HKB
(Herr Duehring remarks, "How comical for example is the declaration based upon Hegel's confused notions that quantity becomes lost in quality and that money advanced [i.e. for productive purposes. Ed.] becomes capital when it reaches a certain limit merely through quantitative increase." To which Engels replies thus):
This seems peculiar when presented in this washed out fashion by Herr Duehring. On page 313 (2nd ed. "Capital") Marx, after an investigation of fixed and variable capital and surplus value, derives from his investigations the conclusion that "not every amount of gold or value capable of being transformed into capital is so transformed; rather a certain minimum of gold or of exchange value is presupposed to be in the possession of the individual owner of gold or goods." He thereupon gives an example, thus, in a branch of industry the worker works eight hours per day for himself, i.e. in order to produce the value of his wages, and the following four hours for the capitalist in producing surplus value to go into their pockets. One must have sufficient values to permit of the setting up of two workmen with raw material, means of labor and wages, in order to live as well as a workman. But since capitalistic production is not undertaken for mere livelihood but for increase of wealth, our individual with his two workmen would still be no capitalist. If he lives twice as well as an ordinary workman and transforms half of the surplus value produced into capital he will have to employ eight workmen and possess four times the aforementioned amount of value, and only after this and other examples for the purpose of illustrating and establishing the fact that not every small amount of value can effect a transformation of itself into capital, but that each period of industrial development and each branch of industry has its own minimum, fixed, Marx remarks "Here, as in nature, the correctness of the law of logic, as discovered by Hegel, is established--that mere quantitative changes at a certain point suddenly take on qualitative differences."
One may remark the elevated and dignified fashion in which Duehring makes Marx say the exact opposite of what he did say. Marx says "The fact that a given amount of value can only transform itself into capital as soon as it has attained a definite minimum, varying with circumstances, in each individual case,--this fact is proof of the correctness of the law of Hegel. Herr Duehring makes him say "Because, according to the law of Hegel, quantity is transformed into quality therefore 'a sum of money when it has reached a certain amount becomes capital.'" He says just the opposite.
We have seen above in the Scheme of the Universe that Herr Duehring had the misfortune to acknowledge and apply, in a weak moment, this Hegelian system of calculation, according to which at a given point quantitative changes suddenly become qualitative. We then gave one of the best known examples, that of the transformation of the form of water which at 0 deg. C. changes from a liquid to solid and at 100 deg. C. from liquid to gaseous, where thus at both these points of departure a mere quantitative change in temperature produces a qualitative change in the water.