Review of Volume One of Karl Marx's Book «Capital»

Author: Friedrich Engels

Title: Review of Volume One of Karl Marx’s Book Capital

Written: 2nd to 13th of March, 1868

First Published: Demokratisches Wochenblatt, Nos. 12 and 13 (21st and 28th of March, 1868)

English Translation: Collected Works of Marx and Engels, First English Edition, Vol. 20, Lawrence & Wishart, London

Revised Digital Edition: Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism Under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland

[This review differs essentially from the reviews of Volume One of Capital written by Friedrich Engels for the bourgeois newspapers. It was intended for the readers of the workers’ newspaper and aimed at popularizing Karl Marx’s work among them and explaining its importance for the working-class movement.]

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#REVIEW OF VOLUME ONE OF KARL MARX’S BOOK CAPITAL

#Friedrich Engels

#2nd to 13th of March, 1868

#★

#1

As long as there have been capitalists and workers on Earth, no book has appeared which is of as much importance for the workers as the one in front of us. The relation between capital and labour, the axis on which our entire present social system turns, is here treated scientifically for the first time, and at that with a thoroughness and acuity such as was possible only for a German. Valuable as the writings of an Owen, Saint-Simon, or Fourier are and will remain — it was reserved for a German first to reach the height from which the whole field of modern social relations can be seen clearly and in full view, just as the lower mountain scenery is seen by an observer standing on the topmost peak.

Political economy until now has taught us that labour is the source of all wealth and the measure of all values, so that two objects whose production has cost the same labour-time possess the same value and must also be exchanged for each other, since, on average, only equal values are exchangeable for one another. At the same time, however, it teaches that there exists a kind of stored-up labour, which it calls capital; that this capital, owing to the auxiliary sources contained in it, raises the productivity of living labour a hundred- and a thousand-fold, and in return claims a certain compensation, which is termed profit or gain. As we all know, this occurs in reality in such a way that the profits of stored-up, dead labour become ever more massive, the capitals of the capitalists become ever more colossal, while the wages of living labour become ever smaller and the masses of the workers living solely on wages become ever more numerous and poverty-stricken. How is this contradiction to be solved? How can there remain a profit for the capitalist if the worker receives in compensation the full value of the labour they add to their product? Yet this ought to be the case, since only equal values are exchanged. On the other hand, how can the equal values be exchanged, how can the worker receive the full value of their product, if, as is admitted by many economists, this product is divided between them and the capitalist? Political economy until now has been helpless in the face of this contradiction, and writes or stutters embarrassed, meaningless phrases. Even the previous Socialist critics of political economy have not been able to do more than to emphasize the contradiction; no one resolved it, until now, at last, Marx has traced the process by which this profit arises right to its birthplace and has thereby made everything clear.

In tracing the development of capital, Marx starts out from the simple, notoriously obvious fact that the capitalists increase the value of their capital through exchange: they buy commodities for their money and afterwards sell them for more money than they cost them. For example, a capitalist buys cotton for 1’000 talers and resells it for 1’100, thus «earning» 100 talers. This excess of 100 talers over the original Marx calls surplus-value. Where does this surplus-value come from? According to the economists’ assumption, only equal values are exchanged, and in the sphere of abstract theory, this, of course, is correct. Hence the purchase of cotton and its resale can just as little yield surplus-value as the exchange of a silver taler for 30 silver groschen and the re-exchange of the small coins for a silver taler,¹ a process by which one becomes neither richer nor poorer. But surplus-value can just as little arise from sellers selling commodities above their value, or purchasers buying them below their value, since each one is in turn buyer and seller, and things would therefore again balance. Just as little can it arise from buyers and sellers reciprocally overreaching each other, for this would create no new value or surplus-value, but only divide the existing capital differently among the capitalists. In spite of the fact that the capitalist buys the commodities at their value and sells them at their value, they get more value out than they put in. How does this happen?

The capitalist finds on the commodity market under present social conditions a commodity which has the peculiar property that its use is a source of new value, is a creation of new value, and this commodity is labour-power.

What is the value of labour-power? The value of every commodity is measured by the labour required for its production. Labour-power exists in the form of the living worker, who requires a definite amount of means of subsistence for their existence, as well as for the maintenance of their family, which ensures the continuance of labour-power also after the worker’s death. The labour-time necessary for producing these means of subsistence represents, therefore, the value of the labour-power. The capitalist pays for it weekly and purchases thereby the use of one week’s labour of the worker. So far, the gentlefolk economists will be pretty well in agreement with us as to the value of labour-power.

The capitalist now sets their worker to work. In a certain period of time, the worker will have performed as much labour as was represented by their weekly wages. Supposing that the weekly wages of a worker represent three workdays; then, if the worker begins on Monday, they have by Wednesday evening replaced to the capitalist the full value of the wages paid. But do they then stop working? Not at all. The capitalist has bought their week’s labour, and the worker must go on working during the last three days of the week, too. This surplus-labour of the worker, over and above the time necessary to replace their wages, is the source of surplus-value, of profit, of the steadily growing increase of capital.

Do not say that it is an arbitrary assumption that the worker works off in three days the wages they have received, and work the remaining three days for the capitalist. Whether they take exactly three days to replace their wages, or two or four, is to be sure quite immaterial here and hence varies according to circumstances; the main point is that the capitalist, besides the labour they pay for, also extract labour that they do not pay for, and this is no arbitrary assumption, for the day the capitalist were to extract from the worker in the long run only as much labour as they paid them in wages, on that day, they would shut down their workshop, since indeed their whole profit would come to nought.

Here we have the solution of all those contradictions. The origin of surplus-value (of which the capitalists’ profit forms an important part) is now quite clear and natural. The value of the labour-power is paid for, but this value is far smaller than that which the capitalist manages to extract from the labour-power, and it is precisely the difference, the unpaid labour, that constitutes the share of the capitalist, or, more accurately, of the capitalist class. For even the profit that the cotton dealer made on their cotton in the above in the above example must consist of unpaid labour, if cotton prices did not rise. The trader must have sold it to a cotton manufacturer, who is able to extract a profit for themself from their product besides the 100 talers, and therefore shares with them the unpaid labour they have pocketed. In general, it is this unpaid labour which maintains all the non-working members of society. The State and municipal taxes, as far as they affect the capitalist class, as also the rent of the landowners, and so on, are paid from it. On it rests the whole existing social system.

It would, however, be absurd to assume that unpaid labour arose only under the present conditions, where production is carried on by capitalists, on the one hand, and wageworkers, on the other. On the contrary, the oppressed class at all times has had to perform unpaid labour. During the whole long period when slavery was the prevailing form of the organization of labour, the slaves had to perform much more labour than was returned to them in the form of means of subsistence. The same was the case under the rule of serfdom and right up to the abolition of peasant corvee labour; here, in fact, the difference stands out palpably between the time during which the peasant works for their own maintenance and the surplus-labour for the feudal lord, precisely because the latter is carried out separately from the former. The form has now been changed, but the substance remains, and as long as «a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the worktime necessary for their own maintenance an extra worktime in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production».²

#2

In the previous article, we saw that every worker employed by a capitalist performs two kinds of labour: during one part of their worktime, they replace the wages advanced to them by the capitalist, and this part of their labour Marx terms the necessary labour. But afterwards, they have to go on working, and during that time, they produce surplus-value for the capitalist, an important part of which constitutes profit. That part of the labour is called surplus-labour.

Let us assume that the worker works three days of the week to replace their wages and three days to produce surplus-value for the capitalist. In other words, it means that, with a 12-hour workday, they work six hours daily for their wages and six hours for the production of surplus-value. One can get only six days out of the week, and even by including Sunday, only seven at most, but one can extract 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, or even more hours of work out of every single day. The worker sells the capitalist a workday for their day’s wages. But what is a workday? 8 hours or 18?

It is in the capitalist’s interest to make the workday as long as possible The longer it is, the more surplus-value it produces. The worker correctly feels that every hour of labour which they perform over and above the replacement of their wages is unjustly taken from them; they learn from bitter personal experience what it means to work excessive hours. The capitalist fights for their profit, the worker for their health, for a few hours of daily rest, to be able to engage in other human activities as well, besides working, sleeping, and eating. It may be remarked in passing that it does not depend at all upon the goodwill of the individual capitalists whether they desire to embark on this struggle or not, since competition compels even the most philanthropic among them to join their colleagues and to fix working hours to be as long as theirs.

The struggle for the fixing of the workday has lasted from the first appearance of free workers in the arena of history down to the present day. In various trades, various traditional workdays prevail; but in reality, they are seldom observed. Only where the law fixes the workday and supervises its observance can one really say that there exists a normal workday. And until now, this is the case virtually solely in the factory districts of England. Here, the ten-hour workday (10 1/2 hours on five days, 7 1/2 hours on Saturday) has been fixed for all women and for youth of 13 to 18, and since the men cannot work without them, they also come under the ten-hour workday.³ This law has been won by English factory workers by years of endurance, by the most persistent, stubborn struggle with the factory owners, by freedom of the press, the right of association and assembly, as well as by adroit utilization of the divisions in the ruling class itself. It has become the palladium of the English workers, it has gradually been extended to all important branches of industry, and last year to almost all trades, at least to all those employing women and children. The present work contains most exhaustive material on the history of this legislative regulation of the workday in England. The next «North German Imperial Diet» will also have factory regulations to discuss and in connection therewith the regulation of factory labour. We expect that none of the deputies that have been elected by German workers will proceed to discuss this bill without previously making themselves thoroughly conversant with Marx’s book. There is much to be achieved here. The divisions within the ruling class are more favourable to the workers than they ever were in England, because universal suffrage compels the ruling classes to court the favour of the workers. Under these circumstances, four or five representatives of the proletariat⁴ are a power, if they know how to use their position, if, above all, they know what is at issue, which the bourgeois do not know. And for this purpose, Marx’s book gives them all the material in ready form.

We will pass over a number of further excellent investigations of more theoretical interest and will pause only at the final chapter, which deals with the accumulation or amassing of capital. Here, it is first shown that the capitalist mode of production, that is, that inaugurated by capitalists on the one hand and wageworkers on the other, not only continually regenerates capital for the capitalist, but at the same time also continually produces the poverty of the workers; thereby, it is provided for a constant regeneration of, on the one hand, capitalists, who are the owners of all means of subsistence, all raw materials, and all instruments of labour, and, on the other hand, the broad masses of the workers, who are compelled to sell their labour-power to these capitalists for a quantum of the means of subsistence, which at best just suffices to keep them able-bodied and to bring up a new generation of able-bodied proletarians. But capital does not merely reproduce itself: it is continually increased and multiplied — and thereby its power over the propertyless class of workers. And just as it itself is reproduced on an even larger scale, so the modern capitalist mode of production reproduces the class of propertyless workers also on an even larger scale, in even larger numbers. Accumulation of capital «reproduces the capital relation on a progressive scale, more capitalists or larger capitalists at this pole, more wageworkers at that. [...] Accumulation of capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat».² Since, however, owing to the progress of machinery, owing to improved agriculture, and so on, fewer and fewer workers are necessary in order to produce the same quantity of products, since this perfecting, that is, this making the workers superfluous, is more rapid than even the growth of capital, what becomes of this ever-increasing number of workers? They form an industrial reserve army, which, when business is bad or middling, is paid below the value of its labour and is irregularly employed or is left to be cared for by public charity, but which is indispensable to the capitalist class at times when business is especially lively, as is palpably evident in England — but which under all circumstances serves to break the power of resistance of the regularly employed workers and to keep their wages down:

The greater the social wealth [...], the greater is the industrial reserve army. [...] But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in direct ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the Lazarus-layers of the working class, and the industrial reserve army, the larger is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.²

These, strictly scientifically proved — and the official economists are taking great care not to make even an attempt at a refutation — are some of the chief laws of the modern, capitalist, social system. But does this tell the whole story? By no means. Marx sharply stresses the bad aspects of capitalist production, but with equal emphasis clearly proves that this social form was necessary to develop the social productive forces to a level which will make possible an equal development worthy of human beings for all members of society. All earlier forms of society were too poor for this. Capitalist production is the first to create the wealth and the productive forces necessary for this, but at the same time, it also creates, in the numerous and oppressed workers, the social class which is compelled more and more to claim the utilization of this wealth and these productive forces for the whole of society — instead of their being utilized, as they are today, for a monopolist class.