. 232.
1,192 grains
1,295
1,330
>>
""
2
60
125
One half, or 6 of the industrial labour categories investi-
gated, had absolutely no beer, 28% no milk. The weekly average
of the liquid means of nourishment in the families varied from
seven ounces in the needle-women to 24 ounces in the stock-
ing-makers. The majority of those who did not obtain milk
were needle-women in London. The quantity of bread-stuffs
consumed weekly varied from 7lbs for the needle-women to
11lbs for the shoemakers, and gave a total average of 9.9 lbs
per adult weekly. Sugar (treacle, etc.) varied from 4 ounces.
weekly for the kid-glovers to 11 ounces for the stocking-
makers; and the total average per week for all categories was
8 ounces per adult weekly. Total weekly average of butter
(fat, etc.) 5 ounces per adult. The weekly average of
meat (bacon, etc.) varied from 7 ounces for the silk-weavers,
to 181 ounces for the kid-glovers; total average for the differ-
ent categories 136 ounces. The weekly cost of food per adult,
gave the following average figures; silk-weavers 2s. 24d.,
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 673
1
needle-women 2s. 7d., kid-glovers 2s. 94d., shoemakers 2s 73d.,
stocking weavers 2s. 6d. For the silk-weavers of Maccles-
field the average was only 1s. 81d. The worst categories were
the needle-women, silk-weavers and kid-glovers. Of these
facts, Dr. Simon in his General Health Report says: "That
cases are innumerable in which defective diet is the cause or
the aggravator of disease, can be affirmed by any one who is
conversant with poor law medical practice, or with the wards
and out-patient rooms of hospitals.
Yet in this point
of view, there is, in my opinion, a very important sanitary
context to be added. It must be remembered that privation
of food is very reluctantly borne, and that as a rule great poor-
ness of diet will only come when other privations have pre-
ceded it. Long before insufficiency of diet is a matter of
hygienic concern, long before the physiologist would think of
counting the grains of nitrogen and carbon which intervene
between life and starvation, the household will have been
utterly destitute of material comfort; clothing and fuel will
have been even scantier than food-against inclemencies of
weather there will have been no adequate protection-dwelling
space will have been stinted to the degree in which over-
crowding produces or increases disease; of household utensils
and furniture there will have been scarcely any-even cleanli-
ness will have been found costly or difficult, and if there still
be self-respectful endeavours to maintain it, every such en-
deavour will represent additional pangs of hunger. The home,
too, will be where shelter can be cheapest bought; in quarters
where commonly there is least fruit of sanitary supervision,
least drainage, least scavenging, least suppression of public
nuisances, least or worst water supply, and, if in town, least
light and air. Such are the sanitary dangers to which poverty
is almost certainly exposed, when it is poverty enough to im-
ply scantiness of food. And while the sum of them is of
terrible magnitude against life, the mere scantiness of food is
in itself of very serious moment.
These are
painful reflections, especially when it is remembered that the
poverty to which they advert is not the deserved poverty of
1 1. c pp. 232, 233.
1. c pp.
2 U
674
Capitalist Production.
idleness. In all cases it is the poverty of working popula-
tions. Indeed, as regards the indoor opervatives, the work
which obtains the scanty pittance of food, is for the most part
excessively prolonged. Yet evidently it is only in a qualified
sense that the work can be deemed self-supporting.
And on a very large scale the nominal self-support can be only
a circuit, longer or shorter, to pauperism." 1
The intimate connexion between the pangs of hunger of the
most industrious layers of the working class, and the extrava-
gant consumption, coarse or refined, of the rich, for which
capitalist accumulation is the basis, reveals itself only when the
economic laws are known. It is otherwise with the "housing
of the poor." Every unprejudiced observer sees that the greater
the centralisation of the means of production, the greater is
the corresponding heaping together of the labourers, within
a given space; that therefore the swifter capitalistic accumula-
tion, the more miserable are the dwellings of the working-
people. "Improvements" of towns, accompanying the increase
of wealth, by the demolition of badly built quarters, the erection
of palaces for banks, warehouses, &c., the widening of streets
for business traffic, for the carriages of luxury, and for the in-
troduction of tramways, &c., drive away the poor into even
worse and more crowded hiding places. On the other hand,
every one knows that the dearness of dwellings is in inverse
ratio to their excellence, and that the mines of misery are ex-
ploited by house speculators with more profit or less cost than
ever were the mines of Potosi. The antagonistic character of
capitalist accumulation, and therefore of the capitalistic rela-
tions of property generally, is here so evident, that even the
official English reports on this subject teem with heterodox on-
slaughts on "property and its rights." With the development
of industry, with the accumulation of capital, with the growth
and "improvement" of towns, the evil makes such progress that
1 1. c. pp. 14, 15.
2 "In no particular have the rights of persons been so avowedly and shamefully
sacrificed to the rights of property as in regard to the lodging of the labouring class.
Every large town may be looked upon as a place of human sacrifice, a shrine where
thousands pass yearly through the fire as offerings to the moloch of avarice." S.
Laing, 1. c. p. 150.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 675
•
the mere fear of contagious diseases which do not spare even
"respectability," brought into existence from 1847 to 1864 no
less than 10 Acts of Parliament on sanitation, and that the
frightened bourgeois in some towns, as Liverpool, Glasgow, &c.,
took strenuous measures through their
their municipalities.
Nevertheless Dr. Simon, in his report of 1865, says: "Speaking
generally, it may be said that the evils are uncontrolled in
England." By order of the Privy Council, in 1864, an inquiry
was made into the conditions of the housing of the agricultural
labourers, in 1865 of the poorer classes in the towns.
The re-
sults of the admirable work of Dr. Julian Hunter are to be
found in the seventh (1865) and eighth (1866) reports on
"Public Health." To the agricultural labourers, I shall come
later. On the condition of town dwellings, I quote, as pre-
liminary, a general remark of Dr. Simon. "Although my
official point of view," he says, "is one exclusively physical,
common humanity requires that the other aspect of this evil
should not be ignored.
In its higher degrees it [i.e.,
overcrowding] almost necessarily involves such negation of
all delicacy, such unclean confusion of bodies and bodily func-
tions, such exposure of animal and sexual nakedness, as is
rather bestial than human. To be subject to these influences
is a degradation which must become deeper and deeper for
those on whom it continues to work. To children who are
born under its curse, it must often be a very baptism into in-
famy. And beyond all measure hopeless is the wish that per-
sons thus circumstanced should ever in other respects aspire to
that atmosphere of civilization which has its essence in physi-
cal and moral cleanliness."1
A
ww
London takes the first place in overcrowded habitations,
absolutely unfit for human beings. "He feels clear," says Dr.
Hunter, "on two points; first, that there are about 20 large
colonies in London, of about 10,000 persons each, whose miser-
able condition exceeds almost anything he has seen elsewere
in England, and is almost entirely the result of their bad house
accommodation; and second, that the crowded and dilapidated
condition of the houses of these colonies is much worse than
1 Public Health, eighth report, 1865, p. 14, note.
676
Capitalist Production.
was the case 20 years ago. "1 "It is not too much to say that
life in parts of London and Newcastle is infernal.” 2
Further, the better-off part of the working class, together with
the small shopkeepers and other elements of the lower middle
class, falls in London more and more under the curse of these
vile conditions of dwelling, in proportion as "improvements,"
and with them the demolition of old streets and houses, ad-
vance, as factories and the afflux of human beings grow in the
metropolis, and finally as house rents rise with the ground
rents. "Rents have become so heavy that few labouring men
can afford more than one room. "3 There is almost no house-
property in London that is not overburdened with a number of
middlemen. For the price of land in London is always very
high in comparison with its yearly revenue, and therefore
every buyer speculates on getting rid of it again at a jury
price (the expropriation valuation fixed by jurymen), or on
pocketing an extraordinary increase of value arising from the
neighbourhood of some large establishment. As a consequence
of this there is a regular trade in the purchase of “fag-ends of
leases." "Gentlemen in this business may be fairly expected
to do as they do get all they can from the tenants while they
have them, and leave as little as they can for their successors.
"4
The rents are weekly, and these gentlemen run no risk. In
consequence of the making of railroads in the City, "the
spectacle has lately been seen in the East of London of a
number of families wandering about some Saturday night with
their scanty worldly goods on their backs, without any resting
place but the workhouse." The workhouses are already over-
?
1 1. c. p. 89. With reference to the children in these colonies, Dr. Hunter says:
"People are not now alive to tell us how children were brought up before this age of
dense agglomerations of poor began, and he would be a rash prophet who should tell
us what future behaviour is to be expected from the present growth of children, who,
under circumstances probably never before paralleled in this country, are now com-
pleting their education for future practice, as dangerous classes" by sitting up half
the night with persons of every age, half naked, drunken, obscene, and quarrelsome."
(1. c. p. 56.)
(C
2 1. c. p. 62.
3 Report of the Officer of Health of St. Martins-in-the-Fields, 1865.
4 Public Health, eighth report, 1865, p. 91. '
5 1. c. p. 88.
AST
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 677
(C
crowded, and the "improvements" already sanctioned by Par-
liament are only just begun. If labourers are driven away by
the demolition of their old houses, they do not leave their old
parish, or at most they settle down on its borders, as near as
they can get to it. They try, of course, to remain as near as
possible to their workshops. The inhabitants do not go beyond
the same or the next parish, parting their two-room tenements
into single rooms, and crowding even those.
Even at an
advanced rent, the people who are displaced will hardly be
able to get an accommodation so good as the meagre one they
have left.
Half the workmen . .
. . of the Strand .
walked two miles to their work.' "> 1 This same Strand, a main
thoroughfare which gives strangers an imposing idea of the
wealth of London, may serve as an example of the packing
together of human beings in that town. In one of its parishes,
the Officer of Health reckoned 581 persons per acre, although
half the width of the Thames was reckoned in. It will be self-
understood that every sanitary measure, which, as has been the
case hitherto in London, hunts the labourers from one quarter,
by demolishing uninhabitable houses, serves only to crowd
them together yet more closely in another. "Either," says Dr.
Hunter, "the whole proceeding will of necessity stop as an ab-
surdity, or the public compassion (!) be effectually aroused to
the obligation which may now be without exaggeration called
national, of supplying cover to those who by reason of their
having no capital, cannot provide it for themselves, though
they can by periodical payments reward those who will pro-
vide it for them." 2 Admire this capitalistic justice! The
owner of land, of houses, the business man, when expropriated
by "improvements" such as railroads, the building of new
streets, &c., not only receives full indemnity. He must, ac-
cording to law, human and divine, be comforted for his en-
forced "abstinence" over and above this by a thumping profit.
The labourer, with his wife and child and chattels, is thrown
out into the street, and-if he crowds in too large numbers to-
wards quarters of the town where the vestries insist on de-
cency, he is prosecuted in the name of sanitation !
1 1. c. p. 88.
2 1. c. p. 89.
678
Capitalist Production.
Except London, there was at the beginning of the 19th
century no single town in England of 100,000 inhabitants.
Only five had more than 50,000. Now there are 28 towns
with more than 50,000 inhabitants. "The result of this change
is not only that the class of town people is enormously in-
creased, but the old close-packed little towns are now centres,
built round on every side, open nowhere to air, and being no
longer agreeable to the rich are abandoned by them for the
pleasanter outskirts. The successors of these rich are occupy-
ing the larger houses at the rate of a family to each room [...
and find accommodation for two or three lodgers . . .] and a
population, for which the houses were not intended and quite
unfit, has been created, whose surroundings are truly degrading
to the adults and ruinous to the children." 1 The more rapidly
capital accumulates in an industrial or commercial town, the
more rapidly flows the stream of exploitable human material,
the more miserable are the improvised dwellings of the
labourers.
Newcastle-on-Tyne, as the centre of a coal and iron district
of growing productiveness, takes the next place after London
in the housing inferno. Not less than 34,000 persons live there
in single rooms. Because of their absolute danger to the com-
munity, houses in great numbers have lately been destroyed
by the authorities in Newcastle and Gateshead. The building
of new houses progresses very slowly, business very quickly.
The town was, therefore, in 1865, more full than ever. Scarcely
a room was to let. Dr. Embleton, of the Newcastle Fever
Hospital, says: "There can be little doubt that the great cause
of the continuance and spread of the typhus has been the over-
crowding of human beings, and the uncleanliness of their
dwellings. The rooms, in which labourers in many cases live,
are situated in confined and unwholesome yards or courts, and
for space, light, air, and cleanliness, are models of insufficiency
and insalubrity, and a disgrace to any civilised community;
in them men, women, and children lie at night huddled to-
gether; and as regards the men, the night-shift succeed the
day-shift, and the day-shift the night-shift in unbroken series
1 1. c. pp. 55 and 56.
mak
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 679
"The town of
for some time together, the beds having scarcely time to cool;
the whole house badly supplied with water, and worse with
privies; dirty, unventilated, and pestiferous." 1
The price per
week of such lodgings ranges from 8d. to 3s.
Newcastle-on-Tyne," says Dr. Hunter, " contains a sample of
the finest tribe of our countrymen, often sunk by external cir-
cumstances of house and street into an almost savage degrada-
tion." "' 2
As result of the ebbing and flowing of capital and labour,
the state of the dwellings of an industrial town may to-day be
bearable, to-morrow hideous. Or the ædileship of the town
may have pulled itself together for the removal of the most
shocking abuses. To-morrow, like a swarm of locusts, come
crowding in masses of ragged Irishmen or decayed English
agricultural labourers. They are stowed away in cellars and
lofts, or the hitherto respectable labourer's dwelling is trans-
formed into a lodging-house whose personnel changes as
quickly as the billets in the 30 years' war. Example: Brad-
ford (Yorkshire). There the municipal philistine was just
busied with urban improvements. Besides, there were still in
Bradford, in 1861, 1751 uninhabited houses. But now comes
that revival of trade which the mildly liberal Mr. Forster, the
negro's friend, recently crowed over with so much grace. With
the revival of trade came of course an overflow from the waves
or
of the ever fluctuating "reserve-army or "relative surplus
population." The frightful cellar habitations and rooms regis-
tered in the list,¹ which Dr. Hunter obtained from the agent of
2 1. c. p. 50.
1 1. c. p. 149.
3 COLLECTING AGENTS' LIST (Bradford).
Houses.
Vulcan Street, No. 122
Lumley Street, No. 13
Bower Street, No. 41
Portland Street, No. 112
Hardy Street, No. 17
North Street, No. 18
North Street, No. 17
Wymer Street, No. 19]
Jowett Street, No. 56
George Street, No. 150
1 room
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
finido poland
>>
>>
>>
>>
""
>>
>>
>9
* A
16 persons
11
11
10
10
16
13
">
""
""
99
""
>>
8 adults
12 persons
3 families
680
Capitalist Production.
،،
an Insurance Company, were for the most part inhabited by
well-paid labourers. They declared that they would willingly
pay for better dwellings if they were to be had. Meanwhile,
they become degraded, they fall ill, one and all, whilst the
mildly liberal Forster, M.P., sheds tears over the blessings of
free-trade, and the profits of the eminent men of Bradford who
deal in worsted. In the Report of September, 1865, Dr. Bell,
one of the poor law doctors of Bradford, ascribes the frightful
mortality of fever-patients in his district to the nature of their
dwellings. In one small cellar measuring 1500 cubic feet . . .
there are ten persons.
Vincent Street, Green Aire
Place, and the Leys include 223 houses having 1,450 inhabi-
tants, 435 beds, and 36 privies.
The beds and in
that term I include any roll of dirty old rags, or an armful of
shavings—have an average of 3.3 person to each, many have 5
and 6 persons to each, and some people, I am told, are abso-
solutely without beds; they sleep in their ordinary clothes, on
the bare boards-young men and women, married and un-
married, all together. I need scarcely add that many of these
dwellings are dark, damp, dirty, stinking holes, utterly unfit
for human habitations; they are the centres from which disease
and death are distributed amongst those in better circum-
stances, who have allowed them thus to fester in our midst."1
Bristol takes the third place after London in the misery of
Rifle Court Marygate, No. 11
Marshall Street, No. 28
Marshall Street, No. 49
George Street, No. 128
George Street, No. 130
Edward Street, No. 4
George Street, No. 49
York Street, No. 34
Salt Pie Street (bottom)
Regent Square
Acre Street
Cellars.
33 Roberts Court
Back Pratt Street, used as a \
}
brazier's shop
27 Ebenezer Street
' 1. c. p. 114.
1. c. p. iii.
1 room
1
3
HHHHHQ
1
1
1
1
1
2
""
1
""
59
""
""
""
""
""
1 cellar
1
1
""
""
""
1 "
11 persons
10
""
3 families
18 persons
16
17
""
2 families
2
""
26 persons
827
7
""
6
persons
""
""
""
(no male above 18).
>>
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 681
its dwellings. Bristol, where the blankest poverty and
domestic misery abound in the wealthiest town of Europe.'
"' 1
r
c. The Nomad Population.
2
We turn now to a class of people whose origin is agricultural,
but whose occupation is in great part industrial. They are the
light infantry of capital, thrown by it, according to its needs,
now to this point, now to that. When they are not on the
march, they "camp." Nomad labour is used for various opera-
tion of building and draining, brick-making, lime-burning,
railway-making, &c. A flying column of pestilence, it carries
into the places in whose neighbourhood it pitches its camp,
small-pox, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, &c. In undertakings
that involve much capital outlay, such as railways, &c., the
contractor himself generally provides his army with wooden
huts and the like, thus improvising villages without any sani-
tary provisions, outside the control of the local boards, very
profitable to the contractor, who exploits the labourers in two-
fold fashion-as soldiers of industry and as tenants. According
as the wooden hut contains 1, 2, or 3 holes, its inhabitant,
navvy, or whatever he may be, has to pay 1, 3, or 4 shillings
weekly. One example will suffice. In September, 1864, Dr.
Simon reports that the Chairman of the Nuisances Removal
Committee of the parish of Sevenoaks sent the following de-
nunciation to Sir George Grey, Home Secretary :-" Small-pox
cases were rarely heard of in this parish until about twelve
months ago. Shortly before that time, the works for a railway
from Lewisham to Tunbridge were commenced here, and, in
addition to the principal works being in the immediate neigh-
bourhood of this town, here was also established the depôt for
the whole of the works, so that a large number of persons was
of necessity employed here. As cottage accommodotion could
not be obtained for them all, huts were built in several places
along the line of the works by the contractor, Mr. Jay, for their
especial occupation. These huts possessed no ventilation nor
3
1 1. c. p. 50.
2 Public Health. Seventh Report. 1864. p. 18.
$ 1. c., p. 165.
682
Capitalist Production.
drainage, and, besides, were necessarily overcrowded, because
each occupant had to accommodate lodgers, whatever the num-
ber in his own family might be, although there were only two
rooms to each tenement. The consequences were, according to
the medical report we received, that in the night-time these
poor people were compelled to endure all the horror of suffoca-
tion to avoid the pestiferous smells arising from the filthy,
stagnant water, and the privies close under their windows.
Complaints were at length made to the Nuisances Removal
Committee by a medical gentleman who had occasion to visit
these huts, and he spoke of their condition as dwellings in the
most severe terms, and he expressed his fears that some very
serious consequences might ensue, unless some sanitary measures
were adopted. About a year ago, Mr. Jay promised to appro-
priate a hut, to which persons in his employ, who were suffering
from contagious diseases, might at once be removed. He repeated
that promise on the 23rd July last, but although since the date
of the last promise there have been several cases of small-pox
in his huts, and two deaths from the same disease, yet he has
taken no steps whatever to carry out his promise. On the 9th
September instant, Mr. Kelson, surgeon, reported to me further
cases of small-pox in the same huts, and he described their
condition as most disgraceful. I should add, for your (the
Home Secretary's) information that an isolated house, called
the Pest-house, which is set apart for parishioners who might
be suffering from infectious diseases, has been continually
occupied by such patients for many months past, and is also
now occupied; that in one family five children died from small-
pox and fever; that from the 1st April to the 1st September
this year, a period of five months, there have been no fewer
than ten deaths from small-pox in the parish, four of them being
in the huts already referred to; that it is impossible to ascer-
tain the exact number of persons who have suffered from that
disease, although they are known to be many, from the fact of
the families keeping it as private as possible." 1
S
11. c., p. 18, Note.-The Relieving Officer of the Chapel-en-le-Frith Union
reported to the Registrar-General as follows:-"At Doveholes, a number of small
excavations have been made into a large hillock of lime ashes (the refuse of lime-
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 683
The labourers in coal and other mines belong to the best paid
categories of the British proletariat. The price at which they
buy their wages was shown on an earlier page.¹ Here I merely
cast a hurried glance over the conditions of their dwellings.
As a rule, the exploiter of a mine, whether its owner or his
tenant, builds a number of cottages for his hands. They
receive cottages and coal for firing "for nothing "-i.e., these
form part of their wages, paid in kind. Those who are not
lodged in this way receive in compensation £4 per annum.
The mining districts attract with rapidity a large population,
made up of the miners themselves, and the artisans, shop-
keepers, &c., that group themselves around them. The ground-
rents are high, as they are generally where population is dense.
The master tries, therefore, to run up, within the smallest
space possible at the mouth of the pit, just so many cottages as
are necessary to pack together his hands and their families.
If new mines are opened in the neighbourhood, or old ones are
again set working, the pressure increases. In the construction
of the cottages, only one point of view is of moment, the
“abstinence” of the capitalist from all expenditure that is not
absolutely unavoidable. "The lodging which is obtained by
the pitmen and other labourers connected with the collieries of
Northumberland and Durham," says Dr. Julian Hunter, “is
perhaps, on the whole, the worst and the dearest of which any
large specimens can be found in England, the similar parishes
of Monmouthshire excepted.
The extreme badness is
in the high number of men found in one room, in the smallness
of the ground-plot on which a great number of houses are
thrust, the want of water, the absence of privies, and the fre-
quent placing of one house on the top of another, or distribu-
Qu
kilns), and which are used as dwellings, and occupied by labourers and others em-
ployed in the construction of a railway now in course of construction through that
neighbourhood. The excavations are small and damp, and have no drains or privies
about them, and not the slightest means of ventilation except up a hole pulled
through the top, and used for a chimney. In consequence of this defect, small-pox
has been raging for some time, and some deaths [amongst the troglodytes] have been
caused by them." (1.c., note 2.)
1 The details given at the end of Part IV. refer especially to the labourers in coal
mines. On the still worse condition in metal mines, see the very conscientious Report
of the Royal Commission of 1864,
684
Capitalist Production.
tion into flats, . . . the lessee acts as if the whole colony were
encamped, not resident.”1
tr
CC
'In pursuance of my instructions," says Dr. Stevens, “I
visited most of the large colliery villages in the Durham Union.
With very few exceptions, the general statement that no
means are taken to secure the health of the inhabitants would
be true of all of them. . . . All colliers are bound ['bound,'
an expression which, like bondage, dates from the age of serf-
dom] to the colliery lessee or owner for twelve months.
If the colliers express discontent, or in any way annoy the
'viewer,' a mark or memorandum is made against their names,
and, at the annual binding,' such men are turned off.
It appears to me that no part of the 'truck system' could be
worse than what obtains in these densely-populated districts.
The collier is bound to take as part of his hiring a house sur-
rounded with pestiferous influences; he cannot help himself,
and it appears doubtful whether anyone else can help him
except his proprietor (he is, to all intents and purposes, a serf),
and his proprietor first consults his balance-sheet, and the
result is tolerably certain. The collier is also often supplied with
water by the proprietor, which, whether it be good or bad, he
has to pay for, or rather he suffers a deduction for from his
wages."2
In conflict with "public opinion," or even with the Officers of
Health, capital makes no difficulty about "justifying" the con-
ditions partly dangerous, partly degrading, to which it confines
the working and domestic life of the labourer, on the ground
that they are necessary for profit. It is the same thing when
capital" abstains" from protective measures against dangerous
machinery in the factory, from appliances for ventilation and
for safety in mines, &c. It is the same here with the housing
of the miners. Dr. Simon, medical officer of the Privy Council,
in his official Report says: "In apology for the wretched house-
hold accommodation . . . it is alleged that mines are commonly
worked on lease; that the duration of the lessee's interest
(which in collieries is commonly for 21 years), is not so long that
he should deem it worth his while to create good accommoda-
11. c., pp. 180, 182.
21. c., pp. 515, 517.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 685
tion for his labourers, and for the tradespeople and others whom
the work attracts; that even if he were disposed to act liberally
in the matter, this disposition would commonly be defeated by
his landlord's tendency to fix on him, as ground rent, an exor-
bitant additional charge for the privilege of having on the
surface of the ground the decent and comfortable village which
the labourers of the subterranean property ought to inhabit,
and that prohibitory price (if not actual prohibition) equally
excludes others who might desire to build. It would be foreign
to the purpose of this report to enter upon any discussion of
the merits of the above apology. Nor here is it even needful
to consider where it would be that, if decent accommodation
were provided, the cost. . . would eventually fall-whether
on landlord, or lessee, or labourer, or public. But in presence
of such shameful facts as are vouched for in the annexed re-
ports [those of Dr. Hunter, Dr. Stevens, &c.] a remedy may well
be claimed.. . . Claims of landlordship are being so used
as to do great public wrong. The landlord in his capacity of
mine-owner invites an industrial colony to labour on his estate,
and then in his capacity of surface-owner makes it impossible
that the labourers whom he collects, should find proper lodging
where they must live. The lessee [the capitalist exploiter]
meanwhile has no pecuniary motive for resisting that division
of the bargain; well knowing that if its latter conditions be
exorbitant, the consequences fall, not on him, that his labourers
on whom they fall have not education enough to know the
value of their sanitary rights, that neither obscenest lodging
nor foulest drinking water will be appreciable inducements
towards a 'strike.'" 1
(d). Effect of Crises on the best paid part of the Working Class.
Before I turn to the regular agricultural labourers, I may be
allowed to show, by one example, how industrial revulsions
affect even the best-paid, the aristocracy, of the working-class.
It will be remembered that the year 1857 brought one of the
great crises with which the industrial cycle periodically ends.
11. c., p. 16
686
Capitalist Production.
The next termination of the cycle was due in 1866. Already
discounted in the regular factory districts by the cotton famine,
which threw much capital from its wonted sphere into the
great centres of the money-market, the crisis assumed, at this
time, an especially financial character. Its outbreak in 1866
was signalised by the failure of a gigantic London Bank, im-
mediately followed by the collapse of countless swindling com-
panies. One of the great London branches of industry involved
in the catastrophe was iron shipbuilding. The magnates of
this trade had not only over-produced beyond all measure
during the overtrading time, but they had, besides, engaged
in enormous contracts on the speculation that credit would
be forthcoming to an equivalent extent. Now, a terrible
reaction set in, that even at this hour (the end of March, 1867)
continues in this and other London industries.¹ To show the
condition of the labourers, I quote the following from the
circumstantial report of a correspondent of the "Morning Star,"
who, at the end of 1866, and beginning of 1867, visited the
chief centres of distress: "In the East End districts of Poplar,
Millwall, Greenwich, Deptford, Limehouse and Canning Town,
at least 15,000 workmen and their families were in a state of
utter destitution, and 3000 skilled mechanics were breaking
stones in the workhouse yard (after distress of over half a year's
duration). . I had great difficulty in reaching the work-
house door, for a hungry crowd besieged it. . . . . They were
waiting for their tickets, but the time had not yet arrived for
the distribution. The yard was a great square place with an
open shed running all round it, and several large heaps of snow
1"Wholesale starvation of the London Poor. . . . Within the last few days the
walls of London have been placarded with large posters, bearing the following re-
markable announcement:-'Fat oxen! Starving men! The fat oxen from their
palace of glass have gone to feed the rich in their luxurious abode, while the starving
men are left to rot and die in their wretched dens.' The placards bearing these
ominous words are put up at certain intervals. No sooner has one set been defaced
or covered over, than a fresh set is placarded in the former, or some equally public
place. . . . . This . . . reminds one of the secret revolutionary associations which
prepared the French people for the events of 1789.
At this moment, while
English workmen with their wives and children are dying of cold and hunger, there
are millions of English gold-the produce of English labour-being invested in
Russian, Spanish, Italian, and other foreign enterprises."—"Reynolds' Newspaper,"
January 20th, 1867.
·
•
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 687
. .
covered the paving-stones in the middle. In the middle, also,
were little wicker-fenced spaces, like sheep pens, where in finer
weather the men worked; but on the day of my visit the pens
were so snowed up that nobody could sit in them. Men were
busy, however, in the open shed breaking paving-stones into
macadam. Each man had a big paving-stone for a seat, and
he chipped away at the rime-covered granite with a big hammer
until he had broken up, and think! five bushels of it, and then
he had done his day's work, and got his day's pay-threepence
and an allowance of food. In another part of the yard was a
rickety little wooden house, and when we opened the door of
it, we found it filled with men who were huddled together
shoulder to shoulder, for the warmth of one another's bodies.
and breath. They were picking oakum and disputing the
while as to which could work the longest on a given quantity
of food-for endurance was the point of honour. Seven thou-
sand . . . in this one workhouse
were recipients of relief
. . . many hundreds of them... it appeared, were, six or eight
months ago, earning the highest wages paid to artisans. .
Their number would be more than doubled by the count of
those who, having exhausted all their savings, still refuse to
apply to the parish, because they have a little left to pawn.
Leaving the workhouse, I took a walk through the streets,
mostly of little one-storey houses, that abound in the neigh-
bourhood of Poplar. My guide was a member of the Committee
of the Unemployed.. . . . My first call was on an ironworker
who had been seven and twenty weeks out of employment. I
found the man with his family sitting in a little back room.
The room was not bare of furniture, and there was a fire in it.
This was necessary to keep the naked feet of the young children
from getting frost bitten, for it was a bitterly cold day. On a
tray in front of the fire lay a quantity of oakum, which the
wife and children were picking in return for their allowance
from the parish. The man worked in the stone yard of the
workhouse for a certain ration of food, and threepence per day.
He had now come home to dinner quite hungry, as he told us
with a melancholy smile, and his dinner consisted of a couple
of slices of bread and dripping, and a cup of milkless tea....
•
688
Capitalist Production.
The next door at which we knocked was opened by a middle-
aged woman, who, without saying a word, led us into a little
back parlour, in which sat all her family, silent and fixedly
staring at a rapidly dying fire. Such desolation, such hope-
lessness was about these people and their little room, as I should
not care to witness again. Nothing have they done, sir,' said
the woman, pointing to her boys, 'for six and twenty weeks;
and all our money gone-all the twenty pounds that me and
father saved when times were better, thinking it would yield a
little to keep us when we got past work. Look at it,' she said,
almost fiercely, bringing out a bank book with all its well-kept
entries of money paid in, and money taken out, so that we
could see how the little fortune had begun with the first five
shilling deposit, and had grown by little and little to be twenty
pounds, and how it had melted down again till the sum in hand
got from pounds to shillings, and the last entry made the book
as worthless as a blank sheet. This family received relief from
the workhouse, and it furnished them with just one scanty
meal per day. . . . . Our next visit was to an iron labourer's
wife, whose husband had worked in the yards. We found her
ill from want of food, lying on a mattress in her clothes, and
just covered with a strip of carpet, for all the bedding had been
pawned. Two wretched children were tending her, themselves
looking as much in need of nursing as their mother. Nineteen
weeks of enforced idleness had brought them to this pass, and
while the mother told the history of that bitter past, she
moaned as if all her faith in a future that should atone for it
were dead.
On getting outside a young fellow came
running after us, and asked us to step inside his house and see
if anything could be done for him. A young wife, two pretty
children, a cluster of pawn-tickets, and a bare room were all
he had to show."
On the after pains of the crisis of 1866, the following extract
from a Tory newspaper. It must not be forgotten that the
East-end of London, which is here dealt with, is not only the
scat of the iron shipbuilding mentioned above, but also of
a so-called "home-industry" always underpaid. "A frightful
spectacle was to be seen yeterday in one part of the metro-
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 689
polis. Although the unemployed thousands of the East End
did not parade with their black flags en masse, the human
torrent was imposing enough. Let us remember what these
people suffer. They are dying of hunger. That is the simple
and terrible fact. There are 40,000 of them. . . . In our pre-
sence, in one quarter of this wonderful metropolis, are packed
-next door to the most enormous accumulation of wealth the
world ever saw-cheek by jowl with this are 40,000 helpless,
starving people. These thousands are now breaking in upon
the other quarters; always half-starving, they cry their misery
in our ears, they cry to Heaven, they tell us from their miser-
able dwellings, that it is impossible for them to find work, and
useless for them to beg. The local ratepayers themselves are
driven by the parochial charges to the verge of pauperism."-
("Standard,” 5th April, 1866.)
As it is the fashion amongst English capitalists to quote
Belgium as the Paradise of the labourer because "freedom of
labour," or what is the same thing, "freedom of capital," is there
limited neither by the despotism of Trade's Unions, nor by Fac-
tory Acts, a word or two on the "happiness" of the Belgian
labourer. Assuredly no one was more thoroughly initiated in
the mysteries of this happiness than the late M. Ducpétiaux,
inspector-general of Belgian prisons and charitable institutions,
and member of the central commission of Belgian statistics. Let
us take his work: "Budgets économiques des classes ouvrières
de la Belgique, Bruxelles, 1855." Here we find among other
matters, a normal Belgian labourer's family, whose yearly
income and expenditure he calculates on very exact data, and
whose conditions of nourishment are then compared with those
of the soldier, sailor, and prisoner. The family "consists of
father, mother, and four children." Of these 6
persons four
may be usefully employed the whole year through." It is as-
sumed that "there is no sick person nor one incapable of work,
among them," nor are there "expenses for religious, moral, and
intellectual purposes, except a very small sum for church sit-
tings," nor "contributions to savings banks or benefit societies,"
nor expenses due to luxury or the result of improvidence."
The father and eldest son, however, allow themselves "the use
(C
CC
2 X
690
Capitalist Production.
of tobacco," and on Sundays "go to the cabaret," for which a
whole 86 centimes a week are reckoned. "From a general
compilation of wages allowed to the labourers in different trades,
it follows that the highest average of daily wage is 1 franc
56c., for men, 89 centimes for women, 56 centimes for boys,
and 55 centimes for girls. Calculated at this rate, the re-
sources of the family would amount, at the maximum, to 1068
francs a-year
In the family . . . taken as typical we
have calculated all possible resources.
But in ascribing wages
to the mother of the family we raise the question of the direc-
tion of the household. How will its internal economy be cared
for? Who will look after the young children? Who will get
ready the meals, do the washing and mending? This is the
dilemma incessantly presented to the labourers."
According to this the budget of the family is:
The father 300 working days at fr. 1·56
mother
89
56
55
""
در
3333
در
boy
girl
""
•
>>
>>
""
soldier
prisoner
""
در
""
""
The man of war's man fr. 1828
1473
1112
در
">
در
")
در
در
در
در
Total fr. 1,068
The annual expenditure of the family would cause a deficit
upon the hypothesis that the labourer has the food of:
•
···
fr. 468
267
168
165
ر,
""
""
>>
"}
Deficit fr. 760
405
44
ور
در
"We see that few labouring families can reach, we will not
say the average of the sailor or soldier, but even that of the
prisoner. The general average (of the cost of each prisoner in
the different prisons during the period 1847-1849), has been
63 centimes for all prisons. This figure, compared with that
of the daily maintenance of the labourer, shows a difference
of 13 centimes. It must be remarked further, that if in the
prisons it is necessary to set down in the account the expenses
of administration and surveillance, on the other hand, the pris-
oners have not to pay for their lodging; that the purchases
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 691
串
​?
they make at the canteens are not included in the expenses of
maintenance, and that these expenses are greatly lowered in
consequence of the large number of persons that make up the
establishments, and of contracting for or buying wholesale, the
food and other things that enter into their consumption
How comes it, however, that a great number, we might say, a
great majority, of labourers, live in a more economical way
It is... by adopting expedients, the secret of which only the
labourer knows; by reducing his daily rations; by substi-
tuting rye-bread for wheat; by eating less meat, or even none
at all, and the same with butter and condiments; by content-
ing themselves with one or two rooms where the family is
crammed together, where boys and girls sleep side by side,
often on the same pallet; by economy of clothing, washing,
decency; by giving up the Sunday diversions; by, in short,
resigning themselves to the most painful privations. Once
arrived at this extreme limit, the least rise in the price of food,
stoppage of work, illness, increases the labourer's distress and
determines his complete ruin; debts accumulate, credit fails,
the most necessary clothes and furniture are pawned, and
finally, the family asks to be enrolled on the list of paupers.'
(Ducpétiaux, 1. c., pp. 151, 154, 155.) In fact, in this "Paradise of
capitalists" there follows, on the smallest change in the price of
the most essential means of subsistence, a change in the number
of deaths and crimes! (See Manifesto of the Maatschappij: De
Vlamingen Vooruit! Brussels, 1860, pp. 15, 16.) In all Bel-
gium are 930,000 families, of whom, according to the official
statistics, 90,000 are wealthy and on the list of voters-450,000
persons; 190,000 families of the lower middle-class in towns
and villages, the greater part of them constantly sinking into
the proletariat, = 1,950,000 persons. Finally, 450,000 working-
class families = 2,250,000 persons, of whom the model ones en-
joy the happiness depicted by Ducpétiaux. Of the 450,000
working-class families, over 200,000 are on the pauper list.
در
(e.) The British Agricultural Proletariat.
Nowhere does the antagonistic character of capitalistic pro-
duction and accumulation assert itself more brutally than in
692
Capitalist Production.
the progress of English agriculture (including cattle-breeding)
and the retrogression of the English agricultural labourer.
Before I turn to his present situation, a rapid retrospect.
Modern agriculture dates in England from the middle of the
18th century, although the revolution in landed property, from
which the changed mode of production starts as a basis, has
a much earlier date.
V
If we take the statements of Arthur Young, a careful ob-
server, though a superficial thinker, as to the agricultural
labourer of 1771, the latter plays a very pitiable part compared
with his predecessor of the end of the 14th century, “when the
labourer. . . could live in plenty, and accumulate wealth," not
to speak of the 15th century, "the golden age of the English
labourer in town and country." We need not, however, go
back so far. In a very instructive work of the year 1777
we read: "The great farmer is nearly mounted to a level
with him [the gentleman]; while the poor labourer is depressed
almost to the earth. His unfortunate situation will fully ap-
pear, by taking a comparative view of it, only forty years ago,
and at present.
Landlord and tenant . . . have both
gone hand in hand in keeping the labourer down."2 It is then
proved in detail that the real agricultural wages between 1737
and 1777 fell nearly or 25 per cent. "Modern policy," says
Dr. Richard Price also, "is, indeed, more favourable to the
higher classes of people; and the consequences may in time.
prove that the whole kingdom will consist of only gentry and
beggars, or of grandees and slaves.'
"3
•
1
4
1 James E. Thorold Rogers. (Prof. of Polit. Econ. in the University of Oxford.)
A History of Agriculture and Prices in England. Oxford, 1866, v. I., p. 690. This
work, the fruit of patient and diligent labour, contains in the two volumes that have
so far appeared, only the period from 1259 to 1400. The second volume contains
simply statistics. It is the first authentic "History of Prices" of the time that we
possess.
2 Reasons for the late increase of the Poor-Rates, or a comparative view of the
price of labour and provisions. Lond., 1777, pp. 5, 11.
3 Dr. Richard Price: Observations on Reversionary Payments, 6th Ed. By W.
Morgan, Lond., 1803, v. II., pp. 158, 159. Price remarks on p. 159: "The nominal
price of day-labour is at present no more than about four times, or, at most, five times
higher than it was in the year 1514. But the price of corn is seven times, and of
flesh-meat and raiment about fifteen times higher. So far, therefore, has the price
of labour been even from advancing in proportion to the increase in the expenses of
I
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 693
1
Nevertheless, the position of the English agricultural labourer
from 1770 to 1780, with regard to his food and dwelling, as
well as to his self-respect, amusements, &c., is an ideal never
attained again since that time. His average wage expressed
in pints of wheat was from 1770 to 1771, 90 pints, in Eden's
time (1797) only 65, in 1808 but 60.1
The state of the agricultural labourer at the end of the Anti-
Jacobin war, during which landed proprietors, farmers, manu-
facturers, merchants, bankers, stockbrokers, army-contractors,
&c., enriched themselves so extraordinarily, has been already
indicated above. The nominal wages rose in consequence
partly of the bank-note depreciation, partly of a rise in the
price of the primary means of subsistence independent of this
depreciation. But the actual wage-variation can be evidenced
in a very simple way, without entering into details that are
here unnecessary. The Poor Law and its administration were
in 1795 and 1814 the same. It will be remembered how this
law was carried out in the country districts: in the form of
alms the parish made up the nominal wage to the nominal
sum required for the simple vegetation of the labourer. The
ratio between the wages paid by the farmer, and the wage-
deficit made good by the parish, shows us two things. First,
the falling of wages below their minimum; second, the degree
in which the agricultural labourer was a compound of wage-
labourer and pauper, or the degree in which he had been turned
into a serf of his parish. Let us take one county that repre-
sents the average condition of things in all counties. In Nor-
thamptonshire, in 1795, the average weekly wage was 7s. 6d. ;
the total yearly expenditure of a family of 6 persons, £36 12s.
5d.; their total income, £29 18s.; deficit made good by the
parish, £6 14s. 5d. In 1814, in the same county, the weekly
wage was 12s. 2d. ; the total yearly expenditure of a family of
5 persons, £54 18s. 4d.; their total income, £36 2s.; deficit
made good by the parish, £18 6s. 4d.2 In 1795 the deficit was
less than the wage, in 1814, more than half. It is self-
living, that it does not appear that it bears now half the proportion to those expenses
that it did bear."
4
1 Barton, 1. c., p. 26. For the end of the 18th century cf. Eden, 1. c.
2 Parry, 1. c., p. 86.
M
694
Capitalist Production.
¿
evident that, under these circumstances, the meagre comforts
that Eden still found in the cottage of the agricultural labourer,
had vanished by 1814.1 Of all the animals kept by the
farmer, the labourer, the instrumentum vocale, was, thenceforth,
the most oppressed, the worst nourished, the most brutally
treated.
The same state of things went on quietly until "the Swing
riots, in 1830, revealed to us [i.e., the ruling classes] by the
light of blazing corn-stacks, that misery and black mutinous
discontent smouldered quite as fiercely under the surface of
agricultural as of manufacturing England."2 At this time,
Sadler, in the House of Commons, christened the agricultural
labourers “white slaves," and a Bishop echoed the epithet in
the Upper House. The most notable political economist of that
period-E. G. Wakefield-says: "The peasant of the South
of England . is not a freeman, nor is be a slave; he is a
pauper."s
The time just before the repeal of the Corn Laws threw new
light on the condition of the agricultural labourers. On the
one hand, it was to the interest of the middle-class agitators to
prove how little the Corn Laws protected the actual producers
of the corn. On the other hand, the industrial bourgeoisie
foamed with sullen rage at the denunciations of the factory
system by the landed aristocracy, at the pretended sympathy
with the woes of the factory operatives, of those utterly
corrupt, heartless, and genteel loafers, and at their " diplomatic
zeal" for factory legislation. It is an old English proverb
that "when thieves fall out, honest men come by their
own," and, in fact, the noisy, passionate quarrel between the
two fractions of the ruling class about the question, which of
the two exploited the labourers the more shamefully, was on
each hand the midwife of the truth. Earl Shaftesbury, then
Lord Ashley, was commander-in-chief in the aristocratic, phil-
anthropic, anti-factory campaign. He was, therefore, in 1845, a
favourite subject in the revelations of the "Morning Chronicle"
on the condition of the agricultural labourers.
This journal,
1 id., p. 213.
3 England and America. Lond., 1833. Vol. I., p. 47.
2.S. Laing. 1. c., p. 62.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 695
then the most important Liberal organ, sent special commis-
sioners into the agricultural districts, who did not content
themselves with mere general descriptions and statistics, but
published the names both of the labouring families examined
and of their landlords. The following list gives the wages paid
in three villages in the neighbourhood of Blanford, Wimbourne,
and Poole. The villages are the property of Mr. G. Bankes
and of the Earl of Shaftesbury. It will be noted that, just
like Bankes, this "low church pope," this head of English
pietists, pockets a great part of the miserable wages of the
labourers under the pretext of house-rent :-
(a) Children.
2
3
2
2
CO
6
3
6
6
8
4
3
(b) Number of
Members in
Family.
4
10
5
4
4
Co
8
10
5
00
8
8
10
6
20
5
(c) Weekly
Wage of the
Men.
s. d.
8 0
8 0
8 0
8 0
FIRST VILLAGE.

s. d
7 0
7 0
7 0
7 0
7 0
(d) Weekly
Wage of the
Children.
1 1 1 │
7 0 1/-, 1/6,
7 0
1/-, 2/-
1/-, 1/6,
1/., 1/6,
(e) Weekly
Income of
the whole
Family.
!
s. d.
8 0
8 0
8 0
SECOND VILLAGE.
8 0
10 6
7 0
s. d.
10 0
7 0
7 0
7 0
70
(f) Weekly
Rent.
s.
d.
2
0
1 6
10
1 0
2 0
1 4
s. d.
1 6
1 31
1 31
1 61
1 63
(1) Total
weekly wage
after deduc-
tion of Rent.
s.
d.
6 0
6 6
7 0
7 0
8 6
5 8
s. d.
8 6
5 83
5 83
5 51
5 51
(h) Weekly
Income per
head,

s.
d.
1 6
1 33
1 9
1 9
101
1 14
s. d.
1 0
0 83
07
0 11
1 1
596
Capitalist Production.
(a) Children.
4
3
0
(b) Number of
Members in
Family.
6
10
5
2
(c) Weekly
Wage of the
Men.
s.
d.
7 0
7 0
5 0
THIRD VILLAGE.
1/-, 2/-,
1/-, 2/6,
s. d.
7 0
11 6
5 0
s. d.
1 0
0 10
1 0
s. d.
6 0
10 8
4 0
!

s. d.
1 0
2 1
201
The repeal of the Corn Laws gave a marvellous impulse to
English agriculture.2 Drainage on the most extensive scale,
new methods of stall-feeding, and of the artificial cultivation
of green crops, introduction of mechanical manuring apparatus,
new treatment of clay soils, increased use of mineral manures,
employment of the steam-engine, and of all kinds of new
machinery, more intensive cultivation generally, characterised
this epoch. Mr. Pusey, Chairman of the Royal Agricultural
Society, declares that the (relative) expenses of farming have
been reduced nearly one-half by the introduction of new
machinery. On the other hand, the actual return of the soil
rose rapidly. Greater outlay of capital per acre, and, as a con-
sequence, more rapid concentration of farms, were essential
conditions of the new method. At the same time, the area
under cultivation increased, from 1846 to 1856, by 464,119
acres, without reckoning the great area in the Eastern Counties
1 London Economist, March 29th, 1845, p. 290.
2 The landed aristocracy advanced themselves to this end, of course per Parliament,
funds from the State Treasury, at a very low rate of interest, which the farmers have
to make good at a much higher rate.
3 The decrease of the middle-class farmers can be seen especially in the census cate-
gory: "Farmer's son, grandson, brother, nephew, daughter, grand-daughter, sister,
niece"; in a word, the members of his own family, employed by the farmer. This
category numbered, in 1851, 216,851 persons; in 1861, only 176,151. From 1851 to
1871, the farms under 20 acres fell by more than 900 in number; those between 50
and 75 acres fell from 8,253 to 6,370; the same thing occurred with all other farms
under 100 acres. On the other hand, during the same twenty years, the number of
large farms increased; those of 300-500 acres rose from 7,771 to 8,410, those of more
than 500 acres from 2,755 to 3,914, those of more than 1,000 acres from 492 to
582.
>
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 697
which was transformed from rabbit warrens and poor pastures
into magnificent cornfields. It has already been seen that, at
the same time, the total number of persons employed in agricul-
ture fell. As far as the actual agricultural labourers of both sexes
and of all ages are concerned, their number fell from 1,241,396,
in 1851, to 1,163,217 in 1861.¹ If the English Registrar-
General, therefore, rightly remarks: "The increase of farmers
and farm-labourers, since 1801, bears no kind of proportion
... to the increase of agricultural produce," this dispropor-
tion obtains much more for the last period, when a positive
decrease of the agricultural population went hand in hand with
increase of the area under cultivation, with more intensive
cultivation, unheard-of accumulation of the capital incor-
porated with the soil, and devoted to its working, an
augmentation in the products of the soil without parallel in
the history of English agriculture, plethoric rent-rolls of land-
lords, and growing wealth of the capitalist farmers. If we
take this, together with the swift, unbroken extension of the
markets, viz., the towns, and the reign of Free Trade, then
the agricultural labourer was at last, post tot discrimina rerum,
placed in circumstances that ought, secundum artem, to have
made him drunk with happiness.
But Professor Rogers comes to the conclusion that the lot of
the English agricultural labourer of to-day, not to speak of his
predecessor in the last half of the 14th and in the 15th cen-
tury, but only compared with his predecessor from 1770 to
1780, has changed for the worse to an extraordinary extent,
that "the peasant has again become a serf," and a serf worse
fed and worse clothed. Dr. Julian Hunter, in his epoch-
making report on the dwellings of the agricultural labourers,
says; "The cost of the hind" (a name for the agricultural
labourer, inherited from the time of serfdom) "is fixed at the
lowest possible amount on which he can live
the
supplies of wages and shelter are not calculated on the profit
3
1 The number of shepherds increased from 12,517 to 25,559.
2 Census. 1. c., p. 36.
G
3 Rogers. 1. c. p. 693, p. 10. Mr. Rogers belongs to the Liberal School, is a per-
sonal friend of Cobden and Bright, and therefore no laudator temporis acti.
698
Capitalist Production.
to be derived from him. He is a zero in farming calculations. ¹
The means [of subsistence] being always supposed
to be a fixed quantity. 2 As to any further reduction of his
income, he may say, nihil habeo nihil curo. He has no fears
for the future, because he has now only the spare supply
necessary to keep him. He has reached the zero from which
are dated the calculations of the farmer. Come what will, he
has no share either in prosperity or adversity."3
In the year 1863, an official inquiry took place into the con-
ditions of nourishment and labour of the criminals condemned
to transportation and penal servitude. The results are re-
corded in two voluminous blue books. Among other things it
is said: “From an elaborate comparison between the diet of
convicts in the convict prisons in England, and that of paupers
in workhouses and of free labourers in the same country..
it certainly appears that the former are much better fed than
either of the two other classes," whilst "the amount of labour
required from an ordinary convict under penal servitude is
about one half of what would be done by an ordinary day
labourer."5 A few characteristic depositions of witnesses: John
Smith, governor of the Edinburgh prison, deposes: No. 5056.
"The diet of the English prisons [is] superior to that of ordinary
labourers in England." No. 50. "It is the fact
that
the ordinary agricultural labourers in Scotland very seldom
get any meat at all." Answer No. 3047. "Is there anything
that you are aware of to account for the necessity of feeding
them very much better than ordinary labourers ?—Certainly
not." No. 3048. Do you think that further experiments
ought to be made in order to ascertain whether a dietary
might not be hit upon for prisoners employed on public works
nearly approaching to the dietary of free labourers? "G
1 Public Health. Seventh Report, 1864, p. 242. It is therefore nothing unusual
either for the landlord to raise a labourer's rent as soon as he hears that he is
earning a little more, or for the farmer to lower the wage of the labourer, "because
his wife has found a trade," 1. C.
3 1. c. p. 134.
2 1. c. p. 135.
4 Report of the Commissioners.
servitude, Lond. 1863, pp. 42. 50.
5 1. c. p. 77. Memorandum by the Lord Chief Justice.
6 1. c. Vol. II. Minutes of Evidence.
•
relating to transportation and penal
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 699
"He [the agricultural labourer] might say: 'I work hard, and
have not enough to eat, and when in prison I did not work
harder where I had plenty to eat, and therefore it is better for
me to be in prison again than here.'"1 From the tables ap-
pended to the first volume of the Report I have compiled the
annexed comparative summary.
WEEKLY AMOUNT OF NUTRIMENT.
Portland (convict)
Sailor in the Navy
Soldier
Working Coachmaker
Compositor
Agricultural labourer
Quantity of
Quantity of
Non-Nitro-
Nitrogenous,
Ingredients. genous In-
gredients.
Ounces
28.95
29.63
25.55
24.53
21.24
17.73
·
Ounces
150·06
152.91
114.49
162.06
100-83
118.03
Quantity of
Mineral
Matter.
1 1. c. Vol I. Appendix p. 280.
2 1. c. pp. 274, 275.
Ounces
4.68
4.52
3.94
4.23
3.12
3.29
Total.
The general result of the inquiry by the medical commission
of 1863, on the food of the lowest fed classes, is already known
to the reader. He will remember that the diet of a great part
of the agricultural labourers' families is below the mimimum
necessary "to arrest starvation diseases." This is especially
the case in all the purely rural districts of Cornwall, Devon,
Somerset, Wilts, Stafford, Oxford, Berks, and Herts. "The
nourishment obtained by the labourer himself," says Dr. E.
Smith, "is larger than the average quantity indicates, since he
eats a larger share. necessary to enable him to perform
his labour. of food than the other members of the family,
including in the poorer districts nearly all the meat and
bacon.
The quantity of food obtained by the wife
and also by the children at the period of rapid growth, is in
many cases, in almost every county, deficient, and particularly
Ounces.
183.69
187·06
14 98
190-82
125.19
139-081
700
Capitalist Production.
in nitrogen." 1 The male and female servants living with the
farmers themselves are sufficiently nourished. Their number
fell from 288,277 in 1851, to 204,962 in 1861. "The labour of
women in the fields," says Dr. Smith, "whatever may be its
disadvantages,
is under present circumstances of
great advantage to the family, since it adds that amount of in-
come which
provides shoes and clothing and pays
the rent, and thus enables the family to be better fed." One
of the most remarkable results of the inquiry was that the
agricultural labourer of England, as compared with other parts
of the United Kingdom, "is considerably the worst fed," as the
appended table shows:
Quantities of Carbon and Nitrogen weekly consumed by an
average agricultural adult.
Carbon, grains.
46.673
48.354
48.980
43.366
England
Wales
Scotland
Ireland
1 Public Health, Sixth Report, 1863, pp. 238, 249, 261, 262.
2 1. c. p. 262.
3 1. c. p. 17. The English agricultural labourer receives only as much milk, and
as much bread as the Irish. Arthur Young in his "Tour through Ireland," at the
beginning of this century, already noticed the better nourishment of the latter.
The reason is simply this, that the poor Irish farmer is incomparably more humane
than the rich English. As regards Wales, that which is said in the text holds only
for the south-west. All the doctors there agree that the increase of the deathrate
through tuberculosis, scrofula, etc., increases in intensity with the deterioration of
the physical condition of the population, and all ascribe this deterioration to poverty.
66
His (the farm labourer's) keep is reckoned at about five pence a day, but in many
districts it was said to be of much less cost to the farmer " [himself very poor].
"A morsel of the salt meat or bacon,
salted and dried to the texture of ma-
is used to
hogany, and hardly worth the difficult process of assimilation. . . .
flavour a large quantity of broth or gruel, of meal and leeks, and day after day this is
the labourer's dinner." The advance of industry resulted for him, in this harsh
and damp climate, in "the abandonment of the solid homespun clothing in favour
of the cheap and so-called cotton goods," and of stronger drinks for so-called tea.
"The agriculturist, after several hours' exposure to wind and rain, gains his cottage to
sit by a fire of peat or of balls of clay and small coal kneaded together, from which
volumes of carbonic and sulphurous acids are poured forth. His walls are of mud
and stones, his floor the bare earth which was there before the hut was built, his
roof a mass of loose and sodden thatch. Every crevice is stopped to maintain
warmth, and in an atmosphere of diabolic odour, with a mud floor, with his only
•
Nitrogen, grains.
1.594
2.031
2:348
2·434.3
•
·
•
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 701
"To the insufficient quantity and miserable quality of the
house accommodation generally had," says Dr. Simon, in his
official Health Report, "by our agricultural labourers, almost
every page of Dr. Hunter's report bears testimony. And
gradually, for many years past, the state of the labourer in
these respects has been deteriorating, house-room being now
greatly more difficult for him to find, and, when found, greatly
less suitable to his needs than, perhaps, for centuries had been
the case. Especially within the last twenty or thirty years,
the evil has been in very rapid increase, and the household cir-
cumstances of the labourer are now in the highest degree deplor-
able. Except in so far as they whom his labour enriches, see
fit to treat him with a kind of pitiful indulgence, he is quite
peculiarly helpless in the matter. Whether he shall find house-
room on the land which he contributes to till, whether the
house-room which he gets shall be human or swineish, whether
he shall have the little space of garden that so vastly lessens
the pressure of his poverty-all this does not depend on his
clothes drying on his back, he often sups and sleeps with his wife and children.
Obstetricians who have passed parts of the night in such cabins have described how
they found their feet sinking in the mud of the floor, and they were forced (easy
task) to drill a hole through the wall to effect a little private respiration. It was at-
tested by numerous witnesses in various grades of life, that to these insanitary in-
fluences, and many more, the underfed peasant was nightly exposed, and of the re-
sult, a debilitated and scrofulous people, there was no want of evidence.
The statements of the relieving officers of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire show in
a striking way the same state of things. There is b...des "a plague more horrible
still, the great number of idiots." Now a word on the climatic conditions.
"A
strong south-west wind blows over the whole country for 8 or 9 months in the year,
bringing with it torrents of rain, which discharge principally upon the western slopes
of the hills. Trees are rare, except in sheltered places, and where not protected, are
blown out of all shape. The cottages generally crouch under some bank, or often in
a ravine or quarry, and none but the smallest sheep and native cattle can live on the
pastures.
The young people migrate to the eastern mining districts of
Glamorgan and Monmouth. Carmarthenshire is the breeding ground of the mining
population and their hospital. The population can therefore barely maintain its
numbers." Thus in Cardiganshire:
•
1861.
1851.
45,155
52,459
44,446
52,955
97,614
97,401
Dr. Hunter's Report in Public Health, Seventh Report. 1864. pp. 498-502, passim.
Males
Females
702
Capitalist Production.
1
willingness and ability to pay reasonable rent for the decent
accommodation he requires, but depends on the use which
others may see fit to make of their right to do as they will
with their own.' However large may be a farm, there is no
law that a certain proportion of labourers' dwellings (much less
of decent dwellings) shall be upon it; nor does any law reserve
for the labourer ever so little right in that soil to which his
industry is as needful as sun and rain . . . . An extraneous
element weighs the balance heavily against him . . . . the in-
fluence of the Poor Law in its provisions concerning settle-
ment and chargeability. Under this influence, each parish
has a pecuniary interest in reducing to a minimum the number
of its resident labourers :-for, unhappily, agricultural labour
instead of implying a safe and permanent independence for the
hard-working labourer and his family, implies for the most part
only a longer or shorter circuit to eventual pauperism-a
pauperism which, during the whole circuit, is so near, that any
illness or temporary failure of occupation necessitates imme-
diate recourse to parochial relief-and thus all residence of
agricultural population in a parish is glaringly an addition to
its poor rates. . . . Large proprietors 2
have but to
resolve that there shall be no labourers' dwellings on their
estates, and their estates will thenceforth be virtually free
from half their responsibility for the poor. How far it has
been intended, in the English constitution and law, that this
kind of unconditional property in land should be acquirable,
and that a landlord, 'doing as he wills with his own,' should
be able to treat the cultivators of the soil as aliens, whom he
may expel from his territory, is a question which I do not pre-
tend to discuss . . . . For that (power) of eviction ... does
not exist only in theory. On a very large scale it prevails in
practice-prevails . . . . as a main governing condition in the
household circumstances of agricultural labour . . . . As regards
¹ In 1865 this law was improved to some extent. It will soon be learnt from ex-
perience that tinkering of this sort is of no use.
2 In order to understand that which follows, we must remember that Close
Villages" are those whose owners are one or two large landlords. "Open villages,
those whose soil belongs to many smaller landlords. It is in the latter that building
speculators can build cottages and lodging-houses.
</
22
1
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 703
i
1
the extent of the evil, it may suffice to refer to the evidence
which Dr. Hunter has compiled from the last census, that de-
struction of houses, notwithstanding increased local demands for
them, had, during the last ten years, been in progress in 821
separate parishes or townships of England, so that irrespec-
tively of persons who had been forced to become non-resident
(that is in the parishes in which they work), these parishes and
townships were receiving in 1861, as compared with 1851, a
population 5 per cent. greater, into house-room 4 per cent.
less
When the process of depopulation has completed
itself, the result, says Dr. Hunter, is a show-village where the
cottages have been reduced to a few, and where none but
persons who are needed as shepherds, gardeners, or game-
keepers, are allowed to live; regular servants who receive the
good treatment usual to their class.¹ But the land requires
cultivation, and it will be found that the labourers employed
upon it are not the tenants of the owner, but that they come from
a neighbouring open village, perhaps three miles off, where a
numerous small proprietary had received them when their
cottages were destroyed in the close villages around. Where
things are tending to the above result, often the cottages which
stand, testify, in their unrepaired and wretched condition, to
the extinction to which they are doomed. They are seen
standing in the various stages of natural decay. While the
shelter holds together, the labourer is permitted to rent it, and
glad enough he will often be to do so, even at the price of decent
lodging. But no repair, no improvement shall it receive, except
such as its penniless occupants can supply. And when at last
it becomes quite uninhabitable-uninhabitable even to the
humblest standard of serfdom-it will be but one more destroyed
cottage, and future poor-rates will be somewhat lightened.
1 A show village of this kind looks very nice, but is as unreal as the villages that
Catherine II. saw on her journey to the Crimea. In recent times the shepherd also
has often been banished from these show villages; e.g., near Market Harboro' is a
sheep-farm of about 500 acres, which only employs the labour of one man. To
reduce the long trudges over these wide plains, the beautiful pastures of Leicester and
Northampton, the shepherd used to get a cottage on the farm. Now they give him
a thirteenth shilling a week for lodging, that he must find far away in an open
village.
704
Capitalist Production.
While great owners are thus escaping from poor-rates through
the depopulation of lands over which they have control, the
nearest town or open village receive the evicted labourers: the
nearest, I say, but this "nearest" may mean three or four miles
distant from the farm where the labourer has his daily toil.
To that daily toil there will then have to be added, as though
it were nothing, the daily need of walking six or eight miles
for power of earning his bread. And whatever farm-work is
done by his wife and children, is done at the same disadvan-
tage. Nor is this nearly all the toil which the distance
occasions him. In the open village, cottage-speculators buy
scraps of land, which they throng as densely as they can with
the cheapest of all possible hovels. And into those wretched
habitations (which, even if they adjoin the open country, have
some of the worst features of the worst town residences) crowd
the agricultural labourers of England.¹ . . . . Nor on the other
hand must it be supposed that even when the labourer is
housed upon the lands which he cultivates, his household cir-
cumstances are generally such as his life of productive industry
would seem to deserve. Even on princely estates
.. his
cottage may be of the meanest description. There are
•
1 "The labourers' houses (in the open villages, which, of course, are always over-
crowded) are usually in rows, built with their backs against the extreme edge of the
plot of land which the builder could call his, and on this account are not allowed
light and air, except from the front." (Dr. Hunter's Report, 1. c., p. 135.) Very
often the beerseller or grocer of the village is at the same time the letter of its
houses. In this case the agricultural labourer finds in him a second master, besides
the farmer. He must be his customer as well as his tenant. "The hind with his
10s. a week, minus a rent of £4 a year
is obliged to buy at the seller's own
terms, his modicum of tea, sugar, flour, soap, candles, and beer." (1. c., p. 132.)
These open villages form, in fact, the "penal settlements" of the English agricul-
tural proletariat. Many of the cottages are simply lodging-houses, through which
all the rabble of the neighbourhood passes. The country labourer and his family who
had often, in a way truly wonderful, preserved, under the foulest conditions, a thorough-
ness and purity of character, go, in these, utterly to the devil. It is, of course, the
fashion amongst the aristocratic shylocks to shrug their shoulders pharisaically at
the building speculators, the small landlords, and the open villages. They know well
enough that their "close villages" and "show villages
show villages" are the the birth-places of the
open villages, and could not exist without them. "The labourers
were it not
for the small owners, would, for by far the most part, have to sleep under the trees
of the farms on which they work." (1. c., p. 135.) The system of "
open" and
"closed" villages obtains in all the Midland counties and throughout the East
of England.
•
•
•
•
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 705
I
¦
}
are
landlords who deem any stye good enough for their labourer
and his family, and who yet do not disdain to drive with him
the hardest possible bargain for rent.¹ It may be but a ruinous
one-bedroomed hut, having no fire-grate, no privy, no opening
window, no water supply but the ditch, no garden-but
the labourer is helpless against the wrong.... And the
Nuisances Removal Acts .
a mere dead letter
in great part dependent for their working on such cottage
owners as the one from whom his (the labourer's) hovel is
rented. . . . From brighter, but exceptional scenes, it is
requisite in the interests of justice, that attention should again
be drawn to the overwhelming preponderance of facts which
are a reproach to the civilization of England. Lamentable
indeed, must be the case, when, notwithstanding all that is
evident with regard to the quality of the present accommoda-
tion, it is the common conclusion of competent observers that
even the general badness of dwellings is an evil infinitely less
urgent than their mere numerical insufficiency. For years the
overcrowding of rural labourers' dwellings has been a matter of
deep concern, not only to persons who care for sanitary good,
but to persons who care for decent and moral life. For,
again and again in phrases so uniform that they seem stereo-
typed, reporters on the spread of epidemic disease in rural
districts, have insisted on the extreme importance of that
over-crowding, as an influence which renders it a quite hope-
less task, to attempt the limiting of any infection which is
introduced. And again and again it has been pointed out
that, notwithstanding the many salubrious influences which
there are in country life, the crowding which so favours the
•
1 "The employer
is
directly or indirectly securing to himself the
profit on a man employed at 10s a week, and receiving from this poor hind £4 or £5
annual rent for houses not worth £20 in a really free market, but maintained at their
artificial value by the power of the owner to say 'Use my house, or go seek a hiring
elsewhere, without a character from me.'
Does a man wish to better himself,
to go as a plate-layer on the railway, or to begin quarry-work, the same power is
ready with 'Work for me at this low rate of wages, or begone at a week's notice;
take your pig with you, and get what you can for the potatoes growing in your
garden.' Should his interest appear to be better served by it, an enhanced rent is
sometimes preferred in these cases by the owner (i.c., the farmer) as the penalty for
leaving his service." (Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 132.)
·
2 Y
706
Capitalist Production.
extension of contagious disease, also favours the origination of
disease which is not contagious. And those who have de-
nounced the over-crowded state of our rural population have.
not been silent as to a further mischief. Even where their
primary concern has been only with the injury to health, often
almost perforce they have referred to other relations on the
subject. In showing how frequently it happens that adult
persons of both sexes, married and unmarried, are huddled
together in single small sleeping rooms, their reports have
carried the conviction that, under the circumstances they
describe, decency must always be outraged, and morality almost
of necessity must suffer.¹ Thus, for instance, in the appendix of
my last annual report, Dr. Ord, reporting on an outbreak of fever
at Wing, in Buckinghamshire, mentions how a young man who
had come thither from Wingrave with fever, "in the first days of
his illness slept in a room with nine other persons. Within a
fortnight several of these persons were attacked, and in the
course of a few weeks five out of the nine had fever, and one died"
From Dr. Harvey, of St. George's Hospital, who, on
private professional business, visited Wing during the time of
the epidemic, I received information exactly in the sense of the
above report...
"A young woman having fever, lay at night
in a room occupied by her father and mother, her bastard
child, two young men (her brothers), and her two sisters, each
with a bastard child-10 persons in all. A few weeks ago 13
persons slept in it.”2
Dr. Hunter investigated 5,375 cottages of agricultural lab-
ourers, not only in the purely agricultural districts, but in all
counties of England. Of these, 2,195 had only one bed-
1 "New married couples are no edifying study for grown-up brothers and sisters;
and though instances must not be recorded, sufficient data are remembered to warrant
the remark, that great depression and sometimes death are the lot of the female
participator in the offence of incest." (Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 137.) A member of the
rural police who had for many years been a detective in the worst quarters of London,
says of the girls of his village: "their boldness and shamelessness I never saw equalled
during some years of police life and detective duty in the worst parts of London.
They live like pigs, great boys and girls, mothers and fathers, all sleeping in
one room, in many instances." (Child. Empl. Com. Sixth Report, 1867, p. 77 £q.
155.)
2 Public Health. Seventh Report, 1864, pp. 9, 14 passim.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 707
room (often at the same time used as living-room), 2,930 only
two, and 250, more than two. I will give a few specimens
culled from a dozen counties.
(1.) BEDFORDSHIRE.
Wrestlingworth. Bedrooms about 12 feet long and 10 broad,
although many are smaller than this. The small, one-storied
cots are often divided by partitions into two bedrooms, one
bed frequently in a kitchen, 5 feet 6 inches in height. Rent,
£3 a year. The tenants have to make their own privies, the
landlord only supplies a hole. As soon as one has made a
privy, it is made use of by the whole neighbourhood. One
house, belonging to a family called Richardson, was of quite
unapproachable beauty. "Its plaster walls bulged very like a
lady's dress in a curtsey. One gable end was convex, the
other concave, and on this last, unfortunately, stood the chim-
ney, a curved tube of clay and wood like an elephant's trunk.
A long stick served as prop to prevent the chimney from fal-
ling. The doorway and window were rhomboidal." Of 17
houses visited, only 4 had more than one bedroom, and those
four overcrowded. The cots with one bedroom sheltered 3
adults and 3 children, a married couple with 6 children, &c.
Dunton. High rents, from £4 to £5; weekly wages of the man,
10s. They hope to pay the rent by the straw-plaiting of the
family. The higher the rent, the greater the number that
must work together to pay it. Six adults, living with 4 chil-
dren in one sleeping apartment, pay £3 10s. for it. The
cheapest house in Dunton, 15 feet long externally, 10 broad,
let for £3. Only one of the houses investigated had 2 bed-
rooms. A little outside the village, a house whose "tenants
dunged against the house-side," the lower 9 inches of the door
eaten away through sheer rottenness; the doorway, a single
opening closed at night by a few bricks, ingeniously pushed
up after shutting and covered with some matting. Half a
window, with glass and frame, had gone the way of all flesh.
Here, without furniture, huddled together, were 3 adults and
5 children. Dunton is not worse than the rest of Biggleswade
Union.
708
Capitalist Production.
(2.) BERKSHIRE.
Beenham. In June, 1864, a man, his wife and 4 children
lived in a cot (one-storied cottage). A daughter came home
from service with scarlet fever. She died, One child sickened
and died. The mother and one child were down with typhus
when Dr. Hunter was called in. The father and one child
slept outside, but the difficulty of securing isolation was seen
here, for in the crowded market of the miserable village lay
the linen of the fever-striken household, waiting for the wash.
The rent of H.'s house, 1s. a week; one bedroom for man, wife,
and 6 children. One house let for 8d. a-week, 14 feet 6 inches
long, 7 feet broad; kitchen, 6 feet high; the bedroom without
window, fire-place, door, or opening, except into the lobby; no
garden. A man lived here for a little while, with two grown-
up daughters and one grown-up son; father and son slept on
the bed, the girls in the passage. Each of the latter had a
child while the family was living here, but one went to the
workhouse for her confinement and then came home.
(3.) BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
30 cottages-on 1,000 acres of land-contained here about 130-
140 persons. The parish of Bradenham comprises 1,000 acres;
it numbered, in 1851, 36 houses and a population of 84 males
and 54 females. This inequality of the sexes was partly
remedied in 1861, when they numbered 98 males and 87
females; increase in 10 years of 14 men and 33 women.
Meanwhile, the number of houses was one less.
Winslow. Great part of this newly built in good style; de-
mand for houses appears very marked, since very miserable
cots let at 1s. to 1s. 3d. per week.
Water Eaton. Here the landlords, in view of the increas-
ing population, have destroyed about 20 per cent. of the exist-
ing houses. A poor labourer, who had to go about 4 miles to
his work, answered the question, whether he could not find a
cot nearer : No; they know better than to take a man in
with my large family."
เC
1
1
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 709
k
{
Tinker's End, near Winslow. A bedroom in which were 4
adults and 4 children; 11 feet long, 9 feet broad, 6 feet 5
inches high at its highest part; another 11 feet 3 inches by 9
feet, 5 feet 10 inches high, sheltered 6 persons. Each of these
families bad less space than is considered necessary for a con-
vict. No house had more than one bedroom, not one of them
a back-door; water very scarce; weekly rent from 1s. 4d. to
2s. In 16 of the houses visited, only 1 man that earned 10s.
a-week. The quantity of air for each person under the cir-
cumstances just described corresponds to that which he would
have if he were shut up in a box of 4 feet measuring each
way, the whole night. But then, the ancient dens afforded a
certain amount of unintentional ventilation.
(4.) CAMBRIDGESHIRE.
Gamblingay belongs to several landlords. It contains the
wretchedest cots to be found anywhere. Much straw-plaiting.
"A deadly lassitude, a hopeless surrendering up to filth," reigns
in Gamblingay. The neglect in its centre, becomes mortifica-
tion at its extremities, north and south, where the houses are
rotting to pieces. The absentee landlords bleed this poor
rookery too freely. The rents are very high; 8 or 9 persons
packed in one sleeping apartment, in 2 cases 6 adults, each
with 1 or 2 children in one small bedroom.
(5.) ESSEX.
In this county, diminutions in the number of persons and
of cottages go, in many parishes, hand in hand. In not less
than 22 parishes, however, the destruction of houses has not
prevented increase of population, or has not brought about
that expulsion which, under the name "migration to towns,"
generally occurs. In Fingringhoe, a parish of 3443 acres, were
in 1851, 145 houses; in 1861, only 110. But the people did
not wish to go away, and managed even to increase under
these circumstances. In 1851, 252 persons inhabited 61
houses, but in 1861, 262 persons were squeezed into 49 houses.
In Basilden, in 1851, 157 persons lived on 1827 acres, in 35
710
Capitalist Production.
houses; at the end of ten years, 180 persons in 27 houses. In
the parishes of Fingringhoe, South Farnbridge, Widford, Basil-
den, and Ramsden Crags, in 1851, 1392 persons were living on
8449 acres in 316 houses; in 1861, on the same area, 1473
persons in 249 houses.
(6.) HEREFORDSHIRE.
This little county has suffered more from the "eviction-
spirit" than any other in England. At Nadby, over-crowded
cottages generally, with only 2 bedrooms, belonging for the
most part to the farmers. They easily let them for £3 or £4
a-year, and paid a weekly wage of 9s.
(7.) HUNTINGDon.
Hartford had, in 1851, 87 houses; shortly after this, 19
cottages were destroyed in this small parish of 1720 acres ;
population in 1831, 452; in 1852, 832; and in 1861, 341. 14
cottages, each with 1 bedroom, were visited. In one, a married
couple, 3 grown-up sons, 1 grown-up daughter, 4 children-in
all 10; in another, 3 adults, 6 children. One of these rooms,
in which 8 people slept, was 12 feet 10 inches long, 12 feet 2
inches broad, 6 feet 9 inches high: the average, without
making any deduction for projections into the apartment,
gave about 130 cubic feet per head. In the 14 sleeping
rooms, 34 adults and 33 children. These cottages are seldom
provided with gardens, but many of the inmates are able to
farm small allotments at 10s. or 12s. per rood. These allot-
ments are at a distance from the houses, which are without
privies. The family "must either go to the allotment to de-
posit their ordures," or, as happens in this place, saving your
presence, use a closet with a trough set like a drawer in a
chest of drawers, and drawn out weekly and conveyed to the
allotment to be emptied where its contents were wanted." In
Japan, the circle of life-conditions moves more decently than
this.
tr
(8.) LINCOLNSHIRE.
Langtoft. A man lives here, in Wright's house, with his
i
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 711
1
I
IN
p
((
wife, her mother, and 5 children; the house has a front kit-
chen, scullery, bedroom over the front kitchen; front kitchen
and bedroom, 12 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches; the whole
ground floor, 21 feet 2 inches by 9 feet 5 inches. The bed-
room is a garret; the walls run together into the roof like a
sugar-loaf, a dormer-window opening in front.
Why did
he live here? On account of the garden? No; it is very
small. Rent? High, 1s. 3d. per week. Near his work?
No; 6 miles away, so that he walks daily, to and fro, 12 miles.
He lived there, because it was a tenantable cot," and because
he wanted to have a cot for himself alone, anywhere, at any
price, and in any conditions. The following are the statistics
of 12 houses in Langtoft, with 12 bedrooms, 38 adults, and 36
children.
No. 1.
2.
3.
""
25
""
""
Houses.
""
4.
5.
6.
Bedrooms.
1
1
1
1
1
1
TWELVE HOUSES IN LANGTOFT.
Adults.
3
4
4
5
2
5
Children.
100
5
CO
3
Jefferie
4
4
2
3
Number of
Persons.
8
7
8
9
4
S
:)
No. 7. 1
8.
1
9.
1
10.
1
11.
1
12. 1
??
";
""
Houses.
""
Bedrooms.
Adults.
3
CO
3
2
C
GO
3
2
Children.
3
2
0
3
CO
3
4
Number of
Persons.

6
CO
100
5
2
20
5
6
6
(9.) KENT.
Kennington, very seriously over-populated in 1859, when
diphtheria appeared, and the parish doctor instituted a medical
inquiry into the condition of the poorer classes. He found
that in this locality, where much labour is employed, various
cots had been destroyed and no new ones built. In one district
stood four houses, named birdcages; each had 4 rooms of the
following dimensions in feet and inches:
712
Capitalist Production.
ì
:
Kitchen: 9 ft. 5 by 8 ft. 11 by 6 ft. 6.
Scullery 8 ft. 6 by 4 ft. 6 by 6 ft. 6.
Bedroom: 8 ft. 5 by 5 ft. 10 by 6 ft. 3.
Bedroom: 8 ft. 3 by 8 ft. 4 by 6 ft. 3.
(10.) NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
Brinworth, Pickford and Floore: in these villages in the
winter 20-30 men were lounging about the streets from want
of work. The farmers do not always till sufficiently the corn
and turnip lands, and the landlord has found it best to throw
all his farms together into 2 or 3. Hence want of employ-
ment. Whilst on one side of the wall, the land calls for labour,
on the other side the defrauded labourers are casting at it
longing glances. Feverishly overworked in summer, and half-
starved in winter, it is no wonder if they say in their peculiar
dialect, the parson and gentlefolk seem frit to death at
them."
(C
At Floore, instances, in one bedroom of the smallest size, of
couples with 4, 5, 6 children; 3 adults with 5 children; a
couple with grandfather and 6 children down with scarlet
fever, &c.; in two houses with two bedrooms, two families of
8 and 9 adults respectively.
(11.) WILTSHIRE.
Stratton. 31 houses visited, 8 with only one bedroom.
Pentill, in the same parish: a cot let at 1s. 3d. weekly with 4
adults and 4 children, had nothing good about it, except the
walls, from the floor of rough-hewn pieces of stones to the
roof of worn-out thatch.
(12.) WORCESTERSHIRE.
House-destruction here not quite so excessive; yet from 1851
to 1861, the number of inhabitants to each house on the average,
has risen from 4.2 to 4·6.
Badsey. Many cots and little gardens here. Some of the
farmers declare that the cots are "a great nuisance here, be-
cause they bring the poor." On the statement of one gentle-
•
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 713
I
:
!
man: “The poor are none the better for them; if you build 500
they will let fast enough, in fact, the more you build, the more
they want" (according to him the houses give birth to the
inhabitants, who then by a law of Nature
"the means
press on
of housing "). Dr. Hunter remarks: "Now these poor must
come from somewhere, and as there is no particular attraction,
such as doles, at Badsey, it must be repulsion from some other
unfit place, which will send them here. If each could find an
allotment near his work, he would not prefer Badsey, where he
pays for his scrap of ground twice as much as the farmer pays
for his."
The continual emigration to the towns, the continual forma-
tion of surplus-population in the country through the concen-
tration of farms, conversion of arable land into pasture,
machinery, &c., and the continual eviction of the agricultural
population by the destruction of their cottages, go hand in
hand. The more empty the district is of men, the greater is its
"relative surplus-population," the greater is their pressure on
the means of employment, the greater is the absolute excess of
the agricultural population over the means for housing it, the
greater, therefore, in the villages is the local surplus-population
and the most pestilential packing together of human beings.
The packing together of knots of men in scattered little vil-
lages and small country towns corresponds to the forcible
draining of men from the surface of the land. The continuous
superseding of the agricultural labourers, in spite of their
diminishing number and the increasing mass of their products,
gives birth to their pauperism. Their pauperism is ultimately
a motive to their eviction and the chief source of their miser-
able housing which breaks down their last power of resistance,
and makes them mere slaves of the landed proprietors and the
farmers.1 Thus the minimum of wages becomes a law of
1 "The heaven-born employment of the hind gives dignity even to this position.
He is not a slave, but a soldier of peace, and deserves his place in married men's
quarters to be provided by the landlord, who has claimed a power of enforced labour
similar to that the country demands of the soldier. He no more receives market
price for his work than does the soldier. Like the soldier he is caught young, igno-
rant, knowing only his own trade, and his own locality. Early marriage and the
operation of the various laws of settlement affect the one as enlistment and the
714
Capitalist Production.
Nature to them. On the other hand, the land, in spite of its
constant "relative surplus-population," is at the same time
under-populated. This is seen, not only locally at the points
where the efflux of men to towns, mines, railroad-making, &c., is
most marked. It is to be seen everywhere, in harvest-time as
well as in spring and summer, at those frequently recurring
times when English agriculture, so careful and intensive, wants
extra hands. There are always too many agricultural labourers
for the ordinary, and always too few for the exceptional or
temporary needs of the cultivation of the soil¹. Hence we find
in the official documents contradictory complaints from the
same places of deficiency and excess of labour simultane-
ously. The temporary or local want of labour brings about no
rise in wages, but a forcing of the women and children into
the fields, and exploitation at an age constantly lowered. As
soon as the exploitation of the women and children takes place
on a larger scale, it becomes in turn a new means of making a
surplus-population of the male agricultural labourer and of
keeping down his wage. In the east of England thrives a
beautiful fruit of this vicious circle-the so-called gang-system,
to which I must briefly return here.2
"It is a
Mutiny Act affect the other." (Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 132.)
(Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 132.) Sometimes an excep-
tionally soft-hearted landlord relents at the solitude he has created.
melancholy thing to stand alone in one's country," said Lord Leicester, when com-
plimented on the completion of Hookham. "I look around and not a house is to
be seen but mine. I am the giant of Giant
bours."
Castle, and have eat up all my neigh-
""
¹ A similar movement is seen during the last ten years in France; in proportion as
capitalist production there takes possession of agriculture, it drives the "surplus'
agricultural population into the towns. Here also we find deterioration in the housing
and other conditions at the source of the surplus-population. On the special "pro-
létariat foncier," to which this system of parcelling out the land has given rise, see,
among others, the work of Colins, already quoted, and Karl Marx "Der Achtzehnte
Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte." 2nd edition. Hamburg, 1869, pp. 56, &c. In
1846, the town population in France was represented by 24:42, the agricultural by
75′58; in 1861, the town by 28 86, the agricultural by 714 per cent. During the
last 5 years, the diminution of the agricultural percentage of the population has been
yet more marked. As early as 1846, Pierre Dupont in his "Ouvriers " sang:
Mal vêtus, logés dans des trous,
Sous les combles, dans les décombres,
Nous vivons avec les hiboux
Et les larrons, amis des ombres.
2"Sixth and last Report of the Children's Employment Commission," published
at the end of March, 1867. It deals solely with the agricultural gang-system.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 715
:
The gang-system obtains almost exclusively in the counties.
of Lincoln, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Nottingham, here and there in the neighbouring counties of
Northampton, Bedford, and Rutland. Lincolnshire will serve us
as an example. A large part of this county is new land, marsh
formerly, or even, as in others of the eastern counties just
named, won lately from the sea. The steam-engine has worked
wonders in the way of drainage. What were once fens and
sandbanks, bear now a luxuriant sea of corn and the highest
of rents. The same thing holds of the alluvial lands won by
human endeavour, as in the island of Axholme and other
parishes on the banks of the Trent. In proportion as the new
farms arose, not only were no new cottages built: old ones
were demolished, and the supply of labour had to come from
open villages, miles away, by long roads that wound along the
sides of the hills. There alone had the population formerly
found shelter from the incessant floods of the winter-time.
The labourers that dwell on the farms of 400—1000 acres (they
are called "confined labourers") are solely employed on such
kinds of agricultural work as is permanent, difficult, and car-
ried on by aid of horses. For every 100 acres there is, on an
average, scarcely one cottage. A fen farmer, e.g., gave evidence
before the Commission of Inquiry: "I farm 320 acres, all arable
land. I have not one cottage on my farm. I have only one
labourer on my farm now. I have four horsemen lodging
about. We get light work done by gangs." The soil requires
much light field labour, such as weeding, hoeing, certain pro-
cesses of manuring, removing of stones, &c. This is done by
the gangs, or organised bands that dwell in the open villages.
The gang consists of 10 to 40 or 50 persons, women, young
persons of both sexes (13-18 years of age, although the boys
are for the most part eliminated at the age of 13), and
children of both sexes (6-13 years of age). At the head is the
gang-master, always an ordinary agricultural labourer, generally
what is called a bad lot, a scapegrace, unsteady, drunken, but
with a dash of enterprise and savoir faire. He is the recruit-
ing-sergeant for the gang, which works under him, not under
1"Child. Emp. Comm., VI. Report." Evidence 173, p. 37.
716
Capitalist Production.
the farmer. He generally arranges with the latter for piece-
work, and his income, which on the average is not very much
above that of an ordinary agricultural labourer,¹ depends almost
entirely upon the dexterity with which he manages to extract
within the shortest time the greatest possible amount of labour
from his gang.
The farmers have discovered that women
work steadily only under the direction of men, but that women
and children, once set going, impetuously spend their life-force
-as Fourier knew-while the adult male labourer is shrewd
enough to economise his as much as he can. The gang-master
goes from one farm to another, and thus employs his gang from
6 to 8 months in the year. Employment by him is, therefore,
much more lucrative and more certain for the labouring fami-
lies, than employment by the individual farmer, who only
employs children occasionally. This circumstance so com-
pletely rivets his influence in the open villages that children
are generally only to be hired through his instrumentality.
The lending out of these individually, independently of the
gang, is his second trade.
The "drawbacks" of the system are the over-work of the
children and young persons, the enormous marches that they
make daily to and from the farms, 5, 6, and sometimes 7 miles.
distant, finally, the demoralisation of the gang. Although the
gangmaster, who, in some districts is called "the driver," is
armed with a long stick, he uses it but seldom, and complaints
of brutal treatment are exceptional. He is a democratic em-
peror, or a kind of Pied Piper of Hamelin. He must therefore
be popular with his subjects, and he binds them to himself by
the charms of the gipsy life under his direction. Coarse free-
dom, a noisy jollity, and obscenest impudence give attractions
to the gang. Generally the gangmaster pays up in a public
house; then he returns home at the head of the procession reel-
ing drunk, propped up right and left by a stalwart virago
while children and young persons bring up the rear, boisterous,
and singing chaffing and bawdy songs. On the return journey
what Fourier calls "phanerogamie," is the order of the day.
1 Some gangmasters, however, have worked themselves up to the position of farmers
of 500 acres, or proprietors of whole rows of houses.
3
י
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 717
The getting with child of girls of 13 and 14 by their male com-
panions of the same age, is common. The open villages which
supply the contingent of the gang, become Sodoms and Go-
morrahs,¹ and have twice as high a rate of illegitimate births
as the rest of the kingdom. The moral character of girls bred
in these schools, when married women, was shown above.
Their children, when opium does not give them the finishing
stroke, are born recruits of the gang.
The gang in its classical form just described, is called the
public, common, or tramping gang. For there are also private
gangs. These are made up in the same way as the common
gang, but count fewer members, and work, not under a gang-
master, but under some old farm servant, whom the farmer does
not know how to employ in any better way. The gipsy fun
has vanished here, but according to all witnesses, the payment
and treatment of the children is worse.
The gang-system, which during the last years has steadily
increased,2 clearly does not exist for the sake of the gangmaster.
It exists for the enrichment of the large farmers,3 and indirectly
of the landlords. For the farmer there is no more ingenious
method of keeping his labourers well below the normal level,
and yet of always having an extra hand ready for extra work,
of extracting the greatest possible amount of labour with the
least possible amount of money,5 and of making adult male
labour "redundant." From the exposition already made, it
4
1 "Half the girls of Ludford have been ruined by going out" (in gangs). 1. c.
p. 6, § 32.
2.44 They (gangs) have greatly increased of late years. In some places they are said
to have been introduced at comparatively late dates; in others where gangs
have been known for many years ... more and younger children are employed in
them.' (1. c., p. 79, § 174.)
""
3 "Small farmers never employ gangs." "It is not on poor land, but on land
which affords rent of from 40 to 50 shillings, that women and children are employed
in the greatest numbers." (1. c., pp. 17, 14.)
*To one of these gentlemen the taste of his rent was so grateful that he indig-
nantly declared to the Commission of Inquiry that the whole hubbub was only due
to the name of the system. If instead of " gang" it were called "the Agricultural
Juvenile Industrial Self-supporting Association," everything would be all right.
Gang work is cheaper than other work; that is why they are employed," says a
former gangmaster (1. c., p. 17, § 14). "The gang-system is decidedly the cheapest
for the farmer, and decidedly the worst for the children," says a farmer. (1. c.,
p. 16, § 3.)
718
Capitalist Production.
(C
will be understood why, on the one hand, a greater or less lack
of employment for the agricultural labourer is admitted, while
on the other, the gang-system is at the same time declared
necessary" on account of the want of adult male labour and
its migration to the towns. The cleanly weeded land, and the
uncleanly human weeds, of Lincolnshire, are pole and counter-
pole of capitalistic production.²
1 "Undoubtedly much of the work now done by children in gangs used to be done
by men and women. More men are out of work now where children and women are
employed than formerly." (1. c., p. 43, n. 202.) On the other hand, "the labour
question in some agricultural districts, particularly the arable, is becoming so serious
in consequence of emigration, and the facility afforded by railways for getting to large
towns that I (the "I" is the steward of a great lord) think the services of children
are most indispensable." (1. c., p. 80, n. 180.) For the "labour question" in Eng-
lish agricultural districts, differently from the rest of the civilised world, means the
landlords' and farmers' question viz., how it is possible, despite an always increasing
exodus of the agricultural folk, to keep up a sufficient relative surplus-population in
the country, and by means of it keep the wages of the agricultural labourer at a
minimum ?
2 The "Public Health Report," where in dealing with the subject of children's
mortality, the gang-system is treated in passing, remains unknown to the press, and,
therefore, to the English public. On the other hand, the last report of the "Child.
Empl. Comm." afforded the press sensational copy always welcome. Whilst the
Liberal press asked how the fine gentlemen and ladies, and the well-paid clergy of
the State Church, with whom Lincolnshire swarms, could allow such a system to
arise on their estates, under their very eyes, they who send out expressly missions to
the Antipodes, "for the improvement of the morals of South Sea Islanders ”—the
more refined press confined itself to reflections on the coarse degradation of the agri-
cultural population who are capable of selling their children into such slavery!
Under the accursed conditions to which these "delicate" people condemn the agri-
cultural labourer, it would not be surprising if he ate his own children. What is
really wonderful is the healthy integrity of character, he has, in great part, retained.
The official reports prove that the parents, even in the gang districts, loathe the
gang-system. "There is much in the evidence that show that the parents of the
children would, in many instances, be glad to be aided by the requirements of a legal
obligation, to resist the pressure and the temptations to which they are often subject.
They are liable to be urged, at times by the parish officers, at times by employers,
under threats of being themselves discharged, to be taken to work at an age when
school attendance .. would be manifestly to their greater advantage.
All that time and strength wasted; all the suffering from extra and unprofitable
fatigue produced to the labourer and to his children; every instance in which the parent
may have traced the moral ruin of his child to the undermining of delicacy by the
overcrowding of cottages, or to the contaminating influences of the public gang, must
have been so many incentives to feelings in the minds of the labouring poor which
can be well understood, and which it would be needless to particularise. They must
be conscious that much bodily and mental pain has thus been inflicted upon them
from causes for which they were in no way answerable; to which, had it been in their
power, they would have in no way consented; and against which they were power.
less to struggle." (1. c., p. xx., § 82, and xxiii., n. 96.)
•
·
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 719
(f.) IRELAND.
In concluding this section, we must travel for a moment to
Ireland. First, the main facts of the case.
The population of Ireland had, in 1841, reached 8,222,664;
in 1851, it had dwindled to 6,623,985; in 1861, to 5,850,309;
in 1866, to 5 millions, nearly to its level in 1801. The
diminution began with the famine year, 1846, so that Ireland,
in less than twenty years, lost more than ths of its people.1
Its total emigration from May, 1851, to July, 1865, numbered
1,591,487: the emigration during the years 1861-1865 was
more than half-a-million. The number of inhabited houses fell,
from 1851-1861, by 52,990. From 1851-1861, the number of
holdings of 15 to 30 acres increased 61,000, that of holdings
over 30 acres, 109,000, whilst the total number of all farms fell
120,000, a fall, therefore, solely due to the suppression of farms
under 15 acres-i.e., to their centralisation.
Year.
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
HORSES.
619,811
614,232
602,894
579,978
562,158
547,867
Table A.
LIVE STOCK.


Total Number. Decrease.
5,993
11,338
22,916
17,820
14,291
Total Number.
3,606,374
3,471,688
3 254,890
3,144,231
3,262,294
3,493,414
CATTLE.
Decrease. Increase.
138,316
216.798
110,695
118,063
231,120
1 Population of Ireland, 1801, 5,319,867 persons; 1811, 6,084,996; 1821, 6,869,544;
1831, 7,828, 347; 1841, 8,222,664.
720
Capitalist Production.


SHEEP.
Year. Total Number. Decrease. Increase. Total Number. Decrease. Increase.
1860
3,542,080
1861
3,556,050
1862
3,456,132
99,918
1863
3,308,204 147,982
1864
3,366,941
1865 3,688,742
HORSES.
72,358
CATTLE.
1,271,072
1,102,042
1,154,324
1,067,458
1,058,480
58,737
321,801 1,299,893
13,970
116,626
PIGS.
The decrease of the population was naturally accompanied
by a decrease in the mass of products. For our purpose, it
suffices to consider the 5 years from 1861-1865 during which
over half-a-million emigrated, and the absolute number of
people sank by more than of a million.
From the above table it results :-
SHEEP.
169,030
146,608
86,866
8,978
52,282
241,413
Absolute Decrease. Absolute Decrease. Absolute Increase, Absolute Increase.
28,819 1
PIGS.
Let us now turn to agriculture, which yields the means of
subsistence for cattle and for men. In the following table is
calculated the decrease or increase for each separate year, as
compared with its immediate predecessor. The Cereal Crops
1 The result would be found yet more unfavourable if we went further back.
Thus Sheep in 1865, 3,688,742, but in 1856, 3,694,294. Pigs in 1865, 1,299,893, but
in 1858, 1,409,883.
2
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 721
C
曳
​include wheat, oats, barley, rye, beans, and peas; the Green
Crops, potatoes, turnips, mangolds, beet-root, cabbages, carrots,
parsnips, vetches, &c.
INCREASE OR DECREASE IN THE AREA UNDER CROPS AND
GRASS IN ACREAGE.
Year.
CEREAL
CROPS.
Decrease.
GREEN CROPS.
Decrease.
Increase.
Table B.

25,241
GRASS AND
CLOVER.
Decrease.
Increase.
Decrease.
FLAX.
Acres.
Acres, Acres. Acres. Acres. Acres. Acres.
1861
15,701
36,974
47,969
1862
72,734 74,785
1863 144,719 19,358
1864 122,437 2,317
1865
72,450
1861-65 428,041 107,984
Increase.
6,623
7,724
47,486
68,970 50,159
82,834
TOTAL CULTIVA-
TED LAND.
Decrease.
Acres. Acres.
19,271 81,873
2,055 138,841
63,922 92,431
87,761
Increase.
28,218
122,850 330,860
10,493
In the year 1865, 127,470 additional acres came under the
heading "grass land," chiefly because the area under the head-
ing of "bog and waste unoccupied," decreased by 101,543 acres.
If we compare 1865 with 1864, there is a decrease in cereals of
246,667 qrs., of which 48,999 were wheat, 160,605 oats, 29,892
barley, &c. the decrease in potatoes was 446,398 tons, although
the area of their cultivation increased in 1865.
2 Z
722
Capitalist Production.
Table C.
INCREASE OR DECREASE IN THE AREA UNDER CULTIVATION, PRODUCT PER ACRE, AND TOTAL PRODUCT
OF 1865 COMPARED WITH 1864.
PRODUCT.
Wheat,
Oats,
Barley,
Bere,
Rye,
Potatoes,
Turnips,
Mangold-wurzel
Cabbages,
Flax,
Hay,
..
...
...
...
•
Acres of Cultivated
Land.
1864.
1865.
Increase or De-
crease, 1865.
Form
276,483 266,989
1,814,886 1,745,228
172,700 177,102
4,402
8,894 !
1,197
10,091
1,039,724 1,066,260 26,536
337,355 334,212
14,073 14,839
31,821 33,622 1,801
301,693 251,433
1,609,569 1,678,493 68,924
316
Product per Acre.
{
1864.
9,494 Wheat, cwt., 13.3
69,658 Oats,
12.1
15.9
16.4
8.5
Barley,
Bere,
Rye,
""
"}
"}
"}
Potatoes, tons, 4°1
3,143 Turnips, 10.3
Mangold- 10.5
wurzel,
Cabbages,,, 9.3
50,260 Flax, st. (14 lb) 34-2
Hay, tons,
1.6
>>
""
1865.
13.0
12.3
14.9
14.8
10.4
3.6
9.9
13.3
10'4
25*2
1.8
Increase or De-
crease, 1865.
0.2
1'9
2.8
1.1
0.2
0.3
1'0
1.6
1864.
9.0
Qrs.
875,782,,
7,826,332,
761,909,,
15,160
12,680
15
""
,,
TOTAL PLODUCT.
""
1865.
Qrs.
826,783
7,659,727
""
"}
054,312,383 ts.| 3,865,990 ts.
04 | 3,467,659 3,301,683
147,284
297,375,,
191,937,,
350,252 "}
64,506 st.
39,561 st.
2,607,153 ts. 3,068,707 ts. 461,554 ""
732,017,,
13,989
18,364 5,684 qs.
>>
""
Increase or Decrease,
1865.
""
44,653 ts.
52,877,,
48,999 qs.
166,605,,
29,892,,
1,171,
446,398 ts.
165,976,
24,945 st.
1
>>
1 The data of the text are put together from the materials of the "Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, General Abstracts, Dublin," for
the years 1860, et seq., and "Agricultural Statistics, Ireland, Tables showing the estimated average produce, &c., Dublin, 1866. These
statistics are official, and laid before Parliament annually. [Note to 2nd edition. The official statistics for the year 1872 show, as com-
pared with 1871, a decrease in area under cultivation of 134,915 acres. An increase occurred in the cultivation of green crops, turnips,
mangold-wurzel, and the like; a decrease in the area under cultivation for wheat of 16,000 acres; oats, 14,000; barley and rye, 4,000;
potatoes, 66,632; flax, 34,667; grass, clover, vetches, rape-seed, 30,000. The soil under cultivation for wheat shows for the last 5
years
the following stages of decrease:-1868, 285,000 acres; 1869, 280,000; 1870, 259,000: 1871, 244.000; 1872, 228,000. For 1872 we find,
in round numbers, an increase of 2,600 horses, 80,000 horned cattle, 68,609 sheep, and a decrease of 236,000 pigs.]

The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 723
From the movement of population and the agricultural pro-
duce of Ireland, we pass to the movement in the purse of its
landlords, larger farmers, and industrial capitalists. It is
reflected in the rise and fall of the Income-tax. It may be
remembered that Schedule D (profits with the exception of
those of farmers), includes also the so-called "professional"
profits-i.e., the incomes of lawyers, doctors, &c.; and the
Schedules C. and E., in which no special details are given,
include the incomes of employés, officers, State sinecurists,
State fundholders, &c.
THE INCOME-TAX ON THE SUBJOINED INCOMES IN
POUNDS STERLING.
1860.
Table D.
1861.
Industrial, &c.,
Profits...
1862.
1863.
1864.
SCHEDULE A.
Rent of Land 13,893,829 13,003,554 13,398,938 13,494,091 13,470,700 13,801,616
SCHEDULE B.
1865.
Farmers' Profits 2,765,387 2,773,644 2,937,899 2,938,823 | 2,930,874 2,946,072
SCHEDULE D.
1
4,891,652 4,836,203 4,858,800 4,846,497 4,546,147 4,850,199
Total Schedules
A. to E... 22,962, 885 22,998,394 23,597,574 23,658,631 23,236,298 23,930,340
1
Under Schedule D. the average annual increase of income
from 1853-1864 was only 0.93; whilst, in the same period, in
Great Britain, it was 4.58. The following table shows the dis-
tribution of the profits (with the exception of those of farmers)
for the years 1864 and 1865 :—
1 Tenth Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. Lond. 1866.
724
Capitalist Production.
Table E.
SCHEDULE D. INCOME FROM PROFITS (OVER £60) IN IRELAND.
Yearly income over
£60 and under £100
Total yearly income 4,368,610 divided among
of......
17,467 persons.
Of the yearly total
income
....
Of these.....
238,626
1,979,066
Remainder of the
total yearly income 2,150,818
1,083,906
1,066,912
130,535
646,377
262,610
1864.
£.
""
,, 11,321
""
""
""
""
""
5,015
""
1,131
910
121
105
26
3
در
""
""
در
""
99
""
""
4,669,979 divided among
18,081 persons.
222,575
2,028,471
1865.
£.
2,418,933
1,097,937
1,320,996
584,458
736,448
264,528
>"
""
""
""
>>
"
""
"
4,703
12,184
1,194
1,044
186
122
28
3
""
""
">
""
""
"}
""
""
1
England, a country with fully developed capitalist produc-
tion, and pre-eminently industrial, would have bled to death
with such a drain of population as Ireland has suffered. But
Ireland is at present only an agricultural district of England,
marked off by a wide channel from the country to which it
yields corn, wool, cattle, industrial and military recruits.
The depopulation of Ireland has thrown much of the land
out of cultivation, has greatly diminished the produce of the
soil,2 and, in spite of the greater area devoted to cattle breed-
ing, has brought about, in some of its branches, an absolute
diminution, in others, an advance scarcely worthy of mention,
and constantly interrupted by retrogressions. Nevertheless,
1 The total yearly income under Schedule D. is different in this table from that
which appears in the preceding ones, because of certain deductions allowed by law.
2 If the product also diminishes relatively per acre, it must not be forgotten that
for a century and a half England has indirectly exported the soil of Ireland, without
as much as allowing its cultivators the means for making up the constituents of the
soil that bad been exhausted.
>
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 725
with the fall in numbers of the population, rents and farmers'
profits rose, although the latter not as steadily as the former.
The reason of this is easily comprehensible. On the one hand,
with the throwing of small holdings into large ones, and the
change of arable into pasture land, a larger part of the whole
produce was transformed into surplus produce. The surplus
produce increased, although the total produce, of which it
formed a fraction, decreased. On the other hand, the money-
value of this surplus produce increased yet more rapidly than
its mass, in consequence of the rise in the English market-
price of meat, wool, &c., during the last 20, and especially
during the last 10, years.
The scattered means of production that serve the producers.
themselves as means of employment and of subsistence, without
expanding their own value by the incorporation of the labour
of others, are no more capital than a product consumed by its
own producer is a commodity. If, with the mass of the popu-
lation, that of the means of production employed in agriculture
also diminished, the mass of the capital employed in agriculture
increased, because a part of the means of production that were
formerly scattered, was concentrated and turned into capital.
The total capital of Ireland outside agriculture, employed in
industry and trade, accumulated during the last two decades
slowly, and with great and constantly recurring fluctuations; so
much the more rapidly did the concentration of its individual
constituents develop. And, however small its absolute in-
crease, in proportion to the dwindling population it had in-
creased largely.
Here, then, under our own eyes and on a large scale, a pro-
cess is revealed, than which nothing more excellent could be
wished for by orthodox economy for the support of its dogma:
that misery springs from absolute surplus-population, and that
equilibrium is re-established by depopulation. This is a far
more important experiment than was the plague in the middle
of the 14th century so belauded of Malthusians. Note further:
If only the naïveté of the schoolmaster could apply, to the
conditions of production and population of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the standard of the 14th, this naïveté, into the bargain,
726
Capitalist Production.
overlooked the fact that whilst, after the plague and the
decimation that accompanied it, followed on this side of the
channel, in England, enfranchisement and enrichment of the
agricultural population, on that side, in France, followed
greater servitude and more misery.1
The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people,
but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country
it did not the slightest damage. The exodus of the next 20
years, an exodus still constantly increasing, did not, as, e.g., the
thirty years' war, decimate, along with the human beings, their
means of production. Irish genius discovered an altogether
new way of spiriting a poor people thousands of miles away
from the scene of its misery. The exiles transplanted to the
United States, send home sums of money every year as
travelling expenses for those left behind. Every troop that
emigrates one year, draws another after it the next. Thus, in-
stead of costing Ireland anything, emigration forms one of the
most lucrative branches of its export trade. Finally, it is a
systematic process, which does not simply make a passing gap
in the population, but sucks out of it every year more people
than are replaced by the births, so that the absolute level of
the population falls year by year.2
<la
What were the consequences for the Irish labourers left be-
hind and freed from the surplus-population? That the rela-
tive surplus-population is to-day as great as before 1846; that
wages are just as low, that the oppression of the labourers has
increased, that misery is forcing the country towards a new
crisis. The facts are simple. The revolution in agriculture
has kept pace with emigration. The production of relative
surplus-population has more than kept pace with the absolute
depopulation. A glance at table C shows that the change of
arable to pasture land must work yet more acutely in Ireland
1 As Ireland is regarded as the promised land of the "principle of population,"
A. Sadler, before the publication of his work on population, issued his famous book,
tr
Ireland, its evils and their remedies. 2nd edition, London, 1829.” Here, by com.
parison of the statistics of the individual provinces, and of the individual counties in
each province, he proves that the misery there is not, as Malthus would have it, in
proportion to the number of the population, but in inverse ratio to this.
2 Between 1851 and 1874, the total number of emigrants amounted to 2,325,922.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 727
10
than in England. In England the cultivation of green crops
increases with the breeding of cattle; in Ireland, it decreases.
Whilst large number of acres, that were formerly tilled, lie
idle or are turned permanently into grass-land, a great part
of the waste land and peat bogs that were unused formerly,
become of service for the extension of cattle-breeding. The
smaller and medium farmers-I reckon among these all who
do not cultivate more than 100 acres still make up about ths
of the whole number.¹ They are, one after the other, and with
a degree of force unknown before, crushed by the competition
of an agriculture managed by capital, and therefore they con-
tinually furnish new recruits to the class of wage-labourers.
The one great industry of Ireland, linen-manufacture, requires
relatively few adult men and only employs altogether, in spite
of its expansion since the price of cotton rose in 1861-1866, a
comparatively insignificant part of the population. Like all
other great modern industries, it constantly produces, by in-
cessant fluctuations, a relative surplus-population within its
own sphere, even with an absolute increase in the mass of
human beings absorbed by it. The misery of the agricultural
population forms the pedestal for gigantic shirt-factories, whose
armies of labourers are, for the most part, scattered over the
country. Here, we encounter again the system described
above of domestic industry, which in under-payment and over-
work, possesses its own systematic means for creating supernu-
merary labourers. Finally, although the depopulation has not
such destructive consequences as would result in a country
with fully developed capitalistic production, it does not go on
without constant reaction upon the home-market. The gap
which emigration causes here, limits not only the local demand
for labour, but also the incomes of small shopkeepers, artisans,
tradespeople generally. Hence the diminution in incomes be-
tween £60 and £100 in table E.
A clear statement of the condition of the agricultural
labourers in Ireland is to be found in the Reports of the Irish
1 According to a table in Murphy's "Ireland industrial, political and social," 1870,
94.6 per cent. of the holdings do not reach 100 acres, 5'4 exceed 100 acres.
728
Capitalist Production.
Poor Law Inspectors (1870).¹ Officials of a government which
is maintained only by bayonets and by a state of siege, now
open, now disguised, they have to observe all the precautions
of language that their colleagues in England disdain. In spite
of this, however, they do not let their government cradle itself
in illusions. According to them the rate of wages in the
country, still very low, has within the last 20 years risen
50-60 per cent., and stands now, on the average, at 6s. to 9s.
per week. But behind this apparent rise, is hidden an actual
fall in wages, for it does not correspond at all to the rise in
price of the necessary means of subsistence that has taken
place in the meantime. For proof, the following extract from
the official accounts of an Irish workhouse.
AVERAGE WEEKLY COST PER HEAD.
Year ended.
29th Sept., 1849.
1869.
رد
Provisions and
Necessaries.
1s. 31d.
2s. 71d.
Clothing.
3d.
6d.
Total.
1s. 6d.
3s. 11d.
The price of the necessary means of subsistence is therefore
fully twice, and that of clothing exactly twice, as much as
they were 20 years before.
Even apart from this disproportion, the mere comparison of
the rate of wages expressed in gold would give a result far
from accurate. Before the famine, the great mass of agricul-
tural wages were paid in kind, only the smallest part in
money; to-day, payment in money is the rule. From this
it follows that, whatever the amount of the real wage, its
money rate must rise. "Previous to the famine, the labourer
enjoyed his cabin with a rood, or half-acre or acre of
1 "Reports from the Poor Law Inspectors on the wages of Agricultural Labourers
in Dublin, 1870." See also "Agricultural Labourers (Ireland) Return, etc., 8 March
1862, London 1862.”
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 729
land, and facilities for . . . a crop of potatoes. He was able
to rear his pig and keep fowl. But they now have to
buy bread, and they have no refuse upon which they can feed
a pig or fowl, and they have consequently no benefit from the
sale of a pig, fowl, or eggs." 1 In fact, formerly, the agricul-
tural labourers were but the smallest of the small farmers, and
formed for the most part a kind of rear-guard of the medium
and large farms on which they found employment. Only since
the catastrophe of 1846 have they begun to form a fraction of
the class of purely wage-labourers, a special class, connected
with its wage-masters only by monetary relations.
→
We know what were the conditions of their dwellings in
1846. Since then they have grown yet worse. A part of the
agricultural labourers, which, however, grows less day by day,
dwells still on the holdings of the farmers in over-crowded huts,
whose hideousness far surpasses the worst that the English
agricultural labourers offered us in this way. And this holds
generally with the exception of certain tracts of Ulster; in the
south, in the counties of Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, &c.; in
the east, in Wicklow, Wexford, &c.; in the centre of Ireland,
in King's and Queen's County, Dublin, &c.; in the west, in
Sligo, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway, &c. "The agricultural
labourers' huts," an inspector cries out, "are a disgrace to the
Christianity and to the civilisation of this country."2 In order
to increase the attractions of these holes for the labourers, the
pieces of land belonging thereto from time immemorial, are
systematically confiscated. "The mere sense that they exist
subject to this species of ban, on the part of the landlords and
their agents, has... given birth in the minds of the labourers
to corresponding sentiments of antagonism and dissatisfaction
towards those by whom they are thus led to regard themselves
ar being treated as... a proscribed race."3
The first act of the agricultural revolution was to sweep
away the huts situated on the field of labour. This was done
on the largest scale, and as if in obedience to a command from
on high. Thus many labourers were compelled to seek shelter
in villages and towns. There they were thrown like refuse
s 1. c. p. 12.
1 1. c. pp. 29, 1.
2 1. c. p. 12.
730
Capitalist Production.
into garrets, holes, cellars and corners, in the worst back slums.
Thousands of Irish families, who according to the testimony of
the English, eaten up as these are with national prejudice, are
notable for their rare attachment to the domestic hearth, for
their gaiety and the purity of their home-life, found them-
selves suddenly transplanted into hotbeds of vice. The men
are now obliged to seek work of the neighbouring farmers
and are only hired by the day, and therefore under the most
precarious form of wage. Hence "they sometimes have long
distances to go to and from work, often get wet, and suffer
much hardship, not unfrequently ending in sickness, disease
and want." 1
3
"The towns have had to receive from year to year what
was deemed to be the surplus-labour of the rural division; "2
and then people still wonder "there is still a surplus of labour
in the towns and villages, and either a scarcity or a threatened
scarcity in some of the country divisions." The truth is that
this want only becomes perceptible "in harvest-time, or during
spring, or at such times as agricultural operations are carried
on with activity; at other periods of the year many hands are
idle; "that" from the digging out of the main crop of potatoes
in October until the early spring following . . . there is no em-
ployment for them; "5 and further, that during the active times
they "are subject to broken days and to all kinds of interrup-
tions." 6
These results of the agricultural revolution-i.ec., the change
of arable into pasture land, the use of machinery, the most
rigorous economy of labour, &c., are still further aggravated by
the model landlords, who, instead of spending their rents in
other countries, condescend to live in Ireland on their demesnes.
In order that the law of supply and demand may not be broken,
these gentlemen draw their "labour-supply . . . chiefly from
their small tenants, who are obliged to attend when required
to do the landlord's work, at rates of wages, in many instances,
considerably under the current rates paid to ordinary labourers,
and without regard to the inconvenience or loss to the tenant
1 1. c. p. 25.
1. c. p. 27.
3 1. c. p. 25.
4 1. c. p. 1.
5 1. c. pp. 31, 32.
6 1. c. p. 25.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 731
of being obliged to neglect his own business at critical periods
of sowing or reaping.'
"" 1
The uncertainty and irregularity of employment, the constant
return and long duration of gluts of labour, all these symptoms
of a relative surplus-population, figure therefore in the reports
of the Poor Law administration, as so many hardships of the
agricultural proletariat. It will be remembered that we met,
in the English agricultural proletariat, with a similar spectacle.
But the difference is that in England, an industrial country,
the industrial reserve recruits itself from the country districts,
whilst in Ireland, an agricultural country, the agricultural
reserve recruits itself from the towns, the cities of refuge of
the expelled agricultural labourers. In the former, the super-
numeraries of agriculture are transformed into factory-opera-
tives; in the latter, those forced into the towns, whilst at the
same time they press on the wages in towns, remain agricul-
tural labourers, and are constantly sent back to the country
districts in search of work.
The official inspectors sum up the material condition of the
agricultural labourer as follows: "Though living with the
strictest frugality, his own wages are barely sufficient to pro-
vide food for an ordinary family and pay his rent, and he de-
pends upon other sources for the means of clothing himself, his
wife, and children. The atmosphere of these cabins, com-
bined with the other privations they are subjected to, has made
this class particularly susceptible to low fever and pulmonary
consumption." 2 After this, it is no wonder that, according to
the unanimous testimony of the inspectors, a sombre discontent
runs through the ranks of this class, that they long for the re-
turn of the past, loathe the present, despair of the future, give
themselves up to the evil influence of agitators," and have
only one fixed idea, to emigrate to America. This is the land
of Cockaigne, into which the great Malthusian panacea, de-
population, has transformed green Erin.
What a happy life the Irish factory operative leads, one
example will show: "On my recent visit to the North of
Ireland," says the English Factory Inspector, Robert Baker,
2 1. c. pp. 21, 13.
1 1. c. p. 30.
732
Capitalist Production.
“I met with the following evidence of effort in an Irish skilled
workman to afford education to his children; and I give his
evidence verbatim, as I took it from his mouth. That he was
a skilled factory hand, may be understood when I say that he
was employed on goods for the Manchester market. Johnson.
-I am a beetler and work from 6 in the morning till 11 at
night, from Monday to Friday. Saturday we leave off at 6
p.m., and get three hours of it (for meals and rest). I have
five children in all. For this work I get 10s. 6d. a week; my
wife works here also, and gets 5s. a week. The oldest girl
who is 12, minds the house. She is also cook, and all the ser-
vant we have. She gets the young ones ready for school. A
girl going past the house wakes me at half past five in the
morning. My wife gets up and goes along with me.
We get
nothing (to eat) before we come to work. The child of 12
takes care of the little children all the day, and we get
nothing till breakfast at eight. At eight we go home. We
get tea once a week; at other times we get stirabout, some-
times of oatmeal, sometimes of Indian meal, as we are able to
get it.
In the winter we get a little sugar and water to our
Indian meal. In the summer we get few potatoes, planting
a small patch ourselves; and when they are done we get back
to stirabout. Sometimes we get a little milk as it may be.
So we go on from day to day, Sunday and week day, always
the same the year round. I am always very much tired when
I have done at night. We may see a bit of flesh meat some-
times, but very seldom. Three of our children attend school,
for whom we pay 1d. a week a head. Our rent is 9d a week.
Peat for firing costs Is. 6d. a fortnight at the very lowest."¹
Such are Irish wages, such is Irish life!
In fact the misery of Ireland is again the topic of the day in
England. At the end of 1866 and the beginning of 1867, one
of the Irish land magnates, Lord Dufferin, set about its solu-
tion in the "Times." "Wie menschlich von solch grossem Herrn!"
From Table E. we saw that, during 1864, of £4,368,610 of
total profits, three surplus-value makers pocketed only
£262,610; that in 1865, however, out of £4,669,979 total
1 Rept. of Insp. of Fact. 31st Oct., 1866, p. 96.
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 733
profits, the same three virtuosi of abstinence pocketed
£274,448; in 1864, 26 surplus-value makers reached to
£646,377; in 1865, 28 surplus-value makers reached to £736,448;
in 1864, 121 surplus-value makers, £1,066,912; in 1865, 186
surplus-value makers, £1,320,996; in 1864, 1131 surplus-
value makers £2,150,818, nearly half of the total annual
profit; in 1865, 1194 surplus-value makers, £2,418,933,
more than half of the total annual profit. But the lion's share,
which an inconceivably small number of land magnates in
England, Scotland and Ireland swallow up of the yearly
national rental, is so monstrous that the wisdom of the English
state does not think fit to afford the same statistical materials
about the distribution of rents as about the distribution of
profits. Lord Dufferin is one of those land magnates. That
rent-rolls and profits can ever be "excessive," or that their
plethora is in any way connected with plethora of the people's
misery is, of course, an idea as "disreputable" as "unsound."
He keeps to facts. The fact is that, as the Irish population
diminishes, the Irish rent-rolls swell; that depopulation bene-
fits the landlords, therefore also benefits the soil, and, therefore,
the people, that mere accessory of the soil. He declares, there-
fore, that Ireland is still over-populated, and the stream of
emigration still flows too lazily. To be perfectly happy, Ire-
land must get rid of at least one-third of a million of labouring
Let no man imagine that this lord, poetic into the
bargain, is a physician of the school of Sangrado, who as often
as he did not find his patient better, ordered phlebotomy and
again phlebotomy, until the patient lost his sickness at the
same time as his blood. Lord Dufferin demands a new blood-
letting of one-third of a million only, instead of about two
millions; in fact, without the getting rid of these, the
millennium in Erin is not to be. The proof is easily given.
men.
NUMBER AND EXTENT OF FARMS IN IRELAND IN 1864.
i
(1) Farms not over (2) Farms over 1, (3) Farms over 5, not
1 acre.
not over 5 acres.
over 15 acres.
No.
48,653
Acres.
No.
25,394 82,037
Acres. No.
288,916 176,368
"}


(4) Farms over 15,
not over 30 acres.
No.
Acres.
1,836,310 136,578
Acres.
3,051,343
734
Capitalist Production.

(5) Farms over 30,
not over 50 acres.
((
(6) Farms over 50, (7) Farms over 100
not over 100 acres.
acres.
No.
Acres.
No.
71,961 2,906,274 54,247
Acres. No.
Acres.
3,983,880 31,927 8,227,807
(8) Total area.
Acres,
26,319,924 1
acres.
Centralisation has from 1851 to 1861 destroyed principally
farms of the first three categories, under 1 and not over 15
These above all must disappear. This gives 307,058
supernumerary" farmers, and reckoning the families the low
average of 4 persons, 1,228,232 persons. On the extravagant
supposition that, after the agricultural revolution is complete,
one-fourth of these are again absorbable, there remain for emi-
gration 921,174 persons. Categories 4, 5, 6, of over 15 and not
over 100 acres, are, as was known long since in England, too
small for capitalistic cultivation of corn, and for sheep-breeding
are almost vanishing quantities. On the same supposition as
before, therefore, there are further 788,761 persons to emigrate;
total, 1,709,532. And as l'appétit vient en mangeant, Rent-
roll's eyes will soon discover that Ireland, with 3 millions, is
still always miserable, and miserable because she is over-popu-
lated. Therefore her depopulation must go yet further, that
thus she may fulfil her true destiny, that of an English sheep
walk and cattle-pasture.2
-
1 The total area includes also peat, bogs, and waste land.
(6
2 How the famine and its consequences have been deliberately made the most of,
both by the individual landlords and by the English legislature, to forcibly carry out
the agricultural revolution and to thin the population of Ireland down to the propor-
tion satisfactory to the landlords, I shall show more fully in Vol III. of this work,
in the section on landed property. There also I return to the condition of the small
farmers and the agricultural labourers. At present, only one quotation. Nassau W.
Senior says, with other things, in his posthumous work, "Journals, Conversations
and Essays, relating to Ireland.' 2 vols. London 1868; Vol. II., p. 282. "Well,"
said Dr. G., we have got our Poor Law and it is a great instrument for giving the
victory to the landlords. Another, and a still more powerful instrument is emigra-
tion . . . No friend to Ireland can wish the war to be prolonged [between the land-
lords and the small Celtic farmers]-still less, that it should end by the victory of the
tenants. The sooner it is over-the sooner Ireland becomes a grazing country, with
the comparatively thin population which a grazing country requires, the better for
all classes." The English Corn Laws of 1815 secured Ireland the monopoly of the free
importation of corn into Great Britain. They favoured artifically, therefore, the
cultivation of corn. With the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846, this monopoly was
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. 735
Like all good things in this bad world, this profitable method
has its drawbacks. With the accumulation of rents in Ireland,
the accumulation of the Irish in America keeps pace. The
Irishman, banished by sheep and ox, reappears on the other
side of the ocean as a Fenian, and face to face with the old queen
of the seas rises, threatening and more threatening, the young
giant Republic:
Acerba fata Romanos agunt
Scelusque fraternæ necis.
suddenly removed. Apart from all other circumstances, this event alone was suffi-
cient to give a great impulse to the turning of Irish arable into pasture land, to the
concertration of farms, and to the eviction of small cultivators. After the fruitfulness
of the Irish soil had been praised from 1815 to 1846, and proclaimed loudly as by
Nature herself destined for the cultivation of wheat, English agronomists, economists,
politicians, discover suddenly that it is good for nothing but to produce forage. M.
Léonce de Lavergne has hastened to repeat this on the other side of the Channel. It
takes a serious "man, à la Lavergne, to be caught by such childishness.
C
*
PART VIII.
THE SO-CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE SECRET OF PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION.
WE
E have seen how money is changed into capital; how
through capital surplus-value is made, and from sur-
plus-value more capital. But the accumulation of capital pre-
supposes surplus-value; surplus-value presupposes capitalistic
production; capitalistic production presupposes the pre-exist-
ence of considerable masses of capital and of labour-power in
the hands of producers of commodities. The whole movement,
therefore, seems to turn in a vicious circle, out of which we
can only get by supposing a primitive accumulation (previous
accumulation of Adam Smith) preceding capitalistic accumula-
tion; an accumulation not the result of the capitalist mode of
production, but its starting point.
This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy
about the same part as original sin in theology.Adam bit the
apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is
supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the
past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people;
one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal élite; the
other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in
riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us
certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in
the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin
reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means
-
V


The Secret of Primitive Accumulation.
737
essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former
sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing
to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates
the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour,
has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the
few that increases constantly although they have long ceased
to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to
us in the defence of property. M. Thiers, e.g., had the assur-
ance to repeat it with all the solemnity of a statesman, to the
French people, once so spirituel. But as soon as the question
of property crops up, it becomes a sacred duty to proclaim the
intellectual food of the infant as the one thing fit for all ages
and for all stages of development. In actual history it is
notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly
force, play the great part. In the tender annals of Political
Economy, the idyllic reigns from time immemorial. Right and
"labour" were from all time the sole means of enrichment, the
present year of course always excepted. As a matter of fact,
the methods of primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic.
In themselves, money and commodities are no more capital
than are the means of production and of subsistence. They
want transforming into capital. But this transformation itself
can only take place under certain circumstances that centre in
this, viz.,that two very different kinds of commodity-possessors
must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the
owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence,
who are eager to increase the sum of values they possess, by
buying other people's labour-power; on the other hand, free
labourers, the sellers of their own labour-power, and there-
fore the sellers of labour. Free labourers, in the double sense
that neither they themselves form part and parcel of the means
of production, as in the case of slaves, bondsmen, &c., nor do
the means of production belong to them, as in the case of pea-
sant-proprietors; they are, therefore, free from, unencumbered
by, any means of production of their own. With this polari-
sation of the market for commodities, the fundamental condi-
tions of capitalist production are given. The capitalist system
presupposes the complete separation of the labourers fr all
Buy


fre

738
Capitalist Production.
property in the means by which they can realise their labour.
As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not
only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continu-
ally extending scale. The process, therefore, that clears the
way for the capitalist system, can be none other than the
process which takes away from the labourer the possession of
his means of production; a process that transforms, on the one
hand, the social means of subsistence and of production into
capital, on the other, the immediate producers into wage-
labourers The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is
nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the pro-
ducer from the means of production. It appears as primitive,
because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the
mode of production corresponding with it.
The economic structure of capitalistic society has grown out
of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of
the latter set free the elements of the former.


The immediate producer, the labourer, could only dispose of
his own person after he had ceased to be attached to the soil
and ceased to be the slave, serf, or bondman of another. To
become a free seller of labour-power, who carries his commodity
wherever he finds a market, he must further have escaped from
the regime of the guilds, their rules for apprentices and journey-
men, and the impediments of their labour regulations. Hence,
the historical movement which changes the producers into
wage-workers, appears, on the one hand, as their emancipation.
from serfdom and from the fetters of the guilds, and this side.
alone exists for our bourgeois historians. But, on the other
hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only
after they had been robbed of all their own means of production,
and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal
arrangements.____ And the history of this, their expropriation, is
written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.


The industrial capitalists, these new potentates, had on their
part not only to displace the guild masters of handicrafts, but
also the feudal lords, the possessors of the sources of wealth.
In this respect their conquest of social power appears as the
fruit of a victorious struggle both against feudal lordship and

<
The Secret of Primitive Accumulation.
739
L
}
its revolting prerogatives, and against the guilds and the fetters
they laid on the free development of production and the free
exploitation of man by man. The chevaliers d'industrie, how-
ever, only succeeded in supplanting the chevaliers of the sword
by making use of events of which they themselves were wholly
innocent. They have risen by means as vile as those by which
the Roman freed-man once on a time made himself the master
of his patronus.

The starting-point of the development that gave rise to the
wage-labourer as well as to the capitalist, was the servitude of
the labourer. The advance consisted in a change of form of
this servitude, in the transformation of feudal exploitation into
capitalist exploitation. To understand its march, we need not
go back very far. Although we come across the first beginnings
of capitalist production as early as the 14th or 15th century,
sporadically, in certain towns of the Mediterranean, the capi-
talistic era dates from the 16th century. Wherever it appears,
the abolition of serfdom has been long effected, and the highest
development of the middle ages, the existence of sovereign
towns, has been long on the wane.
In the history of primitive accumulation, all revolutions are
epoch-making that act as levers for the capitalist class in
course of formation; but, above all, those moments when great
masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means
of subsistence, and hurled as free and "unattached" proletarians
on the labour market. The expropriation of the agricultural
producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole
process. The history of this expropriation, in different countries,
assumes different aspects, and runs through its various phases in
different orders of succession, and at different periods. In Eng-
land alone, which we take as our example, has it the classic form.¹
• Į
1 In Italy, where capitalistic production developed earliest, the dissolution of serf-
dom also took place earlier than elsewhere. The serf was emancipated in that
country before he had acquired any prescriptive right to the soil. His emancipation
at once transformed him into a free proletarian, who, moreover, found his master
ready waiting for him in the towns, for the most part handed down as legacies from
the Roman time. When the revolution of the world-market, about the end of the
15th century, annihilated Northern Italy's commercial supremacy, a movement in
the reverse direction set in. The labourers of the towns were driven en masse into
the country, and gave an impulse, never before seen, to the petite culture, carried on
in the form of gardening.
740
Capitalist Production.
CHAPTER XXVII.
EXPROPRIATION OF THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION FROM THE
LAND.

In England, serfdom had practically disappeared in the last
part of the 14th century. The immense majority of the
population¹ consisted then, and to a still larger extent, in the
15th century, of free peasant proprietors, whatever was the
feudal title under which their right of property was hidden.
In the larger seignorial domains, the old bailiff, himself a serf,
was displaced by the free farmer. The wage-labourers of
agriculture consisted partly of peasants, who utilised their
leisure time by working on the large estates, partly of an
independent special class of wage-labourers, relatively and
absolutely few in numbers. The latter also were practically
at the same time peasant farmers, since, besides their wages,
they had alloted to them arable land to the extent of 4 or more
acres, together with their cottages. Besides they, with the
rest of the peasants, enjoyed the usufruct of the common
land, which gave pasture to their cattle, furnished them with
timber, fire-wood, turf, &c.2 In all countries of Europe,
1 "The petty proprietors who cultivated their own fields with their own hands, and
enjoyed a modest competence. . . then formed a much more important part of the
nation than at present. If we may trust the best statistical writers of that age, not
less than 160,000 proprietors who, with their families, must have made up more than
a seventh of the whole population, derived their subsistence from little freehold
estates. The average income of these small landlords
was estimated at
between £60 and £70 a year. It was computed that the number of persons who
tilled their own land was greater than the number of those who farmed the land of
others." Macaulay: History of England, 10th ed., 1854, I. p. 333, 334. Even in
the last third of the 17th century, of the English people were agricultural. (1. c., p.
413.) I quote Macaulay, because as systematic falsifier of history he minimises as
much as possible facts of this kind.
2 We must never forget that even the serf was not only the owner, if but a tribute-
paying owner, of the piece of land attached to his house, but also a co-possessor of
the common land. "Le paysan y (in Silesia, under Frederick II.), est serf." Never-
theless, these serfs possess common lands. "On n'a pas pu encore engager les Si-
lésiens au partage des communes, tandis que dans la Nouvelle Marche, il n'y a guère
de village où ce partage ne soit exécuté avec le plus grand succès.
De la Monarchie Prussienne, Londres, 1788, t. ii., pp. 125, 126.)
(Mirabeau :
•
•
•
•
***
A
}
Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 741
feudal production is characterised by division of the soil
amongst the greatest possible number of sub-feudatories. The
might of the feudal lord, like that of the sovereign, depended
not on the length of his rent roll, but on the number of his
subjects, and the latter depended on the number of peasant
proprietors.¹ Although, therefore, the English land, after the
Norman conquest, was distributed in gigantic baronies, one of
which often included some 900 of the old Anglo-Saxon lord-
ships, it was bestrewn with small peasant properties, only here
and there interspersed with great seignorial domains. Such
conditions, together with the prosperity of the towns so charac-
teristic of the 15th century, allowed of that wealth of the
people which Chancellor Fortescue so eloquently paints in his
"Laudes legum Angliæ;" but it excluded the possibility of
capitalistic wealth.
•
{
ܫ:
The prelude of the revolution that laid the foundation of
the capitalist mode of production, was played in the last third
of the 15th, and the first decade of the 16th century. A mass
of free proletarians was hurled on the labour-market by the
breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers, who, as Sir James
Steuart well says, "everywhere uselessly filled house and
castle." Although the royal power, itself a product of bourgeois
development, in its strife after absolute sovereignty forcibly
hastened on the dissolution of these bands of retainers, it was
by no means the sole cause of it. In insolent conflict with
king and parliament, the great feudal lords created an incom-
parably larger proletariat by the forcible driving of the
peasantry from the land, to which the latter had the same
feudal right as the lord himself, and by the usurpation of the
common lands. The rapid rise of the Flemish wool manufac-
tures, and the corresponding rise in the price of wool in
England, gave the direct impulse to these evictions. The old
nobility had been devoured by the great feudal wars. The
new nobility was the child of its time, for which money was

-

1
Japan, with its purely feudal organisation of landed property and its developed
petite culture, gives a much truer picture of the European middle ages than all our
history books, dictated as these are, for the most part, by bourgeois prejudices.
It is very convenient to be "liberal" at the expense of the middle ages.
742
Capitalist Production.
the power of all powers. Transformation of arable land into
sheep-walks was, therefore, its cry. Harrison, in his "Descrip-
tion of England, prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicle," describes
how the expropriation of small peasants is ruining the country.
"What care our great encroachers?' The dwellings of the
peasants and the cottages of the labourers were razed to the
ground or doomed to decay. "If," says Harrison, "the old
records of euerie manour be sought
it will soon appear
that in some manour seventeene, eighteene, or twentie houses
are shrunk . . . . that England was neuer less furnished with
people than at the present.
Of cities and townes either
utterly decaied or more than a quarter or half diminished,
though some one be a little increased here or there; of townes
pulled downe for sheepe-walks, and no more but the lordships
now standing in them. . . . I could saie somewhat." The
complaints of these old chroniclers are always exaggerated, but
they reflect faithfully the impression made on contemporaries
by the revolution in the conditions of production. A com-
parison of the writings of Chancellor Fortescue and Thomas
More reveals the gulf between the 15th and 16th century. As
Thornton rightly has it, the English working-class was pre-
cipitated without any transition from its golden into its iron
age.
>>

Legislation was terrified at this revolution. It did not yet.
stand on that height of civilisation where the "wealth of the
nation" (ie., the formation of capital, and the reckless exploita-
tion and impoverishing of the mass of the people) figure as the
ultima Thule of all state-craft. In his history of Henry VII.,
Bacon says:
"Inclosures at that time (1489) began to be more
frequent, whereby arable land (which could not be manured
without people and families) was turned into pasture, which
was easily rid by a few herdsmen; and tenancies for years,
lives, and at will (whereupon much of the yeomanry lived)
were turned into demesnes. This bred a decay of people, and
(by consequence) a decay of towns, churches, tithes, and the
like..... In remedying of this inconvenience the king's
wisdom was admirable, and the parliament's at that time
they took a course to take away depopulating inclosures, and

Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 743
depopulating pasturage." An Act of Henry VII., 1489, cap.
19, forbad the destruction of all "houses of husbandry" to
which at least 20 acres of land belonged. By an Act, 25 Henry
VIII., the same law was renewed. It recites, among other
things, that many farms and large flocks of cattle, especially of
sheep, are concentrated in the hands of a few men, whereby
the rent of land has much risen and tillage has fallen off,
churches and houses have been pulled down, and marvellous
numbers of people have been deprived of the means wherewith
to maintain themselves and their families. The Act, there-
fore, ordains the rebuilding of the decayed farm-steads, and
fixes a proportion between corn land and pasture land, &c.
An Act of 1533 recites that some owners possess 24,000
sheep, and limits the number to be owned to 2000.¹ The cry
of the people and the legislation directed, for 150 years after
Henry VII., against the expropriation of the small farmers and
peasants, were alike fruitless. The secret of their inefficiency
Bacon, without knowing it, reveals to us. "The device of
King Henry VII.," says Bacon, in his "Essays, Civil and Moral,”
Essay 29," was profound and admirable, in making farms and
houses of husbandry of a standard; that is, maintained with
such a proportion of land unto them as may breed a subject to
live in convenient plenty, and no servile condition, and to keep
the plough in the hands of the owners and not mere hirelings.”2
1 In his "Utopia," Thomas More says, that in England" your shepe that were
wont to be so meke and tame, and so smal eaters, now, as I heare saye, be become so
great devourers and so wylde that they eate up, and swallow downe, the very mer
themselfes." Utopia," transl. by Robinson., ed. Arber, Lond., 1869, p 41.
CC
2 Bacon shows the connexion between a free, well-to-do peasantry and good in
fantry. “This did wonderfully concern the might and mannerhood of the kingdom
to have farms as it were of a standard sufficient to maintain an able body out of
penury, and did in effect amortize a great part of the lands of the kingdom unto the
hold and occupation of the yeomanry or middle people, of a condition between gen-
tlemen, and cottagers and peasants. .. For it hath been held by the general
opinion of men of best judgment in the wars. that the principal strength of an
ariny consisteth in the infantry or foot. And to make good infantry it requireth men
bred, not in a servile or indigent fashion, but in some free and plentiful manner.
Therefore, if a state run most to noblemen and gentlemen, and that the husbandmen
and ploughmen be but as their workfolk and labourers, or else mere cottagers (which
are but hous'd beggars), you may have a good cavalry, but never good stable bands
of foot.
And this is to be seen in France, and Italy, and some other parts
abroad, where in effect all is noblesse or peasantry
insomuch that they are
•
•
•
⚫ •
744
Capitalist Production.
A
j)
What the capitalist system demanded was, on the other hand,
a degraded and almost servile condition of the mass of the
people, the transformation of them into mercenaries, and of
their means of labour into capital. During this transformation
period, legislation also strove to retain the 4 acres of land by
the cottage of the agricultural wage-labourer, and forbad him
to take lodgers into his cottage. In the reign of James I., 1627,
Roger Crocker of Front Mill, was condemned for having built
a cottage on the manor of Front Mill without 4 acres of land
attached to the same in perpetuity. As late as Charles I.'s
reign, 1638, a royal commission was appointed to enforce the
carrying out of the old laws, especially that referring to the 4
acres of land. Even in Cromwell's time, the building of a
house within 4 miles of London was forbidden unless it was
endowed with 4 acres of land. As late as the first half of the
18th century complaint is made if the cottage of the agricul-
tural labourer has not an adjunct of one or two acres of land.
Nowadays he is lucky if it is furnished with a little garden, or if
he may rent, far away from his cottage, a few roods.
"Land-
lords and farmers," says Dr. Hunter, "work here hand in hand.
A few acres to the cottage would make the labourers too inde-
pendent."



The process of forcible expropriation of the people received.
in the 16th century a new and frightful impulse from the
Reformation, and from the consequent colossal spoliation
of the church property. The Catholic church was, at the
time of the Reformation, feudal proprietor of a great part of
the English land. The suppression of the monasteries, &c.,
hurled their inmates into the proletariat. The estates of
the church were to a large extent given away to rapacious
royal favourites, or sold at a nominal price to speculating
farmers and citizens, who drove out, en masse, the hereditary

inforced to employ mercenary bands of Switzers and the like, for their battalions of
foot; whereby also it comes to pass that those nations have much people and few
soldiers. ("The Reign of Henry VII." Verbatim reprint from Kennet's England.
Ed. 1719. Lond., 1870, p. 308.)
;)
1 Dr. Hunter, 1. c., p. 134. The quantity of land assigned (in the old laws)
would now be judged too great for labourers, and rather as likely to convert them
into small farmers." (George Roberts: The Social History of the People of the
Southern Counties of England in past centuries." Lond., 1856, pp. 184-185.)
CC
tr
Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 745
L
1
sub-tenants and threw their holdings into one. The legally
guaranteed property of the poorer folk in a part of the church's
tithes was tacitly confiscated "Pauper ubique jacet," cried
Queen Elizabeth, after a journey through England. In the
43rd year of her reign the nation was obliged to recognise
pauperism officially by the introduction of a poor-rate. "The
authors of this law seem to have been ashamed to state the
grounds of it, for [contrary to traditional usage] it has no pre-
amble whatever." By the 16th of Charles I., ch. 4, it was
declared perpetual, and in fact only in 1834 did it take a new
and harsher form.³ These immediate results of the Reformation
were not its most lasting ones. The property of the church

1"The right of the poor to share in the tithe, is established by the tenour of ancient
statutes." (Tuckett, 1. c., Vol. II., pp. 804-805.)
2 William Cobbett: "A History of the Protestant Reformation,” § 471.
3 The "spirit" of Protestantism may be seen from the following, among other
things. In the south of England certain landed proprietors and well-to-do farmers
put their heads together and propounded ten questions as to the right interpretation
of the poor-law of Elizabeth. These they laid before a celebrated jurist of that time,
Sergeant Snigge (later a judge under James I.) for his opinion. Question 9-Some
of the more wealthy farmers in the parish have devised a skilful mode by which all
the trouble of executing this Act (the 43rd of Elizabeth) might be avoided. They
have proposed that we shall erect a prison in the parish, and then give notice to the
neighbourhood, that if any persons are disposed to farm the poor of this parish, they
do give in sealed proposals, on a certain day, of the lowest price at which they will
take them off our hands; and that they will be authorised to refuse to any one unless
he be shut up in the aforesaid prison. The proposers of this plan conceive that there
will be found in the adjoining counties, persons, who, being unwilling to labour and
not possessing substance or credit to take a farm or ship, so as to live without labour,
may be induced to make a very advantageous offer to the parish. If any of the poor
perish under the contractor's care, the sin will lie at his door, as the parish will have
done its duty by them. We are, however, apprehensive that the present Act (43rd
of Elizabeth) will not warrant a prudential measure of this kind; but you are to
learn that the rest of the freeholders of the county, and of the adjoining county of
B, will very readily join in instructing their members to propose an Act to enable the
parish to contract with a person to lock up and work the poor; and to declare that
if any person shall refuse to be so locked up and worked, he shall be entitled to no
relief. This, it is hoped, will prevent persons in distress from wanting relief, and be
the means of keeping down parishes." (R. Blakey: "The History of Political Litera-
ture from the earliest Times." Lond., 1855, Vol. II., pp. 84-85.) In Scotland, the
abolition of serfdom took place some centuries later than in England. Even in 1698,
Fletcher of Saltoun, declared in the Scotch parliament, "The number of beggars in
Scotland is reckoned at not less than 200,000. The only remedy that I, a republican
on principle can suggest, is to restore the old state of serfdom, to make slaves of all
those who are unable to provide for their own subsistence. Eden, 1. c., Book I.,
ch. 1, pp. C0-61, says, "The decrease of villenage seems necessarily to have been the
era of the origin of the poor. Manufactures and commerce are the two parents of
our national poor." Eden, like our Scotch republican on principle, errs only in this:
>>
CC
746
Capitalist Production.
formed the religious bulwark of the traditional conditions of
landed property. With its fall these were no longer tenable.¹
Even in the last decade of the 17th century, the yeomanry,
the class of independent peasants, were more numerous than
the class of farmers. They had formed the backbone of Crom-
well's strength, and, even according to the confession of
Macaulay, stood in favourable contrast to the drunken squires
and to their servants, the country clergy, who had to marry their
masters' cast-off mistresses. About 1750, the yeomanry had
disappeared, and so had, in the last decade of the 18th century,
the last trace of the common land of the agricultural labourer.
We leave on one side here the purely economic causes of the
agricultural revolution. We deal only with the forcible means
employed.
After the restoration of the Stuarts, the landed proprietors
carried, by legal means, an act of usurpation, effected every-
where on the Continent without any legal formality. They
abolished the feudal tenure of land, i.e., they got rid of
all its obligations to the State, "indemnified" the State by
taxes on the peasantry and the rest of the mass of the people,
vindicated for themselves the rights of modern private property
in estates to which they had only a feudal title, and, finally,
passed those laws of settlement, which, mutatis mutandis, had
the same effect on the English agricultural labourer, as the
edict of the Tartar Boris Godunof on the Russian peasantry.
The "glorious Revolution" brought into power, along with
not the abolition of villenage, but the abolition of the property of the agricultural
labourer in the soil made him a proletarian, and eventually a pauper. In France,
where the expropriation was effected in another way, the ordonnance of Moulins, 1571,
and the Edict of 1656, correspond to the English poor-laws.
1 Professor Rogers, although formerly Professor of Political Economy in the Uni-
versity of Oxford, the hotbed of Protestant orthodoxy, in his preface to the "History
of Agriculture" lays stress on the fact of the pauperisation of the mass of the people
by the Reformation.
2 A letter to Sir T. C. Banbury, Bart., on the High Price of Provisions. By a
Suffolk Gentleman. Ipswich, 1795, p. 4. Even the fanatical advocate of the system
of large farms, the author of the "Inquiry into the connection of large farms, etc.,
London, 1773," p. 133, says: "I most lament the loss of our yeomanry, that set of
men who really kept up the independence of this nation; and sorry I am to see their
lands now in the hands of monopolizing lords, tenanted out to small farmers, who
hold their leases on such conditions as to be little better than vassals ready to attend
a summons on every mischievous occasion."
•
ม
Expropriation of Agricultural Population.
747
Ĭ
3
William of Orange, the landlord and capitalist appropriators of
surplus-value. They inaugarated the new era by practising on
a colossal scale thefts of state lands, thefts that had been hitherto
managed more modestly. These estates were given away,
sold at a ridiculous figure, or even annexed to private estates
by direct seizure. All this happened without the slightest
observation of legal etiquette. The crown lands thus fraudul-
ently appropriated, together with the robbery of the Church
estates, as far as these had not been lost again during the
republican revolution, form the basis of the to-day princely
domains of the English oligarchy. The bourgeois capitalists
favoured the operation with the view, among others, to pro-
moting free trade in land, to extending the domain of modern
agriculture on the large farm-system, and to increasing their
supply of the free agricultural proletarians ready to hand.
Besides, the new landed aristocracy was the natural ally of
the new bankocracy, of the newly-hatched haute finance, and
of the large manufacturers, then depending on protective
duties. The English bourgeoisie acted for its own interest
quite as wisely as did the Swedish bourgeoisie who, reversing
the process, hand in hand with their economic allies, the
peasantry, helped the kings in the forcible resumption of the
Crown lands from the oligarchy. This happened since 1604
under Charles X. and Charles XI.
2
Communal property-always distinct from the State pro-
perty just dealt with-was an old Teutonic institution which
lived on under cover of feudalism. We have seen how the
1 On the private moral character of this bourgeois hero, among other things: "The
large grant of lands in Ireland to Lady Orkney, in 1695, is a public instance of the
king's affection, and the lady's influence Lady Orkney's endearing offices are
supposed to have been-foeda labiorum ministeria." (In the Sloane Manuscript
Collection, at the British Museum, No. 4224. The Manuscript is entitled: "The
charakter and behaviour of King William, Sunderland, etc., as represented in Original
Letters to the Duke of Shrewsbury, from Somers Halifax, Oxford, Secretary Vernon,
etc. It is full of curiosa.)
>>
•
2 The illegal alienation of the Crown Estates, partly by sale and partly by gift, is
a scandalous chapter in English history a gigantic fraud on the nation." (F.
W. Newman, Lectures on Political Economy. London, 1851, pp. 129, 130.) [For details
as to how the present large landed proprietors of England came into their possessions
see "Our Old Nobility. By Noblesse Oblige." London, 1879.-Ed.]
Read, e.g., E. Burke's Pamphlet on the ducal house of Bedford, whose offshoot
was Lord John Russell, the "tomtit of Liberalism."
748
Capitalist Production.
1
forcible usurpation of this, generally accompanied by the turn-
ing of arable into pasture land, begins at the end of the 15th
and extends into the 16th century. But, at that time, the pro-
cess was carried on by means of individual acts of violence
against which legislation, for a hundred and fifty years, fought
in vain. The advance made by the 18th century shows
itself in this, that the law itself becomes now the instrument
of the theft of the people's land, although the large farmers
make use of their little independent methods as well. The
parliamentary form of the robbery is that of Acts for enclosures
of Commons, in other words, decrees by which the landlords
grant themselves the people's land as private property, decrees
of expropriation of the people. Sir F. M. Eden refutes his own
crafty special pleading, in which he tries to represent com-
munal property as the private property of the great landlords
who have taken the place of the feudal lords, when he, him-
self, demands a "general Act of Parliament for the enclosure of
Commons," (admitting thereby that a parliamentary coup d'état
is necessary for its transformation into private property), and
moreover calls on the legislature for the indemnification for the
expropriated poor.2
Whilst the place of the independent yeoman was taken by
tenants at will, small farmers on yearly leases, a servile rabble
dependent on the pleasure of the landlords, the systematic
robbery of the Communal lands helped especially, next to
the theft of the State domains, to swell those large farms, that
were called in the 18th century capital farms or mer-
chant farms, and to "set free" the agricultural population as
proletarians for manufacturing industry.
3
1 "The farmers forbid cottagers to keep any living creatures besides themselves and
children, under the pretence that if they keep any beasts or poultry, they will steal
from the farmers' barns for their support; they also say, keep the cottages poor and
you will keep them industrious, &c., but the real fact, I believe, is that the farmers
may have the whole right of common to themselves." (A Political Inquiry into the
consequences of enclosing Waste Lands. London, 1785. p. 75.)
Eden, 1. c. preface.
3" Capital Farms." Two letters on the Flour Trade and the Dearness of Corn. By
a person in business. London, 1767, pp. 19, 20.
1
4 "Merchant Farms." An Inquiry into the present High Prices of Provisions.
London, 1767, p. 11. Note.-This excellent work, that was published anonymously,
is by the Rev. Nathaniel Forster.
Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 749
((
CC
The 18th century, however, did not yet recognise as fully as
the 19th, the identity between national wealth and the poverty
of the people. Hence the most vigorous polemic, in the
economic literature of that time, on the "enclosure of
commons." From the mass of materials that lie before me, I
give a few extracts that will throw a strong light on the cir-
cumstances of the time. "In several parishes of Hertfordshire,"
writes one indignant person, "24 farms, numbering on the
average 50-150 acres, have been melted up into three farms." 1
In Northamptonshire and Leicestershire the enclosure of
common lands has taken place on a very large scale, and most
of the new lordships, resulting from the enclosure, have been
turned into pasturage, in consequence of which many lordships
have not now 50 acres ploughed yearly, in which 1500 were
ploughed formerly. The ruins of former dwelling-houses, barns,
stables, &c.," are the sole traces of the former inhabitants. An
hundred houses and families have in some open field villages
dwindled to eight or ten . . . . The landholders in most
parishes that have been enclosed only 15 or 20 years, are
very few in comparison of the numbers who occupied them in
their open-field state. It is no uncommon thing for 4 or 5
wealthy graziers to engross a large enclosed lordship which
was before in the hands of 20 or 30 farmers, and as many
smaller tenants and proprietors. All these are hereby thrown
out of their livings with their families and many other families.
who were chiefly employed and supported by them." It was
not only the land that lay waste, but often land cultivated
either in common or held under a definite rent paid to the
community, that was annexed by the neighbouring landlords
under pretext of enclosure. "I have here in view enclosures
of open fields and lands already improved. It is acknowledged
by even the writers in defence of enclosures that these di-
minished villages increase the monopolies of farms, raise the
prices of provisions, and produce depopulation
and even
the enclosure of waste lands (as now carried on) bears hard on
1 Thomas Wright: A short address to the public on the monopoly of large farms,
1779, pp. 2, 3.
2 Rev. Addington: Inquiry into the reasons for or against enclosing open fields.
London, 1772, pp. 37, 43 passim.
750
Capitalist Production.
1
the poor, by depriving them of a part of their subsistence, and
only goes towards increasing farms already too large. "When,
says Dr. Price, "this land gets into the hands of a few great
farmers, the consequence must be that the little farmers"
(earlier designated by him "a multitude of little proprietors
and tenants, who maintain themselves and families by the
produce of the ground they occupy by sheep kept on a common,
by poultry, hogs, &c., and who therefore have little occasion to
purchase any of the means of subsistence") "will be converted
into a body of men who earn their subsistence by working for
others, and who will be under a necessity of going to market
for all they want. . . . There will, perhaps, be more labour,
because there will be more compulsion to it. . . . Towns and
manufacturers will increase, because more will be driven to
them in quest of places and employment. This is the way in
which the engrossing of farms naturally operates. And this is
the way in which, for many years, it has been actually
operating in this kingdom. He sums up the effect of the
enclosures thus: "Upon the whole, the circumstances of the
lower ranks of men are altered in almost every respect for the
worse. From little occupiers of land, they are reduced to the
state of day-labourers and hirelings; and, at the same time, their
subsistence in that state has become more difficult." 3
In fact,
}}
¹ Dr. R. Price, 1. c., v. ii., p. 155, Forster, Addington, Kent, Price, and James
Anderson, should be read and compared with the miserable prattle of Sycophant
MacCulloch in his catalogue: The Literature of Political Economy, London, 1845.
2 Price, 1. c., p. 147.
"C
3 Price, l. c., p, 159. We are reminded of ancient Rome. "The rich had got posses-
sion of the greater part of the undivided land. They trusted in the conditions of the
time, that these possessions would not be again taken from them, and bought, there-
fore, some of the pieces of land lying near theirs, and belonging to the poor, with the
acquiescence of their owners, and took some by force, so that they now were cultivat-
ing widely extended domains, instead of isolated fields. Then they employed slaves
in agriculture and cattle-breeding, because freemen would have been taken from
labour for military service. The possession of slaves brought them great gain,
inasmuch as these, on account of their immunity from military service, could freely
multiply and have a multitude of children. Thus the powerful men drew all wealth
to themselves, and all the land swarmed with slaves. The Italians, on the other
hand, were always decreasing in number, destroyed as they were by poverty, taxes,
and military service. Even when times of peace came, they were doomed to complete
inactivity, because the rich were in possession of the soil, and used slaves instead of
free men in the tilling of it." (Appian: Civil Wars, I. 7.) This passage refers to the
time before the Licinian rogations. Military service, which hastened to so great an
1
!
Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 751
I
usurpation of the common lands and the revolution in agricul-
ture accompanying this, told so acutely on the agricultural
labourers that, even according to Eden, between 1765 and 1780,
their wages began to fall below the minimum, and to be sup-
plemented by official poor-law relief. Their wages, he says
were not more than enough for the absolute necessaries of
life."
<<
Let us hear for a moment a defender of enclosures and an
opponent of Dr. Price. "Nor is it a consequence that there
must be depopulation, because men are not seen wasting their
labour in the open field If, by converting the little
farmers into a body of men who must work for others, more
labour is produced, it is an advantage which the nation" (to
which, of course, the "converted" ones do not belong) "should
wish for. .. the produce being greater when their joint
labours are employed on one farm, there will be a surplus for
manufactures, and by this means manufactures, one of the
mines of the nation, will increase, in proportion to the quantity
of corn produced."1
•
•
The stoical peace of mind with which the political economist
regards the most shameless violation of the "sacred rights of
property" and the grossest acts of violence to persons, as soon
as they are necessary to lay the foundations of the capitalistic
mode of production, is shown by Sir. F. M. Eden, philanthro-
pist and tory, to boot. The whole series of thefts, outrages, and
popular misery, that accompanied the forcible expropriation of
the people, from the last third of the 15th to the end of the
18th century, lead him merely to the comfortable conclusion :
"The due proportion between arable land and pasture had to
be established. During the whole of the 14th and the greater
part of the 15th century, there was one acre of pasture to 2,
-
extent the ruin of the Roman plebeians, was also the chief means by which, as in a
forcing-house, Charlemagne brought about the transformation of free German
peasants into serfs and bondsmen.
1 An Inquiry into the Connection between the Present Prices of Provisions, &c., p.
124, 129. To the like effect, but with an opposite tendency: "Working-men are
driven from their cottages and forced into the towns to seek for employment; but
then a larger surplus is obtained, and thus capital is augmented." (The Perils of the
Nation, 2nd ed. London. 1843, p. 14.)
752
Capitalist Production.
1
3, and even 4 of arable land.
Con
About the middle of the 16th
century the proportion was changed to 2 acres of pasture to 2,
later on, of 2 acres of pasture to one of arable, until at last the
just proportion of 3 acres of pasture to one of arable land was
attained."
ܐܬ ܘܢ ܀
In the 19th century, the very memory of the connexion
between the agricultural labourer and the communal property
had, of course, vanished. To say nothing of more recent times,
have the agricultural population received a farthing of com-
pensation for the 3,511,770 acres of common land which between
1801 and 1831 were stolen from them and by parliamentary
devices presented to the landlords by the landlords?
The last process of wholesale expropriation of the agricul-
tural population from the soil is, finally, the so-called clearing
of estates, i.e., the sweeping men off them. All the English
methods hitherto considered culminated in "clearing." As
we saw in the picture of modern conditions given in a former
chapter, where there are no more independent peasants to get
rid of, the "clearing" of cottages begins; so that the agricul-
tural labourers do not find on the soil cultivated by them even
the spot necessary for their own housing. But what "clearing
of estates" really and properly signifies, we learn only in the
promised land of modern romance, the Highlands of Scotland.
There the process is distinguished by its systematic character,
by the magnitude of the scale on which it is carried out at one
blow (in Ireland landlords have gone to the length of sweeping
away several villages at once; in Scotland areas as large as
German principalities are dealt with), finally by the peculiar
form of property, under which the embezzled lands were
held.
The Highland Celts were organised in clans, each of which
was the owner of the land on which it was settled. The
representative of the clan, its chief or "great man," was only
the titular owner of this property, just as the Queen of England
is the titular owner of all the national soil. When the English
government succeeded in suppressing the intestine wars of
these "great men," and their constant incursions into the
Lowland plains, the chiefs of the clans by no means gave up
{
(
Expropriation of Agricultural Population. 753
their time-honoured trade as robbers; they only changed its
form. On their own authority they transformed their nominal
right into a right of private property, and as this brought
them into collision with their clansmen, resolved to drive them
out by open force. "A king of England might as well claim
to drive his subjects into the sea," says Professor Newman.
This revolution, which began in Scotland after the last rising
of the followers of the Pretender, can be followed through its
first phases in the writings of Sir James Steuart 2 and James
Anderson.3 In the 18th century the hunted-out Gaels were
forbidden to emigrate from the country, with a view to
driving them by force to Glasgow and other manufacturing
towns. As an example of the method 5 obtaining in the 19th
century, the "clearing" made by the Duchess of Sutherland

ܐ
11. c., p. 132.
2 Steuart says:
says: "If
"If you compare the rent of these lands" (he erroneously includes
in this economic category the tribute of the taskmen to the clan-chief) "with the
extent, it appears very small. If you compare it with the numbers fed
the farm,
you will find that an estate in the Highlands maintains, perhaps, ten times as many
people as another of the same value in a good and fertile province." (1. c., vol. i.,
ch. xvi., p. 104.)
upon
3 James Anderson: Observations on the means of exciting a spirit of National
Industry, &c. Edinburgh, 1777.
* In 1860 the people expropriated by force were exported to Canada under false
pretences. Some fled to the mountains and neighbouring islands. They were followed
by the police, came to blows with them and escaped.
5"In the Highlands of Scotland," says Buchanan, the commentator on Adam
Smith, 1814, “the ancient state of property is daily subverted
The landlord,
without regard to the hereditary tenant (a category used in error here), now offers
his land to the highest bidder, who, if he is an improver, instantly adopts a new
system of cultivation. The land, formerly overspread with small tenants or labourers,
was peopled in proportion to its produce, but under the new system of improved
cultivation and increased rents, the largest possible produce is obtained at the least
possible expense: and the useless hands being, with this view, removed, the popula-
tion is reduced, not to what the land will maintain, but to what it will employ. The
dispossessed tenants either seek a subsistence in the neighbouring towns," &c. (David
Buchanan: Observations on, &c., A. Smith's Wealth of Nations. Edinburgh, 1814,
vol. iv., p. 144.) The Scotch grandees dispossessed families as they would grub up
coppice-wood, and they treated villages and their people as Indians harassed with
wild beasts do, in their vengeance, a jungle with tigers . . . . Man is bartered for a
fleece or a carcase of mutton, nay, held cheaper.. Why, how much worse is it than
the intention of the Moguls, who, when they had broken into the northern provinces
of China, proposed in council to exterminate the inhabitants, and convert the land
into pasture. This proposal many Highland proprietors have effected in their own
country against their own countrymen." (George Ensor: An inquiry concerning the
population of nations. Lond., 1818, pp. 215, 216.)
**
·
·
•
·
•
3 B
754
Capitalist Production.
will suffice here. This person, well instructed in economy,
resolved, on entering upon her government, to effect a radical
cure, and to turn the whole country, whose population had
already been, by earlier processes of the like kind, reduced to
15,000, into a sheep-walk. From 1814 to 1820 these 15,000
inhabitants, about 3000 families, were systematically hunted
and rooted out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt,
all their fields turned into pasturage. British soldiers en-
forced this eviction, and came to blows with the inhabi-
tants. One old woman was burnt to death in the flames of
the hut, which she refused to leave. Thus this fine lady
appropriated 794,000 acres of land that had from time im-
memorial belonged to the clan. She assigned to the expelled
inhabitants about 6000 acres on the sea-shore-2 acres per
family. The 6000 acres had until this time lain waste, and
brought in no income to their owners. The Duchess, in the
nobility of her heart, actually went so far as to let these at an
average rent of 2s. 6d. per acre to the clansmen, who for
centuries had shed their blood for her family. The whole of
the stolen clan-land she divided into 29 great sheep farms, each
inhabited by a single family, for the most part imported
English farm-servants. In the year 1835 the 15,000 Gaels
were already replaced by 131,000 sheep. The remnant of the
aborigines flung on the sea-shore, tried to live by catching fish.
They became amphibious and lived, as an English author
says, half on land and half on water, and withal only half on
both,¹
But the brave Gaels must expiate yet more bitterly their
idolatry, romantic and of the mountains, for the "great men
of the clan. The smell of their fish rose to the noses of the
great men. They scented some profit in it, and let the sea-
")
When the present Duchess of Sutherland entertained Mrs. Beecher Stowe, authoress
of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," with great magnificence in London, to show her sympathy
for the negro slaves of the American republic-a sympathy that she prudently forgot,
with her fellow-aristocrats, during the civil war, in which every
"noble" English
heart beat for the slave-owner-I gave in the "New York Tribune "the facts about
the Sutherland slaves. (Epitomised in part by Carey in The Slave Trade. London,
1853, p. 202, 203.) My article was reprinted in a Scotch newspaper, and led to a
pretty polemic between the latter and the sycophants of the Sutherlands.
Expropriation of Agricultural Population.
755
shore to the great fishmongers of London. For the second
time the Gaels were hunted out.¹
1
But, finally, part of the sheep-walks are turned into deer
preserves. Every one knows that there are no real forests
in England. The deer in the parks of the great are demurely
domestic cattle, fat as London aldermen. Scotland is there-
fore the last refuge of the "noble passion." "In the High-
lands," says Somers in 1848, "new forests are springing up
like mushrooms. Here, on one side of Gaick, you have the new
forest of Glenfeshie; and there on the other you have the
new forest of Ardverikie. In the same line you have the
Black Mount, an immense waste also recently erected. From
east to west-from the neighbourhood of Aberdeen to the
crags of Oban-you have now a continuous line of forests;
while in other parts of the Highlands there are the new forests
of Loch Archaig, Glengarry, Glenmoriston, &c. Sheep were
introduced into glens which had been the seats of communities.
of small farmers; and the latter were driven to seek sub-
sistence on coarser and more sterile tracks of soil. Now deer
are supplanting sheep; and these are once more dispossessing
the small tenants, who will necessarily be driven down upon
still coarser land and to more grinding penury._Deer-forests 2-
and the people cannot co-exist. One or other of the two must
yield. Let the forests be increased in number and extent
during the next quarter of a century, as they have been in the
last, and the Gaels will perish from their native soil . . . This
movement among the Highland proprietors is with some a
matter of ambition.
with some love of sport.
while others, of a more practical cast, follow the trade in deer
with an eye solely to profit. For it is a fact, that a mountain
range laid out in forest is, in many cases, more profitable to
the proprietor than when let as a sheep walk.
The
1 Interesting details on this fish trade will be found in Mr. David Urquhart's
Portfolio, new series.-Nassau W. Senior, in his posthumous work, already quoted,
terms "the proceedings in Sutherlandshire one of the most beneficent clearings since
the memory of man." (1. c.)
2 The deer-forests of Scotland contain not a single tree. The sheep are driven from,
and then the deer driven to, the naked hills, and then it is called a deer forest. Not
even timber-planting and real forest culture.
756
Capitalist Production.
huntsman who wants a deer-forest limits his offers by no other
calculation than the extent of his purse.
Sufferings
have been inflicted in the Higlands scarcely less severe than
those occasioned by the policy of the Norman kings. Deer
have received extended ranges, while men have been hunted
within a narrower and still narrower circle.
One
after one the liberties of the people have been cloven down.
And the oppressions are daily on the increase.
The clearance and dispersion of the people is pursued by the
proprietors as a settled principle, as an agricultural necessity,
just as trees and brushwood are cleared from the wastes of
America or Australia; and the operation goes on in a quiet,
business-like way, &c."1
66
(C
1 Robert Somers: Letters from the Highlands: or the Famine of 1847. London
1848, pp. 12-28 passim. These letters originally appeared in the "Times." The Eng-
lish economists of course explained the famine of the Gaels in 1847, by their over-
population. At all events, they were pressing on their food-supply." The
clearing of estates," or as it is called in Germany Bauernlegen," occurred in
Germany especially after the 30 years' war, and led to peasant-revolts as late as 1790
in Kursachsen. It obtained especially in East Germany. In most of the Prussian
provinces, Frederick II. for the first time secured right of property for the peasants.
After the conquest of Silesia he forced the landlords to rebuild the huts, barns, etc.,
and to provide the peasants with cattle and implements. He wanted soldiers for his
army and tax-payers for his treasury. For the rest, the pleasant life that the pea-
sant led under Frederick's system of finance and hodge-podge rule of despotism,
bureaucracy and feudalism, may be seen from the following quotation from his ad-
mirer, Mirabeau : "Le lin fait donc une des grandes richesses du cultivateur dans le
Nord de l'Allemagne. Malheureusement pour l'espèce humaine, ce n'est qu'une res-
source contre-la-misère et non un moyen de bien-être. Les impôts directs, les corvées,
les servitudes de tout genre, écrasent le cultivateur allemand, qui paie encore des
impôts indirects dans tout ce qu'il achète. . . . et pour comble de ruine, il n'ose pas
vendre ses productions où et comme il le veut ; il n'ose pas acheter ce dont il a besoin
aux marchands qui pourraient le lui livrer au meilleur prix. Toutes ces causes le
ruinent insensiblement, et il se trouverait hors d'état de payer les impôts directs à
l'échéance sans la filerie; elle lui offre une ressource, en occupant utilement sa femme,
ses enfants, ses servants, ses valets, et lui-même; mais quelle pénible vie, même
aidée de ce secours. En été, il travaille comme un forçat au labourage et à la récolte;
il se couche à 9 heures et se lève à deux, pour suffire aux travaux; en hiver il devrait
réparer ses forces par un plus grand repos; mais il manquera de grains pour le pain
et les semailles, s'il se défait des denrées qu'il faudrait vendre pour payer les impôts.
Il faut donc filer pour suppléer à ce vide. . . . il faut y apporter la plus grande
assiduité. Aussi le paysan se couche-t-il en hiver à minuit, une heure, et se lève à
cinq ou six; ou bien il se couche à neuf, et se lève à deux, et cela tous les jours de la
vie si ce n'est le dimanche. Ces excès de veille et de travail usent la nature humaine,
et de là vient qu' hommes et femmes vieillissent beaucoup plûtôt dans les campagnes
que dans les villes. (Mirabeau, 1. c. t. III., pp. 212 sqq.)
Note to the second edition. In April 1866, 18 years after the publication of the work
С،
Expropriation of Agricultural Population.
757
The spoliation of the church's property, the fraudulent alien-
ation of the State domains, the robbery of the common lands,
the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transforma-
tion into modern private property under circumstances of reck-
less terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive
accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistic agri-
culture, made the soil part and parcel of capital, and created for
the town industries the necessary supply of a "free" and out-
lawed proletariat.
of Robert Somers quoted above, Professor Leone Levi gave a lecture before the Society
of Arts on the transformation of sheep walks into deer-forest, in which he depicts
the advance in the devastation of the Scottish Highlands. He says, with other things:
"Depopulation and transformation into sheep-walks were the most convenient means
for getting an income without expenditure. A deer forest in place of a sheep-
walk was a common change in the Highlands. The landowners turned out the sheep
as they once turned out the men from their estates, and welcomed the new tenants
-the wild beasts and the feathered birds. One can walk from the Earl of
Dalhousie's estates in Forfarshire to John o' Groats, without ever leaving forest land.
·
•
In many of these woods the fox, the wild cat, the marten, the polecat, the
weasel and the Alpine hare are common; whilst the rabbit, the squirrel and the rat
have lately made their way into the country. Immense tracts of land, much of
which is described in the statistical account of Scotland as having a pasturage in
richness and extent of very superior description, are thus shut out from all cultiva-
tion and improvment, and are solely devoted to the sport of a few persons for a very
brief period of the year." The London Economist of June 2, 1866, says, Amongst
the items of news in a Scotch paper of last week, we read. 'One of the finest
sheep farms in Sutherlandshire, for which a rent of £1,200 a year was recently offered,
on the expiry of the existing lease this year, is to be converted into a deer forest.'
Here we see the modern instincts of feudalism.
**
did when the Norman Conqueror.
•
•
·
•
•
•
operating pretty much as they
destroyed 36 villages to create the New
totally laid waste, embracing within their
Forest.
Two millions of acres.
area some of the most fertile lands of Scotland. The natural grass of Glen Tilt was
among the most nutritive in the county of Perth. The deer forest of Ben Aulder
was by far the the best grazing ground in the wide district of Badenoch; a part
of the Black Mount forest was the best pasture for black-faced sheep in Scotland.
Some idea of the ground laid waste for purely sporting purposes in Scotland may be
formed from the fact that it embraced an area larger than the whole county of Perth.
The resources of the forest of Ben Aulder might give some idea of the loss sustained
from the forced desolations. The ground would pasture 15,000 sheep, and as it was
not more than one-thirtieth part of the old forest ground in Scotland. .. it might
&c., . . . All that forest land is as totally unproductive. It might thus as well
have been submerged under the waters of the German Ocean. . . . Such extemporized
wildernesses or deserts ought to be put down by the decided interference of the
Legislature."
·
•
•
•
a
·
•
•
-
•
•
758
Capitalist Production.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
BLOODY LEGISLATION AGAINST THE EXPROPRIATED, FROM THE
END OF THE 15TH CENTURY. FORCING DOWN OF WAGES
BY ACTS OF PARLIAMENT.
THE proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of
feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the people
from the soil, this "free" proletariat could not possibly be
absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown
upon the world.
On the other hand, these men, suddenly
dragged from their wonted mode of life, could not as suddenly
adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition.
They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vaga-
bonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of cir-
cumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the
whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe a bloody
legislation against vagabondage. The fathers of the present
working-class were chastised for their enforced transforma-
tion into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them
as "voluntary" criminals, and assumed that it depended on their
own goodwill to go on working under the old conditions that
no longer existed.
In England this legislation began under Henry VII.
Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work receive
a beggar's licence. On the other hand, whipping and imprison-
ment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to the cart-
tail and whipped until the blood streams from their bodies,
then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace or to
where they have lived the last three years and to "put them-
selves to labour." What grim irony! In 27 Henry VIII.
the former statute is repeated, but strengthened with new
clauses. For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping
is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the third
relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal
and enemy of the common weal.
Edward VI.: A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547,
Legislation against the Expropriated.
759
ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned
as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler.
The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth
and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to
force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip
and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned
to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or back
with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed
as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out
on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle.
If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are
also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are
to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has
been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birth-
place, branded with a redhot iron with the letter V on the
breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some
other labour. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is
then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants,
or its corporation, and to be branded with an S. All persons
have the right to take away the children of the vagabonds
and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th
year, the girls until the 20th. If they run away, they are to
become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can put
them in irons, whip them, &c., if they like. Every master may
put an iron ring round the neck, arms or legs of his slave, by
which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him.¹
The last part of this statute provides, that certain poor people
may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to
give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind
of parish-slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th
century under the name of "roundsmen."
Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age
are to be severely flogged and branded on the left ear unless
some one will take them into service for two years; in case of a
<<
1 The author of the Essay on Trade, etc., 1770, says, In the reign of Edward VI.
indeed the English seem to have set, in good earnest, about encouraging manufactures
and employing the poor. This we learn from a remarkable statute which runs thus:
That all vagrants shall be branded, &c.'" 1. c., p. 5.
760
Capitalist Production.
repetition of the offence, if they are over 18, they are to be
executed, unless some one will take them into service for two
years; but for the third offence they are to be executed without
mercy as felons. Similar statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and
another of 1597.
James I: Any one wandering about and begging is declared
a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty sessions
are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first
offence to imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2
years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and
as often as the justices of the peace think fit . . . Incorrigible
and dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left
shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught begging
again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes, legally
binding until the beginning of the 18th century, were only re-
pealed by 12 Ann, c. 23.
1 Thomas More says in his Utopia: "Therefore that on covetous and unsatiable
cormaraunte and very plage of his native contrey maye compasse aboute and inclose
many thousand akers of grounde together within one pale or hedge, the husbandmen
be thrust owte of their owne, or els either by coueyne and fraude, or by violent op-
pression they be put besydes it, or by wrongs and iniuries thei be so weried that they
be compelled to sell all: by one meanes, therfore, or by other, either by hooke or
crooke they muste needes departe awaye, poore, selye, wretched soules, men, women,
husbands, wiues, fatherlesse children, widowes, wofull mothers with their yonge
babes, and their whole household smal in substance, and muche in numbre, as hus-
bandrye requireth many handes. Awaye thei trudge, I say, owte of their knowen
accustomed houses, fyndynge no place to reste in. All their housholde stuffe, which
is very little woorthe, thoughe it might well abide the sale: yet beeynge sodainely
thruste owte, they be constrayned to sell it for a thing of nought. And when they
haue wandered abrode tyll that be spent, what can they then els doe but steale, and then
iustly pardy be hanged, or els go about beggyng. And yet then also they be caste in
prison as vagaboundes, because they go aboute and worke not: whom no man wyl set
a worke though thei neuer so willyngly profre themselues therto.
Of these poor
fugitives of whom Thomas More says that they were forced to thieve, "7200 great and
petty thieves were put to death," in the reign of Henry VIII. (Hollinshed, descrip-
tion of England, Vol. 1., p. 186.) In Elizabeth's time, "rogues were trussed up apace,
and that there was not one year commonly wherein three or four hundred were not
devoured and eaten up by the gallowes." (Strype's Annals of the Reformation
and Establishment of Religion, and other Various Occurrences in the Church of Eng-
land during Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign. Second ed., 1725, Vol. 2.) According
to this same Strype, in Somersetshire, in one year, 40 persons were executed, 35 rob-
bers burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 discharged as "incorrigible vagabonds."
Nevertheless, he is of opinion that this large number of prisoners does not comprise even
a fifth of the actual criminals, thanks to the negligence of the justices and the foolish
compassion of the people; and the other counties of England were not better off in
this respect than Somersetshire, while some were even worse.
25
Legislation against the Expropriated.
761
Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th
century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established
in Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI.'s reign (Ordi-
nance of July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from 16
to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not
practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the same
nature are the statute of Charles V. for the Netherlands
(October, 1537), the first edict of the States and Towns of
Holland (March 10, 1614), the "Plakaat" of the United
Provinces (June 26, 1649), &c.
Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated
from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds,
and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely
terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system.
It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concen-
trated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at the one pole of
society, while at the other are grouped masses of men, who
have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Neither is it
enough that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily. The
advance of capitalist production developes a working-class,
which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions
of that mode of production as self-evident laws of nature. The
organization of the capitalist process of production, once fully
developed, breaks down all resistance. The constant generation
of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and
demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that
corresponds with the wants of capital. The dull compulsion
of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer
to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is
of course still used, but only exceptionally. In the ordinary
run of things, the labourer can be left to the "natural laws of
production," i.e., to his dependence on capital, a dependence
springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions
of production themselves. It is otherwise during the historic
genesis of capitalist production. The bourgeoisie, at its rise,
wants and uses the power of the state to "regulate" wages, i.e.,
to force them within the limits suitable for surplus-value
making, to lengthen the working-day and to keep the labourer
762
Capitalist Production.
himself in the normal degree of dependence. This is an essen-
tial element of the so-called primitive accumulation.
The class of wage-labourers, which arose in the latter half of
the 14th century, formed then and in the following century
only a very small part of the population, well protected in its
position by the independent peasant proprietary in the country
and the guild-organization in the town. In country and town.
master and workmen stood close together socially. The subor-
dination of labour to capital was only formal-i.e., the mode
of production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic
character. Variable capital preponderated greatly over con-
stant. The demand for wage-labour grew, therefore, rapidly
with every accumulation of capital, whilst the supply of wage-
labour followed but slowly. A large part of the national pro-
duct, changed later into a fund of capitalist accumulation, then
still entered into the consumption fund of the labourer.
1
Legislation on wage-labour, (from the first, aimed at the ex-
ploitation of the labourer and, as it advanced, always equally
hostile to him), is started in England by the Statute of
Labourers, of Edward III., 1349. The ordinance of 1350 in
France, issued in the name of King John, corresponds with it.
English and French legislation run parallel and are identical
in purport. So far as the labour-statutes aim at compulsory
extension of the working-day, I do not return to them, as this
point was treated earlier (Chap. X., Section 5).
The Statute of Labourers was passed at the urgent instance
of the House of Commons. A Tory says naively: "Formerly
the poor demanded such high wages as to threaten industry
and wealth. Next, their wages are so low as to threaten in-
dustry and wealth equally and perhaps more, but in another
way. "2 A tariff of wages was fixed by law for town and country,
for piece-work and day-work. The agricultural labourers were
to hire themselves out by the year, the town ones "in open
1 "Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters
and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters," says A. Smith. "L'esprit
des lois, c'est la propriété," says Linguet.
2 "Sophisms of Free Trade." By a Barrister. Lond., 1850, p. 53. He adds
maliciously: "We were ready enough to interfere for the employer, can nothing
now be done for the employed?"
Legislation against the Expropriated.
763
market." It was forbidden, under pain of imprisonment, to pay
higher wages than those fixed by the statute, but the taking of
higher wages was more severely punished than the giving
them. [So also in Sections 18 and 19 of the Statute of
Apprentices of Elizabeth, ten days' imprisonment is decreed
for him that pays the higher wages, but twenty-one days for
him that receives them.] A statute of 1360 increased the
penalties and authorised the masters to extort labour at the
legal rate of wages by corporal punishment. All combinations,
contracts, oaths, &c., by which masons and carpenters recipro-
cally bound themselves, were declared null and void. Coalition.
of the labourers is treated as a heinous crime from the 14th
century to 1825, the year of the repeal of the laws against
Trades' Unions. The spirit of the Statute of Labourers of 1349
and of its offshoots, comes out clearly in the fact, that in-
deed a maximum of wages is dictated by the State, but on no
account a minimum.
In the 16th century, the condition of the labourers had, as
we know, become much worse. The money wage rose, but not
in proportion to the depreciation of money and the correspond-
ing rise in the prices of commodities. Wages, therefore, in
reality fell. Nevertheless, the laws for keeping them down
remained in force, together with the ear-clipping and branding
of those "whom no one was willing to take into service." By
the Statute of Apprentices 5 Elizabeth, c. 3, the justices of the
peace were empowered to fix certain wages and to modify them
according to the time of the year and the price of commodities.
James I. extended these regulations of labour also to weavers,
spinners, and all possible categories of workers.1 George II.
1 From a clause of Statute 2 James I., c. 6, we see that certain cloth-makers took
upon themselves to dictate, in their capacity of justices of the peace, the official tariff
of wages in their own shops. In Germany, especially after the Thirty Years'
War, statutes for keeping down wages were general. "The want of servants and
labourers was very troublesome to the landed proprietors in the depopulated districts.
All villagers were forbidden to let rooms to single men and women; all the latter
were to be reported to the authorities and cast into prison if they were unwilling to
become servants, even if they were employed at any other work, such as sowing seeds
for the peasants at a daily wage, or even buying and selling corn. (Imperial pri-
vileges and sanctions for Silesia, I., 25.) For a whole century in the decrees of the
small German potentates a bitter cry goes up again and again about the wicked and
mpertinent rabble that will not reconcile itself to its hard lot, will not be content
76+
Capitalist Production.
extended the laws against coalitions of labourers to manufac-
tures. In the manufacturing period par excellence, the capi-
talist mode of production had become sufficiently strong to render
legal regulation of wages as impracticable as it was unneces-
sary; but the ruling classes were unwilling in case of necessity
to be without the weapons of the old arsenal. Still, 8 George
II. forbade a higher day's wage than 2s. 74d. for journeymen
tailors in and around London, except in cases of general
mourning; still, 13 George III., c. 68, gave the regulation of
the wages of silk-weavers to the justices of the peace; still,
in 1706, it required two judgments of the higher courts to de-
cide, whether the mandates of justices of the peace as to wages
held good also for non-agricultural labourers; still, in 1799, an
act of Parliament ordered that the wages of the Scotch miners
should continue to be regulated by a statute of Elizabeth and
two Scotch acts of 1661 and 1671. How completely in the
meantime circumstances had changed, is proved by an occur-
rence unheard-of before in the English Lower House. In that
place, where for more than 400 years laws had been made for
the maximum, beyond which wages absolutely must not rise,
Whitbread in 1796 proposed a legal minimum wage for agri-
cultural labourers. Pitt opposed this, but confessed that the
"condition of the poor was cruel." Finally, in 1813, the laws
for the regulation of wages were repealed. They were an
absurd anomaly, since the capitalist regulated his factory by
his private legislation, and could by the poor-rates make up
the wage of the agricultural labourer to the indispensable
minimum. The provisions of the labour statutes as to con-
tracts between master and workman, as to giving notice and
the like, which only allow of a civil action against the contract-
breaking master, but on the contrary permit a criminal action
against the contract-breaking workman, are to this hour (1873)
in full force. The barbarous laws against Trades' Unions fell in
M
with the legal wage; the individual landed proprietors are forbidden to pay more
than the State had fixed by a tariff. And yet the conditions of service were at times
better after the war than 100 years later; the farm servants of Silesia had, in 1652,
meat twice a week, whilst even in our century, districts are known where they have
it only three times a year. Further, wages after the war were higher than in the
following century." (G. Freitag.)
Legislation against the Expropriated.
765
1825 before the threatening bearing of the proletariat. Despite
this, they fell only in part. Certain beautiful fragments of
the old statute vanished only in 1859. Finally, the act of Par-
liament of June 29, 1871, made a pretence of removing the last
traces of this class of legislation by legal recognition of Trades
Unions. But an act of Parliament of the same date (an act
to amend the criminal law relating to violence, threats, and
molestation), re-established, in point of fact, the former state of
things in a new shape. By this Parliamentary escamotage the
means which the labourers could use in a strike or lock-out
were withdrawn from the laws common to all citizens, and
placed under exceptional penal legislation, the interpretation
of which fell to the masters themselves in their capacity as
justices of the peace. Two years earlier, the same House of
Commons and the same Mr. Gladstone in the well-known
straightforward fashion brought in a bill for the abolition of
all exceptional penal legislation against the working-class. But
this was never allowed to go beyond the second reading, and
the matter was thus protracted until at last the "great Liberal
party," by an alliance with the Tories, found courage to turn
against the very proletariat that had carried it into power.
Not content with this treachery, the "great Liberal party
allowed the English judges, ever complaisant in the service of
the ruling classes, to dig up again the earlier laws against
conspiracy," and to apply them to coalitions of labourers.
We see that only against its will and under the pressure of the
masses did the English Parliament give up the laws against
Strikes and Trades' Unions, after it had itself, for 500 years,
held, with shameless egoism, the position of a permanent Trades'
Union of the capitalists against the labourers.
*
During the very first storms of the revolution, the French
bourgeoisie dared to take away from the workers the right of
association but just acquired. By a decree of June 14, 1791,
they declared all coalition of the workers as "an attempt against
liberty and the declaration of the rights of man," punishable by
a fine of 500 livres, together with deprivation of the rights of an
active citizen for one year. This law which, by means of State
1
1 Article I. of this law runs: "L'anéantissement de toute espèce de corporations
})
766
Capitalist Production.
compulsion, confined the struggle between capital and labour
within limits comfortable for capital, has outlived revolutions
and changes of dynasties. Even the Reign of Terror left it un-
touched. It was but quite recently struck out of the Penal Code,
Nothing is more characteristic than the pretext for this bourgeois
coup d'état.
"Granting," says Chapelier, the reporter of the
Select Committee on this law, "that wages ought to be a little
higher than they are, . . . that they ought to be high enough
for him that receives them, to be free from that state of abso-
lute dependence due to the want of the necessaries of life, and
which is almost that of slavery," yet the workers must not
be allowed to come to any understanding about their own in-
terests, nor to act in common and thereby lessen their "abso-
lute dependence, which is almost that of slavery;" because,
forsooth, in doing this they injure "the freedom of their ci-
devant masters, the present entrepreneurs," and because a
coalition against the despotism of the quondam masters of the
corporations is-guess what!-is a restoration of the corpora-
tions abolished by the French constitution.¹
CHAPTER XXIX.
GENESIS OF THE CAPITALIST FARMER.
Now that we have considered the forcible creation of a class of
outlawed proletarians, the bloody discipline that turned them
into wage-labourers, the disgraceful action of the state which
employed the police to accelerate the accumulation of capital
du même état et profession étant l'une des bases fondamentales de la constitution
française, il est défendu de les rétablir de fait sous quelque prétexte et sous quelque
forme que ce soit." Article IV. declares, that if "des citoyens attachés aux mêmes
professions, arts et métiers prenaient des délibérations, faisaient entre eux des con-
ventions tendantes à refuser de concert ou à n'accorder qu'à un prix déterminé le
secours de leur industrie ou de leurs travaux, les dites délibérations et conventions
seront déclarées inconstitutionnelles, attentatoires à la liberté et à la declara-
tion des droits de l'homme, &c.": felony, therefore, as in the old labour-statutes.
("Revolutions de Paris." Paris, 1791, t. III., p. 523.)
1 ¹ Buchez et Roux: "Histoire Parlementaire," t. x., p. 195.
A
Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer.
767
by increasing the degree of exploitation of labour, the ques-
tion remains whence came the capitalists originally? For
the expropriation of the agricultural population creates,
directly, none but great landed proprietors. As far, however,
as concerns the genesis of the farmer, we can, so to say, put our
hand on it, because it is a slow process evolving through many
centuries. The serfs, as well as the free small proprietors, held
land under very different tenures, and were therefore
emancipated under very different economic conditions. In
England the first form of the farmer is the bailiff, himself a
serf. His position is similar to that of the old Roman villicus,
only in a more limited sphere of action. During the second
half of the 14th century he is replaced by a farmer, whom the
landlord provides with seed, cattle and implements. His con-
dition is not very different from that of the peasant. Only he
exploits more wage-labour. Soon he becomes a métayer, a
half-farmer. He advances one part of the agricultural stock,
the landlord the other. The two divide the total product in
proportions determined by contract. This form quickly disap-
pears in England, to give place to the farmer proper, who
makes his own capital breed by employing wage-labourers, and
pays a part of the surplus product, in money or in kind, to the
landlord as rent. So long, during the 15th century, as the
independent peasant and the farm-labourer working for himself
as well as for wages, enriched themselves by their own labour,
the circumstances of the farmer, and his field of production,
were equally mediocre. The agricultural revolution which
commenced in the last third of the 15th century, and continued
during almost the whole of the 16th (excepting, however, its
last decade), enriched him just as speedily as it impoverished
the mass of the agricultural people.¹
The usurpation of the common lands allowed him to aug-
ment greatly his stock of cattle, almost without cost, whilst
they yielded him a richer supply of manure for the tillage of
the soil. To this, was added in the 16th century, a very im-
1 Harrison in his 'Description of England,' says although peradventure
foure pounds of old rent be improved to fortie, toward the end of his term, if he
have not six or seven yeares rent lieng by him, fiftie or a hundred pounds, yet will
the farmer thinke his gaines verie small."
((
C
768
Capitalist Production.
portant element. At that time the contracts for farms ran for
a long time, often for 99 years. The progressive fall in the
value of the precious metals, and therefore of money, brought
the farmers golden fruit. Apart from all the other circum-
stances discussed above, it lowered wages. A portion of the
latter was now added to the profits of the farm. The con-
tinuous rise in the price of corn, wool, meat, in a word of all
agricultural produce, swelled the money capital of the farmer
without any action on his part, whilst the rent he paid, (being
calculated on the old value of money) diminished in reality.¹
Thus they grew rich at the expense both of their labourers and
their landlords. No wonder therefore, that England, at the
end of the 16th century, had a class of capitalist farmers, rich,
considering the circumstances of the time.¹
1 On the influence of the depreciation of money in the 16th century, on the
different classes of society, see "A Compendious or Briefe Examination of Certayne
Ordinary complaints of Diverse of our Countrymen in these our days." By W. S.,
Gentleman. (London 1581). The dialogue form of this work led people for a long
time to ascribe it to Shakespeare, and even in 1751, it was published under his name.
Its author is William Stafford. In one place the knight reasons as follows:
>>
Knight: "You, my neighbour, the husbandman, you Maister Mercer, and you
Goodman Cooper, with other artificers, may save yourselves metely well. For as
much as all things are deerer than they were, so much do you arise in the pryce of
your wares and occupations that ye sell agayne.
agayne. But we have nothing to sell where-
by we might advance ye price there of, to countervaile those things that we must buy
agayne. In another place the knight asks the doctor: "I pray you, what be those
sorts that ye meane. And first, of those that ye thinke should have no losse
thereby ?-Doctor: I mean all those that live by buying and selling, for as they buy
deare, they sell thereafter. Knight: What is the next sort that ye say would win
by it? Doctor: Marry, all such as have takings or fearmes in their owne manurance
[cultivation] at the old rent, for where they pay after the olde rate they sell after
the newe—that is, they paye for theire lande good cheape, and sell all things grow-
ing thereof deare. Knight: What sorte is that which, ye sayde should have greater
losse hereby, than these men had profit? Doctor: It is all noblemen, gentlemen,
and all other that live either by a stinted rent or stypend, or do not manure [cultiva-
tion] the ground, or doe occupy no buying and selling."
CC
2 In France, the régisseur, steward, collector of dues for the feudal lords during
the earlier part of the middle ages, soon became an homme d'affaires, who by extor-
tion, cheating, &c., swindled himself into a capitalist. These régisseurs themselves.
were sometimes noblemen. E. g. C'est li compte que messire Jacques de Thoraine,
chevalier chastelain sor Besançon rent ès-seigneur tenant les comptes à Dijon pour
monseigneur le duc et comte de Bourgoigne, des rentes appartenant à la dite chas-
tellenic, depuis xxve jour de décembre MCCCLIX jusqu' au xxviiie jour de décem-
bre MCCCLX. (Alexis Monteil: Histoire des Materiaux manuscrits etc., p. 244.)
Already it is evident here how in all spheres of social life the lion's share falls to the
middleman. In the economic domain, e.g., financiers, stock-exchange speculators,
Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution. 769
CHAPTER XXX.
REACTION OF THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION ON INDUSTRY,
CREATION OF THE HOME MARKET FOR INDUSTRIAL CAPITAL.
THE expropriation and expulsion of the agricultural popula-
tion, intermittent but renewed again and again, supplied,
as we saw, the town industries with a mass of proletarians
entirely unconnected with the corporate guilds and unfet-
tered by them; a fortunate circumstance that makes old A.
Anderson (not to be confounded with James Anderson) in his
"History of Commerce," believe in the direct intervention of
Providence. We must still pause a moment on this element of
primitive accumulation. The thinning-out of the independent,
self-supporting peasants not only brought about the crowding
together of the industrial proletariat, in the way that Geoffroy
Saint Hilaire explained the condensation of cosmical matter at
one place, by its rarefaction at another. In spite of the smaller
number of its cultivators, the soil brought forth as much or
more produce, after as before, because the revolution in the
conditions of landed property was accompanied by improved
methods of culture, greater co-operation, concentration of the
means of production, &c., and because not only were the agri-
merchants, shopkeepers skim the cream; in civil matters, the lawyer fleeces his
clients; in politics the representative is of more importance than the voters, the
minister than the sovereign; in religion God is pushed into the background by the
"Mediator," and the latter again is shoved back by the priests, the inevitable
middlemen between the good shepherd and his sheep. In France, as in England,
the great feudal territories were divided into innumerable small homesteads, but
under conditions incomparably more unfavourable for the people. During the 14th
century arose the farms or terriers. Their number grew constantly, far beyond
100,000. They paid rents varying from to of the product in money or in kind.
These farms were fiefs, sub-fiefs, &c., according to the value and extent of the
domains, many of them only containing a few acres. But these farmers had rights
of jurisdiction in some degree over the dwellers on the soil; there were four grades.
The oppression of the agricultural population under all these petty tyrants will be
understood. Monteil says that there were once in France 160,000 judges, where to-
day 4000 tribunals, including justices of the peace, suffice.
1 In his Notions de Philosophie Naturelle. Paris, 1838.
30
770
Capitalist Production.
cultural wage-labourers put on the strain more intensely,' but
the field of production on which they worked for themselves,
became more and more contracted. With the setting free of a
part of the agricultural population, therefore, their former
means of nourishment were also set free. They were now
transformed into material elements of variable capital. The
peasant, expropriated and cast adrift, must buy their value in
the form of wages, from his new master, the industrial capita-
list. That which holds good of the means of subsistence holds
with the raw materials of industry dependent upon home
agriculture. They were transformed into an element of con-
stant capital. Suppose, e.g., a part of the Westphalian peas-
ants, who, at the time of Frederic II., all span flax, forcibly
expropriated and hunted from the soil; and the other part that
remained, turned into day-labourers of large farmers. At the
same time arise large establishments for flax-spinning and weav-
ing, in which the men "set free" now work for wages. The flax
looks exactly as before. Not a fibre of it is changed, but a new
social soul has popped into its body. It forms now a part of
the constant capital of the master manufacturer. Formerly
divided among a number of small producers, who cultivated
it themselves and with their families spun it in retail fashion,
it is now concentrated in the hand of one capitalist, who sets
others to spin and weave it for him. The extra labour expen-
ded in flax-spinning realised itself formerly in extra income to
numerous peasant families, or maybe, in Frederic II.'s time, in
taxes pour le roi de Prusse. It realises itself now in profit for
a few capitalists. The spindles and looms, formerly scattered
over the face of the country, are now crowded together in a few
great labour-barracks, together with the labourers and the raw
material. And spindles, looms, raw material, are now trans-
formed, from means of independent existence for the spinners
and weavers, into means for commanding them and sucking out
of them unpaid labour. One does not perceive, when looking
at the large manufactories and the large farms, that they have
1 A point that Sir James Steuart emphasises.
24
Je permettrai," says the capitalist, "que vous ayez l'honneur de me servir, à
condition que vous me donnez le peu qui vous reste pour la peine que je prends de vous
commander. (J. J. Rousseau : Discours sur l'Economie Politique.)
Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution.
771
originated from the throwing into one of many small centres of
production, and have been built up by the expropriation of
many small independent producers. Nevertheless, the popular
intuition was not at fault. In the time of Mirabeau, the lion
of the Revolution, the great manufactories were still called
manufactures réunies, workshops thrown into one, as we speak
of fields thrown into one. Says Mirabeau: "We are only paying
attention to the grand manufactories, in which hundreds of men
work under a director and which are commonly called
manufactures réunies. Those where a very large number of
labourers work, each separately and on his own account, are
hardly considered; they are placed at an infinite distance from
the others. This is a great error, as the latter alone make a
really important object of national prosperity . . . The large
workshop (manufacture réunie) will enrich prodigiously one or
two entrepreneurs, but the labourers will only be journeymen,
paid more or less, and will not have any share in the success of
the undertaking. In the discrete workshop (manufacture
séparée,) on the contrary, no one will become rich, but many
labourers will be comfortable; the saving and the industrious
will be able to amass a little capital, to put by a little for a
birth of a child, for an illness, for themselves or their belongings.
The number of saving and industrious labourers will increase,
because they will see in good conduct, in activity, a means of
essentially bettering their condition, and not of obtaining a
small rise of wages that can never be of any importance for the
future, and whose sole result is to place men in the position to
live a little better, but only from day to day.
The large
workshops, undertakings of certain private persons who pay
labourers from day to day to work for their gain, may be able
to put these private individuals at their ease, but they will
never be an object worth the attention of governments. Dis-
crete workshops, for the most part combined with cultivation
of small holdings, are the only free ones." The expropriation
and eviction of a part of the agricultural population not
1 Mirabeau, 1. c. t. III, pp. 20-109 passim. That Mirabeau considers the separate
workshops more economic and productive than the "combined," and sees in the latter
merely artificial exotics under government cultivation, is explained by the position at
that time of a great part of the continental manufactures.
772
Capitalist Production.
only set free for industrial capital, the labourers, their means
of subsistence, and material for labour; it also created the home
market.
In fact, the events that transformed the small peasants into
wage-labourers, and their means of subsistence and of labour
into material elements of capital, created, at the same time, a
home-market for the latter. Formerly, the peasant family
produced the means of subsistence and the raw materials, which
they themselves, for the most part, consumed. These raw
materials and means of subsistence have now become com-
modities; the large farmer sells them, he finds his market in
manufactures. Yarn, linen, coarse woollen stuffs-things
whose raw materials had been within the reach of every
peasant family, had been spun and woven by it for its own
use-were now transformed into articles of manufacture, to
which the country districts at once served for markets. The
many scattered customers, whom stray artizans until now
had found in the numerous small producers working on
their own account, concentrate themselves now into one great
market provided for by industrial capital.¹ Thus, hand in
hand with the expropriation of the self-supporting peasants,
with their separation from their means of production, goes the
destruction of rural domestic industry, the process of separation
between manufacture and agriculture. And only the destruc-
tion of rural domestic industry can give the internal market.
of a country that extension and consistence which the capitalist
mode of production requires. Still the manufacturing period,
properly so-called, does not succeed in carrying out this trans-
formation radically and completely. It will be remembered
that manufacture, properly so-called, conquers but partially
the domain of national production, and always rests on the
handicrafts of the town and the domestic industry of the rural
1 "Twenty pounds of wool converted unobtrusively into the yearly clothing of
labourer's family by its own industry in the intervals of other work-this makes no
show; but bring it to market, send it to the factory, thence to the broker, thence to
the dealer, and you will have great commercial operations, and nominal capital
engaged to the amount of twenty times its value. . . . The working class is thus emerce i
to support a wretched factory population, a parasitical shop-keeping class, and 急
​fictitious commercial, monetary, and financial system. (David Urquhart, I. e
p. 120.)
•
Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution. 773
1
districts as its ultimate basis. If it destroys these in one form,
in particular branches, at certain points, it calls them up again
elsewhere, because it needs them for the preparation of raw
material up to a certain point. It produces, therefore, a new
class of small villagers who, while following the cultivation of
the soil as an accessary calling, find their chief occupation in
industrial labour, the products of which they sell to the manu-
facturers directly, or through the medium of merchants. This
is one, though not the chief, cause of a phenomenon which, at
first, puzzles the student of English history. From the last
third of the 15th century he finds continually complaints, only
interrupted at certain intervals, about the encroachment of
capitalist farming in the country districts, and the progressive
destruction of the peasantry. On the other hand, he always
finds this peasantry turning up again, although in diminished
number, and always under worse conditions.¹ The chief
reason is: England is at one time chiefly a cultivator of corn, at
another chiefly a breeder of cattle, in alternate periods, and with
these the extent of peasant cultivation fluctuates. Modern
Industry alone, and finally, supplies, in machinery, the lasting
basis of capitalistic agriculture, expropriates radically the
enormous majority of the agricultural population, and completes
the separation between agriculture and rural domestic in-
dustry, whose roots-spinning and weaving-it tears up.2
1 Cromwell's time forms an exception. So long as the Republic lasted, the mass of
the English people of all grades rose from the degradation into which they had sunk
under the Tudors.
46
C
2 Tuckett is aware that the modern woollen industry has sprung, with the introduc-
tion of machinery, from manufacture proper and from the destruction of rural and
domestic industries. The plough, the yoke, were the invention of gods, and the
occupation of heroes;' are the loom, the spindle, the distaff, of less noble parentage
You sever the distaff and the plough, the spindle and the yoke, and you get factories
and poorhouses, credit and panics, two hostile nations, agricultural and commercial."
(David Urquhart, 1. c., p. 122.) But now comes Carey, and cries out upon England, surely
not with unreason, that it is trying to turn every other country into a mere agricul-
tural nation, whose manufacturer is to be England. He pretends that in this way
Turkey has been ruined, because "the owners and occupants of laud have never been
permitted by England to strengthen themselves by the formation of that natural
alliance between the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow." (The Slave
Trade, p. 125.) According to him, Urquhart himself is one of the chief agents in the
ruin of Turkey, where he had made free trade propaganda in the English interest.
The best of it is that Carey, a great Russophile by the way, wants to pre-
vent the process of separation by that very system of protection which accelerates it.
774
Capitalist Production.
It therefore also, for the first time, conquers for industrial capital
the entire home market.¹
CHAPTER XXXI.
GENESIS OF THE INDUSTRIAL CAPITALIST.
THE genesis of the industrial 2 capitalist did not proceed in
such a gradual way as that of the farmer. Doubtless many
small guild-masters, and yet more independent small artisans,
or even wage-labourers, transformed themselves into small
capitalists, and (by gradually extending exploitation of wage-
labour and corresponding accumulation) into full-blown capi-
talists. In the infaney of capitalist production, things often
happened as in the infancy of medieval towns, where the
question, which of the escaped serfs should be master and which
servant, was in great part decided by the earlier or later date
of their flight. The snail's-pace of this method corresponded
in no wise with the commercial requirements of the new world-
market that the great discoveries of the end of the 15th century
created. But the middle ages had handed down two distinct
forms of capital, which mature in the most different economie
social formations, and which, before the era of the capitalist
mode of production, are considered as capital quand même-
usurer's capital and merchant's capital.
"At present, all the wealth of society goes first into the pos-
session of the capitalist . . . . he pays the landowner his rent,
the labourer his wages, the tax and tithe gatherer their claims,
and keeps a large, indeed the largest, and a continually aug-
1 Philanthropic English economists, like Mill, Rogers, Goldwin, Smith, Fawcett,
&c., and liberal manufacturers like John Bright & Co., ask the English landed
proprietors, as God asked Cain after Abel, Where are our thousands of freeholders
gone? But where do you come from, then? From the destruction of those free-
holders. Why don't you ask further, where are the independent weavers, spinners,
and artizans gone?
2 Industrial here in contradistinction to agricultural. In the " categoric" sense
the farmer is an industrial capitalist as much as the manufacturer.
Į
Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.
775
menting share, of the annual produce of labour for himself.
The capitalist may now be said to be the first owner of all the
wealth of the community, though no law has conferred on him
the right to this property ... this change has been effected
by the taking of interest on capital . . . and it is not a little
curious that all the lawgivers of Europe endeavoured to pre-
vent this by statutes, viz., statutes against usury. . . . . The
power of the capitalist over all the wealth of the country is a
complete change in the right of property, and by what law, or
series of laws, was it effected ? "1 The author should have re-
membered that revolutions are not made by laws.
•
2
The money capital formed by means of usury and commerce
was prevented from turning into industrial capital, in the
country by the feudal constitution, in the towns by the guild
organisation. These fetters vanished with the dissolution of
feudal society, with the expropriation and partial eviction of
the country population. The new manufactures were estab-
lished at sea-ports, or at inland points beyond the control of
the old municipalities and their guilds. Hence in England an
embittered struggle of the corporate towns against these new
industrial nurseries.
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpa-
tion, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal
population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of
the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for
the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy
dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic pro-
ceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On
their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations,
with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of
the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in Eng-
land's anti-jacobin war, and is still going on in the opium wars
against China, &c.
The different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute
1 "The Natural and Artificial Rights of Property Contrasted." Lond., 1832, pp.
98-99. Author of the anonymous work: Th. Hodgskin.'
2 Even as late as 1794, the small cloth-makers of Leeds sent a deputation to Parlia-
ment, with a petition for a law to forbid any merchant from becoming a manufac-
turer. (Dr. Aikin, 1. c.)
776
Capitalist Production.
themselves now, more or less in chronological order, par-
ticularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England.
In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a
systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national
debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist
system. These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g.,
the colonial system. But they all employ the power of the
State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten,
hothouse fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal
mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the
transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant
with a new one. It is itself an economic power.
Of the Christian colonial system, W. Howitt, a man who
makes a speciality of Christianity, says: "The barbarities and
desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout
every region of the world, and upon every people they have
been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any
other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however
reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth." The
history of the colonial administration of Holland-and Holland
was the head capitalistic nation of the 17th century-"is one
of the most extraordinary relations of treachery, bribery,
massacre, and meanness." 2 Nothing is more characteristic
than their system of stealing men, to get slaves for Java. The
men stealers were trained for this purpose. The thief, the in-
terpreter, and the seller, were the chief agents in this trade,
native princes the chief sellers. The young people stolen, were
thrown into the secret dungeons of Celebes, until they were
ready for sending to the slave-ships. An official report says:
“This one town of Macassar, e.g., is full of secret prisons, one
more horrible than the other, crammed with unfortunates,
victims of greed and tyranny fettered in chains, forcibly torn
1 William Howitt: "Colonisation and Christianity :
Colonisation and Christianity: A Popular History of the
Treatment of the Natives by the Europeans in all their Colonies." London, 1838,
p. 9. On the treatment of the slaves there is a good compilation in Charles Comte,
Traité de la Législation. 3me éd. Bruxelles, 1837. This subject one must study in
detail, to see what the bourgeoisie makes of itself and of the labourer, wherever it
can, without restraint, model the world after its own image.
2 Thomas Stamford Raffles, late Lieut.-Gov. of that island: "History of Java and
its dependencies." Lond., 1817.
Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.
777
from their families." To secure Malacca, the Dutch corrupted
the Portuguese governor. He let them into the town in 1641.
They hurried at once to his house and assassinated him, to
“abstain " from the payment of £21,875, the price of his treason.
Wherever they set foot, devastation and depopulation followed.
Banjuwangi, a province of Java, in 1750 numbered over 80,000
inhabitants, in 1811 only 18,000. Sweet commerce!
The English East India Company, as is well known, obtained,
besides the political rule in India, the exclusive monopoly of
the tea-trade, as well as of the Chinese trade in general, and of
the transport of goods to and from Europe. But the coasting
trade of India and between the islands, as well as the internal
trade of India, were the monopoly of the higher employés of
the company. The monopolies of salt, opium, betel and other
commodities, were inexhaustible mines of wealth. The em-
ployés themselves fixed the price and plundered at will the
unhappy Hindus. The Governor-General took part in this
private traffic. His favourites received contracts under con-
ditions whereby they, cleverer than the alchemists, made gold
out of nothing. Great fortunes sprang up like mushrooms in
a day; primitive accumulation went on without the advance
of a shilling. The trial of Warren Hastings swarms with such
cases. Here is an instance. A contract for opium was given
to a certain Sullivan at the moment of his departure on an
official mission to a part of India far removed from the opium
district. Sullivan sold his contract to one Binn for £40,000;
Binn sold it the same day for £60,000, and the ultimate pur-
chaser who carried out the contract declared that after all he
realised an enormous gain. According to one of the lists laid
before Parliament, the Company and its employés from 1757-
1766 got £6,000,000 from the Indians as gifts. Between 1769
and 1770, the English manufactured a famine by buying up
all the rice and refusing to sell it again, except at fabulous
prices.¹
The treatment of the aborigines was, naturally, most fright-
G
1 In the year 1866 more than a million Hindus died of hunger in the province of
Orissa alone. Nevertheless, the attempt was made to enrich the Indian treasury by
the price at which the necessaries of life were sold to the starving people.
T₁₂
778
Capitalist Production.
2
ful in plantation-colonies destined for export trade only, such
as the West Indies, and in rich and well-populated countries,
such as Mexico and India, that were given over to plunder.
But even in the colonies properly so-called, the Christian
character of primitive accumulation did not belie itself. Those
sober virtuosi of Protestantism, the Puritans of New England,
in 1703, by decrees of their assembly set a premium of £40 on
every Indian scalp and every captured red-skin in 1720 a
premium of £100 on every scalp; in 1744, after Massachusetts-
Bay had proclaimed a certain tribe as rebels, the following
prices for a male scalp of 12 years and upwards £100 (new
currency), for a male prisoner £105, for women and children
prisoners £50, for scalps of women and children £50. Some
decades later, the colonial system took its revenge on the de-
scendants of the pious pilgrim fathers, who had grown
seditious in the meantime. At English instigation and for
English pay they were tomahawked by red-skins. The
British Parliament proclaimed blood-hounds and scalping as
means that God and Nature had given into its hand."
The colonial system ripened, like a hot-house, trade and
navigation. The "societies Monopolia" of Luther were power-
ful levers for concentration of capital. The colonies secured a
market for the budding manufactures, and, through the
monopoly of the market, an increased accumulation. The
treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting,
enslavement, and murder, floated back to the mother-country
and were there turned into capital. Holland, which first fully
developed the colonial system, in 1648 stood already in the
acme of its commercial greatness. It was "in almost exclu-
sive possession of the East Indian trade and the commerce be-
tween the south-east and north-west of Europe. Its fisheries,
marine, manufactures, surpassed those of any other country.
The total capital of the Republic was probably more important
than that of all the rest of Europe put together." Gülich for-
gets to add that by 1648, the people of Holland were more
overworked, poorer and more brutally oppressed than those of
all the rest of Europe put together.
To-day industrial supremacy implies commercial supremacy.
Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.
779
In the period of manufacture properly so-called, it is, on the
other hand, the commercial supremacy that gives industrial pre-
dominance. Hence the preponderant rôle that the colonial sys-
tem plays at that time. It was "the strange God" who
perched himself on the altar cheek by jowl with the old Gods
of Europe, and one fine day with a shove and a kick chucked
them all of a heap. It proclaimed surplus-value making as
the sole end and aim of humanity.
The system of public credit, i.e. of national debts, whose
origin we discover in Genoa and Venice as early as the middle
ages, took possession of Europe generally during the manu-
facturing period. The colonial system with its maritime trade
and commercial wars served as a forcing-house for it. Thus it
first took root in Holland. National debts, i.e., the alienation.
of the state-whether despotic, constitutional or republican-
marked with its stamp the capitalistic era. The only part of
the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the col-
lective possessions of modern peoples is-their national debt.¹
Hence, as a necessary consequence, the modern doctrine that a
nation becomes the richer the more deeply it is in debt.
Public credit becomes the credo of capital. And with the
rise of national debt-making, want of faith in the national
debt takes the place of the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,
which may not be forgiven.
The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of
primitive accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter's
wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and
thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing
itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employ-
ment in industry or even in usury. The state-creditors
actually give nothing away, for the sum lent is transformed
into public bonds, easily negotiable, which go on functioning
in their hands just as so much hard cash would. But further,
apart from the class of lazy annuitants thus created, and from
the improvised wealth of the financiers, middlemen between
the government and the nation-as also apart from the tax-
1 William Cobbett remarks that in England all public institutions are designated
"royal;" as compensation for this, however, there is the "national" debt.
780
Capitalist Production.
farmers, merchants, private manufacturers, to whom a good
part of every national loan renders the service of a capital
fallen from heaven-the national debt has given rise to joint-
stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds,
and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and
the modern bankocracy.
At their birth the great banks, decorated with national
titles, were only associations of private speculators, who placed.
themselves by the side of governments, and, thanks to the
privileges they received, were in a position to advance money
to the state. Hence the accumulation of the national debt has
no more infallible measure than the successive rise in the stock
of these banks, whose full development dates from the found-
ing of the Bank of England in 1694. The Bank of England
began with lending its money to the Government at 8%; at
the same time it was empowered by Parliament to coin money
out of the same capital, by lending it again to the public in
the form of bank-notes. It was allowed to use these notes for
discounting bills, making advances on commodities, and for
buying the precious metals. It was not long ere this credit-
money, made by the bank itself, became the coin in which the
Bank of England made its loans to the state, and paid, on ac-
count of the state, the interest on the public debt. It was not
enough that the bank gave with one hand and took back
more with the other; it remained, even whilst receiving, the
eternal creditor of the nation down to the last shilling advanced.
Gradually it became inevitably the receptacle of the metallic
hoard of the country, and the centre of gravity of all com-
mercial credit. What effect was produced on their contem-
poraries by the sudden uprising of this brood of bankocrats,
financiers, rentiers, brokers, stock-jobbers, &c., is proved by the
writings of that time, e.g., by Bolingbroke's.¹
With the national debt arose an international credit system,
which often conceals one of the sources of primitive accumula-
tion in this or that people. Thus the villanies of the Venetian
1 "Si les Tartares inondaient l'Europe aujourd'hui, il faudrait bien des affaires
pour leur faire entendre ce que c'est qu'un financier parmi nous." Montesquieu
Esprit des lois, t. iv. p. 33, ed. Londres, 1769.
Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.
781
thieving system formed one of the secret bases of the capital-
wealth of Holland to whom Venice in her decadence lent large
sums of money. So also was it with Holland and England.
By the beginning of the 18th century the Dutch manufac-
tures were far outstripped. Holland had ceased to be the
nation preponderant in commerce and industry. One of its
main lines of business, therefore, from 1701-1776, is the lend-
ing out of enormous amounts of capital, especially to its great
rival England. The same thing is going on to-day between
England and the United States. A great deal of capital,
which appears to-day in the United States without any certi-
ficate of birth, was yesterday, in England, the capitalised blood
of children.
As the national debt finds its support in the public revenue,
which must cover the yearly payments for interest, &c., the
modern system of taxation was the necessary complement of
the system of national loans. The loans enable the govern-
ment to meet extraordinary expenses, without the tax-payers
feeling it immediately, but they necessitate, as a consequence,
increased taxes. On the other hand, the raising of taxation
caused by the accumulation of debts contracted one after an-
other, compels the government always to have recourse to new
loans for new extraordinary expenses. Modern fiscality, whose
pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary means of sub-
sistence (thereby increasing their price), thus contains within
itself the germ of automatic progression. Over-taxation is not
an incident, but rather a principle. In Holland, therefore,
where this system was first inaugurated, the great patriot, De
Witt, has in his "Maxims" extolled it as the best system for
making the wage-labourer submissive, frugal, industrious, and
overburdened with labour. The destructive influence that it
exercises on the condition of the wage-labourer concerns us
less however, here, than the forcible expropriation, resulting
from it, of peasants, artisans, and in a word, all elements of
the lower middle-class. On this there are not two opinions,
even among the bourgeois economists. Its expropriating effi-
cacy is still further heightened by the system of protection,
which forms one of its integral parts.
782
Capitalist Production.
The great part that the public debt, and the fiscal system
corresponding with it, has played in the capitalisation of
wealth and the expropriation of the masses, has led many
writers, like Cobbett, Doubleday and others, to seek in this,
incorrectly, the fundamental cause of the misery of the modern
peoples.
The system of protection was an artificial means of manufac-
turing manufacturers, of expropriating independent labourers, of
capitalising the national means of production and subsistence, of
forcibly abbreviating the transition from the medieval to the
modern mode of production. The European states tore one an-
other to pieces about the patent of this invention, and, once entered
into the service of the surplus-value makers, did not merely
lay under contribution in the pursuit of this purpose their own
people, indirectly through protective duties, directly through
export premiums. They also forcibly rooted out, in their de-
pendent countries, all industry, as, e.g., England did with the
Irish woollen manufacture. On the continent of Europe, after
Colbert's example, the process was much simplified. The
primitive industrial capital, here, came in part directly out of
the state treasury. Why," cries Mirabeau, "why go so far to
seek the cause of the manufacturing glory of Saxony before
the war? 180,000,000 of debts contracted by the sovereigns !"1
t
Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, com-
mercial wars, &c., these children of the true manufacturing
period, increase gigantically during the infancy of Modern
Industry. The birth of the latter is heralded by a great
slaughter of the innocents. Like the royal navy, the factories
were recruited by means of the press-gang. Blasé as Sir F. M.
Eden is as to the horrors of the expropriation of the agricul-
tural population from the soil, from the last third of the 15th
century to his own time; with all the self-satisfaction with
which he rejoices in this process, "essential" for establishing
capitalistic agriculture and "the due proportion between
arable and pasture land"-he does not show, however, the
same economic insight in respect to the necessity of child-steal-
ing and child-slavery for the transformation of manufacturing
1 Mirabeau, 1. c., t. vi., p. 101.
Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.
783
exploitation into factory exploitation, and the establishment of
the "true relation" between capital and labour-power. He
says: "It may, perhaps, be worthy the attention of the public
to consider, whether any manufacture, which, in order to be
carried on successfully, requires that cottages and workhouses
should be ransacked for poor children; that they should be
employed by turns during the greater part of the night and
robbed of that rest which, though indispensable to all, is most
required by the young; and that numbers of both sexes, of
different ages and dispositions, should be collected together in
such a manner that the contagion of example cannot but lead
to profligacy and debauchery; will add to the sum of individ-
ual or national felicity?"1
In the counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and
more particularly in Lancashire," says Fielden, "the newly-
invented machinery was used in large factories built on the
sides of streams capable of turning the water-wheel. Thou-
sands of hands were suddenly required in these places, remote
from towns; and Lancashire, in particular, being, till then,
comparatively thinly populated and barren, a population was
all that she now wanted. The small and nimble fingers or
little children being by very far the most in request, the cus-
tom instantly sprang up of procuring apprentices from the
different parish workhouses of London, Birmingham, and else-
where. Many, many thousands of these little, hapless creatures
were sent down into the north, being from the age of 7 to the
age of 13 or 14 years old. The custom was for the master to
clothe his apprentices and to feed and lodge them in an "appren-
tice house" near the factory; overseers were appointed to see
to the works, whose interest it was to work the children to
the utmost, because their pay was in proportion to the quantity
of work that they could exact. Cruelty was, of course, the
consequence... In many of the manufacturing districts, but
particularly, I am afraid, in the guilty county to which I
belong [Lancashire], cruelties the most heart-rending were
practised upon the unoffending and friendless creatures who
were thus consigned to the charge of master manufacturers;
1 Eden, 1. c., Vol. I., Book II., Ch. I., p. 421.
A
J
784
Capitalist Production.
they were harassed to the brink of death by excess of labour
were flogged, fettered and tortured in the most exquisite
refinement of cruelty; . . . they were in many cases starved
to the bone while flogged to their work and . . .
even in
some instances were driven to commit suicide . . . The
beautiful and romantic valleys of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire
and Lancashire, secluded from the public eye, became the
dismal solitudes of torture, and of many a murder. The
profits of manufactures were enormous; but this only whetted
the appetite that it should have satisfied, and therefore the
manufacturers had recourse to an expedient that seemed to
secure to them those profits without any possibility of limit ;
they began the practice of what is termed "night-working,"
that is, having tired one set of hands, by working them
throughout the day, they had another set ready to go on
working throughout the night; the day-set getting into the
beds that the night-set had just quitted, and in their turn
again, the night-set getting into the beds that the day-set
quitted in the morning. It is a common tradition in Lanca-
shire, that the beds never get cold.”1
With the development of capitalist production during the
manufacturing period, the public opinion of Europe had lost
the last remnant of shame and conscience. The nations
bragged cynically of every infamy that served them as a means
•
در
1 John Fielden, 1. c. pp. 5, 6. On the earlier infamies of the factory system, cf.
Dr. Aikin (1795) 1. c. p. 219, and Gisborne: Enquiry into the Duties of Men, 1795,
Vol. II. When the steam-engine transplanted the factories from the country water-
falls to the middle of towns, the "abstemious" surplus-value maker found the child-
material ready to his hand, without being forced to seek slaves from the workhouses.
When Sir R. Peel, (father of the "minister of plausibility "), brought in his bill for the
protection of children, in 1815, Francis Horner, lumen of the Bullion Committee and
intimate friend of Ricardo, said in the House of Commons: "It is notorious, that
with a bankrupt's effects, a gang, if he might use the word, of these children had
been put up to sale, and were advertised publicly as part of the property. A most
atrocious instance had been brought before the Court of King's Bench two years
before, in which a number of these boys, apprenticed by a parish in London to one
manufacturer, had been transferred to another, and had been found by some benevo-
lent persons in a state of absolute famine. Another case more horrible had come to
his knowledge while on a [Parliamentary] Committee.
that not many years
ago, an agreement had been made between a London parish and a Lancashire manu-
facturer, by which it was stipulated, that with every 20 sound children one idiot
should be taken.'
K
•
Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.
785
to capitalistic accumulation. Read, e.g., the naïve Annals of
Commerce of the worthy A: Anderson. Here it is trumpetted
forth as a triumph of English statecraft that at the Peace of
Utrecht, England extorted from the Spaniards by the Asiento
Treaty the privilege of being allowed to ply the negro-trade,
until then only carried on between Africa and the English
West Indies, between Africa and Spanish America as well. Eng-
land thereby acquired the right of supplying Spanish America
until 1743 with 4800 negroes yearly. This threw, at the
same time, an official cloak over British smuggling. Liverpool
waxed fat on the slave-trade. This was its method of primi-
tive accumulation. And, even to the present day, Liverpool
respectability" is the Pindar of the slave-trade which—com-
pare the work of Aikin [1795] already quoted-"has coincided
with that spirit of bold adventure which has characterised the
trade of Liverpool and rapidly carried it to its present state of
prosperity; has occasioned vast employment for shipping and
sailors, and greatly augmented the demand for the manufac-
tures of the country" (p. 339). Liverpool employed in the
slave trade, in 1730, 15 ships; in 1751, 53; in 1760, 74; in
1770, 96; and in 1792, 132.
CC
Whilst the cotton industry introduced child-slavery in
England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the trans-
formation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a
system of commercial exploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery
of the wage-workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery
pure and simple in the new world.¹
Tantæ molis erat, to establish the "eternal laws of
Nature" of the capitalist mode of production, to complete
the process of separation between labourers and conditions
of labour, to transform, at one pole, the social means of
production and subsistence into capital, at the opposite pole,
the mass of the population into wage-labourers, into "free
labouring poor," that artificial product of modern society. If
1 In 1790, there were in the English West Indies ten slaves for one free man, in
the French fourteen for one, in the Dutch twenty-three for one. (Henry Brougham :
An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers. Edin. 1803, vol. II. .
p. 74.)
2 The phrase, "labouring poor," is found in English legislation from the moment
3 D
786
Capitalist Production.
money, according to Augier,¹ "comes into the world with a con-
genital blood-stain on one cheek," capital comes dripping frʊm
head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.²
CHAPTER XXXII.
HISTORICAL TENDENCY OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION.
WHAT does the primitive accumulation of capital, i.e., its histori-
cal genesis, resolve itself into? In so far as it is not immediate
transformation of slaves and serfs into wage-labourers, and
therefore a mere change of form, it only means the expropriation
of the immediate producers, i.e., the dissolution of private pro-
perty based on the labour of its owner.
of its owner. Private property, as
the antithesis to social, collective property, exists only where
when the class of wage-labourers becomes noticeable. This term is used in
opposition, on the one hand, to the "idle poor," beggars, etc., on the other to those
labourers, who, pigeons not yet plucked, are still possessors of their own ineans of
labour. From the Statute Book it passed into political economy, and was handed
down by Culpeper, J. Child, etc., to Adam Smith and Eden. After this, one
can judge of the good faith of the "execrable political cant-monger," Edmund Burke,
when he called the expression, "labouring poor,"-"execrable political cant." This
sycophant who, in the pay of the English oligarchy, played the romantic laudator
temporis acti against the French Revolution, just as, in the pay of the North American
Colonies, at the beginning of the American troubles, he had played the Liberal against
the English oligarchy, was an out and out vulgar bourgeois. The laws of commerce
are the laws of Nature, and therefore the laws of God." (E. Burke, 1.c., pp. 31, 32.)
No wonder that, true to the laws of God and of Nature, he always sold himself in
the best market. A very good portrait of this Edmund Burke, during his liberal time,
is to be found in the writings of the Rev. Mr. Tucker. Tucker was a parson and a
Tory, but, for the rest, an honourable man and a competent political economist. In
face of the infamous cowardice of character that reigns to-day, and believes most
devoutly in "the laws of commerce," it is our bounden duty again and again to
brand the Burkes, who only differ from their successors in one thing--talent.
"
1 Marie Augier: Du Crédit Public. Paris, 1842.
44
2 Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and strife, and to
be timid, which is very true; but this is very incompletely stating the question.
Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to
abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent.
will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness;
50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all
human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a
'risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and
strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade
have amply proved all that is here stated." (P. J. Dunning, 1. c.. p. 35.)
ات
Historical Tendency of Accumulation.
787
the means of labour and the external conditions of labour
belong to private individuals. But according as these private
individuals are labourers or not labourers, private property has
a different character. The numberless shades, that it at first
sight presents, correspond to the intermediate stages lying
between these two extremes. The private property of the
labourer in his means of production is the foundation of petty
industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or both; petty
industry, again, is an essential condition for the development
of social production and of the free individuality of the
labourer himself. Of course, this petty mode of production exists
also under slavery, serfdom, and other states of dependence.
But it flourishes, it lets loose its whole energy, it attains its
adequate classical form, only where the labourer is the private
owner of his own means of labour set in action by himself: the
peasant of the land which he cultivates, the artizan of the tool
which he handles as a virtuoso. This mode of production
pre-supposes parcelling of the soil, and scattering of the other
means of production. As it excludes the concentration of these
means of production, so also it excludes co-operation, division
of labour within each separate process of production, the control
over, and the productive application of the forces of Nature by
society, and the free development of the social productive
powers. It is compatible only with a system of production,
and a society, moving within narrow and more or less primitive
bounds. To perpetuate it would be, as Pecqueur rightly says,
"to decree universal mediocrity." At a certain stage of devel-
opment it brings forth the material agencies for its own dis-
solution. From that moment new forces and new passions
spring up in the bosom of society; but the old social organiz-
ation fetters them and keeps them down. It must be annihi-
lated; it is annihilated. Its annihilation, the transformation of
the individualised and scattered means of production into soci-
ally concentrated ones, of the pigmy property of the many into
the huge property of the few, the expropriation of the great
mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence,
and from the means of labour, this fearful and painful expropria-
tion of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of
788
Capitalist Production.
capital. It comprises a series of forcible methods, of which we
have passed in review only those that have been epoch-making
as methods of the primitive accumulation of capital. The ex-
propriation of the immediate producers was accomplished with
merciless Vandalism, and under the stimulus of passions the
most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanly
odious. Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say,
on the fusing together of the isolated, independent labouring-
individual with the conditions of his labour, is supplanted by
capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the
nominally free labour of others, i.e., on wages-labour.¹
As soon as this process of tranformation has sufficiently de-
composed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as
the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of
labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of produc-
tion stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of
labour and further transformation of the land and other means of
production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means
of production, as well as the further expropriation of private
proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be ex-
propriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but
the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation
is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capital-
istic production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One
capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this central-
isation, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few,
develop, on an ever extending scale, the co-operative form of the
labour-process, the conscious technical application of science,
the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the
instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable
in common, the economising of all means of production by
their use as the means of production of combined, socialised
labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-
market, and with this, the international character of the capi-
talistic régime. Along with the constantly diminishing number
•
-
1 (4
nous
Nous sommes dans une condition tout-à-fait nouvelle de la société
tendons à séparer toute espèce de propriété d'avec toute espèce de travail." (Sismondi :
Nouveaux Principes de l'Econ. Polit. t. II., p. 434.)
• ·
Historical Tendency of Accumulation.
789
of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all
advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass
of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but
with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class
always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organ-
ised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist
production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter
upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and
flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means
of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point
where they become incompatible with their capitalist integu-
ment. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist
private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.
The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist
mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is
the first negation of individual private property, as founded on
the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets,
with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is
the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private pro-
perty for the producer, but gives him individual property based
on the acquisitions of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation
and the possession in common of the land and of the means
of production.
The transformation of scattered private property, arising
from individual labour, into capitalist private property is,
naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and
difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private pro-
perty, already practically resting on socialised production, into
socialised property. In the former case, we had the expro-
priation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the
latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass
of the people.1
1 The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces
the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combina-
tion, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from
under its feet, the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropri-
ates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-
diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. . . Of all
the classes, that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie to-day, the proletariat alone is a
790
Capitalist Production.
•
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE MODERN THEORY OF COLONISATION.1
POLITICAL economy confuses on principle two very different
kinds of private property, of which one rests on the producers'
own labour, the other on the employment of the labour of
others. It forgets that the latter not only is the direct anti-
thesis of the former, but absolutely grows on its tomb only.
In Western Europe, the home of political economy, the process
of primitive accumulation is more or less accomplished. Here
the capitalist régime has either directly conquered the whole
domain of national production, or, where economic conditions
are less developed, it, at least, indirectly controls those strata of
society which, though belonging to the antiquated mode of pro-
duction, continue to exist side by side with it in gradual decay.
To this ready-made world of capital, the political economist
applies the notions of law and of property inherited from a pre-
capitalistic world with all the more anxious zeal and all the
greater unction, the more loudly the facts cry out in the face of
his ideology. It is otherwise in the colonies. There the capitalist
régime everywhere comes into collision with the resistance of
the producer, who, as owner of his own conditions of labour,
employs that labour to enrich himself, instead of the capitalist.
The contradiction of these two diametrically opposed economic
systems, manifests itself here practically in a struggle between
them. Where the capitalist has at his back the power of the
mother-country, he tries to clear out of his way by force, the
modes of production and appropriation, based on his indepen-
dent labour of the producer. The same interest, which compels
really revolutionary class. The other classes perish and disappear in the face of Modern
Industry, the proletariat is its special and essential product. . . The lower middle-
classes, the small manufacturers, the shopkeepers, the artisan, the peasant, all these
fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the
middle-class . they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of
history. "Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei,"
London, 1847, pp. 9, 11.
1 We treat here of real Colonies, virgin soils, colonised by free immigrants. The
United States are, speaking economically, still only a Colony of Europe. Besides,
to this category belong also such old plantations as those in which the abolition of
slavery has completely altered the earlier conditions.
The Modern Theory of Colonisation.
791
the sycophant of capital, the political economist, in the mother-
country, to proclaim the theoretical identity of the capitalist
mode of production with its contrary, that same interest com-
pels him in the colonies to make a clean breast of it, and to
proclaim aloud the antagonism of the two modes of production.
To this end he proves how the development of the social
productive power of labour, co-operation, division of labour, use
of machinery on a large scale, &c., are impossible without the
expropriation of the labourers, and the corresponding transfor-
mation of their means of production into capital. In the
interest of the so-called national wealth, he seeks for artificial.
means to ensure the poverty of the people. Here his apologetic
armour crumbles off, bit by bit, like rotten touchwood. It is
the great merit of E. G. Wakefield to have discovered, not any-
thing new about the Colonies, but to have discovered in the
Colonies the truth as to the conditions of capitalist production
in the mother-country. As the system of protection at its
origin attempted to manufacture capitalists artificially in the
mother-country, so Wakefield's colonisation theory, which
England tried for a time to enforce by Acts of Parliament,
attempted to effect the manufacture of wage-workers in the
Colonies. This he calls "systematic colonisation."
1
2
First of all, Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies,
property in money, means of subsistence, machines, and other
means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist
if there be wanting the correlative-the wage-worker, the
other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free-will.
He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social rela-
tion between persons, established by the instrumentality of
things. Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to
Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of pro-
3
1 Wakefield's few glimpses on the subject of Modern Colonisation are fully antici-
pated by Mirabeau Père, the physiocrat, and even much earlier by English econo-
mists.
2 Later, it became a temporary necessity in the international competitive struggle.
But, whatever its motive, the consequences remain the same.
3 A negro is a negro. In certain circumstances he becomes a slave. A mule is a
machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain circumstances does it become
capital. Outside these circumstances, it is no more capital than gold is intrinsically
money, or sugar is the price of sugar
Capital is a social relation of production.
•
•
•
792
Capitalist Production.
duction to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight
to bring with him, besides, 3000 persons of the working-class,
men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination,
"Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch
him water from the river."1 Unhappy Mr. Peel who provided
for everything except the export of English modes of pro-
duction to Swan River!
For the understanding of the following discoveries of Wake-
field, two preliminary remarks: We know that the means of
production and subsistence, while they remain the property of
the immediate producer, are not capital. They become capital,
only under circumstances in which they serve at the same
time as means of exploitation and subjection of the labourer.
But this capitalist soul of theirs is so intimately wedded, in the
head of the political economist, to their material substance, that
he christens them capital under all circumstances, even when
they are its exact opposite. Thus is it with Wakefield,
Further the splitting up of the means of production into the
individual property of many independent labourers, working
on their own account, he calls equal division of capital. It is
with the political economist as with the feudal jurist. The
latter stuck on to pure monetary relations the labels supplied
by feudal law.
"If," says Wakefield, "all the members of the society
are supposed to possess equal portions of capital
no man would have a motive for accumulating more capital
than he could use with his own hands. This is to some extent
the case in new American settlements, where a passion for
owning land prevents the existence of a class of labourers for
hire." 2
So long, therefore, as the labourer can accumulate for
himself—and this be can do so long as he remains possessor of
his means of production-capitalist accumulation and the
capitalistic mode of production are impossible. The class of
wage-labourers, essential to these, is wanting. How, then, in
old Europe, was the expropriation of the labourer from his
It is a historical relation of production. (Karl Marx, "Lohnarbeit und Kapital."
N. Rh. Z. No. 266, April 7, 1849.)
1 E. G. Wakefield: England and America, vol. ii., p. 33.
21. c., p. 17.
The Modern Theory of Colonisation.
793
conditions of labour, i.e., the co-existence of capital and wage-
labour, brought about? By a social contract of a quite
original kind. "Mankind bave adopted a ... . . simple con-
trivance for promoting the accumulation of capital," which, of
course, since the time of Adam, floated in their imagination as
the sole and final end of their existence: "they have divided
themselves into owners of capital and owners of labour
This division was the result of concert and combination.”1 In
one word: the mass of mankind expropriated itself in honour
of the “accumulation of capital." Now, one would think, that
this instinct of self-denying fanaticism would give itself full fling.
especially in the Colonies, where alone exist the men and condi-
tions that could turn a social contract from a dream to a reality.
But why, then, should "systematic colonisation" be called
in to replace its opposite, spontaneous, unregulated colonisation?
But-but-" In the Northern States of the American Union, it
may be doubted whether so many as a tenth of the people
would fall under the description of hired labourers . . . . In
England. . . . the labouring class compose the bulk of the
people." 2 Nay, the impulse to self-expropriation, on the part of
labouring humanity, for the glory of capital, exists so little,
that slavery, according to Wakefield himself, is the sole natural
basis of Colonial wealth. His systematic colonisation is a mere
pis aller, since he unfortunately has to do with free men, not
with slaves. "The first Spanish settlers in Saint Domingo did
not obtain labourers from Spain. But, without labourers, their
capital must have perished, or, at least, must soon have been
diminished to that small amount which each individual could
employ with his own hands. This has actually occurred in
the last Colony founded by Englishmen-the Swan River
Settlement-where a great mass of capital, of seeds, implements,
and cattle, has perished for want of labourers to use it, and
where no settler has preserved much more capital than he can
employ with his own hands." 3
We have seen that the expropriation of the mass of the people
from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production.
The essence of a free colony, on the contrary, consists in this-that
31. c., vol. i., p. 5
11. c., vol. i., p. 18.
21. c., pp. 42, 43, 44.
794
Capitalist Production.
the bulk of the soil is still public property, and every settler on
it therefore can turn part of it into his private property and
individual means of production, without hindering the later
settlers in the same operation.¹ This is the secret both of the
prosperity of the colonies and of their inveterate vice-
opposition to the establishment of capital. Where land is
very cheap and all men are free, where every one who so
pleases can easily obtain a piece of land for himself, not only
is labour very dear, as respects the labourer's share of the pro-
duce, but the difficulty is to obtain combined labourat any price."2
As in the colonies the separation of the labourer from the
conditions of labour and their root, the soil, does not yet exist,
or only sporadically, or on too limited a scale, so neither does
the separation of agriculture from industry exist, nor the de-
struction of the household industry of the peasantry. Whence
then is to come the internal market for capital ? No part of
the population of America is exclusively agricultural, excepting
slaves and their employers who combine capital and labour in
particular works. Free Americans, who cultivate the soil,
follow many other occupations. Some portion of the furniture
and tools which they use is commonly made by themselves.
They frequently build their own houses, and carry to market,
at whatever distance, the produce of their own industry. They
are spinners and weavers; they make soap and candles, as well
as, in many cases, shoes and clothes for their own use. In
America the cultivation of land is often the secondary pursuit
of a blacksmith, a miller or a shopkeeper." With such queer
people as these, where is the "field of abstinence" for the
capitalists?
3
((
The great beauty of capitalist production consists in this-
that it not only constantly reproduces the wage-worker as
wage-worker, but produces always, in proportion to the
accumulation of capital, a relative surplus population of wage-
workers. Thus the law of supply and demand of labour is kept
in the right rut, the oscillation of wages is penned within limits
1 "Land, to be an element of colonization, must not only be waste, but it must be
public property, liable to be converted into private property." (I. c. Vol. II., p 125.)
21. c. Vol. I. p. 247.
3 1. c. pp 21, 22.
The Modern Theory of Colonisation.
795
satisfactory to capitalist exploitation, and lastly, the social
dependance of the labourer on the capitalist, that indispensable
requisite, is secured; an unmistakeable relation of dependence,
which the smug political economist, at home, in the mother coun-
try, can transmogrify into one of free contract between buyer
and seller, between equally independent owners of commodities,
the owner of the commodity capital and the owner of the com-
modity labour. But in the colonies this pretty fancy is torn
asunder. The absolute population here increases much more
quickly than in the mother-country, because many labourers
enter this world as ready-made adults, and yet the labour
market is always understocked. The law of the supply and de-
mand of labour falls to pieces. On the one hand, theold world con-
stantly throws in capital, thirsting after exploitation and “abs-
tinence;" on the other, the regular reproduction of the wage-
labourer as wage-labourer comes into collision with impedi-
ments the most impertinent and in part invincible. What be-
comes of the production of wage-labourers, supernumerary in
proportion to the accumulation of capital? The wage-worker
of to-day is to-morrow an independent peasant, or artisan,
working for himself. He vanishes from the labour-market, but
not into the workhouse. This constant transformation of the
wage-labourers into independent producers, who work for them-
selves instead of for capital, and enrich themselves instead of
the capitalist gentry, reacts in its turn very perversely on the
conditions of the labour-market. Not only does the degree of
exploitation of the wage-labourer remain indecently low. The
wage-labourer loses into the bargain, along with the relation of
dependence, also the sentiment of dependence on the abstemi-
ous capitalist. Hence all the inconveniences that our E. G
Wakefield pictures so doughtily, so eloquently, so pathetically.
The supply of wage-labour, he complains, is neither constant,
nor regular, nor sufficient. "The supply of labour is always, not
only small, but uncertain." 1 Though the produce divided
between the capitalist and the labourer be large, the labourer
takes so great a share that he soon becomes a capitalist.
Few, even of those whose lives are unusually long, can accumu-
1 1. c., Vol. II., p. 116.
tr
796
Capitalist Production.
late great masses of wealth." 1 The labourers most distinctly
declines to allow the capitalist to abstain from the payment of
the greater part of their labour. It avails him nothing, if he
is so cunning as to import from Europe, with his own capital,
his own wage-workers. They soon "cease... to be labourers
for hire; they . . . become independent landowners, if not com-
petitors with their former masters in the labour market." 2
Think of the horror! The excellent capitalist has imported
bodily from Europe, with his own good money, his own
competitors! The end of the world has come! No wonder
Wakefield laments the absence of all dependence and of all
sentiment of dependence on the part of the wage-workers
in the colonies. On account of the high wages, says his
disciple, Merivale, there is in the colonies" the urgent desire
for cheaper and more subservient labourers-for a class to
whom the capitalist might dictate terms, instead of being
dictated to by them.
In ancient civilized countries the
labourer, though free, is by a law of nature dependent on
capitalists; in colonies this dependence must be created by
artificial means.
What is now, according to Wakefield, the consequence of this
")
2 1. C.,
Vol. II., p. 5.
1 1.
C., Vol. I., p. 131.
3 Merivale, 1. c., Vol. II., pp. 235-314 passim. Even the mild, free-trade, vulgar
economist, Molinari, says: "Dans les colonies où l'esclavage a été aboli sans que le
travail forcé se trouvait remplacé par une quantité équivalente de travail libre, on a
vu s'opérer la contre-partie du fait qui se réalise tous les jours sous nos yeux.
On a
vu les simples travailleurs exploiter à leur tour les entrepreneurs d'industrie, exiger
d'eux des salaires hors de toute proportion avec la part légitime qui leur revenait dans
le produit. Les planteurs, ne pouvant obtenir de leurs sucres un prix suffisant pour
couvrir la hausse de salaire, ont été obligés de fournir l'excédant, d'abord sur leurs
profits, ensuite sur leurs capitaux mêmes. Une foule de planteurs ont été ruinés de
la sorte, d'autres ont fermé leurs ateliers pour échapper à une ruine imminente.
Sans doute, il vaut mieux voir périr des accumulations de capitaux que des généra-
tions d'hommes [how generous of Mr. Molinari !]: mais ne vaudrait-il pas mieux que
ni les uns ni les autres périssent?" (Molinari 1. c. pp. 51, 52.) Mr. Molinari, Mr.
Molinari ! What then becomes of the ten commandments, of Moses and the prophets,
of the law of supply and demand, if in Europe the "entrepreneur" can cut down the
labourer's legitimate part, and in the West Indies, the labourer can cut down the entre-
preneur's? And what, if you please, is this "legitimate part," which on your own
showing the capitalist in Europe daily neglects to pay? Over yonder, in the colonies.
where the labourers are so CC
simple as to "exploit
exploit" the capitalist, Mr. Molinari
feels a strong itching to set the law of supply and demand, that works elsewhere
automatically, on the right road by means of the police.
>>
•
The Modern Theory of Colonisation.
797
unfortunate state of things in the colonies? A "barbarising
tendency of dispersion" of producers and national wealth.¹
The parcelling-out of the means of production among innumer-
able owners, working on their own account, annihilates, along
with the centralisation of capital, all the foundations of com-
bined labour. Every long-winded undertaking, extending over
several years and demanding outlay of fixed capital, is pre-
vented from being carried out. In Europe, capital invests
without hesitating a moment, for the working-class constitutes
its living appurtenance, always in excess, always at disposal.
But in the colonies! Wakefield tells an extremely doleful
anecdote. He was talking with some capitalists of Canada
and the state of New York, where the immigrant wave often
becomes stagnant and deposits a sediment of "supernumerary"
labourers. Our capital," says one of the characters in the
melodrama, "was ready for many operations which require a
considerable period of time for their completion; but we could
not begin such operations with labour which, we knew, would
soon leave us. If we had been sure of retaining the labour of
such emigrants, we should have been glad to have engaged it
at once, and for a high price: and we should have engaged it,
even though we had been sure it would leave us, provided we
had been sure of a fresh supply whenever we might need
it." 2
(6
After Wakefield has contrasted the English capitalist agri-
culture and its "combined" labour with the scattered cultiva-
tion of American peasants, he unwittingly gives us a glimpse
at the reverse of the medal. He depicts the mass of the
American people as well-to-do, independent, enterprising and
comparatively cultured, whilst "the English agricultural
labourer is a miserable wretch, a pauper.
In what
country, except North America and some new colonies, do
the wages of free labour employed in agriculture, much ex-
ceed a bare subsistence for the labourer ?
Un-
doubtedly, farm-horses in England, being a valuable property,
are better fed than English peasants. "3 But, never mind,
2 1. c. pp. 191, 192.
1 Wakefield, 1. c., Vol.II., p. 52.
3 I. c., Vol. I., pp. 47, 246.
798
Capitalist Production.
national wealth is, once again, by its very nature, identical
with misery of the people.
How, then, to heal the anti-capitalistic cancer of the
colonies ? If men were willing, at a blow, to turn all the soil
from public into private property, they would destroy certainly
the root of the evil, but also the colonies. The trick is
how to kill two birds with one stone. Let the Government
put upon the virgin soil an artificial price, independent of the
law of supply and demand, a price that compels the immigrant
to work a long time for wages before he can earn enough
money to buy land, and turn himself into an independent
peasant.¹ The funds resulting from the sale of land at a price
relatively prohibitory for the wage-workers, this fund of money
extorted from the wages of labour by violation of the sacred
law of supply and demand, the Government is to employ, on
the other hand, in proportion as it grows, to import have-
nothings from Europe into the colonies, and thus keep the
wage-labour market full for the capitalists. Under these cir-
cumstances, tout sera pour le mieux dans le meilleur des
mondes possibles. This is the great secret of "systematic
colonisation." By this plan, Wakefield cries in triumph, "the
supply of labour must be constant and regular, because, first,
as no labourer would be able to procure land until he had
worked for money, all immigrant labourers, working for a time
for wages and in combination, would produce capital for the
employment of more labourers; secondly, because every labourer
who left off working for wages and became a landowner, would,
by purchasing land, provide a fund for bringing fresh labour to
the colony."2 The price of the soil imposed by the State must,
of course, be a "sufficient price "-i.e., so high "as to prevent
the labourers from becoming independent landowners until
·
1 "C'est, ajoutez-vous, grâce à l'ap ropriation du sol et des capitaux que l'homme,
qui n'a que ses bras, trouve de l'occupation, et se fait un revenu . c'est au con-
traire, grâce à l'appropriation individuelle du sol qu'il se trouve des hommes n'ayant
que leurs bras. . . . Quand vous mettez un homme dans le vide, vous vous emparez
de l'atmosphère. Ainsi faites-vous, quand vous vous emparez du sol. C'est le
mettre dans le vide de richesses, pour ne le laisser vivre qu'à votre volonté." (Colins,
1. c., t. III., pp. 268-271, passim.)
2 Wakefield, 1. c., Vol. II., p. 192.
•
+
*
The Modern Theory of Colonisation.
799
" 1
others had followed to take their place. This "sufficient
price for the land" is nothing but a euphemistic circumlocu-
tion for the ransom which the labourer pays to the capitalist
for leave to retire from the wage-labour market to the land.
First, he must create for the capitalist "capital," with which
the latter may be able to exploit more labourers; then he must
place, at his own expense, a locum tenens on the labour market,
whom the Government forwards across the sea for the benefit
of his old master, the capitalist.
It is very characteristic that the English Government for
years practised this method of "primitive accumulation," pre-
scribed by Mr. Wakefield expressly for the use of the colonies.
The fiasco was, of course, as complete as that of Sir Robert
Peel's Bank Act. The stream of emigration was only diverted
from the English colonies to the United States. Meanwhile,
the advance of capitalistic production in Europe, accompanied
by increasing Government pressure, has rendered Wakefield's
recipe superfluous. On the one hand, the enormous and cease-
less stream of men, year after year driven upon America, leaves
behind a stationery sediment in the east of the United States,
the wave of immigration from Europe throwing men on the
labour market there more rapidly than the wave of emigration
westwards can wash them away. On the other hand, the
American Civil War brought in its train a colossal national
debt, and, with it, pressure of taxes, the rise of the vilest
financial aristocracy, the squandering of a huge part of the
public land on speculative companies for the exploitation of
railways, mines, &c., in brief, the most rapid centralisation of
capital. The great republic has, therefore, ceased to be the
promised land for emigrant labourers. Capitalistic production
advances there with giant strides, even though the lowering of
wages and the dependence of the wage-worker are yet far from
being brought down to the normal European level. The
shameless lavishing of uncultivated colonial land on aristocrats
and capitalists by the Government, so loudly denounced even
by Wakefield, has produced, especially in Australia, in conjunc-
11. c., p. 45.
2 As soon as Australia became her own law-giver, she passed, of course, laws
800
Capitalist Production.
;
•
tion with the stream of men that the gold-diggings attract,
and with the competition that the importation of English com-
modities causes even to the smallest artisan, an ample "relative
surplus labouring population," so that almost every mail brings
the Job's news of a "glut of the Australian labour-market," and
prostitution in some places there flourishes as wantonly as in
the London Haymarket.
However, we are not concerned here with the condition of
the colonies. The only thing that interests us is the secret
discovered in the new world by the political economy of the
old world, and proclaimed on the house-tops: that the capital-
ist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore
capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condi-
tion the annihilation of self-earned private property; in other
words, the expropriation of the labourer.
favourable to the settlers, but the squandering of the land, already accomplished by
the English Government, stands in the way. "The first and main object at which
the new Land Act of 1862 aims is to give increased facilities for the settlement of the
people." (The Land Law of Victoria, by the Hon. U. G. Duffy, Minister of Public
Lands. Lond. 1862.)
THE END.
S. Cowan & Co., Strathmore Printing Works, Perth.
WORKS AND AUTHORS QUOTED IN "CAPITAL."
Author.
ABEL, K., and Meck-
lenburg, F. A......Arbeiten der Kaiserlich Russischen
Gesandtschaft zu Peking über China. Berlin, 1858.
ADDINGTON, Steph.. Enquiry into the Reasons for or against
enclosing Open Fields...
ABRÉGÉ Elémentaire des Principes
d'Économie Politique. (See under
Anonymous).
London, 1772.
AIKIN, Dr....……….
ANONYMOUs...
>"
">
>>
""
>>
>>
""
>>
>>
-
>>
Work.
ADVANTAGES of the East Indian
Trade. (See under Anonymous)...
Description of the country from thirty
to forty miles round Manchester... London, 1795.
ABREGE Élémentaire des Principes
de l'Économie Politique. (See Gar-
nier, G.).........
ADVANTAGES of the East Indian
Paris, 1796.
.London, 1720.
Trade to England.....
CASE, The, of our English Wool, etc. London, 1685.
COMBINATION, On, of Trades....... London, 1834.
CONSIDERATIONS concerning taking off
...
•
...
the bounty on Corn exported...... ..London, 1753.
CURRENCY QUESTION, The...
.London, 1847.
CURRENCY QUESTION reviewed, The.
A Letter to the Scotch People. By a
Banker in England………………….
DEFENCE, A, of the Landowners and
London, 1845.
Farmers of Great Britain....... ..London, 1814.
DISCOURSE Concerning Trade, that in
particular of the East Indies... ...London, 1689.
DISCOURSE, A, on the general notions
of Money, Trade, and Exchange as
they stand in relation to each other.
By a Merchant..
.London, 1695.
DISCOURSE, A, on the Necessity of
encouraging Mechanick Industry....London, 1690.
DISSERTATION, A critical, on the Na-
ture, Measure, and Causes of Value.
etc. (See Bailey S.)............
DISSERTATION on the Poor Laws.
A Well-wisher of Mankind.
Townsend).....
Date.
..
.London, 1825.
By
(See
..London, 1786 (repub.
1817.)
3 E
802
Capitalist Production.
Author.
ANONYMOUS.....
""
""
""
""
""
>>
""
""
""
""
***
""
""
""
""
""
""
""
""
>>
,,
""
>>
··
Work.
..EAST India Trade, The, a most pro-
fitable Trade.....
.London, 1696.
ECONOMY, Public, concentrated........ Carlisle, 1833.
ENQUIRY into the connection between
the high price of Provisions and the
size of Farms. By a Farmer.........London, 1773.
ENQUIRY into the present high price
.London, 1767.
of Provisions....
ENQUIRY into the causes of the pres-
ent high price of Provisions. (See
Forster, Nathaniel)…………….
ENQUIRY into those principles respect-
ing the nature of Demand as lately
advocated by Mr. Malthus...... ...London, 1821.
ENQUIRY, A political, into the conse-
quences of enclosing Waste Lands.. London, 1785.
ESSAY, An, on the Governing Causes
of the Natural rate of Interest (See
J. Massey)......
ESSAY, a prize, on the Comparative
merits of Competition and Co-
operation....
.London, 1834.
ESSAY on Credit and the Bankrupt Act. London, 1707.
ESSAY on the Political Economy of
...
Date.
Nations....
ESSAY on Public Credit.
ESSAY on Trade and Commerce..
ESSAYS on Political Economy in
which are illustrated the principal
causes of the present National
Distress.
FARMS, Capital, Two Letters on the
Flour Trade, and the dearness of
Corn. By a Person in Business.....London, 1767.
INDUSTRY of Nations, The .....
..London, 1855.
INQUIRY. (See Enquiry).
KRANKHEITEN, Die, welche ver-
schiednen Ständen,
Altern und
•
...
.London, 1773.
...
London, 1750.
.London, 1821.
..London, 1710.
London, 1770.
Geschlechtern eigenthümlich sind... Ulm, 1860.
LABOUR DEFENDED against Capital,
by T. H. (See Hodgskin).... ..London, 1825.
LETTER, A, to Sir J. C. Banbury, Bt.,
On the high Price of Provisions.
By a Suffolk Gentleman
MONEY and its Vicissitudes. (See S.
Bailey)......
.London, 1830.
.Ipswich, 1795.
.London, 1837.
OUTLINES of Political Economy…………………..London, 1832.
OBSERVATIONS on certain verbal dis-
putes in Political Economy..
..London, 1821.
Works and Authors quoted in " Capital."
803
Author.
ANONYMOUS.
""
""
"J
""
19
""
"
29
99
a ……………
ARISTOTLE.
AUGIER, Marie..
BAILEY, S.....
رد
Work.
PERILS, The, of the Nation.....
PRINCIPLES, Essential, of the Wealth
BANKER, A..………..
...
of Nations...
REASONS for the late increase of the
Poor Rate..
REASONS for a limited Exportation of
Wool.....
REMARKS on the Commercial Policy
of Great Britain..
··
4.
...
THOUGHTS, Some, on the interest of
money in general, and particularly
in the English Funds.......
APPIAN
De bellis Civilibus..
ASHLEY, Anth., Lord. The Ten Hours' Factory Bill, Speech
of the 15th March.........
De Republica.
Date.
London, 1843.
..London, 1797.
.London, 1777.
.London, 1677.
.London, 1815.
....
S. W. A Compendious and Briefe
Examination of certayne ordinary
complaints of diverse of our country-
men in these our days. (See
William Stafford)…………….
SOPHISMS of Free Trade. By a
Barrister....... .Reprint, 1870. London, 1850.
SOURCE, The, and Remedies of the
..London, 1581.
National Difficulties. A letter to
Lord John Russell.
THEORY, The, of the Exchanges. The
Bank Charter Act of 1844. The
abuse of the Metallic Principle to
Depreciation
•••
•
***
...London, 1821.
.London, 1864.
London, 1870.
.London, 1844.
…….
......Du crédit public et de son Histoire de-
puis les temps anciens jusqu'à nos jours. Paris, 1842.
..London, 1825.
Money and its Vicissitudes. (Pub-
lished Anon.).....
London, 1837.
BABBAGE, Charles... On the Economy of Machinery........London, 1832.
BACON....
Life of Henry VII. (Kennet's England). London, 1817.
BANK Acts. (See Parliamentary
B.
..A Critical Dissertation, etc., chiefly in
reference to the writings of Mr.
Ricardo......
Papers).
The Currency Question reviewed. A
letter to the Scotch people by
a Banker in England.
BARBON, Nicolas.....A Discourse on coining the new money
lighter, in answer to Mr. Locke's
Considerations.
London, 1845.
..London, 1696.
804
Capitalist Production.
Author.
Work.
BARTON, John........Observations on the circumstances
which influence the condition of the
Labouring Classes of Society.........London, 1817.
BARRISTER, A..... Sophisms of Free Trade. (See under
Anonymous).
BECCARIA, CESARE...Elementi di Economia Pubblica. Cus-
todi's ed. of Italian Economists......Milano, 1803.
BELLERS, John...... Essays about the Poor, Manufacturers,
Trade, Plantations, and Immorality. London, 1699.
BENGAL HURKARU. (See under News-
papers),
BENTHAM, Jeremy...Théorie des peines et des récompenses
(d'après des manuscrits inédits, ed.
by E. Dumont).
BERKELEY, George.. The Querist.....
BIDAUT, J. N.........Du Monopole qui
Du Monopole qui s'établit dans les
""
ور
""
arts industriels et le Commerce......Paris, 1828.
BIESE, F………….. Die Philosophie des Aristoteles..... Berlin, 1842.
BLAKEY, Robert......The History of Political Literature
from the earliest times.......
Blanqui, J. A……………..Des Classes Ouvrières en France peu-
dant l année, 1848.
..London, 1855.
Cours d'économie industrielle...........Paris, 1835-39.
BOISGUILLEBERT..... Dissertation sur la nature des richesses,
de l'argent et des tributs. (Ed.
Daire)....
BOXHORN..
Institutiones politica..
BOYLEAU, Etienne...Livres des métiers.
documents inédits)
BROADHURST, J.... Political Economy..
BROUGHAM, Henry..An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy
of the European Powers...
BRUCKNER, ...Théorie du système animal..
BUCHANAN, David...Inquiry into the Taxation and Com-
....
mercial Policy of Great Britain......Edinburgh, 1844.
Smith's Wealth of Nations. With
notes and an additional volume.....London, 1814.
BUCHEZ et Roux.....Histoire Parlementaire de la Révolu-
tion Française.…………….
Paris, 1834-38.
BURKE, Edmund…….. Thoughts and details on Scarcity......London, 1800.
A Letter from the Right Hon. Ed.
Burke, to a noble lord, on the at-
tacks made upon him and his pen-
sion in the House of Lords by the
Duke of Bedford, etc..
.Hudibras.
BUTLER....
►
...
·
-
C.
CAIRNES, J. E.. .....The Slave Power.
•
…………
...
···
Date.
(Collection de
..Londres, 1811.
.London, 1750.
··
…….
Paris, 1843.
Leyden, 1663.
.Paris, 1835.
.London, 1842.
.Edinburgh, 1803.
.Leyden, 1767.
Philadelphia, 1795 (?)
.London, 1862.
Works and Authors quoted in "Capital."
805
Author,
**
99
CAMPBELL, George.. Modern India...
CANTILLON, Philip.. Essai sur la nature du Commerce en
général......
The Analysis of Trade, Commerce,
etc. (English translation).............London, 1759.
CARD, Ronard de.... Falsification des substances sacra-
mentelles.
CAREY, H. C.......... The Slave Trade......
"}
Philadelphia, 1853.
Essay on the Rate of Wages.. ..London, 1834.
CARLI, G. R...........Notes in his edition of Verri. (See
Verri).....
Milano, 1803.
CAZENOVE, John..... Notes in his edition of Malthus' De-
finitions in Political Economy.......London, 1853.
CENSUS. (See Parliamentary Papers)
.Glasgow, 1832.
Work.
CHALMERS, Th.......On Political Economy
CHAMBERLAIN, Jos..Speech at Sanitary Congress, Bir-
mingham. (Times, 15th Jan., 1875).
CHERBULIEZ, A. E..Riche ou pauvre…………..
COBBETT, William...A History of the Protestant Reforma-
tion.....
COLINS, H.......
L'Économie Politique……..
Combination (On) of Trades.
Anon.).......
COMMISSIONS.
CONDILLAC..
U
•••
Paris, 1811.
.Dublin, 1868.
Paris, 1857.
London, 1834.
(See
(Children's Employ-
ment, on Railways, etc. (See Parl.
Papers).
CONGRESS. (International Statistic).
Compte rendu.......
.Paris.
Le Commerce et le Gouvernement, .Paris, 1770.
Reprinted in:
Mélanges de l'Économie Politique.
(Ed. Daire et Molinari)..
CONSIDERATIONS concerning taking
off the Bounty on Corn exported.
(See Anonymous)..
An Inquiry into the Causes and Modes
.London, 1753.
CORBET, Th..……………..
of the Wealth of Individuals.........London, 1841.
CORBON, C. A....... De l'enseignement professionnel........ Paris, 1858.
COURCELLE-SENEUIL. Traité théorique et pratique des en-
J. G.
treprises industrielles........
Paris, 1857.
CURRENCY Question, The. (See Anon.). London, 1847.
CURRENCY Question, reviewed, The.
.London, 1845.
.Paris, 1863.
Date.
.London, 1852.
Amsterdam, 1756.
...
···
A
(See Anon.)………………….
CUVIER, J. L. C......Discours sur les Révolutions du Globe.
(Ed. Hoefer)…………………….
Paris, 1847.
D.
DAILY TELEGRAPH. (See Newspapers).
DARWIN, Charles.... Origin of Species...
J
..London, 1859.
100
806
Capitalist Production.
Work.
Defence, A, of the landlords and
farmers of Great Britain.
Anon.)....
(See
DE QUINCEY, Th.....The Logic of Political Economy.
DESCARTES, René.... Discours de la Méthode
DEUTSCH-FRANZÖSISCHE JAHRBÜCHER
(See Marx and Ruge)………..
DIODORUS SICULUS.. Bibliotheca Historica.
DISCOURSE Concerning Trade, etc.
(See Anonymous).
DISCOURSE on the General Notions of
Author.
""
DUNNING, T. J.......Trades' Unions and Strikes.
DUPONT, Pierre
19
FARMеr, A………………….
………
···
....
··
……….
...London, 1814.
.London, 1844.
.Paris, 1668.
Paris, 1844.
.....
Money, etc. (See Anon.).............London, 1695.
DISCOURSE on the necessity of en-
couraging Mechanick Industry,
(See Anon.)..
DISSERTATION on the Poor Laws, etc.
(See Anon.)......
..Chansons..
E.
EAST INDIAN TRADE, etc., (see Anon.). London, 1696.
ECONOMY, Public, Concentrated, (see
Anon.)
Carlisle, 1833.
..London, 1797.
ECONOMIST (see under Newspapers).
EDEN, F. M...........The State of the Poor...
EMPIRICUS, Sextus.. Opera.
ENGELS, Friedrich...Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in Eng-
land.....
...London, 1689.
...
Date.
..London, 1690.
.London, 1786.
.London, 1860.
.Paris, 1846.
..
Umrisse zu einer Kritik der National-
œkonomie (Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher)..
Die Englische Zehn - Stunden - Bill
(Neue Rheinische Zeitung April
number)
ENGELS, F. & Marx, K. Manifest der Kommunistischen Par-
tei.......
···
.Leipzig, 1845.
.Paris, 1844.
ENQUIRY into, etc. (see under Anony-
mous).
ESSAY, etc. (see under Anonymous)..
ENSOR, George.......An Inquiry concerning the Population
of Nations......
Hamburg, 1850.
.London, 1847.
..London, 1818.
F,
FACTORY ACTS, Reports of Inspectors,
(see Parl. Papers).
Enquiry into the Connection, etc.,
(see Enquiry under Anonymous)... London, 1773.
FARMS, Capital, etc., (see under
Anonymous)
.London, 1767.
Works and Authors quoted in " Capital."
807
Author.
Work.
FAWCETT, Henry.....The Economic Position of the British
Labourer.
………..London, 1865.
Ferguson, A…………………..A History of Civil Society, Reprinted. London, 1850.
FERRAND....... ..Speech in House of Commons. (see
Hansard).
...
G
FERRIER, F. L. A... Le gouvernement considéré dans ses
rapports avec le commerce....... Paris, 1822.
FIELDEN, J....... .The Curse of the Factory System......London, 1836.
FLEETWOOD, Bishop. Chronicon pretiosum....
..London, 1707.
FONTEROL, A. L......Hygiène physique et morale de
l'ouvrier, etc
FORBONNAIS, V. de. Eléments du Commerce. Nouvelle
Edition ........
.Paris, 1858.
.Leyde, 1766.
""
..
HANSARD..
...
...
FORSTER, Rev. Na-
thaniel...
.An enquiry into the Causes of the
FRANKLIN, Benja- present high price of Provisions.....London, 1773.
min......
Works, (Edited by Sparks),.......
FULLARTON, John.... Regulation of Currencies..
.Boston, 1830-36-40.
.London, 1844.
..
...
G.
Milano, 1803.
GALIANI, F...………….. Della Moneta, (Custodi Ed.)
GANILH, Charles..... Des systèmes de l'économie politique. Paris, 1821.
GARNIER, G...... .Abrégé élémentaire des principes de
l'économie politique (published
anonymously).
GASKELL, P...........The Manufacturing Population of
..Paris, 1796.
England...
London, 1833.
GENTLEMAN, A Suf-Letter to Sir J. C. Banbury on the
folk....
high price of provisions....
GENOVESI, A.
..London, 1795.
A…………… Lezioni di Economia civile (Custodi
Ed.)………..
Milano, 1803.
.Bruxelles, 1865.
GISBOURNE
Enquiry into the Duties of Man......London, 1795.
GLADSTONE, W. E...See Hansard.
GREGOIR, H...........Les Typographes devant le Tribunal
Correctionnel de Bruxelles.
GREG, R. H.………………. The Factory question and the Ten
Hours' Bill...
.London, 1837.
GROVE, W.R..........On the Correlation of Physical Forces. London, 1846.
H.
...
Date.
HALLER, C. L. Von..Restauration der Staatswissenschaf-
ten.
***
•
HAMM, W..............Die Landwirthschaftlichen Geräthe
und Maschinen Englands.........
Parliamentary Debates. Speech of
Mr. Ferrand, April 27th, 1863......London, 1863.
Parliamentary Debates. Speech of
Mr. Gladstone on the Budget, Feb.
14th, 1843..………..
Wintherthur, 1820-
1834.
.Braunschweig, 1856.
....I ndon, 1843.
..
808
Capitalist Production.
HANSARD....
""
Author.
""
HOLLINSHEDd..
HOMER
HOPKINS, Th.....
HORNE, Geo.....
ISOCRATES..
HARRIS, James, Earl
of Malmesbury....Dialogue concerning Happiness (re-
published in "Three Treatises,"
1765)...
HASSALL, Dr. H. H..Adulterations detected..
..London, 1741
.London, 1857.
Berlin, 1832-40.
HEGEL, G. W. F.....WERKE…….
HILAIRE, Geoffroi St. Notions de Philosophie Naturelle.. ...Paris, 1838.
HOBBES, Th...........Leviathan. (Works).
HODGSKIN, Th.. .Labour Defended against Capital.
London, 1839-44.
By T. H. (See under Anon.)…….......London, 1825.
Natural and Artificial Rights, The, of
Property Contrasted. (Anonymous). London, 1832.
Description of England.
..
""
;
""
"
Work.
...Parliamentary Debates. Speech of
Mr. Gladstone on the Budget, April,
16th, 1863...
Parliamentary Debates.
Speech of
Mr. Gladstone, April 7th, 1864.....London, 1864.
...
Iliad and Odyssey.
On Rent of Land...
HORNER, Leonard... A Letter to Mr. Senior, etc.
HOUGHTON, John.....Husbandry and Trade Improved
HOWITT, William....Colonization and Christianity..
HUTTON, C.............Course of Mathematics......
-
Compte rendu……………..
Orationes et Epistolae..
··
•
.London, 1863.
..
.A Letter to Adam Smith, LL.D., On
the Life, Death and Philosophy of
his Friend, David Hume...... .Oxford, 1784.
··
...
.London, 1828.
...
Date.
I.
INDUSTRY of Nations. (See Anony-
mous).....
INQUIRY. (See Enquiry under Anon.).
INTERNATIONAL Statistic Congress,
J.
JONES, Richard.......An Essay on the Distribution of
London, 1837.
..London, 1727
..London, 1838.
.Reprint, London,
1841-43.
.London, 1855.
.Paris.
Wealth. Part I., On Rent.,.........London, 1831.
An Introductory Lecture on Political
..London, 1833.
.Hertford, 1852.
Economy..
Text Book of Lectures on the Political
Economy of Nations..
JOURNAL of the Society of Arts. (See
under newspapers).
K.
KRANKHEITEN, Die, welche verschie-
denen Ständen, Altern und Ge-
schlechtern eigenthumlich sind......Ulm, 1860.
Works and Authors quoted in "Capital."
809
Work.
L.
LABORDE, A. de......De l'esprit de l'association dans tous
les interéts de la communauté. .Paris, 1818.
LABOUR defended. (See Hodgskin).
LABOURERS, (Agricultural) Ireland.
(See Parliamentary Papers).
LAING, S...... ..National Distress, etc...
London, 1844.
LANCELLOTTI, Abb..Farfalloni de gli Antichi Historici...Venetia, 1636.
LASSALLE, Ferdin....Die Philosophie des Herakleitos.......
..Berlin, 1858.
LAVERGNE, Léonce
de......
Author.
LAW, J......
LE TROSNE.
LEVI, Leone.........
>>
le Commerce. (Ed. Daire).......... Paris, 1843.
LETTER, A, to Sir J. C. Banbury,
etc. By a Suffolk gentleman.
(See Anonymous)……………
Ipswich, 1795.
De l'intérêt Social. (Ed. Daire). ... ..Paris, 1846.
.Lecture before the Society of Arts,
April, 1866. (See Newspapers).....London, 1866.
LIEBIG, J. von.......Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf
Agrikultur
•
>>
>>
...Essai sur l'économie rurale de l'An-
gleterre.....
Considérations sur le numéraire et sur
})
··
...
L
Ueber Theorie und Praxis in der
Landwirthschaft.
LINGUET, N........ ..Théorie des loix civiles..
LOCKE, John..........Some Considerations on the Conse-
quences of the Lowering of Interest.
(Works, Vol. II.)…………….
***
➜
...
LORDS (House of) Committee on Bank
Acts. (See Parliamentary Papers).
De Rerum Natnrâ.
LUCRETIUS.
LUTHER, Martin. ...An die Pharhernn, wider den Wucher
zu predigen.
.. ↑
****
Paris, 1858.
Date.
KAN
.Braunschweig, 1862.
.Braunschweig, 1856
Londres, 1787.
M.
...London, 1858.
MACAULAY, Thos. B.History of England. 10th Edit.......London, 1854.
MACLAREN, James...History of the Currency.
MACLEOD, H. D......Theory and Practice of Banking.......London, 1855.
M'CULLOCH, J. R....A Dictionary, Practical, &c., of Com-
merce......
.London, 1777.
··
.London, 1847.
The Literature of Political Economy. London, 1845.
Principles of Political Economy........London, 1830.
MALTHUS, T. R.......Definitions in Political Economy.......London, 1827.
Inquiry into the Nature and Progress
of Rent........
MALTHUS, T. R…………….. Principles of Political Economy.
MANDEVILLE, B. de. Fable of the Bees......
.Wittenberg, 1540.
London, 1815.
London, 1836.
London, 172S..
810
Capitalist Production.
Author.
""
MARTINEAU, Harriet The Manchester Strike....……………………………………….(?)
MARX, Karl, and
Engels, F........
MARX, Karl, and
Ruge, A........
MARX, Karl..
99
MAURER.
>>
Paris, 1847.
Zur Kritik der Politischen Ekonomie. Berlin, 1859.
MASSEY, J.............An Essay on the Governing Causes of
the Natural Rate of Interest. (Pub.
Anon.)..
...
...
Work.
MASTER SPINNERS and Manufacturers
Defence Fund. (See Report.).
Geschichte der Fronhöfe.....
Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark-
verfassung
MERCIER de la Rivière. (See Rivière.).
MERCHANT, A.... ...A Discourse on the General Notions of
Money, &c. (See under Anonymous). London, 1695.
MERIVALE, H.........Lectures on Colonization and Colonies. London, 1841.
MILL, James. .Article Co
Colony," Supplement of
Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. London, 1847.
Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher.......Paris, 1844.
Lohnarbeit und Kapital. (Neue
Rheinische Zeitung, 7th April.)………..Köln, 1849.
Misère de la philosophie: Réponse à la
philosophie de la misère de M.
Proudhon.......
MUN, Th.....
MURPHY..
··
""
MIRABEAU.
MOLINARI, G. de.... Etudes Économiques...
MOMMSEN, Th........Römische Geschichte.
MONTESQUIEU.
MORE, Thomas....... Utopia.
••
""
MILL, John Stuart.. Essays on some Unsettled Questions
of Political Economy.
Principles of Political Economy..
De la Monarchie Prussienne.
..
...
Encyclopædia Britannica....... Edinburgh, 1831.
Elements of Political Economy....
London, 1821.
...
&c........
Esprit des Lois. Œuvres.
•
•
Money and its Vicissitudes. (See S.
Bailey. Pub. Anon.)
MONTEIL, Alexis.....Histoire des Matériaux manuscrits,
.London, 1750.
Date.
1842.
Erlangen, 1862.
.München, 1854.
•
**
..
MORNING STAR. (See under News-
papers)
MORTON, J. C........Article LABOURER in Cyclopædia of
Agriculture.
Paper read before the Society of Arts
Jan. 1861.
MORNING STAR. (See under News-
.London, 1844.
.London, 1848.
Londres, 1788.
Paris, 1846.
Berlin, 1856.
.London, 1837.
Paris, 1835.
.Londres, 1767.
papers).
England's Treasure by Foreign Trade. London, 1669.
.Ireland, Industrial, Political, and
Social..
.London, 1870.
200
A
Works and Authors quoted in "Capital."
-811
Author.
MURRAY, Hugh,
WILSON, etc.
NASMITH.
N.
Speech at Trades' Union Commission,
1851......
NEWMAN, S. P........Elements of Political Economy.
NEWMAN, W. F......Lectures on Political Economy.
NEWNHAM, G. B.....A Review of the Evidence before the
Committee of the two Houses of
..
NEWSPAPERS..
Work.
Historic and descriptive account of
British India………
•
OLMSTED, F.....
OPDYKE, G.
ORTES, G...
ECONOMIST, July, 19th...
Janr., 21st..
June, 2nd....
""
Parliament on the Corn Laws........London, 1815.
.NEWSPAPERS and journals, etc.
""
BENGAL HURKARU. Bi-monthly Over-
land Summary of news, July 22nd.. Calcutta (?) 1861.
DAILY TELEGRAPH, Jan. 7th.....
.London, 1860.
""
>>
""
""
JOURNAL of the Society of Arts………......London.
January, 1861.
January, 1872.
April, 1866, etc.
""
MORNING STAR, April 17th....………….
>"
June 23rd.
OBSERVER, April 24th.....
REVOLUTIONS DE PARIS.
REYNOLDS' NEWSPAPER, Jan
""
>>
SPECTATOR, June……..
STANDARD.
""
""
>>
London, 1863.
.London, 1863.
London, 1864.
Paris, 1789-94.
..London, 1860.
Feb... ..London, 1866.
Jan. 20th....London, 1867.
.London, 1866 (?)
..London, 1865 (?)
..London, 1861.
..London, 1861.
London, 1862.
London, 1862.
London, 1863.
.London, 1873.
WORKMAN'S Advocate, Jan. 1866......London, 1866.
NIEBUHR, G. B.... ..Römische Geschichte (reprinted)…………..Berlin, 1853.
NORTH, Sir Dudley. Discourses upon Trade........
....London, 1691.
19
>>
TIMES, Nov. 5th...
Nov. 26th.
Nov. 29th.
""
Oct. 26th......
...
...
***
...
March 24th……………...
Sept. 9th....
...
Edinburgh, 1832.
.London, 1851.
New York, 1835.
.London, 1851.
..
Date.
.London, 1859.
.London, 1860.
.London, 1866.
O
*
..
O.
OBSERVATIONS on certain verbal dis-
putes. (See Anonymous).....
OBSERVER. (See Newspapers).
Sea board Slave States......
.London, 1821.
New York, 1856.
New York, 1851.
A treatise on Political Economy.
Della Economia libri sei (Ed. Custodi). Milano, 1803.
812
Capitalist Production.
Author.
Work.
OTWAY, J.H...........Judgment of J. H. Otway, Hilary
Sessions, Belfast.
PAGNINI, L.A…..
OWEN, Robert........Observations on the Effects of the
Manufacturing System.........London, 1817.
...
PARLIAMENTARY
PAPERS.
P.
Saggio sopra il giusto pregio delle
cose. (Ed. Custodi)…………….
AGRICULTURAL Labourers, (Ireland)
1862.
CENSUS for Great Britain, Ireland and
Wales, 1863, etc.
CHILDREN'S Employment Commission
Factory Regulation Acts, 1859.
HOUSE OF COMMONS Committee, 1826.
HOUSE OF LORDS Committee on Bank
Act, 1848.
REPORTS ON Bank Acts, 1857
CC of Select Committee on Bank
Acts, 1858.
REPORTS of Select Committee on
Mines, 1866.
REPORTS of Commissioners of H. M.'s
Inland Revenue. (Fourth & Tenth).
REPORTS of Commissioners relating to
Transportation and Penal Servi-
tude. (1863).
REPORTS of Foreign Office. (Howard
de Welden)..
REPORTS of Inspectors of Factories.
REPORTS of Royal Commission on
the Grievances of the Journeymen
Bakers. (1862).
REPORTS from the Poor Law Inspec-
tors on the Wages of Agricultural
Labourers in Dublin. (1870).
REPORTS on Public Health.
REPORTS of the Registrar General.
REPORTS of H. M. Secretaries of Em-
bassies and Legations on Manufac-
tures. (1863).
STATISTICAL Abstract for the United
Kingdom. (1861 and 1866).
STATISTICS (Miscellaneous) of the
United Kingdom. (1866).
PARRY, C H....... ..The Question of the Necessity of the
Date.
.Milano, 1803.
ད
Existing Corn Laws Considered.....London, 1816.
250
ܐܐ ܘܠܐ ܕܩܠܕܫܐ ܒ
Works and Authors quoted in " Capital." 813
Author.
PERSON in Business,
A………..
Capital Farms. (See under Anon.)…..London, 1767.
PETTY, William......Political Anatomy of Ireland and
Verbum Sapienti....
..London, 1691.
Quantulumcunque concerning Money. London, 1695.
A Treatise on Taxes and Contribu-
tions......
.London, 1662.
""
""
""
>>
Verbum Sapienti. (See Political An-
atomy of Ireland).
PINTO, Isaac.. Traité de la Circulation et du Crédit...Amsterdam, 1771.
PLATO.....
..De Republica.
POSTLETHWAYT, M.. First Preliminary Discourse……... London.
PRICE, Richard.......Observations on Reversionary Pay-
London, 1803.
""
PROUDHON.......
RAFFLES, Th. Stam-
ford....
RAMAZZINI.
•
..Oeuvres.
•
Work.
ments....
Universal Dictionary of Trade and
Commerce...
*
•
+
•
Great Britain's Commercial Interest
Explained......
...
Q.
QUESNAY, Dr. F......Dialogue sur le Commerce. (Ed.
R.
...
•
..
...London.
Daire)...
.Paris, 1846.
Maximes Générales. (Ed. Daire)…………..Paris, 1816.
………
History of Java...
De morbis artificum (1713). French
translation in " Encyclopédie des
Sciences Médicales."
RAMSAY, G............An Essay on
..An Essay on the Distribution of
Wealth....
RAVENSTONE, P......Thoughts on the Funding System and
its Effects.
READ, George... History of Baking..
REDGRAVE, A...... ..Report of Speech in Journal of the
Society of Arts. (Jan., 1872).
Regnault, E………......Histoire politique et sociale des Prin-
cipautés Dauubiennes.
REICH, Eduard.......Ueber die Entartung des Menschen....Erlangen, 1868.
REPORT of the Committee of the
Master Spinners and Manufacturers
Defence Fund.....
Paris, 1855.
REPORT of Social Science Congress,
Edinburgh, Oct., 1863
REPORTS (Inspectors of Factories,
Health, etc. See under Parlia
mentary Papers.)..
...London, 1755.
Paris.
Date.
❤ ··
...
London, 1817.
Paris, 1841.
Edinburgh, 1836.
London, 1824.
..London, 1848.
Manchester, 1851.
814
Capitalist Production.
Author.
RIVIÈRE, Mercier de
la.........
RODBERTUS-JAGET-
zow, C...........
ROGERS, James
Thorold..
ROSCHER, W…...
Rossi, P.....
REVOLUTIONS de Paris. (See under
Newspapers)
REYNOLDS' Newspapers. (See under
Newspapers).
RICARDO, David......Principles of Political Economy........London, 1821.
RICHARDSON, B. W.. Work and Overwork. (Social Science
Review, July, 1863)……..
..London, 1863.
SAY, J. B.....
SAINT-HILAIRE,
Geoffroi.......
""
Work.
RESOLUTION of Working Men of Dun-
kirk..
""
E.
.A History of Agriculture and Prices.. Oxford, 1866.
.Grundlagen der Nationalœkonomie... Berlin, 1858.
Cours d'Économie Politique.......
ROUSSEAU, Jean-
.Bruxelles, 1842.
Jacques...... Discours sur l'Économie Politique.....Genève, 1765.
Roux et Buchez.....(See Buchez).
99
""
...
(See Mercier)..
,,
••
Soziale Briefe an Kirchmann... Berlin, 1850.
Briefe, etc., Edited by Dr. R. Meyer.. Berlin, 1881.
Notions de Philosophie Naturelle......Paris, 1838.
Lettres à M. Malthus....
.Paris, 1820.
""
Traité de l'Économie Politique........Paris, 1841.
SCHOUW, F…………………….... Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch. Leipzig, 1854.
SCHULZ, Wilhelm....Die Bewegung der Produktion... .....Zürich, 1843.
SCROPE, G. P.........Political Economy (Edited by A.
Potter)...
New York, 1541
S.
···
SENIOR, William
Nassau.......... .Journals, Conversations and Essays
relating to Ireland.
Letters on the Factory Acts.
Principes Fondamentaux de l'Écono-
..Paris, 1836.
mie Politique (French translation by
Arrivabene)..
Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages. London, 1830.
SHAKESPEARE, Wm. Works.
SISMONDI, Simonde
de ...
.New York, 1866.
··
………
....
*
…….
Date.
Études d'Économie Politique........
Nouveaux Principes de l'Économie
..London, 1868.
London, 1837.
Politique....
De la Richesse Commerciale...
SKARBEK, F...........Théorie des Richesses Sociales..
SMITH, Adam…..
Wealth of Nations.....
SOCIAL SCIENCE Congress. (See under
Report).
.Paris, 1837.
...
Paris, 1819.
.Genève, 1803.
Paris, 1829.
Aberdeen, 1848.
..
300
#
Works and Authors quoted in "Capital." 815
Work.
SOCIETY of Arts, Journal of. (See
under Newspapers).
SOCIETY of Arts, Commission of In-
quiry into Industrial Pathology.....
SOMERS, Robert...... Letters from the Highlands, on the
Famine of 1847.
Antigone.
SOPHOCLES.
SPECTATOR. (See under Newspapers).
STAFFORD, William. A Compendious and Briefe Examina-
tion of certayne ordinary complaints
of diverse of our countrymen in
these our days. (Publ. Anon.)......London, 1581.
STANDARD. (See under Newspapers).
STATISTICS. (See under Parliament-
ary Papers).
STATUTES, General, of Massachusetts.
STATUTES, Revised of Rhode Island...
STATUTE, Decree of Philippe de Valois,
1346.
Author.
""
STEUART, Sir Jas....Principles of Political Economy........Dublin, 1770.
Works
STEWART, Dugald…..Works. (Edited by Sir William
.London, 1805.
>>
..
Hamilton)....
Edinburgh, 1855.
STOLBERG, Christian. Gedichte aus dem Griechischen...... Hamburg, 1782.
STORCH, H. F…………………..Cours d'Économie Politique... St. Petersburg, 1815.
STRYPE.
Annals of the Reformation....
.London, 1725.
'
T.
TIMES. (See under Newspapers)..
THIERS, Adolphe.... De la propriété..
THOMPSON, Benj.....Essays, Political, Economical and
Philosophical, etc………..
THOMPSON, W........An Inquiry into the principles of the
distribution of Wealth..
··
•
Paris, 1848.
...London, 1796-1802.
..London, 1824.
THORNTON, W. T...Over-population and its Remedy.......London, 1864.
THUCIDYDES.......... De Bello Peloponnesiaco..
THUNEN, J. H. von... Der isolirte Staat.......
Rostock, 1863.
TOOKE, Thos...... ...History of Prices (partly Ed. by W.
Newmarch)..
.London, 1853-57.
TORRENS, R.......... An Essay on the External Corn
Trade......
London, 1815.
An Essay on the Production
Wealth.
.London, 1821.
London, 1834.
Ou Wages and Combinations...
**
Townsend, W……..... Dissertation on the Poor Laws, etc.
(See under Anomymous).....………….. London, 1817.
TRACY, Destutt de...Traité de la Volouté et de ses Effets.. Paris, 1823.
TRADES' Union Commission.
··
I
.London, 1848.
•
Date.
••• 1
•
of
816.
Capitalist Production.
Author.
Work.
TUCKETT, J. D.......A History of the Past and Present
TURGOT.....
??
U.
URE, Andrew.........Philosophy of Manufactures.
URQUHART, David...Familiar Words..
State of the Labouring Population. London, 1845.
Réflexions sur la formation et la dis-
tribution des richesses.....
Paris, 1844.
""
....
""
V.
VANDERLINT, Jas....Money answers all things..
VERRI, Pietro.... Meditazioni sulla Economia politica,
(Ed. Custodi)..
VISSERING, S………........Handboek van pratische Staatshuis-
""
…………….
houdkunde...
Portfolio, New Series, (see under
Newspapers).
WAKEFIELD, E. G...England and America.
...
W.
WADE, John..........History of the Middle and Working
Classes....
•
Xenophon..............Cyropædia.
..London, 1835.
..London, 1858.
Notes in his ed. of Smith's Wealth of
Nations..
.London, 1835.
A view of the Art of Colonization..... London, 1849.
WARD, John..........History of the Borough of Stoke-upon-
Trent.....
.London, 1843.
WATSON, S............(See under Society of Arts).
WATTS, John.. ......Facts and Fictions of Political Econo-
mists.....
Y.
YOUNG, Arthur......Political Arithmetic....
A
in
Date.
.London, 1734.
Milano, 1803.
Amsterdam, 1860-62
Trade Societies and Strikes..
WAYLAND, F..........Elements of Political Economy.........London, 1856.
WEST, Edward. Price of Corn and Wages of Labour.. London, 1826.
WILKS, Mark.... Historical Sketches of the South of
..London, 1810-17.
India.
WORKMAN'S ADVOCATE, (see under
Newspapers).
WRIGHT, Thomas...Short Address to the Public on the
Monopoly of large Farms........
X.
London, 1833.
...London, 1833.
Manchester, 1842
...Manchester, 1865.
……………
.London, 1779,
...London, 1774-
……………
}

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DATE DUE
OCT 1 71983
Se

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 00474 7005
DO NOT REMOVE
OR
MUTILATE CARD
påvene starapless bea

!....
........
*
IN.
Cam