CHAPTER XII.

The Accumulation of Capital.
(A) The uninterrupted continuation of Production (Reproduction).
detracted from vol. II, ch. 2'J.)
_A_society can no more cease to produce than it can cease to consume. No society can continually produce, unless it constantly reconverts a part of its products into means of production. All other circumstances remaining the same, the only mode by which it can reproduce its wealth, and maintain it at one level, is by replacing the means of pro- duction — ' /. e. the instruments of labour, the raw material, and the auxiliary substances — consumed in the course of the year by an equal quantity of the same kind of articles; these must be separated from the mass of the yearly pro- ducts, and thrown afresh into the process of production, and must be applicable for this purpose.
In a capitalist society all means of production serve as capital, for they all enable their proprietor to reap sur- plus-value by employing wage-labour. As a matter of fact the capitalist does not intend reaping surplus-value only once, but continually, from the capital advanced by him.
If such surplus-value were to be completely consumed every year by the capitalist, there would be a simple repetition of production, i. e. simple reproduction. But even this simple continued repetition gives a new character to the process.
The purchase of labour power for a fixed period is the prelude to the process of production. But the labourer is not paid until after he has expended his labour, power, and realised in commodities not only its value, but surplus-value. He has, therefore, produced not only surplus-value, but he has also produced, before it flows back to him in the shape of wages, the fund out of which he himself is paid; and his employment lasts only so long as he continues to reproduce :iul. Hence, wages are but a portion of the product
9
122 v
that is continuously reproduced by the labourer himself. The capitalist, it is true, pays him in money, but this money is merely the transmuted form of the product of his labour. ~Tt is his labour iiis
labour power this week or this year. The illusion begotten by the intervention of money vanishes immediately, if, in- stead of taking a single capitalist and a single labourer, we take the class of capitalists and the class of labourers as a whole. The capitalist class is constantly giving to the labouring class order-notes, -in the form of money, on a por- tion of the commodities produced by the latter and appro- priated by the former. The labourers give these order-notes back just as constantly to the capitalist class, and in this way get their share of their own product. The transaction is veiled by the commodity form of the product and the money form of the commodity.
True, the illusion that wages are advanced out of the capitalist's funds only disappears when we view the process of capitalist production in the flow of its constant renewal. But that process must have had a beginning of some kind. We assume, therefore, for the present, that the capitalist, once upon a time, ! independently
of the unpaid lab
he was enabled to tfer. Hov. be,
the mere continuity of the process, the simple reproduction, brings about some other wonderful changes, which affect not only the variable, but the total capital.
If a capital of £ 1000 beget yearly a surplus-vahu
DO, and if this surplus-value be consumed every year, it is clear that at the end of 5 years the surplus-value con- sumed will amount to 5 X £ 200 or Hie £ 1000 originally advanced. If only a part, say one half, were consumed, the same result would follow at the tnd of lit years, since
100 — £ 100(1. CieniM-al rule: at the end oi certain number of years, according to the amount of thu capital advanced and of the surplus-value consumed, the capital originally advanced has been consumed by the capi- talist and has disappeared. The capitalist thinks that he is consuming the produce of the unpaid labour oi the surplus-value, and is keeping intact his original capital; but what he thinks cannot alter facts. After the lap^e
i certain number of years, the capital value he then
THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL. J23
possesses is equal to the sum total of the surplus-value appropriated by him during those, years, and the total value he has consumed is equal to that of his original capital. It is true, he has in hand a capital whose amount has not changed, and of which a part, viz., the buildings, machinery, &c., were already there when the work of his business began. But what we have to do with here, is not the material ele- ments, but the value, of that capital. When a person gets through all his property, by taking upon himself debts equal to the value of that property, it is clear that his property represents nothing but the sum total of his debts. And so it is with the capitalist; when he has consumed the equi- valent of his original capital, the value of his present capital represents nothing but the total amount of the surplus-value appropriated by him without payment. Not a single atom of the value of his old capital continues to exist.
The mere continuity of the process of production, in other words simple reproduction, thus sooner or later, and of necessity, converts every capital into capitalised surplus- value. Even if that capital was originally acquired by the personal labour of its employer, it sooner or later becomes value appropriated without an equivalent — the un- paid labour of others materialised either in money or in some other object.
In order to convert his money into capital, for the purpose of exploiting the labour of others, the capitalist had_originally to confront, on the labour market, the labourer lacking all means, of production and subsistence. Tin the real foundation in fact, and the starting point, of capi- talist pro^uc!T6n7" But, by the mere continuity of the pro- cess, TjyTsinipIe" reproduction, these conditions are perpe- tually reproduced. On the one hand, the process of produc- tion incessantly converts material wealth into capital, into means of creating more wealth and means of enjoyment for the capitalist. On the other hand the labourer, on quitting the process, is what he was on entering it, a source of wealth, but devoid of all means of making that wealth his own. Since, before entering on the process, his own labour has already been alienated from himself by the sale of his labour-power, has been appropriated by the capitalist and incorporated with capital, the product also belongs to the capitalist. This incessant reproduction, this perpetuation of
124
the proletarian labourer, is an indispensable condition of reduction.
Tlu consumes in a twofold way. While
during he consumes by his labour the means of production, and converts them into products with a higher value than that of the capital advanced. This is Ins productive con- sumption. It is at the same time consumption of his labour power by the capitalist who bought it. On the other hand, the labourer turns the money paid to him for his ! power, into means of subsistence: this is his individual con- sumption. The labourer's productive consumption, and his individual consumption, are therefore to net. In the
r, ne acts as" the motive power of capital, and be- longs to the capitalist. In the latter, he belongs to him- self, and performs his necessary vital functions outside the process of production. The result of the one is, that the lives; of the other, that the labourer I
True, the labourer is often compelled to make his indi- vidual consumption a mere incident of production. In such a case, he supplies himself with necessaries in order to maintain his labour power, just as coal and water art- supplied to the steam engine and oil to the wheel. This, however, appears to be an abuse not essentially appertaining to capitalist production.
The matter takes quite another aspect, when we con- template, not the single capitalist, and the singb labourer, but the capitalist class and the labouring class, not an iso- lated process of production, but capitalist production in its totality, and on its actual social scale, part of his capital into labour power, tin.
lliL- value of his entire capital. Me kills two birds with one stone. Me profits, not only by v. from, but by what he gives to, 1i
given in * 'or labour verted into ne-
. ies, by the consumption of which the must
oi existing labourers are reproduced, and new labourers are i Within the limits of what is
strictly necessary, the individual consumption of the work- lass is, therefore, the reconversion of the means of subsistence given by capital in exchange for labour power, into fresh labour power at the disposal ot capital for ex- ploitation. It is the production and reproduction of that
Illl. ACCUMULATION or LAI'U AL. J25
means of production so indispensable to the capitalist: the labourer himself. The individual consumption of the la- bourer, whether it proceed within the workshop or out- side it, whether it be part of the process of production or not, forms therefore a factor of the production and repro- duction of capital; just as cleaning machinery does, whether it be done while the machinery is working or while it is standing. The fact that the labourer consumes his means of subsistence for his own purposes, and not to please the capitalist, has no bearing on the matter. The consumption of food by a beast of burden is none the less a necessary factor in the process of production, because the beast enjoys what it, eats. The maintenance and reproduction of the work- ing-class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to 'the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may .safely leave its fulfilment to the labourer's instincts of self preser- vation and of propagation. All the capitalist rares for, is to reduce the labourer's individual consumption as far as possible to what is strictly necessary, and he is far away from imitating those brutal South-Americans, who force their labourers to take more substantial food.1
Hence both the capitalist and his ideological represen- tative, the political economist, consider that part alone of the labourer's individual consumption to be productive, which is requisite for the perpetuation of the class, and which there- fore must take place in order that the capitalist may have labour-power to consume; what the labourer consumes for his own pleasure beyond that part, is unproductive con- sumption.-
From a social point of view, therefore, the working- class, even when not directly engaged in the labour-process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary ins- truments of labour. Even its individual consumption is, within certain limits, a mere factor in the process of the re-
1 'The labourers in the mines of S. America, whose daily task (the heaviest perhaps in the world) consists in bringing to the surface on their shoulders a load of metal weighing from 180 to 200 pounds, from a depth of 45U feet, live on bread and beans only; they themselves would prefer the bread alone for food, but their masters, who have found out that the men cannot work so hard on bread, treat them like horses, and compel them to eat beans; beans, however, are relatively much richer in bone- earth (phosphate of lime) than is bread > (Liebig, Chemistry in its application to Agriculture and Physiology, 7th German ed., 1862, vol. I, p. 194, note.)
- James Mill. Elements of Political tlcorwniv, French translation by Parissot. Paris, 1823, p. 238, sqq.
126 CHAPTER XII.
pcoduciioiL^pJL capital. That, process, however, takes good care to prevent these self-conscious instruments from leav- ing it in the lurch, for it constantly transforms their pro- duct, as fast as it is made, into the property of capital. Indi- vidual consumption provides, on the one hand, the means for their maintenance and reproduction: on the other hand, it secures by the annihilation of the necessaries of life the continued reappearance of the workman in the labour-market. The Roman slave was held by fetters: the wage-labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant change of employers, and by the fictio juris of a contract.
In former times, capital resorted to legislation, when- ever necessary, to enforce its proprietary rights over the free labourer. For instance, down to 1815, the emigration of mechanics employed in machine making was, in England, forbidden, under heavy pains and penalties.
The reproduction of the working class carries with it the transmission and accumulation of skill, that is handed down from one generation to another. To what extent the capitalist reckons the existence of such a skilled class among the factors of production that belong to him by right, is seen so soon as a crisis threatens him with its loss. In consequence of the civil war in the United States and of the accompanying cotton famine, the majority of the cotton operatives in Lanceshire were, as is well known, thrown out of work. Both from the working-class itself, and from other ranks of society, there arose a cry for State aid, or for voluntary subscriptions, in order to enable the «super- fluous» hands to emigrate to the colonies or to the United States. Thereupon, the Times rublished on the 24th March, 1863, a letter from Edmund Potter, a former president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. This letter was rightly called, in the House of Commons, the manufactu- rers' manifesto. We cull here a few characteristic passages, in which the proprietary rights of capital over labour-power are unblu shingly asserted.
«He» (the man out of work) «may be told the supply of cotton-workers is too large .... and .... must .... in fact be reduced by a third, perhaps, and that then there will be a healthy demand for the remaining two-thirds .... Public opinion .... urges emigration .... The master
THE ACCUMULATION Of CAPI'lAi.. 127
(/. e. the cotton manufacturer) cannot willingly see his la- bour supply being removed; he may think, and perhaps justly, that it is both wrong and unsound . . . . But if the public funds are to be devoted to assist emigration, he has a right to be heard, and perhaps to protest*. Mr. Potter then shows how useful the cotton trade is, how the «trade has undoubtedly drawn the surplus-population from Ireland and from the agricultural districts*, how immense is its extent, how in the year 1860 it yielded 5/13 ths of the total English exports, how, after a few years, it will again expand by the extension of the market, particularly of the Indian market, and by calling forth a plentiful supply of cotton at 6d. per Ib. He then continues: «Time . . . , one, two, or three years, it may be, will produce the quantity .... The question I would put then is this: Is the trade worth re- taining? Is it worth while to keep the machinery (he means the living labour machines) in order, and is it not the great- est folly to think of parting with that? I think it is. I allow that the workers are not a property, not the pro- perty of Lancashire and the masters; but they are the strength of both; they are the mental and trained power which cannot be replaced for a generation; the mere ma- chinery which they work might much of it be beneficially replaced, nay improved, in a twelvemonth.1 Encourage or ailow (!) the working-power to emigrate, and what of the capitalist? .... Take away the cream of the workers, and fixed capital will depreciate in a great degree, and the float- ing will not subject itself to a struggle with the short supply of inferior labour .... We are told the workers wish it (emigration). Very natural it is that they should do so .... Reduce, compress the cotton trade by taking away its working power and reducing their wages expen- diture, say one-fifth, or five millions, and what then would
i It will not be forgotten that this same capital sings quite another song, under ordinary circumstances, when there is a question of reducing wages. Then the masters exclaim with one voice: «The factory operative should keep in wholesome remembrance the fact that theirs is really a low species cf skilled labour; and that there is none which is more easily acquired, or of its quality more amply remunerated, or which, by a short training of the least expert, can be more quickly, as well as abundantly, acquired .... The master's machinery^ (which we now learn can be replaced with advantage in 12 months) «really plays a far more important part in the business of production than the labour and skill ot the operatives (who cannot now be replaced under 30 years), months' education can 'teach, and a common labourer can learn>. (See ante, p. 101.)
128 i/'//- A' \/i.
happen to the class above, the small shopkeepers; and what of the rents, the cottage rents .... Trace out the effects upward to the small fanner, the better householder, and . . . the landowner, and say if there could be any suggestion more suicidal to all classes of the country than by enfee- bling a nation by exporting the best of its manufacturing population, and destroying the value of some of its most productive capital and enrichment .... Can anything be worse for landowners or masters than parting with the t the workers, and demoralising and disappointing the rest by an extended depletive emigration, a depletion of ca- pital and value in an entire proviu
Potter, the chosen mouthpiece of the manufacturers, distinguishes two sorts of «machinery», each of which be- longs to the capitalist, and of which one stands in his fac- tory, the other at night-time and on Sundays is housed out- side the factory, in cottages. The one is inanimate, the other living. The inanimate machinery not only wears out and depreciates from day to day, but a great part of it becomes so quickly super-annuated, by constant technical progress, that it can be replaced with advantage by new machinery after a few months. The living machinery, on the contrary, gets better the longer it lasts, and in propor- tion as the skill, handed from one generation to another, accumulates. The Times answered the cotton lord as follows: lr. Edmund Potter is so impressed with the excep- tional and supreme importance of the cotton masters that, in order to preserve this class and perpetuate their profes- sion, he would keep half a million of the labouring class confined in a great moral workhouse against their will. ,Is the trade worth retaining?' asks Mr. Potter. Certainly by all honest means it is, we answer, ,1s it worth white keeping the machinery in order?' again asks Mr. Potter. Mere we hesitate. By the ,machinerv' Mr. PolUT means the human machinery, for he goes on to protest that he does not mean to use them as an absolute property. We must confess that we do not think it «worth while*, or even possible, 10 keep the human machinery in order that is to shut'il up and keep it oiled till it is wanted. Human machinery will nisi under '"action, oil and rub it as you r; !he human machinery will, as we have up of j t ^ own accord and
IIIL ACCUMULATION <>/ CAPITAL. 129
or run amuck in our great towns. It might, as Mr. Potter says, require some time to reproduce the workers, but, having machinists and capitalists at hand, we could always find thrifty, hard, industrious men wherewith to improvise more master manufacturers than we can ever want. Mr. Potter talks of the trade reviving «in one, two, or three years», and he asks us not «to encourage or allow (!) the working power to emigrate*. He says that it is very natural th^ workers should wish to emigrate; but he thinks that in spite of their desire, the nation ought to keep this half million of workers, with their 700 GOO dependents, shut up in the cot- ton districts; and as a necessary consequence, he must of course think that the nation ought to keep down their dis- content by force, and sustain them by alms and upon the chance that the cotton masters may some day want them . . . The time is come when the great public opinion of these islands must operate to save this «working power» from those who would deal with it as they would deal with iron, and coal, and cotton.»
The Times article was only a jeu d'esprif. The «great public opinion», was in fact of Mr. Potter's opinion, that the factory operatives are part of the movable fittings of a factory. Their emigration was prevented.1 They were locked up in that «moral workhouse», the cotton districts, and they form, as before the «strength» of the cotton manu- facturers of Lancashire.
Capitalist production, therefore, of itself reproduces the separation between labour power and the means of labour. 1. 1 hereby reproduces and perpetuates the condition for ex- ploiting the labourer. It incessantly forces him to sell his labour power in order to live, and enables the capitalist to purchase labour power in order that he may enrich him- self. It is no longer a mere accident, that capitalist and labourer confront each other .in the market as buyer and seller. It is the process itself that incessantly hurls back the labourer on to the market as a vendor of his labour
1 Parliament did not vote a single farthing in aid of emigration, but simply passed some Acts empowering the municipal corporations to keep the operatives in a half-starved state, i. e., to exploit them at less than the normal wages. On the other hand, when 3 years later, the cattle disease broke out, Parliament broke wildly through its usages and voted, straight off, millions for indemnifying 'the millionaire landlords, whose farmers in any event came off without loss, owing to tfie rise in the price of meat.
130
power, and thai incessantly converts his own product into a means by which another man can purchase him.
Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a continuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus-value, but i; also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation: on the one side tin- -rer.
(B) Increase of Capital by means of Surplus- Value. Capitalist Property.
(Extracted from vol. II, ch. 24, section 1.)
Hitherto we have investigated how surplus-value ema- nates from capital; we have now to see how capital arises from surplus-value. Employing surplus-value as capital, reconver- ting it into capital, is called accumulation of capital.
First let us consider this transaction from the stand- point of the individual capitalist. Suppose a spinner to li;: advanced a capital of £ 10 COO, of which four-fifths (£ 8000) are laid out in cotton, machinery, &c., and one-fifth (£ 2000) in wages. Let him produce 240000 Ibs. of yarn annually, having a value of £ 12 COO. The rate of surplus-value being 100 %, the surplus-value lies in the surplus or net product of 40000 Ibs. of yam, one sixth of the gross product, with a value of £ 2000 which will be realised by a sale. £ 2COO is £ 2000. We can neither see nor smell in this sum of money a trace of surplus-value. When we know thru given value is surplus-value, we know how its owner ca. by it; but that does not alter the nature either of value or of money.
In order to convert this additional sum 01 into
capital, the master spinner will, all circumstances remain i as before, advance four-fifths of it (£ 1COO) in the purchase of cotton, &c. and one-fifth (£ 4CO) in the purchase of ad- ditional spinners, who will find in the market the necessaries of life whose value the master has advanced to them. Then the new capital of £ 2000 functions in the spinning mill, and brings in, in its tun ins-value of £ 400.
THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL,
The capital-value was originally advanced in money form. If the 200000 Ibs. of yarn, in which it is invested, be sold, the capital-value regains its original form. The surplus-value, on the contrary, is from the beginning the value of a definite portion of .the gross product. Through the sale, therefore, the original form of the surplus-value is altered. From this moment the capital-value and the surplus-value are both of them sums of money, and their reconversion into capital takes place in precisely the same way. The one, as well as the other, is laid out by the ca- pitalist in the purchase of commodities that place him in a position to begin afresh the fabrication of his goods^ and this time, on an extended scale. But in order to be able to buy those commodities, he must find them ready in the market.
Commodities, which are to be bought on the market, must be produced beforehand. The transactions in the mar- ket effectuate only the interchange of the individual com- ponents of the annual product, transfer them from one hand to another, but can neither augment the total annual pro- duction, nor alter the nature of the objects produced.
The annual production must in the first place furnish all those objects (use-values) from which the material com- ponents of capital, used up in the course of the year, h,ave to be replaced. Deducting these there remains the net or surplus-product, in which the surplus-value lies. And of what does this surplus-product consist? Perhaps of things destined to satisfy the wants and desires of the capitalist class? Were that the case, the cup of surplus-value would be drained to the very dregs.
We cannot, except by a miracle, convert into capital any thing but such articles as can be employed in the labour- process (L e., means of production), and such further ar- ticles as are suitable for the sustenance of the labourer, (/. e., means of subsistence). Consequently, a part of the annual surplus-labour must have been applied to the pro- duction of additional means of production and subsistence, over and above the quantity of these things required to re- place the capital advanced. In other words, surplus-value is convertible into capital solely because the surplus-product, whose value it is, already comprises the material elements of new capital.
132 1 /'//:' A' XII.
Now in order to allow of these elements actually func- tioning as capital, the capitalist class requires additional labour. If the exploitation of the labourers already em- ployed do not increase, either extensively or intensively, then additional labour-power must be found. For this the me- chanism of capitalist production provides beforehand, since the wages suffice, not only for the maintenance, but for the increase of the working class. It is only necessary for capital to incorporate this additional labour-power, annually supplied by the working class in the shape of labourers of all ages, with the surplus means of production comprised in the annual produce, and the conversion of surplus-value into capital is complete.
Let us now return to . our illustration. 1 1 is the old story: Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, and so on. The orginal capital of £ 10 COO brings in a surplus-value of £ 2000, which is capitalised. The new capital of i brings in a surplus-value of £ 4CO, and this, too, is talised, converted into a second additional capital, which, in its turn, produces a further surplus-value of £ 80. And so the ball rolls on.
We here leave out of consideration the portion of the surplus-value consumed by the capitalist. Just as little does it concern us, for the moment, whether the additional capi- tal is joined on to the original capital, or is separated from it to function independently; whether the same capitalist, who accumulated it, employs it, or whether he hands it over to another. This only we must not forget, that by the side of the newly formed capital, the original capital continues to reproduce itself, and to produce surplus-value, and that this is also true of all accumulated capital.
The original capital was formed by the advance of L' 10000. How did the owner become possessed of it? «By his own labour and that of his forefathers , answer un- animously the spokesmen of political economy.
But il is quite otherwise with regard to the additional capital of i 2(.()f). How that originated we know perfectly well. It is capitalised surplus-value. There is not one single atom of its value that does not
unpaid labour. The means of production, with which the additional labour-power is incorporated, as well as the ne- cessaries with which the labour usUmied, are nothing
////•' ACCUMULATION Of CAPITAL. 133
but component parts of the surplus product, of the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class. Though the latter with a portion of that tribute pur- chases the additional labour power even at its full price, so that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the trans- action is for all that only the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of.
If the additional capital employs the person who pro- duced it, this producer must not only continue to augment the value of the original capital, but must buy back the fruits of his previous labour with more labour than they cost. When viewed as a transaction between the capitalist class and the working class, it makes nfQ_44fference that additional labourers are employed by means of the unpaid labour' of the previously employed labourers. The capitalist may even convert the additional capital into a machine which throws the workman who made it out of work, and which replaces them by a few children. In every case the working class creates by the surplus-labour of one year the capital des- tined to employ additional labour in the following year.
The accumulation of the first additional capital of £'2000 presupposes a value of ' £ 10000 belonging to the capitalist by virtue of his «primitive labour», and advanced by him. The second additional capital of £ 400 presupposes, on the contrary, only the previous accumulation of the £ 2000, of which the £ 400 is the surplus-value capitalised. The owner- ship of past unpaid labour is henceforth the sole condition for the appropriation of living unpaid labour on a con- stantly increasing scale. The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more is he ablef'to accumulate.
Owing to the process just described, /. e. the constant increase of capital by means of the surplus-value previously made, of which a part is invariably applied to the purchase of new labour power (and we will even assume that the latter is bought at its real value) it is evident that private pro- perty, based on the production and circulation of commodities, becomes changed into its very opposite. The exchange of equivalents has now become turned round in such a way that tiiere is only an apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the capital which is exchanged for labour power is iiself but a portion of the product of others' labour
134 CHAPTER XII.
appropriated without an equivalent; and, secondly, that this capital must not only be replaced by its producer, but re- placed together with a surplus. The exchange between capi- talist and labourer becomes a mere form, foreign to the real nature of the transaction, and only mystifying it. The ever repeated purchase and sale of labour power is now the mere form; what really takes place is this: the capitalist again and again appropriates, without equivalent, a portion oL the labour of others, (already existing in the commodities), and exchanges it for a greater quantity of living labour. At first the rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man's own labour. At least, some such assumption was necessary, since only commodity owners with equal rights confronted each other, and the sole means by which a man colild become possessed of the commodities of others, was by alienating his own commodities; and these could be re- placed by labour alone. Now, however, property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product, and to be the im- , possibility, on the part of the labourer, of appropriating his own product.
We have seen that even in the case of simple reproduc- tion, all capital, whatever its original source, becomes con- verted into capitalised surplus-value. But in the Flood of production all the capital originally advanced becomes a vanishing quantity, compare! with the directly accumulated capital, i. e., with the surplus-product that is reconverted into capital, whether it function in the hands of its accumulator, or in those of others.
It is evident1 that only a portion of the surplus-value can be converted into capital, and that another portion must serve for the sustenance of the capitalist. The larger the one of these parts, the smaller is the other. The less the capitalist consumes, the. greater will be the accumulation.
The historical value and justification of the capitalist are to be found in the fact that he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production's sake; he thus forces the development of the productive powers of society, and creates those ni.'iterial conditions, which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full
Frome licre on vol. II cli. 24, so
THE ACCUMULATION Of CAPITAL. 135
and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle. Moreover, the development of capitalist produc- tion makes it constantly necessary to keep increasing the amount of the capital laid out in a given industrial under- taking; and competition compels each individual capitalist to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it, but extend it he cannot, except by means of progressive accumulation