Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

THE 'ECONOMICS' 3'17 4

Thus surplus value could only arise from variable capital, not from

constant capital, as labour alone created value. Put very simply, Marx's

reason for thinking that the rate of profit would decrease was that, with

the introduction of machinery, labour time would become less and thus

yield less surplus value. Of course, machinery would increase production

and colonial markets would absorb some of the surplus, but these were

only palliatives and an eventual crisis was inevitable.

These first nine chapters were complemented by a masterly historical

account of the genesis of capitalism which illustrates better than any other

writing Marx's approach and method. Marx particularly made pioneering

use of official statistical information that came to be available from the

middle of the nineteenth century onwards. A reader who finds the begin-

ning of Capital too arid would do well to follow Marx's advice to Mrs

Kugelmann^197 and begin by reading the chapters on 'The Working Day',

'Machinery and Modern Industry' and 'Capitalist Accumulation'. In the

chapter on 'The Working Day', Marx described in detail the 'physical

and mental degradation'^198 forced on men, women and children by

working long hours in unhealthy conditions and related the bitter struggle

to gain some relief by legal limits on the number of hours worked and

the passing of factory acts. Although, Marx concluded, it might seem as

though the capitalist and worker exchanged contracts in a free market,

the bargain was, in fact, one-sided:

The bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was no 'free agent' that

the time for which he is free to sell his labour-power is the time for

which he is forced to sell it, that in fact the vampire will not loose its

hold on him 'so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to

be exploited'. For 'protection' against 'the serpent of their agonies', the

labourers must put their heads together, and, as a class, compel

the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the

very workers from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves

and their families into slavery and death. In place of the pompous

catalogue of the 'inalienable rights of man' comes the modest Magna

Charta of a legally limited working-day, which shall make clear 'when

the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own begins'.^199

Marx continued his indictment of capitalism in the chapter on 'Machinery
and Modern Industry', describing the crippling effect of machinery on
workers and the environmental effects of capitalist exploitation of agri-
culture.^200 Summing up his conclusions, however, Marx showed that his
view of technological progress under capitalism was not wholly negative:

We have seen how this absolute contradiction between the technical

necessities of Modern Industry, and the social character inherent in its