[ Fixed Capital and the Development of the Productive Forces of Society]
"Division of machines into (1) diose applied to produce power; (2) those whose aim is simply die transmission of power and the performance of labour" (Babbage, [ Traité sur l'économie des machines et des manufactures, pp. 20-21,] Notebook, p. 10).a14
"FACTORY signifies the cooperation of different classes of workers, adults and non-adults, skilfully and diligently watching over a system of productive machinery continually kept in operation by a central [source of] power, and excludes any workshop the mechanism of which does not form a continuous system, or which does not depend on a single driving force. Examples of the latter are dyeing works, brass foundries, etc.—This term, in its strictest sense, implies a vast automaton, made up of a large number of mechanical and intellectual organs working together and without interruption, to produce the same object, all these organs being subordinated to a self-powered driving force" (Ure, [Philosophie des manufactures, Vol. I, Brussels, 1836, pp. 18-19] p. 13 l 4).
The capital which is consumed in the production process proper, or fixed capital, is emphatically means of production. In a broader sense, the entire production process and each of its moments, as well as each moment of circulation — so far as its material aspect is considered — is merely means of production for capital, to which value alone exists as an end in itself. Raw material itself, from its material aspect, is means of production for the product, etc.
But to determine the use value of fixed capital by its being consumed in the production process proper is the same as saying that it is used only as a means in this process, and itself exists merely as an agent for the transformation of raw material into product. As such means of production, its use value may consist in its being merely a technological condition for the process to take place (the place in which the production process is carried on), as in the case of buildings, etc., or in its being an immediate condition for the operation of the means of production proper, as all matières instrumentales are. Both are, in turn, merely material presuppositions for carrying on the production process in general, or for the application and maintenance of the means of labour. And the means of labour in the strict sense serves only within
a Marx quotes from Babbage partly in German and partly in French. The following quotation from Ure is in French.— Ed.
production and for production, and has no other use value.
Initially, when we discussed the transition of value into capital, the labour process was simply included into capital, and with respect to its physical condition, the material form in which it existed, capital appeared as the totality of the conditions for this process, and accordingly fell into definite qualitatively different portions: the material of labour (this, not raw material, is the correct and conceptual expression), means of labour and living labour.* On the one hand, capital, according to the material form in which it existed, was divided up into these three elements; on the other, the moving unity of these elements was the labour process (or the entering of these elements into process with one another), and their inert unity was the product. In this form, the material elements — material of labour, means of labour and living labour— appear merely as the essential moments of the labour process itself, which is appropriated by capital. But this material aspect of capital — or its determination as use value and real process— diverged completely from the determination of its form. In this determination itself
(1) the 3 elements in which capital appears prioi to the exchange with labour capacity, prior to the actual process, appeared merely as quantitatively different portions of capital itself, as quantities of value, whose unity is formed by capital itself as their sum. The material form, the use value, in which these different portions existed, did not affect the homogeneity of this determination. From the viewpoint of their formal determination, they only appeared as reflecting the fact that quantitatively capital fell into distinct portions.
(2) Within the process itself, the distinction between the element of labour and the other two, as regards form, consisted only in that labour was determined as positing value, and the other two as constant values. Yet as far as their distinctness as use values, the material aspect, was concerned, it was quite extrinsic to the formal determination of capital. Now, however, in the distinction between circulating capital (raw material and product) [VI-44] and fixed capital (means of labour), the distinction between the elements as use values is, at the same time, posited as a distinction of capital as capital, in its formal determination. The relationship of the factors to each other, which was only quantitative, now appears as a qualitative distinction of capital itself and as determining its overall movement (turnover). In terms of physical substance, too, the material of labour and the product of labour, the neutral precipitate of the labour process, as raw material and product, are no longer determined as the material and product of labour but as the use value of capital itself in different phases.
As long as the means of labour remains means of labour in the strict sense, as it was — directly, historically — included by capital into its valorisation process, it only undergoes a formal change in that it now appears not merely as means of labour from its material aspect, but at the same time as a particular mode of existence of capital, one determined by the overall process of capital — as fixed capital.
Once included into the production process of capital, however, the means of labour passes through a series of metamorphoses until it ends up as the machine, or rather as an automatic system of machinery (system of machinery; automatic merely means the. most complete, most adequate form of machinery, and alone transforms machinery into a system). That system is set in motion by an automaton, self-moved motive power; this automaton consists of a large number of mechanical and intellectual organs, with the workers themselves cast in the role of merely conscious members of it. In the machine, and to an even greater degree in machine[ry] as an automatic system, the means of labour is transformed, with respect to its use value, i. e. to its material character, into a form adequate to fixed capital and to capital in general. And the form in which it was included, as immediate means of labour, into the production process of capital is superseded by a form posited by capital itself and corresponding to it.
In no respect does the machine appear as the means of labour of the individual worker. Its differentia specifica is not at all to mediate between the activity of the worker and the object, as is the case with the means of labour. On the contrary, the worker's activity is posited rather as merely mediating the labour of the machine, its action upon the raw material — he watches over it and guards against obstructions. Not as in the case of the instrument, which the worker animates with his own skill and activity as an organ, and whose manipulation is thus dependent upon his virtuosity. On the contrary, the machine, which possesses skill and power in contrast to the worker, is itself the virtuoso. It possesses a soul of its own in the laws of mechanics which determine its operations; and to maintain its continuous self-motion it consumes coal, oil, etc. (matières instrumentales), as the worker consumes foodstuffs. The activity of the worker, restricted to a mere abstraction of activity, is determined and governed in every respect by the movement of the machinery, not vice versa. Science, which compels the inanimate members of the machinery, by means of their design, to operate purposefully as an automaton, does not exist in the worker's consciousness, but acts upon him through the machine as an alien force, as the force of the machine itself.
The appropriation of living labour by objectified labour — of the value-creating power or activity by value-for-itself — an appropriation inherent in the concept of capital, is posited in production based upon machinery as the character of the production process itself, and is also posited in terms of its material elements and its material movement. The production process has ceased to be a labour process in the sense that it is no longer embraced by labour as the unity which dominates it. Now, on the contrary, labour appears merely as a conscious organ, dispersed at many points of the mechanical system in isolated living workers. It is subsumed under the overall process of the machinery itself, and is merely a member of the system, whose unity exists not in living workers but in the living (active) machinery. The latter confronts the isolated, insignificant activity of the worker as a mighty organism. In machinery, objectified labour confronts living labour in the labour process itself as the power which dominates it, a power which, in terms of its form, as the appropriation of living labour, is capital. The incorporation of the labour process into the valorisation process of capital as merely one of its moments is also posited materially by the transformation of the means of labour into machinery, and of living labour into a mere living accessory of this machinery, as the means of its action.
As we have seen,(1) it is the necessary tendency of capital to increase the productive power of labour and to bring about the greatest possible negation of necessary labour. This tendency is realised by the transformation of the means of labour into machinery. In machinery, objectified labour physically confronts living labour as the power which dominates it and actively subsumes it under itself — not merely by appropriating living labour, but in the actual production process itself. In fixed capital existing as machinery, the relation of capital as value which appropriates the value-creating activity is posited, at the same time, as the relation of the use value of capital to the use value of the labour capacity. Moreover, the value objectified in the machinery appears as a presupposition in comparison to which the value-creating power of the individual labour capacity disappears as being infinitesimally small. With the enormous rates of production posited by machinery, there also disappears in the product every reference to the immediate need of the producer, and thus to immediate use value. The form in which the product is produced, and the conditions in which it is produced, already imply that it is only produced as a bearer of value, and its use value only as the condition for this. Objectified labour itself directly appears in the machine not only in the form of the product, or of the product employed as the means of labour, but in that of productive power itself. The development of the means of labour into machinery is not a matter of chance for capital, but the historical transformation of the traditional means of labour, as handed down from the past, into a form adequate to capital. The accumulation of knowledge and skill, of the general productive forces of the social mind, is thus absorbed in capital as opposed to labour, and hence appears as a property of capital, more precisely, of fixed capital, to the extent that it enters into the production process as means of production in the strict sense.
Therefore, machinery appears as the most adequate form of fixed capital; and fixed capital, as far as capital is considered in its relation to itself, as the most adequate form of capital in general. On the other hand, as far as fixed capital is confined to its existence as a particular use value, it does not correspond to the concept of capital, for capital as value is indifferent to every particular form of use value, and can with equal indifference adopt or shed any of them as its incarnation. In this respect, in terms of capital's relation to what is outside it, circulating capital appears as the adequate form of capital as against fixed capital.
Furthermore, to the extent that machinery develops with the accumulation of social knowledge and productive power in general, it is not in the worker but in capital that general social labour is represented. The productive power of society is measured in terms of fixed capital, exists in it in the form of objects; and conversely the productive power of capital develops with this general progress, which is appropriated gratis by capital. We need not enter into the development of machinery en détail here, but only in general, in so far as in fixed capital the means of labour, considered in its physical aspect, loses its immediate form and confronts the worker physically as capital. Knowledge appears in machinery as alien and external to him, and living labour as subsumed under objectified labour operating independently of him. The worker appears as superfluous — unless his action is conditioned by the needs [of capital].(2)
[VII-l](3) Hence, the full development of capital only takes place — or capital has only posited the mode of production corresponding to it — when the means of labour is not merely formally determined as fixed capital but is superseded in its immediate form, and fixed capital confronts labour within the production process as machinery. The entire production process then appears no longer as subsumed under the immediate skill of the worker, but as technological application of science. Capital thus tends to impart a scientific character to production, and immediate labour is reduced to a mere moment of this process. Just as we found when discussing the transformation of value into capital, a more detailed analysis of capital shows that, on the one hand, it presupposes a definite given historical development of the productive forces — these including science, too — and, on the other, spurs them on and accelerates their growth.
Hence the quantitative volume and effectiveness (intensity) of the development of capital as fixed capital indicates, in general, the DEGREE to which capital is developed as capital, as power over living labour, and to which it has, in general, subjected to itself the production process. It is also indicative as expressing the degree of accumulation of objectified productive forces and similarly of objectified labour. But if capital gives to itself its adequate form as use value within the production process only when it adopts the form of machinery and other physical forms of existence of fixed capital, e.g., railways, etc. (which we shall take up later), it does not in any way follow that this use value — machinery in itself — is capital, or that its existence as machinery is identical with its existence as capital. Just as little as gold would lose its use value as gold if it ceased to be money. Machinery would not lose its use value through ceasing to be capital. From the fact that machinery is the most appropriate form of use value of fixed capital, it in no way follows that its subsuming under the social relation of capital is the most appropriate and best social production relation for the application of machinery.
In the same measure as labour time — the simple quantity of labour — is posited by capital as the sole determinant of value, immediate labour and its quantity disappear as the determining principle of production, of the creation of use values. It is reduced both quantitatively, in that its proportion declines, and qualitatively, in that it, though still indispensable, becomes a subaltern moment in comparison to general scientific work, the technological application of the natural sciences, on the one hand, and also in comparison to the general productive power originating from the organisation of society in overall production, a productive power which appears as a natural gift of social labour (although it is an historical product). Thus capital works to dissolve itself as the form which dominates production.
Thus if, on the one hand, the transformation of the production process from the simple labour process into a scientific process, one forcing the powers of Nature into its service and thus setting them to work in the service of human needs, appears as a property of fixed capital as against living labour; if, further, individual labour as such ceases in general to appear as productive, but rather is productive only in collective labours which subjugate the powers of Nature to themselves, and this elevation of immediate into social labour appears to reduce individual labour to helplessness compared to the concentrated collectivity represented in capital, then, on the other hand, the maintenance of labour in one branch of production by COEXISTING LABOUR[18] in another now appears as the property of circulating capital.
In the lesser circulation,(4) capital advances wages to the worker, who exchanges them for the products necessary for his consumption. The money he has received can effect the exchange only because simultaneously others work alongside him; and it is only because capital has appropriated his labour that it can give him in money a draft upon alien labour. This exchange of his own labour with alien does not appear here to be mediated and conditioned by the simultaneous coexistence of the labour of others, but by the advance which capital makes [to him]. The part of the CIRCULATING CAPITAL which is handed over to the worker, and CIRCULATING CAPITAL in general, appear to have the property of enabling the worker to undertake during production the exchange of matter necessary for his consumption. It appears not as an exchange of matter between simultaneously working labour powers, but as an exchange of matter effected by capital; a consequence of the existence of CIRCULATING CAPITAL.
Hence all the powers of labour are transposed into powers of capital. Fixed capital stands for the productive power of labour (which is posited outside labour and appears to exist independendy of it, objectively). And in circulating capital, the fact, on the one hand, that the worker has himself posited the conditions for the repetition of his labour, and, on the other hand, that the exchange of this his labour is mediated by the coexisting labour of others, appears in the form that capital makes the advance to him and, on the other hand, posits the contemporaneity of the different branches of labour. (Stricdy speaking, the latter two determinations belong in the section on accumulation.) Capital posits itself as the mediator between the different LABOURERS in the form of circulating capital.
Fixed capital, in its determination as means of production, whose most adequate form is machinery, produces value, i. e. increases the value of the product, only in two respects: (1) to the extent that it possesses value, i.e. is itself a product of labour, a certain quantity of labour in objectified form; (2) in so far as it increases the proportion of surplus labour to necessary labour, by enabling labour, through increasing its productive power, to produce a larger quantity of products necessary for the maintenance of the living labour capacity in a shorter time. It is, therefore, an utterly absurd bourgeois phrase to claim that the worker shares with the capitalist because the latter, by means of fixed capital (which, moreover, is itself the product of labour, is alien labour simply appropriated by capital), alleviates or abridges his labour for him. (In fact, by setting him to work with a machine, the capitalist robs his labour of all independence and attractiveness.)
Capital employs the machine, rather, only in so far as it enables the worker to work a larger part of his time for capital, to relate to a larger part of his time as not belonging to him, to work a longer time for another. By this process, the quantity of labour necessary for the production of a certain object is in fact reduced to the minimum, but only in order that a maximum of labour can be valorised in a maximum of such objects. The first aspect is important because capital in this way — quite unintentionally— reduces human labour, the expenditure of [human] energy, to a minimum. This will be to the advantage of emancipated labour and is the condition for its emancipation.
What has been said above shows the absurdity of Lauderdale's attempt to make fixed capital into an autonomous source of value, one independent of labour time.[19] It can be so only to the extent that it itself posits objectified labour time and surplus labour time. The employment of machinery itself historically presupposes [VII-2]—see Ravenstone, above(5)—superfluous hands. Only when there is a superfluity of labour powers, does machinery intervene to replace labour. It is only in the imagination of economists that machinery assists the individual worker. It can only operate with masses of workers, whose concentration vis-à-vis capital is, as we have seen, one of capital's historical presuppositions.(6) Machinery is not introduced to make up for a shortage of labour power, but to reduce abundantly available labour power to the necessary volume. Only where labour capacity is available in large quantities is machinery introduced. (This to be reverted to.)
Lauderdale believes to have made a great discovery in asserting that machinery does not increase the productive power of labour, since it rather replaces labour or performs tasks which labour cannot perform on its own. It is inherent in the concept of capital that the increased productive power of labour is posited rather as the aggrandizement of a power outside it and as its own enfeeblement. The means of labour makes the worker independent — posits him as a proprietor. Machinery — as fixed capital— posits him as dependent, as appropriated. However, machinery has this effect only to the extent that it is determined as fixed capital; and it is determined as such only by the fact that the worker relates himself to it as a wage labourer, and the active individual in general as a mere labourer.
Hitherto, fixed capital and circulating capital appeared merely as different transitory determinations of capital. Now they have hardened into particular modes of existence of capital, and circulating capital appears alongside fixed capital. There are now 2 particular kinds of capital. In so far as one considers a single capital in a particular branch of production, it appears divided up into these 2 portions, or it falls in definite proportions into these 2 kinds of capital.
The different elements within the production process, originally means of labour and material of labour, and finally product of labour, now appear as circulating capital (the last two) and fixed capital. The differentiation of capital according to its purely material aspect has now been assimilated into the very form of capital and appears as a differentiator of capital.
Fixed capital — notably that whose material existence or use value is machinery — is the form best suited to give some semblance of truth to the shallow FALLACIES of those who, like Lauderdale, etc., believe that capital as such, divorced from labour, can produce value, and thus also surplus value (or profit). One may answer them, as was done, e.g., in Labour Defended? that the road-maker may indeed share with the road-user, but the "road" itself cannot do so.(7)
Circulating capital — assuming that it actually passes through its various phases — causes the decrease or increase, the shortening or lengthening of circulation time, the easier or more arduous course through the various stages of circulation, a diminishing of the surplus value that could be produced in a given period of time if the process were not subject to these interruptions — either because there is a decline in the number of reproductions, or because the quantity of capital continuously engaged in the production process contracts. In neither case is there a reduction in the initially posited value; but, in both cases, a reduction in the rapidity of its growth. Yet, as soon as fixed capital has attained a certain level of development — and this level, as we have already indicated, is the measure of development of large-scale industry in general, and therefore rises in proportion to the development of the productive forces of large-scale industry (fixed capital is itself the objectification of these productive forces, is these forces themselves as a presupposed product)—from this moment onwards, every interruption of the production process direcdy reduces capital itself, its presupposed value.
The value of fixed capital is only reproduced to the extent that it is used up in the production process. If it is not used, fixed capital loses its use value, without its value passing on to the product. Hence the larger the scale on which fixed capital develops, in the sense in which it is considered here, the more the continuity of the production process or the continuous flow of reproduction becomes a compelling external condition of the mode of production based upon capital.
In this respect, too, the appropriation of living labour by capital takes on an immediate reality in machinery: on the one hand, it is the analysis and application of mechanical and chemical laws— originating directly from science — that enables the machine to perform the same labour as was previously performed by the worker. However, the development of machinery takes this course only when large-scale industry has already attained a high level of development and all the sciences have been forced into the service of capital, and when, on the other hand, the machinery already in existence itself affords great resources. At this point, invention becomes a business, and the application of science to immediate production itself becomes a factor determining and soliciting science.
However, this is not the way in which machinery has come into being on a general basis; and still less is it the way in which it develops in detail. The actual way is that of analysis — through the division of labour, which increasingly transforms the workers' operations into mechanical ones, so that at a certain point the workers can be replaced by a mechanism. (Ad. ECONOMY OF POWER.) Therefore, a definite mode of labour appears here to be directly transferred from the worker to capital in the form of the machine, and this transposition devalues his own labour capacity. Hence the workers' struggle against machinery. What was the activity of a live worker now becomes an activity of the machine. Thus the appropriation of labour by capital confronts the worker in a gross-sensuous way; capital as absorbing living labour into itself—"as though it had love in its bosom".(8)
The exchange of living labour for objectified, i.e. the positing of social labour in the form of the antithesis of capital and wage labour, is the ultimate development of the value relationship and of production based on value. Its presupposition is and remains the sheer volume of immediate labour time, the quantity of labour employed, as the decisive factor in the production of wealth. But in the degree in which large-scale industry develops, the creation of real wealth becomes less dependent upon labour time and the quantity of labour employed than upon the power of the agents set in motion during labour time. And their power — their POWERFUL EFFECTIVENESS — in turn bears no relation to the immediate labour time which their production costs, but depends, rather, upon the general level of development of science and the progress of technology, or on the application of science to production. (The development of science itself, especially of natural science, and with it of all the other sciences, is, in turn, related to the development of material production.) E.g. agriculture becomes mere application of the science of the exchange of matter — in terms of how that exchange can be regulated to the maximum advantage of the social body as a whole.
Real wealth manifests itself rather — and this is revealed by large-scale industry — in the immense disproportion between the labour time employed and its product, and similarly in the qualitative disproportion between labour reduced to a pure abstraction and the power of the production process which it oversees. Labour no longer appears so much as included in the production process, but rather man relates himself to that process as its overseer and regulator. (What is true of machinery is equally true of the combination of human activities and the development of human intercourse.) No longer does the worker interpose a modified natural object as an intermediate element between the object and himself; now he interposes the natural process, [VII-3] which he transforms into an industrial one, as an intermediary between himself and inorganic nature, which he makes himself master of. He stands beside the production process, rather than being its main agent.
Once this transformation has taken place, it is neither the immediate labour performed by man himself, nor the time for which he works, but the appropriation of his own general productive power, his comprehension of Nature and domination of it by virtue of his being a social entity — in a word, the development of the social individual — that appears as the corner-stone of production and wealth. The theft of alien labour time, which is the basis of present wealth, appears to be a miserable foundation compared to this newly developed one, the foundation created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in its immediate form has ceased to be the great source of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and therefore exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the masses has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of a few has ceased to be the condition for the development of the general powers of the human mind. As a result, production based upon exchange value collapses, and the immediate material production process itself is stripped of its form of indigence and antagonism. Free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time in order to posit surplus labour, but in general the reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, to which then corresponds the artistic, scientific, etc., development of individuals, made possible by the time thus set free and the means produced for all of them.
By striving to reduce labour time to a minimum, while, on the other hand, positing labour time as the sole measure and source of wealth, capital itself is a contradiction-in-process. It therefore diminishes labour time in the form of necessary labour time in order to increase it in the form of superfluous labour time; it thus posits superfluous labour time to an increasing degree as a condition—question de vie et de mort"—for necessary labour time. On the one hand, therefore, it calls into life all the powers of science and Nature, and of social combination and social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth (relatively) independent of the labour time employed for that purpose. On the other hand, it wishes the enormous social forces thus created to be measured by labour time and to confine them within the limits necessary to maintain as value the value already created. The productive forces and social relations — two different aspects of the development of the social individual — appear to capital merely as the means, and are merely the means, for it to carry on production on its restricted basis. IN FACT, however, they are the material conditions for exploding that basis.
"A nation is truly rich if 6 instead of 12 hours are worked. WEALTH is not command over surplus labour time" (real wealth) "but DISPOSABLE TIME, in addition to that employed in immediate production, for every individual and for the whole society."(9)
Nature does not construct machines, locomotives, railways, ELECTRIC TELEGRAPHS, SELF-ACTING MULES, etc. They are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of man's will over Nature, or of man's activity in Nature. They are organs of the human mind which are created by the human hand, the objectified power of knowledge. The development of fixed capital shows the degree to which society's general science, KNOWLEDGE, has become an immediate productive force, and hence the degree to which the conditions of the social life process itself have been brought under the control of the GENERAL INTELLECT and remoulded according to it. It shows the degree to which the social productive forces are produced not merely in the form of knowledge but as immediate organs of social praxis, of the actual life process.
There is yet another aspect from which the development of fixed capital indicates the degree of development of wealth in general or of the development of capital. The object of production direcdy aimed at use value, and similarly directly at exchange value, is the product itself, which is intended for consumption. The part of production aimed at the production of fixed capital does not produce immediate objects of enjoyment or immediate exchange values; at least it does not produce immediately realisable exchange values. So it depends upon the level of productivity already attained—upon a mere part of production time being sufficient for immediate production— that an increasingly large part of production time is employed in producing means of production.
This presupposes that society can wait, can withdraw a large part of the wealth already created both from immediate enjoyment and from production intended for immediate enjoyment, and employ it for labour which is not immediately productive (within the material production process itself). For it to be able to do so, productivity and relative excess must already have attained a certain level, and indeed a level directly proportionate to the scale on which circulating capital is transformed into fixed capital. Just as the amount of relative surplus labour depends upon the productivity of necessary labour, so the amount of the labour time employed on the production of fixed capital—living labour time as well as objectified — depends upon the productivity of the labour time intended for the direct production of products.
Surplus population (surplus from this standpoint), like surplus production, is a condition for this, i.e. the result of the time employed upon immediate production must be relatively in excess of what is immediately required for the reproduction of the capital employed in these branches of industry. The less the immediate yield of fixed capital, the less fixed capital engaged in the immediate production process, the larger this relative surplus population and surplus production must be; i.e. more relative surplus population and surplus production is required to build railways, canals, waterworks, telegraphs, etc., than to make machinery used in the immediate production process. Hence — and we shall come back to that later — the continual over- and underproduction in modern industry reflecting the continual fluctuations and convulsions in the disproportionate — now insufficient, now excessive— transformation of circulating capital into fixed capital.
//The creation of an abundance of DISPOSABLE TIME apart from necessary labour time, for society in general and for each of its members (i.e. scope for the development of the full productive powers of the individual, hence also of society), this creation of not-labour-time appears under the conditions of capital, and at all earlier stages, as the creation of not-labour-time, free time, for a few. What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the masses by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in its appropriation of surplus labour time; for its direct aim is value, not use value.
Hence it is INSTRUMENTAL, malgré lui,[3] IN CREATING THE MEANS OF SOCIAL DISPOSABLE TIME, of reducing labour time for the whole of society to a declining minimum, and of thus setting free the time of all [members of society] for their own development. But its tendency is always, on the one hand, to create DISPOSABLE TIME, and on the other TO CONVERT IT INTO SURPLUS LABOUR. Yet if it is too successful in the former, it is afflicted with surplus production, and then necessary labour is interrupted, as no SURPLUS LABOUR can be utilised by capital.
T h e more this contradiction develops, the more obvious it becomes that the growth of the productive forces can no longer be tied to the appropriation of alien SURPLUS LABOUR, and that the working masses must, rather, themselves appropriate their surplus labour. Once they have done so — and DISPOSABLE TIME has thereby ceased to possess an antithetical existence — then, on the one hand, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual; and, on the other, society's productive power will develop so rapidly that, although production will now be calculated to provide wealth for all, the DISPOSABLE TIME of all will increase. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. Then [VII-4] wealth is no longer measured by labour time but by DISPOSABLE TIME. Labour time as the measure of wealth posits wealth itself as based upon poverty, and DISPOSABLE TIME only as existing in and through the opposition to surplus labour time; or the whole time of an individual is posited as labour time, and he is consequently degraded to a mere labourer, subsumed u n d e r labour. Hence the most developed machinery now compels the labourer to work for a longer time than the savage does, or than the labourer himself did when he was using the simplest, crudest implements.//
"If the whole labour of a country were only sufficient TO RAISE THE SUPPORT OF THE WHOLE POPULATION, THERE WOULD BE NO SURPLUS LABOUR, CONSEQUENTLY NOTHING THAT COULD BE ALLOWED TO ACCUMULATE AS CAPITAL. I F THE PEOPLE RAISE i n one year sufficient for the SUPPORT OF 2 YEARS, ONE YEAR'S CONSUMPTION MUST PERISH, OR FOR ONE YEAR MEN MUST CEASE FROM PRODUCTIVE LABOUR. B U T THE POSSESSORS OF SURPLUS PRODUCE OR CAPITAL EMPLOY PEOPLE UPON SOMETHING NOT DIRECTLY AND IMMEDIATELY PRODUCTIVE, e . g . IN THE ERECTION OF MACHINERY. S o it goes ON" (The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties [London, 1821, pp. 4-5]).
//Just as with the development of large-scale industry the basis on which it rests, appropriation of alien labour time, ceases to constitute or to create wealth, so, as this development takes place,
a Despite itself.— Ed.
immediate labour as such ceases to be the basis of production. That happens because, on the one hand, immediate labour is transformed into a predominantly overseeing and regulating activity; and also because, on the other hand, the product ceases to be the product of isolated immediate labour, and it is rather the combination of social activity that appears as the producer.
"As soon as the division of labour has been developed, almost any labour by an isolated individual becomes some part OF A WHOLE, HAVING NO VALUE OR UTILITY OF ITSELF. THERE IS NOTHING ON WHICH THE LABOURER CAN SEIZE [and say:] THIS IS MY PRODUCE, THIS I WILL KEEP TO MYSELF" ([Th. Hodgskin,] Labour Defended, [London, 1825,] 1, 2, XI22 [p. 25]).
In immediate exchange, the isolated immediate labour appears as realised in a particular product or part of a product, and its communal social character — its character as the objectification of general labour, and satisfaction of general need — is only posited by exchange. By contrast, in the production process of large-scale industry, we see, on the one hand, that the productive power of the means of labour developed to an automatic process presupposes the subjection of the natural forces to the social intelligence, and, on the other hand, that the labour of the individual in its immediate existence is posited as superseded individual, i.e., as social, labour. Thus the other basis of this mode of production is abolished.//
Within the production process of capital itself, the labour time employed upon the production of fixed capital relates to that employed upon the production of circulating capital as surplus labour time to necessary labour time. In the degree in which production directed to the satisfaction of immediate needs becomes more productive, a larger part of production can be directed to satisfy the needs of production itself or to the production of means of production. In so far as the production of fixed capital aims directly, in material terms too, neither at the production of immediate use values, nor of values required for the immediate reproduction of capital, i.e. values which in the creation of value itself represent, relatively, use value, but aims at the production of means for the creation of value, hence not at value as an immediate object, but at the creation of value, at the means of valorisation as the immediate object of production — the production of value materially posited in the object of production itself as the purpose of production, of the objectification of productive power, the value-producing power of capital — to that extent capital posits itself as an end-in-itself—and is active as capital—in a higher potency in the production of fixed capital than in that of circulating capital Therefore, in this respect too, the magnitude which fixed capital already possesses, and which its production constitutes in overall production, is the measure of the development of wealth based upon the capitalist mode of production.
"The number of labourers DEPENDS ON CIRCULATING CAPITAL SO FAR as that number DEPENDS ON THE QUANTITY OF PRODUCTS OF COEXISTING LABOUR, WHICH LABOURERS ARE ALLOWED TO CONSUME" ([Th. Hodgskin,] Labour Defended [p. 20]).
All the passages from various economists cited above refer to fixed capital as the part of capital which is locked up in the production process.
"FLOATING CAPITAL IS CONSUMED; FIXED CAPITAL IS MERELY USED IN THE GREAT PROCESS OF PRODUCTION" ([The]Economist, [No. 219, 6 November 1847, p. 1271,] VI,
11').
This is incorrect, and holds good only for the part of circulating capital which is itself consumed by fixed capital, i.e., for the
matières instrumentales. Only fixed capital is consumed "IN THE GREAT PROCESS OF PRODUCTION", taking this to be the immediate production process. And its consumption within the production process is IN FACT its USE, the using up of it.
Furthermore, the greater durability of fixed capital is not to be understood in purely material terms either. The iron and wood which compose the bed in which I sleep, or the stone of which the house is built in which I live, or the marble statue with which a palace is adorned, are as durable as the iron and wood, etc., which are employed in the construction of machinery. But durability is a condition for the instrument, for the means of production, not merely for the technical reason that metal, etc., is the main material of all machinery, but because the instrument is to play the same role continually in repeated production processes. Its durability as a means of production is a direct requirement of its use value. The more frequently it has to be renewed, the more expensive it is; the larger is the part of capital which must be uselessly employed on it. Its duration is its existence as a means of production. The longer it lasts, the greater its productive power. With circulating capital, on the contrary, to the extent that it is not transformed into fixed capital, its durability has no relation whatever to the act of production itself and is thus not a conceptually posited moment. That some of the objects thrown into the fonds de consommation are again determined as fixed capital, because they are consumed slowly and may be consumed by many individuals successively, is connected with further determinations (renting instead of selling, interest, etc.) with which we are not yet concerned here.
[VII-5]a "Since the general introduction of inanimate mechanism into British manufactories, man, with few exceptions, has been treated as a secondary and inferior machine; and far more attention has been given to perfect the raw materials of wood and metals than those of body and mind" (Robert Owen, Essays on the Formation of the Human Character, London, 1840, p. 31).
//Real economising — saving — consists in the saving of labour time (the minimum production costs,[23] and their reduction to the minimum). But this saving is identical with the development of the productive power. Hence in no way renunciation of enjoyment but development of POWER, of the capacity to produce and hence of both the capacity for and the means of enjoyment. The capacity for enjoyment is a condition for it, and hence the basic means for it, and this capacity is created by the development of an individual disposition, productive power.
The saving of labour time is equivalent to the increase of free time, i.e. time for the full development of the individual, which itself, as the greatest productive force, in turn reacts upon the productive power of labour. From the standpoint of the immediate production process, it can be considered as the production of fixed capital, this fixed capital BEING MAN HIMSELF.
Incidentally, it is self-evident that immediate labour time itself cannot remain in abstract antithesis to free time, as it appears to do from the standpoint of bourgeois political economy. Labour cannot become a game, as desired by Fourier,b whose great merit it remains to have stated that the ULTIMATE OBJECT is the raising of the mode of production itself, not [that] of distribution, to a higher form. Free time — which is both leisure and time for higher activity — has naturally transformed its possessor into another subject; and it is then as this other subject that he enters into the immediate production process. This process is simultaneously discipline, with respect to the developing human being, and application, experimental science, material creative and self-objectifying science, with respect to the developed man, whose mind is the repository of the accumulated knowledge of society. So far as labour demands practical manual exertion and free motion, as in agriculture, the production process is for both of them, at the same time, EXERCISE.
a In Marx's hand at the top of this page: "March. 1858".— Ed. b Ch. Fourier, Le Nouveau Monde industriel et sociétaire. In: Œuvres computes, 3rd ed., Vol. 6, Paris, 1848, pp. 245-52.— Ed.
Just as the system of bourgeois economy unfolds to us only gradually, so also does its negation of itself, which is its ultimate result. At this point, we are still concerned with the immediate production process. If we consider bourgeois society in the round, it is always society itself, i.e. man himself in his social relations, that appears as the final result of the social production process. Everything that has a solid form, like the product, etc., appears merely as a moment, a vanishing moment in this movement. Even the immediate production process itself appears here merely as a moment. The conditions and objectifications of that process are themselves, to an equal degree, moments of it, and it is only individuals that appear as its subjects; yet individuals in relations to one another, which they reproduce just as much as they produce them anew. Their own continuous process of movement, in which they renew themselves to just the same extent as they renew the world of wealth which they create.//
(In his Six Lectures delivered at Manchester, 1837, Owen discusses the difference between workers and capitalists which capital creates BY ITS VERY GROWTH and appearance on a wide scale (and it attains this only in large-scale industry, which is connected with the development of fixed capital). However, he says that the development of capital is a necessary condition for the RE-CREATION OF SOCIETY, and relates of himself:
"It was BY BEING GRADUALLY TRAINED TO CREATE AND CONDUCT SOME OF THESE LARGE" (MANUFACTURING) "ESTABLISHMENTS, THAT YOUR LECTURER" (Owen himself) "was taught to perceive the great errors and DISADVANTAGES of past and present attempts to improve the character and the condition of his fellow-men" (p. [57-J58).
We shall quote here the entire passage, so that we may refer to it on another occasion.[24]
"The producers of fully developed wealth may be divided into workers in soft and workers in hard materials, under the immediate direction, as a general rule, of masters whose object it is to make pecuniary gain by the labour of those whom they employ. Before the introduction of the chemical and mechanical manufacturing system, operations were carried on upon a confined scale; there were many small masters, each having a few journeymen, who looked forward to becoming also in due time, small masters. These usually fed at the same table, and lived together; and there prevailed a spirit and feeling of equality between them. Since the period when SCIENTIFIC POWER began to be largely applied to the business of manufacture, a gradual change took place in this respect. Almost all manufactures, to be successful, must now be carried on EXTENSIVELY and with large capital; small masters with small capitals have now very little chance of success, especially in the manufacture of the soft materials, such as cotton, wool, flax, etc.; it is now indeed EVIDENT that so long as the present classification of society and mode of conducting business life shall continue, the small masters will be more and more superseded by those who possess large capitals, and that the former comparatively happy equality among producers must give place to the greatest inequality between master and worker that has yet occurred in the history of man. The large capitalist is now elevated to the position of an imperial lord, having the health, life, and death, INDIRECTLY, of his slaves at his will. This power he obtains by combining with other large capitalists engaged in the same interests with himself, and thus does he effectively coerce to his purpose those whom he employs. The large capitalist now wallows in wealth, the right use of which he has not been taught and knows not. He has acquired power by his riches. His riches and his power blind his understanding; and when he most GRIEVOUSLY oppresses, he believes he is conferring favours... His SERVANTS, as they are called, his SLAVES IN FACT, are reduced to the most hopeless degradation; the majority of them, robbed of their health, of their domestic comforts and of the leisure and the healthy open air amusements of former days. Through excessive exhaustion of their powers, brought on by long protracted monotonous employments, they are seduced into habits of intemperance and unfitted for thought or reflection. They can have no physical, intellectual or moral enjoyments, except of the very lowest description; all the real pleasures of life being far removed from them. The existence which a very large portion of the workers endure under the present system is, in short, not worth possessing.
"But for the changes of which these are the results no individuals are BLAMEABLE; they proceed in the REGULAR ORDER OF NATURE, and are preparatory and necessary steps towards the great and important social revolution which is in progress. Without large capitals, large establishments would not have been formed; men could not have been trained to conceive the PRACTICABILITY OF EFFECTING NEW COMBINATIONS, IN ORDER TO SECURE A SUPERIOR CHARACTER TO ALL and the production of more wealth annually than all could consume; and that that wealth also should be of a very superior description to that [VII-6] hitherto generally produced" (I.e., [pp.] 56, 57).
"It is this new chemical and mechanical manufacturing system that is now enlarging the human faculties to prepare them to understand other PRINCIPLES and PRACTICES, to adopt them, and thus to effect the greatest beneficial change in affairs that the world has yet known. And it is this new manufacturing system that now creates the necessity for another and superior classification of society" (I.e., [p.] 58).)
Endnotes
[18] Marx gave a detailed analysis of the concept of coexisting labour in his Economic Manuscript of 1861-63, when examining Thomas Hodgskin's views (see present edition, Vol. 32). In connection with this, Marx noted, in particular: "Division of labour is, in one sense, nothing but coexisting labour, that is, the coexistence of different kinds of labour which are represented in different kinds of products or rather commodities."—86
[19] Marx examined Lauderdale's explanation of profit in his Economic Manuscript of 1861-63 (see present edition, Vol. 31 and this volume, pp. 78-79).—87
[3] In his manuscript, to denote these categories Marx uses mostly the French terms "capital circulant" and "capital fixe", but sometimes he also uses the German ones "zirkulierendes Kapital" and "fixiertes Kapital", or the English "circulating capital", "floating capital", and "fixed capital".— 9, 201, 515, 526
[23] Here and elsewhere Marx uses the term "production costs" in the sense of "the immanent production costs of the commodity, which are equal to its value", i.e., "the real production costs of the commodity itself" and not the costs defrayed by the capitalist, who pays only part of the labour time contained in the commodity (see Economic Manuscript of 1861-63, present edition, Vol. 32).—97
[24] Marx is referring to this passage from Robert Owen later, in Section Three (see this volume, p. 153).—98