ILLUSTRATIONS

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Page 32 of Notebook VI with the Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy

C1 7 / 0 7 \ S'= (—X—:—). Before we continue the analysis of this

formula, others have to be brought in.

Z If the quotient of -^r— is designated as q', then q' expresses the

number of times U=(p + c) is contained in Z, the number of

Z turnovers. — - =q'\ hence Z=pq' + cq'. In this equation, pq'

expresses the total production time and cq' the total circulation time.

Designate the total circulation time as C (so cq' = C). (Z (360)=4x60 (240)+4x30 (120). From what has been presupposed, q'=4. C = cq'=4c; 4 being the number of turnovers. As we

SZ . saw earlier, the maximum of [surplus] value creation = -—-, but in that case Z was assumed to be equal to the production time. Yet now the actual production time is Z — cq', as also follows from the equation. Z=pq' (total production time)+cq' (total circulation time,

Z — C • or C). Consequently, Z — C~pq'. As a result, S • is the

maximum of [surplus] value creation. For the production time is not 360 days but 360 days - cq', i.e. - 4x30, or - 120; hence [the total surplus value produced is]

/ 360-120 \ 20x240 20-( — ) = =80. x 60 60 [VI-32] Finally, as regards the formula

S ' - ^ i _ C ^ c \ 360X20 /20X360 30 \ p~\pXc + p'~ 60 V 60 X30 + 60/

= 120-(120x^)=6x20-(6x20x- =20x6-(20x6x-) or

90 9 3 = 120-(120x4-)= 120-40=80,

3 it means that [surplus] value is equal to the maximum [surplus] value, i.e. to the [surplus] value determined purely by the relation of production time to total time, minus the number which expresses how many times the circulation time is contained in this maximum, and this number is the maximum itself multiplied by the number of times one turnover is contained in c, in the circulation time per turnover, or divided by the number which expresses how many times c is contained in c + p or C in Z.

If c were = 0, 5 ' would be = — , and would thus be at its

maximum. S' grows smaller in the same measure as c increases,

c and hence is inversely related to it, for the factor -q— and the

number —X — r— , or —X-rr , which is to be subtracted from P c+p p U SZ , the maximum [surplus] value, increase in the same measure.

, =-7j • TV expresses the relation of circulation time to one

turnover of capital. If we multiply the numerator and the , • , cq' C ( c 30 1 \ denominator by a , we get: ;—, , , — - = -• {—.—= on , e n = — / » ^[7] ^ & (c + p)q Z Vc + P 30 + 60 3 /

c 1 —-—- , or — , expresses the relation of circulation time to total

360 c time, since — =120. T h e turnover (c + p) is contained in c "Tf-, c or '/s ( o r 7- ) [times].

We therefore have three formulas:

(1) s, sz sz P + c U

(2) S,_S(Z-C)

(3) 5'=^--(^x^-=S0-(^X-£r)}.

p x p c-\-p p V c + P''

Hence Sq:S'= • S(Z~C'-o r Sq:S'=Z:(Z-C). T h e P P maximum [surplus] value relates to the actual [surplus] value as a given period of time relates to this period minus total circulation

time. Or also Sq:S'=(pq'+ cq'):(pq'+ cq'— cq') = (p +c):p.

Concerning (3):

p v p c + p' yp \p c + p'' P ^

S' = S(q-q-^[7]^ = S(g-gSr).

The total surplus value is therefore equal to the surplus value posited in one production phase, the coefficient of the latter value being the number of times the production time is contained in the total time minus the number of times the circulation time of one turnover is contained in this latter number.

5 ( , - ^ ) = S , ( l - ^ = S , ( ^ = ^ = | L c ,

which is the first formula. Hence formula (3) means ... formula (1): The total surplus value is equal to the surplus value produced in one production phase multiplied by the total time, divided by the turnover time, or multiplied by the number of times the sum of production time and circulation time is contained in the total time.

Formula (2): The total [surplus] value is equal to the surplus value multiplied by the total time minus the total circulation time, divided by the duration of one production phase.

(The basic law developed under competition, as distinct from that established with respect to value and surplus value, is that value is determined, not by the labour contained in it, or by the labour time in which it is produced, but by the labour time in which it can be produced, or by the labour time necessary for reproduction. Only in this way is the individual capital in reality placed under the conditions of capital in general, although the original law seems to have been overthrown. But it is only thus that necessary labour time is posited as determined by the movement of capital itself. This is the basic law of competition. Demand, supply, price (production costs) are further determinations of form; price as market price; or general price. Then the positing of a general rate of profit. On the basis of the market price, capitals are then allocated to different branches. Lowering of production costs, etc. In short, here all determinations appear in inverse order as compared with their appearance in capital in general. There price is determined by labour; here labour is determined by price, etc., etc.

The action of the individual capitals upon one another has the effect, precisely, of forcing them to behave as capital; the apparently independent operation of the individual capitals, and their chaotic collisions, are precisely the positing of their general law. The market acquires yet another meaning here. The action of capitals as individual ones upon each other thus becomes precisely their positing as general ones, and the abolition of the apparent independence and autonomous existence of individual capitals.

This abolition takes place to an even greater extent in credit. And the extreme form to which this abolition proceeds, but which is, at the same time, the ultimate positing of capital in its adequate form, is joint-stock capital.)

(Demand, supply, price, production costs, the opposition of profit and interest, the different relations between exchange value and use value, consumption and production.)

So we have seen that the surplus value that capital can posit in a definite period of time is determined by the number of times the valorisation process can be repeated, or the capital can be reproduced, within that period, but that the number of these reproductions is determined by the relation of the duration of the production phase, not to the total time period, but to this total time minus circulation time. Circulation time therefore appears as time during which the [VI-33] ability of capital to reproduce itself, and therefore to reproduce surplus value, is suspended. Hence its productivity — i.e. its production of surplus values — is inversely related to circulation time, and would attain its maximum level if the latter dropped to zero.

Since circulation is the passage of capital through the different, conceptually determined moments of its necessary metamorphosis, of its life process, it is an indispensable condition for capital, one posited by capital's own nature. In so far as this passage takes time, capital cannot increase its value during this time, for it is not-production time, it is time in which capital does not appropriate living labour. Hence, circulation time can never increase the value produced by capital, but can only posit time which posits no value, i.e. can only appear as a limit to the increase of value, its limiting effect being measurable by the ratio it bears to labour time. Circulation time cannot be reckoned as value-producing time, the latter only being labour time which objectifies itself in value. It is not part of the production costs of value; nor is it part of the production costs of capital; but it is a condition which impedes capital's self-reproduction.

Obviously, the obstacles to the valorisation of capital — i.e. to its appropriation of living labour — do not constitute a moment of its valorisation, of its positing of value. Therefore, it is ludicrous to take the term production costs in the original sense here. Or we must set the production costs apart as a particular form from the labour time which objectifies itself in value (as we must set profit apart from surplus value). But even then, circulation time does not form part of the production costs of capital in the same sense as wages, etc., do. It is an ITEM which comes into the reckoning in the settling of accounts between individual capitals, because they share out the surplus value among themselves in certain general proportions.

Circulation time is not time in which capital produces value, but time in which it realises the value produced in the production process. Circulation time does not increase the quantity of value, but posits it in other appropriate determinations of form, converting it from the determination of product into that of commodity, from that of commodity into that of money, etc. The fact that the price, which previously had a notional existence in the commodity, is now really posited, and that the commodity is now actually exchanged for its price, money, does not increase this price, of course.

Circulation time, therefore, does not appear as time which determines value; and the number of turnovers, as far as it is determined by circulation time, does not appear as indicating that capital introduces a new value-determining element, one which belongs to it, sui generis, as distinct from labour. On the contrary, it appears as a limiting, negative principle. Hence the necessary tendency of capital is circulation without circulation time, and this tendency is the basic attribute of credit and the credit CONTRIVANCES of capital. On the other hand, credit is, therefore, also a form in which capital seeks to posit itself as distinct from the individual capitals, or in which the individual capital seeks to posit itself as capital as distinct from its quantitative limit. However, the most that it can achieve in this LINE is, on the one hand, FICTITIOUS capital. On the other hand, credit merely appears as a new element of concentration, of the swallowing-up of capitals by individual centralising capitals.

From one aspect, circulation time is objectified in money. The attempt of credit to posit money as a merely formal moment, so that money mediates the change of form without itself being capital, i.e. value. This is a form of circulation without circulation time. Money is itself a product of circulation. We shall see later how capital creates new products of circulation in credit.

But if, on the one hand, capital strives for circulation without circulation time, it seeks, on the other, to attribute the value of production time to circulation time as such, to attribute value to it in the various organs by which the process of circulation time and circulation is mediated; to posit all of them as money, and in a further determination as capital. This is another aspect of credit.

All this springs from the same source. All the requirements of circulation, money, conversion of commodity into money, conversion of money into commodity, etc., may be traced back to circulation time, although they adopt various, apparently quite heterogeneous, forms. The machinery designed to reduce circulation time is itself part of it.

Circulation time is that time of capital which may be regarded as the time of its specific movement as capital, as distinct from production time, during which it reproduces itself, exists not as already produced capital which has merely formal transformations to undergo, but as capital-in-process, creative capital, sucking its life-blood from labour.

The opposition of labour time and circulation time comprises the entire doctrine of credit, as this involves, i.a., the problem of CURRENCY, etc. Of course, apart from circulation time being a deduction from the possible production time, real costs of circulation come into evidence later, i.e. it emerges that values which have already been posited in reality, must be expended in circulation. But IN FACT capital only burdens itself with all these costs — deductions from the surplus value already produced — in order to increase the sum of surplus values that can be produced, e.g., in a year, that is, to increase the aliquot part of production time contained in a definite time period — i.e. to reduce circulation time.

True, it also emerges that in practice circulation time does not really interrupt production time (except in crises and DEPRESSIONS OF TRADE). But this is merely because each capital is divided up into portions, with one part in the production phase and the other in the circulation phase. Not the whole of a given capital is active, but, e.g. (depending on the ratio of circulation time to production time), Vs, Vi of it, while the other part is involved in circulation. Or it may be that a given capital is doubled (e.g., by means of credit). For this capital—[for] the original capital — it is then the same as if circulation time did not exist at all. But then the capital it has borrowed is in that PLIGHT. And if we abstract from the question of OWNERSHIP, it is again quite the same as if one capital had been divided into two. Instead of a being divided into two and b being divided into two, a draws b to itself and then divides up into a and b. Illusions concerning this process are widespread among the credit cranks (who are seldom creditors, but RATHER debtors).

We have already indicated⁽¹⁾ that the dual and contradictory condition of capital, continuity of production and the necessity for circulation time, or, also, continuity of circulation (not circulation time) and the necessity for production time, can only be fulfilled by dividing capital into portions, one of which circulates as finished product, and the other reproduces itself in the production process, and these portions alternate; when the one returns to phase P (production process), the other leaves it.

This process takes place day after day, and also within longer intervals (time dimensions). The whole capital and the total value have been reproduced as soon as both portions have gone through the production process and the circulation process, or also as soon as the second portion re-enters into circulation. Thus the point of departure is also the end point. Hence the turnover depends on the size of the capital, or RATHER, here, still on the total sum of these two portions. Only when it has been reproduced, has the whole turnover been completed; otherwise, only V2» V3, V* of it, depending upon the proportion of the constandy circulating part.

[VI-34] It was further emphasised that each part could be regarded in opposition to the other as fixed or circulating and that they did in fact alternately adopt these roles in relation to each other. The simultaneity of the different phases of the process of capital is only made possible by the fact that capital is divided and rejects portions, each of which is capital, but capital in a different determination.

This change of form and substance is similar to that in an organic body. If, e.g., it is said that the body reproduces itself within 24 hours, it does not do so all at once; rejection in one form and renewal [in] another are spread out in time and take place simultaneously. Incidentally, in the body the bone-structure is fixed capital; it is not renewed in the same time as flesh and blood. Consumption (self-consumption), and hence reproduction, proceed with different degrees of rapidity. (Here we, therefore, already have the transition to many capitals.) The important thing here above all is to keep in mind, as yet, only capital as such; for the determinations developed here are determinations which make value in general into capital, constitute the differentia specifica of capital as such.

Before going any further, we shall once again draw attention to the important point that circulation time — i.e. the time during which capital is separated from the process in which it absorbs labour into itself, i.e. the labour time of capital as capital — merely transposes presupposed value from one determination of form into the other, but it is not an element which creates or increases value.

By converting a value of 4 days' labour which existed in the form of twist, into a value of 4 days' labour which exists as money, or a symbol recognised as the representative of 4 days' labour in general, 4 general working days, the presupposed and measured value is translated from one form into the other, but it is not increased. The exchange of equivalents leaves them, qua quantities of value, the same after the exchange as they were before it. If we assume a single capital, or treat the various capitals of a country as one capital (national capital) as distinct from that of other countries, it is clear that the time during which this capital is not active as productive capital, i.e. posits no surplus value, is a deduction from the valorisation time at its disposal.

Such time appears — conceived in this abstract form, still wholly disregarding the costs of circulation itself — as a negation, not of the valorisation time actually posited, but of the possible valorisation time, i.e. possible if circulation time were zero. Plainly, the national capital cannot regard the time during which it does not multiply itself as time during which it does. Nor can, e.g., an isolated peasant regard the time in which he cannot harvest or sow, in which in general his labour is interrupted, as time which enriches him. That capital, used as it is, and necessarily so, to considering itself as productive and yielding fruit independently of labour, of its absorption of labour, assumes itself to be fruitful at all times, and reckons its circulation time as time producing value — as production cost — is QUITE ANOTHER THING.

One therefore sees the error when Ramsay, e.g., says

"THAT THE USE OF FIXED CAPITAL MODIFIES TO A CONSIDERABLE EXTENT THE PRINCIPLE THAT VALUE DEPENDS ON QUANTITY OF LABOUR. FOR SOME COMMODITIES ON WHICH THE SAME QUANTITY OF LABOUR HAS BEEN EXPENDED, REQUIRE VERY DIFFERENT PERIODS BEFORE THEY ARE FIT FOR CONSUMPTION. BUT AS DURING THIS TIME THE CAPITAL BRINGS NO RETURN, IN ORDER THAT THE EMPLOYMENT IN QUESTION SHOULD NOT BE LESS LUCRATIVE THAN OTHERS IN WHICH THE PRODUCE IS SOONER READY FOR USE, IT IS NECESSARY THAT THE COMMODITY, WHEN AT LAST BROUGHT TO MARKET, SHOULD BE INCREASED IN VALUE BY ALL THE AMOUNT OF PROFIT WITHHELD."

(It is already presupposed here that capital as such always yields a uniform profit, as a healthy tree yields fruit.)

"THIS SHEWS HOW CAPITAL MAY REGULATE VALUE INDEPENDENTLY OF LABOUR." E.g., wine in the cellar. (Ramsay, [An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, p. 43,] IX, 84.) H

This is as if circulation time — alongside labour time, or on the same scale as it — produced value. Capital, of course, includes both moments. (1) Labour time as the moment which produces value.

(2) Circulation time as the moment which limits labour time and hence the total production of value by capital; a moment necessary because value, or capital, in the form in which it immediately results from the production process, is certainly value, but value which has yet to be posited in its adequate form. The time required for this change of form — i.e. the time which elapses between production and reproduction — is time which depreciates capital. While, on the one hand, the determination of capital as circulating, as capital-in-process, implies continuity, it equally implies the interruption of continuity.

The economists correctly define circulation, the revolution that capital must go through to kindle itself for new production, as une série d'échanges. But by doing so, they admit that this circulation time does not increase the quantity of value, and hence cannot be time positing new value. For a série d'échanges, whatever the number of échanges it comprises, and whatever the amount of time required to perform these operations, is merely an exchange of equivalents. The positing of values — the extremes mediated — as equal, obviously cannot posit them as unequal. In quantitative terms, they can neither have been increased nor decreased by the exchange.

The surplus value produced during one production phase is determined by the surplus labour set in motion by capital during that phase (the surplus labour appropriated). The sum of surplus values that capital can produce in a certain period of time is determined by the repetition of the production phase during this period; or by the turnover of capital. The turnover, however, is equal to the duration of the production phase -I- the duration of circulation, i.e. equal to the sum of circulation time and production time. The turnover approaches production time the more closely the shorter circulation time is, i.e. the time which elapses between capital sortant de la production et rentrant dans elle?

Surplus value is IN FACT determined by the labour time objectified during one production phase. The more often capital is reproduced, the more often the production of surplus value takes place. The number of reproductions=the number of turnovers. Hence total surplus value [5'] = 5xnC/ (n is the number of turnovers).

S' S'=SxnU; therefore S==-fiTJ- If the production time required by

a capital of £100 in a certain branch of industry equals 3 months, the capital could turn over 4 times a year; and if the S value

^[3] Leaving production and its re-entry into it.— Ed.

produced each time=5, the total surplus value would=5 (the 5 produced in one production phase) x 4 (the number of turnovers determined by the relation of production time to the year) = 20. But since circulation time is, e.g., 'A of production time, 1 turnover would = 3 + l months, i.e. 4 months, and the capital of 100 could turn over only 3 times a year [; S'J=15. Therefore, although the capital posits an S value of £5 in 3 months, [it] is the same for it as if it only posited a [surplus] value of 5 in 4 months, since it can only posit one of 5x3 in a year. It is the same for it as if it produced an S of 5 per 4 months; i.e. as if in 3 months it produced only ^[15]/4 or 3^[3]/^[4], and in the one month of circulation l'At-

To the extent that the turnover is distinct from the duration posited by the conditions of production itself, it=circulation time. The latter, however, is not determined by labour time. Hence the sum of surplus values posited by capital in a given period of time appears to be determined, not simply by labour time, but by labour time and circulation time, [VI-35] in the proportions given above. But the determination which capital introduces here into the positing of value is, as shown above, a negative, limiting one.

If, e.g., a capital of £100 requires 3 months, say 90 days, for production, it could, if circulation time=0, turn over 4 times a year, and all of it would be continuously active as capital, i.e. as positing surplus labour, as value multiplying itself. If 80 of the 90 days represented necessary labour, 10 would represent surplus labour. Assume now that circulation time was 33/ ^[3]% of production time or 7s of it; i.e., 1 month to 3. Circulation time would then equal ^[9]%; one-third of production time, or 30 days; c = 7s p-

"m>}

WELL. The question is: how large a proportion of this capital can now be continuously engaged in production? during the whole year? If the capital of 100 had worked for 90 days, and circulated as a product of 105 for a month, then during this month it could not employ any labour at all.

(Of course, the 90 working days can be 3, 4, 5, xx90, depending upon the number of workers employed during those 90 days. They would only=90 days if only 1 worker were employed. But for the time being, we are not concerned with this.)

(In all these calculations, it is assumed that surplus value is not re-capitalised, but that the capital continues to work with the same number of workers. Yet it is only with the realisation of the surplus [value] that the entire capital as well is again realised as money.)

I.e., for one month, the capital could not be employed at all. (The capital of 100 constantly employs, e.g., 5 workers; contained in it is their surplus labour, and the product which is circulated is never the original capital but that which has absorbed the surplus labour and hence has a surplus value. Strictly speaking, therefore, the circulation of a capital of 100 is to be understood as the circulation of a capital of, e.g., 105, i.e. of the capital together with the profit posited in 1 act of production. But at this point, that erreur⁽²⁾ is of no consequence, notably in dealing with the above question.)

Suppose that twist worth £100 has been produced at the end of 3 months, and 1 month passes before I receive the money and can recommence production. Now to set the same number of workers to work during the 1 month when the capital circulates, I must have a surplus capital of £33 7s, for if £100 sets a certain amount of labour in motion for 3 months, Vs of £100 would set it in motion for one month.

At the end of the 4th month, the capital of 100 would RETURN into the production phase, and that of 33 V3 would enter into the circulation phase. Given the same relation, the latter would take 7s of a month for circulation, and hence would come back into production after 10 days.

The first capital could only re-enter circulation at the end of the 7th month. The 2nd capital, which entered into circulation at the beginning of the 5th month, would return, say, on the 10th day of the 5th month, re-enter circulation on the 10th of the 6th month and return on the 20th of the 6th month. It would then re-enter circulation on the 20th of the 7th month, and return at the end of the 7th month. So the first capital would be resuming its course at precisely the moment when the 2nd would be returning. Beginning of the 8th month and return at etc. Beginning of the 9th etc.

In a word: if the capital were Vs larger — precisely the amount made up by circulation time — it could give continuous employment to the same number of workers. But it can also continuously maintain itself in the production phase by constandy employing V3 less labour. Suppose the capitalist began with only 75 of his capital; at the end of the 3rd month production would be completed, and one month would be needed for circulation. During this month, however, he could still carry on production, since he has kept a capital of 25 on hand; and if he needs 75 to set a certain amount of labour in motion for 3 months, he needs 25 to set a corresponding amount in motion for 1 month. He would continuously have the same number of men working. Each of his commodities takes V12 of a year to sell.

If the sale of his commodities always takes [a time equal to] Vs of production time, so etc. It should be possible to solve this problem by means of a very simple equation, to which we shall come back later. Properly speaking, it does not belong here. But it is important because of the problems of credit later.

Meanwhile thus much is clear. Call production time pt, circulation time ct, and capital C. C cannot be simultaneously in its production phase and in its circulation phase. If it is to continue to produce while it circulates, it must divide itself up into 2 parts, of which one is engaged in the production phase and the other in the circulation phase, the continuity of the process being maintained thus: when part a is posited in the former determinateness, part b is posited in the latter. Let the portion always engaged in production be x. Then x — C — b (where b is the part of capital engaged in circulation). C=ft+x If ct, circulation time, were zero, b would also be zero; and x would be equal to C. b (the part of capital engaged in circulation):C (total capital) —ct (circulation time):/)« (production time). b:C=ct:pt; i.e. the ratio of the part of capital in circulation to total capital is given by that of circulation time to production time.

If a capital of 100 turns over at a gain of 5% every 4 months, with one month's circulation time per 3 months' production time,

5-12 total surplus value will, as we have seen,^[3] = M (month) 4 = 5x3=15; instead of 20, if c=0, for in that case, 5x12 5'= = 20. But now 15 is the gain yielded at 5% by a capital of

75 whose circulation time = 0; which turns over 4 times a year; which is always employed. At the end of the 1st quarter, 3/4; at the end of the year, 15. (But it would only turn over a total capital of 300, as against 400 if, in the former case, ct=0.)

Consequently, a capital of 100, with circulation time of 1 month per 3 M production time, can continuously EMPLOY productively a capital of 75; a capital of 25 is always in circulation and unproductive. 75:25=3M:1M; or, if we call the part of capital employed in production p, that in circulation c, and the corresponding time periods p' and d', then p:c = p':c'. (p:c=l:^[1]/s.)

The ratio of the part of C engaged in production to that in circulation is always 1:7s; this '/s is continuously represented by varying component parts. But p:C=75:l00=^[3]/i; c= /^[4]; p:C=l:^[4]/^[3] and c:C=\A. The total turnover=4M; p: t/=3M:4M=l: ^[4]/ ⁽³⁾-

[VI-36] In the circulation of capital, there is a simultaneous change of form and material.^[3] We must begin here not with money, but with the production process as the presupposition. In production, so far as the material aspect is concerned, the instrument is expended and the raw material is worked up. The result is the product — a newly created use value, which is different from its elemental presuppositions. As regards the material aspect, first a product is created in the production process. This is the first, and an essential material change. On the market, in the exchange with money, the product is ejected from the circulation of capital and falls within the sphere of consumption, becomes an object of consumption, whether for the final satisfaction of an individual need or as the raw material of another capital.

In the exchange of the commodity for money, the material change and the change of form coincide, for in money precisely the content itself belongs to the economic determination of form. And the reconversion of capital into the material conditions of production implies here the reconversion of money into commodity. A definite use value is reproduced, just as is value as such. But just as the material element from the outset, at its entry into circulation, was posited here as a product, so at the end of circulation the commodity is again posited as condition of production. To the extent that money figures here as means of circulation, it is, on the one hand, in fact, merely the mediator between production and consumption, in the échange, where capital rejects value from itself in the form of the product; and, on the other hand, the mediator between production and production, where capital rejects itself in the form of money and draws the commodity into its circulation in the form of condition of production.

From the material aspect of capital, money appears merely as means of circulation; from the formal aspect, it appears as the nominal measure of its valorisation and, during a particular phase, as value-for-itself. Hence capital is C—M—M—C to just the same extent as it is M—C—C—M, and in such a way that both forms of simple circulation are, at the same time, determined further here: M—M\ is money that produces money, and C—C\ is a commodity whose use value is both reproduced and increased. With respect to money circulation, which at this point appears both as entering into the circulation of capital and as determined by it, we will only observe en passant*—since au fondh the issue can only be dealt with after we have considered the many capitals in their action and reaction upon one another — that obviously money is posited here in different determinations.

Up to this point, we have assumed that production time and labour time coincide. However, in, e.g., agriculture, interruptions in labour occur within production itself, prior to the completion of the product. The same labour time may be employed and yet the duration of the production phase may differ, because labour is interrupted. If the only difference is that in one case longer labour is required to finish the product than in the other, NO CASE AT ALL is CONSTITUTED. For then it is clear that, in conformity with the general law, the product which contains a greater quantity of labour is of correspondingly greater value, and if reproduction in a given period of time is less frequent, the value reproduced is so much the greater. 2x100 is precisely as much as 4x50. This is as valid for surplus value as for total value.

The unequal duration [of the production process] for different products, although exactly the same quantity of labour time (i.e. accumulated and living labour together) is employed upon them, is the QUESTION. Ostensibly, fixed capital operates here entirely by itself, without the intervention of human labour, like, e.g., the seed committed to the earth's womb. If additional labour is needed, this is to be subtracted. The question is to be posed in its pure form.

If circulation time is the same here, the turnover is less frequent because the production phase lasts longer. Therefore, production time+circulation time = I t / is greater than when production time coincides with labour time. The time required here to bring the product to maturity, the interruptions of labour involved, constitute conditions of production here. Non-labour time is a condition for labour time, necessary to actually posit the latter as production time. Obviously, the question must be discussed later, in connection with the equalisation of the rate of profit. Yet we must clear the ground here.

The slower RETURN — this is the essential point — is due here, not to circulation time, but to the very conditions under which labour becomes productive; it is part of the technological conditions of the production process. What must be absolutely denied, since it is perfectly absurd, is the idea that a natural circumstance which prevents capital in a certain branch of production from exchanging itself in the same time with the same quantity of labour time, as another capital does in another branch of production, can in any way contribute to increasing its value. Value, and hence surplus value too, is not equal to the time the production phase lasts, but to the labour time employed during this production phase, both objectified labour time and living. The latter alone can produce surplus value — and does so in the proportion which it bears to the objectified labour time employed — because it alone yields surplus labour time. //It is clear that other determinations also come into play in the equalisation of the rate of profit. But here we are dealing with the creation of surplus value, not with its distribution.//

Hence, it has been correctly asserted that from this viewpoint, e.g. agriculture is less productive (productivity refers here to the production of values) than other industries. Just as in another respect—in so far as the growth of productivity in it d i r e c t l y diminishes necessary labour time—it is more productive than all other industries. Yet in itself this circumstance can only benefit it where capital and the GENERAL FORM OF PRODUCTION corresponding to it are already dominant.

This interruption within the production phase already implies that agriculture can never be the sphere with which capital begins, where it originally establishes itself. The interruption contradicts the most fundamental conditions of industrial labour. Hence it is only through its reaction that agriculture is vindicated to capital and farming becomes industrial. Requires a high degree of development of competition, on the one hand, and advanced chemistry, machinery, etc., i.e. manufacturing industry, on the other. Therefore, historically too agriculture never appears in a pure form in the modes of production that precede capital or correspond to the lower stages of its development. Rural sideline industries, e.g., spinning, weaving, etc., must for the limitation on the employment of labour time in this sphere — a limitation resulting from these interruptions.

The non-coincidence of production time and labour time can, in general, only be due to natural conditions which here stand directly in the way of the utilisation of labour, i.e. of the appropriation of surplus labour by capital. Of course, far from constituting ADVANTAGES, these obstacles in capital's way rather involve it, de son point de vue*, in losses.

Strictly speaking, the whole CASE is only to be mentioned here as an example of fixed capital, capital fixed in a particular phase. The only thing to be noted here is that capital creates no surplus value as long as it employs no living labour. The mere reproduction of the fixed capital employed posits no surplus value, of course.

(In the human body, as in capital, the reproduction of the various constituent parts does not take place in equal periods of time. Blood is renewed more quickly than muscle, muscle more quickly than bone, which in this respect may be considered as the fixed capital of the human body.)

[VI-37] As means by which circulation may be accelerated, Storch lists: (1) the formation of a class of "workers" who are solely occupied with trade; (2) improvement of the means of transport; (3) money; (4) credit. (See above.b)

This higgledy-piggledy enumeration shows the entire confusion of the political economists. Money and the money circulation— what we called simple circulation — is the presupposition, condition of both capital itself and of the circulation of capital. Hence, money as it exists, as a relation of commerce belonging to a stage of production antecedent to capital, money as money, in its immediate form, cannot be said to accelerate the circulation of capital, but is, rather, its presupposition. When we speak of capital and its circulation, we are dealing with a stage of social development at which money is not introduced as a discovery, etc., but is a presupposition. To the extent that money in its immediate form itself possesses value, is not merely the value of other commodities, the symbol of their value — for if something immediate in itself is to be something else which is likewise immediate, it can only represent the latter thing, be, d'une manière ou d'une autre,c a symbol — to the extent that money itself possesses value, is itself objectified labour in a particular use value, it retards the circulation of capital, rather than accelerates it.

If one considers both aspects in which money appears in the circulation of capital, as means of circulation and as the realised value of capital, it forms part of the circulation costs to the extent that it itself is labour time, employed, on the one hand, to reduce circulation time, and, on the other, to represent a qualitative moment of circulation — the reconversion of capital into itself as value-for-itself. In neither aspect does it increase value. On the one side, it is a form of representing value which involves expenses, costs labour time and hence constitutes a deduction from surplus value. On the other side, it can be regarded as a device that saves circulation time, and hence sets time free for production. But to the extent that money itself, as such a device, costs labour and is a product of labour, it represents faux frais de la production⁽⁴⁾ in relation to capital. It figures among the circulation costs.

The original circulation cost is circulation time itself in opposition to labour time. The real circulation costs are themselves objectified labour time — machinery for reducing the original costs of circulation time. Hence money in its immediate form, as it is appropriate to a stage of production which historically precedes capital, appears to capital as a circulation cost, and capital therefore seeks to convert it into a form adequate to capital itself, and thus to turn it into a [mere] representative of one of the moments of circulation, a representative which costs no labour time and does not itself possess any value. The aim of capital is therefore to abolish money in its traditional, immediate reality, and to convert it into something which is posited, and likewise transcended, solely by capital, into something purely notional. So one cannot argue, as Storch does, that money is in general a means for accelerating the circulation of capital. On the contrary, it must be argued that capital seeks to transform money into a purely notional moment of its circulation, and to elevate it into the adequate form corresponding to capital. The abolition of money in its immediate form appears as a demand of money circulation which has become a moment of capital circulation; because in its immediate, presupposed form, money constitutes a barrier to the circulation of capital.

Circulation without circulation time is the tendency of capital. Hence also the positing of the instruments which only serve to reduce circulation time, in determinations of form posited solely by capital, in the same way as the different moments through which capital passes in circulation are qualitative determinations of its own metamorphosis.

The formation of a special trading estate — i.e. a development of the division of labour which has transformed the very business of exchanging into a particular kind of labour — naturally implies that the sum of exchange operations must already have attained a certain level.

(If 100 people spent Vioo of their labour time on exchange, each man would be an exchanger to the extent of Vioo-IOO/ioo exchangers would represent ONE SINGLE MAN. T O the 100, there could then be one merchant. The separation of trade from production proper, or the fact that exchange itself is represented to the exchangers by a special person, in general presupposes A CERTAIN DEGREE of development of exchange and intercourse. The merchant represents all buyers to the seller, and all sellers to the buyer; so he is not one of the extremes, but rather the middle term, of the exchange; hence he appears as mediator.)

The formation of a merchant estate, which presupposes the formation of money, even if not developed in all its moments, is likewise presupposed by capital and thus cannot be adduced as that which mediates its specific circulation. Since trade is, both historically and conceptually, a presupposition for the rise of capital, we shall have to come back to it before we conclude this chapter, since it belongs in the section on the origin of capital or the one preceding it.

The improvement of the means of transport, as far as it means the facilitation of the physical circulation of commodities, does not belong here, where only the determinations of form peculiar to the circulation of capital are considered. The product only becomes a commodity, only emerges from the production phase, when it is put onto the market. On the other hand, the means of transport are relevant here in so far as the time taken by capital to return—i.e. circulation time — is bound to increase with the distance separating the market from the place of production. From this angle, reduction of circulation time with the help of means of transport therefore appears as direcdy relevant to the analysis of the circulation of capital. Yet, strictly speaking, this belongs in the theory of the market, which itself belongs in the section on capital.

Finally, credit. This form of circulation, etc., direcdy posited by capital and hence deriving specifically from the nature of capital, this differentia specifica of capital, is lumped in by Storch, etc., together with money, the trading estate, etc., which belong in general to the development of exchange and of production MORE OR LESS based upon it. To state the differentia specifica is here both part of the logical development of the matter in hand and the key to understanding its historical development. Historically, too, we find that in, e.g., England (and similarly in France) the attempts to replace money by paper coincide with the rise of capital, as do, on the other hand, the attempts to give capital, as far as it exists in the form of value, a form posited exclusively by capital itself, and, finally, the attempts to found credit. (E.g., Petty, Boisguillebert.)

Within circulation as the total process, we can distinguish between the greater and the lesser circulation. The former embraces the entire period from the moment when capital emerges from the production process until it returns into it. The latter is continuous and takes place simultaneously with the production process itself. It involves the part of capital which is paid out as wages, exchanged for the labour capacity.^[8]

This circulation process of capital, this exchange of equivalents which is posited in form, but actually supersedes itself, which posits itself as merely formal (the transition of value into capital, where the exchange of equivalents turns into its opposite and, on the basis of exchange, exchange becomes purely formal, AND THE MUTUALITY is ALL ON ONE SIDE), this circulation process of capital is to be developed thus:

The values which are exchanged are always objectified labour time, a mutually presupposed quantity of labour present (as a use value) in the form of an object. Value as such is always an effect, never a cause. It expresses the quantity of labour by which an object is produced, and hence that by which — assuming the same level of the productive forces — it can be reproduced.

The capitalist does not directly exchange capital for labour or labour time; he exchanges time contained, worked up in commodities, for time contained, worked up in the living labour capacity. The living labour time which he gets through exchange is not the exchange value of the labour capacity but its use value. Just as a machine is not exchanged or paid for as the cause of effects but as itself an effect; not by relation to its use value in the production process but as a product — a definite quantity of objectified labour. The labour time contained in the labour capacity, i.e. the time necessary to produce the living labour capacity, is the same as is necessary — given the same level of the productive forces — to reproduce it, i.e. to maintain it.

Hence the exchange carried on between capitalist and [VI-38] worker is totally in accordance with the laws of exchange; moreover, it is its ultimate development. For as long as the labour capacity itself is not being exchanged, production is not as yet based upon exchange, and exchange is, rather, merely a narrow circle resting upon non-exchange as its basis, as in all stages preceding bourgeois production. But the use value of the value which the capitalist has acquired in the exchange is itself the element of valorisation and its measure, living labour and labour time. Moreover, the capitalist has acquired more labour time than is objectified in the labour capacity, i.e. more labour time than it costs to reproduce the living worker.

Hence, by acquiring in the exchange the labour capacity as an equivalent, capital has acquired labour time — to the extent that it exceeds the quantity contained in the labour capacity — without giving an equivalent for it; it has appropriated alien labour time without exchange, by means of the form of exchange. The exchange therefore becomes a merely formal one; and, as we have seen," as capital develops further, even the appearance is eliminated that capital was giving in exchange for the labour capacity anything other than the latter's own objectified labour, i.e. giving anything at all for it.

This inversion [Umschlag] is thus due to the fact that the ultimate stage of free exchange is the exchange of the labour capacity as a commodity, as value, for a commodity, for value, that it is acquired as objectified labour, but its use value consists in living labour, i.e. in the positing of exchange value. The inversion is due to the fact that the use value of the labour capacity as value is itself the value-creating element, the substance of value and the substance which increases value. Hence in this exchange the worker gives up his value-creating and value-increasing living labour time in exchange for the equivalent of the labour time objectified in him. He sells himself as an effect. As cause, as activity, he is absorbed by and incarnated in capital. Thus exchange is inverted into its opposite, and the laws of private property — liberty, equality, property — property in one's own labour and the ability to freely dispose of it — are inverted into the propertylessness of the worker and the alienation of his labour, his relation to it as alien property and vice versa.

The circulation of the part of capital posited as wages accompanies the production process, appears as an economic relation of form alongside it, and is simultaneous and INTERWOVEN with it. It is this circulation that posits capital as such; it is the condition of its valorisation process and posits not merely a formal determination of that process, but its substance. It is the continuously circulating part of capital, which does not for a moment enter into the production process itself, and continually accompanies it. It is the part of capital that does not for a moment enter into its reproduction process, which is not the case with the raw material. The approvisionnement of the worker emerges as a product from the production process, as its resultant. But as such it never enters into the production process, because it is FINISHED PRODUCE intended for individual consumption. It enters directly into the worker's consumption, and is directly exchanged to serve that purpose. Hence it is, in distinction from both raw material and instrument of labour, CIRCULATING CAPITAL xon-'é£oxTJv.⁽⁵⁾

This is the only moment in the circuit of capital at which consumption directly enters into it. At this point, where the commodity is exchanged for money, it may be exchanged by another capital as raw material for new production. Further, under the presuppositions of capital, it is not the individual consumer but the merchant that confronts capital, and he buys the commodity merely to resell it for money. (This presupposition concerning the trading estate is in general to be developed. It implies that circulation among DEALERS is different from that between DEALERS and consumers.^[6])

Therefore circulating capital appears here directly as capital intended for the individual consumption of the workers; in general, as intended for immediate consumption and therefore existing in the form of finished product. Hence, if, on the one hand, capital appears as the presupposition of the product, the finished product appears, to the same extent, as the presupposition of capital — which in terms of history means that capital did not create the world afresh, but rather found production and products already in existence before it subjugated them to its process. Once in motion, setting out from itself, it continuously presupposes itself in its different forms as consumable product, raw material and instrument of labour, in order to continuously reproduce itself in these forms. They appear first as the conditions presupposed by capital itself, and then as its result. In reproducing itself it produces its own conditions.

Hence we find that — because of the relation of capital to the living labour capacity, and to the natural conditions of the maintenance of the latter — circulating capital is also determined in respect of use value, as directly entering into individual consumption and subject to be consumed as a product. It has therefore been incorrectly concluded that circulating capital is, in general, consumable capital, as though coal, oil, dyes, etc., instruments, etc., soil improvements, etc., factory buildings were not all equally consumed, if by consumption one is to understand the abolition of their use value and their form. But, just as much, none of these are consumed, if individual consumption, consumption in the proper sense, is meant thereby.

In this circulation, capital continuously rejects [part of] itself as objectified labour so that it may assimilate living labour power, the air it needs to live. Now as for the worker's consumption, it reproduces one thing — the worker himself as living labour capacity. Since this reproduction of him is a condition of capital, the consumption of the worker also appears as the reproduction, not directly of capital, but of the circumstances in which alone it is capital. The living labour capacity forms part of the conditions for the existence of capital just as much as raw material and instrument do. Hence capital reproduces itself doubly, in its own form, [and] in the consumption of the worker, but only to the extent that it reproduces him as living labour capacity. Capital, therefore, calls this consumption productive — productive, not in so far as it reproduces the individual, but the individuals as labour capacity.

If Rossi objects to wages being included twice in the calculation, first as the revenue of the worker and then as reproductive consumption of capital,⁽⁶⁾ his objection is valid only in reference to those who cause wages to enter directly into the production process of capital as value. For the payment of wages is an act of circulation, which takes place simultaneously with and alongside the act of production. Or as Sismondi says in this connection, the worker consumes his wages non-reproductively; but the capitalist consumes them productively,⁽⁷⁾ in so far as he exchanges them for labour, which reproduces the wages and more than the wages.

This refers to capital itself only considered as an object. But in so far as capital is a relation, notably a relation to the living labour capacity, the worker's consumption reproduces this relation, or capital reproduces itself doubly: as value, by its exchange with labour — as the possibility of recommencing the valorisation process, of once again acting as capital; and as a relation, by means of the worker's consumption, which reproduces him as labour capacity exchangeable for capital, for wages as part of capital.

From this circulation between capital and labour there follows, therefore, the determination of part of capital as constantly circulating, approvisionnement; constandy consumed; constandy to be reproduced. Strikingly displayed in this circulation is the difference between capital and money, between the circulation of capital and that of money. Capital pays, e.g., weekly wages; the worker takes his wages to the épicier,* etc., who direcdy or indirecdy deposits it with the BANKER; and the following week, the factory owner takes it from the banker again, in order again to distribute it among the same workers, etc., and so on. The same sum of money continuously circulates new portions of capital. But the sum of money itself does not determine the portions of capital thus circulated. If the money value of wages rises, the circulating medium will rise too; but the volume of the circulating medium does not determine the rise. If the production costs of money did not fall, no increase in the amount of money would have any effect on the portion of it entering into this circulation. Here money appears as mere means of circulation. Since there is a large number of workers to be paid simultaneously, a certain sum of money is simultaneously necessary, a sum that increases with their number. On the other hand, if the money is turned over quickly, a smaller quantity of it is necessary than in situations in which there are fewer workers, but the machinery of the money circulation is not so well ordered.

This circulation is a prerequisite of the production process and thereby of the circulation [VI-39] process as well. On the other hand, if capital did not return from circulation, this circulation between worker and capital could not begin anew. Hence it is, for its part, conditioned by the fact that capital passes through the different moments of its metamorphosis outside the production process. Its failure to do so would not be due to an insufficient supply of money as means of circulation, but because either capital was not available in the form of products, [i.e.] this part of circulating capital was absent; or because capital had not posited itself in the form of money, i.e. had not realised itself as capital. Yet this too would not be due to the quantity of means of circulation, but to the fact that capital had not posited itself in the qualitative determination as money. For it to do so, it need not at all be posited in the form of HARD CASH, in the immediate money form, and whether or not it posited itself in this form would once again depend not on the quantity of money in circulation as means of circulation, but on the exchange of capital for value as such. Again a qualitative, not a quantitative, moment, as we shall argue in more detail when we come to speak of capital as money. (Interest, etc.)

Considered as a whole, circulation therefore appears in three forms:

(1) The total process — the passage of capital through its different moments. Here capital is posited as in flux, as circulating. To the extent that each of the moments constitutes a virtual interruption of the continuity, and can set itself up as an obstacle to the transition into the next phase, capital here likewise appears to be fixed in different relations, and the different modes of this fixity constitute different capitals: commodity capital, money capital, capital as conditions of production.

(2) The lesser circulation between capital and labour capacity. It accompanies the production process and appears as a contract, exchange, a form of intercourse, which is a presupposition for the production process to be set in motion. The part of capital which enters into this circulation—approvisionnement—is circulating capital xax'é£oxT|v.⁽⁸⁾ Not only is it determined in regard of form, but its use value, i.e. its material determination as a consumable product entering directly into individual consumption, itself constitutes part of its determination of form.

(3) The greater circulation, the movement of capital outside the production phase, the time during which it does so appearing as circulation time in contrast to labour time. From this opposition between capital engaged in the production phase and capital emerging from it, there results the distinction between fixed and fluid capital. The former is capital which is fixed to the production process and consumed in it; certainly it derives from the greater circulation, but it does not return into it, and in so far as it circulates, it only does so in order to be consumed in, to be confined to, the production process.

The three different forms of circulation of capital give rise to the three distinctions between circulating and fixed capital; they posit one part of capital as circulating xaT'èijoxTJv, because it never enters into the production process, but constantly accompanies it; and, thirdly, they yield the distinction between fluid and fixed capital. Circulating capital in form No. 3 also includes No. 2, since the latter likewise forms a contrast to fixed capital. Yet No. 2 does not include No. 3.

The part of capital that as such belongs to the production process is the part of it which, in its material aspect, serves only as means of production; is the mediator between living labour and the material to be worked up. A part of the fluid capital, e.g., coal, oil, etc., also serves only as means of production. Everything that only serves as a means to maintain in operation a given machine, or another machine that keeps in motion the former. This distinction will have to be examined more closely. D'abord, this does not contradict determination 1, for fixed capital as value also circulates, in the degree in which it is used up. It is precisely in this determination as fixed capital — i.e. in the determination in which capital has lost its fluidity and is identified with a definite use value, which deprives it of the ability to be transformed — that developed capital, in as much as we have so far known it as productive capital, presents itself most strikingly, and it is precisely in this apparently inadequate form, and in its increasing ratio to the form of circulating capital in No. 2, that the development of capital as capital is measured. A pretty contradiction. To be developed.

The different kinds of capital, which in political economy come in from without like snow from the sky, appear here as just so many precipitates of the movements to which the nature of capital itself gives rise, or rather of this movement itself in its different determinations.

Circulating capital constantly

"PARTS" from the capitalist in order to return to him in the first form. Fixed capital does not do this (Storch).

"CIRCULATING CAPITAL THAT PORTION OF THE CAPITAL WHICH DOES NOT YIELD PROFIT TILL IT IS PARTED WITH; FIXED ETC. YIELDS SUCH PROFIT, WHILE IT REMAINS IN THE POSSESSION OF THE OWNER" (Malthus). "Circulating capital yields no revenue or profit to its owner, while it remains in his possession. Fixed capital yields profit to him without changing owners, and without requiring circulation" (A. Smith)?

From this viewpoint, the definition given above cannot be correct, since the departure of capital from its OWNER (partir de son possesseur) is precisely the alienation of property or possession which occurs in the act of exchange, and since it is the nature of all exchange value and hence of all capital to become value for its owner by being alienated. If fixed capital existed for its owner without the mediation of exchange and of the exchange value it comprises, fixed capital would IN FACT merely be use value, and consequently not capital.

But what underlies the above definition is this: as value fixed capital does circulate (even though merely in a piecemeal fashion, successively, as we shall see). As use value capital, it does not. Fixed capital, considered in its material aspect, as a moment of the production process, never goes beyond its BOUNDARIES; is not alienated by its possessor; remains in his hands. It only circulates with respect to its formal aspect as capital, perennial value. In circulating capital, there is no such distinction between form and content, use value and exchange value. In order to circulate as, to be, exchange value, it must enter into circulation as use value, be alienated as such. Use value for capital as such is only value itself. Circulating capital is realised as value for capital only by being alienated. As long as it remains in the capitalist's hands, it only has value in itself; it is not posited; only 8u vâ(j.ei, not actu.⁽⁹⁾ Fixed capital, on the contrary, is only realised as value as long as it remains in the hands of the capitalist as use value, or, expressed as a physical relation, as long as it remains in the production process, which can be regarded as the inner organic movement of capital, its relating to itself, as against its animalistic movement, its existence for other purposes. Hence, since fixed capital remains in the production process once it has entered into it, it also vanishes in it, is consumed in it. The length of the time taken by this vanishing does not as yet concern us.

From this angle, therefore, what Cherbuliez calls matières instrumentales,⁽¹⁰⁾ such as coal, wood, oil, tallow, etc., which are completely destroyed in the production process and which possess only use value for that process itself, are part of fixed capital. But the same materials have a use value outside production too and can also be consumed in other ways, just as buildings, houses, etc., are not necessarily intended for production. They are fixed capital not by virtue of the particular mode of their existence, but by virtue of the use made of them. They become fixed capital by entering into the production process. They are fixed capital as soon as they are posited as moments of the production process of capital; because then they [VI-40] lose their quality of being potential circulating capital.

Just as the part of capital which enters into the lesser circulation of capital — or capital, so far as it enters into this movement — the circulation between capital and labour capacity, the part of capital circulating as wages — taken in its material aspect, as use value— never departs from circulation and never enters into the production process of capital, but is always rejected by that process as a product, as the result of a prior process of production, so the part of capital determined as fixed capital, on the contrary, never departs as use value, in its material existence, from the production process and never re-enters into circulation. While fixed capital enters into circulation only as value (as part of the value of the finished product), circulating capital enters into the production process only as value, since necessary labour is the reproduction of wages, of the part of the value of capital that circulates as wages. This is, therefore, the first determination of fixed capital; and seen from this angle fixed capital also embraces the matières instrumentales.

Secondly: Fixed capital, however, can only enter into circulation as value to the extent that it vanishes as use value in the production process. It enters as value into the product — i.e. as labour time worked up or preserved in it — to the extent that it vanishes in its independent form as use value. In consequence of its being used it is used up, but in such a way that its value is transferred from its form into that of the product. If it is not used, is not consumed in the production process itself — if the machine is idle, if the iron rusts and the wood rots — its value of course vanishes with its transitory existence as use value. Its circulation as value corresponds to its consumption as use value in the production process. Its total value is fully reproduced, i.e. returns from circulation, only when it has been completely consumed as use value in the production process. As soon as it has been completely resolved in value and, hence, has completely entered into circulation, it has completely disappeared as a use value, and must therefore be replaced as a necessary moment of production by a new use value of the same kind, i.e. it must be reproduced. The necessity of its reproduction, i.e. its reproduction time, is determined by the time in which it is used up, consumed, within the production process.

In the case of circulating capital, the reproduction is determined by circulation time; in the case of fixed capital, the circulation is determined by the time in which it is used up as use value, in its material existence, within the act of production, i.e. by the time within which it must be reproduced. A thousand lbs of twist can be reproduced as soon as it has been sold and the money received for it re-exchanged for cotton, etc., in short for the elements of production of twist. Its reproduction is therefore determined by its circulation time. A machine valued at £1,000, which lasts for 5 years, i.e. is only used up after 5 years has passed, and then is merely scrap iron — is used up each year to the extent of, say, l/^[5], if we assume the AVERAGE [rate] of consumption in the production process. Only '/s of its value, therefore, enters into circulation each year, and it is only upon the passage of the 5 years that the whole of it has entered into and returned from circulation. [The rate of] its entry into circulation, therefore, is determined solely by the length of the time during which it is used up, and the time its value takes to enter wholly into circulation and return from it is determined by its overall reproduction time, the time in which it must be reproduced.

Fixed capital enters into the product only as value, whereas the use value of circulating capital has persisted in the product as its substance, and has merely acquired another form. This distinction introduces an essential modification into the turnover time of a total capital divided into fixed and circulating capital. Suppose that the total capital is S; the circulating part of it is c, and the fixed part,

/. Let the fixed capital constitute J_S ; the circulating capital j?_.

x y Let the circulating capital turn over 3 times a year, the fixed

S capital only twice in 10 years. Within 10 years, / o r — turns over

S X

twice, while in the same 10 years — turns over 3x 10=30 times. If 5 were=to —, i.e. if the capital wholly consisted of circulating capital,

its turnover, U, would be=30; and the total capital turned over in

10 years would be=30x—. But the fixed capital turns over only

twice in 10 years. Its U' = 2, and the total fixed capital turned

25 5 5 over= — . But 5 = 1 , and its total turnover time=the sum of x y x the turnover times of these two parts. If the fixed capital turns over twice in 10 years, s/io or Vs of it turns over in one year; while the circulating capital turns over 3 times in one year. — turns over once a year.

The question boils down to this: assuming that a capital of 1,000 thaler consists of 600 circulating capital and 400 fixed capital, i.e. ^[3]/^[5] circulating and ^[2]/^[5] fixed capital, that the fixed capital lasts for 5 years, hence turns over once in 5 years, and that the circulating capital turns over 3 times a year, what is the average turnover number, or turnover time, of the total capital? If it were wholly circulating capital, it would turn over 5x3, or 15 times; the total capital turned over in the 5 years would be 15,000. However, ^[2]/s of the capital only turns over once in 5 years. Consequendy, of these 400 thaler ^[40]%, i.e. 80 thaler, turn over in a year. Of the 1,000 thaler 600 turn over 3 times a year, and 80 once a year. That is to say, only 1,880 would turn over in the whole year; in the 5 years, therefore, 5x1,880=9,400 will turn over; i.e. 5,600 less than if the capital wholly consisted of circulating capital. If the latter were the case, the total capital would turn over once in V3 of a year.a

[VI-41] If the capital =1,000, with c=600 and turning over twice a year, and /=400 and turning over once a year, then 600 (s/s S)

turns over in half a year; and 400/^[2] or ( jr — 5 ) similarly in half a year.

f Hence in half a year, 600+200=800 (i.e. c + y ) turns over.

Correspondingly, in a w h o l e y e a r 2x800, or 1,600 thaler, turns over; 1,600 thaler in a year; i.e. 100 in ^[12]/i^[6] months, and therefore 1,000 in ^[12]%^[6], or 7 /^[2], months. The entire capital of 1,000 thus turns over in 77^[2] months, as compared with the 6 months required if it consisted wholly of circulating capital. 7 72:6=1:174 or l:^[5]/4.b

Suppose the capital=100, made up of 50 circulating and 50 fixed, with the former turning over twice a year and the latter once. Then 7^[2] of 100 turns over once in 6 months, and l/^[4] of 100 likewise once in 6 months. Therefore, ^[3]/^[4] of the capital turns over in 6 months, ^[3]/^[4] of 100 in 6 months; or 75 in 6 months, and 100 in 8 months. If ^[2]/^[4] of 100 turns over in 6 months and ^[1]/^[4] of 100 (7^[2] the fixed capital) in the same time, this means that ^[3]/^[4] of 100 turns over in 6 months. Consequendy, lU turns over in ^[6]/^[3] or 2 months, and so % of 100, or 100, in 6+2, or 8 months.

The total turnover time of capital=6 (the turnover time of the entire circulating capital and V2 of the fixed capital or lU of the total capital)+^[6]/^[3], i.e.+ this turnover time divided by the number which expresses the proportion of the remaining fixed capital to the capital turned over in the turnover time of the circulating capital. So in the above example: s/^[5] of 100 turns over in 6 months, ditto V5 of 100; therefore */^[5] of 100 in 6 months; therefore the remaining Vs of 100 in ^[6]/^[4] months; therefore the total capital in 6+^[6]/^[4] months=6+lV2; or W2. months."

Expressed in general terms: The average turnover time=the turnover time of the circulating capital+this turnover time divided by the number of times the remaining part of the fixed capital is contained in the total sum of capital which was circulated in this turnover time.b

Suppose there are 2 capitals each of 100 thaler. One is entirely circulating capital, the other is half fixed capital. Both operate at a gain of 5%. The one turns over entirely twice a year; in the other, the circulating capital likewise twice, and the fixed capital only once. The total capital turned over in the first case would be 200, and the profit 10; in the second, there would be 1 turnover in 8 months, or ^[1]/^[2] in 4, i.e. 150 would be turned over in 12 months and its profit would be 7^[1]/i.

This sort of calculation has tended to harden the common delusion that circulating capital or fixed capital yields gain by means of some MYSTERIOUS INNATE POWER, a delusion manifest even in Malthus's statement that "circulating capital yields gain if its POSSESSORS PART WITH IT, etc."; similarly, in the passages cited above from his Measure of Value, etc., namely in the way he describes the accumulation of the profits of fixed capitals The greatest confusion and mystification has arisen from the failure of the hitherto economic doctrines to consider the theory of surplus gain in its purity. Instead, they have lumped it together with the theory of real profit, which is all about the way the different capitals share in the general rate of profit. The profit of the capitalists as a class, or the profit of capital as such, must be there before it can be distributed, and it is the height of absurdity to wish to explain its origin by its distribution.

It follows from the above that profit diminishes because the turnover time of capital increases in proportion to the increase of the component part of it which is called fixed capital.

//The size of capital is assumed to be permanent, but this does not concern us here anyway, since the proposition is valid for capital of whatever size. Capitals differ in size, but the size of each individual capital is equal to itself. Hence as long as capital is only considered in its quality as capital, it may be of ANY size. But if we consider 2 capitals in distinction from one another, the difference in their size introduces a relation of qualitative determinations. Their very size becomes a quality distinguishing them from one another. This is an essential aspect showing how the consideration of capital as such differs from that of one capital in relation to another, or from that of capital in its reality — and size is

O n l y ONE SINGLE INSTANCE.//

A capital of the same [VI-42] size, 100 in the example above, would turn over completely twice a year, if it consisted entirely of circulating capital. But it is only turned over twice in 16 months, or only 150 thaler is turned over in a year, because half of it is fixed capital. As the number of times a capital is reproduced in a given time declines, or as the quantity of it reproduced in a given time declines, there is also a decline in the production of surplus time or surplus value, since capital in general posits value only to the extent that it posits surplus value. (At least, this is its tendency, its adequate action.)

As we have seen, fixed capital circulates as value only in the degree in which it is used up or consumed as use value in the production process. But the time in which it is thus consumed and must be reproduced in its form as use value depends upon its relative durability. Its durability, or its greater or lesser perishability — i. e. the greater or lesser length of time for which it can continue to repeat its function within the repeated production processes of capital — this determination of its use value, therefore, becomes here a form-determining moment, i. e. a determinant of capital with respect to its formal, not its material, aspect. Hence the necessary reproduction time of fixed capital, just as much as the proportion it constitutes of the whole capital, modify here the turnover time of the total capital and therefore its valorisation. A greater durability of capital (the duration of its necessary reproduction time) and a higher proportion of fixed capital to total capital, therefore, have precisely the same effect on valorisation as a slower turnover, occasioned either by the fact that the market from which capital returns as money is more distant, and hence more time is needed for it to run the course of circulation (e. g., capitals which work in England for the East Indies market return more slowly than those which work for less distant foreign markets or for the or because the production phase itself is interrupted owing to natural conditions, as in agriculture. Ricardo at first emphasised the influence of fixed capital upon the valorisation process; but then he jumbled all these determinations together, as can be seen from the passages cited above.^[3]

In the first case (fixed capital) [the rate of] the turnover of capital is diminished because fixed capital is only slowly consumed within the production process, or because of the length of time required for its reproduction. In the second case, the diminished [rate of] turnover is due to the lengthening of circulation time (in the first case the fixed capital necessarily circulates always with the same velocity as the product, in so far as it does circulate, enter into circulation, because it does not circulate in its material form of existence but only as value, i. e. as a notional component of the total value of the product), to be more precise, to the lengthening of the circulation time of the second half of the circulation process proper, the reconversion of money. In the third case, the diminished [rate of] turnover is due to the longer time required by capital to emerge from the production process as a product, not, as in the first case, the longer time capital takes to perish in the production process. The first case is peculiar specifically to fixed capital; the other belongs to the category of non-fluid fixed capital, capital fixed in any phase of the total circulation process

(FIXED CAPITAL OF A CONSIDERABLE DEGREE OF DURABILITY, OR CIRCULATING CAPITAL RETURNABLE AT DISTANT PERIODS. McCuIloch, [ The] Principles of Political Economy, [London, 1825, p. 300] Notebook, p. 15).⁽¹¹⁾

Thirdly: Up to this point, we have considered fixed capital only from one angle — in as much as its distinctions are posited in terms of its particular, specific relation to the circulation process proper. Considered from this angle, it shows further distinctions. Firstly, its value returns piecemeal, whereas each portion of circulating capital is exchanged wholly, because in the case of circulating capital the existence of value coincides with that of use value. Secondly, we have hitherto only considered the effect of fixed capital upon the average turnover time of a given capital. But we must also examine the effect it has on its own turnover time. The latter circumstance becomes important where fixed capital appears not as a mere instrument of production within the production process, but as an independent form of capital, e. g., in the form of railways, canals, roads, waterworks, as capital wedded to the soil, etc.

This latter determination is especially important with respect to the proportions in which the total capital of a country is divided up into these two forms [fixed and circulating capital]. Then the way in which fixed capital is renewed and maintained; the economists argue that it can yield revenue only by means of circulating capital, etc. Au fond, this boils down to a consideration of the MOMENT in which fixed capital appears not as a particular, independent existence alongside and outside circulating capital, but as circulating capital transformed into fixed capital.

But what we want to consider first at this point is the relation of fixed capital, not towards the outside, but as given by the fact that it remains locked up in the production process. Fixed capital is posited by its being a particular moment of the production process itself.

//We are not in any way arguing that fixed capital is, in every determination, capital which does not serve individual consumption but production alone. A house can just as well be used for production as for consumption; similarly all vehicles: a ship or a wagon can be used both for pleasure trips and as means of transport; a road can be used as means of communication for production proper, as well as for strolling along, etc. We are not at all concerned with fixed capital in this second relation; for at this point we are discussing capital only as valorisation process and production process. The second determination will enter when we come to discuss interest. Ricardo can only have this determination in mind when he says:

"Depending on whether capital is more perishable or less perishable, i.e. must be reproduced more frequently or less frequently in a given period of time, it is called circulating capital or fixed capital" (Ricardo, [On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation, p. 26] VIII, 19⁽¹²⁾).

On that basis, a coffee pot would be fixed capital, and the coffee, circulating capital. The economists regard people's social relations of production, and the determinations acquired by things subsumed under these relations, as natural properties of the things. This crude materialism is an equally crude idealism, indeed a fetishism which ascribes to things social relations as determinations immanent to them, and thus mystifies them. The difficulty of defining any thing at all as fixed or circulating capital by reference to its natural character has brought the economists here, as an exception, to the idea that things themselves are neither fixed nor circulating capital, hence probably not capital at all, as little as it is the natural property of gold to be money.//

(Lest we forget it, we must add to the points enumerated above the circulation of fixed capital as circulating capital, i.e., the transactions by which it changes its owners.)

"Fixed capital—engaged: capital so engaged in one kind of production that it can no longer be diverted from it to be employed in another kind of production" (Say, [Traité d'économie politique, Vol. II, p. 430,] 21⁽¹³⁾).⁽¹⁴⁾

"Fixed capital is consumed in order to help to reproduce what man destines for his use ... consists of permanent installations suitable for increasing the productive forces of future labour" (Sismondi, [Nouveaux principes d'économie politique, Vol. 1, pp. 95, 97-98] V I » »

"Fixed capital is the capital which is necessary to maintain the instruments, machines, etc., of labour" (Smith, [Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations], Vol. II, p. 226).

"FLOATING CAPITAL IS CONSUMED, FIXED CAPITAL MERELY USED IN THE GREAT WORK OF PRODUCTION" ([The] Economist, [No. 219, 6 November 1847, p. 1271] Notebook VI, p. I).⁽¹⁵⁾?

"It will be shown that the first stick or stone he took into his hand to help him in the pursuit of those objects, by performing part of his work, fulfilled exactly the same function as the capitals employed at present by the mercantile nations" (Lauderdale, [Recherches sur la nature et l'origine de la richesse publique, Paris, 1808,] p. 87, Notebook 8, a).c 14 "It is one of the characteristic and distinguishing features of the human species thus to supplant labour by capital transformed into machinery" (p. 120) (p. 9, Notebook Lauderdale). "Now it will be seen that the profit of capital always derives either from its supplanting a portion of labour which would otherwise have to be performed by the hand of man; or from its performing a portion of labour which is beyond the reach of the personal exertion of man to accomplish" (p. 119, I. c).

Lauderdale takes issue with Smith and Locke, [VI-43] whose belief that labour is the source of profit has, according to Lauderdale, the following result:

"If this notion of the profit of capital were stricdy correct, it would follow that profit is not an original source of wealth but a derivative one; and capital could not be considered a source of wealth, its profit being only a transfer from the pocket of the labourer into that of the capitalist" (1. c, pp. 116, 117).

"The profit of capital always derives either from its supplanting a portion of labour which would otherwise have to be performed by the hand of man; or from its performing a portion of labour which is beyond the reach of the personal exertion of man to accomplish" (p. 119, 1. c, [Notebook] p. 9, b).

"It should be noted that if the capitalist, by the use he makes of his money, saves a certain amount of labour to the class of consumers, he does not substitute for it an equal portion of his own; which proves that it is his capital, and not himself, that performs it" (10, Notebook, 1. c, p. 132).

"If Adam Smith had not imagined that the effect of a machine was to facilitate labour or, as he expressed himself, to increase the productive power of labour (it is a strange confusion of ideas that has led Dr. Smith to describe the effect of capital as increasing the productive power of labour. According to this logic, one could very well claim that shortening a circuitous road between two given places by half means doubling the velocity of the walker), he would have seen that it was by supplanting labour that the funds paid for the machine yielded profit, and he would have attributed the origin of profit to this very circumstance" ([Notebook,] p. 11;

P- 1 3 7 )-

"Capital, whether fixed or circulating, in home trade, far from serving to set labour in motion, or adding to the productive power of labour, is, on the contrary, only useful and profitable in these two situations: either it supplants the necessity of a portion of labour that would otherwise have to be performed by the hand of man, or it performs a certain kind of labour that is beyond the powers of man himself to accomplish."

This, Lauderdale says, is not a purely verbal distinction.

"The idea that capital sets labour in motion, and that it adds to its productive power, gives rise to the opinion that labour is everywhere proportioned to the quantity of existing capital; that the industry of a country always corresponds to the funds employed; from which it follows that the increase of capital is by far the best and unlimited means of augmenting wealth. If, instead, we admitted that capital can have no other useful and profitable employment than that of supplanting or performing a certain kind of labour, we would draw the natural conclusion that the State can derive no advantage from possessing more capital than can be employed in performing or supplanting labour in the production and manufacture of things required by the consumer" (pp. 150-52, [Notebook,] pp. 11, 12).

To prove his proposition that capital is, independently of labour, a source sui generis OF PROFIT and thus OF WEALTH, he points to the surplus profit which the owner of a newly invented machine derives before his brevet d'invention" expires, and competition depresses prices, and then concludes with the words:

"This alteration in the rule of charging does not prevent the profit" (for the use value) "of the machine from being received out of a fund of the same nature as that which it was paid from before the expiration of the patent: this fund is always that part of the revenue of the country which formerly was destined to pay the wages of the labour supplanted by the new invention" (1. c, p. 125, [Notebook,] p. 10, b).

Ravenstone, on the contrary, argues (IX, 32)" that:

MACHINERY CAN SELDOM BE APPLIED WITH SUCCESS TO ABRIDGE THE LABOURS OF AN INDIVIDUAL; MORE TIME WOULD BE LOST IN ITS CONSTRUCTION THAN COULD BE SAVED BY ITS APPLICATION. I T IS ONLY REALLY USEFUL WHEN IT ACTS ON GREAT MASSES, WHEN A SINGLE MACHINE CAN ASSIST THE LABOURS OF THOUSANDS. I T IS ACCORDINGLY IN THE MOST POPULOUS COUNTRIES WHERE THERE ARE MOST IDLE MEN THAT IT IS ALWAYS MOST ABUNDANT. IT IS NOT CALLED INTO ACTION BY A SCARCITY OF MEN, BUT BY THE FACILITY WITH WHICH THEY ARE BROUGHT TOGETHER" (1. c.) [ Thoughts on the Funding System, and Its Effects, London, 1824, p. 45].

---

Endnotes

(1) See the beginning of the previous paragraph.— Ed.

[15] Marx is referring to the Excerpt Notebook compiled in Manchester in 1845.—76

[9] Marx is referring to Excerpt Notebook I (London, September 1850).—30

(2) Inaccuracy.— Ed.

3 See this volume, pp. 40-47, but there time is reckoned in days, not months.— Ed.

(3) Here the following passage is crossed out in the manuscript: "Firstly, capital exists as money, which at this stage we still can conceive of in the form of undeveloped metallic money. Here form and content are abstractly identical; the material of value and its form are the same; taken in the abstract, since capital as."—Ed. 4-785

a In passing.— Ed. b Basically.— Ed.

4*

a From its point of view.— Ed. b See this volume, p. 25.— Ed. c In one way or another.— Ed.

(4) Overhead costs of production.— Ed.

[8] In the 1857-1858 manuscript Marx as a rule uses the term "Arbeitsvermögen" (labour capacity), hut in some cases "Arbeitskraft" (labour power). In Capital, Vol. I, Ch. VI, he treats the two terms as identical: "By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description" (see present edition, Vol. 35).—29, 63

a See present edition, Vol. 28, pp. 381-83.— Ed.

(5) Par excellence.— Ed.

(6) P. Rossi, Cours d'économie politique. Année 1836-1837. In: Cours d'économie politique, Brussels, 1843, pp. 369-71.— Ed.

(7) S. de Sismondi, Nouveaux principes d'économie politique etc., Vol. I, pp. 87 and 93,— Ed.

a Grocer.— Ed.

(8) Par excellence.— Ed.

a H. Storch, Cours d'économie politique, Vol. I, pp. 405 and 420; Th. R. Malthus, Definitions in Political Economy, London, 1827, pp. 237-38; A. Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, Paris, 1802, Vol. II, pp. 197-98.— Ed.

(9) Only potentially, not actually.— Ed.

(10) Instrumental materials. See A. Cherbuliez, Richesse ou pauvreté, pp. 14-15.— Ed.

[40] The Laws of the Twelve Tables (Leges duodecim tabularum)—the most ancient legislative documents of the Roman slave-owning state. They originated from the plebeians' struggle against the patricians (the plebeians sought to deprive the patricians of their privileges to interpret legal customs) and were recorded in 451-450 B.C. They concerned private property, credit, family relations, prohibited marriages between patricians and plebeians and formed a basis of Roman law.—214

a Here Marx crossed out several lines containing another version of this calculation.— Ed. b Thus in the manuscript.— Ed.

a Here Marx crossed out several lines containing a formula for determining the turnover time of the part of capital — Ed. b Here Marx crossed out a formula representing this proposition.— Ed. c See present edition, Vol. 28, pp. 487-99 and this volume, p. 69.— Ed.

(11) See this volume, pp. 32-35.— Ed.

(12) See this volume, pp. 32-33.— Ed.

(13) See this volume, p. 30. Marx quotes in French.— Ed.

(14) See this volume, pp. 35-36. Marx quotes partly in French.— Ed.

(15) This and the following passages from Lauderdale are quoted in French in the manuscript. In one quotation (from p. 116) Marx occasionally uses German words.— Ed.

a Patent.— Ed.

[7] Marx has in mind Notebook XVI of the 24 notebooks of excerpts on political economy he made in the early 1850s. The notebook contains excerpts from Gratuité du crédit. Discussion entre M. Fr. Bastiat et M. Proudhon, Paris, 1850. Proudhon's formula on the surplus added by labour is to be found on p. 200 of this book, as well as in Proudhon's Système des contradictions économiques, ou Philosophie de la misère, Vol. I, Paris, 1846, p. 73. Cf. present edition, Vol. 28, p. 531. For criticism of this formula, see also Marx's work The Poverty of Philosophy (present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 152-60).—29

[3] In his manuscript, to denote these categories Marx uses mostly the French terms "capital circulant" and "capital fixe", but sometimes he also uses the German ones "zirkulierendes Kapital" and "fixiertes Kapital", or the English "circulating capital", "floating capital", and "fixed capital".— 9, 201, 515, 526

[4] This refers to the discovery of rich deposits of gold in Australia in 1851. The development of these deposits, alongside the extraction of gold discovered in California in 1848, spurred industrial and stock-exchange activity in capitalist countries.—11, 265

[1] This is the concluding part of Marx's economic manuscript of 1857-1858. Consisting of seven large notebooks, which Marx numbered I-VII, the manuscript is the first rough draft of Capital. On the cover of the last, seventh, notebook, Marx wrote Political Economy, Criticism of in English and "Fortsetzung [Continuation]" in German. This implies that Notebook VII is a continuation of the preceding six notebooks and that Marx did not consider it to be the concluding one. The words Political Economy, Criticism of can be regarded as the author's title for the whole manuscript. The words "rough draft" are taken from Marx's letter to Engels of November 29, 1858 in which Marx calls his economic manuscript of 1857-1858 a Rohentwurf (Rough Draft). The manuscript is, indeed, a rough draft, for it is unfinished and breaks off in mid-sentence. A major part of the manuscript is included in Volume 28 of the present edition and begins with Chapter II—"Chapter on Money", followed by a long third chapter, "Chapter on Capital". Notebook VII contains the conclusion ot this chapter, followed by fragments intended as additions to the two chapters — on money and on capital. The Economic Manuscript of 1857-1858 is being published in the sequence given by Marx. The numbers of the notebooks are indicated in Roman numerals and the pages in Arabic ones, in square brackets. The square brackets in the manuscript are, therefore, replaced by oblique lines. Some passages have been transposed — as indicated by Marx in the manuscript or where there are obvious additions relevant to the preceding text. All such cases are mentioned in the footnotes, which also indicate passages crossed out by Marx and sometimes reproduce them. Where Marx, in quoting, gives references to pages of his excerpt notebooks, these have been supplemented, in brackets, with references to the pages of the editions Marx used. Where he merely gives the authors' names, the titles of the quoted works have been supplied. Foreign words and expressions, including Greek and Latin, are preserved when the author used them for stylistic or terminological purposes. English phrases, expressions and separate words are given in small caps. Quotations from English sources are given according to the editions used by the author. In all cases the form in which Marx quoted is respected. The language in which Marx quotes is indicated, unless it is German. The manuscript was first published in full in the language of the original (German) in Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (Rohentwurf). 1857-1858, Moscow, 1939-41 and reproduced by Dietz Verlag, Berlin, in 1953. In English, the manuscript was published in full in Karl Marx, Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft). Translated with a foreword by Martin Nicolaus. Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, London, 1973. Separate extracts had been published previously in Marx's Grundrisse, ed. David McLellan, Macmillan Press Ltd., London, 1971.—Title-page

[6] When speaking about circulation between dealers, and that between dealers and consumers, Marx has in mind Adam Smith's division of the whole circulation into these two different branches (see Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. II, Book II, Ch. II).—27, 65

[5] The reference is to the 1845 Brussels Excerpt Notebook. Other quotations from Storch are on pages 26, 34-35 of this notebook.— 24, 118

[2] Marx dealt with the circuit and turnover of capital in the preceding part of Section Two of the "Chapter on Capital" (see present edition, Vol. 28, pp. 439-72), but then he interrupted his exposition of these problems and wrote a section about bourgeois theories of surplus value and profit (see Vol. 28, pp. 473-537). He did, however, return to the topic.— 7

[12] Marx quotes Ricardo from his Excerpt Notebook VIII (London, April-mid-May 1851).—33, 77