Key Arguments

• Machinery removes the need for muscular power, turning it into 'a means for employing workers of slight muscular strength, or whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple,' so that 'The labour of women and children was therefore the first result of the capitalist application of machinery!'
• The machine, 'that mighty substitute for labour and for workers,' is 'immediately transformed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every member of the worker’s family, without distinction of age or sex,' so compulsory wage work replaces children’s play and domestic labour for the family itself.
• Under pre‑machinery conditions, 'The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult worker, but also by that necessary to maintain his family.'
• Once machinery throws all family members onto the labour-market, it 'spreads the value of the man’s labour-power over his whole family. It thus depreciates it.' Buying the labour-power of four family members may cost more in money than buying the labour-power of the single head of household, but in return 'four days’ labour takes the place of one day’s, and the price falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus labour of four over the surplus labour of one.'
• In order for the family to live, 'four people must now provide not only labour for the capitalist, but also surplus labour.' Thus machinery both widens the 'human material that forms capital’s most characteristic field of exploitation' and 'at the same time raises the degree of that exploitation.'

Source Quotes

Before we inquire how human material is incorporated with this objective organism, let us consider some general effects of the revolution on the worker himself. (a) Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-Power by Capital. The Employment of Women and Children In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means for employing workers of slight muscular strength, or whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour of women and children was therefore the first result of the capitalist application of machinery!

The Employment of Women and Children In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means for employing workers of slight muscular strength, or whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour of women and children was therefore the first result of the capitalist application of machinery! That mighty substitute for labour and for workers, the machine, was immediately transformed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every member of the worker’s family, without distinction of age or sex.

The labour of women and children was therefore the first result of the capitalist application of machinery! That mighty substitute for labour and for workers, the machine, was immediately transformed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every member of the worker’s family, without distinction of age or sex. Compulsory work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children’s play, but also of independent labour at home, within customary limits, for the family itself.

Compulsory work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children’s play, but also of independent labour at home, within customary limits, for the family itself. The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult worker, but also by that necessary to maintain his family. Machinery, by throwing every member of that family onto the labour-market, spreads the value of the man’s labour-power over his whole family.

The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult worker, but also by that necessary to maintain his family. Machinery, by throwing every member of that family onto the labour-market, spreads the value of the man’s labour-power over his whole family. It thus depreciates it. To purchase the labour-power of a family of four workers may perhaps cost more than it formerly did to purchase the labour-power of the head of the family, but, in return, four days’ labour takes the place of one day’s, and the price falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus labour of four over the surplus labour of one.

It thus depreciates it. To purchase the labour-power of a family of four workers may perhaps cost more than it formerly did to purchase the labour-power of the head of the family, but, in return, four days’ labour takes the place of one day’s, and the price falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus labour of four over the surplus labour of one. In order that the family may live, four people must now provide not only labour for the capitalist, but also surplus labour.

In order that the family may live, four people must now provide not only labour for the capitalist, but also surplus labour. Thus we see that machinery, while augmenting the human material that forms capital’s most characteristic field of exploitation, at the same time raises the degree of that exploitation. Machinery also revolutionizes, and quite fundamentally, the agency through which the capital-relation is formally mediated, i.e. the contract between the worker and the capitalist.

Key Concepts

• In so far as machinery dispenses with muscular power, it becomes a means for employing workers of slight muscular strength, or whose bodily development is incomplete, but whose limbs are all the more supple.
• The labour of women and children was therefore the first result of the capitalist application of machinery!
• that mighty substitute for labour and for workers, the machine, was immediately transformed into a means for increasing the number of wage-labourers by enrolling, under the direct sway of capital, every member of the worker’s family, without distinction of age or sex.
• The value of labour-power was determined, not only by the labour-time necessary to maintain the individual adult worker, but also by that necessary to maintain his family.
• Machinery, by throwing every member of that family onto the labour-market, spreads the value of the man’s labour-power over his whole family. It thus depreciates it.
• four days’ labour takes the place of one day’s, and the price falls in proportion to the excess of the surplus labour of four over the surplus labour of one.
• Thus we see that machinery, while augmenting the human material that forms capital’s most characteristic field of exploitation, at the same time raises the degree of that exploitation.

Context

Beginning of subsection (a) 'Appropriation of Supplementary Labour-Power by Capital. The Employment of Women and Children' in Section 3, where Marx deduces the immediate effects of machine production on the composition and valuation of labour-power in the working-class family.