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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 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 consists 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, therefore, in that year, the time for its periodical reproduction, for its replacement by
new ones of the same kind. If the productiveness of labour has, during the using up of these
instruments of labour, increased (and it develops 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 that part of the
original capital which has entered upon its stage of renewal. This, in passing into its new shape,
incorporates 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 productive. 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, increases 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 re-appear in a new, useful form, and can thus function anew as capital.
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“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.”
46
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 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,
consequently with the accumulation that accompanies the development of its productive power,
labour keeps up and eternises an always increasing capital value in a form ever new.”
47
This
natural power of labour takes the appearance of an intrinsic property of capital, in which it is
incorporated, just as the productive 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, therefore 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
MacCulloch, ought to receive a special remuneration in the shape of interest, profit, etc.
48
The
powerful and ever-increasing assistance given by 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 today, 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 accumulation 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.