of this capital by the number of the labouring population.”[1] That is to say we first add together the individual wages actually paid, and then we affirm that the sum thus obtained, forms the total value of the “labour-fund” determined and vouchsafed to us by God and Nature. Lastly, we divide the sum thus obtained by the number of labourers to find out again how much may come to each on the average. An uncommonly knowing dodge this, It did not prevent Mr. Fawcett saying in the same breath: “The aggregate wealth which is annually saved in England, is divided into two portions; one portion is employed as capital to maintain our industry, and the other portion is exported to foreign countries.… Only a portion, and perhaps, not a large portion of the wealth which is annually saved in this country, is invested in our own industry.”[2]
The greater part of the yearly accruing surplus-product, embezzled, because abstracted without return of an equivalent, from the English labourer, is thus used as capital, not in England, but in foreign countries. But with the additional capital thus exported, a part of the “labour-fund” invented by God and Bentham is also exported.[3]
- ↑ I must here remind the reader that the categories, “variable and constant capital,” were first used by me. Political Economy since the time of Adam Smith has confusedly mixed up the essential distinctions involved in these categories, with the mere formal differences, arising out of the process of circulation, of fixed and circulating capital. For further details on this point, see Book II., Part II.
- ↑ Fawcett, l. c. pp. 122, 123.
- ↑ It might be said that not only capital, but also labourers, in the shape of emigrants, are annually exported from England. In the text, however, there is no question of the peculium of the emigrants, who are in great part not labourers. The sons of farmers make up a great part of them. The additional capital annually transported abroad to be put ont at interest is in much greater proportion to the annual accumulation than the yearly emigration is to the yearly increase of population.
