 Capital by Karl Marx, volume 1, Editors Preface to the English Edition, 1886. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. Capital by Karl Marx, volume 1, Editors Preface to the English Edition, 1886. The publication of an English version of Das Kapital needs no apology. On the contrary, an explanation might be expected why this English version has been delayed until now, seeing that for some years past the theories advocated in this book have been constantly referred to, attacked and defended, interpreted and misinterpreted in the periodical press and the current literature of both England and America. When, soon after the author's death in 1883, it became evident that an English edition of the work was really required, Mr Samuel Moore for many years a friend of Marx and of the present writer, and then whom perhaps no one is more conversant with the book itself, consented to undertake the translation which the literary executors of Marx were anxious to lay before the public. It was understood that I should compare the manuscript with the original work and suggest such alterations as I might deem advisable. When, by and by, it was found that Mr Moore's professional occupations prevented him from finishing the translation as quickly as we all desired, we gladly accepted Dr Aveling's offer to undertake a portion of the work. At the same time, Mrs Aveling, Marx's youngest daughter, offered to check the quotations and to restore the original text of the numerous passages taken from English authors and blue books and translated by Marx into German. This has been done throughout with but a few unavoidable exceptions. The following portions of the book have been translated by Dr Aveling. All the rest of the book has been done by Mr Moore. While thus each of the translators is responsible for his share of the work only, I bear a joint responsibility for the whole. The third German edition, which has been made the basis of our work throughout, was prepared by me in 1883 with the assistance of notes left by the author indicating the passages of the second edition to be repeated. The capital by Karl Marx, translation by M. J. Roy, entirely revised by the author, Paris La Charte. This translation, especially the latter part of the book, contains considerable alterations in and additions to the text of the book. The first German edition is published in 1873 by the author, and the second edition is published in 1873. The first German edition is published in 1873. The second edition, which is part of the book, contains considerable alterations in and additions to the text of the second German edition. End footnote. The alterations, thus affected in the text of the second edition, generally coincided with the changes prescribed by Marx in a set of manuscript instructions for an English translation that was planned about ten years ago in America but abandoned chiefly for want of a fit and proper translator. This manuscript was placed at our disposal by a friend, Mr F. A. Sorge, of Hoboken, New Jersey. It designates some further interpolations from the French edition, but being so many years older than the final instructions for the third edition, I did not consider myself at liberty to make use of it otherwise than sparingly and chiefly in cases where it helped us over difficulties. In the same way, the French text has been referred to in most of the difficult passages as an indicator of what the author himself was prepared to sacrifice wherever something of the full import of the original had to be sacrificed in the rendering. There is, however, one difficulty we could not spare the reader. The use of certain terms in a sense different from what they have, not only in common life, but in ordinary political economy. But this was unavoidable. Every new aspect of a science involves a revolution in the technical terms of that science. This is best shown by chemistry where the whole of the terminology is radically changed about once in twenty years and where you will hardly find a single organic compound that has not gone through a series of different names. Political economy has generally been content to take, just as they were, the terms of commercial and industrial life and to operate with them entirely failing to see that by so doing it can find itself within the narrow circles of ideas expressed by those terms. Thus, though perfectly aware that both profits and rent are but subdivisions, fragments of that unpaid part of the product, which the labourer has to supply to his employer, its first appropriator, though not its ultimate exclusive owner, yet even classic political economy never went beyond the received notions of profits and rents, never examined this unpaid part of the product called by Marx's surplus product in its integrity as a whole and therefore never arrived at a clear comprehension either of its origin and nature or of the laws that regulate the subsequent distribution of its value. Similarly, all industry, not agricultural or handicraft, is indiscriminately comprised in the term of manufacture and thereby the distinction is obliterated between two great and essentially different periods of economic history, the period of manufacture proper based on the division of manual labour and the period of modern industry based on machinery. It is, however, self-evident that a theory which views modern capitalist production as a mere passing stage in the economic history of mankind must make use of terms different from those habitual to writers who look upon that form of production as imperishable and final. A word respecting the author's method of quoting may not be out of place. In the majority of cases, the quotations serve in the usual way as documentary evidence in support of assertions made in the text. But in many instances passages from economic writers are quoted in order to indicate when, where and by whom a certain proposition was for the first time clearly enunciated. This is done in cases where the proposition quoted is of importance as being a more or less adequate expression of the conditions of social production and exchange, prevalent at the time, and quite irrespective of Marx's recognition or otherwise of its general validity. These quotations therefore supplement the text by a running commentary taken from the history of the science. Our translation comprises the first book of the work only, but this first book is in a great measure a whole in itself and has for 20 years ranked as an independent work. The second book, edited in German by me in 1885, is decidedly incomplete without the third, which cannot be published before the end of 1887. When book three has been brought out in the original German, it will then be soon enough to think about preparing an English edition of both. Das Kapital is often called on the continent, the Bible of the working class, that the conclusions arrived at in this work are daily more and more becoming the fundamental principles of the great working class movement, not only in Germany and Switzerland, but in France, in Holland and Belgium, in America, and even in Italy and Spain, that everywhere the working class more and more recognises its conclusions, the most adequate expression of its condition and of its aspirations, nobody acquainted with that movement will deny. And in England too, the theories of Marx, even at this moment, exercise a powerful influence upon the socialist movement, which is spreading in the ranks of cultured people no less than in those of the working class. But that is not all. The time is rapidly approaching when a thorough examination of England's economic position will impose itself as an irresistible national necessity. The working of the industrial system of this country, impossible without a constant and rapid extension of production and therefore of markets, is coming to a dead stop. Free trade has exhausted its resources. Even Manchester doubts this, its quantum economic gospel. Footnote. At the quarterly meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, held this afternoon, a warm discussion took place on the subject of free trade. A resolution was moved to the effect that, quote, having waited in vain 40 years for other nations to follow the free trade example of England, this chamber thinks the time has now arrived to reconsider that position, end quote. The resolution was rejected by a majority of only one, the figures being 21 for and 22 against. Evening standard, November 1st, 1886. End footnote. Foreign industry, rapidly developing, stares English production in the face everywhere. Not only in protected, but also in neutral markets and even on this side of the channel. While the productive power increases in a geometric, the extension of markets proceeds at best in an arithmetic ratio. The decennial cycle of stagnation, prosperity, overproduction and crisis ever recurrent from 1825 to 1867 seems indeed to have run its course, but only to land us in the slough of despond, of a permanent and chronic depression. The sidefall period of prosperity will not come as often as we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms so often do they again vanish into air. Meanwhile, each succeeding winter brings up afresh the question, what to do with the unemployed? But while the number of the unemployed keeps swelling from year to year, there is nobody to answer that question. And we can almost calculate the moment when the unemployed, losing patients, will take their own fate into their own hands. Surely at such a moment, the voice ought to be heard of a man whose whole theory is the result of a lifelong study of the economic history and condition of England, and whom that study led to the conclusion that, at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be affected entirely by peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit without a pro-slavery rebellion to this peaceful and legal revolution. Frederick Engels, November 5th, 1886. End of Editor's Preface Read by Karl Manchester, 2007. Capital Volume 1 by Karl Marx Preface to the first German edition. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Karl Manchester, 2007. Capital Volume 1 by Karl Marx Preface to the first German edition, 1867. The work, the first volume of which I now submit to the public, forms the continuation of my zoo critique of their politician economy, a contribution to the criticism of political economy, published in 1859. The long pause between the first part and the continuation is due to an illness of many years' duration that again and again interrupted my work. The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the first three chapters of this volume. This is not done merely for the sake of connection and completeness. The presentation of the subject matter is improved. As far as circumstances in any way permit, many points only hinted at in the earlier book are here worked out more fully, whilst conversely, points worked out fully there are only touched upon in this volume. The sections on the history of the theories of value and of money are now, of course, left out altogether. The reader of the earlier work will find, however, in the notes to the first chapter additional sources of reference relative to the history of those theories. Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will therefore present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. Footnote. This is the more necessary, as even the section of Ferdinand LaSalle's work against Shultzad Eliech, in which he professes to give the intellectual quintessence of my explanations on these subjects, contains important mistakes. If Ferdinand LaSalle has borrowed almost literally from my writings and without any acknowledgement, all the general theoretical propositions in his economic works, e.g. those on the historical character of capital, on the connection between the conditions of production and the mode of production, etc., etc., even to the terminology created by me, this may perhaps be due to purposes of propaganda. I am here, of course, not speaking of his detailed working out and application of these propositions with which I have nothing to do. End Footnote. The value form whose fully developed shape is the money form is very elementary and simple. Nonetheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than the cells of the body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity form of the product of labour or value form of the commodity is the economic cell form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy. With the exception of the section of value form, therefore, this volume cannot stand accused on the score of difficulty. I presuppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself. The physicist either observes physical phenomena where they occur in their most typical form and most free from disturbing influence or wherever possible he makes experiments under conditions that assure the occurrence of the phenomena in its normality. In this work, I have to examine the capitalist mode of production and the conditions of production and exchange corresponding to that mode. Up to the present time, their classic ground is England. That is the reason why England is used as the chief illustration in the development of my theoretical ideas. If, however, the German reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition that he is a British industrial and agricultural labourers, or in optimist fashion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany things are not nearly so bad, I must plainly tell him Dete fabula narrateur. It is a view that the story has told. Horace. Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that is more developed industrially only shows to the less developed the image of its own future. But apart from this, where capitalist production is fully naturalised among the Germans, for instance in the factories proper, the condition of things is much worse than in England, because the counterpoise of the factory acts is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like the rest of continental western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils, oppressors, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes of production with their inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisi le vif. Dead holds the living in his grasp. Formula of French common law. The social statistics of Germany and the rest of continental western Europe are in comparison with those of England, wretchedly compiled. But they raise the veil just enough to let us catch a glimpse of the medjusa head behind it. We should be appalled at the state of things at home if, as in England, our governments and parliaments are pointed periodically commissions of inquiry into economic conditions. If these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers to get at the truth, if it were possible to find for this purpose men as competence as free from partisanship and respect of persons as are the English factory inspectors, her medical report is on public health, her commissioners of inquiry into the exploitation of women and children into housing and food. Perseus wore a magic cap down over his eyes and ears as a make believed that there are no monsters. Let us not deceive ourselves on this. As in the 18th century the American war of independence sounded a toxin for the European middle class so that in the 19th century the American civil war sounded it for the European working class. In England, the process of social disintegration is palpable. When it has reached a certain point it must react on the continent. There it will take a form more brutal or more humane according to the degree of development of the working class itself. Apart from higher motives therefore their own most important interests dictate to the classes that are for the nonce the ruling ones the removal of all legally removable hindrances to the free development of the working class. For this reason as well as others I have given so larger space in this volume to the history, the details and the results of English factory legislation. One nation can and should learn from others and even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement and it is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society it can neither clear by bold leaps nor remove by legal enactments the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development but it can shorten and lessen the birth pangs. To prevent possible misunderstandings a word I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose i seen through rose tinted glasses but here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories embodiments of particular class relations and class interests. My standpoint from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains however much he may subjectively raise himself above them. In the domain of political economy free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains the peculiar nature of the materials it deals with summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast the furies of private interest the English established church for example will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 139th of its income. Nowadays atheism is called polyvis a relatively slight sin contrast with mortal sin as compared with criticism of existing property relations nevertheless there is an unmistakable advance I refer for example to the blue book published within the last few weeks correspondence with her majesty's missions abroad regarding industrial questions and trades unions. The representatives of the English crown in foreign countries there declare in so many words that in Germany, in France to be brief in all the civilised states of the European continent radical change in the existing relations between capital and labour is as evident and inevitable as in England at the same time on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean Mr Wade, vice president of the United States declared in public meetings that after the abolition of slavery a radical change of the relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day these are signs of the times not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks they do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen or that within the ruling classes themselves a foreboding is dawning that the present society is no solid crystal but an organism capable of change and is constantly changing the second volume of this book will treat of the process of the circulation of capital, book two and of the varied forms assumed by capital in the course of its development book three the third and last volume, book four the history of the theory every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome as to prejudices of so called public opinion to which I have never made concessions now as a foretime the maxim of the great Florentine is mine follow your own course and let people talk paraphrased from Dante Karl Marx 10 July 25 1867 end of the preface to the first German edition read by Karl Manchester 2007 capital by Karl Marx afterward to the second edition 1873 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org this reading by Karl Manchester 2007 capital by Karl Marx afterward to the second edition 1873 to the present moment political economy in Germany is a foreign science Gustav von Gulich in his historical description of commerce industry etc especially in the two first volumes published in 1830 has examined at length the historical circumstances that prevented in Germany the development of the capitalist mode of production and consequently the development in that country of modern bourgeois society thus the soil wence political economy springs was wanting this science had to be imported from England and France as a ready made article its German professors remained school wise the theoretical expression of a foreign reality was turned in their hands into a collection of dogmas interpreted by them in terms of the petty trading world around them and therefore misinterpreted the feeling of scientific impotence a feeling not holy to be repressed and the uneasy consciousness of having to touch on a subject in reality foreign to them was but imperfectly concealed either under a parade of literary and historical erudition or by an admixture of extraneous material borrowed from the so-called Cameral Sciences a medley of smatterings through whose purgatory the hopeless candidate for the German bureaucracy has to pass since 1848 capitalist production has developed rapidly in Germany and at the present time it is in the full bloom of speculation and swindling but fate is still un-propitious to our professional economists at the time when they were able to deal with political economy in a straightforward fashion modern economic conditions did not actually exist in Germany and as soon as these conditions did come into existence they did so under circumstances that no longer allowed of there being really and impartially investigated within the bounds of the bourgeois horizon in so far i.e. as the capitalist regime is looked upon as the absolutely final form of social production instead of as a passing historical phase of its evolution political economy can remain a science only so long as the class struggle is latent or manifests itself only in isolated and sporadic phenomena let us take England its political economy belongs to the period in which the class struggle was as yet undeveloped its last great representative Ricardo in the end consciously makes the antagonism of class interests of wages and profits of profits and rent the starting point of his investigations naively taking this antagonism for a social law of nature but by this start the science of bourgeois economy had reached the limits beyond which it could not pass already in the lifetime of Ricardo and in opposition to him it was met by criticism in the person of Sismondi footnote see my work Zurgritique etc page 39 the succeeding period from 1820 to 1830 was notable in England for scientific activity in the domain of political economy it was the time as well as the vulgarising and extending of Ricardo's theory as to the contest of that theory with the old school splendid tournaments were held what was done then is little known to the continent generally because the polemic is for the most part scattered through articles in reviews occasional literature and pamphlets the unprejudiced character of this polemic although the theory of Ricardo already serves in exceptional cases as a weapon of attack upon bourgeois economy is explained by the circumstances of the time on the one hand modern industry itself was only just emerging from the age of childhood as is shown by the fact that with the crisis of 1825 it for the first time opens the periodic cycle of its modern life on the other hand the clash struggle between capital and labour is forced into the background politically by the discord between the governments and the feudal aristocracy gathered around the holy alliance on the one hand and the popular masses led by the bourgeoisie on the other economically by the quarrel between industrial capital and aristocratic landed property a quarrel that in France was concealed by the opposition between small and large landed property and that in England broke out openly after the Corn Laws the literature of political economy in England at this time caused to mind the stormy forward movement in France after Dr Quesney's death but only as a Saint Martin's summer reminds us of spring with the year 1830 came the decisive crisis in France and in England the bourgeoisie had conquered political power thenceforth a clash struggle practically as well as theoretically took on more and more outspoken and threatening forms I sounded the knell of scientific bourgeoisie economy it was thenceforth no longer a question whether this theorem or that was true but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient politically dangerous or not in place of disinterested inquirers there were hired prize fighters in place of genuine scientific research the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic still even the obtrusive pamphlets with which the anti-corn law league led by the manufacturer's coban and bright deluge the world have a historic interest if no scientific one on account of their polemic against the landed aristocracy but since then the free trade legislation inaugurated by Sir Robert Peale as deprived vulgar economy of this its last sting the continental revolution of 1848-9 also had its reaction in England men who still claimed some scientific standing and aspired to be something more than mere sophists and sycophants of the ruling classes tried to harmonize the political economy of capital with the claims no longer to be ignored of the proletariat hence a shallow syncretism of which John Stuart Mill is the best representative it is a declaration of bankruptcy by bourgeois economy an event on which the great Russian scholar and critic Enn at Shurnishowsky has thrown the light of a master mind in his outlines of political economy according to Mill in Germany therefore the capitalist mode of production came to a head after its antagonistic character had already in France and England shown itself in a fierce strife of classes and meanwhile moreover the German proletariat had attained a much more clear class consciousness than the German bourgeoisie thus at the very moment when a bourgeois science of political economy seemed at last possible in Germany it had in reality become impossible under these circumstances its professors fell into two groups the one set prudent practical business folk flocked to the banner of Bastia the most superficial and therefore the most adequate representative of the apologetic of vulgar economy the other proud of the professional dignity of their science followed John Stuart Mill in his attempt to reconcile irreconcilables just as in the classical time of bourgeois economy so also in the time of its decline the Germans remained mere school boys imitators and followers petty retailers and hawkers in the service of the great foreign wholesale concern the peculiar historic development of German society therefore forbids in that country all the original work in bourgeois economy but not the criticism of that economy so far as such criticism represents a class it can only represent the class whos vocation in history is the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and the final abolition of all classes the proletariat the learned and unlearned spokesman of the German bourgeoisie tried at first to kill Das Kapital by silence as they had managed to do with my earlier writings as soon as they found that these tactics no longer fitted the conditions of the time they wrote under pretense of criticising my book descriptions quote for the tranquilisation of the bourgeois mind end quote but they found in the workers press see for example Joseph Dietzgen's articles in the valk start antagonists stronger than themselves to whom down to this very day they owe a reply footnote the mealy-mouthed babblers of German vulgar economy fell foul of the style of my book no one can feel the literary shortcomings in Das Kapital more strongly than I myself yet I will for the benefit and enjoyment of these gentlemen and their public quote in this connection one English and one Russian notice the Saturday review always hostile to my views said in its notice of the first edition quote the presentation of the subject invests the driest economic questions with a certain peculiar charm end quote the Saint Petersburg Journal sanct Petersburg ski viadomasty in its issue of April 20th 1872 says quote the presentation of the subject with the exception of one or two exceptionally special parts is distinguished by its comprehensibility by the general reader its clearness and in spite of the scientific intricacy of the subject by an unusual liveliness in this respect the author in no way resembles the majority of German scholars who write their books in a language so dry and obscure that the heads of ordinary mortals are cracked by it end quote end footnote an excellent Russian translation of Das Kapital appeared in the spring of 1872 the addition of 3000 copies is already nearly exhausted as early as 1871 a Sieber Professor of Political Economy in the University of Kiev in his work David Ricardo's Theory of Value and of Capital referred to my theory of value of money and of capital as in its fundamentals a necessary sequel to the teaching of Smith and Ricardo that which astonishes the western European in the reading of this excellent work is the author's consistent and firm grasp of the purely theoretical position that the method employed in Das Kapital has been little understood is shown by the various conceptions contradictory one to another that have been formed of it Thus the Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that on the one hand I treat economics metaphysically and on the other hand imagine can find myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts instead of writing receipts contest ones for the cook shops of the future in answer to the reproach in Ray metaphysics Professor Sieber has it quote in so far as it deals with actual theory the method of Marx is the deductive method of the whole English school a school whose failings and virtues are common to the best theoretical economists end quote Monsieur Bloch, le terrorisien de socialisme en Allemagne extrait du journal Positiviste, Jullet et Haute 1872 makes the discovery that my method is analytic and says quote par ses tufraeg Monsieur Marx se clas parmi les esprits analytiques les plus éminents end quote with this work Mr Marx puts himself among the most eminent of analytical minds German reviews of course shriek out at Hegelian Sophistics the European messenger of St Petersburg in an article dealing exclusively with the method of Das Kapital main number 1872 pages 427 to 436 finds my method of inquiry severely realistic but my method of presentation unfortunately German dialectical it says quote at first sight if the judgment is based on the external form of the presentation of the subject Marx is the most ideal of ideal philosophers always in the German i.e. the bad sense of the word but in point of fact he is infinitely more realistic than all his forerunners in the work of economic criticism he can in no sense be called an idealist end quote I cannot answer the writer better than by aid of a few extracts from his own criticism of my readers to whom the Russian original is inaccessible after a quotation from the preface to my criticism of political economy Berlin 1859 pages 4 to 7 where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method the writer goes on quote the one thing which is of moment to Marx is to find the laws of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned and not only is that law of moment to him which governs these phenomena in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connection within a given historical period a still greater moment to him is the law of their variation of their development i.e. of their transition from one into another from one series of connections into a different one this law once discovered he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life consequently Marx only troubles himself about one thing to show by rigid scientific investigation the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions and to establish as impartially as possible the facts that serve him for fundamental starting points for this is quite enough if he proves at the same time both the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over and this all the same whether men believe or do not believe it whether they are conscious or unconscious of it Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence but rather on the contrary determining that will, consciousness and intelligence if in the history of civilization the conscious element plays a part so subordinate then it is self evident that a critical inquiry whose subject matter is civilization can less than anything else have for its basis any form of or any result of consciousness that is to say that not the idea but the material phenomena alone can serve as its starting point such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact not with ideas but with another fact for this inquiry the one thing of moment is that both facts can be investigated as accurately as possible and that they actually form each with respect to the other different momenta of an evolution but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves but it will be said the general laws of economic life are one and the same no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past this marks directly denies according to him such abstract laws do not exist on the contrary in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own as soon as society has outlived a given period of development and is passing over from one given stage to another it begins to be subject also to other laws in a word economic life offers as a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution on other branches of biology the old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry a more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals nay one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole of the variations of their individual organs of the different conditions in which those organs function etc marks for example denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places he asserts on the contrary that every stage of development has its own law of population with the varying degree of development of productive power social conditions and the laws governing them vary too whilst marks sets himself the task following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital he is only formulating in a strictly scientific manner the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have the scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one and it is this value that in point of fact marks his book has end quote whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method in this striking and as far as concerns my own application of it generous way what else is he picturing but the dialectic method of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry the latter has to appropriate the material in detail to realise its different forms of development to trace out their inner connection only after this work is done can the actual movement be adequately described if this is done successfully if the life of the subject matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a prior reconstruction my dialectical method is not only different from the Hegelian but is its direct opposite to Hegel the life process of the human brain i.e. the process of thinking which under the name of the idea he even transforms into an independent subject is the demiurgus of the real world and the real world is only the external phenomenal form of the idea with me on the contrary the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought the mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly 30 years ago at a time when it was still the fashion but just as I was working at the first volume of Das Kapital it was the good pleasure of the pivish arrogant mediocre epigonoi who now talk large in cultured Germany to treat Hegel in the same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time at treated Spinoza i.e. as a dead dog I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker and even here and there in the chapter on the theory of value cichetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him the mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner with him it is standing on its head it must be turned right side up again if you would discover the rational curdle within the mystical shell in its mystified form dialectic became the fashion in Germany because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things in its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors because it includes in its comprehension an affirmative recognition of the existing state of things at the same time also the recognition of the negation of that state of its inevitable breaking up because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence because it lets nothing impose upon it and is in its essence critical and revolutionary the contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impressed themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle through which modern industry runs and whose crowning point is the universal crisis that crisis is once again approaching although as yet but in its preliminary stage and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom of the new holy proshogeomanic empire Karl Marx London January 24th 1873 End of Afterward Chapter 1, Section 1 of Capital Volume 1 This is a Librivox recording All Librivox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org Capital, Volume 1 by Karl Marx Chapter 1, Section 1 The two factors of a commodity Use value and value The substance of value and the magnitude of value The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as quote an immense accumulation of commodities end quote footnote Karl Marx 1859 Chapter 3, End Footnote Its unit being a single commodity Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity A commodity is in the first place an object outside us a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another The nature of such wants whether for instance they spring from the stomach or from fancy makes no difference footnote quote Desire implies want It is the appetite of the mind and as natural as hunger to the body The greatest number of things have their value from supplying the wants of the mind end quote Nicholas Barben A discourse concerning coining the new money lighter in answer to Mr Locke's considerations etc London 1696 End footnote Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants whether directly as means of subsistence or indirectly as means of production Every useful thing as iron, paper etc may be looked at from the two points of view of quality and quantity It is an assemblage of many properties and may therefore be of use in various ways To discover the various uses of things is the work of history footnote quote Things have an intrinsic value end quote This is Barben's special term for value in use quote Which in all places have the same virtue as the lodestone to attract iron end quote The property which the magnet possesses of attracting iron became of use only after by means of that property the polarity of the magnet had been discovered end footnote So also is the establishment of socially recognized standards of measure for the quantities of these useful objects The diversity of these measures has its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured partly in convention The utility of a thing makes it a use value footnote quote The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities of human life end quote John Locke, some considerations on the consequences of the lowering of interest 1691 In English writers of the 17th century we frequently find worth in the sense of value in use and value in the sense of exchange value This is quite in accordance with the spirit of a language that likes to use a teutonic word for the actual thing and a romance word for its reflection end footnote But this utility is not a thing of air Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity it has no existence apart from that commodity A commodity such as iron, corn or a diamond is therefore so far as it is a material thing a use value something useful This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities When treating a use value we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities such as dozens of watches yards of linen or tons of iron The use values of commodities furnish the material for a special study that of the commercial knowledge of commodities Footnote In bourgeois societies the economic fixio-juris prevails that everyone as a buyer possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of commodities end footnote Use values become a reality only by use or consumption They also constitute the substance of all wealth whatever may be the social form of that wealth In the form of society we are about to consider they are in addition the material depositories of exchange value Exchange value at first sight presents itself as a quantitative relation as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of another sort Footnote Quote Value consists in the exchange relation between one thing and another between a given amount of one product and a given amount of another Laetrasne de l'onterès sociale physiocrate Paris 1846 End footnote A relation constantly changing with time and place Hence exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative and consequently an intrinsic value i.e. an exchange value that is inseparately connected with current in commodities seems a contradiction in terms Footnote Quote Let us consider the matter a little more closely A given commodity, for example a quarter of wheat is exchanged for X blacking Y silk or Z gold etc in short, for other commodities in the most different proportions Instead of one exchange value the wheat has therefore a great many but since X blacking Y silk or Z gold etc each represents the exchange value of one quarter of wheat X blacking Y silk Z gold etc must as exchange values be replaceable by each other or equal to each other Therefore, first the valid exchange values of a given commodity express something equal Secondly, exchange value generally is only the mode of expression, the phenomenal form of something contained in it yet distinguishable from it Let us take two commodities for example corn and iron The proportions in which they are exchangeable whatever those proportions may be can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron for example one quarter corn equals X hundred weight of iron What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things in one quarter of corn and in X hundred weight of iron there exists in equal quantities something common to both The two things must therefore be equal to a third which in itself is neither the one nor the other Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear In order to calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures we decompose them into triangles But the area of the triangle itself is expressed by something totally different from its visible figure namely by half the product of the base multiplied by the altitude In the same way the exchange values of commodities must be capable of being expressed in terms of something common to them all of which thing they represent a greater or less quantity This common something cannot be either a geometrical a chemical or any other natural property of commodities Such properties claim our attention only in so far as they affect the utility of those commodities make them use values But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use value Then one use value is just as good as another provided only it be present in sufficient quantity or as old Barben says Quote One sort of wares are as good as another if the values be equal There is no difference or distinction in things of equal value One's worth of lead or iron is of as great value as 100 pounds worth of silver or gold End quote As use values commodities are above all of different qualities But as exchange values they are merely different quantities and consequently do not contain an atom of use value If we then leave out of consideration the use value of commodities they have only one common property left that of being products of labour But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands If we make abstraction from its use value we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value We see in it no longer a table a house, yarn or any other useful thing Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner the mason, the spinner or of any other definite kind of productive labour Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them and the concrete forms of that labour There is nothing left but what is common to them all all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour human labour in the abstract is now considered the residue of each of these products It consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each a mere congulation of the homogeneous human labour of labour power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure All that these things now tell us is that human labour power has been expended in their production that human labour is embodied in them When looked at as crystals of this social substance common to them all they are values We have seen that when commodities are exchanged their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value but if we abstract from their use value there remains their value as defined above therefore the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value of commodities whenever they are exchanged is their value The progress of our investigation will show that exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed For the present however we have to consider the nature of value independently of this its form A use value or useful article therefore has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it How then is the magnitude of this value to be measured plainly by the quantity of the value creating substance the labour contained in the article The quantity of labour however is measured by its duration and labour time in turn finds its standard in weeks, days and hours Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it the more idle and unskillful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be because more time would be required in its production The labour however that forms the substance of value is homogeneous human labour expenditure of one uniform labour power The total labour power of society which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power composed though it be innumerable individual units Each of these units is the same as any other so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society and takes effect as such that is so far as it requires for producing a commodity no more time than is needed on an average no more than is socially necessary The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time The introduction of power looms into England probably reduced by one half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth The handloom weavers as a matter of fact continued to require the same time as before but for all that the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour social labour and consequently fell to half of its form of value We see then that that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary or the labour time socially necessary for its production Footnote The value of them, the necessities of life, when they are exchanged the one for another, is regulated by the quantity of labour necessarily required and commonly taken in producing them Some thoughts on the interest of money in general and particularly in the public funds etc This remarkable anonymous work written in the last century bears no date it is clear however from internal evidence that it appeared in the reign of George II about 1739 or 1740 End footnote Each individual commodity in this connection is to be considered as an average sample of its class Footnote All the productions of the same kind do not form properly only a mass whose price is determined in general and without regard to particular circumstances End quote Properly speaking, all products of the same kind form a single mass and their price is determined in general and without regard to particular circumstances The troesn End footnote Commodities therefore in which equal quantities of labour are embodied or which can be produced in the same time have the same value The value of one commodity is to the value of any other as the labour time necessary for the production of the one is to that necessary for the production of the other Quote As values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labour time End quote Footnote The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant if the labour time required for its production also remained constant But the latter changes with every variation in the productiveness of labour This productiveness is determined by various circumstances amongst others by the average amount of skill of the workman the rate of science and the degree of its practical application the social organisation of production the extent and capabilities of the means of production and by physical conditions for example the same amount of labour in favourable seasons is embodied in eight bushels of corn and in unfavourable only in four The same labour extracts from rich mines more metal than from poor mines are a very rare occurrence in the earth's surface and hence their discovery costs on average a great deal of labour time Consequently much labour is represented in a small compass Jacob doubts whether gold has ever been paid for at its full value This applies still more to diamonds According to Eschveger the total production of the Brazilian diamond mines for the 80 years ending 1823 had not realised the price of one and a half years average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of the same country although the diamonds cost much more labour and therefore represented more value With richer mines the same quantity of labour would embody itself in more diamonds and their value would fall If we could succeed at a small expenditure of labour in converting carbon into diamonds their value might fall below that of bricks In general the greater the productiveness of labour the less is the labour time required for the production of an article the less is the amount of labour crystallised in that article and the less is its value and vice versa the less the productiveness of labour the greater is the labour time required for the production of an article and the greater is its value The value of a commodity therefore varies directly as the quantity yn gyfnodd o'r ysgufyniadau cymru i'w fawr yn ymdegau. Mae cyfnodd maen nhw'n cael ei fawr yn ei fawr, mae ddweud o'r caso yw ysgufyniadau i'w ymdegau yn ymdegau ei fawr. Felly mae'r iawn, ysgol ymdegau, y meddwl yma. Mae cyfnodd maen nhw'n cael ei fawr, ac mae'r ddweud o'r ysgufyniadau ei fawr, mae ddweud o'r cymoddau. Os yw cyfnodd yn fawr iawn iddyn nhw, the produce of his own labour creates indeed use values but not commodities in order to produce the latter. He must not only produce use values but use values for others. Social use values. Parentheses. And not only for others without more. The medieval peasant produced quit rent corn for his feudal lord and tith corn for his parson, but neither the quit rent corn neu y Tythcorn wedi gweld cymodau yn ei gwybod gyda'r ffaith y mae'n ei fathau ymddangos gyda'r adnodd. A i ddim yn cymodau, y bydd y bydd y bydd yn eisiau os ymddangos ymddangos yng nghymru, oherwydd y bydd yn ymdeg mwy o'r ffordd. End Phrenthysau. Fodolwydwch. Fodolwydwch wedi bod yn ei gwybod ar y dyfodol, at y penderfyn yng nghymru, yr adnodd y bydd yn ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos yw cymodau. Yng nghylch, 4th German edition. End footnote. Lastly, nothing can have value without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it. The labour does not count as labour and therefore creates no value. End of Chapter 1, Section 1. Chapter 1, Section 2 of Capital Volume 1. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit Librivox.org. This reading by Karl Manchester 2007. With Italian by Ricardo. Capital Volume 1 by Karl Marx. Chapter 1, Section 2. The two-fold character of the labour embodied in commodities. At first sight, a commodity presented itself to us as a complex of two things. Use value and exchange value. Later on, we saw also that Labour too possesses the same two-fold nature. For so far as it finds expression in value, it does not possess the same characteristics that belong to it as a creator of use values. I was the first to point out and to examine critically this two-fold nature of the labour contained in commodities. As this point is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns, we must go more into detail. Let us take two commodities such as a coat and ten yards of linen and let the former be double the value of the latter so that if ten yards of linen equals W, the coat equals 2W. The coat is a use value that satisfies a particular want. Its existence is the result of a special sort of productive activity, the nature of which is determined by its aim, mode of operation, subject, means and result. The labour whose utility is thus represented by the value in use of its product or which manifests itself by making its product a use value, we call useful labour. In this connection, we consider only its useful effect. As the coat and the linen are two qualitatively different use values, so also are the two forms of labour that produce them, tailoring and weaving. Were these two objects not qualitatively different, not produced respectively by labour of different quality, they could not stand to each other in the relation of commodities. Coats are not exchanged for coats. One use value is not exchanged for another of the same kind. To all the different varieties of values in use, they correspond as many different kinds of useful labour, classified according to the order, genus, species and variety to which they belong in the social division of labour. This division of labour is a necessary condition for the production of commodities, but it does not follow conversely that the production of commodities is a necessary condition for the division of labour. In the primitive Indian community, there is social division of labour without production of commodities, or to take an example near a home, in every factory the labour is divided according to a system, but this division is not brought about by the operatives mutually exchanging their individual products. Only such products can become commodities with regard to each other as result from different kinds of labour, each kind being carried on independently and for the account of private individuals. To resume then, in the use value of each commodity there is contained useful labour, i.e. productive activity of a definite kind and exercised with a definite aim. Use values cannot confront each other as commodities unless the useful labour embodied in them is qualitatively different in each of them. In a community, the produce of which in general takes the form of commodities, i.e. in a community of commodity producers, this qualitative difference between the useful forms of labour that are carried on independently by individual producers each on their own account develops into a complex system, a social division of labour. Anyhow, whether the coat be worn by the tailor or by his customer, in either case it operates as a use value, nor is the relation between the coat and the labour that produced it altered by the circumstance that tailoring may have become a special trade, an independent branch of the social division of labour. Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years without a single man becoming a tailor. But coats and linen like every other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous produce of nature must invariably owe their existence to a special productive activity, exercised with a definite aim, an activity that appropriates particular nature-given materials to particular human wants. So far, therefore, as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition independent of all forms of society for the existence of the human race. It is an eternal nature-imposed necessity without which there can be no material exchanges between man and nature and therefore no life. The use values, coat, linen, etc, i.e. the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements, matter and labour. If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by nature without the help of man. The latter can only work as nature does, that is, by changing the form of matter. Footnote. All the phenomena of the universe, whether they are produced by the hand of man, i.e. by the universal laws of physics, do not give us the idea of current creation, but only of a modification of matter. To lean and separate are the only elements that the human genre finds by analysing the idea of reproduction. And so much is the reproduction of value. Value in use, although very in this passage of his controversy with the physiocrats, is not himself quite certain of the kind of value he is speaking of. And of wealth, if the earth, the air and the water in the fields are moved in grain, as if, with the hand of man, the gluten of an insect is moved in velvet, i.e. some pieces of metal are organised to form a repetition. Pietro Veri. Meddwl o'r economia politica, first printed in 1773 in Custodi's edition of the Italian Economists. Parte moderna, end footnote. Name more. In this work of changing the form, he is constantly helped by natural forces. We see then that Labour is not the only source of material wealth of use values produced by Labour. As William Petty puts it, Labour is its father and the earth its mother. Let us now pass from the commodity considered as a use value to the value of commodities. By our assumption, the coat is worth twice as much as the linen, but this is a mere quantitative difference, which for the present does not concern us. We bear in mind, however, that if the value of the coat is double that of 10 yards of linen, 20 yards of linen must have the same value as one coat. So far as they are values, the coat and the linen are things of a like substance. Objective expressions of essentially identical labour. But tailoring and weaving are qualitatively different kinds of labour. There are, however, states of society in which one and the same man does tailoring and weaving alternately, in which case these two forms of labour and mere modifications of the labour of the same individual are not special and fixed functions of different persons. Just as the coat, which our tailor makes one day and the trousers which he makes another day, imply only a variation in the labour of one and the same individual. Moreover, we see at a glance that, in our capitalist society, a given portion of human labour is in accordance with the varying demand at one time supplied in the form of tailoring, at another in the form of weaving. This change may possibly not take place without friction, but take place it must. Productive activity, if we leave out of sight a special form vis the useful character of the labour, is nothing but the expenditure of human labour power. Tailoring and weaving, though qualitatively different productive activities, are each a productive expenditure of human brains, nerves and muscles, and in this sense are human labour. They are but two different modes of expending human labour power. Of course, this labour power which remains the same under all its modifications must have attained a certain pitch of development before it can be expended in a multiplicity of modes. But the value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human labour in general. And just as in society a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere man on the other hand a very shabby part. Footnote, compare Hegel, philosophy desrects. Berlin, 1840. End footnote. So here with mere human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour power, i.e. of the labour power which on average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of every human individual. Simple average labour, it is true, varies in character in different countries and at different times, but in a particular society it is given. Unskilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified or rather as multiplied simple labour. A given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour represents a definite quantity of the latter labour alone. Footnote, the reader must note that we are not speaking here of the wages or value that the labourer gets for a given labour time, but of the value of the commodity in which that labour time is materialised. Wages is a category that as yet has no existence at the present stage of our investigation. End footnote. The different proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as their standard are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers and consequently appears to be fixed by custom. For simplicity's sake we shall henceforth account every kind of labour to be unskilled simple labour. By this we do no more than save ourselves the trouble of making the reduction. Just as therefore in viewing the coat and linen as values we abstract from their different use values so it is with the labour represented by those values. We disregard the difference between its useful forms weaving and tailoring. As the use values coat and linen are combinations of special productive activities with cloth and yarn while the values coat and linen are on the other hand mere homogeneous congelations of undifferentiated labour. So the labour embodied in these latter values does not count by virtue of its productive relation with cloth and yarn but only as being expenditure of human labour power. Tailoring and weaving are necessary factors in the creation of the use values coat and linen precisely because these two kinds of labour are of different qualities but only insofar as abstraction is made from their special qualities only insofar as both possess the same quality of being human labour do tailoring and weaving in the absence of the values of the same articles. Coats and linen however are not merely values but values of definite magnitude and according to our assumption the coat is worth twice as much as the ten yards of linen. Wence this difference in their values it is owing to the fact that the linen contains only half as much labour as the coat and consequently that in the production of the latter labour power must have been expended during twice as necessary for the production of the former. While therefore with reference to use value the labour contained in a commodity counts only qualitatively with reference to value it counts only quantitatively and must first be reduced to human labour pure and simple. In the former case it is a question of how and what in the latter of how much, how long a time since the magnitude of the value of a commodity represents only the quantity of labour embodied in it it follows that all commodities when taken in certain proportions must be equal in value. If the productive power of all the different sorts of useful labour required for the production of a coat remains unchanged the sum of the values of the coats produced increases with their number. If one coat represents x days labour two coats represents two x days labour and so on but assume that the duration of the labour necessary for the production of a coat becomes doubled or halved. In the first case one coat is worth as much as two coats were before. In the second case two coats are only worth as much as one was before although in both cases one coat renders the same services before and the useful labour embodied in it remains of the same quality but the quantity of labour spent on its production has altered. An increase in the quantity of use values is an increase of material wealth. With two coats two men can be clothed with one coat only one man. Nevertheless an increased quantity of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous fall in the magnitude of its value. This antagonistic movement has its origin in the two fold character of labour. Productive power has reference of course only to labour of some useful concrete form the efficacy of any special productive activity during a given time being dependent on its productiveness. Useful labour becomes therefore a more or less abundant source of products in proportion to the rise or fall of its productiveness. On the other hand no change in this productiveness affects the labour represented by value. Since productive power is an attribute of the concrete useful forms of labour of course it can no longer have any bearing on that labour so soon as we make abstraction from those concrete useful forms. However then productive power may vary the same labour exercised during equal periods of time always yields equal amounts of value but it will yield during equal periods of time different quantities of values in use more if the productive power rise fewer if it fall. The same change in productive power which increases the fruitfulness of labour and in consequence the quantity of use values produced by that labour will diminish the total value of this increased quantity of use values provided such change shortened the total labour time necessary for their production and vice versa. On the other hand all labour is speaking physiologically an expenditure of human labour power and in the character of identical abstract human labour it creates and forms the values of commodities. On the other hand all labour is the expenditure of human labour power in a special form and with a definite aim and in this its character of concrete useful labour it produces use values. Footnote in order to prove that labour alone is that all sufficient and real measure by which at all times the value of all commodities can be estimated and compared Adam Smith says quote equal quantities of labour must at all times and in all places have the same value for the labourer in his normal state of health strength and activity and with the average degree of skill that he may possess he must always give up the same proportion of his rest, his freedom and his happiness end quote Wealth of Nations book 1 chapter 5 On the one hand Adam Smith here but not everywhere confuses the determination of value by the means of quantity of labour expended in the production of commodities with the determination of the values of commodities by means of the value of labour and seeks in consequence to prove that equal quantities of labour have always the same value. On the other hand he has a presentiment that labour, so far as it manifests itself in the value of commodities counts only as expenditure of labour power but he treats this expenditure as the mere sacrifice of rest, freedom and happiness not as at the same time the normal activity of living beings but then he has the modern wage labourer in his eye much more aptly the anonymous predecessor of Adam Smith quoted above in note 1 page 39 he says quote one man has employed himself a week in providing this necessary of life and he that gives him some other in exchange cannot make a better estimate of what is a proper equivalent than by computing what cost him just as much labour and time which in effect is no more than exchanging one man's labour in one thing for a time certain for another man's labour in another thing for the same time end quote the English language has the advantage of possessing different words for the two aspects of labour here considered the labour which creates use value and counts qualitatively is work as distinguished from labour that which creates value and counts quantitatively is labour as distinguished from work angles end editorial note end footnote end of chapter 1 section 2