II. The Role of Money Capital
//Although the following belongs in a later section of this part, we shall analyse it immediately, namely, the money capital considered as a constituent part of the aggregate social capital.//
In the study of the turnover of the individual capital money capital revealed two aspects.
In the first place, it constitutes the form in which every individual capital appears upon the scene and opens its process as capital. It therefore appears as the primus motor, lending impetus to the entire process.
In the second place, that portion of the advanced capital value which must be continually advanced and renewed in the form of money differs in its ratio to the productive capital which it sets in motion, i. e., in its ratio to the continuous scale of production, depending on the particular length of the period of turnover and the particular ratio between its two component parts — the working period and the period of circulation. But whatever this ratio may be, the portion of the capital value in process which can continually function as productive capital is limited in any event by that portion of the advanced capital value which must always exist beside the productive capital in the form of money. It is here merely a question of the normal turnover, an abstract average. Additional money capital required to compensate for interruptions of the circulation is excepted.
On the first point. Commodity production presupposes commodity circulation, and commodity circulation presupposes the expression of commodities in money, the circulation of money; the splitting of a commodity into commodity and money is a law of the expression of the product as a commodity.(1) Similarly the capitalist production of commodities — whether considered socially or individually — presupposes capital in the form of money, or money capital, both as the primus motor of every incipient business, and as its continual motor. The circulating capital especially implies that the money capital acts with constant repetition at short intervals as a motor. The entire advanced capital value, that is to say, all the elements of capital, consisting of commodities, labour power, instruments of labour, and materials of production, must be bought over and over again with money. What is true here of the individual capital is also true of the social capital, which functions only in the form of many individual capitals. But as we showed in Book I, it does not at all follow from this that capital's field of operation, the scale of production, depends — even on a capitalist basis — for its absolute limits on the amount of functioning money capital.
Incorporated in capital are elements of production whose expansion within certain limits is independent of the magnitude of the advanced money capital. Though payment of labour power be the same, it can be exploited more or less extensively or intensively. If the money capital is increased with this greater exploitation (that is, if wages are raised), it is not increased proportionately, hence not at all pro tanto.
The productively exploited natural materials — the soil, the seas, ores, forests, etc.— which do not constitute elements of capital value, are more intensively or extensively exploited with a greater exertion of the same amount of labour power, without an increased advance of money capital. The real elements of productive capital are thus multiplied without requiring an additional money capital. But so far as such an addition becomes necessary for additional auxiliary materials, the money capital in which the capital value is advanced is not increased proportionately to the augmented effectiveness of the productive capital, hence is pro tanto not at all increased.
The same instruments of labour, and thus the same fixed capital, can be used more effectively by an extension of the time they are daily(2) used and by a greater intensity of their employment, without an additional outlay of money for fixed capital. There is, in that case, only a more rapid turnover of the fixed capital, but then the elements of its reproduction are supplied more rapidly.
Apart from the natural materials, it is possible to incorporate in the production process natural forces, which do not cost anything, to act as agents with more or less heightened effect. The degree of their ef-fectiveness depends on methods and scientific developments which cost the capitalist nothing.
The same is true of the social combination of labour power in the process of production and of the accumulated skill of the individual labourers. Carey calculates that the landowner never receives enough, because he is not paid for all the capital or labour put into the soil since time immemorial in order to give it its present productivity. (Of course, no mention is made of the productivity of which the soil is robbed.) Accordingly each individual labourer would have to be paid in conformity with the work which it cost the entire human race to evolve a modern mechanic out of a savage. On the contrary one should think that if all the unpaid labour put into the soil and converted into money by the landowner and capitalist is totalled up, all the capital ever invested in this soil has been paid back over and over again with usurious interest, so that society has long ago redeemed landed property over and over again.
True enough, the increase in the productive power of labour, so far as it does not imply an additional investment of capital value, aug-ments in the first instance only the quantity of the product, not its value, except in so far as it makes it possible to reproduce more constant capital with the same labour and thus to preserve its value. But it forms at the same time new material for capital, hence the basis of increased accumulation of capital.
So far as the organisation of social labour itself, and thus the increase in the social productive power of labour, requires large-scale production and therefore the advance of large quantities of money capital by individual capitalists, we have shown in Book I (3) that this is accomplished in part by the centralisation of capitals in a few hands, without necessitating an absolute increase in the magnitude of the functioning capital values, and consequently also in the magnitude of the money capital in which they are advanced. The magnitude of the individual capitals can increase by centralisation in the hands of a few without a growth of their social sum total. It is only a changed distribution of the individual capitals.
Finally, we have shown in the preceding part that a shortening of the period of turnover permits of setting in motion either the same productive capital with less money capital or more productive capital with the same money capital.
But evidently all this has nothing to do with the question of money capital itself. It shows only that the advanced capital — a given sum of values consisting in its free form, in its value form, of a certain sum of money — includes, after its conversion into productive capital, productive powers whose limits are not set by the limits of its value, but which on the contrary may operate within certain bounds with differ-ing degrees of extensiveness or intensiveness. If the prices of the elements of production — the means of production and labour power — are given, the magnitude of the money capital required for the purchase of a definite quantity of these elements of production existing as commodities is determined. Or the magnitude of value of the capital to be advanced is determined. But the extent to which this capital acts as a creator of values and products is elastic and variable.
On the second point. It is self-evident that the part of the social labour and means of production which must be annually expended for the production or purchase of money in order to replace worn-off coin is pro tanto a diminution of the volume of social production. But as for the money value which functions partly as a medium of circulation, partly as a hoard, it is simply there, acquired, present alongside the labour power, the produced means of production, and the natural sources of wealth. It cannot be regarded as a limit set to these things. By its transformation into elements of production, by its exchange with other nations, the scale of production might be extended. This presupposes, however, that money continues as before to play its role of universal money.(4)
To set the productive capital in motion requires more or less money capital, depending on the length of the period of turnover. We have also seen that the division of the period of turnover into working time and circulation time requires an increase of the capital latent or suspended in the form of money.
Inasmuch as the period of turnover is determined by the length of the working period, it is determined, other conditions remaining equal, by the material nature of the process of production, hence not by the specific social character of this process of production. However, on the basis of capitalist production, more extensive operations of comparatively long duration necessitate large advances of money capital for a rather long time. Production in such spheres depends therefore on the magnitude of the money capital which the individual capitalist has at his disposal. This barrier is broken down by the credit system and the associations connected with it, e. g., the stock companies. Disturbances in the money market therefore put such establishments out of business, while these same establishments, in their turn, produce disturbances in the money market.
When social production is the basis, the scale must be ascertained on which those operations — which withdraw labour power and means of production for a long time without supplying any product as a useful effect in the interim — can be carried on without injuring branches of production which not only withdraw labour power and means of production continually, or several times a year, but also supply means of subsistence and of production. Under social as well as capitalist production, the labourers in branches of business with shorter working periods will as before withdraw products only for a short time without giving any products in return; while branches of business with long working periods continually withdraw products for a longer time before they return anything. This circumstance, then, arises from the material conditions of the particular labour process, not from its social form. In the case of social production, money capital is eliminated. Society distributes labour power and means of production to the different branches of production. The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate.