Key Arguments

• The capitalist's motivating force is the acquisition of exchange-value, not use-value
• Competition forces the capitalist to constantly extend their capital to preserve it
• The capitalist is merely a cog in a social mechanism that dictates their actions as external coercive laws

Source Quotes

That part of the tribute exacted by him which he accumulates is said to be saved by him, because he does not consume it, i.e. because he performs his function as a capitalist, and enriches himself. Except as capital personified, the capitalist has no historical value, and no right to that historical existence which, to use Lichnowsky’s amusing expression, ‘ain’t got no date’. It is only to this extent that the necessity of the capitalist’s own transitory existence is implied in the transitory necessity of the capitalist mode of production.

But, in so far as he is capital personified, his motivating force is not the acquisition and enjoyment of use-values, but the acquisition and augmentation of exchange-values. He is fanatically intent on the valorization of value; consequently he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production’s sake. In this way he spurs on the development of society’s productive forces, and the creation of those material conditions of production which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle.

As such, he shares with the miser an absolute drive towards self-enrichment. But what appears in the miser as the mania of an individual is in the capitalist the effect of a social mechanism in which he is merely a cog. Moreover, the development of capitalist production makes it necessary constantly to increase the amount of capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition subordinates every individual capitalist to the immanent laws of capitalist production, as external and coercive laws.

It compels him to keep extending his capital, so as to preserve it, and he can only extend it by means of progressive accumulation. In so far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of capital – endowed as capital is, in his person, with consciousness and a will – his own private consumption counts as a robbery committed against the accumulation of his capital, just as, in double-entry book-keeping, the private expenditure of the capitalist is placed on the debit side of his account against his capital. Accumulation is the conquest of the world of social wealth.

Key Concepts

• Except as capital personified, the capitalist has no historical value
• fanatically intent on the valorization of value
• ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production’s sake
• effect of a social mechanism in which he is merely a cog
• endowed as capital is, in his person, with consciousness and a will

Context

Marx defining the specific social role of the capitalist, distinguishing their structural function from their individual humanity