Routledge Library Editions karl marx

substantial part of the workers’ wages, and similar disagreeable phenomena.

The relation of surplus-value and wages causes the capitalist mode of production to reproduce constantly not only the capital of the capitalist, but also the poverty of the worker. On the one hand there is the capitalist class owning all the foodstuffs, all the raw materials and all the means of production, and on the other hand there is the working class, the great mass of human beings, who are compelled to sell their labour-power to the capitalists in return for that quantity of food which in the best case is sufficient to maintain them in working condition and permit the production of a new generation of working proletarians. But capital does not merely reproduce itself, it increases its volume constantly, and Marx devotes the final part of his first volume to examining this “ Process of Accumulation ”.

Not only does surplus-value result from capital, but capital results from surplus-value. A part of the annually produced surplus-value which is distributed amongst the possessing classes is consumed by them as income, but another part is accumulated as capital. The unpaid labour which has been extracted from the workers now serves rv a means to extract still further unpaid labour from them. In the stream of production all the originally advanced capital becomes a vanishing quantity compared with the directly accumulated capital, that is to say, that surplus-value or surplus-product which is changed back into capital, whether it is still functioning in the hands of him who originally accumulated it or in the hands of another. The law of private property based on commodity production and commodity circulation transforms itself into its direct opposite, thanks to its own internal and inevitable dialectic. The laws of commodity production seem to justify a property right in individual labour. Commodity owners with equal rights face each other. The means to obtain the other commodity is only the sale of one’s own commodity, and one’s own commodity can be produced only by labour. Property, on the side of the capitalist, now appears as the right to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its produce, and on the side of the worker as the impossibility of appropriating his own product.

When the modern proletariat began to grasp the meaning of this, when the urban proletariat in Lyons sounded the tocsin and the rural proletariat in England laid fire to the houses of their oppressors, the vulgar political economists invented the “ abstinence theory ” according to which capital was accumulated by the “ voluntary abstinence ” of the capitalists, a theory which Marx scourged as mercilessly as Lassalle had done before




him. An instance of “ abstinence ” really contributing to the accumulation of capital is the compulsory “ abstinence ” of the workers, the brutal depression of wages below the value oflabour- power in order to turn the necessary consumption funds of the workers into the accumulation funds of the capitalists, at least in part. This is the real origin of all the lamentations about the “ luxurious ” life of the workers, the endless jeremiad about the grand pianos which some workers are alleged to have purchased at some time or the other, all the cheap and nasty cookery recipes of the Christian social reformers, and all the other related tricks and frauds used by the intellectual hod-carriers of capitalism.

The general law of capitalist accumulation is as follows : The growth of capital includes the growth of its variable section, or that part which is changed into labour-power. If the composition of capital remains unchanged, if a certain quantity of the means of production demands always the same quantity of labour-power to set it into motion, then obviously the demand for labour-power will grow in proportion with the growth of capital, as will also the subsistence funds of the workers ; the quicker capital grows the quicker they must grow also. As simple reproduction constantly reproduces the capital relation itself, so accumulation reproduces the capital relation on a larger scale : more capitalists or bigger capitalists on the one hand, and more wage-workers on the other. The accumulation of capital is therefore the increase of the proletariat also, and in the case supposed this increase takes place under the most favourable conditions for the workers. A larger part of their own increasing surplus-product, which increasingly changes into capital, returns to them in the form of means of payment so that they are able to increase their consumption and to equip themselves more generously with clothing, furniture, etc. However, their relation of dependency towards the capitalist does not change in any way, just as a slave does not cease to be a slave if he is well-fed and well-clothed. They must always provide a certain quantity of unpaid labour, and although this may diminish it can never do so to an extent seriously endangering the capitalist character of the process of production. If wages rise above this point then the profit incentive is blunted and the accumulation of capital slackens until wages sink again to a level corresponding to the needs of its utilization.

However, only when the accumulation of capital takes place without any change in the relation between its constant and variable components can the golden chain which the wageworker himself forges grow lighter and less irksome, but in reality the process of accumulation is accompanied by a great




revolution in what Marx calls the organic composition of capital. Constant capital grows at the expense of variable capital. The growing productivity of labour causes the mass of the means of production to increase more quickly than the mass of labour- power embodied in them. The demand for labour-power does not rise proportionately with the accumulation of capital, but sinks relatively. The same effect is produced in another form by the concentration of capital which takes place, quite apart from its accumulation, owing to the fact that the laws of capitalist competition lead to the swallowing up of the smaller capitalists by the larger ones. Whilst the supplementary capital formed in the process of accumulation demands fewer and fewer workers in comparison with its quantity, the old capital which is reproduced in a new composition disposes more and more of the workers formerly employed by it. In this way there develops a relative surplus mass of workers, relative that is to the needs of the utilization of capital, an industrial reserve army which is paid below the value of its labour-power in bad or middling business periods, which is employed irregularly and which at other times is dependent on public assistance, but which at all times serves to lower the resistance of the employed workers and to depress their wage standards.

This industrial reserve army is a necessary product of the process of accumulation, or of the development of wealth on a capitalist basis, and at the same time it develops into a lever of the capitalist mode of production. With accumulation and the accompanying development of the productivity of labour, capital’s power of sudden expansion also grows and demands large masses of workers who can be employed at a moment’s notice in new markets or in new branches of production without interrupting the work of production in other spheres. The characteristic course of modern industry, the form of a decennial cycle (broken only by minor vacillations) of periods of average activity, of production at high pressure, of crisis and stagnation is based on the continous formation, the greater or lesser absorption, and reconstitution of the industrial reserve army. The greater social wealth, the amount of capital at work, the extent and energy of its growth, and the greater therefore the absolute size of the working population and the productivity of its labour, the greater is relative over-population or the industrial reserve army. Its comparative size increases with the increase of wealth. The larger is the industrial reserve army in relation to the active industrial army, the larger are those sections of workers whose poverty is in inverse ratio to their labour torment. And finally, the larger is the Lazarus section of the working class and the larger




is the industrial reserve army, the greater are the numbers of those who are officially acknowledged paupers. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.

The historical tendency of capitalist accumulation develops from this law. Hand in hand with the accumulation and concentration of capital develops the co-operative form of the labour process on a steadily growing scale, the conscious technological application of science to production, the organized and joint cultivation of the land, the transformation of the means of production into forms usable onlyjointly, and the economizing of the means of production by their use asjoint means of production of combined social labour. With the steadily diminishing number of those capital magnates who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transformation, there is a corresponding increase in the volume of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation and exploitation, but at the same time also in the indignation of the working class, which steadily grows in size and is trained, united and organized by the mechanism of the capitalist process of production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter to the mode of production which has grown up with and under it. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labour reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist shell. The knell of capitalist private property sounds and the expropriators are expropriated.

Individual property based on individual labour is restored, but on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era, as the co-operation of free workers and as their common property in the land and the means of production produced by labour. Naturally, the transformation of capitalist property, which is already practically based on a social mode of production, into social property is by no means as wearisome and difficult as was the transformation of scattered property based on individual labour into capitalist property. In the one case it was the expropriation of the masses of the people by a few usurpers, and in the other case it will be the expropriation of a few usurpers by the masses of the people.

2. 
   The Second and Third Volumes
   

The fate of the second and third volumes of Capital was similar to that of the first. Marx hoped to be able to publish them soon after the appearance of the first, but in fact many years


passed and in the end he did not succeed in preparing them for print.

Ever new and deeper studies, lingering illness and finally death prevented him from completing the whole work, and it was Engels who prepared the second and third volumes from the unfinished manuscripts his friend left behind. The wealth of material which he found consisted of drafts, jottings and the brief notes made by a scientific student for his own eyes alone, with here and there long and connected passages. Al in aU it represented the results of tremendous intellectual labours extending, with considerable interruptions, from 1861 to 1878.

In these circumstances we must not look to the last two volumes of Capital to provide us with a final and completed solution of all economic problems. In some cases these problems are merely formulated, together with an indication here and there as to the direction in which one must work to arrive at a solution. In accordance with Marx’s whole attitude, his Capital is not a Bible containing final and unalterable truths, but rather an inexhaustible source of stimulation for further study, further scientific investigations and further struggles for truth.

The same circumstances also explain why the second and third volumes are not so perfected in their form as the first volume, why they do not sparkle with quite the same intellectual brilliance. However, they give even greater pleasure to some readers just because they present sheer intellectual problems without bothering greatly about the form. The contents of the two volumes represent an essential supplement to and development of the first volume, and they are indispensable for an understanding of the Marxian system as a whole. Unfortunately they have not been treated in any popularization up to the present and they are therefore still unknown to the broad masses of even the enlightened workers.

In the first volume Marx deals with the cardinal question of political economy : what is the origin of wealth? What is the source of profit? Before his investigations this question was answered in two different ways.

The “ scientific ” defenders of the best of all worlds in which we live, some of them men like Schulze-Delitzsch, who enjoyed respect and confidence even amongst the workers, explained capitalist wealth by a series of more or less plausible vindications and cunning manipulations : as the result of a systematic addition to the prices of commodities in order to “ compensate ” the employer for his generosity in “ giving ” his capital for productive purposes, as compensation for the “ risk ” every employer runs, as a reward for the “ intellectual management ” of business, and so on




in the same strain. These explanations have all one common aim, that of presenting the wealth of the one and therefore the poverty of the other as something “ just " and in consequence unalterable.

On the other hand, the critics of bourgeois society, that is to say, all the socialist schools of thought which existed prior to Marx, declared capitalist wealth to be simply the result of swindling, theft from the workers made possible by the intervention of money or by deficiencies in the organization of the process of production. Proceeding from this standpoint, these socialists developed various utopian plans for abolishing exploitation by doing away with money, by “ the organization of labour”, and similar plans.

The real source of capitalist wealth was revealed for the first time in the first volume of Capital, which wasted no time either in finding justifications for the capitalists or in reproaching them with their injustice. Marx showed for the first time how profit originated and how it flowed into the pockets of the capitalists. He did so on the basis of two decisive economic facts : first, that the mass of the workers consists of proletarians who are compelled to sell their labour-power as a commodity in order to exist, and secondly that this commodity labour-power possesses such a high degree of productivity in our own day that it is able to produce in a certain time a much greater product than is necessary for its own maintenance in that time. These two purely economic facts, representing the result of objective historical development, cause the fruit of the labour-power of the proletarian to fall automatically into the lap of the capitalist, and to accumulate, with the continuance of the wage system, into evergrowing masses of capital.

Thus capitalist wealth is explained not as any compensation to the capitalists for imaginary sacrifices or benefits granted, or as the result of cheating or theft in the generally accepted sense of the words, but as an exchange between capitalist and worker, as a transaction of unimpeachable legal equity proceeding exactly according to those laws which govern the sale and purchase of all other commodities. In order to explain thoroughly this unobjectionable transaction which gives the capitalist the golden fruits of labour, Marx had to develop the law of value discovered by the great English classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, i.e., the explanation of the inner laws of commodity exchange, to its logical conclusion and apply it to the commodity labour-power. The first volume deals chiefly with the law of value, and, resulting from it, wages and surplus- value, i.e. the explanation of how the product of wage-labour




divides itself naturally and without any violence or cheating into a pittance for the wage-worker and effortless wealth for the capitalist. And here lies the great historical significance of the first volume of Capital. It demonstrated that exploitation can be abolished only by abolishing the sale of labour-power, that is by abolishing the wage system.

In the first volume we are all the time at the point of production, in a factory, in a mine or in a modern agricultural undertaking, and what is said applies equally to all capitalist undertakings. We are given an individual example as the type of the whole capitalist mode of production. When we close the volume we are thoroughly acquainted with the daily creation of profit and with the whole mechanism of exploitation in all its details. Before us lie piles of commodities of all sorts still damp with the sweat of the workers as they come from the factories, and in all of them we can clearly discern that part of their value which results from the unpaid labour of the workers and which belongs just as equitably to the capitalist as the whole commodity. The root of capitalist exploitation is la.id bare before our eyes.

However, at this stage the capitalist has his harvest by no means safely in the barn. The fruit of exploitation is present, but it is still in a form unsuitable for appropriation. So long as the fruit of exploitation takes the form of piled-up commodities the capitalist can derive but little pleasure from the process. He is not the slave-owner of the classical Grceco-Roman world, or the feudal lord of the Middle Ages, who ground the faces of the working people merely to satisfy their own craving for luxury and to maintain an imposing retinue. In order to maintain himself and his family “ in a manner befitting his social station ” the capitalist must have his riches in hard cash, and this is also necessary if he is to increase his capital ceaselessly. To this end therefore he must sell the commodities produced by the wageworkers together with the surplus-value contained in them. The commodities must leave the factory and the warehouse and be thrown on to the market. The capitalist follows his commodities from his warehouse and from his office into the stock exchange and into the shops, and in the second volume of Capital we follow the capitalist.

The second stage in the life of the capitalist is spent in the sphere of commodity exchange, and here he meets with a number of difficulties. In his own factory the capitalist is undisputed master, and strict organization and discipline prevail there, but on the commodity market complete anarchy prevails under the name of free competition. On the commodity market no




one bothers about his neighbour and no one bothers about the whole, but for all that it is precisely here that the capitalist feels his dependence on the others and on society as a whole.

The capitalist must keep abreast of his competitors. Should he take more time than absolutely necessary in selling his commodities, should he fail to provide himself with sufficient money to purchase raw materials and all the other things he needs at the right moment in order to prevent his factory coming to a standstill for 1ack of supplies, should he fail to invest promptly and profitably the money he receives for the sale of his commodities, he is bound to fall behind in one way or the other. The devil takes the hindmost, and the individual capitalist who fails to ensure that his business is managed as effectively in the constant exchange between the factory and the commodity market as it is in the factory itself will not succeed in obtaining the normal rate of profit no matter how zealously he may exploit his workers. A part of his “ well-earned” profit will be lost somewhere on the way and will not find its way into his pocket.

However, this alone is not enough. The capitalist can accumulate riches only if he produces commodities, i.e. articles for use. Further, he must produce precisely those kinds and sorts of commodities which society needs, and he must produce them in just the quantities required, otherwise his commodities will remain unsold and the surplus-value contained in them will be lost. How can the individual capitalist control all these factors? There is no one to tell him what commodities society needs and how many of them it needs, for the simple reason that no one knows. We are living in a planless, anarchic society, and each individual capitalist is in the same position. Nevertheless, out of this chaos, out of this confusion, a" whole must result which will permit the individual business of the capitalist to prosper and at the same time satisfy the needs of society and permit its continued existence as a social organism.

To be more exact, out of the anarchic confusion of the commodity market must develop the possibility of the ceaseless circular movement of individual capital, the possibility of producing, selling, purchasing raw materials, etc., and producing again, whereby capital constantly changes from its money form into its commodity form and back again. These stages must dovetail accurately: money must be in reserve to utilize every favourable market opportunity for the purchase of raw materials, etc., and to meet the current expenses of production, and the money which comes flowing back as the commodities are sold must be given an opportunity of immediate utilization again. The individual capitalists, who are apparently quite