V. Economy Through Inventions
These savings in the application of fixed capital are, we repeat, due to the employment of the conditions of labour on a large scale; in short, are due to the fact that these serve as conditions of directly social, socialised labour or direct co-operation within the process of production. On the one hand, this is the indispensable requirement for the utilisation of mechanical and chemical inventions without increasing the price of the commodity, and this is always the conditio sine qua non. On the other hand, only production on a large scale permits the savings derived from co-operative productive consumption. Finally, it is only the experience of the combined labourer which discovers and reveals the where and how of saving, the simplest methods of applying the discoveries, and the ways to overcome the practical frictions arising from carrying out the theory — in its application to the production process — etc.
Incidentally, a distinction should be made between universal labour and co-operative labour. Both kinds play their role in the process of production, both flow one into the other, but both are also differentiated. Universal labour is all scientific labour, all discovery and all invention. This labour depends partly on the co-operation of the living, and partly on the utilisation of the labours of those who have gone before. Co-operative labour, on the other hand, is the direct co-operation of individuals.
The foregoing is corroborated by frequent observation, to wit:
1 ) The great difference in the cost of the first model of a new machine and that of its reproduction (regarding which, see Ure (1) and Babbageb).
2) The far greater cost of operating an ESTABLISHMENT based on a new invention as compared to later ESTABLISHMENTS arising out of their ruins, ex suis ossibus. This is so very true that the trail-blazers generally go bankrupt, and only those who later buy the buildings, machinery, etc., at a cheaper price, make money out of it. It is, therefore, generally the most worthless and miserable sort of money capitalists who draw the greatest profit out of all new developments of the universal labour of the human spirit and their social application through combined labour.