Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. J. L. Joynes (1900).pdf/51

 reducing the price of commodities to their cost of production,—and, as fast as their production is cheapened, compelling, as if by a despotic law, a continually larger supply of cheaper products to be offered at lower prices. Thus the capitalist will have nothing for his exertions beyond the obligation to produce during the same time an amount larger than before, and an enhancement of the difficulty of employing his capital to advantage. While competition continually persecutes him with its law of the cost of production, and turns against himself every weapon which he forges against his rivals, the capitalist continually tries to cheat competition by incessantly introducing further subdivision of labor and replacing the old machines by new ones, which, though more expensive, produce more cheaply, instead of waiting till competition has rendered them obsolete.

Let us now look at this feverish agitation as it affects the markets of the whole world, and we shall understand how the increase, accumulation, and concentration of capital bring in their train an uninterrupted and extreme subdivision of labor, always advancing with gigantic strides of progress, and a continual employment of new machinery, together with improvement of the old.

The greater division of labor enables one laborer to do the work of five, ten, twenty; it therefore multiplies the competition among laborers, five, ten,