That the powers of labour, and of the other instruments which produce wealth, may be indefinitely increased by using their products as the means of further production.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If the quantity of labour realized in commodities, regulate their exchangeable value, every increase of the quantity of labour must augment the value of that commodity on which it is exercised, as every diminution must lower it.
Productivity and the growth of productivity must be the first economic consideration at all times, not the last. That is the source of technological innovation, jobs, and wealth.
In order for a society to survive, it must generate a sufficient level of physical production both to meet its current needs, and to produce a surplus for upgrading its productive powers.
But if inventions have increased man's power over nature very much, then the real value of money is better measured for some purposes in labour than in commodities.
Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.
The system has for its object an increase of persons that are to intervene between the producer and the consumer, living on the product of the land and labour of others, diminishing the power of the first, and increasing the number of the last.
Productivity - the amount of output delivered per hour of work in the economy - is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies. Output is everything. Time is money. The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic literature and haunts the waking hours of C.E.O.s and finance ministers.
The only way to generate sustained exponential growth is to make whatever you're making sufficiently good.
Profits might also increase, because improvements might take place in agriculture, or in the implements of husbandry, which would augment the produce with the same cost of production.
The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.