Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. J. L. Joynes (1900).pdf/31

 Capital consists of raw material, implements of labor, and all kinds of means of subsistence, which are used for the production of now implements and new means of subsistence. All these factors of capital are created by labor, are products of labor, are stored-up labor. Stored-up labor which serves as the means of new production is capital.

So say the economists.

What is a negro slave? A human creature of the black race. The one definition is just as valuable as the other,

A negro is a negro. In certain conditions he is transformed into a slave. A spinning-jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain circumstances does it become capital. Outside these circumstances it is no more capital than gold is intrinsically money, or sugar is the price of sugar. In the work of production men do not stand in relation to nature alone, but also to each other. They only produce when they work together in a certain way and mutually enter upon certain relations and conditions, and it is only within these relations and conditions that their relation to nature is defined, and production becomes possible.

These social relations upon which the producers mutually enter, the terms upon which they exchange their energies and take their share in the collective act of production, will of course differ according to the character of the means of production. With the invention of firearms as implements of warfare the whole organization of the army was of necessity