020-Part-3-The-Production-of-Absolute-Surplus-Value-Chapter-7-The-Labour-Process-and-the-Process-of-Producing-Surplus-Value-Section-1-The-Labour-Process-or-the-Production-of-Use-Values

Part 3: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value

第3部分：绝对剩余价值的生产

Chapter 7: The Labour-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value

第7章：劳动过程和生产剩余价值的过程

Section 1: The Labour-Process or the Production of Use-Values

第1节：劳动过程（即使用价值的生产）

The capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it; and labour-power in use is
labour itself. The purchaser of labour-power consumes it by setting the seller
of it to work. By working, the latter becomes actually, what before he only was
potentially, labour-power in action, a labourer. In order that his labour may
re-appear in a commodity, he must, before all things, expend it on something
useful, on something capable of satisfying a want of some sort. Hence, what the
capitalist sets the labourer to produce, is a particular use-value, a specified
article. The fact that the production of use-values, or goods, is carried on
under the control of a capitalist and on his behalf, does not alter the general
character of that production. We shall, therefore, in the first place, have to
consider the labour-process independently of the particular form it assumes
under given social conditions.

我们先忽略社会条件，只研究劳动过程。

Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature
participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls
the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature
as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the
natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a
form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing
it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering
powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing
with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere
animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which
a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state
in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose
labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts
operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an
architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst
architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure
in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every
labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the
labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the
material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives
the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And
this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily
organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will
be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less
he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried
on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his
bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be.

首先，劳动是人与自然之间的过程，是人自主地启动、计划和控制人与自然之间的物质变化的过程。人与自然界对立，为了获得适合自己需求的自然物质，使自己的四肢、手、脑（即自己的天然力）运动起来。他改变外部世界的同时，也就改变了他自己。他激发出潜藏的能力，并控制着它的运动。现在我们不讨论原始的动物本能形式的劳动。我们只研究专属于人的那种劳动形式。蜘蛛织网类似织工，蜜蜂建造蜂房的本领使许多建筑师羞愧。但最差的建筑师比最好的蜜蜂都高明的地方，在于他在实际建造之前就在头脑中完成了建造。劳动过程结束时的产品，在劳动开始时就存在于他的头脑中。他不仅改变了外物，而且实现了他的目的。这个目的决定了他的手段，统治着他的意愿。这种统治不是仅仅瞬间的行为。除了对身体器官的运用，整个劳动过程期间都要求工人的意愿与他的目的保持稳定地一致。【不能开小差】这就要求他集中注意力。工作越无趣，他就越没有肉体和精神上的愉悦，他就必须越集中注意力。

The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, the personal activity of
man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its instruments.

劳动过程的基本要素是：人的活动（即劳动本身）；劳动对象；劳动工具（劳动手段、劳动资料）。

The soil (and this, economically speaking, includes water) in the virgin state
in which it supplies 1 man with necessaries or the means of subsistence ready to
hand, exists independently of him, and is the universal subject of human labour.
All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connexion with
their environment, are subjects of labour spontaneously provided by Nature. Such
are fish which we catch and take from their element, water, timber which we fell
in the virgin forest, and ores which we extract from their veins. If, on the
other hand, the subject of labour has, so to say, been filtered through previous
labour, we call it raw material; such is ore already extracted and ready for
washing. All raw material is the subject of labour, but not every subject of
labour is raw material: it can only become so, after it has undergone some
alteration by means of labour.

天然的土地和水源，给人提供了直接的生活资料。人通过劳动使某些物脱离自然环境，这些物是天然的劳动对象。例如，从水中捕捉的鱼，从天然林砍伐的木材，从矿藏里开采的矿石。如果某劳动对象已经被之前的劳动过滤过，我们就称其为原材料。例如已经开采出来准备洗练的矿石。所有原材料都是劳动对象，但并非所有劳动对象都是原材料。只有经过某些劳动处理后的劳动对象才是原材料。【天然劳动对象->原材料->原材料……】

An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which the labourer
interposes between himself and the subject of his labour, and which serves as
the conductor of his activity. He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and
chemical properties of some substances in order to make other substances
subservient to his aims.2 Leaving out of consideration such ready-made means of
subsistence as fruits, in gathering which a man’s own limbs serve as the
instruments of his labour, the first thing of which the labourer possesses
himself is not the subject of labour but its instrument. Thus Nature becomes one
of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his own bodily organs,
adding stature to himself in spite of the Bible. As the earth is his original
larder, so too it is his original tool house. It supplies him, for instance,
with stones for throwing, grinding, pressing, cutting, &c. The earth itself is
an instrument of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implies a whole
series of other instruments and a comparatively high development of labour.3 No
sooner does labour undergo the least development, than it requires specially
prepared instruments. Thus in the oldest caves we find stone implements and
weapons. In the earliest period of human history domesticated animals, i.e.,
animals which have been bred for the purpose, and have undergone modifications
by means of labour, play the chief part as instruments of labour along with
specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and shells.4 The use and fabrication of
instruments of labour, although existing in the germ among certain species of
animals, is specifically characteristic of the human labour-process, and
Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making animal. Relics of bygone
instruments of labour possess the same importance for the investigation of
extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determination of
extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made, but how they are made,
and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic
epochs. 5 Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of
development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of
the social conditions under which that labour is carried on. Among the
instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature, which, taken as a whole, we
may call the bone and muscles of production, offer much more decided
characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those which, like pipes,
tubs, baskets, jars, &c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which
latter class, we may in a general way, call the vascular system of production.
The latter first begins to play an important part in the chemical industries.

劳动工具位于劳动者和劳动对象之间，将劳动者的活动传导到劳动对象上。人利用某些物的物理属性、化学属性使另一些物服从他的目的。采集天然果实时，劳动者的四肢是劳动工具。劳动者直接拥有的，是劳动工具，不是劳动对象。这实际上是将自然物附加在他的肉体器官上，延长了增强了他的肢体，违背了圣经的训诫。地球是人的天然粮仓，也是人的天然工具箱。地球给人提供了可投掷、研磨、按压、切割等的石头等工具。土地要在农业上起到劳动工具的作用，就要以一系列其他工具和一定发展程度的劳动技艺为前提。劳动技艺一有所发展，就会需要经过加工的劳动工具了。在最古老的洞穴中，我们也会发现石制工具和武器。在人类历史的最早期，驯养的动物是最主要的劳动工具。其他工具还有经过加工的石头、木头、骨头、贝壳。制造和使用工具，虽然在某几种动物中初步存在，但仍只是人类劳动过程独有的特征。所以富兰克林（Franklin）将人定义为“能制造工具的动物”。劳动工具的文物对研究已灭亡社会的经济形态有重要意义，就像化石对研究已灭绝的物种有重要意义。区分经济纪元的，不是能生产什么，而是用什么工具生产。劳动工具不能能判断劳动发展程度，而且能指示出劳动所处的社会状况。在各种劳动工具中，起机械作用的工具（我们可以称之为生产系统的骨骼和肌肉），远远比起容器作用的工具（如管、桶、篮、瓶等），更能显示一个生产纪元的决定性特征。容器从化学工业开始才扮演重要角色。

In a wider sense we may include among the instruments of labour, in addition to
those things that are used for directly transferring labour to its subject, and
which therefore, in one way or another, serve as conductors of activity, all
such objects as are necessary for carrying on the labour-process. These do not
enter directly into the process, but without them it is either impossible for it
to take place at all, or possible only to a partial extent. Once more we find
the earth to be a universal instrument of this sort, for it furnishes a locus
standi to the labourer and a field of employment for his activity. Among
instruments that are the result of previous labour and also belong to this
class, we find workshops, canals, roads, and so forth.

广义上，除了充当传导体的劳动工具外，劳动过程所需的一切物都属于劳动工具。它们不直接参与劳动过程，但没有它们就无法劳动，或无法不受限制地劳动。我们又发现了，地球就是这种劳动工具，因为它为劳动者提供立足之地，为劳动者的活动提供空间。车间、运河、道路等，都是既属于经过加工的劳动工具，又属于广义的劳动工具。

In the labour-process, therefore, man’s activity, with the help of the
instruments of labour, effects an alteration, designed from the commencement, in
the material worked upon. The process disappears in the product, the latter is a
use-value, Nature’s material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man.
Labour has incorporated itself with its subject: the former is materialised, the
latter transformed. That which in the labourer appeared as movement, now appears
in the product as a fixed quality without motion. The blacksmith forges and the
product is a forging.

因此，在劳动过程中，人的活动，借助劳动工具，按预定的计划，改变了劳动对象。过程消失了，凝结在产品中了。产品是使用价值，是改变了形式从而适应人的需求的自然物。劳动改变了劳动对象，劳动物化在劳动对象中。动态的劳动，呈现为静态的产品。铁匠炼铁，铁被炼。

If we examine the whole process from the point of view of its result, the
product, it is plain that both the instruments and the subject of labour, are
means of production,6 and that the labour itself is productive labour.7

从整个过程的结果的角度看（即从产品的角度看），劳动工具和劳动对象都是生产资料，劳动则是生产劳动。

Though a use-value, in the form of a product, issues from the labour-process,
yet other use-values, products of previous labour, enter into it as means of
production. The same use-value is both the product of a previous process, and a
means of production in a later process. Products are therefore not only results,
but also essential conditions of labour.

有的产品，作为使用价值，退出了劳动过程；有的产品，作为之前劳动的产品，作为生产资料，又进入了劳动过程。同一个使用价值，既是前一个劳动过程的产品，又是后一个劳动过程的生产资料。产品不仅是劳动的结果，也是劳动的必要条件。

With the exception of the extractive industries, in which the material for
labour is provided immediately by Nature, such as mining, hunting, fishing, and
agriculture (so far as the latter is confined to breaking up virgin soil), all
branches of industry manipulate raw material, objects already filtered through
labour, already products of labour. Such is seed in agriculture. Animals and
plants, which we are accustomed to consider as products of Nature, are in their
present form, not only products of, say last year’s labour, but the result of a
gradual transformation, continued through many generations, under man’s
superintendence, and by means of his labour. But in the great majority of cases,
instruments of labour show even to the most superficial observer, traces of the
labour of past ages.

采矿、狩猎、捕鱼、开垦荒地，这些采掘业的劳动对象是自然界提供的。除此之外的产业，其劳动对象都是原材料，是经历了劳动处理的物，已经是某种劳动的产品。例如农业中的种子就是原材料。我们习惯上将动物植物看作自然界提供的产物，但它们不仅可能是去年的劳动产品，还是在人的控制下、经过许多世代才形成的劳动产品。【野猪经过人的劳动，被驯化改变为家猪。农作物品种改良等。】大多数劳动工具都无声地诉说着过去劳动的故事。

Raw material may either form the principal substance of a product, or it may
enter into its formation only as an accessory. An accessory may be consumed by
the instruments of labour, as coal under a boiler, oil by a wheel, hay by
draft-horses, or it may be mixed with the raw material in order to produce some
modification thereof, as chlorine into unbleached linen, coal with iron,
dye-stuff with wool, or again, it may help to carry on the work itself, as in
the case of the materials used for heating and lighting workshops. The
distinction between principal substance and accessory vanishes in the true
chemical industries, because there none of the raw material re-appears, in its
original composition, in the substance of the product.8

原材料可能形成产品的主要实体，也可能只是辅助材料。辅助材料可能被劳动工具消耗，例如煤被蒸汽机消耗、润滑油被轮子消耗、草料被马匹消费，也可能被加入其他原材料，使产品发生某种改变，例如氯被加入麻布（漂白）、煤被加入铁、燃料被加入羊毛，还可能用于帮助工作的进行，例如用于加热和照明。【十分契合成本会计。】化学工业上就不区分主料和辅料了。【这一段描述纯粹的劳动过程】

Every object possesses various properties, and is thus capable of being applied
to different uses. One and the same product may therefore serve as raw material
in very different processes. Corn, for example, is a raw material for millers,
starch-manufacturers, distillers, and cattlebreeders. It also enters as raw
material into its own production in the shape of seed; coal, too, is at the same
time the product of, and a means of production in, coal-mining.

每一种物品都有多种属性，因此有多种用途。因此，同一种产品可以用作不同种劳动过程的原材料。例如谷物可用于磨面粉、制淀粉、酿酒、喂牲畜、做种子等。采矿业挖出煤，煤又可以用于采矿业。

Again, a particular product may be used in one and the same process, both as an
instrument of labour and as raw material. Take, for instance, the fattening of
cattle, where the animal is the raw material, and at the same time an instrument
for the production of manure.

一种劳动产品，在一个劳动过程中，可以既是劳动工具又是原材料。例如肉牛，既是原材料，又是制造粪肥的劳动工具。

A product, though ready for immediate consumption, may yet serve as raw material
for a further product, as grapes when they become the raw material for wine. On
the other hand, labour may give us its product in such a form, that we can use
it only as raw material, as is the case with cotton, thread, and yarn. Such a
raw material, though itself a product, may have to go through a whole series of
different processes: in each of these in turn, it serves, with constantly
varying form, as raw material, until the last process of the series leaves it a
perfect product, ready for individual consumption, or for use as an instrument
of labour.

一种产品，即使已经可以直接用于消费了，仍旧可能成为原材料。例如葡萄可以直接消费，也可以成为葡萄酒的原材料。另一方面，某种劳动过程只产出原材料，例如棉花、线、纱。这种原材料，虽然是产品【会计上的半成品】，但必须再经历后续劳动过程，才能最终成为可直接消费的产品或劳动工具。

Hence we see, that whether a use-value is to be regarded as raw material, as
instrument of labour, or as product, this is determined entirely by its function
in the labour-process, by the position it there occupies: as this varies, so
does its character.

我们看到，一种使用价值到底是原材料、劳动工具还是产成品，取决于它在劳动过程中的作用和位置。位置不同，角色就不同。

Whenever therefore a product enters as a means of production into a new
labour-process, it thereby loses its character of product, and becomes a mere
factor in the process. A spinner treats spindles only as implements for
spinning, and flax only as the material that he spins. Of course it is
impossible to spin without material and spindles; and therefore the existence of
these things as products, at the commencement of the spinning operation, must be
presumed: but in the process itself, the fact that they are products of previous
labour, is a matter of utter indifference; just as in the digestive process, it
is of no importance whatever, that bread is the produce of the previous labour
of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. On the contrary, it is generally by
their imperfections as products, that the means of production in any process
assert themselves in their character of products. A blunt knife or weak thread
forcibly remind us of Mr. A., the cutler, or Mr. B., the spinner. In the
finished product the labour by means of which it has acquired its useful
qualities is not palpable, has apparently vanished.

一个产品作为生产资料，进入新的劳动过程，它就不再是产品，而是劳动过程的一个因素。在纺纱工人看来，纱锭仅仅是纺纱的工具，亚麻【草本植物，用于织布，参考棉花】仅仅是纺纱的原材料。【我不懂纺织啊，查了半天纱锭是什么，我觉得应该换个更人尽皆知的产业做例子。】

A machine which does not serve the purposes of labour, is useless. In addition,
it falls a prey to the destructive influence of natural forces. Iron rusts and
wood rots. Yarn with which we neither weave nor knit, is cotton wasted. Living
labour must seize upon these things and rouse them from their death-sleep,
change them from mere possible use-values into real and effective ones. Bathed
in the fire of labour, appropriated as part and parcel of labour’s organism,
and, as it were, made alive for the performance of their functions in the
process, they are in truth consumed, but consumed with a purpose, as elementary
constituents of new use-values, of new products, ever ready as means of
subsistence for individual consumption, or as means of production for some new
labour-process.

机器不参与劳动过程，就没有用。而且机器还会生锈、腐朽、报废。活的劳动必须抓住它们，使它们复活，使它们从可能的使用价值变为现实的使用价值。它们被劳动过程消费掉，它们是形成新使用价值的要素。新使用价值则继续成为生活资料或生产资料。

If then, on the one hand, finished products are not only results, but also
necessary conditions, of the labour-process, on the other hand, their assumption
into that process, their contact with living labour, is the sole means by which
they can be made to retain their character of use-values, and be utilised.

前一个劳动过程P1的产品A，成为后一个劳动过程P2的条件。P2消耗产品A，是让产品A有用和被用的唯一方法。

Labour uses up its material factors, its subject and its instruments, consumes
them, and is therefore a process of consumption. Such productive consumption is
distinguished from individual consumption by this, that the latter uses up
products, as means of subsistence for the living individual; the former, as
means whereby alone, labour, the labour-power of the living individual, is
enabled to act. The product, therefore, of individual consumption, is the
consumer himself; the result of productive consumption, is a product distinct
from the consumer.

劳动消耗了劳动对象和劳动工具，因而是一个消费的过程。这种生产性的消费与个人消费不同：后者是将产品当作生活资料给用掉，得到的结果是消费者本人；前者是将产品当作劳动的生活资料给用掉，得到的结果是与消费者不同的产品。【人消费产品，得到新的人。劳动消费产品，得到新的产品。】

In so far then, as its instruments and subjects are themselves products, labour
consumes products in order to create products, or in other words, consumes one
set of products by turning them into means of production for another set. But,
just as in the beginning, the only participators in the labour-process were man
and the earth, which latter exists independently of man, so even now we still
employ in the process many means of production, provided directly by Nature,
that do not represent any combination of natural substances with human labour.

The labour-process, resolved as above into its simple elementary factors, is
human action with a view to the production of use-values, appropriation of
natural substances to human requirements; it is the necessary condition for
effecting exchange of matter between man and Nature; it is the everlasting
Nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is independent of
every social phase of that existence, or rather, is common to every such phase.
It was, therefore, not necessary to represent our labourer in connexion with
other labourers; man and his labour on one side, Nature and its materials on the
other, sufficed. As the taste of the porridge does not tell you who grew the
oats, no more does this simple process tell you of itself what are the social
conditions under which it is taking place, whether under the slave-owner’s
brutal lash, or the anxious eye of the capitalist, whether Cincinnatus carries
it on in tilling his modest farm or a savage in killing wild animals with
stones.9

从以上的角度看，劳动过程是生产使用价值的人类活动，是为满足人的需求而占用自然物，是人与自然界之间物质变化【人把自然界的粮食变化成大小便】的永恒的必要条件。因此，劳动是一切社会阶段共有的。

Let us now return to our would-be capitalist. We left him just after he had
purchased, in the open market, all the necessary factors of the labour process;
its objective factors, the means of production, as well as its subjective
factor, labour-power. With the keen eye of an expert, he has selected the means
of production and the kind of labour-power best adapted to his particular trade,
be it spinning, bootmaking, or any other kind. He then proceeds to consume the
commodity, the labour-power that he has just bought, by causing the labourer,
the impersonation of that labour-power, to consume the means of production by
his labour. The general character of the labour-process is evidently not changed
by the fact, that the labourer works for the capitalist instead of for himself;
moreover, the particular methods and operations employed in bootmaking or
spinning are not immediately changed by the intervention of the capitalist. He
must begin by taking the labour-power as he finds it in the market, and
consequently be satisfied with labour of such a kind as would be found in the
period immediately preceding the rise of capitalists. Changes in the methods of
production by the subordination of labour to capital, can take place only at a
later period, and therefore will have to be treated of in a later chapter.

The labour-process, turned into the process by which the capitalist consumes
labour-power, exhibits two characteristic phenomena. First, the labourer works
under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs; the capitalist
taking good care that the work is done in a proper manner, and that the means of
production are used with intelligence, so that there is no unnecessary waste of
raw material, and no wear and tear of the implements beyond what is necessarily
caused by the work.

资本家消费劳动力的那种劳动过程，显示出2个特点。首先，劳动者在资本家的监督下工作，他的劳动属于资本家；资本家确保工作正常进行、原材料不被浪费、劳动工具不被超额磨损。

Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the
labourer, its immediate producer. Suppose that a capitalist pays for a day’s
labour-power at its value; then the right to use that power for a day belongs to
him, just as much as the right to use any other commodity, such as a horse that
he has hired for the day. To the purchaser of a commodity belongs its use, and
the seller of labour-power, by giving his labour, does no more, in reality, than
part with the use-value that he has sold. From the instant he steps into the
workshop, the use-value of his labour-power, and therefore also its use, which
is labour, belongs to the capitalist. By the purchase of labour-power, the
capitalist incorporates labour, as a living ferment, with the lifeless
constituents of the product. From his point of view, the labour-process is
nothing more than the consumption of the commodity purchased, i. e., of
labour-power; but this consumption cannot be effected except by supplying the
labour-power with the means of production. The labour-process is a process
between things that the capitalist has purchased, things that have become his
property. The product of this process belongs, therefore, to him, just as much
as does the wine which is the product of a process of fermentation completed in
his cellar.10

其次，产品是资本家的财产，不是直接生产者的财产。