MA CHINES AS AR TIF1CIAL SLA VES 3 1 3 



neighbour wastes ; and that every year, through Book iv 

 the powers accumulated in his manure heap, he can 

 raise a larger crop than his neighbour, though he are forms of 

 actually works less. Would any one affirm that the are actual pro- 

 man lost his right to his extra produce because he product" 



produced it indirectly by the external agency 

 his manure, and not directly by overstraining his them - 

 muscles ? Or again, if one of the peasants raised 

 a larger crop than his neighbour because, whilst his 

 neighbour spent all his money in drinking, he him- 

 self saved it and bought a horse, would any one main- 

 tain that the extra crop due to the work which the 

 horse performed for its owner did not belong to the 

 owner, but was stolen by him from the other man ? 



No one would put forward an argument so absurd The same is 

 as this. And yet the wooden darts of the savage such capital as 

 and the manure heap and the horse of the peasant are manufactory 

 neither more nor less than portions of fixed capital, plant 

 just as a steam engine is, or a cotton mill w r ith all its 

 plant. Fixed capital is merely productive ability 

 which, instead of acting directly in the production of 

 goods for the consumer, stores itself up in externalised 

 means of production, so that it may, with accumu- 

 lated force, produce such goods indirectly ; and the 

 additional wealth which a man produces by a new 

 machine is just as much produced by himself as is 

 the additional crop which he raises from a patch of 

 land by the employment of a horse which he has 

 bought, or manure which he has himself concocted. 

 Indeed, fixed capital may be compared to a breed 

 of artificial horses, or if we like the simile better, to 



