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33
“The particular classes of income which yield the most abundantly to the progress of national
capital, change at different stages of their progress, and are, therefore, 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.... When a considerable advance in the
powers of national industry has actually taken place, profits rise into comparative importance as a
source of accumulation.” (Richard Jones, “Textbook, &c.,” pp. 16, 21.)
34
l. c., p. 36, sq.
35
“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.)
36
J. Stuart Mill: “Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy,” Lond., 1844, p. 90.
37
“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 mine-owner, 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.
38
l. c., pp. 44, 46.
39
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.
40
l. c., pp. 70, 71. Note in the 3rd German edition: today, 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. 3, 1873, p. 8.) The wished-for goal of English capital is no longer
Continental wages but Chinese.
41
Benjamin Thompson: “Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, &c.,” 3 vols., Lond, 1796-
1802, vol. i., p. 294. 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 comfortably, for months together, upon oat-meal and barley-meal, mixed with only water
and salt.” (l. 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 (1797.)
42
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
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examination of 34 specimens of opium, purchased of as many different chemists in London, showed
that 31 were adulterated with poppy heads, wheat-flour, gum, clay, sand, &c. Several did not contain
an atom of morphia.
43
G. B. Newnham (barrister-at-law): “A Review of the Evidence before the Committee of the two
Houses of Parliament on the Corn Laws.” Lond., 1815, p. 20,
note.
44
l. c., pp. 19, 20.
45
C. H. Parry, l. 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.” (I.
c., pp. 100, 101.)
46
Friedrich Engels, “Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England,” p. 20.
47
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 reproduction, 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 products very different masses of value;
in consequence of which the values of the products 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 considére, 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... nous 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.” [As for the difficulty raised by Ricardo when he says that, by using better methods of
production, a million people can produce two or three times as much wealth, without producing any
more value, this difficulty disappears when one bears in mind, as one should, that production is like an
exchange in which a man contributes the productive services of his labour, his land, and his capital, in
order to obtain products. It is by means of these productive services that we acquire all the products
existing in the world. Therefore ... we are richer, our productive services have the more value, the
greater the quantity of useful things they bring in through the exchange which is called production] (J.
B. Say, “Lettres à M. Malthus,” Paris, 1820, pp. 168, 169.) 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 production 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... [because competition obliges
them (the producers) to sell their products for what they cost to make] But whence does the profit