Our capitalist stares in astonishment. The value of the product is exactly
equaI to the value of the capital advanced. The value so advanced has not
expanded, no surplus-value has been created, and consequently money has not
been converted into capital. The price of the yarn is fifteen shillings,
and fifteen shillings were spent in the open market upon the constituent
elements of the product, or, what amounts to the same thing, upon the
factors of the labour-process; ten shillings were paid for the cotton, two
shillings for the substance of the spindle worn away, and three shillings
for the labour-power. The swollen value of the yarn is of no avail, for it
is merely the sum of the values formerly existing in the cotton, the
spindle, and the labour-power: out of such a simple addition of existing
values, no surplus-value can possibly arise. These separate values are now
all concentrated in one thing; but so they were also in the sum of fifteen
shillings, before it was split up into three parts, by the purchase of the
commodities.
There is in reality nothing very strange in this result. The value of one
pound of yarn being eighteenpence, if our capitalist buys 10 lbs. of yarn
in the market, he must pay fifteen shillings for them. It is clear that,
whether a man buys his house ready built, or gets it built for him, in
neither case will the mode of acquisition increase the amount of money laid
out on the house.
Our capitalist, who is at home in his vulgar economy, exclaims: "Oh! but I
advanced my money for the express purpose of making more money." The way to
Hell is paved with good intentions, and he might just as easily have
intended to make money, without producing at all. He threatens all sorts of
things. He won't be caught napping again. In future he will buy the
commodities in the market, instead of manufacturing them himself. But if
all his brother capitalists were to do the same, where would he find his
commodities in the market? And his money he cannot eat. He tries
persuasion. "Consider my abstinence; I might have played ducks and drakes
with the 15 shillings; but instead of that I consumed it productively, and
made yarn with it." Very well, and by way of reward he is now in possession
of good yarn instead of a bad conscience; and as for playing the part of a
miser, it would never do for him to relapse into such bad ways as that; we
have seen before to what results such asceticism leads. Besides, where
nothing is, the king has lost his rights; whatever may be the merit of his
abstinence, there is nothing wherewith specially to remunerate it, because
the value of the product is merely the sum of the values of the commodities
that were thrown into the process of production. Let him therefore console'
himself with the reflection that virtue is its own reward, But no, he
becomes importunate. He says: "The yarn is of no use to me: I produced it
for sale." In that case let him sell it, or, still better, let him for the
future produce only things for satisfying his personal wants, a remedy that
his physician MacCulloch has already prescribed as infallible against an
epidemic of over-production. He now gets obstinate. "Can the labourer," he
asks, "merely with his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing?
Did I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and in which
alone, his labour could be embodied? And as the greater part of society
consists of such ne'er-do-wells, have I not rendered society incalculable
service by my instruments of production, my cotton and my spindle, and not
only society, but the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with
the necessaries of life? And am I to be allowed nothing in return for all
this service?" Well, but has not the labourer rendered him the equivalent
service of changing his cotton and spindle into yarn? Moreover, there is
here no question of service. A service is nothing more than the useful
effect of a use-value, be it of a commodity, or be it of labour. But here
we are dealing with exchange-value. The capitalist paid to the labourer a
value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave him back an exact equivalent in
the value of 3 shillings, added by him to the cotton: he gave him value for
value. Our friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the
modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims: "Have I myself not
worked? Have I not performed the labour of superintendence and of
overlooking the spinner? And does not this labour, too, create value?" His
overlooker and his manager try to hide their smiles. Meanwhile, after a
hearty laugh, he re-assumes his usual mien. Though he chanted to us the
whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he would not give a
brass farthing for it. He leaves this and all such like subterfuges and
juggling tricks to the professors of Political Economy, who are paid for
it. He himself is a practical man; and though he does not always consider
what he says outside his business, yet in his business he knows what he is
about.
=46rom THE CAPITAL. CHAPTER VII THE LABOUR-PROCESS AND THE PROCESS
OFPRODUCING SURPLUS-VALUE, SECTION 2. THE PRODUCTION OF SURPLUS-VALUE
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