surplus value does not exist at all. Besides this major omission, it is of small account that he, just like his disciple, takes no notice of constant capital. He wants to solve the problem of realising the surplus value and expanding capital without positing more than the existence of a certain quantity of commodities which are mutually exchanged. Sismondi was blind to the fact that the venue has been changed altogether. Yet he tried faithfully to bring the fantasies of his famous guest and opponent down to earth and to analyse their invisible contradictions, plaintively saying that these assumptions, 'just like German metaphysics, abstract from time and space'.[204] He grafts Ricardo's hypothesis on to 'society in its real organisation, with unpropertied workers whose wage is fixed by competition and who can be dismissed the moment their master has no further need of their work ... for'--remarks Sismondi, as acute as he is modest--'it is just this social organisation to which our objection refers'.[205] He lays bare the many difficulties and conflicts bound up with the progress of labour productivity under capitalism, and shows that Ricardo's postulated changes in the technique of labour, from the point of view of society, lead to the following alternative: Either a number of workers corresponding to the increase in labour productivity will have to be dismissed outright--then there will be a surplus of products on the one hand, and on the other unemployment and misery--a faithful picture of present-day society. Or the surplus product will be used for the maintenance of the workers in a new field of production, the production of luxury goods. Here Sismondi undoubtedly proves himself superior: he suddenly remembers the existence of the constant capital, and now it is he who subjects the English classic to a frontal attack: 'For setting up a new industry for manufacturing luxuries, new capital is also needed; machines will have to be built, raw materials procured, and distant commerce brought into activity; for the wealthy are rarely content with enjoying what is immediately in front of them. Where, then, could we find this new capital which may perhaps be much more considerable than that required by agriculture?... Our luxury workers are still a long way from eating our labourers' grain, from wearing the clothes from our common factories; they are not yet made into workers, they may not even have been born yet, their trade does not exist, the materials on which they are to work have not arrived from India. All those among whom the former should distribute their bread, wait for it in vain.'[206]