Chapter I. Of The Requisites Of Production.

over and above his machinery, consists at present wholly in iron goods. Iron goods can not feed laborers. Nevertheless, by a mere change of the destination of the iron goods, he can cause laborers to be fed. Suppose that [the capitalist changed into wages what he had before spent] in buying plate and jewels; and, in order to render the effect perceptible, let us suppose that the change takes place on a considerable scale, and that a large sum is diverted from buying plate and jewels to employing productive laborers, whom we shall suppose to have been previously, like the Irish peasantry, only half employed and half fed. The laborers, on receiving their increased wages, will not lay them out in plate and jewels, but in food. There is not, however, additional food in the country; nor any unproductive laborers or animals, as in the former case, whose food is set free for productive purposes. Food will therefore be imported if possible; if not possible, the laborers will remain for a season on their short allowance: but the consequence of this change in the demand for commodities, occasioned by the change in the expenditure of capitalists from unproductive to productive, is that next year more food will be produced, and less plate and jewelry. So that again, without having had anything to do with the food of [pg 068] the laborers directly, the conversion by individuals of a portion of their property, no matter of what sort, from an unproductive destination to a productive, has had the effect of causing more food to be appropriated to the consumption of productive laborers. The distinction, then, between Capital and Not-capital, does not lie in the kind of commodities, but in the mind of the capitalist—in his will to employ them for one purpose rather