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12
WAGE-LABOUR AND CAPITAL
(half an hour in each of the twelve hours), and six hours for the
capitalist.
The rock upon which the best economists were stranded as long
as they started out from the value of labour, vanishes as soon as
we make our starting-point the value of labour-power. Labour-
power is, in our present-day capitalist society, a commodity like
every other commodity, but yet a very peculiar commodity. It
has, namely, the peculiarity of being a value-creating force, the
source of value, and, moreover, when properly treated, the source
of more value than it possesses itself. In the present state of production, human labour-power not only produces in a day a
greater value than it itself possesses and costs; but with each new
scientific discovery, with each new technical invention, there also
rises the surplus of its daily production over its daily cost, while
as a consequence there diminishes that part of the working day
in which the labourer produces the equivalent of his day's wages,
and, on the other hand, lengthens that part of the working day
in which he must present labour gratis to the capitalist.
And this is the economic constitution of our entire modern
society: the working class alone produces all values. For value is
only another expression for labour, that expression, namely, by
which is designated, in our capitalist society of to-day, the amount
of socially necessary labour embodied in a particular commodity.
But these values produced by the workers do not belong to the
workers. They belong to the owners of the raw materials,
machines, tools, and money, which enable them to buy the
labour-power of the working class. Hence, the working class
gets back only a part of the entire mass of products produced by
it. And as we have just seen, the other portion, which the capitalist class retains, and which it has to share, at most, only with
the landlord class, is increasing with every new discovery and
invention, while the share which falls to the working class (per
capita) rises but little and very slowly, or not at all, and under
certain conditions it may even fall.
But these discoveries and inventions which supplant one another with ever-increasing speed, this productiveness of human
labour which increases from day to day to unheard-of proportions, at last gives rise to a conflict, in which present capitalistic
economy must go to ruin. On the one hand, immeasurable
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