"Capital is a basis of means of economic power for the continuation of production and for the formation of shares in the fruits of the general labour-power " {D C. 40}, However oracularly and slovenly that too is expressed, this much at least is certain: the basis of means of economic power may continue production to eternity, but according to Herr Dühring's own words it will not become capital so long as it does not form "shares in the fruits of the general labour-power" -- that is to say, form surplus-value or at least surplus-product. Herr Dühring therefore not only himself commits the sin with which he charges Marx -- of not holding the accepted economic view of capital -- but besides commits a clumsy plagiarism of Marx, "badly concealed" {D. K. G. 506} by high-sounding phrases.
On page 262 {D. C.} this is further developed:
"Capital in the social sense" (and Herr Dühring still has to discover a capital in a sense which is not social) "is in fact specifically different from the mere means of production; for while the latter have only a technical character and are necessary under all conditions, the former is distinguished by its social power of appropriation and the formation of shares. It is true that social capital is to a great extent nothing but the technical means of production in their social function; but it is precisely this function which ... must disappear".
When we reflect that it was precisely Marx who first drew attention to the "social function" by virtue of which alone a sum of values becomes capital, it will certainly "at once be clear to every attentive investigator of the subject that Marx's definition of the concept of capital can only cause confusion" {D. K. G. 498} -- not, however, as Herr Dühring thinks, in the strict theory of national economy but as is evident simply and solely in the head of Herr Dühring himself, who in the Kritische Geschichte has already forgotten how much use he made of the said concept of capital in his Cursus . However, Herr Dühring is not content with borrowing from Marx the latter's definition of capital, though in a "purified" form.
He is obliged to follow Marx also in the "toying with metamorphoses of concepts and history" {497}, in spite of his own better knowledge that nothing could come of it but "barren conceptions", "frivolities", "fragility of the foundations" {498} and so forth. Whence comes this "social function"{D. C. 262} of capital, which enables it to appropriate the fruits of others'
labour and which alone distinguishes it from mere means of production?
Herr Dühring says that it does not depend "on the nature of the means of production and their technical indispensability" {262}.
It therefore arose historically, and on page 262 Herr Dühring only tells us again what we have heard ten times before, when he explains its origin by means of the old familiar adventures of the two men, one of whom at the dawn of history converted his means of production into capital by the use of force against the other. But not content with ascribing a historical beginning to the social function through which alone a sum of values becomes capital Herr Dühring prophesies that it will also have a historical end. It is "precisely this which must disappear" {262}. In ordinary parlance it is customary to call a phenomenon which arose historically and disappears again historically, "a historical phase". Capital, therefore, is a historical phase not only according to Marx but also according to Herr Dühring, and we are consequently forced to the conclusion that we are among Jesuits here. When two persons do the same thing, then it is not the same. [A paraphrase of a dictum from the comedy Adelphoe by the Roman playwright Terentius (Act V, Scene 3). -- Ed .] When Marx says that capital is a historical phase, that is a barren conception, a bastard of historical and logical fantasy, in which the faculty of discernment perishes, together with all honesty in the use of concepts When Herr Dühring likewise presents capital as a historical phase that is proof of the keenness of his economic analysis and of his definitive and most strictly scientific treatment in the sense of the exact disciplines.
What is it then that distinguishes the Dühringian conception of capital from the Marxian?
"Capital," says Marx, "has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production." Surplus-labour, labour beyond the time required for the labourer's own maintenance, and appropriation by others of the product of this surplus-labour, the exploitation of labour, is therefore common to all forms of society that have existed hitherto, in so far as these have moved in class antagonisms. But it is only when the product of this surplus-labour assumes the form of surplus-value, when the owner of the means of production finds the free labourer -- free from social fetters and free from possessions of his own -- as an object of exploitation, and exploits him for the purpose of the production of commodities -- it is only then, according to Marx, that the means of production assume the specific character of capital. And this first took place on a large scale at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.
