ABSTRACT
Capitalists require their capital to be employed, that it may gain a revenue; and hence they offer it for a certain price, to such as wish to cause labour; workmen on the other hand, and those who employ workmen, have need of capital for their labour; and, after reckoning up the profit expected from it, they offer a certain share of their advantage to capitalists. The opening of the mine, the construction of its galleries, the establishment of refining furnaces, require large advances, independently of the labour by which the ore is drawn from the bowels of the earth. This labour, and its fruits, may be exactly paid by the metal produced, and the state will gain by the operation, as by any other manufacture. Marx, on the other hand, had never successfully conducted any type of business, had had no other experience and therefore reflects in his writings the disdain of the academic philosopher for the world of profit.
