'The employer of labour, as also the labourer, does not use all his productive wealth for the sowing; he devotes part of it to buildings, mills and tools which render the work easier and more productive, just as a share of the labourer's wealth had been devoted to the permanent work of making the soil more fertile. Thus we see how the different kinds of wealth successively come into being and become distinct. One part of the wealth accumulated by society is devoted by every one who possesses it to render labour more profitable by slow consumption, and make the blind forces of nature execute the work of man; this part is called _fixed capital_ and comprises reclaiming, irrigation, factories, the tools of trade, and mechanical contrivances of every description. A second part of wealth is destined for immediate consumption, to reproduce itself in the work it gets done, to change its form, though not its value, without cease. This part is called _circulating capital_ and it comprises seed, raw materials for manufacture, and wages. Finally, a third part of wealth becomes distinguishable from the second: it is the value by which the finished job exceeds the advances which had to be made: this part is called _income_ on capitals and is destined to be consumed without reproduction.'[167] After this laborious attempt to achieve a division of the aggregate social production according to incommensurable categories, fixed capital, circulating capital, and surplus value, Sismondi soon shows unmistakable signs that he means constant capital when he speaks of fixed capital, and variable capital when he speaks of circulating capital. For 'all that is created', is destined for human consumption, though fixed capital is consumed 'mediately' while the circulating capital 'passes into the consumption fund of the worker whose wage it forms'.[168] Thus we are a little nearer to the division of the social product into constant capital (means of production), variable capital (provisions for the workers) and surplus value (provisions for the capitalists). But so far Sismondi's explanations are not particularly illuminating on the subject which he himself describes as 'fundamental'. In this welter of confusion, at any rate, we cannot see any progress beyond Adam Smith's 'massive thought'. Sismondi feels this himself and would clarify the problem 'by the simplest of all methods', sighing that 'this movement of wealth is so abstract and requires such great power of concentration to grasp it properly'.[168] Thus again we put on blinkers with a focus on Robinson [Crusoe], who in the meantime has changed to the extent that he has produced a family and is now a pioneer of colonial policy: