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production on a large scale in the capitalistic form alone. A certain accumulation of capital, in the
hands of individual producers of commodities, forms therefore the necessary preliminary of the
specifically capitalistic mode of production. We had, therefore, to assume that this occurs during
the transition from handicraft to capitalistic industry. It may be called primitive 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 accompany it, and of accelerated production of surplus-value. If, 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 specifically capitalistic mode of production develops, 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 capitalists, 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, therefore, the number of
capitalists grows to a greater or less extent. Two points characterise this kind of concentration
which grows directly out of, or rather is identical with, accumulation. 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 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 individual capitals or the repulsion of its
fractions one from another, 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 accumulation. It is concentration of capitals already formed, destruction of their individual
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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 therefore 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 distinct from accumulation and concentration.
The laws of this centralisation of capitals, or of the attraction 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 demands, caeteris 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 remembered 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 sporadically 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 in the ruin of many small capitalists, whose capitals
partly pass into the hands of their conquerors, partly vanish. Apart from this, with capitalist
production an altogether new force comes into play – the credit system, which in its first stages
furtively creeps in as the humble assistant of accumulation, drawing into the hands of individual
or associated capitalists, by invisible threads, the money resources which lie scattered, over the
surface of society, in larger or smaller amounts; but it soon becomes a new and terrible weapon in
the battle of competition and is finally transformed into an enormous social mechanism for the
centralisation of capitals.
Commensurately with the development of capitalist production and accumulation there develop
the two most powerful levers of centralisation – competition and credit. At the same time the
progress of accumulation increases the material amenable to centralisation, i.e., the individual
capitals, whilst the expansion of capitalist production creates, on the one hand, the social want,
and, on the other, the technical means necessary for those immense industrial undertakings which
require a previous centralisation of capital for their accomplishment. Today, therefore, the force
of attraction, drawing together individual capitals, and the tendency to centralisation are stronger
than ever before. But if the relative extension and energy of the movement towards centralisation
is determined, in a certain degree, by the magnitude of capitalist wealth and superiority of
economic mechanism already attained, progress in centralisation does not in any way depend
upon a positive growth in the magnitude of social capital. And this is the specific difference
between centralisation and concentration, the latter being only another name for reproduction on
an extended scale. Centralisation may result from a mere change in the distribution of capitals
already existing, from a simple alteration in the quantitative grouping of the component parts of
social capital. Here capital can grow into powerful masses in a single hand because there it has
been withdrawn from many individual hands. In any given branch of industry centralisation
would reach its extreme limit if all the individual capitals invested in it were fused into a single
capital.
12
In a given society the limit would be reached only when the entire social capital was
united in the hands of either a single capitalist or a single capitalist company.
Centralisation completes the work of accumulation by enabling industrial capitalists to extend the
scale of their operations. Whether this latter result is the consequence of accumulation or
centralisation, whether centralisation is accomplished by the violent method of annexation –
when certain capitals become such preponderant centres of attraction for others that they shatter
the individual cohesion of the latter and then draw the separate fragments to themselves – or