When, at the end of a day, week, month, or year, the manufacturer is in possession of the finished product, that product contains the "necessary" as well as the "surplus" value. In the "necessary" value is included not only the wages paid to the workingmen but also the "capital" that went into the product, or rather, that part of capital which Marx calls "constant," that is to say, raw material, machinery charges, etc. Of course, all these things at one time, when they were produced, represented "necessary" as well as "surplus" value; when they are used, however, in production, that part of the product which simply reproduces their value is "necessary" for the same reason that the part representing the wages is "necessary." The "surplus" which he finds himself thus possessed of is therefore a clear surplus over and above all his expenditures and investment. It is pure revenue or profit. The amount of the surplus-value produced, and therefore of the revenue or profit derived by the manufacturer, depends, aside from the mere length of the working day, as already stated, on the state of the productivity of labor in general and the mode of living of the workingmen; that is to say, on the proportion of the "necessary" to the "surplus" in the labor performed by the laborer during the period of his employment. The length of the work day given, the productivity of labor and the mode of living of the workingmen affect this proportion in opposite directions: a higher mode of living increases the "necessary" part of the labor, and higher productivity its "surplus" part.
After the surplus value is produced by the laborer in the surplus time that he works, the fund from which the capitalist class as a class derives its revenue and "saves" its wealth is ready for its use, and it becomes merely a question of its distribution among the different members of the class. This distribution is no simple matter, as it is done for the most part without the participants meeting each other, often without their knowledge, and always without their consent. This distribution is accomplished by the laws
