By means of the possession of this fixed, permanent, or slowly consumed, part of national wealth, of the land and materials to work upon, the tools to work with, the houses to shelter whilst working, the holders of these articles command for their own benefit the yearly productive powers of all the really efficient productive labourers of society, though these articles may bear ever so small a proportion to the recurring products of that labour. The population of Britain and Ireland being twenty millions, the average consumption of each individual, man, woman, and child, is probably about twenty pounds, ****** four hundred millions of wealth, the product of labour annually consumed. The whole amount of the accumulated capital of these countries, it has been estimated, does not exceed twelve hundred millions, or three times the year's labour of the community; or, if equally divided, sixty pounds capital for every individual. `Tis with the proportions, rather than with the absolute accurate amount of these estimated sums, we are concerned. The interest of this capital stock would support the whole population in the same comfort in which they now exist, for about two months of one year, the whole accumulated capital itself would maintain them in idleness (could purchasers be found) for three years! at the end of which time, without houses, clothes, or food, they must starve, or become the slaves of those who supported them in the three years idleness. As three years to the life of one healthy generation, say forty years, so is the magnitude and importance of the actual wealth, the accumulated capital of even the wealthiest community, to the productive powers of only one generation; not of what, under judicious arrangements of equal security, they might produce, particularly with the aid of cooperative labour, but of what, under the defective and depressing expedients of insecurity, they do absolutely produce! . . . The seeming mighty mass of existing capital to maintain and perpetuate which (or rather the command of the products of yearly labour which it serves as the means of engrossing). . . in its present state of forced division, are all the horrible machinery, the vices, crimes, and miseries of insecurity, sought to be perpetuated. As nothing can be accumulated without first supplying necessaries, and as the great current of human inclination is to enjoyment; hence the comparatively trifling amount of the actual wealth of society at any particular moment. `Tis an eternal round of production and consumption. From the amount of this immense mass of annual consumption and production, the handful of actual accumulation would hardly be missed; and yet it is to this handful, and not to the mass of productive powers that attention has chiefly been directed. This handful, however, having been seized upon by a few, and been made the instrument of converting to their use the constantly recurring annual products of the labour of the great majority of their fellow-creatures; hence, in the opinion of these few, the paramount importance of such an instrument. .
. . About one-third part of the annual products of the labour of these countries is now abstracted from the producers, under the name of public burdens, and unproductively consumed by those who give no equivalent, that is to say, none satisfactory to the producers. . . . With the accumulated masses, particularly when held forth in the hands of a few individuals, the vulgar eye has been always struck. The annually produced and consumed masses, like the eternal and incalculable waves of a mighty river, roll on and are lost in the forgotten ocean of consumption. On this eternal consumption, however, are dependent, not only for almost all gratifications, but even for existence, the whole human race. The quantity and distribution of these yearly products ought to be the paramount objects of consideration.
The actual accumulation is altogether of secondary importance, and derives almost the whole of that importance from its influence on the distribution of the yearly productions. . . . Actual accumulations and distributions have been always considered (in Thompson's works) in reference, and subordinate to actual accumulations, and to the perpetuating of the existing modes of distribution. In comparison to the preservation of the actual distribution, the ever recurring misery of happiness of the whole human race has been considered as unworthy of regard. To perpetuate the results of force, fraud, and chance, has been called security; and to the support of this spurious security, have all the productive powers of the human race been unrelentingly sacrificed." ( Ibid ., pp. 440-43.)For reproduction only two normal cases are possible, apart from disturbances, which interfere with reproduction even on a fixed scale.
There is either reproduction on a ****** scale.
Or there is capitalisation of surplus-value, accumulation.
I. SIMPLE REPRODUCTION
In the case of ****** reproduction the surplus-value produced and realised annually, or periodically, if there are several turnovers during the year, is consumed individually, that is to say, unproductively, by its owner, the capitalist.
The circumstance that the value of the product consists in part of surplus-value and in part of that portion of value which is formed by the variable capital reproduced in the product plus the constant capital consumed by it, does not alter anything whatever either in the quantity or in the value of the total product, which constantly steps into circulation as commodity-capital and is just as constantly withdrawn from it, in order to be productively or individually consumed, i.e., to serve as means of production or consumption. if constant capital is left aside, only the distribution of the annual product between the labourers and the capitalists is affected thereby.
