Karl Marx

“ Long before the cloth is sold, perhaps long before it is fully woven, the weaver has received his wages. The capitalist, then, does not pay his wages out of the money which he will obtain from the cloth, but out of money already on hand. Just as little as loom and yarn are the product of the weaver to whom they are supplied by the employer, just so little are the commodities which he receives in exchange for his commodity—labor-power— his product. ”

“ The worshipful capitalists will not find their fresh supply of exploitable flesh and blood running short and will let the dead bury their dead. This is indeed a consolation with which the bourgeois comfort themselves rather than the laborers. If the whole class of wage-laborers were annihilated by the machines, how shocking that would be for capital, which, without wage-labor, ceases to act as capital at all. ”

“ For, if labor is the measure of all values, we can express the “value of labor” but in terms of labor. Needless to say, that we know absolutely nothing about the value of one hour’s labor, if we know only that it equals one hour’s labor. We have not come a hair’s breath nearer the solution of the problem, we are merely turning hopelessly in a vicious circle.
Classical Political Economy thus had to attempt another method to solve the problem. It asserted the value of a commodity equals its cost of production. Now then, what is the cost of production of labor? ”

“ The one dollar has therefore been consumed in a double manner—reproductively for the capitalist, for it has been exchanged for labor-power, which brought forth two dollars; unproductively for the worker, for it has been exchanged for means of subsistence which are lost for- ever, and whose value he can obtain again only by repeating the same exchange with the farmer. Capital therefore presupposes wage-labor; wage-labor presupposes capital. They condition each other; each brings the other into existence. ”

“ He does not count the labor itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity that he has auctioned off to another. The product of his activity, therefore, is not the aim of his activity. What he produces for himself is not the silk that he weaves, not the gold that he draws up the mining shaft, not the palace that he builds. What he produces for himself is the wages, and silk, gold, and palace are resolved for him into a certain quantity of necessaries of life, perhaps into a cotton jacket, into copper coins, and into a basement dwelling. ”

“ While competition, therefore, constantly pursues him with its law of the cost of production and turns against himself every weapon that he forges against his rivals, the capitalist continually seeks to get the best of competition by restlessly introducing further subdivision of labor and new machines, which, though more expensive, enable him to produce more cheaply, instead of waiting until the new machines shall have been rendered obsolete by competition. ”

“ To him, free trade is the normal condition of modern capitalist production. Only under free trade can the immense productive powers of steam, of electricity, of machinery, be fully developed; and the quicker the pace of this development, the sooner and the more fully will be realized its inevitable results; society splits up into two classes, capitalists here, wage-laborers there; hereditary wealth on one side, hereditary poverty on the other; supply outstripping demand, the markets being unable to absorb the ever growing mass of the productions of industry ”

“ If we now conceive this feverish agitation as it operates in the market of the whole world, we shall be in a position to comprehend how the growth, accumulation, and concentration of capital bring in their train an evermore detailed subdivision of labor, an ever greater improvement of old machines, and a constant application of new machines—a process which goes on uninterruptedly, with feverish haste, and upon an evermore gigantic scale. ”

“ But as soon as I consume means of subsistence, they are irrevocably lost to me, unless I employ the time during which these means sustain my life in producing new means of subsistence, in creating by my labor new values in place of the values lost in consumption. But it is just this noble reproductive power that the laborer surrenders to the capitalist in exchange for means of subsistence received. ”

“ The larger the army of workers among whom the labor is subdivided, the more gigantic the scale upon which machinery is introduced, the more in proportion does the cost of production decrease, the more fruitful is the labor. And so there arises among the capitalists a universal rivalry for the increase of the division of labor and of machinery and for their exploitation upon the greatest possible scale. ”

“ But what is growth of productive capital? Growth of the power of accumulated labor over living labor; growth of the rule of the bourgeoisie over the working class. When wage-labor produces the alien wealth dominating it, the power hostile to it, capital, there flow back to it its means of employment, i.e., its means of subsistence, under the condition that it again become a part of capital, that it become again the lever whereby capital is to be forced into an accelerated expansive movement. ”

“ In the present state of production, human labor-power not only produces in a day a greater value than it itself possesses and costs; but with each new scientific discovery, with each new technical invention, there also rises the surplus of its daily production over its daily cost, while as a consequence there diminishes that part of the working day in which the laborer produces the equivalent of his day’s wages, and, on the other hand, lengthens that part of the working day in which he must present labor gratis to the capitalist. ”

“ From this point of view, forty years ago, Marx pronounced, in principle, in favor of free trade as the more progressive plan, and, therefore, the plan which would soonest bring capitalist society to that deadlock. But if Marx declared in favor of free trade on that ground, is that not a reason for every supporter of the present order of society to declare against free trade? If free trade is stated to be revolutionary, must not all good citizens vote for protection as a conservative plan? ”

“ The special skill of the laborer becomes worthless. It is changed into a monotonous and uniform power of production, which gives play neither to bodily nor to intellectual elasticity. His labor becomes accessible to everybody. Competitors, therefore, crowd around him from all sides; and besides, we must remember that the more simple and easily learnt the labor is, and the less it costs a man to make himself master of it, so much the lower must its wages sink, since they are determined, like the price of every other commodity, by its coat of production. ”

“ Now, if by means of a greater subdivision of labor, by the employment and improvement of new machines, or by the more skillful and profitable use of the forces of nature, a capitalist has discovered the means of producing a larger amount of commodities than his competitors with the same amount of labor, whether it be stored-up labor or direct—if he can, for instance, spin a complete yard of cotton in the time which it takes his competitors to spin half a yard—how will this capitalist proceed to act? ”

“ But this continuously accelerated rash of inventions and discoveries, this unprecedented daily growth of the productivity of human labor, will in the long run cause a conflict, by which our present capitalist economy must perish. On the one side unfathomable wealth and a superabundance of products which the purchasers cannot find use for. On the other side, the great mass of society, proletarized, turned into wage-workers, and thereby made unable to acquire that superabundance of products. ”

“ Well, then, if America must become a manufacturing country, and if she has every chance of not only succeeding, but even outstripping her rivals, there are two ways open to her: either to carry on, for, let us say, fifty years, under free trade an extremely expensive competitive war against English manufacturers that have got nearly a hundred years' start; or else to shut out, by protective duties, English manufacturers for, say, twenty-five years, with the almost absolute certainty that at the end of the twenty-five years she will be able to hold her own in the open market of the world. ”

“ To say that “the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital,” means only this: that the more speedily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him, the greater will be the number of workers that can be called into existence, the more can the mass of slaves dependent upon capital be increased. ”

“ The laborer leaves the employer to whom he has hired himself when ever he pleases; and the employer discharges him whenever he thinks fits; either as soon as he ceases to make a profit out of him or fails to get as high a profit as he requires. But the laborer, whose only source of earning is the sale of his labor-power cannot leave the whole class of its purchasers, that is the capitalist class, without renouncing his own existence, He does not belong to this or that particular employer, but he does belong to the capitalist class ”

“ Not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capital to crush the worker.
Why should you desire farther to sanction unlimited competition with this idea of freedom, when the idea of freedom itself is only the product of a social condition based upon free competition? ”

“ Economists always take the price of labor at the moment of its exchange with other commodities, and altogether ignore the moment at which labor accomplishes its own exchange with capital. When it costs less to set in motion the machinery which produces commodities, then the things necessary for the maintenance of this machine, called workman, will also cost less. If all commodities are cheaper, labor, which is a commodity too, will also fall in price, and we shall see later that this commodity, labor, will fall far lower in proportion than all other commodities. ”

“ This is the law which continually drives bourgeois production out of its old track, and compels capital to intensify the productive powers of labor for the very reason that it has already intensified them—the law that allows it no rest, but for ever whispers in its ear the words “Quick march!” ”

“ The exchange value of a commodity estimated in money is called its price. Wages therefore are only a special name for the price of labor-power, and are usually called the price of work; it is the special name for the price of this peculiar commodity, which has no other repository than human flesh and blood.
Let us take any worker, for example, a weaver. The capitalist supplies him with the loom and the yarn. The weaver applies himself to work, and the yarn is turned into cloth. The capitalist takes possession of the cloth and sells it for twenty dollars, for example. ”

“ And this is the economic constitution of our entire modern society: the working class alone produces all values. For value is only another expression for labor, that expression, namely, by which is designated, in our capitalist society of to-day, the amount of socially necessary labor embodied in a particular commodity. But these values produced by the workers do not belong to the workers. They belong to the owners of the raw materials, machines, tools, and money, which enable them to buy the labor-power of the working class. ”

“ What is it that takes place in the exchange between capital and wage-labor?
The laborer receives in exchange for his labor-power the means of subsistence; but the capitalist receives in exchange for the means of subsistence—labor, the productive energy of the laborer, the creative force whereby the laborer not only replaces what he consumes, but also gives to the stored-up labor a greater value than it had before. The laborer receives from the capitalist a share of the previously-provided means of subsistence. ”