Let's look at the passage again...
"Let us some up: The more productive capital grows, the more
the division of labor and the application of machinery expands.
The more the division of labour and the application of machinery
expands, the more competition among the workers expands and
the more their wages contract.
"In addition, the working class gains recruits from the higher
strata of society also; a mass of petty industrialists and small
rentiers are hurled down into its ranks and have nothing better
to do than urgently stretch out their arms alongside those of the
workers. Thus the forest of uplifted arms demanding work becomes
ever thicker, while the arms themselves become ever thinner."
Did you note that the first paragraph begins "Let us sum up"?
Do you really mean to say it is not fair to take a paragraph that begins "Let us sum up" and turn it into a thesis to be investigated? When I begin paragraphs with the phrase "Let us sum up," I mean the reader to understand that the paragraph is a summary, thumbnail sketch of what I am trying to say. Are you saying that Marx worked by different rules, and that when he said "let us sum up" he in fact meant "don't take this paragraph to be a summary statement of what I am trying to say"?
Now I could take care of the argument that Marx's thought "evolved over time" by jumping from 1849 to 1864, to the Inaugural Address of Marx to the First International, which begins:
"It is a great fact that the misery of the working
masses has not diminished from 1848 to 1864, and
yet this period is unrivalled for the development
of its industry and the growth of its commerce."
And after four pages of official statistics and government reports detailing poverty in England, moves on to the European continent where:
"Everywhere the great mass of the working classes
were sinking down to a lower depth, at the same rate
at least, that those above them were rising in the
social scale. In all countries of Europe it has now
become a truth demonstrable to every unprejudiced
mind, and only denied by those, whose interest it
is to hedge other people in a fool's paradise, that
no improvement of machinery, no appliance of science
to production, no contrivances of communication, no
new colonies, no emigration, no opening of markets, no
free trade, nor all these things put together, will
do away with the miseries of the industrious masses;
but that, on the present false base, every fresh
development of the productive powers of labour must
tend to deepen social contrasts and point social
antagonisms. Death of starvation rose almost to the
rank of an institution, during this [1848-64]
intoxicating epoch of economical progress, in the
metropolis of the British Empire."
The tone--of both _Wage Labour and Capital_ and the _Inaugural Address to the First International_--sounds insistent. And phrases like "sinking down to a lower depth" and "death by starvation" certainly sound like absolute immiserization to me.
But there isn't really any point to this...
An analogy: Matthew 16:27-28 reads:
"For the son of man shall come in the glory of the
Father, with his angels; and then he shall reward
every man according to his works. Verily I say unto
you, There be some standing here, which shall not
taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming
in his kingdom."
This is as plain a declaration as one could wish: Jesus of Nazareth is telling his disciples that the Kingdom of God will be established on earth in their lifetime. But this is not how it has been interpreted. Jesus's declaration has been interpreted as a reference to:
--St. John, who is not dead but lying in his grave in a
state of suspended animation, till Jesus come
again.
--The Wandering Jew, cursed to live and wander the earth,
never finding rest, till the Second Coming.
--The Transfiguration of Christ, in which the future
Kingdom of God was made visible to the disciples.
When a text becomes itself transfigured--when it ceases to be of mortal origin and meaning, but instead becomes Holy Writ for a world religion--then all rules of interpretation and argument are suspended...
Brad De Long