KARL'S QUOTE'S

- Capitalist propaganda is quick to tell us that the machines they have introduced (not invented or made, note ) have lightened the load of the workers. On page 492 (Penguin Edition) of “Capital”, Marx writes,
“John Stuart Mill says in his Principles of Political Economy, ’It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened theday’s toil of any human being.’ That is, however, by no means the aim of the application of machinery under capitalism. Like every other instrument for increasing the productivity of labour, machinery is intended to cheapen commodities and, by shortening the part of the working day in which the worker works for himself, to lengthen the other part, the part he gives to the capitalist for nothing. The machine is a means for producing surplus-value.”
The kicker is the footnote by Marx, “Mill should have said, ‘of any human being not fed by other people’s labour’, for there is no doubt that machinery has greatly increased the number of distinguished idlers.”
How True! John Ayers