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Capitalist Production.

of efficiency in the same mass of capital. And as we presupposed the limits set by capitalist production, that is to say, pre-supposed the process of social production in a form developed by purely spontaneous growth, we neglected any more rational combination, directly and systematically practicable with the means of production, and the mass of labour-power at present disposable. Classical economy always loved to conceive social capital as a fixed magnitude of a fixed degree of efficiency. But this prejudice was first established as a dogma by the arch-Philistine, Jeremy Bentham, that insipid, pedantic, leather-tongued oracle of the ordinary bourgeois intelligence of the 19th century.^[1] Bentham is among philosophers what Martin Tupper is among poets. Both could only have been manufactured in England.^[2] In the light of his dogma the commonest phenomena of the process of production, as, e.g., its sudden expansions and contractions, nay, even accumulation itself, become perfectly inconceivable.^[3] The

↑ Compare among others, Jeremy Bentham: “Théorie des Peines et des Récompenses, traduct. d’Et. Dumont, 3éme édit. Paris, 1826,” p. II., L. IV., ch. II.
↑ Bentham is a purely English phenomenon. Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolf, in no time and in no country has the most homespun common-place ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvetius and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the dryest naiveté he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian religion, e.g., is “useful,” because it forbids in the name of religion the same faults that the penal code condemns in the name of the law. Artistic criticism is “harmful,” because it disturbs worthy people in their enjoyment of Martin Tupper, etc. With such rubbish has the brave fellow, with his motto, “nulla dies sine lineâ,” piled up mountains of books. Had I the courage of my friend, Heinrich Heine, I should call Mr. Jeremy a genius in the way of bourgeois stupidity.
↑ “Political economists are too apt to consider a certain quantity of capital and a certain number of lahourers as productive instruments of uniform power, or operating with a certain uniform intensity.… Those … who maintain … that commodities are the sole agents of production … prove that production could never be enlarged, for it requires as an indispensable condition to such an enlargement that food, raw materials, and tools should be previously augmented; which is in fact maintaining that no increase of production can take place without a previous increase, or, in other words, that an increase is impossible.” (S. Bailey: “Money and its vicissitudes,” pp. 26 and 70.) Bailey criticises the dogma mainly from the point of view of the process of circulation.

[1] Compare among others, Jeremy Bentham: “Théorie des Peines et des Récompenses, traduct. d’Et. Dumont, 3éme édit. Paris, 1826,” p. II., L. IV., ch. II.

[2] Bentham is a purely English phenomenon. Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolf, in no time and in no country has the most homespun common-place ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvetius and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the dryest naiveté he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian religion, e.g., is “useful,” because it forbids in the name of religion the same faults that the penal code condemns in the name of the law. Artistic criticism is “harmful,” because it disturbs worthy people in their enjoyment of Martin Tupper, etc. With such rubbish has the brave fellow, with his motto, “nulla dies sine lineâ,” piled up mountains of books. Had I the courage of my friend, Heinrich Heine, I should call Mr. Jeremy a genius in the way of bourgeois stupidity.

[3] “Political economists are too apt to consider a certain quantity of capital and a certain number of lahourers as productive instruments of uniform power, or operating with a certain uniform intensity.… Those … who maintain … that commodities are the sole agents of production … prove that production could never be enlarged, for it requires as an indispensable condition to such an enlargement that food, raw materials, and tools should be previously augmented; which is in fact maintaining that no increase of production can take place without a previous increase, or, in other words, that an increase is impossible.” (S. Bailey: “Money and its vicissitudes,” pp. 26 and 70.) Bailey criticises the dogma mainly from the point of view of the process of circulation.

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