the law discovered by Hegel (in his “Logic”), that merely quantitative differences beyond a certain point pass into qualitative changes.[1]
The minimum of the sum of value that the individual possessor of money or commodities must command, in order to metamorphose himself into a capitalist, changes with the different stages of development of capitalist production, and is at given stages different in different spheres of production, according to their special and technical conditions. Certain spheres of production demand, even at th~ very outset of capitalist production, a minimum of capital that is not as yet found in the hands of single individuals. This gives rise partly to state subsidies to private persons, as in France in the time of Colbert, and as in many German states up to our own epoch; partly to the formation of societies with legal monopoly for the exploitation of certain branches of industry and commerce, the fore-runners of our own modern joint-stock companies.[2]
Within the process of production, as we have seen, capital acquired the command over labour, i. e., over functioning labouring-power or the labourer himself. Personified capital, the capitalist takes care that the labourer does his work regularly and with the proper degree of intensity.
Capital further developed into a coercive relation, which compels the working class to do more work than the narrow round of its own life-wants prescribes. As a producer of the activity of others, as a pumper-out of surplus-labour and exploiter of labour-power, it surpasses in energy, disregard of
- ↑ The molecular theory of modern chemistry first scientifically worked out by Laurent and Gerhardt rests on no other law. (Addition to 3rd Edition.) For the explanation of this statement, which is not very clear to non-chemists, we remark that the author speaks here of the homologous series of carbon compounds, first so named by C. Gerhardt in 1848, each series of which has its own general algebraic formula. Thus the series of paraffins: Cn H²n+², that of the normal alcohols: Cn H²n+²0; of the normal fatty acids: Cn H²n O² and many others. In the above examples, by the simply quantitative addition of C H² to the molecular formula, a qualitatively different body is each time formed. On the share (overestimated by Marx) of Laurent and Serhardt in the determination of this important fact see Kopp, ‘“Entwicklung der Chemie.’ München, 1873, pp. 709, 716, and Schorlemmer, "Rise and Progress of Organic Chemistry.” London, 1879, p. 54.—Ed.
- ↑ Martin Luther calls these kinds of institutions: "The Company Monopolia.”
