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

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СКАЧАТЬ Pm which are bought by it. M', on the other hand, composed of M, the capital-value, and m, the surplus-value created by M, stands for materialized capital-value, expresses the purpose and the outcome, the function of the total process of circulation of capital. The fact that it expresses this outcome in the form of money, of materialized money-capital, is due to the capital-character of money-capital, not to its money-character; for capital opened the process of circulation in the form of an advance of money. Its return to the money-form, as we have seen, is a function of C', not of money-capital. As for the difference between M and M', it is simply m, the money-form of c, the increment of C. For M' is composed of M plus m only because C' was composed of C plus c. In C', this difference and the relation of capital-value to its product, surplus-value, is already present and expressed, before both of them are transformed into M'. And in this form, these two values appear independently side by side and may, therefore, be employed in separate and distinct functions.

      M' is the outcome of the materialization of C'. Both M' and C' are different forms of utilized capital-value, one of them the commodity, the other the money-form. Both of them share the quality of being utilized capital-value. Both of them are materialized capital, because capital-value here exists simultaneously with its product, surplus-value, although it is true that this relation is expressed in the undifferentiated form of the proportion of two parts of one and the same sum of money or commodity-value. But as expressions of capital, and in distinction from the surplus-value produced by it, M' and C' are the same and express the same thing, only in different forms. In so far as they represent utilized value, capital acting in its own role, they express the result of the function of productive capital, the only function in which capital-value generates more value. What is common to both of them, is that money-capital as well as commodity-capital are different modes of existence of capital. Their distinctive and specific functions cannot, therefore, be anything else but the difference between the functions of money and of commodities. Commodity-capital, the direct product of the capitalist process of production, indicates its capitalist origin and is, therefore, to that extent more rational and less difficult to understand than money-capital, in which every trace of this process has disappeared. In general, all special use-forms of commodities disappear in money.

      It is only when M' itself figures as commodity-capital, when it is the direct outcome of a productive process, instead of being a transformed product of this process, that it loses its bizarre form, that is to say, in the production of money itself. In the production of gold, for instance, the formula would be M-C{^LPm...P...M (M plus m), and M' would here figure as a commodity, because P furnishes more gold than had been advanced for the elements of production contained in the first money-capital M. In this case, the irrational nature of the formula M...M' (M plus m) disappears. Here a part of a certain sum of money appears as the mother of another part of the same sum of money.

IV. The Rotation as a Whole

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      We have seen that the process of circulation is interrupted at the end of its first phase, M-C{^LPm. by P, which makes the commodities L and Pm parts of the substance and value of productive capital and consumes them. The result of this productive consumption is a new commodity C', which is of different composition and value than the commodities L and Pm. The interrupted process of circulation, C-M, must be completed by M-C. The basis of this second and concluding phase of circulation is C', a commodity of different composition and value than C. The process of circulation therefore appears first as M-C,1 then as C 2-M', the C2 in this second phase representing a greater value and a different use-value than C1, due to the interruption caused by the function of P which is the production of C' from elements of C, embodied in the productive capital P. The first form assumed by capital (vol. I, chap. IV), viz., M-C-M', or extended first M-C,1 second C1-M', shows the same commodity twice. It is the same commodity which is exchanged for money in the first phase and again exchanged for more money in the second phase. In spite of this essential difference, these two modes of circulation share the peculiarity of transforming in their first phase money into commodities, and in the second phase commodities into money, so that the money spent in the first phase returns in the second. On the one hand, both have in common this return of money to its starting point, on the other hand the excess of the returned money over the money first advanced. To this extent, the formula M-C...C'-M' is apparently contained in the general formula M-C-M'.

      It follows furthermore that equal quantities of simultaneously existing values are placed in opposition to one another and exchanged in the two metamorphoses of circulation represented by M-C and C'-M'. The change of value is due exclusively to the metamorphosis P, the process of production, which thus appears as a natural metamorphosis of capital, as compared to the merely formal metamorphosis of circulation.

      Let us now consider the total movement, M-C...P...C'-M', or its more explicit form, M-C{^LPm...P...C' (C+c) -M' (M+m). Capital here appears as a value which goes through a series of connected metamorphoses conditioned on one another and representing so many phases of the total process. Two of these phases belong to the sphere of circulation, one of them to that of production. In each one of these phases, capital-value has a different form corresponding to a different, special, function. Within this cycle, value does not only maintain itself at the magnitude in which it was originally advanced, but it increases. Finally, in the concluding stage, it returns to the same form which it had at the beginning of the cycle. This total movement constitutes the process of rotation as a whole.

      The two forms assumed by capital-value are that of money-capital and commodity-capital. In the stage of production, its form is that of productive capital. The capital which assumes these different forms in the course of its total process of rotation, discards them one after the other, and performs a special function in each one of them, is industrial capital. The term industrial applies to every branch of industry run on a capitalist basis.

      Money-capital, commodity-capital, productive capital are not, therefore, terms indicating independent classes of capital, nor are their functions processes of independent and separate branches of industry. They are here used only to indicate special functions of industrial capital, assumed by it seriatim.

      The circulation of capital proceeds normally only so long as its various phases flow uninterruptedly one into the other. If capital stops short in its first phase M-C, money-capital assumes the rigid form of a hoard; if it stops in the phase of production, the means of production remain lifeless on one side, while labor-power remains unemployed on the other; and if capital stops short in its last phase C'-M', masses of unsold commodities accumulate and clog the flow of rotation.

      At the same time, it is a matter of course that the rotation of capital includes the stopping of capital for a certain length of time in the various sections of its cycle. In each of these sections, industrial capital is poured into a definite mold, being either money-capital, productive capital, or commodity-capital. It does not assume a form in which it may enter a new metamorphosis, until it has gone through the function corresponding to the form preceding the new metamorphosis. In order to make this plain, we have assumed in our illustration, that the capital-value of the mass of commodities created in the phase of production is equal to the total sum of values originally advanced in the form of money, or, in other words, that the entire capital-value advanced in the form of money enters undivided from one stage into the next. Now we have seen (vol. I, chap. IV) that a part of the constant capital, the means of production proper, such as machinery, always serve repeatedly, for a greater or smaller number of times, in the same processes of production, so that they transfer their values piece-meal to the products. We shall see later, to what extent this circumstance modifies the process of rotation of capital. For the present, it suffices to say this: In our illustration, the value of the productive capital of 422 pounds sterling contained only the average wear and tear of buildings, machinery, etc., that is to say only that part of value which they transferred in the transformation of 10,600 pounds of cotton to 10,000 pounds of yarn, which represents the product of one week's spinning, or of 60 hours. СКАЧАТЬ