The Process of Circulation of Capital (Capital Vol. II). Karl Marx

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СКАЧАТЬ proportion of their value to that of productive capital embodied in them before they became commodities. If, then, these 10,000 pounds of yarn are sold at their value of 500 pounds sterling, this act of circulation, considered by itself, is identical with C-M, a mere transformation of the same value from the form of a commodity into that of money. But as a special stage in the circulation of a certain individual capital, the same act is also a realization of the capital value, embodied in the commodity, to the amount of 422 pounds sterling plus the surplus-value, likewise embodied in it, of 78 pounds sterling. That is to say, it also represents C'-M', the transformation of the commodity-capital from its commodity form into that of money.3

      The function of C' is now that of all commodities, viz.: to transform itself into money, to be sold, to go through the circulation stage C-M. So long as the capital utilized so far remains in the form of commodity-capital and stays on the market, the process of production rests. The commodity-capital serves then neither as a creator of value nor of products. In proportion to the degree of speed with which capital throws off the commodity-form and assumes that of money, in other words, in proportion to the rapidity of the sale, the same capital-value will serve in widely different degrees as a creator of products or of values, and the scale of reproduction will be extended or abridged. It has been shown in Volume I that the effectiveness of any given capital is conditioned on factors in the productive process which are to a certain extent independent of the magnitude of its own value. Here we see that the process of circulation sets in motion new factors which are independent of the value of the capital, its effectiveness, its expansion or contraction.

      The mass of commodities C', being the embodiment of the consumed capital, must furthermore pass in its entire volume through the metamorphosis C'-M'. The quantity sold is here the main determinant. The individual commodity figures only as an integral part of the total mass. The 500 pounds sterling are embodied in 10,000 pounds of yarn. If the capitalist succeeds in selling only 7,440 pounds of yarn at their value of 372 pounds sterling, he has recovered only the value of his constant capital, the value expended by him for means of production. If he sells 8,440 pounds of yarn, he recovers only the value of his total capital. He must sell more, in order to obtain some surplus-value, and he must sell the entire 10,000 pounds in order to get the entire surplus-value of 78 pounds sterling (1,560 pounds of yarn). In 500 pounds sterling he receives merely an equivalent for the commodity sold. His transaction within the process of circulation is simply C-M. If he had paid his laborers 64 pounds sterling instead of 50 pounds sterling, his surplus-value would be only 64 pounds sterling instead of 78, and the degree of exploitation would have been only 100 per cent instead of 150. But the value of the yarn would remain the same; only the relation of its component parts would be changed. The circulation-act C-M would still represent the sale of 10,000 pounds of yarn for 500 pounds sterling, which is their value.

      C' is equal to C+c (or 422 plus 78 pounds st.). C equals the value of P, the productive capital, and this equals the value of M, the money advanced in the act M-C, the purchase of the elements of production, amounting to 422 pounds sterling in our example. If the mass of commodities is sold at its value, then C equals 422 pounds sterling, and c, the value of the surplus product of 1,560 pounds of yarn, equals 78 pounds sterling. If we call c, expressed in money, m, then C'-M'=(C+c)-(M+m), and the cycle M-C...P...C'-M', in its expanded form, is represented by M-C{^LPm...P...(C+c)-(M+m).

      In the first stage, the capitalist takes articles of use out of the commodity-market proper and the labor-market. And in the third stage he throws commodities back, but only into one market, the commodity-market proper. But the fact that he extracts from the market, by means of his commodities, a greater value than he threw upon it originally, is due only to the circumstance that he throws more commodity-values back upon it than he first drew out of it. He threw the value M into it and drew out of it the equivalent C; he throws the value C+c back into it, and draws out of it the equivalent M+m.

      M was in our example equal to the value of 8,440 pounds of yarn. But he throws 10,000 pounds of yarn into the market, he returns a greater value than he drew out of it. On the other hand, he threw this increased value into it only by virtue of the fact that he obtained a surplus-value through the exploitation of labor-power (this value being expressed by an aliquot part of the product). The mass of commodities becomes a commodity-capital only by virtue of this process, it is the impersonation of the used-up capital value only through it. By the act C'-M' the advanced capital-value is recovered as well as the surplus-value. The realization of both coincides with that series of sales, or with that one sale, of the entire mass of commodities, which is expressed by C'-M'. But this same act of circulation is different for capital-value and surplus-value, because it expresses for each one of these two values a different stage of their circulation, a different section of the series of metamorphoses through which each of them passes in its circulation. The surplus-value c did not come into the world until the process of production began. It appeared for the first time on the commodity-market in the form of commodities. This is its first form of circulation, hence the act c-m is its first circulation act, or its first metamorphosis, which remains to be supplemented by the reverse circulation, or the opposite metamorphosis, M-c.4

      It is different with the circulation which the capital-value C performs in the same circulation act C'-M', and which constitutes for it the circulation act C-M, in which C is equal to P, the M originally advanced. It opened its circulation in the form of M, money-capital, and returns through the act C-M to the same form. In other words, it has now passed through the two opposite stages of the circulation, first M-C, second C-M, and finds itself once more in the form in which it can begin its cycle anew. What constitutes for surplus-value the first transformation of the commodity-form into that of money, constitutes for capital-value its return, or retransformation, into its original money-form.

      By means of M-C{^LPm, money-capital is transformed into an equivalent mass of commodities, L and Pm. These commodities no longer perform the function of commodities, of articles of sale. Their value now exists in the hands of the capitalist who bought them, they represent the value of his productive capital P. And in the function P, productive consumption, they are transformed into commodities substantially different from the means of production, into yarn, in which their value is not only preserved but increased, rising from 422 pounds sterling to 500 pounds sterling. By means of this metamorphosis, the commodities taken from the market in the first stage, M-C, are replaced by commodities of a different substance and value, which now perform the function of commodities, being exchanged for money and sold. The process of production, therefore, appears to us as an interruption of the process of circulation of capital-value, since up to production it has passed only through the phase M-C. It passes through the second and concluding phase, C-M, after C has been altered in substance and value. But so far as capital-value, considered by itself, is concerned, it has merely gone through a transformation of its use-form in the process of production. It existed in the form of 422 pounds sterling's worth of L and Pm, while now it exists in the form of 8,440 pounds of yarn valued at 422 pounds sterling. If we consider merely the two circulation phases of capital-value, apart from its surplus-value, we find that it passes through the stages M-C and C-M, in which the second C represents a different use-value, but the same exchange-value as the first C. And the process M-C-M is, therefore, a cycle which requires the return of the value advanced in money to its money-form, because the commodity here changes places twice and in the opposite direction, the first change being from the money to the commodity-form, the second from the commodity to the money-form. Capital-value is retransformed into money.

      The same circulation act C'-M', which constituted the second and concluding metamorphosis, a return to the money-form, for capital-value, represents for the surplus-value simultaneously embodied in the commodity-capital, and realized by its exchange for money, its first metamorphosis, its transformation from the commodity to the money-form, C-M, its first circulation phase.

      We have, then, two observations to make. First, the final return of capital-value to its original money-form is a function of commodity-capital. Second, this function includes the first transformation of surplus-value from its original commodity-form to that of money. The money-form, then, plays a double role here. On the one hand, it is СКАЧАТЬ