Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. Harriet E. Lothrop (1902).djvu/46

 sumed the one dollar that he gave to the day-laborer in a fruitful, productive manner. For the one dollar he has bought the labor-power of the day-laborer, which creates products of the soil of twice the value, and out of one dollar makes two. The day-laborer, on the con- trary, receives in the place of his productive force, whose results he has just surrendered to the farmer, one dollar, which he exchanges for means of subsistence, which means of subsistence he consumes more or less quickly. The one dollar has therefore been consumed in a double manner—reproductively for the capitalist, for it has been exchanged for labor-power, which brought forth two dollars; unproductively for the worker, for it has been exchanged for means of subsistence which are lost for- ever, and whose value he can obtain again only by repeating the same exchange with the farmer.

Does a worker in a cotton factory produce only cotton goods? No. He produces capital. He produces values which serve anew to command his work and to create by means of it new values.

Capital can multiply itself only by exchanging itself for labor-power, by calling wage-labor into life. The labor-power of the wage-laborer can exchange itself for capital only by increasing capital, by strengthening that very power whose slave it is.

And so, the bourgeoisie and its economists maintain that the interest of the capitalist and of the laborer is the same. And in fact, so they are! The worker perishes if capital does not keep him busy. Capital