438
Chapter 25
reaction sets in: a smaller part of revenue is capitalised, accumulation 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 economists into
pretended law of Nature, in reality merely states that the very nature of accumulation excludes
every diminution 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 his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the
products of his own hand.
10
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.
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.”
11
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 products. The mass of the means of production which he thus
transforms, increases with the productiveness of his labour. But those means of production play a
double part. The increase of some is a consequence, that of the others a condition of the
increasing productivity of labour. E.g., with the division of labour in manufacture, and with the
use of machinery, more raw material is worked up in the same time, and, therefore, 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 concentrated 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 incorporated with them, is an expression of the growing
productiveness of labour. The increase of the latter appears, therefore, in the diminution of the
mass of labour in proportion to the mass of means of production moved by it, or in the diminution
of the subjective factor of the labour process as compared with the objective factor.
439
Chapter 25
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 in 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 economic epochs or different nations in the same epoch. The relative
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 capital) is in inverse proportion to the advance of
accumulation.
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 today in spinning is 7/8 constant and
1/8 variable, whilst at the beginning of the 18th century it was ½ constant and ½ variable, on the
other hand, the mass of raw material, instruments of labour, &c., that a certain quantity of
spinning labour consumes productively today, 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 where as 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 division and combination
of labour can be organised, and the means 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 independent 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