416
Chapter 24
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 productions 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.”
16
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 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 £2,000 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 £2,000 are spent in
the payment of wages, i.e., until the entire product represented by the £2,000 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.
17
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 difficulty 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 production in the shape in which it
is presented to us after passing through the process of circulation.
18
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.
417
Chapter 24
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 portion is consumed by the capitalist as revenue,
19
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.
Caeteris 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 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.
Fanatically 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 preserve it, but extend it he
cannot, except by means of progressive 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 perpetrated 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 to extend
both the direct and the indirect sway of the capitalist.
20
But original sin is at work everywhere. As capitalist production, 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 accumulation as “abstinence”
from pleasure.
“Two souls, alas, do dwell with in his breast;
The one is ever parting from the other.”
21