Page:Das Kapital (Moore, 1906).pdf/593

 In order to be sold as a commodity in the market, labour must at all events exist before it is sold. But could the labourer give it an independent objective existence, he would sell a commodity and not labour.

Apart from these contradictions, a direct exchange of money, i.e., of realized labour, with living labour would either do away with the law of value which only begins to develop itself freely on the basis of capitalist production, or do away with capitalist production itself, which rests directly on wage-labour. The working day of 12 hours embodies itself, e.g., in a money value of 6s. Either equivalents are exchanged, and then the labourer receives 6s. for 12 hours’ labour; the price of his labour would be equal to the price of his product. In this case he produces no surplus-value, for the buyer of his labour, the 6s. are not transformed into capital, the basis of capitalist production varishes. But it is on this very basis that he sells his labour aud that his labour is wage-labour. Or else he receives for 12 hours’ labour less than 6s., i.e., less than 12 hours’ labour. Twelve hours labour are exchanged against 10, 6, &c., hours’ labour. This equalisation of unequal quantities not merely does away with the determination of value. Such a self-destructive contradiction cannot be in any way even enunciated or formulated as a law.

It is of no avail to deduce the exchange of more labour against less, from their difference of form, the one being realized, the other living. This is the more absurd as the