Marx’s Grundrisse

The disintegration of all products and activities into exchange values presupposes both the disintegration of all rigid, personal (historical) relationships of dependence in production, and a universal interdependence of the producers. The production of each individual depends on everyone else’s production, just as the transformation of his product into food for himself depends on everyone else’s consumption. Prices are ancient; and so is exchange; but the increasing determination of prices by the cost of production, and the influence of exchange over all production relationships can only develop fully and ever more completely in bourgeois society, the society of free competition. What Adam Smith, in true eighteenth-century style, places in the prehistoric period, puts before history, is in fact its, product.

Considered in the act of production itself, the labour of the individual is used by him as money to buy the product directly, that is, the object of his own activity; but it is particular money, used to buy this particular product. In order to be money in general, it must originate from general and not special labour; that is, it must originally be established as an element of general production. But on this presupposition it is not basically exchange that gives it its general character, but its presupposed social character will determine its participation in the products. The social character of production would make the product from the start a collective and general product. The exchange originally found in production — which is an exchange not of exchange values but of activities determined by communal needs and communal aims — would from the start imply the participation of individuals in the collective world of products.

We must bear in mind that new productive forces and new relationships of production do not evolve from nothing, nor from the air or the womb of the self-positing idea; they evolve inside, and in opposition to, an already present stage in the development and inherited, traditional property relationships. If, in the completed bourgeois system, every economic relationship presupposes another in a bourgeois economic form so that every factor posited is at the same time a presupposition, then this is no different from any other organic system. This organic system itself as a totality has its own presuppositions and its development to a totality consists precisely in its subordinating all elements of society to itself or creating out of society the organs that it is still lacking. It thus becomes historically a totality. Its becoming this totality constitutes a moment of its process, of its development. On the other hand when, inside a society, modern relationships of production, i.e. capital, have developed to their totality and this society then conquers a new terrain (as, for example, in colonies), its representative, the capitalist, finds that his capital can no longer be capital unless there is wage-labour and that a precondition of this is not only landed property in general, but modern landed property the expense of whose capitalised rent excludes as such the direct exploitation of the earth by individuals.

Nothing can result at the end of a process that did not occur at its beginning as a prerequisite and condition. On the other hand, however, the result must contain all the elements of the process. Therefore if capital appears to have disappeared as a form of relationship at the end of the production process that was begun with capital as a prerequisite, this can only happen because we have overlooked the invisible threads that are drawn through this process by capital. So let us consider this aspect of the matter.

What appears to be surplus value on the part of capital appears on the worker’s side to be, precisely, surplus labour far beyond his requirements, that is to say, far beyond his immediate needs for the maintenance of his livelihood. The great historical feature of capital is that it produces this surplus labour, which is superfluous labour from the standpoint of ordinary use value and mere subsistence. The historical vocation of capital is fulfilled as soon as, on the one hand, demand has developed to the point where there is a general need for surplus labour beyond what is necessary, and surplus labour itself arises from individual needs; and on the other, general industriousness has developed (under the strict discipline of capital) and has been passed on to succeeding generations, until it has become the property of the new generation; and finally when the productive forces of labour, which capital spurs on in its unrestricted desire for wealth and the conditions in which alone capital can achieve this, have developed to the point where the possession and maintenance of general wealth requires, on the one hand, shorter working hours for the whole of society, and working society conducts itself scientifically towards the progressive reproduction of wealth, its reproduction in even greater profusion; so that the sort of labour in which the activities of men can be replaced by those of machines will have ceased. Capital and labour behave in this way like money and goods; if one of them is the general form of wealth, the other is only the substance which aims at immediate consumption.

It is necessary to produce a precise analysis of the concept of capital, since it is the basic concept of modern economics just as capital itself, which is its abstract reflection, is the basis of bourgeois society. From a clear perception of the basic premise of the relationship all the contradictions of bourgeois production must emerge as also the limit at which it progresses beyond itself.

The increase in values is thus the result of the self-valorisation of capital. It is unimportant whether this self-valorisation is defined as the result of absolute or relative surplus time, i.e. of a real increase of relative surplus labour time, i.e. a decrease of the part of the working day which is the working time required for the maintenance of labour power, necessary labour in general.

To come closer to the heart of the question: firstly, there is a limit not inherent to production generally, but to production founded on capital. This limit is dual, or rather revealed one and the same when considered from two angles. It is sufficient here, in order to have discovered the basis of over-production — the fundamental contradiction of developed capitalism — to show that capital contains a particular limitation on production, a limitation which contradicts its general tendency to push beyond any barrier on its production. This is the discovery in general that capital is not, as the economists think, the absolute form for the development of productive forces, that it is not the absolute form of wealth coinciding absolutely with the development of productive forces. Viewed from the standpoint of capital, the stages of production that preceded it appear as so many fetters on the productive forces. But, correctly understood, capital itself appears as a condition for the development of productive forces so long as they need an external stimulant which is at the same time a brake.

The additional value is thus again established as capital, as objectified labour entering into the exchange process with living labour, and thence dividing itself into a constant part — the objective conditions of labour, the existence of living labour power, the necessaries, food for the worker. In this second appearance of capital in this form, some points are cleared up which in its first appearance — as money, which is changing from the form of value into that of capital — were completely obscure. They are now solved through the process of valorisation and production. At their first occurrence, the prerequisites themselves seemed to be exterior and derived from circulation; thus they did not arise from its internal nature, nor were they explained by it. These external prerequisites will now appear as elements in the movement of capital itself, so that capital itself has presupposed them as its own elements, irrespective of how they arose historically.

Now, from the standpoint of capital: as far as surplus capital is concerned, the capitalist represents value as an entity in itself, the third function of money — wealth, through the mere acquisition of alien labour, in that each element of surplus capital — material, instrument and means of subsistence — is resolved into alien labour, which the capitalist does not acquire by means of exchange for existing values, but which he has acquired without exchange. Of course the original condition for this surplus capital was the exchange of a part of the values belonging to the capitalist, or the objectified labour that he possesses, against alren living labour power. Let us term surplus capital, as it originated from the first production process, surplus capital I. For the creation of this capital, i.e. for the acquisition of alien labour, of objectified alien labour, a condition appears to be the possession of values on the part of the capitalist, of which he exchanges one part, as a matter of form, for living labour capacity. We say ‘as a matter of form’ because living labour has to replace and give back again the exchanged values. But he can please himself about this. In any case the condition for the existence of surplus capital I, i.e. for the acquisition of alien labour or of the values in which it has been objectified, appears as the exchange of the values belonging to the capitalist, placed by him into the circulation, and conveyed by him to living labour power — but which do not derive capital from relationship. In the second case, the presupposition itself is mediated, i.e. the precondition is collective production; the community is the foundation of production. The labour of the individual is established from the start as collective labour. But whatever the particular form of the product which he creates or helps to create, what he has bought with his labour is not this or that product, but a definite participation in collective production. Therefore he has no special product to exchange.

Money has in fact only been turned into capital at the end of the first production process which results in its reproduction and the new production of surplus capital I. But surplus capital I is itself only established as surplus capital, and realised as such, once it has produced surplus capital II; once, in fact, the prerequisites of the transition of money into capital, which are still external to the movement of real capital, have disappeared, and capital has in fact established the conditions, in line with its inherent nature, for entering production. Once we assume this production is founded on capital, the condition that the capitalist must introduce into circulation values that he has created — whether through his own labour or otherwise, since he does not yet have available wage-labour, either present or past — in order to set himself up as a capitalist, now belongs to the antediluvian conditions of capital; it belongs to its historical prerequisites, which already as such are past, and thus belong to the history of its development and not in any way to its contemporary history, i.e. not to the real system of the mode of production that it controls. If, for example, the flight of the serfs to the towns was one of the historical conditions and prerequisites of the urban system, it ceases to be a condition, and a factor in its reality, once the towns have developed.

Thus the ancient conception in which man, in spite of his various narrow national, religious or political determinations, still nevertheless appears as the aim of production, seems to be very superior to the modern world where production is the aim of man and wealth the aim of production. But in fact, when the narrow bourgeois form is cast aside, what is wealth other than the universality of the needs, capacities, enjoyments, productive forces, etc., of individuals that are generated by universal exchange? The complete development of human domination of natural forces, both those of so-called ‘nature’ as well as those of his own nature? What is it but the absolute elaboration of his creative dispositions without any presupposition other than the previous historical development, which makes the totality of this development, i.e. the development of all human powers as such as not measured against any already established yardstick, into an end in itself? What is this, but a situation in which man does not reproduce himself in a determined form, but produces his totality? Where man does not seek to remain something that he has become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming? In bourgeois economics — and the epoch of production that corresponds to it — this complete elaboration of the inner potential of man appears as complete depletion, this universal objectification as complete alienation and the destruction of all determined, one-sided aims as the sacrifice of his autonomy to a wholly external aim. Thus, on the one hand, the childlike ancient world appears to be the higher.

The exchange of living labour for objectified labour, i.e. the establishment of social labour in the antagonistic form of capital and wage-labour, is the final development of the value relationship and of production based on value. The prerequisite for this relationship is the mass of direct labour time, the quantity of labour utilised, which is the decisive factor in the production of wealth. But as heavy industry develops, the creation of real wealth depends less on labour time and on the quantity of labour utilised than on the power of mechanical agents which are set in motion during labour time. The powerful effectiveness of these agents, in its turn, bears no relation to the immediate labour time that their production costs. It depends rather on the general state of science and on technological progress, or the application of this science to production. (The development of science — especially of the natural sciences and with them of all the others — is itself once more related to the development of material production.) Agriculture, for example, is a pure application of the science of material metabolism, and the most advantageous way of employing it for the good of society as a whole.

Capital creates a great deal of disposable time, apart from the labour time that is needed for society in general and for each sector of society (i.e. space for the development of the individual’s full productive forces, and thus also for those of society). This creation of non-working time is, from the capitalist standpoint, and from that of all earlier stages of development, non-working time or free time for the few. What is new in capital is that it also increases the surplus labour time of the masses by all artistic and scientific means possible, since its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time, since its direct aim is value, not use value. Thus, despite itself, it is instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, and so in reducing working time for the whole of society to a minimum and thus making everyone’s time free for their own development. But although its tendency is always to create disposable time, it also converts it into surplus labour. If it succeeds too well with the former, it will suffer from surplus production, and then the necessary labour will be interrupted as soon as no surplus labour can be valorised from capital. The more this contradiction develops, the clearer it becomes that the growth of productive forces can no longer be limited by the appropriation of the surplus labour of others; the masses of the workers must appropriate their own surplus labour.

Real economy — savings — consists in the saving of working time (the minimum, and reduction to the minimum, of production costs); but this saving is identical with the development of productivity. Economising, therefore, does not mean the giving up of pleasure, but the development of power and productive capacity, and thus both the capacity for and the means of enjoyment. The capacity for enjoyment is a condition of enjoyment and therefore its primary means; and this capacity is the development of an individual’s talents, and thus of the productive force. To economise on labour time means to increase the amount cf free time, i.e. time for the complete development of the individual, which again reacts as the greatest productive force on the productive force of labour. From the standpoint of the immediate production process it may be considered as production of fixed capital; this fixed capital being man himself. It is also self-evident that immediate labour time cannot remain in its abstract contradiction to free time — as in the bourgeois economy. Work cannot become a game, as Fourier would like it to be; his great merit was that he declared that the ultimate object must be to raise to a higher level not distribution but the mode of production.

It is a fact that as the productive forces of labour develop, the objective conditions of labour (objectified labour) must grow in proportion to living labour. This is actually a tautology, for the growth of the productive forces of labour means merely that less direct labour is required in order to make a larger product, so that social wealth expresses itself more and more in the labour conditions that have been created by labour itself. From the point of view of capital, it does not appear that one of the elements of social activity (objectified labour) has become the ever more powerful body of the other element (subjective, living labour); rather it appears (and this is important for wage-labour) that the objective conditions of labour become more and more colossally independent of living labour — which is shown by their very extent — and social wealth becomes, in ever greater and greater proportions, an alien and dominating force opposing the worker. Stress is placed not on the state of objectification but on the state of alienation, estrangement and abandonment, on the fact that the enormous objectified power which social labour has opposed to itself as one of its elements belongs not to the worker but to the conditions of production that are personified in capital.

Of all the laws of modern political economy, this is, in every respect, the most important and the most essential for the understanding of the most difficult problems. From the historical point of view, also, it is the most important law, one which, in spite of its simplicity, has never yet been understood and still less been consciously enunciated. This fall in the rate of profit is bound up with (1) the already existing forces of production and the material foundation that it creates for a new production which in turn presupposes an enormous development of scientific powers; (2) the diminution of that part of capital already produced that has to be exchanged for direct labour, in other words, a diminution in the direct labour which is necessary to reproduce an enormous quantity of values, which is expressed in a greater mass of products at low prices, since the sum total of prices equals the capital reproduced plus the profit; (3) the dimension of capital in general, including the portion of it that is not fixed capital. This implies great development in commerce, in exchange operations and the market; the universality of simultaneous labour; means of communication; the presence of the necessary consumer funds to undertake this gigantic process (food, lodging for the workers, etc.).