Key Arguments

• This dogma renders economic phenomena like accumulation and sudden expansions incomprehensible
• It portrays variable capital as a separate, isolated part of social wealth confined by 'natural chains' that cannot be crossed
• It serves an apologetic purpose to suggest workers cannot increase their share of wealth
• Jeremy Bentham is identified as the 'arch-philistine' who established this prejudice as dogma

Source Quotes

Classical political economy has always liked to conceive social capital as a fixed magnitude of a fixed degree of efficiency. But this prejudice was first established as a dogma by the arc-philistine, Jeremy Bentham, that soberly pedantic and heavy-footed oracle of the ‘common sense’ of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie. Bentham is among philosophers what Martin Tupper is among poets.

This dogma in fact renders the commonest phenomena of the production process, for instance its sudden expansions and contractions, and even accumulation itself, absolutely incomprehensible. It was used by Bentham himself, as well as by Malthus, James Mill, MacCulloch, etc., for apologetic purposes, and in particular so as to represent one part of capital, namely variable capital, or that part convertible into labour-power, as being of fixed size. Variable capital in its material existence, i.e. the mass of the means of subsistence it represents for the worker, or the so-called labour fund, was turned by this fable into a separate part of social wealth, confined by natural chains and unable to cross the boundary to the other parts.

It was used by Bentham himself, as well as by Malthus, James Mill, MacCulloch, etc., for apologetic purposes, and in particular so as to represent one part of capital, namely variable capital, or that part convertible into labour-power, as being of fixed size. Variable capital in its material existence, i.e. the mass of the means of subsistence it represents for the worker, or the so-called labour fund, was turned by this fable into a separate part of social wealth, confined by natural chains and unable to cross the boundary to the other parts. To set in motion the part of social wealth which is to function as constant capital, or, to express it in a material form, as means of production, a definite mass of living labour is required.

Both could only have been manufactured in England. This dogma in fact renders the commonest phenomena of the production process, for instance its sudden expansions and contractions, and even accumulation itself, absolutely incomprehensible. It was used by Bentham himself, as well as by Malthus, James Mill, MacCulloch, etc., for apologetic purposes, and in particular so as to represent one part of capital, namely variable capital, or that part convertible into labour-power, as being of fixed size.

Key Concepts

• prejudice was first established as a dogma by the arc-philistine, Jeremy Bentham
• represent one part of capital, namely variable capital, or that part convertible into labour-power, as being of fixed size
• turned by this fable into a separate part of social wealth, confined by natural chains and unable to cross the boundary to the other parts
• renders the commonest phenomena of the production process, for instance its sudden expansions and contractions, and even accumulation itself, absolutely incomprehensible

Context

Marx critiquing the intellectual lineage (Bentham, Malthus, James Mill) that promoted the idea of a fixed fund for wages