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he proceeds with more or less speed to consume. The two shillings have thus been consumed in double fashion; productively for capital, since they have been exchanged for the labor force which produced the four shillings; unproductively for the laborer, since they have been exchanged for means of subsistence which have disappeared for ever, and whose value he can only recover by repeating the same bargain with the farmer. Thus capital presupposes wage-labor and wage-labor presupposes capital; one is a necessary condition to the existence of the other; they mutually call each other into existence.
Does an operator in a cotton factory produce merely cotton goods? No. He produces capital. He produces values which give fresh command over his labor, and which, by means of such command, create fresh values.
Capital can only increase when it is exchanged for labor—when it calls wage-labor into existence. Wage-labor can only be exchanged for capital by augmenting capital and strengthening the power whose slave it is. An increase of capital is therefore an increase of the proletariat, that is, of the laboring class.
The interests of the capitalist and the laborer are therefore identical, assert the bourgeoisie and their economists. And, in fact, so they are! The laborer perishes if capital does not employ him. Capital perishes if it does not exploit labor, and in order to exploit it, it must buy it. The faster the capital devoted to production—the productive capital—in-
