---
title: "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844"
date: 1844
draft: true

author: Karl Marx
written: Between April and August 1844
firstPublished: 1932
source: Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1959
translated: Martin Milligan
transcription: marxists.org by Andy Blunden in 2000
proofed: Matthew Carmody 2009
copyleft: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 2.0
---

# Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 [^preface1]

## Preface

*||XXXIX|* I have already announced in the [Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher](https://marxists.org/glossary/periodicals/d/e.htm#dfj) the critique of jurisprudence and political science in the form of a [critique of the Hegelian philosophy of law](https://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/index.htm). While preparing it for publication, the intermingling of criticism directed only against speculation with criticism of the various subjects themselves proved utterly unsuitable, hampering the development of the argument and rendering comprehension difficult.  Moreover, the wealth and diversity of the subjects to be treated could have been compressed into one work only in a purely aphoristic style; whilst an aphoristic presentation of this kind, for its part, would have given the *impression* of arbitrary systematism.  I shall therefore publish the critique of law, ethics, politics, etc., in a series of distinct, independent pamphlets, and afterwards try in a special work to present them again as a connected whole showing the interrelationship of the separate parts, and lastly attempt a critique of the speculative elaboration of that material.  For this reason it will be found that the interconnection between political economy and the state, law, ethics, civil life, etc., is touched upon in the present work only to the extent to which political economy itself expressly touches upon these subjects.

It is hardly necessary to assure the reader conversant with political economy that my results have been attained by means of a wholly empirical analysis based on a conscientious critical study of political economy.

(Whereas the uninformed reviewer who tries to hide his complete ignorance and intellectual poverty by hurling the “*utopian phrase*” at the positive critic’s head, or again such phrases as “quite pure, quite resolute, quite critical criticism,” the “not merely legal but social – utterly social – society,” the “compact, massy mass,” the “outspoken spokesmen of the massy mass,” [^preface2] this reviewer has yet to furnish the first proof that besides his theological family affairs he has anything to contribute to a discussion of *worldly* matters.)

It goes without saying that besides the French and English socialists I have also used German socialist works.  The only original German works of substance in this science, however – other than [Weitling’s](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/w/e.htm#weitling-wilhelm) writings – are the essays by *Hess* published in *Einundzwanzig Bogen* [^preface3] *and Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie* by Engels in the *Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,* where also the basic elements of this work have been indicated by me in a very general way.

(Besides being indebted to these authors who have given critical attention to political economy, positive criticism as a whole – and therefore also German positive criticism of political economy – owes its true foundation to the discoveries of *[Feuerbach](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/f/e.htm#feuerbach-ludwig)*, against whose *Philosophie der Zukunft* and *Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie* in the *Anekdota,* despite the tacit use that is made of them, the petty envy of some and the veritable wrath of others seem to have instigated a regular conspiracy of *silence.*

It is only with *Feuerbach* that *positive,* humanistic and naturalistic criticism begins.  The less noise they make, the more certain, profound, extensive, and enduring is the effect of *Feuerbach’s* writings, the only writings since [Hegel’s](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/h/e.htm#hegel) *Phänomenologie* and *Logik* to contain a real theoretical revolution.

In contrast to the *critical theologians* of our day, I have deemed the concluding chapter of this work – a critical discussion of *Hegelian dialectic* and philosophy as a whole to be absolutely necessary, a task not yet performed.  This *lack of thoroughness* is not accidental, since even the *critical* theologian remains a *theologian.* Hence, either he has to start from certain presuppositions of philosophy accepted as authoritative; or, if in the process of criticism and as a result of other people’s discoveries doubts about these philosophical presuppositions have arisen in him, he abandons them in a cowardly and unwarrantable fashion, *abstracts* from them, thus showing his servile dependence on these presuppositions and his resentment at this servility merely in a negative, unconscious and sophistical manner.

(He does this either by constantly repeating assurances concerning the *purity* of his own criticism, or by trying to make it seem as though all that was left for criticism to deal with now was some other limited form of criticism outside itself – say eighteenth-century criticism – and also the limitations of the *masses,* in order to divert the observer’s attention as well as his own from the *necessary* task of settling accounts between *criticism* and its point of origin – Hegelian *dialectic* and German philosophy as a whole – that is, from this necessary raising of modern criticism above its own limitation and crudity.  Eventually, however, whenever discoveries (such as *Feuerbach’s*) are made regarding the nature of his own philosophic presuppositions, the critical theologian partly makes it appear as if *he* were the one who had accomplished this, producing that appearance by taking the results of these discoveries and, without being able to develop them, hurling them in the form of *catch-phrases* at writers still caught in the confines of philosophy.  He partly even manages to acquire a sense of his own superiority to such discoveries by asserting in a mysterious way and in a veiled, malicious and skeptical fashion elements of the Hegelian *dialectic* which he still finds lacking in the criticism of that dialectic (which have not yet been critically served up to him for his use) against such criticism – not having tried to bring such elements into their proper relation or having been capable of doing so, asserting, say, the category of mediating proof against the category of positive, self-originating truth, (...) in a way *peculiar* to Hegelian dialectic.  For to the theological critic it seems quite natural that everything has to be *done* by philosophy, so that he can *chatter away* about purity, resoluteness, and quite critical criticism; and he fancies himself the true *conqueror of philosophy* whenever he happens to *feel* some element [^preface4] in Hegel to be lacking in Feuerbach – for however much he practises the spiritual idolatry of “*self-consciousness*” and “mind” the theological critic does not get beyond feeling to consciousness.)

On close inspection *theological* criticism – genuinely progressive though it was at the inception of the movement – is seen in the final analysis to be nothing but the culmination and consequence of the old *philosophical,* and especially the *Hegelian, transcendentalism,* twisted into a *theological caricature.* This interesting example of historical justice, which now assigns to theology, ever philosophy’s spot of infection, the further role of portraying in itself the negative dissolution of philosophy, i.e., the process of its decay – this historical nemesis I shall demonstrate on another occasion. [^preface5]

(How far, on the other hand, *Feuerbach’s* discoveries about the nature of philosophy still, for their *proof* at least, called for a critical discussion of philosophical dialectic will be seen from my exposition itself.) *||LX|*

## First Manuscript

### Wages of Labour

***Wages*** are determined through the antagonistic struggle between capitalist and worker. Victory goes necessarily to the capitalist. The capitalist can live longer without the worker than can the worker without the capitalist. Combination among the capitalists is customary and effective; workers’ combination is prohibited and painful in its consequences for them. Besides, the landowner and the capitalist can make use of industrial advantages to augment their revenues; the worker has neither rent nor interest on capital to supplement his industrial income. Hence the intensity of the competition among the workers. Thus only for the workers is the separation of capital, landed property, and labour an inevitable, essential and detrimental separation. Capital and landed property need not remain fixed in this abstraction, as must the labour of the workers.

***The separation of capital, rent, and labour is thus fatal for the worker***.

The lowest and the only necessary wage rate is that providing for the subsistence of the worker for the duration of his work and as much more as is necessary for him to support a family and for the race of labourers not to die out. The ordinary wage, according to Smith, is the lowest compatible with common humanity [^wagesfn06], that is, with cattle-like existence.


***The demand for men necessarily governs the production of men, as of every other commodity***. Should supply greatly exceed demand, a section of the workers sinks into beggary or starvation. The worker’s existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence of every other commodity. The worker has become a commodity, and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find a buyer. And the demand on which the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the rich and the capitalists. Should supply exceed demand, then one of the constituent parts of the price – profit, rent or wages – is paid below its *rate*, [a part of these] factors is therefore withdrawn from this application, and thus the market price gravitates [towards the] natural price as the centre-point. But **(1)** where there is considerable division of labour it is most difficult for the worker to direct his labour into other channels; **(2)** because of his subordinate relation to the capitalist, he is the first to suffer.

***Thus in the gravitation of market price to natural price it is the worker who loses most of all and necessarily***. And it is just the capacity of the capitalist to direct his capital into another channel which either renders the worker, who is restricted to some particular branch of labour, destitute, or forces him to submit to every demand of this capitalist.

The accidental and sudden fluctuations in market price hit rent less than they do that part of the price which is resolved into profit and wages; but they hit profit less than they do wages. In most cases, for every wage that rises, one remains *stationary* and one *falls*.

***The worker need not necessarily gain when the capitalist does, but he necessarily loses when the latter loses.*** Thus, the worker does not gain if the capitalist keeps the market price above the natural price by virtue of some manufacturing or trading secret, or by virtue of monopoly or the favorable situation of his land.

Furthermore, *the prices of labour are much more constant than the prices of provisions. Often they stand in inverse proportion*. In a dear year wages fall on account of the decrease in demand, but rise on account of the increase in the prices of provisions – and thus balance. In any case, a number of workers are left without bread. In cheap years wages rise on account of the rise in demand, but decrease on account of the fall in the prices of provisions – and thus balance.

Another respect in which the worker is at a disadvantage:

***The labour prices of the various kinds of workers show much wider differences than the profits in the various branches in which capital is applied***. In labour all the natural, spiritual, and social variety of individual activity is manifested and is variously rewarded, whilst dead capital always keeps the same pace and is indifferent to real individual activity.

In general we should observe that in those cases where worker and capitalist equally suffer, the worker suffers in his very existence, the capitalist in the profit on his dead mammon.

The worker has to struggle not only for his physical means of subsistence; he has to struggle to get work, i.e., the possibility, the means, to perform his activity.

Let us take the three chief conditions in which society can find itself and consider the situation of the worker in them:

1. If the wealth of society declines the worker suffers most of all, and for the following reason: although the working class cannot gain so much as can the class of property owners in a prosperous state of society, *no one suffers so cruelly from its decline as the working class.*

2. 
   Let us now take a society in which wealth is increasing. This condition is the only one favorable to the worker. Here competition between the capitalists sets in. The demand for workers exceeds their supply. But:

    *In the first place,* the raising of wages gives rise to overwork among the workers. The more they wish to earn, the more must they sacrifice their time and carry out slave-labour, completely losing all their freedom, in the service of greed. Thereby they shorten their lives. This shortening of their life-span is a favourable circumstance for the working class as a whole, for as a result of it an ever-fresh supply of labour becomes necessary. This class has always to sacrifice a part of itself in order not to be wholly destroyed.

    ***Furthermore***: When does a society find itself in a condition of advancing wealth? When the capitals and the revenues of a country are growing. But this is only possible:

    1. As the result of the accumulation of much labour, capital being accumulated labour; as the result, therefore, of the fact that more and more of his products are being taken away from the worker, that to an increasing extent his own labour confronts him as another man’s property and that the means of his existence and his activity are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the capitalist.

    2. The accumulation of capital increases the division of labour, and the division of labour increases the number of workers. Conversely, the number of workers increases the division of labour, just as the division of labour increases the accumulation of capital. With this division of labour on the one hand and the accumulation of capital on the other, the worker becomes ever more exclusively dependent on labour, and on a particular, very one-sided, machine-like labour at that. Just as he is thus depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine and from being a man becomes an abstract activity and a belly, so he also becomes ever more dependent on every fluctuation in market price, on the application of capital, and on the whim of the rich. Equally, the increase in the class of people wholly dependent on work intensifies competition among the workers, thus lowering their price. In the factory system this situation of the worker reaches its climax.

    3. In an increasingly prosperous society only the richest of the rich can continue to live on money interest. Everyone else has to carry on a business with his capital, or venture it in trade. As a result, the competition between the capitalists becomes more intense. The concentration of capital increases, the big capitalists ruin the small, and a section of the erstwhile capitalists sinks into the working class, which as a result of this supply again suffers to some extent a depression of wages and passes into a still greater dependence on the few big capitalists. The number of capitalists having been diminished, their competition with respect to the workers scarcely exists any longer; and the number of workers having been increased, their competition among themselves has become all the more intense, unnatural, and violent. Consequently, a section of the working class falls into beggary or starvation just as necessarily as a section of the middle capitalists falls into the working class.

    Hence even in the condition of society most favorable to the worker, the inevitable result for the worker is overwork and premature death, decline to a mere machine, a bond servant of capital, which piles up dangerously over and against him, more competition, and starvation or beggary for a section of the workers.

    The raising of wages excites in the worker the capitalist’s mania to get rich, which he, however, can only satisfy by the sacrifice of his mind and body. The raising of wages presupposes and entails the accumulation of capital, and thus sets the product of labour against the worker as something ever more alien to him. Similarly, the division of labour renders him ever more one-sided and dependent, bringing with it the competition not only of men but also of machines. Since the worker has sunk to the level of a machine, he can be confronted by the machine as a competitor. Finally, as the amassing of capital increases the amount of industry and therefore the number of workers, it causes the same amount of industry to manufacture *a larger amount of products*, which leads to over-production and thus either ends by throwing a large section of workers out of work or by reducing their wages to the most miserable minimum.

    Such are the consequences of a state of society most favourable to the worker – namely, of a state of *growing, advancing* wealth.

    Eventually, however, this state of growth must sooner or later reach its peak. What is the worker’s position now?

3. “In a country which had acquired that full complement of riches both the wages of labour and the profits of stock would probably be very low [...] the competition for employment would necessarily be so great as to reduce the wages of labour to what was barely sufficient to keep up the number of labourers, and, the country being already fully peopled, that number could never be augmented.” [[Adam Smith](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/s/m.htm#smith-adam), *[Wealth of Nations, Vol. I, p. 84](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm).*]

The surplus would have to die.

Thus in a declining state of society – increasing misery of the worker; in an advancing state – misery with complications; and in a fully developed state of society – static misery.

Since, however, according to Smith, a society is not happy, of which the greater part suffers – yet even the wealthiest state of society leads to this suffering of the majority – and since the *economic system* [^wagesfn07] (and in general a society based on private interest) leads to this wealthiest condition, it follows that the goal of the economic system is the *unhappiness* of society.

Concerning the relationship between worker and capitalist we should add that the capitalist is more than compensated for rising wages by the reduction in the amount of labour time, and that rising wages and rising interest on capital operate on the price of commodities like simple and compound interest respectively.

Let us put ourselves now wholly at the standpoint of the political economist, and follow him in comparing the theoretical and practical claims of the workers.

He tells us that originally and in theory the *whole product* of labour belongs to the worker. But at the same time he tells us that in actual fact what the worker gets is the smallest and utterly indispensable part of the product – as much, only, as is necessary for his existence, not as a human being, but as a worker, and for the propagation, not of humanity, but of the slave class of workers.

The political economist tells us that everything is bought with labour and that capital is nothing but accumulated labour; but at the same time he tells us that the worker, far from being able to buy everything, must sell himself and his humanity.

Whilst the rent of the idle landowner usually amounts to a third of the product of the soil, and the profit of the busy capitalist to as much as twice the interest on money, the “something more” which the worker himself earns at the best of times amounts to so little that of four children of his, two must starve and die.

Whilst according to the political economists it is solely through labour that man enhances the value of the products of nature, whilst labour is man’s active possession, according to this same political economy the landowner and the capitalist, who *qua* landowner and capitalist are merely privileged and idle gods, are everywhere superior to the worker and lay down the law to him.

Whilst according to the political economists labour is the sole unchanging price of things, there is nothing more fortuitous than the price of labour, nothing exposed to greater fluctuations.

Whilst the division of labour raises the productive power of labour and increases the wealth and refinement of society, it impoverishes the worker and reduces him to a machine. Whilst labour brings about the accumulation of capital and with this the increasing prosperity of society, it renders the worker ever more dependent on the capitalist, leads him into competition of a new intensity, and drives him into the headlong rush of overproduction, with its subsequent corresponding slump.

Whilst the interest of the worker, according to the political economists, never stands opposed to the interest of society, society always and necessarily stands opposed to the interest of the worker.

According to the political economists, the interest of the worker is never opposed to that of society: (1) because the rising wages are more than compensated by the reduction in the amount of labour time, together with the other consequences set forth above; and (2) because in relation to society the whole gross product is the net product, and only in relation to the private individual has the net product any significance.

But that labour itself, not merely in present conditions but insofar as its purpose in general is the mere increase of wealth – that labour itself, I say, is harmful and pernicious – follows from the political economist’s line of argument, without his being aware of it.

In theory, rent of land and profit on capital are *deductions* suffered by wages. In actual fact, however, wages are a deduction which land and capital allow to go to the worker, a concession from the product of labour to the workers, to labour.

When society is in a state of decline, the worker suffers most severely. The specific severity of his burden he owes to his position as a worker, but the burden as such to the position of society.

But when society is in a state of progress, the ruin and impoverishment of the worker is the product of his labour and of the wealth produced by him. The misery results, therefore, from the *essence* of present-day labour itself.

Society in a state of maximum wealth – an ideal, but one which is approximately attained, and which at least is the aim of political economy as of civil society – means for the workers *static misery.*

It goes without saying that the *proletarian*, i.e., the man who, being without capital and rent, lives purely by labour, and by a one-sided, abstract labour, is considered by political economy only as a *worker*. Political economy can therefore advance the proposition that the proletarian, the same as any horse, must get as much as will enable him to work. It does not consider him when he is not working, as a human being; but leaves such consideration to criminal law, to doctors, to religion, to the statistical tables, to politics and to the poor-house overseer.

Let us now rise above the level of political economy and try to answer two questions on the basis of the above exposition, which has been presented almost in the words of the political economists:

1. What in the evolution of mankind is the meaning of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labour?

2. What are the mistakes committed by the piecemeal reformers, who either want to raise wages and in this way to improve the situation of the working class, or regard equality of wages (as [Proudhon](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/p/r.htm#proudhon) does) as the goal of social revolution?

In political economy labour occurs only in the form of *activity as a source of livelihood.*

> *||VIII, 1|* “It can be asserted that those occupations which presuppose specific talents or longer training have become on the whole more lucrative; whilst the proportionate reward for mechanically monotonous activity in which one person can be trained as easily and quickly as another has fallen with growing competition, and was inevitably bound to fall. And it is just *this* sort of work which in the present state of the organization of labour is still by far the commonest. If therefore a worker in the first category now earns seven times as much as he did, say, fifty years ago, whilst the earnings of another in the second category have remained unchanged, then of course both are earning *on the average* four times as much. But if the first category comprises only a thousand workers in a particular country, and the second a million, then 999,000 are no better off than fifty years ago – and they are *worse off* if at the same time the prices of the necessaries of life have risen. With such superficial *calculation of averages* people try to deceive themselves about the most numerous class of the population. Moreover, the size of the *wage* is only one factor in the estimation of the *worker’s* income, because it is essential for the measurement of the latter to take into account the certainty of its *duration* – which is obviously out of the question in the anarchy of so-called free competition, with its ever-recurring fluctuations and periods of stagnation. Finally, the *hours of work* customary formerly and now have to be considered. And for the English cotton-workers these have been increased, as a result of the entrepreneurs’ mania for profit. 
>
> *||IX, 1|* to between twelve and sixteen hours a day during the past twenty-five years or so – that is to say, precisely during the period of the introduction of labour-saving machines; and this increase in one country and in one branch of industry inevitably asserted itself elsewhere to a greater or lesser degree, for the right of the unlimited exploitation of the poor by the rich is still universally recognized.” (Wilhelm Schulz, *Die Bewegung der Production.*)

> “But even if it were as true as it is false that the average income of *every* class of society has increased, the income-differences and *relative* income-distances may nevertheless have become greater and the contrasts between wealth and poverty accordingly stand out more sharply. For just because total production rises – and in the same measure as it rises – needs, desires and claims also multiply and thus *relative* poverty can increase whilst *absolute* poverty diminishes. The Samoyed living on fish oil and rancid fish is not poor because in his secluded society all have the same needs. But in a state *that is forging ahead*, which in the course of a decade, say, increased by a third its total production in proportion to the population, the worker who is getting as much at the end of ten years as at the beginning has not remained as well off, but has become poorer by a third.” (*op. cit.*, pp. 65-66)

But political economy knows the worker only as a working animal – as a beast reduced to the strictest bodily needs.

> “To develop in greater spiritual freedom, a people must break their bondage to their bodily needs – they must cease to be the slaves of the body. They must, above all, have *time* at their disposal for spiritual creative activity and spiritual enjoyment. The developments in the labour organism gain this time. Indeed, with new motive forces and improved machinery, a single worker in the cotton mills now often performs the work formerly requiring a hundred, or even 250 to 350 workers. Similar results can be observed in all branches of production, because external natural forces are being compelled to participate to an ever-greater degree in human labour. If the satisfaction of a given amount of material needs formerly required a certain expenditure of time and human effort which has later been reduced by half, then without any loss of material comfort the scope for spiritual activity and enjoyment has been simultaneously extended by as much.... But again the way in which the booty, that we win from old Cronus *[Greek God associated with time.]* himself in his most private domain, is shared out is still decided by the dice-throw of blind, unjust Chance. In France it has been calculated that at the present stage in the development of production an average working period of five hours a day by every person capable of work could suffice for the satisfaction of all the material interests of society.... Notwithstanding the time saved by the perfecting of machinery. the duration of the slave-labour performed by a large population in the factories has only increased.” (Schulz, *op. cit.*, pp. 67, 68.)

> “The transition from compound manual labour rests on a break-down of the latter into its simple operations. At first, however, only *some* of the uniformly-recurring operations will devolve on machines, while some will devolve on men. From the nature of things, and from confirmatory experience, it is clear that unendingly monotonous activity of this kind is as harmful to the mind as to the body; thus this *combination* of machinery with mere division of labour among a greater number of hands must inevitably show all the disadvantages of the latter. These disadvantages appear, among other things, in the greater mortality of factory workers.... Consideration has not been given ... to this big distinction as to how far men work *through* machines or how far *as* machines.” (*op. cit.*, p. 69.)

> “In the future life of the peoples, however, the inanimate forces of nature working in machines will be our slaves and serfs.” (*op. cit.*, p. 74.)

> “The English spinning mills employ 196,818 women and only 158,818 men. For every 100 male workers in the cotton mills of Lancashire there are 103 female workers, and in Scotland as many as 209. In the English flax mills of Leeds, for every 100 male workers there were found to be 147 female workers. In Dundee and on the east coast of Scotland as many as 280. In the English silk mills ... many female workers; male workers predominate in the woollen mills where the work requires greater physical strength. In 1833, no fewer than 38,927 women were employed alongside 18,593 men in the North American cotton mills. As a result of the changes in the labour organism, a wider sphere of gainful employment has thus fallen to the share of the female sex.... Women now occupying an economically more independent position ... the two sexes are drawn closer together in their social conditions.” (*op. cit.*, pp. 71-72.)

> “Working in the English steam- and water-driven spinning mills in 1835 were: 20,558 children between the ages of eight and twelve; 35,867 between the ages of twelve and thirteen; and, lastly, 108,208 children between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.... Admittedly, further advances in mechanisation, by more and more removing all monotonous work from human hands, are operating in the direction of a gradual *||XII, 1|* elimination of this evil. But standing in the way of these more rapid advances is the very circumstance that the capitalists can, in the easiest and cheapest fashion, appropriate the energies of the lower classes down to the children, to be used *instead* of mechanical devices.” (*op. cit.*, pp. 70-71.)

> “Lord Brougham’s call to the workers – ‘Become capitalists’. ... This is the evil that millions are able to earn a bare subsistence for themselves only by strenuous labour which shatters the body and cripples them morally and intellectually; that they are even obliged to consider the misfortune of finding *such* work a piece of good fortune.” (*op. cit.*, p. 60.)

> “In order to live, then, the non-owners are obliged to place themselves, directly or indirectly, *at the service* of the owners – to put themselves, that is to say, into a position of dependence upon them.” (Pecqueur, *Théorie nouvelle d’économie soc., etc.*)

> *Servants – pay: workers – wages; employees – salary* or *emoluments*. (*loc. cit*., pp. 409, 410.)

> “To hire out one’s labour,” “to lend one’s labour at interest,” “to work in another’s place.”

> “To hire out the materials of labour”, “to lend the materials of labour at interest”, “to make others work in one’s place”. (*op. cit.*, p. 411.)

> “Such an economic order condemns men to occupations so mean, to a degradation so devastating and bitter, that by comparison savagery seems like a kingly condition.... (*op. cit.*, pp. 417, 418.) 

> “Prostitution of the non-owning class in all its forms.” (*op. cit.*, p. 421 f.) “Ragmen.”

*Charles Loudon* in the book *Solution du probleme de la population, etc*., Paris, 1842 [^wagesfn08], declares the number of prostitutes in England to be between sixty and seventy thousand. The number of women of doubtful virtue is said to be equally large (p. 228).

> “The average life of these unfortunate creatures on the streets, after they have embarked on their career of vice, is about six or seven years. To maintain the number of sixty to seventy thousand prostitutes, there must be in the three kingdoms at least eight to nine thousand women who commit themselves to this abject profession each year, or about twenty-four new victims each day – an average of *one* per hour; and it follows that if the same proportion holds good over the whole surface of the globe, there must constantly be in existence one and a half million unfortunate women of this kind.” (*op. cit.*, p. 229.)

> “The numbers of the poverty-stricken grow with their poverty, and at the extreme limit of destitution human beings are crowded together in the greatest numbers contending with each other for the right to suffer.... In 1821 the population of Ireland was 6,801,827. In 1831 it had risen to 7,764,010 – an increase of 14 per cent in ten years. In Leinster, the wealthiest province, the population increased by only 8 per cent; whilst in Connaught, the most poverty-stricken province, the increase reached 21 per cent. (Extract from the *Enquiries Published in England on Ireland*, Vienna, 1840.)” (Buret, *De la misère*, etc., t. 1, pp. 36, 37.)

Political economy considers labour in the abstract as a thing; labour is a commodity. If the price is high, then the commodity is in great demand; if the price is low, then the commodity is in great supply: the price of labour as a commodity must fall lower and lower. (Buret, *op. cit.*) This is made inevitable partly by the competition between capitalist and worker, partly by the competition amongst the workers.

> “The working population, the seller of labour, is necessarily reduced to accepting the most meagre part of the product.... Is the theory of labour as a commodity anything other than a theory of disguised bondage?” (*op. cit.*, p. 43.)

> “Why then has nothing but an exchange-value been seen in labour?” (*op. cit.*, p. 44.)

The large workshops prefer to buy the labour of women and children, because this costs less than that of men. (*op. cit.*)

> “The worker is not at all in the position of a free seller vis-à-vis the one who employs him.... The capitalist is always free to employ labour, and the worker is always forced to sell it. The value of labour is completely destroyed if it is not sold every instant. Labour can neither be accumulated nor even be saved, unlike true [commodities].

> “Labour is life, and if life is not each day exchanged for food, it suffers and soon perishes. To claim that human life is a commodity, one must, therefore, admit slavery.” (*op. cit.*, p. 49, 50.)

If then labour is a commodity it is a commodity with the most unfortunate attributes. But even by the principles of political economy it is no commodity, for it is not the “*free result of a free transaction*.” [*op. cit.*] The present economic regime

> “simultaneously lowers the price and the remuneration of labour; it perfects the worker and degrades the man.” (*op. cit.*, pp. 52-53.) 

> “Industry has become a war, and commerce a gamble.” (*op. cit.*, p. 62.)

> “The cotton-working machines” (in England) alone represent 84,000,000 manual workers. (*op. cit.*, p. 193.)

Up to the present, industry has been in a state of war, a war of conquest:

> “It has squandered the lives of the men who made up its army with the same indifference as the great conquerors. Its aim was the possession of wealth, not the happiness of men.” (Buret, *op. cit*.) “These interests” (that is, economic interests), “freely left to themselves ... must necessarily come into conflict; they have no other arbiter but war, and the decisions of war assign defeat and death to some, in order to give victory to the others.... It is in the conflict of opposed forces that science seeks order and equilibrium: *perpetual war*, according to it, is the sole means of obtaining peace; that war is called competition.” (*op. cit.*, p. 23.)

> “The industrial war, to be conducted with success, demands large armies which it can amass on one spot and profusely decimate. And it is neither from devotion nor from duty that the soldiers of this army bear the exertions imposed on them, but only to escape the hard necessity of hunger. They feel neither attachment nor gratitude towards their bosses, nor are these bound to their subordinates by any feeling of benevolence. They do not know them as men, but only as instruments of production which have to yield as much as possible with as little cost as possible. These populations of workers, ever more crowded together, have not even the assurance of always being employed. Industry, which has called them together, only lets them live while it needs them, and as soon as it can get rid of them it abandons them without the slightest scruple; and the workers are compelled to offer their persons and their powers for whatever price they can get. The longer, more painful and more disgusting the work they are given, the less they are paid. There are those who, with sixteen hours’ work a day and unremitting exertion, scarcely buy the right not to die.” (*op. cit.*, pp. 68-69.)

> “We are convinced ... as are the commissioners charged with the inquiry into the condition of the hand-loom weavers, that the large industrial towns would in a short time lose their population of workers if they were not all the time receiving from the neighbouring rural areas constant recruitments of healthy men, a constant flow of fresh blood.” (*op. cit.*, p. 362.)

## Profit of Capital

### 1. Capital

*||I, 2|*  What is the basis of *capital*, that is, of private property in the products of other men's labour?

> “Even if capital itself does not merely amount to theft or fraud, it still requires the cooperation of legislation to sanctify inheritance.” (Say, *Traité d'économie politique*.) [^capital9]

How does one become a proprietor of productive stock? How does one become owner of the products created by means of this stock?

By virtue of *positive law*. (Say, t. II, p. 4.)

What does one acquire with capital, with the inheritance of a large fortune, for instance?

> “The person who [either acquires, or] succeeds to a great fortune, does not necessarily [acquire or] succeed to any political power [.... ] The power which that possession immediately and directly conveys to him, is the *power of purchasing*; a certain command over all the labour, or over all the produce of labour, which is then in the market.” ([Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, Vol. I, pp. 26-27](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch05.htm).) [^capital10]

Capital is thus the *governing power* over labour and its products. The capitalist possesses this power, not on account of his personal or human qualities, but inasmuch as he is an *owner* of capital. His power is the *purchasing* power of his capital, which nothing can withstand.

Later we shall see first how the capitalist, by means of capital, exercises his governing power over labour, then, however, we shall see the governing power of capital over the capitalist himself.

What is capital?

> “A certain quantity of *labour stocked* and stored up to be employed.” (Adam Smith, *op. cit.*, Vol. I, p. 295.)

Capital is *stored-up labour*.

> (2) *Fonds*, or stock, is any accumulation of products of the soil or of manufacture. Stock is called *capital* only when it yields to its owner a revenue or profit. (Adam Smith, *op. cit.*, p. 243)

### 2. The Profit of Capital

> The *profit* or *gain of capital* is altogether different from the *wages of labour*. This difference is manifested in two ways: in the first place, the profits of capital are regulated altogether by the value of the capital employed, although the labour of inspection and direction associated with different capitals may be the same. Moreover in large works the whole of this labour is committed to some principal clerk, whose salary bears no regular proportion to the *||II, 2|* capital of which he oversees the management. And although the labour of the proprietor is here reduced almost to nothing, he still demands profits in proportion to his capital. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 43](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch06.htm)) [^capital11]

Why does the capitalist demand this proportion between profit and capital?

> He would have no *interest* in employing the workers, unless he expected from the sale of their work something more than is necessary to replace the stock advanced by him as wages and he would have no *interest* to employ a great stock rather than a small one, unless his profits were to bear some proportion to the extent of his stock. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 42](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch06.htm))

The capitalist thus makes a profit, first, on the wages, and secondly on the raw materials advanced by him.

What proportion, then, does profit bear to capital?

> If it is already difficult to determine the usual average level of wages at a particular place and at a particular time, it is even more difficult to determine the profit on capitals. A change in the price of the commodities in which the capitalist deals, the good or bad fortune of his rivals and customers, a thousand other accidents to which commodities are exposed both in transit and in the warehouses – all produce a daily, almost hourly variation in profit. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 78-79](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm).)

But though it is impossible to determine with precision what are the profits on capitals, some notion may be formed of them from the *interest of money*. Wherever a great deal can be made by the use of money, a great deal will be given for the use of it; wherever little can be made by it, little will be given. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 79](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm).)

The proportion which the usual market rate of interest ought to bear to the rate of clear profit, necessarily varies as profit rises or falls. Double interest is in Great Britain reckoned what the merchants call a good, moderate, reasonable profit, terms which mean no more than a *common and usual profit*. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 87](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm).)

What is the *lowest* rate of profit? And what the *highest?*

> The *lowest* rate of ordinary profit on capital must always be *something more* than what is sufficient to compensate the occasional losses to which every employment of stock is exposed. It is this surplus only which is neat or clear profit. The same holds for the lowest rate of interest. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 86](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm))

*||III, 2|*  The *highest* rate to which ordinary profits can rise is that which in the price of the greater part of commodities eats *up the whole of the* rent *of the* land, and reduces the wages of labour contained in the commodity supplied to the *lowest rate,* the bare subsistence of the labourer during his work. The worker must always be fed in some way or other while he is required to work; rent can disappear entirely. For example: the servants of the East India Company in Bengal. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 86-87](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm))

Besides all the advantages of limited competition which the capitalist may *exploit* in this case, he can keep the market price above the natural price by quite decorous means.

> *For one thing*, by keeping *secrets in trade* if the market is at a great distance from those who supply it, that is, by concealing a price change, its rise above the natural level. This concealment has the effect that other capitalists do not follow him in investing their capital in this branch of industry or trade.

*Then* again by keeping *secrets in manufacture*, which enable the capitalist to reduce the costs of production and supply his commodity at the same or even at lower prices than his competitors while obtaining a higher profit. (Deceiving by keeping secrets is not immoral? Dealings on the Stock Exchange.) *Furthermore*, where production is restricted to a particular locality (as in the case of a rare wine), and where the *effective demand* can never be satisfied. *Finally*, through *monopolies* exercised by individuals or companies. Monopoly price is the highest possible. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 53-54](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch07.htm))

Other fortuitous causes which can raise the profit on capital:

> The acquisition of new territories, or of new branches of trade, often increases the profit on capital even in a wealthy country, because they withdraw some capital from the old branches of trade, reduce competition, and cause the market to be supplied with fewer commodities, the prices of which then rise: those who deal in these commodities can then afford to borrow at a higher rate of interest. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 83](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm))

The more a commodity comes to be manufactured – the more it becomes an object of manufacture – the greater becomes that part of the price which resolves itself into wages and profit in proportion to that which resolves itself into rent. In the progress of the manufacture of a commodity, not only the number of profits increases, but every subsequent profit is greater than the foregoing; because the capital from which <!-- context --> *||IV, 2|* it is derived must always be greater. The capital which employs the weavers, for example, must always be greater than that which employs the spinners; because it not only replaces that capital with its profits, but pays, besides, the wages of weavers; and the profits must always bear some proportion to the capital. ([op. cit., Vol. I, p. 45](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch06.htm))

Thus the advance made by human labour in converting the product of nature into the manufactured product of nature increases, not the wages of labour, but in part the number of profitable capital investments, and in part the size of every subsequent capital in comparison with the foregoing.

More about the advantages which the capitalist derives from the division of labour, later.

He profits doubly – first, by the division of labour; and secondly, in general, by the advance which human labour makes on the natural product. The greater the human share in a commodity, the greater the profit of dead capital.

> In one and the same society the average rates of profit on capital are much more nearly on the same level than the wages of the different sorts of labour. (*op. cit.*, Vol. I, p. 100.) In the different employments of capital, the ordinary rate of profit varies with the certainty or uncertainty of the returns.

The ordinary profit of stock, though it rises with the risk, does not always seem to rise in proportion to it. (*op. cit.*, Vol. I, pp. 99-100.)

It goes without saying that profits also rise if the means of circulation become less expensive or easier available (e.g., paper money).

### 3. The Rule of Capital over Labour and the Motives of the Capitalist

> The consideration of his own private profit is the sole motive which determines the owner of any capital to employ it either in agriculture, in manufactures, or in some particular branch of the wholesale or retail trade. The different quantities of *productive labour* which it may put into motion, *||V, 2|* and the different values which it may add to the annual produce of the land and labour of his country, according as it is employed in one or other of those different ways, never enter into his thoughts. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 335](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/ch05.htm).)

The most useful employment of capital for the capitalist is that which, risks being equal, yields him the greatest profit. This employment is not always the most useful for society; the most useful employment is that which utilises the productive powers of nature. (Say, t. II, pp. 130-31.)

The plans and speculations of the employers of capitals regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and *profit* is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the decline of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The interest of this class, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two.... The particular interest of the dealers in any particular branch of trade or manufactures is always in some respects different from, and frequently even in sharp opposition to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the sellers' competition is always the interest of the dealer.... This is a class of people whose interest is never exactly the same as that of society, a class of people who have generally an interest to deceive and to oppress the public. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 231-32](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch11c-3.htm))

### 4. The Accumulation of Capitals and the Competition among the Capitalists

> The *increase of stock,* which raises wages, tends to lower the capitalists' profit, because of the competition amongst the capitalists. (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 78](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm).)

If, for example, the capital which is necessary for the grocery trade of a particular town “is divided between two different grocers, their competition will tend to make both of them sell cheaper than if it were in the hands of one only; and if it were divided among twenty, *||VI, 2|* their competition would be just so much the greater, and the chance of their combining together, in order to raise the price, just so much the less.” (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 322](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/ch05.htm).)

Since we already know that monopoly prices are as high as possible, since the interest of the capitalists, even from the point of view commonly held by political economists, stands in hostile opposition to society, and since a rise of profit operates like compound interest on the price of the commodity (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 87-88](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm)), it follows that the sole defence against the capitalists is *competition*, which according to the evidence of political economy acts beneficently by both raising wages and lowering the prices of commodities to the advantage of the consuming public.

But competition is only possible if capital multiplies, and is held in many hands. The formation of many capital investments is only possible as a result of multilateral accumulation, since capital comes into being only by accumulation; and multilateral accumulation necessarily turns into unilateral accumulation. Competition among capitalists increases the accumulation of capital. Accumulation, where private property prevails, is the *concentration* of capital in the hands of a few, it is in general an inevitable consequence if capital is left to follow its natural course, and it is precisely through competition that the way is cleared for this natural disposition of capital.

We have been told that the profit on capital is in proportion to the size of the capital. A large capital therefore accumulates more quickly than a small capital in proportion to its size, even if we disregard for the time being deliberate competition. *|VI||*

*||VIII, 2|*  [^capital12] Accordingly, the accumulation of large capital proceeds much more rapidly than that of smaller capital, quite irrespective of competition. But let us follow this process further.

With the increase of capital the profit on capital diminishes, because of competition. The first to suffer, therefore, is the small capitalist.

The increase of capitals and a large number of capital investments presuppose, further, a condition of advancing wealth in the country.

> “In a country which had acquired its full complement of riches [ ... ]the ordinary rate of clear profit would be very small, so the usual [market] rate of interest which could be afforded out of it would be so low as to render it impossible for any but the very wealthiest people to live upon the interest of their money. All people of [...] middling fortunes would be obliged to superintend themselves the employment of their own stocks. It would be necessary that almost every man should be a man of business, or engage in some sort of trade.” (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 86](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm))

This is the situation most dear to the heart of political economy.

> “The proportion between capital and revenue, therefore, seems everywhere to regulate the proportion between industry and idleness; wherever capital predominates, industry prevails; wherever revenue, idleness.” (Adam Smith, *op. cit.*, Vol. I, p. 301.)

What about the employment of capital, then, in this condition of increased competition?

> “As stock increases, the quantity of stock to be lent at interest grows gradually greater and greater. As the quantity of stock to be lent at interest increases, the interest ... diminishes (i) because the market price of things commonly diminishes as their quantity increases. ... and (ii) because with *the increase of capitals* in any country, “it becomes gradually more and more difficult to find within the country a profitable method of employing any new capital. There arises in consequence a competition between different capitals, the owner of one endeavouring to get possession of that employment which is occupied by another. But upon most occasions he can hope to jostle that other out of this employment by no other means but by dealing upon more reasonable terms. He must not only sell what he deals in somewhat cheaper, but in order to get it to sell, he must sometimes, too, buy it dearer. The demand for productive labour, by the increase of the funds which are destined for maintaining it, grows every day greater and greater. Labourers easily find employment, <!-- context --> *|IX, 2|* but the owners of capitals find it difficult to get labourers to employ. Their competition raises the wages of labour and sinks the profits of stock.” (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 316](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/ch04.htm).)

Thus the small capitalist has the choice: (1) either to consume his capital, since he can no longer live on the interest – and thus cease to be a capitalist; or (2) to set up a business himself, sell his commodity cheaper, buy dearer than the wealthier capitalist, and pay higher wages – thus ruining himself, the market price being already very low as a result of the intense competition presupposed. If, however, the big capitalist wants to squeeze out the smaller capitalist, he has all the advantages over him which the capitalist has as a capitalist over the worker. The larger size of his capital compensates him for the smaller profits, and he can even bear temporary losses until the smaller capitalist is ruined and he finds himself freed from this competition. In this way, he accumulates the small capitalist's profits.

Furthermore: the big capitalist always buys cheaper than the small one, because he buys bigger quantities. He can therefore well afford to sell cheaper.

But if a fall in the rate of interest turns the middle capitalists from rentiers into businessmen, the increase in business capital and the resulting smaller profit produce conversely a fall in the rate of interest.

> “When the profits which can be made by the use of a capital are diminished the price which can be paid for the use of it [...] must necessarily be diminished with them.” (Adam Smith, [loc. cit., Vol. I, p. 316](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/ch04.htm))

> “As riches, improvement, and population have increased, interest has declined,” and consequently the profits of capitalists, “after these [profits] are diminished, stock may not only continue to increase, but to increase much faster than before. [...] A great stock though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money.” ([op. cit., Vol. I, p. 83](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch09.htm).)

When, therefore, this large capital is opposed by small capitals with small profits, as it is under the presupposed condition of intense competition, it crushes them completely.

The necessary result of this competition is a general deterioration of commodities, adulteration, fake production and universal poisoning, evident in large towns.

*||X, 2|*  An important circumstance in the competition of large and small capital is, furthermore, the relation between *fixed capital* and *circulating capital*.

> *Circulating capital* is a capital which is “employed in raising” provisions, “manufacturing, or purchasing goods, and selling them again. [... ] The capital employed in this manner yields no revenue or profit to its employer, while it either remains in his possession, or continues in the same shape. [...] His capital is continually going from him in one shape, and returning to him in another, and it is only by means of such circulation, or successive exchanges” and transformations “that it can yield him any profit.” Fixed capital consists of capital invested “in the improvement of land, in the purchase of useful machines and instruments of trade, or in such-like things.” (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 243-44](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/ch01.htm))

> “Every saving in the expense of supporting the fixed capital is an improvement of the net revenue of the society. The whole capital of the undertaker of every work is necessarily divided between his fixed and his circulating capital. While his whole capital remains the same, the smaller the one part, the greater must necessarily be the other. It is the circulating capital  *[Marx uses the French terms *capital fixé* and *capital circulant*. - Ed.]* which furnishes the materials and wages of labour, and puts industry into motion. Every saving, therefore, in the expense of maintaining the fixed capital, which does not diminish the productive powers of labour, must increase the fund which puts industry into motion.” (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 257](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/ch02.htm).)

It is clear from the outset that the relation of fixed capital and circulating capital is much more favourable to the big capitalist than to the smaller capitalist. The extra fixed capital required by a very big banker as against a very small one is insignificant. Their fixed capital amounts to nothing more than the office. The equipment of the bigger landowner does not increase in proportion to the size of his estate. Similarly, the credit which a big capitalist enjoys compared with a smaller one means for him all the greater saving in fixed capital – that is, in the amount of ready money he must always have at hand. Finally, it is obvious that where industrial labour has reached a high level, and where therefore almost all manual labour has become factory labour, the entire capital of a small capitalist does not suffice to provide him even with the necessary fixed capital. *As is well known, large-scale cultivation usually provides employment only for a small number of hands*. *[Note by Marx in French]*

It is generally true that the accumulation of large capital is also *accompanied* by a proportional concentration and simplification of fixed capital, as compared to the smaller capitalists. The big capitalist introduces for himself some kind of organisation of the instruments of labour. *||XI, 2|*

> “Similarly, in the sphere of industry every manufactory and mill is already a comprehensive combination of a large material fortune with numerous and varied intellectual capacities and technical skills serving the common purpose of production.... Where legislation preserves landed property in large units, the surplus of a growing population flocks into trades, and it is therefore as in Great Britain in the field of industry, principally, that proletarians aggregate in great numbers. Where, however, the law permits the continuous division of the land, the number of small. debt-encumbered proprietors increases, as in France; and the continuing process of fragmentation throws them into the class of the needy and the discontented. When eventually this fragmentation and indebtedness reaches a higher degree still, big landed property once more swallows up small property, just as large-scale industry destroys small industry. And as larger estates are formed again, large numbers of  propertyless workers not required for the cultivation of the soil are again driven into industry.” (Schulz, *Bewegung der Production*, pp. 58, 59.)

> “Commodities of the same kind change in character as a result of changes in the method of production, and especially as a result of the use of machinery. Only by the exclusion of human power has it become possible to spin from a pound of cotton worth 3 shillings and 8 pence 350 hanks of a total length of 167 English miles (i.e., 36 German miles), and of a commercial value of 25 guineas.” (*op. cit.*, p. 62.)

> “On the average the prices of cotton-goods have decreased in England during the past 45 years by eleven-twelfths, and according to Marshall's calculations the same amount of manufactured goods for which 16 shillings was still paid in 1814 is now supplied at 1 shilling and 10 pence. The greater cheapness of industrial products expands both consumption at home and the market abroad, and because of this the number of workers in cotton has not only not fallen in Great Britain after the introduction of machines but has risen from forty thousand to one and a half million. *|XII, 2|* As to the earnings of industrial entrepreneurs and workers; the growing competition between the factory owners has resulted in their profits necessarily falling relative to the amount of products supplied by them. In the years 1820-33 the Manchester manufacturer's gross profit on a piece of calico fell from four shillings 1 1/3 pence to one shilling 9 pence. But to make up for this loss, the volume of manufacture has been correspondingly increased. The consequence of this is that separate branches of industry experience over-production to some extent, that frequent bankruptcies occur causing property to fluctuate and vacillate unstably within the class of capitalists and masters of labour, thus throwing into the proletariat some of those who have been ruined economically; and that, frequently and suddenly, close-downs or cuts in employment become necessary, the painful effects of which are always bitterly felt by the class of wage-labourers.” (*op. cit.*, p. 63.)

> “To hire out one's labour is to begin one's enslavement. To hire out the materials of labour is to establish one's freedom.... Labour is man; the materials, on the other hand, contain nothing human.” (Pecqueur, *Théorie sociale, etc*.)

> “The material element, which is quite incapable of creating wealth without the other element. labour, acquires the magical virtue of being fertile for them [who own this material element] as if by their own action they had placed there this indispensable element.” (*op. cit.*)

> “Supposing that the daily labour of a worker brings him on the average 400 francs a year and that this sum suffices for every adult to live some sort of crude life, then any proprietor receiving 2,000 francs in interest or rent, from a farm, a house, etc., compels indirectly five men to work for him; an income of 100,000 francs represents the labour of 250 men, and that of 1,000,000 francs the labour of 2,500 individuals (hence, 300 million [Louis Philippe] therefore the labour of 750,000 workers).” (*op. cit.*, pp. 412-13.)

“The human law has given owners the right to use and to abuse – that is to say, the right to do what they will with the materials of labour.... They are in no way obliged by law to provide work for the propertyless when required and at all times, or to pay them always an adequate wage, etc. (*loc. cit.*, p. 413.) “Complete freedom concerning the nature, the quantity, the quality and the expediency of production; concerning the use and the disposal of wealth; and full command over the materials of all labour. Everyone is free to exchange what belongs to him as he thinks fit, without considering anything other than his own interest as an individual” (*op. cit.* p. 413.)

> “Competition is merely the expression of the freedom to exchange, which itself is the immediate and logical consequence of the individual’s right to use and abuse all the instruments of production. The right to use and abuse, freedom of exchange, and arbitrary competition – these three economic moments, which form one unit, entail the following consequences; each produces what he wishes, as he wishes, when he wishes, where he wishes, produces well or produces badly, produces too much or not enough, too soon or too late, at too high a price or too low a price; none knows whether he will sell, to whom he will sell, how he will sell, when he will sell, where he will sell. And it is the same with regard to purchases. <!-- context --> *||XIII, 2|* The producer is ignorant of needs and resources, of demand and supply. He sells when he wishes, when he can, where he wishes, to whom he wishes, at the price he wishes. And he buys in the same way. In all this he is ever the plaything of chance, the slave of the law of the strongest, of the least harassed, of the richest.... Whilst at one place there is scarcity, at another there is glut and waste. Whilst one producer sells a lot or at a very high price, and at an enormous profit, the other sells nothing or sells at a loss.... The supply does not know the demand, and the demand does not know the supply. You produce, trusting to a taste, a fashion, which prevails amongst the consuming public. But by the time you are ready to deliver the commodity, the whim has already passed and has settled on some other kind of product.... The inevitable consequences: bankruptcies occurring constantly and universally; miscalculations, sudden ruin and unexpected fortunes, commercial crises, stoppages, periodic gluts or shortages; instability and depreciation of wages and profits, the loss or enormous waste of wealth, time and effort in the arena of fierce competition.” (*op. cit.*, pp. 414-16.)

*[Ricardo](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/r/i.htm#ricardo-david)* in his book [**On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation**] (rent of land): Nations are merely production-shops; man is a machine for consuming and producing; human life is a kind of capital; economic laws blindly rule the world. For Ricardo men are nothing, the product everything. In the 26th chapter of the French translation it says:

> “To an individual with a capital of £20,000 whose profits were £2,000 per annum, it would be a matter quite indifferent whether his capital would employ a hundred or a thousand men.... Is not the real interest of the nation similar? Provided its net real income, its rent and profits be the same, it is of no importance whether the nation consists of ten or twelve millions of inhabitants.” – [t. II, pp. 194, 195.] “In fact, says M. Sismondi ([*Nouveaux principes diconomie politique*,] t. II, p. 331), nothing remains to be desired but that the King, living quite alone on the island, should by continuously turning a crank cause automatons to do all the work of England.” [^capital13]

> “The master who buys the worker's labour at such a low price that it scarcely suffices for the worker's most pressing needs is responsible neither for the inadequacy of the wage nor for the excessive duration of the labour: he himself has to submit to the law which he imposes.... Poverty is not so much caused by men as by the power of things.” (Buret, *op. cit.*, p. 82.)

> “The inhabitants of many different parts of Great Britain have not capital sufficient to improve and cultivate all their lands. The wool of the southern counties of Scotland is, a great part of it, after a long land carriage through very bad roads, manufactured in Yorkshire, for want of capital to manufacture it at home. There are many little manufacturing towns in Great Britain, of which the inhabitants have not capital sufficient to transport the produce of their own industry to those distant markets where there is demand and consumption for it. If there are any merchants among them, <!-- context --> *||XIV, 2|* they are properly only the agents of wealthier merchants who reside in some of the greater commercial cities.” (Adam Smith, [Wealth of Nations, Vol. I, pp. 326-27](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/ch05.htm).)

> “The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means but by increasing either *the number of its productive labourers*, or the *productive power of those labourers* who had before been employed.... In either case an additional capital is almost always required.”  (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 306-07](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/ch03.htm).)

> “As the *accumulation* of stock must, in the nature of things, be previous to the division of labour, so labour can be more and more subdivided in proportion only as stock is previously more and more accumulated. The quantity of materials which the same number of people can work up, increases in a great proportion as labour comes to be more and more subdivided; and as the operations of each workman are gradually reduced to a greater degree of simplicity, a variety of new machines come to be invented for facilitating and abridging those operations. As the division of labour advances, therefore, in order to give constant employment to an equal number of workmen, an equal stock of provisions, and a greater stock of materials and tools than what would have been necessary in a ruder state of things, must be accumulated beforehand. But the number of workmen in every branch of business generally increases with the division of labour in that branch, or rather it is the increase of their number which enables them to class and subdivide themselves in this manner.” (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 241-42](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/intro.htm).)

> “As the accumulation of stock is previously necessary for carrying on this great improvement in the productive powers of labour, so that accumulation naturally leads to this improvement. The person who employs his stock in maintaining labour, necessarily wishes to employ it in such a manner as to produce as great a quantity of work as possible. He endeavours, therefore, both to make among his workmen the most proper distribution of employment, and to furnish them with the best machines which he can either invent or afford to purchase [...]. His abilities in both these respects <!-- context --> *|XV, 2|* are generally in proportion to the extent of his stock, or to the number of people whom it can employ. The quantity of industry, therefore, not only increases in every country with the increase *of the stock* which employs it, but, in consequence of that increase, the same quantity of industry produces a much greater quantity of work.” (Adam Smith, [op. cit., Vol. I, p. 242](https://marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book02/intro.htm).)

Hence *over-production*.

> “More comprehensive combinations of productive forces ... in industry and trade by uniting more numerous and more diverse human and natural powers in larger-scale enterprises. Already here and there, closer association of the chief branches of production. Thus, big manufacturers will try to acquire also large estates in order to become independent of others for at least a part of the raw materials required for their industry; or they will go into trade in conjunction with their industrial enterprises, not only to sell their own manufactures, but also to purchase other kinds of products and to sell these to their workers. In England, where a single factory owner sometimes employs ten to twelve thousand workers ... it is already not uncommon to find such combinations of various branches of production controlled by one brain, such smaller states or provinces within the state. Thus, the mine owners in the Birmingham area have recently taken over the *whole* process of iron production, which was previously distributed among various entrepreneurs and owners, (See “*Der bergmännische Distrikt bei Birmingham*,” *Deutsche Vierteljahr-Schrift* No. 3, 1838.) Finally in the large joint-stock enterprises which have become so numerous, we see far-reaching combinations of the financial resources of many participants with the scientific and technical knowledge and skills of others to whom the carrying-out of the work is handed over. The capitalists are thereby enabled to apply their savings in more diverse ways and perhaps even to employ them simultaneously in agriculture, industry and commerce. As a consequence their interest becomes more comprehensive, <!-- context --> *||XVI, 2|* and the contradictions between agricultural, industrial, and commercial interests are reduced and disappear. But this increased possibility of applying capital profitably in the most diverse ways cannot but intensify the antagonism between the propertied and the non-propertied classes.” (Schulz, *op. cit.*, pp. 40-4l.)

The enormous profit which the landlords of houses make out of poverty. House rent stands in inverse proportion to industrial poverty.

So does the interest obtained from the vices of the ruined proletarians. (Prostitution, drunkenness, pawnbroking.)

The accumulation of capital increases and the competition between capitalists decreases, when capital and landed property are united in the same hand, also when capital is enabled by its size to combine different branches of production.

Indifference towards men. Smith's twenty lottery-tickets. [^capital14]

Say's net and gross revenue. *|XVI||*


[^preface1]:
    The *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* is the first work in which Marx tried to systematically elaborate problems of political economy from the standpoint of his maturing dialectical-materialist and communist views and also to synthesise the results of his critical review of prevailing philosophic and economic theories. Apparently, Marx began to write it in order to clarify the problems for himself. But in the process of working on it he conceived the idea of publishing a work analysing the economic system of bourgeois society in his time and its ideological trends. Towards the end of his stay in Paris, on February 1, 1845, Marx signed a contract with Carl Leske, a Darmstadt publisher, concerning the publication of his work entitled *A Critique of Politics and of Political Economy.* It was to be based on his *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* and perhaps also on his earlier manuscript *Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law.* This plan did not materialise in the 1840s because Marx was busy writing other works and, to some extent, because the contract with the publisher was cancelled in September 1846, the latter being afraid to have transactions with such a revolutionary-minded author. However, in the early 1850s Marx returned to the idea of writing a book on economics. Thus, the manuscripts of 1844 are connected with the conception of a plan which led many years later to the writing of *Capital*.

    The *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts* is an unfinished work and in part a rough draft. A considerable part of the text has not been preserved. What remains comprises three manuscripts, each of which has its own pagination (in Roman figures). The first manuscript contains 27 pages, of which pages I-XII and XVII-XXVII are divided by two vertical lines into three columns supplied with headings written in beforehand: “Wages of Labour,” “Profit of Capital” (this section has also subheadings supplied by the author) and “Rent of Land.” It is difficult to tell the order in which Marx filled these columns. All the three columns on p. VII contain the text relating to the section “Wages of Labour.” Pages XIII to XVI are divided into two columns and contain texts of the sections “Wages of Labour” (pp. XIII-XV), “Profit of Capital” (pp. XIII-XVI) and “Rent of Land” (p. XVI). On pages XVII to XXI, only the column headed “Rent of Land” is filled in. From page XXII to page XXVII, on which the first manuscript breaks off, Marx wrote across the three columns disregarding the headings. The text of these pages is published as a separate section entitled by the editors according to its content “Estranged Labour.”

    Of the second manuscript only the last four pages have survived (pp. XL-XLIII).

    The third manuscript contains 41 pages (not counting blank ones) divided into two columns and numbered by Marx himself from I to XLIII (in doing so he omitted two numbers, XXII and XXV). Like the extant part of the second manuscript, the third manuscript has no author’s headings; the text has been arranged and supplied with the headings by the editors.

    Sometimes Marx departed from the subject-matter and interrupted his elucidation of one question to analyse another. Pages XXXIX-XL contain the Preface to the whole work which is given before the text of the first manuscript. The text of the section dealing with the critical analysis of Hegel’s dialectic, to which Marx referred in the Preface as the concluding chapter and which was scattered on various pages, is arranged in one section and put at the end in accordance with Marx’s indications.

    In order to give the reader a better visual idea of the structure of the work, the text reproduces in vertical lines the Roman numbers of the sheets of the manuscripts, and the Arabic numbers of the columns in the first manuscript. The notes indicate where the text has been rearranged. Passages crossed out by Marx with a vertical line are enclosed in pointed brackets; separate words or phrases crossed out by the author are given in footnotes only when they supplement the text. The general title and the headings of the various parts of the manuscripts enclosed in square brackets are supplied by the editors on the basis of the author’s formulations. In some places the text has been broken up into paragraphs by the editors. Quotations from the French sources cited by Marx in French or in his own translation into German, are given in English in both cases and the French texts as quoted by Marx are given in the footnotes. Here and elsewhere Marx’s rendering of the quotations or free translation is given in small type but without quotation marks. Emphasis in quotations, belonging, as a rule, to Marx, as well as that of the quoted authors, is indicated everywhere by italics.

    The *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* was first published by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow in the language of the original: Marx/Engels, *Gesamtausgabe, Abt.* 1, Bd. 3, 1932.

    In English this work was first published in 1959 by the Foreign Languages Publishing House (now Progress Publishers), Moscow, translated by Martin Milligan.

[^preface2]: This refers to Bruno Bauer’s reviews of books, articles and pamphlets on the Jewish question, including Marx’s article on the subject in the *Deutsch-Französche Jahrbücher,* which were published in the monthly *Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung* (issue No. 1, December 1843, and issue No. IV, March 1844) under the title “*Von den neuesten Schriften über die Judenfrage*.” Most of the expressions quoted are taken from these reviews. The expressions “utopian phrase” and “compact mass” can he found in Bruno Bauer’s unsigned article, “*Was ist jetzt der Gegenstand der Kritik?*,” published in the *Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung,* issue No. VIII, July 1844. A detailed critical appraisal of this monthly was later on given by Marx and Engels in the book *Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik* (see this edition, Vol. 4, *The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism).*

[^preface3]: 
    Marx apparently refers to Weitling’s works: *Die Menschheit, wie sie ist und wie sie sein sollte,* 1838, and *Garantien der Harmonic und Freiheit,* Vivis, 1842.

    Moses Hess published three articles in the collection *Ein-und-zwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz* (Twenty-One Sheets from Switzerland), *Erster Teil* (*Zürich und Winterthur*, 1843), issued by Georg Herwegh. These articles, entitled “*Sozialismus und Kommunismus*,” “*Philosophie der Tat*” *and “Die Eine und die ganze Freiheit*,” were published anonymously. The first two of them had a note - “Written by the author of ’Europäische Triarchie’.”

[^preface4]: The term “element” in the Hegelian philosophy means a vital element of thought. It is used to stress that thought is a process, and that therefore elements in a system of thought are also phases in a movement. The term “feeling” (*Empfindung*) denotes relatively low forms of mental life in which no distinction is made between the subjective and objective.

[^preface5]: Shortly after writing this Preface Marx fulfilled his intention in *The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism,* written in collaboration with Engels (see Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, *Collected Works,* Vol. 4).

[^wagesfn06]: The expression “common humanity” (in the manuscript in French, “simple humanity”) was borrowed by Marx from the first volume (Chapter VIII) of Adam Smith’s *Wealth of Nations,* which he used in Garnier’s French translation *(Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations,* Paris, 1802, t. I, p. 138). All the subsequent references were given by Marx to this publication, the synopsis of which is contained in his Paris Notebooks with excerpts on political economy. This edition is reproduced on the MIA and Marx’s citations are linked to the text.

[^wagesfn07]: Marx uses the German term “Nationalökonomie” to denote both the economic system in the sense of science or theory, and the economic system itself.

[^wagesfn08]: Loudon’s work was a translation into French of an English manuscript apparently never published in the original. The author did publish in English a short pamphlet - *The Equilibrium of Population and Sustenance Demonstrated,* Leamington, 1836.

[^capital9]: Unlike the quotations from a number of other French writers such as Constantin Pecqueur and Eugéne Buret, which Marx gives in French in this work, the excerpts from J. B. Say’s book are given in his German translation.

[^capital10]: From this page of the manuscript quotations from Adam Smith’s book (in the French translation), which Marx cited so far sometimes in French and sometimes in German, are, as a rule, given in German. In this book the corresponding pages of the English edition are substituted for the French by the editors and Marx’s references are given in square brackets (see Note 6).

[^capital11]: The text published in small type here and below is not an exact quotation from Smith but a summary of the corresponding passages from his work. Such passages are subsequently given in small type but without quotation marks.

[^capital12]:  The preceding page (VII) of the first manuscript does not contain any text relating to the sections “Profit of Capital” and “Rent of Land” (see Note 1).

[^capital13]: The whole paragraph, including the quotation from Ricardo’s book in the French translation by Francisco Solano Constancio:* Des principes de l’economie politique, et de 1’impôt, *2-e éd., Paris, 1835, T. II, pp. 194-95 (see the corresponding English edition* On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, *London, 1817), and from Sismondi’s* Nouveaux principes d’économie politique...*, Paris, 1819, T. II., p. 331, is an excerpt from Eugéne Buret’s book *De la misère des classes laborieuses en Angleterre et en France*.... Paris, 1840, T. I, pp. 6-7, note.

[^capital14]: The allusion is to the following passage: “In a perfectly fair lottery, those who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty.” (Smith, *Wealth of Nations,* Vol. 1, Bk. 1, p. 94.)

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">15.</span> See Note 12.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">16.</span> *The Corn Laws* - a series of laws in England (the first of which dated back to the 15th century) which imposed high duties on imported corn with the aim of maintaining high prices on it on the home market. In the first third of the 19th century several laws were passed (in 1815, 1822 and so on) changing the conditions of corn imports, and in 1828 a sliding scale was introduced, which raised import duties on corn while lowering prices on the home market and, on the contrary, lowered import duties while raising prices.

In 1838 the Manchester factory owners Cobden and Bright founded the Anti-Corn Law League, which widely exploited the popular discontent at rising corn prices. While agitating for the abolition of the corn duties and demanding complete freedom of trade, the League strove to weaken the economic and political positions of the landed aristocracy and to lower workers’ wages.

The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended in their repeal in 1846.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">17.</span> Pages XIII to XV are divided into two columns and not three like the other pages of the first manuscript; they contain no text relating to the section “Rent of Land.” On page XVI, which also has two columns, this text is in the first column, while on the following pages it is in the second.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">18.</span> Marx, still using Hegel’s terminology and his approach to the unity of the opposites, counterposes the term “Verwirklichung” (realisation) to “Entwirklichung” (loss of realisation).

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">19.</span> In this manuscript Marx frequently uses two similar German terms, “*Entäusserung*” and “*Entfremdung*,” to express the notion of “alienation.” In the present edition the former is generally translated as “alienation,” the latter as “estrangement,” because in the later economic works (*Theories of Surplus-Value*) Marx himself used the word “alienation” as the English equivalent of the term “*Entäusserung*.”

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">20.</span> The term “species-being” (*Gattungswesen*) is derived from Ludwig Feuerbach’s philosophy where it is applied to man and mankind as a whole.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">21.</span> Apparently Marx refers to Proudhon’s book *Qu’est-ce que la propri’eté*?, Paris, 1841.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">22.</span> This passage shows that Marx here uses the category of wages in a broad sense, as an expression of antagonistic relations between the classes of capitalists and of wage-workers. Under “the wages” he understands “the wage-labour,” the capitalist system as such. This idea was apparently elaborated in detail in that part of the manuscript which is now extant.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">23.</span> This apparently refers to the conversion of individuals into members of civil society which is considered as the sphere of property, of material relations that determine all other relations. In this case Marx refers to the material relations of society based on private property and the antagonism of different classes.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">24.</span> The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 deprived poor people considered able to work (including children) of any public relief except a place in the workhouse, where they were compelled to work.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">25.</span> In the manuscript “sein für sich selbst,” which is an expression of Hegel’s term “für sich’ (for itself) as opposed to “an sich” (in itself). In the Hegelian philosophy the former means roughly explicit, conscious or defined in contrast to “an sich,” a synonym for immature, implicit or unconscious.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">26.</span> This refers to *Revolutions de France et de Brabant, par Camille Desmoulins. Second Trimestre, contenant mars, avril et mai, Paris, l’an 1ier*, 1790, N. 16, p. 139 sq.; N. 23, p. 425 sqq.; N. 26, p. 580 sqq.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">27.</span> This refers to Georg Ludwig Wilhelm Funke, *Die aus der unbeschrdnklen Theilbarkeit des Grundeigenthums hervorgehenden Nachtheile, Hamburg und Gotha*, 1839, p. 56, in which there is a reference to Heinrich Leo, *Studien und Skizzen zu einer Vaturlehre des Slaates,* Halle, 1833, p. 102.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">28.</span> The third manuscript is a thick notebook the last few pages of which are blank. The pages are divided into two columns by a vertical line, not for the purpose of dividing the text according to the headings but for purely technical reasons. The text of the first three sections comprises pp. I-XI, XIV-XXI, XXXIV-XXXVIII and was written as a supplement to the missing pages of the second manuscript. Pages XI-XIII, XVII, XVIII, XXIII, XXIV, XXVI, XXXIV contain the text of the concluding chapter dealing with the criticism of Hegel’s dialectic (on some pages it is written alongside the text of other sections). In some places the manuscript contains the author’s remarks testifying to his intention to unite into a single whole various passages of this section separated from each other by the text of other sections. Pages XXIX-XL comprise the draft Preface. Finally, the text on the last pages (XLI-XLIII) is a self-contained essay on the power of money in bourgeois society.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">29.</span> The manuscript has “als für sich seiende Tätigkeit.” For the meaning of the terms “für sich” and “an sich” in Hegel’s philosophy see Note 25.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">30.</span> Marx refers to the rise of the primitive, crude equalitarian tendencies among the representatives of utopian communism at the early stages of its development. Among the medieval religious communistic communities, in particular, there was current a notion of the common possession of women as a feature of the future society depicted in the spirit of consumer communism ideals. In 1534-35 the German Anabaptists, who seized power in Münster, tried to introduce polygamy in accordance with this view. Tommaso Campanella, the author of *Civitas Solis* (early 17th century), rejected monogamy in his ideal society. The primitive communistic communities were also characterised by asceticism and a hostile attitude to science and works of art. Some of these primitive equalitarian features, the negative attitude to the arts in particular, were inherited by the communist trends of the first half of the 19th century, for example, by the members of the French secret societies of the 1830s and 1840s (“worker-egalitarians,” “humanitarians,” and so on) comprising the followers of Babeuf (for a characterisation of these see Engels, “Progress of Social Reform on the Continent” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, *Collected Works,* Volume 3, pp. 396-97)).

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">31.</span> This note is given by Marx on page V of the manuscript where it is separated by a horizontal line from the main text, but according to its meaning it refers to this sentence.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">32.</span> This part of the manuscript shows clearly the peculiarity of the terminology used by Marx in his works. At the time he had not worked out terms adequately expressing the conceptions of scientific communism he was then evolving and was still under the influence of Feuerbach in that respect. Hence the difference in the use of words in his early and subsequent, mature writings. In the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* the word “socialism” is used to denote the stage of society at which it has carried out a revolutionary transformation, abolished private property, class antagonisms, alienation and so on. In the same sense Marx used the expression “communism equals humanism.” At that time he understood the term “communism as such” not as the final goal of revolutionary transformation but as the process of this transformation, development leading up to that goal, a lower stage of the process.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">33.</span> This expression apparently refers to the theory of the English geologist Sir Charles Lyell who, in his three-volume work *The Principles of Geology* (1830-33), proved the evolution of the earth’s crust and refuted the popular theory of cataclysms. Lyell used the term “historical geology” for his theory. The term “geognosy” was introduced by the 18th-century German scientist Abraham Werner, a specialist in mineralogy, and it was used also by Alexander Humboldt.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">34.</span> This statement is interpreted differently by researchers. Many of them maintain that Marx here meant crude equalitarian communism, such as that propounded by Babeuf and his followers. While recognising the historic role of that communism, he thought it impossible to ignore its weak points. It seems more justifiable, however, to interpret this passage proceeding from the peculiarity of terms used in the manuscript (see Note 32). Marx here used the term “communism” to mean not the higher phase of classless society (which he at the time denoted as “socialism” or “communism equalling humanism”) but movement (in various forms, including primitive forms of equalitarian communism at the early stage) directed at its achievement, a revolutionary transformation process of transition to it. Marx emphasised that this process should not be considered as an end in itself, but that it is a necessary, though a transitional, stage in attaining the future social system, which will be characterised by new features distinct from those proper to this stage.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">35.</span> Page XI (in part) and pages XII and XIII are taken up by a text relating to the concluding chapter (see Note 28).

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">36.</span> The greater part of this page as well as part of the preceding page (XVII) comprises a text relating to the concluding chapter (see Note 28).

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">37.</span> Apparently Marx refers to a formula of the German philosopher [Fichte](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/f/i.htm#fichte-johann), an adherent of subjective idealism.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">38.</span> The preceding pages starting from p. XXI, which is partly taken up by a text relating to this section, contain the text of the concluding chapter.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">39.</span> In some of his early writings Marx already uses the term “*bürgerliche Gesellschaft*” to mean two things: (1) in a broader sense, the economic system of society regardless of the historical stage of its development, the sum total of material relations which determine political institutions and ideology, and (2) in the narrow sense, the material relations of bourgeois society (later on, that society as a whole), of capitalism. Hence, the term has been translated according to its concrete meaning in the context as “civil society” in the first case and “bourgeois society” in the second.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">40.</span> The two previous pages of the manuscript contain the draft Preface to the whole work, which is published on pages 17-20.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">41.</span> Ontology – in some philosophic systems a theory about being, about the nature of things.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">42.</span> Originally the section on the Hegelian dialectic was apparently conceived by Marx as a philosophical digression in the section of the third manuscript which is published under the heading “Private Property and Communism” and was written together with other sections as an addition to separate pages of the second manuscript (see pp. 93-108 of this book). Therefore Marx marked the beginning of this section (p. XI in the manuscript) as point 6, considering it to be the continuation of the five points of the preceding section. He marked as point 7 the beginning of the following section, headed “Human Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property,” on page XIV of the manuscript. However, when dealing with this subject on subsequent pages of his manuscript, Marx decided to collect the whole material into a separate, concluding chapter and mentioned this in his draft Preface. The chapter, like a number of other sections of the manuscript, was not finished. While writing it, Marx made special excerpts from the last chapter (“Absolute Knowledge”) of Hegel’s *Phänomenologie des Geistes,* which are in the same notebook as the third manuscript (these excerpts are not reproduced in this edition).

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">43.</span> The reference is not quite accurate. On page 193 of the work mentioned, Bruno Bauer polemises not against the anti-Hegelian Herr Gruppe but against the Right Hegelian Marheineke.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">44.</span> Marx here refers to Feurbach’s critical observations on Hegel in §§ 29-30 of his *Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft.*

This note is given at the bottom of page XIII of the third manuscript without any indication what it refers to. The asterisk after the sentence to which it seems to refer is given by the editors.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">45.</span> Here on page XVII of the third manuscript (part of which comprises a text relating to the section “Human Requirements and Division of Labour Under the Rule of Private Property”) Marx gave the note: “see p. XIII,” which proves that this text is the continuation of the section dealing with the critical analysis of the Hegelian dialectic begun on pp. XI-XII.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">46.</span> At the end of page XVIII of the third manuscript there is a note by Marx: “continued on p. XXII.” However number XXII was omitted by Marx in paging. The text of the given chapter is continued on the page marked by the author as XXIII, which is also confirmed by his remark on it: “see p. XVIII.”

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">47.</span> Marx apparently refers here not only to the identity of Hegel’s views on labour and some other categories of political economy with those of the English classical economists but also to his profound knowledge of economic writings. In lectures he delivered at Jena University in 1803-04 Hegel cited Adam Smith’s work. In his *Philosophie des Rechts* (§ 189) he mentions Smith, Say and Ricardo and notes the rapid development of economic thought.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">48.</span> Hegel uses the term “thinghood” (*Dingheit*) in his work *Phänomenologie des Geistes* to denote an abstract, universal, mediating link in the process of cognition; “thinghood” reveals the generality of the specific properties of individual things. The synonym for it is “pure essence” (*das reine Wesen*).

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">49.</span> These eight points of the “surmounting of the object of consciousness,” expressed “in all its aspects,” are copied nearly word for word from §§ 1 and 3 of the last chapter (“Absolute Knowledge”) of Hegel’s *Phänomenologie des Geistes.*

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">50.</span> Number XXV was omitted by Marx in paging the third manuscript.

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">51.</span> Marx refers to § 30 of Feuerbach’s *Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft,* which says: “Hegel is a thinker who *surpasses* himself in thinking.”

<!-- class: fst -->
<span class="term">52.</span> This enumeration gives the major categories of Hegel’s *Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften* in the order in which they are examined by Hegel. Similarly, the categories reproduced by Marx above (on p. 149), from “civil law” to “world history,” are given in the order in which they appear in Hegel’s *Philosophie des Rechts.*