III (2)

Instead of denouncing the rapacity of the vampires who grow fat on labour for which they do not pay, Karl Marx ought to have made fun of their absurd disinterestedness. According to the above computation, the portion of capital set apart for wages is only 2½ per cent. of the total capital; if then the profit be derived entirely from this fraction, why do employers continually seek to keep it down, instead of increasing it? Why improve their plant instead of increasing the number of their wage-earners? If unpaid human labour be the sole element of profit, why substitute mechanical labour for it? How can they have failed to realise their mistake, when Karl Marx has pointed out to them the means of obtaining unlimited profits by making unlimited additions to their staff of labour?

Logically, in order to make a fortune the capitalist has only to take the greatest possible number of workmen and to make them work, not as usefully as possible, but for the greatest possible number of hours. An employer should never buy a machine, and should destroy all those that he possesses. If navvies had neither picks, spades nor wheelbarrows, the number of them necessary for a particular job would have to be largely increased, and by virtue of the law of surplus-value they would earn far larger profits for the contractor if they were to scrape the ground up with their nails and carry it in their hands.

Karl Marx found the following answer. There are three methods by which the capitalist can increase surplus-labour: by reducing wages, that is to say the hours of necessary labour, a reduction which is limited by the means of subsistence, or by increasing the hours of labour, but in this he is encountered by obstacles of a physiological, moral, and legal nature. There remains, therefore, but one method, that of perfecting the means of production.

The capitalist who applies the improved method of production, appropriates to surplus-labour a greater portion of the working-day than the other capitalists in the same trade….

There is immanent in capital an inclination and constant tendency to heighten the productiveness of labour, in order to cheapen commodities, and by such cheapening to cheapen the labourer himself.

This is how Karl Marx explains the capitalist's passion for machinery. But this explanation is insufficient for the following reason. If machinery increases the labour of the individual, it diminishes the number of individuals necessary for a like amount of production; it therefore destroys that human surplus-labour which is the sole source of surplus-value, and which alone produces a profit for capital; the capitalist, therefore, by substituting machinery for manual labour, condemns himself to famine and commits himself to suicide, and all progress in industrial production is actually the destruction of surplus-value.

A capitalist owns a machine of ten horse-power, worked by two mechanics, each of whom is paid 6 francs a day. The result is as follows:—

Multiplying this by 2, you find that the capitalist vampire has appropriated surplus-value to the value of 6 francs. If, however, he had employed the 210 men who are the equivalent of 10 horse-power, he would even, if the surplus-value was reduced from 3 francs to 1.50, to 0.50, or to 0.25, have 210 francs, 105 francs, or 52 francs respectively, instead of the 6 francs obtained from the two mechanics.

These vampires are madmen: they destroy with their own hands the surplus-value which is their only profit.