Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. J. L. Joynes (1900).pdf/34

 be large or small, it remains a tree. Whether we exchange iron for other wares in ounces or in hundredweights that makes no difference in its character as a commodity possessing exchange-value. According to its amount it is a commodity of more or less value, with a higher or lower price.

How, then, can a sum of commodities, of exchange- values, become capital?

By maintaining and multiplying itself as an independent social power, that is, as the power of a portion of society, by means of its exchange for direct, living labor-power. Capital necessarily presupposes the existence of a class which possesses nothing but labor force.

It is the lordship of past, stored-up, realized labor over actual, living labor that transforms the stored-up labor into capital.

Capital does not consist in the fact that stored up labor is used by living labor as a means to further production. It consists in the fact that living labor serves as the means whereby stored-up labor may maintain and multiply its own exchange-value.

What is it that takes place in the exchange between capital and wage-labor?

The laborer receives in exchange for his labor-power the means of subsistence; but the capitalist receives in exchange for the means of subsistence—labor, the productive energy of the laborer, the creative force whereby the laborer not only replaces what he consumes, but also. The laborer receives