II. Costs of Storage
Whether a product is fabricated as a commodity or not, it is always a material form of wealth, a use value intended for individual or productive consumption. Its value as a commodity is ideally expressed in its price, which does not change its actual use form in the least. But the fact that certain commodities like gold and silver function as money and as such reside exclusively in the process of circulation (even in the form of hoards, reserve funds, etc., they remain in the sphere of circulation, although latently) is a pure product of the particular social form of the process of production, the process of production of commodities. Since under capitalist production products assume the general form of commodities, and the overwhelming mass of products is created as commodities and must therefore assume the form of money, and since the vast bulk of the commodities, the part of social wealth functioning as commodities, grows continually, it follows that the quantity of gold and silver functioning as means of circulation, paying medium, reserve fund, etc., likewise increases. These commodities performing the function of money enter into neither individual nor productive consumption. They represent social labour fixed in a form in which it serves as a mere circulation machine. Besides the fact that a part of the social wealth has been condemned to assume this unproductive form, the wearing down of the money demands its constant replacement, or the conversion of more social labour, in the form of products, into more gold and silver. These replacement costs are considerable in capitalistically developed nations, because in general the portion of wealth tied up in the form of money is tremendous. Gold and silver as money commodities mean circulation costs to society which arise solely out of the social form of production. They are faux frais of commodity production in general, and they increase with the development of this production, especially of capitalist production. They represent a part of the social wealth that must be sacrificed to the process of circulation.[13]'
II. Costs of Storage
Costs of circulation, which originate in a mere change of form of value, in circulation, ideally considered, do not enter into the value of commodities. The parts of capital expended as such costs are merely deductions from the productively expended capital so far as the capitalist is concerned. The costs of circulation which we shall consider now are of a different nature. They may arise from processes of production which are only continued in circulation, the productive character of which is hence merely concealed by the circulation form. On the other hand they may be, from the standpoint of society, mere costs, unproductive expenditure of living or objectified labour, but for that very reason they may become productive of value for the individual capitalist, may constitute an addition to the selling price of his commodities. This already follows from the fact that these costs are different in different spheres of production, and here and there even for different individual capitals in one and the same sphere of production. By being added to the prices of commodities they are distributed in proportion to the amount to be borne by each individual capitalist. But all labour which adds value can also add surplus value, and will
[13]*"The money circulating in a country is a certain portion of the capital of the country, absolutely withdrawn from productive purposes, in order to facilitate or increase the productiveness of the remainder. A certain amount of wealth is, therefore, as necessary in order to adopt gold as a circulating medium, as it is to make a machine in order to facilitate any other production"* [Economist, Vol. V, p. 520).
always add surplus value under capitalist production, as the value created by labour depends on the amount of the labour itself, whereas the surplus value created by it depends on the extent to which the capitalist pays for it. Consequently costs which enhance the price of a commodity without adding to its use value, which therefore are to be classed as the faux frais of production so far as society is concerned, may be a source of enrichment to the individual capitalist. On the other hand, as this addition to the price of the commodity merely distributes these costs of circulation equally, they do not thereby cease to be unproductive in character. For instance insurance companies divide the losses of individual capitalists among the capitalist class. But this does not prevent these equalised losses from remaining losses so far as the aggregate social capital is concerned.
Endnotes
[13] Passages from Ravenstone's Thoughts on the Funding System, and Its Effects copied out by Marx in London in 1851 are to be found in Notebook IX (MEGA 2, Bd. IV/8, Berlin, 1986, S. 542-48).—18