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654

Capitalist Production.

revolution, and the country proletariat in England began to set fire to farmyards and cornstacks. On this side of the Channel Owenism began to spread; on the other side, St. Simonism and Fourierism. The hour of vulgar economy had struck. Exactly a year before Nassau W. Senior discovered at Manchester, that the profit (including interest) of capital is the product of the last hour of the twelve, he had announced to the world another discovery. “I substitute,” he proudly says, “for the word capital, considered as an instrument of production, the word abstinence.”^[1] An unparalleled sample this, of the discoveries of vulgar economy! Ii substitutes for an economic category, a sycophantic phrase—volià tout. “When the savage,” says Senior, “makes bows, he exercises an industry, but he does not practice abstinence.” This explains how and why, in the earlier states of society, the implements of labour were fabricated without abstinence on the part of the capitalist. “The more society progresses, the more abstinence is demanded,”^[2] namely, from those who ply the industry of appropriating the fruits of others’ industry. All the conditions for carrying on the labour-process are suddenly converted into so many acts of abstinence on the part of the capitalist. If the corn is not all eaten, but part of it also sown—abstinence of the capitalist. If the wine gets time to mature—abstinence of the capitalist.^[3] The

↑ (Senior, Principes fondamentaux de l’Econ. Pol. trad. Arrivabeue. Paris, 1886, p. 308). This was rather too much for the adherents of the old classical school. “Mr. Senior has substituted for it” (the expression, labour and profit) “the expression Labour and Abstinence. He who converts his revenue abstains from the enjoyment which its expenditure would afford him. It is not the capital, but the use of the capital productively, which is the cause of profits.” (John Cazenove, l. c. p. 180, Note.) John St. Mill, on the contrary, accepts on the one hand Ricardo’s theory of profit, and annexes on the other hand Senior’s “remuneration of abstinence.” He is as much at home in absurd contradictions, as he feels at sea in the Hegelian contradiction, the source of all dialectic. It has never occurred to the vulgar economist to make the simple reflexion, that every human action may be viewed, as “abstinence” from its opposite. Eating is abstinence from fasting, walking, abstinence from standing still, working, abstinence from idling, idling abstinence from working, &c. These gentlemen would do well, to ponder, once in a way, over Spinoza’s: “Determinatio est Negatio.”
↑ Senior, l. c., p, 342.
↑ “No one … will sow his wheat, for instance, and allow it to remain a twelve-month in the ground, or leave his wine in a cellar for years, instead of consuming these things or their equivalent at once … unless he expects to acquire additional value, &c.” (Scrope, Polit. Econ. edit. by A. Potter, New York, 1841, p. 133-134.)

[1] (Senior, Principes fondamentaux de l’Econ. Pol. trad. Arrivabeue. Paris, 1886, p. 308). This was rather too much for the adherents of the old classical school. “Mr. Senior has substituted for it” (the expression, labour and profit) “the expression Labour and Abstinence. He who converts his revenue abstains from the enjoyment which its expenditure would afford him. It is not the capital, but the use of the capital productively, which is the cause of profits.” (John Cazenove, l. c. p. 180, Note.) John St. Mill, on the contrary, accepts on the one hand Ricardo’s theory of profit, and annexes on the other hand Senior’s “remuneration of abstinence.” He is as much at home in absurd contradictions, as he feels at sea in the Hegelian contradiction, the source of all dialectic. It has never occurred to the vulgar economist to make the simple reflexion, that every human action may be viewed, as “abstinence” from its opposite. Eating is abstinence from fasting, walking, abstinence from standing still, working, abstinence from idling, idling abstinence from working, &c. These gentlemen would do well, to ponder, once in a way, over Spinoza’s: “Determinatio est Negatio.”

[2] Senior, l. c., p, 342.

[3] “No one … will sow his wheat, for instance, and allow it to remain a twelve-month in the ground, or leave his wine in a cellar for years, instead of consuming these things or their equivalent at once … unless he expects to acquire additional value, &c.” (Scrope, Polit. Econ. edit. by A. Potter, New York, 1841, p. 133-134.)

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