nd measure of
economic values or of wealth, Marx goes on to point out that, by the
improvement of industrial methods, labour in the modern world has been
growing more and more productive, so that each labour-hour results in an
increased yield of commodities. Thus a man who a couple of centuries ago
could have only just kept himself alive by the products of his entire
labour-day, can now keep himself alive by the products of half or a
quarter of it. The products of the remainder of his labour-day are what
Marx called a "surplus value," meaning by this phrase all that output of
wealth which is beyond what is practically necessary to keep the
labourer alive. But what, he asks, becomes of this surplus? Does it go
to the labourers who have produced it? No, he replies. On the contrary,
as fast as it is produced, it is abstracted from the labourer in a
manner, which he goes on to analyse, by the capitalist.

Marx here advances to the second stage of his argument. Capital, as he
conceives of it, is the tools or instruments of production; and modern
capital for him means those vast aggregates of machinery by the use of
which in most industries the earlier implements have been displaced.
Now, here, says Marx, the capitalist is sure to interpose with the
objection that the increased output of wealth is due, not to labour, but
to the machinery, and that the labourer, as such, has consequently no
claim on it. But to this objection Marx is ready with the following
answer--that the machinery itself is nothing but past labour in
disguise. It is past labour crystallised, or embodied in an external
form, and used by present labour to assist itself in its own operations.
Every wheel, crank, and connecting-rod, every rivet in every boiler,
owes its shape and its place to labour, and labour only. Labour,
therefore--the labour of the average multitude--remains the sole agent
in the production of wealth, after all.

Capital, however, as thus understood, has, he says, this
peculiarity--that, being labour in an externalised and also in a
permanent form, it is capable of being detached from the labourers and
appropriated by other people; and the essence of modern capitalism is
neither more nor less than this--the appropriation of the instruments of
production by a minority who are not producers. So long as the
implements of production were small and simple, and such that each could
be used by one man or family, the divorce between the labourer