Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. Harriet E. Lothrop (1902).djvu/45



is it that takes place in the exchange between capitalist and wage-laborer?

The laborer receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labor-power; but the capitalist receives, in exchange for his means of subsistence, labor, the productive activity of the laborer, the creative force by which. the worker not only replaces what he consumes, but also The laborer gets from the capitalist a portion of the existing means of subsistence. For what purpose do these serve him? For immediate consumption. But as soon as I consume means of subsistence, they are irrevocably lost to me, unless I employ the time during which these means sustain my life in producing new means of subsistence, in creating by my labor new values in place of the values lost in consumption. But it is just this noble reproductive power that the laborer surrenders to the capitalist in exchange for means of subsistence received. Consequently, he has lost it for himself.

Let us take an example. For one dollar a laborer works all day long in the fields of a farmer, to whom he thus secures a return of two dollars. The farmer not only receives the replaced value which he has given to the day-laborer; he has doubled it. Therefore he has con-