III. Costs of Transportation
It is not necessary to go here into all the details of the costs of circulation, such as packing, sorting, etc. The general law is that all costs of circulation which arise only from changes in the forms of commodities do not add to their value. They are merely expenses incurred in the realisation of the value or in its conversion from one form into another. The capital spent to meet those costs (including the labour done under its control) belongs among the faux frais of capitalist production. They must be replaced from the surplus product and constitute, as far as the entire capitalist class is concerned, a deduction from the surplus value or surplus product, just as the time a' labourer needs for the purchase of his means of subsistence is lost time. But the costs of transportation play a too important part to pass them by without a few brief remarks.
Within the circuit of capital and the metamorphosis of commodities, which forms a part ofthat circuit, an interchange of matter takes place in social labour. This interchange of matter may necessitate a change of location of products, their real motion from one place to another. Still, circulation of commodities can take place without physical motion by them, and there can be transportation of products without circulation of commodities, and even without a direct exchange of products. A house sold by A to B does not wander from one place to another, although it circulates as a commodity. Movable commodity values, such as cotton or pig iron, may lie in the same storage dump at a time when they are passing through dozens of circulation processes, are bought and resold by speculators.17) What really does move here is the title of ownership in goods, not the goods themselves. On the other hand, transportation played a prominent role in the land of the Incas,[20] although the social product neither circulated as a commodity nor was distributed by means of barter.
Consequently, although the transportation industry when based on capitalist production appears as a cause of circulation costs, this special form of appearance does not alter the matter in the least.
Quantities of products are not increased by transportation. Nor, with a few exceptions, is the possible alteration of their natural qual-ities, brought about by transportation, an intentional useful effect; it is rather an unavoidable evil. But the use value of things is realised only in their consumption, and their consumption may necessitate a change of location of these things, hence may require an additional process of production, in the transport industry. The productive capital invested in this industry imparts value to the transported products, partly by transferring value from the means of transportation, partly by adding value through the labour performed in transport.
[17] Storch calls this "circulation factice".
This last-named increment of value splits, as it does in all capitalist production, into a replacement of wages and into surplus value.
Within each process of production, a great role is played by the change of location of the subject of labour and the required instruments of labour and labour power — such as cotton trucked from the carding to the spinning room or coal hoisted from the shaft to the sur-face. The transition of the finished product as finished goods from one independent place of production to another located at a distance shows the same phenomenon, only on a larger scale. The transport of the products from one productive establishment to another is furthermore followed by the passage of the finished products from the sphere of production to that of consumption. The product is not ready for consumption until it has completed these movements.
As was shown above, the general law of commodity production holds: The productivity of labour is inversely proportional to the value created by it. This is true of the transport industry as well as of any other. The smaller the amount of dead and living labour required for the transportation of commodities over a certain distance, the greater the productive power of labour, and vice versa.[18]'
The absolute magnitude of the value which transportation adds to the commodities stands in inverse proportion to the productive power of the transport industry and in direct proportion to the distance travelled, other conditions remaining the same.
The relative part of the value added to the prices of commodities by the costs of transportation, other conditions remaining the same, is directly proportional to their cubic content and weight. But there are many modifying factors. Transportation requires, for instance, more or less important precautionary measures, and therefore more or less
ls) Ricardo quotes Say, who considers it one of the blessings of commerce that by means of the costs of transportation it increases the price, or the value, of products. "Commerce," writes Say, "enables us to obtain a commodity in the place where it is to be found, and to convey it to another where it is to be consumed; it therefore gives us the power of increasing the value of the commodity, by the whole difference between its price in the first of these places, and its price in the second." [25] Ricardo remarks with reference to this: * "True, but how is this additional value given to it? By adding to the cost of production, first, the expenses of conveyance; secondly, the profit on the advances of capital made by the merchant. The commodity is only more valuable, for the same reason that every other commodity may become more valuable, because more labour is expended on its production and conveyance before it is purchased by the consumer. This must not be mentioned as one of the advantages of commerce" * (Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy, 3rd ed., London, 1821, pp. 309, 310).
expenditure of labour and instruments of labour, depending on how fragile, perishable, explosive, etc., the articles are. Here the railway kings show greater ingenuity in the invention of fantastic species than do botanists and zoologists. The classification of goods on English railways, for example, fills volumes and, in principle, rests on the general tendency to transform the diversified natural properties of goods into just as many ills of transportation and routine pretexts for fraudulent charges.
"Glass, which was formerly worth £11 per CRATE,' is now worth only £2 since the improvements which have taken place in manufactures, and since the abolition of the duty; but the rate for carriage is the same as it was formerly, and higher than it was previously, when carried by canal. Formerly, manufacturers ... had glass and glass wares for the plumbers' trade carried at about 10 s. per ton, within 50 miles of Birmingham. At the present time, the rate to cover risk of breakage is three times that amount... The companies always resist any claim that is made for breakages." 19)
The fact that furthermore the relative part of the value added to an article by the costs of transportation is inversely proportional to its value furnishes special grounds to the railway kings to tax articles in direct proportion to their values. The complaints of the industrialists and merchants on this score are found on every page of the testimony given in the report quoted.
The capitalist mode of production reduces the costs of transportation of the individual commodity by the development of the means of transportation and communication, as well as by the concentration— increasing scale — of transportation. It increases that part of the living and objectified social labour which is expended in the transport of commodities, firstly by converting the great majority of all products into commodities, secondly, by substituting distant for local markets.
The circulation, i. e., the actual locomotion of commodities in space, resolves itself into the transport of commodities. The transport industry forms on the one hand an independent branch of production and thus a separate sphere of investment of productive capital. On the other hand its distinguishing feature is that it appears as a continuation of a process of production within the process of circulation and for the process of circulation.
Endnotes
[20] The Inca state existed between the early 15th and the mid-16th centuries on the ter-
[17] The monetary system, an early form of mercantilism, consisting of a variety of economic measures applied by European states in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its advo-cates equated wealth with money and favoured policies designed to ensure an in-flow of money into the country by maintaining an active trade balance and impos-ing protective tariffs. See also Note 6.— 68
[18] Marx quotes S.Bailey's book according to Notebook VII, which he compiled in London between 1859 and 1863.— 111
[25] D. Ricardo quotes the third edition of Say's Traité d'économie politique, oü simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent et se consomment, les richesses, Paris, 1817, p. 433. Marx copied out passages from this book in one of his Paris notebooks for 1844 (MEGA 2, Bd. IV/2, Berlin, 1981, S. 301-27). Passages from the third edition of Ricardo's book are quoted by Marx in London notebooks IV (1850) (MEGA 2, Bd. IV/7, Berlin, 1983, S. 316-28) and VII (1851). Marx had both books in his personal library.— 154