1. Transformation of Money into Loan Capital
We have already seen that a large build-up or superabundance of loan capital can occur, which is connected with productive accumulation only to the extent that it is inversely proportional to it. This is the case in two phases of the industrial cycle, namely, first, when industrial capital in both its forms of productive and commodity capital is contracted, i.e., at the beginning of the cycle after the crisis; and, secondly, when the improvement begins, but when commercial credit still does not use banking credit to a great extent. In the first case, money capital, which was formerly employed in production and commerce, appears as idle loan capital; in the second case, it appears used to an increasing extent, but at a very low rate of interest, because the industrial and commercial capitalists now prescribe terms to the money capitalist. The excess of loan capital expresses, in the first case, a stagnation of industrial capital, and in the second, a relative independence of commercial credit from banking credit — based on the fluidity of the returns, short-term credit, and a preponderance of operations with one's own capital. The speculators, who count on the credit capital of other people, have not yet appeared on the field; the people who work with their own capital are still far removed from approximately pure credit operations. In the former phase, the surplus of loan capital is directly opposite to expressing actual accumulation. In the second phase, it coincides with a renewed expansion of the reproduction process — it accompanies it, but is not its cause. The surplus of loan capital is already decreasing, i.e., it is still only relative compared to the demand. In both cases, the expansion of the actual process of accumulation is promoted by the fact that the low interest— which coincides in the first case with low prices and in the second, with slowly rising prices — increases that portion of the profit which is transformed into profit of enterprise. This takes place to an even greater extent when interest rises to its average level during the height of the period of prosperity, when it has indeed grown, but not relative to profit.
We have seen, on the other hand, that an accumulation of loan capital can take place without any actual accumulation, i. e., by mere technical means such as an expansion and concentration of the banking system; and a saving in the circulation reserve, or in the reserve fund of private means of payment, which are then always transformed into loan capital for a short time. Although this loan capital, which, for this reason, is also called FLOATING CAPITAL,(1) always retains the form of loan capital only for short periods of time (and should indeed also be used for discounting only for short periods of time), there is a continual ebb and flow of it. If one draws some away, another adds to it. The mass of loanable money capital thus grows quite independently of the actual accumulation (we are not speaking here at all about loans for a number of years but only of short-term ones on bills of exchange and deposits).
Bank Committee, 1857. Question 501. "What do you mean by 'FLOATING CAPITAL'?"— //Answer of Mr. Weguelin, Governor of the Bank of England:// "It is capital applicable to loans of money for short periods.... (502) The Bank of England notes ... the country banks circulation, and the amount of coin which is in the country." — //Question:// "It does not appear from the returns before the Committee, if by FLOATING CAPITAL you mean the active circulation" //of the notes of the Bank of England//, "that there is any very great variation in the active circulation?" //But there is a very great difference whether this active circulation is advanced by the money lender or by the reproductive capitalist himself. Weguelin's answer:// "I include in FLOATING CAPITAL the reserves of the bankers, in which there is a considerable fluctuation."
That is to say, there is considerable fluctuation in that portion of the deposits which the bankers have not loaned out again, but which figures as their reserve and for the greater part also as the reserve of the Bank of England, where they are deposited. Finally, the same gentleman says: FLOATING CAPITAL may be BULLION, that is, bar and coin (503). It is truly wonderful how in this credit gibberish of the money market all categories of political economy receive a different meaning and a different form. FLOATING CAPITAL is the expression there for CIRCU-
LATING CAPITAL, which is, of course, something quite different, and MON-
EY is CAPITAL, and BULLION is CAPITAL, and banknotes are CIRCULATION, and capital is a COMMODITY, and debts are COMMODITIES, and FIXED CAPI-
TAL is money invested in hard-to-sell paper!
"The joint-stock banks of London ... have increased their deposits from £8,850,774 in 1847 to £43,100,724 in 1857.... The evidence given to your Committee leads to the inference that of this vast amount, a large part has been derived from sources not heretofore made available for this purpose; and that the practice of opening accounts and depositing money with bankers has extended to numerous classes who did not formerly employ their capital(!) in that way. It is stated by Mr. Rodwell, the Chairman of the Association of the Private Country Bankers" //distinguished from joint-stock banks//, "and delegated by them to give evidence to your Committee, that in the neighbourhood of Ipswich this practice has lately increased four-fold among the farmers and shopkeepers of that district; that almost every farmer, even those paying only £50 per annum rent, now keeps deposits with bankers. The aggregate of these deposits of course finds its way to the employments of trade, and especially gravitates to London, the centre of commercial activity, where it is employed first in the discount of bills, or in other advances to the customers of the London bankers. That large portion, however, for which the bankers themselves have no immediate demand passes into the hands of the BILL-BROKERS, who give to the banker in return commercial bills already discounted by them for persons in London and in different parts of the country, as a security for the sum advanced by the banker" (Bank Committee, 1858, p. 8(2)).
By making advances to the BILL-BROKER on bills of exchange which this BILL-BROKER has already discounted once, the banker does, in fact, rediscount them; but in reality, very many of these bills have already been rediscounted by the BILL-BROKER, and with the same money that the banker uses to rediscount the bills of the BILL-BROKER, the latter re-discounts new bills. What this leads to is shown by the following:
Concerning this rediscounting and the assistance which this purely technical increase of loanable money capital gives to credit swindles, the following extract from the Economist is of interest:
"For some years past capital" //namely, loanable money capital// "has accumulated in some districts of the country more rapidly than it could be used, while, in others, the means of employing capital have increased more rapidly than the capital itself. While the bankers in the purely agricultural districts throughout the kingdom found no sufficient means of profitably and safely employing their deposits in their own districts, those in the large mercantile towns, and in the manufacturing and mining districts, have found a larger demand for capital than their own means could supply. The efTect of this relative state of different districts has led, of late years, to the establishment and rapid extension of a new class of houses in the distribution of capital, who, though usually called BILL-BROKERS, are in reality bankers upon an immense scale. The business of these houses has been to receive, for such periods, and at such rates of interest as were agreed upon, the surplus capital of bankers in those districts where it could not be employed, as well as the temporary unemployed moneys of public companies and extensive mercantile establishments, and advance them at higher rates of interest to bankers in those districts where capital was more in demand, generally by rediscounting the bills taken from their customers ... and in this way Lombard Street has become the great centre in which the transfer of spare capital has been made from one part of the country, where it could not be profitably employed, to another, where a demand existed for it, as well as between individuals similarly circumstanced. At first these transactions were confined almost exclusively to borrowing and lending of banking securities. But as the capital of the country rapidly accumulated, and became more economised by the establishment of banks, the funds at the disposal of these discount houses became so large that they were induced to make advances first on DOCK WARRANTS of merchandise (storage bills on commodities in docks), and next on bills of lading, representing produce not even arrived in this country, though sometimes, if not generally, secured by bills drawn by the merchant upon his broker. This practice rapidly changed the whole character of English commerce. The facilities thus afforded in Lombard Street gave extensive powers to the brokers in Mincing Lane, who on their part ... offered the full advantage of them to the importing merchant; who so far took advantage of them, that, whereas 25 years ago, the fact that a merchant received advances on his bills of lading, or even his DOCK WARRANTS, would have been fatal to his credit, the practice has become so common of late years that it may be said to be now the general rule, and not the rare exception, as it was 25 years ago. Nay, so much further has this system been carried, that large sums have been raised in Lombard Street on bills drawn against the forthcoming crops of distant colonies. The consequence of such facilities being thus granted to the importing merchants led them to extend their transactions abroad, and to invest their FLOATING3 capital with which their business has hitherto been conducted, in the most objectionable of all fixed securities — foreign plantations — over which they could exercise little or no control. And thus we see the direct chain of credits through which the capital of the country, collected in our rural districts, and in small amounts in the shape of deposits in country banks, and centred in Lombard Street for employment, has been, first, made available for the extending operations in our mining and manufacturing districts, by the rediscount of bills to banks in those localities; next, for granting greater facilities for the importation of foreign produce by advances upon DOCK WARRANTS and bills of lading, and thus liberating the 'legitimate' mercantile capital of houses engaged in foreign and colonial trade, and inducing to its most objectionable advances on foreign plantations" (Economist, 1847, p. 1334).(3)
This is how credits are "nicely" chained. The rural depositor fancies that he deposits only with his banker, and fancies furthermore that when his banker lends to others, it is done to private persons whom he knows. He has not the slightest suspicion that this banker places his deposit at the disposal of some London BILL-BROKER, over whose operations neither of them has the slightest control.
We have already seen how large public enterprises, such as railways, may momentarily increase loan capital, owing to the circumstance that the deposited amounts always remain at the disposal of the bankers for a certain length of time until they are really used.
Incidentally, the mass of loan capital is quite different from the quantity of circulation. By the quantity of circulation we mean here the sum of all the banknotes and coin, including bars of precious metals, existing and circulating in a country. A portion of this quantity constitutes the reserve of the banks which continuously vary in magnitude.
"On November 12, 1857" //the date of the suspension of the Bank Act of 1844//, "the entire reserve of the Bank of England was only £580,751 (including London and all its branches); their deposits at the same time amounting to £22,500,000; of which near six and a half million belonged to London bankers" (Bank Acts, 1858, p. LVII ).
The variations in the interest rate (aside from those occurring over longer periods or the variation in the interest rate among various countries; the former are dependent upon variations in the general rate of profit, the latter on differences in the rates of profit and in the development of credit) depend upon the supply of loan capital (all other circumstances, state of confidence, etc., being equal), that is, of capital loaned in the form of money, coin and notes; in contradistinction to industrial capital, which, as such — in commodity form — is loaned by means of commercial credit among the agents of reproduction themselves.
However, the mass of this loanable money capital is different from, and independent of, the mass of circulating money.
For example, if £20 were loaned five times per day, a money capital of £100 would be loaned, and this would imply at the same time that this £20 would have served, moreover, at least four times as a means of purchase or payment; for, if no purchase and payment in-tervened— so that it would not have represented at least four times the converted form of capital (commodities, including labour power) — it would not constitute a capital of £100, but only five claims of £20 each.
In countries with a developed credit, we can assume that all money capital available for lending exists in the form of deposits with banks and money lenders. This is at least true for business as a whole. Moreover, in times of flourishing business, before the real speculation gets underway — when credit is easy and confidence is growing — most of the functions of circulation are settled by a simple transfer of credit, without the help of coin or paper money.
The mere possibility of large sums of deposits existing when a relatively small quantum of a medium of circulation is available, depends solely on:
1) the number of purchases and payments which the same coin performs;
2) the number of return excursions, whereby it goes back to the banks as deposits, so that its repeated function as a means of purchase and payment is promoted through its renewed transformation into deposits. For example, a small dealer deposits weekly with his banker £100 in money; the banker pays out a portion of the deposit of a manufacturer with this; the latter pays it to his workers; and the workers use it to pay the small dealer, who deposits it in the bank again. The £100 deposited by this small dealer have served, therefore, first, to pay the manufacturer a deposit of his; secondly, to pay the workers; thirdly, to pay the dealer himself; fourthly, to deposit another portion of the money capital of the same small dealer; thus at the end of 20 weeks, if he himself did not have to draw against this money, he would have deposited £2,000 in the bank by means of the same £100.
To what extent this money capital is idle, is shown only by the ebb and flow in the reserve fund of the banks. Therefore, Mr. Weguelin, Governor of the Bank of England in 1857, concludes that the gold of the Bank of England is the "only" reserve capital:
"1258. Practically, I think, the rate of discount is governed by the amount of unemployed capital which there is in the country. The amount of unemployed capital is represented by the reserve of the Bank of England, which is practically a reserve of bullion. When, therefore, the bullion is drawn upon, it diminishes the amount of unemployed capital in the country, and consequently raises the value of that which remains."— "1364. The reserve of bullion in the Bank of England is, in truth, the central reserve or hoard of treasure upon which the whole trade of the country is carried on... And it is upon that hoard or reservoir that the action of the foreign exchanges always falls"(4)
(Report on Bank Acts, 1857).
The statistics of exports and imports furnish a measure of the accumulation of real, i.e., productive and commodity capital. These always show that, during the ten-year cyclical periods of development of British industry (1815 to 1870), the maximum of the last prosperity before the crisis always reappears as the minimum of the following prosperity, whereupon it rises to a new and far higher peak.
The actual or declared value of the exported products from Great Britain and Ireland in the prosperity year of 1824 was £40,396,300. With the crisis of 1825, the amount of exports then falls below this sum and fluctuates between 35 and 39 million annually. With the return of prosperity in 1834, it rises above the former maximum to £41,649,191, and reaches in 1836 the new maximum of £53,368,571. Beginning with 1837, it falls again to 42 million, so that the new minimum is already higher than the old maximum, and then fluctuates between 50 and 53 million. The return of prosperity lifts the amount of exports in 1844 to £58,500,000, whereby the peak of 1836 is again already far exceeded. In 1845, it reaches £60,111,082; it then falls to something over 57 million in 1846, reaches in 1847 almost 59 million, in 1848 almost 53 million, rises in 1849 to 63,500,000, in 1853 to nearly 99 million, in 1854 to 97 million, in 1855 to 94,500,000, in 1856 almost 116 million and reaches a peak of 122 million in 1857. It falls in 1858 to 116 million, rises already in 1859 to 130 million, in 1860 to nearly 136 million, in 1861 only 125 million (the new minimum is here again higher than the former maximum), in 1863 to 146,500,000.
Of course, the same thing could be demonstrated in the case of imports, which show the expansion of the market; here it is only a matter of the scale of production. //Of course, this holds true of England only for the time of its actual industrial monopoly; but it applies in general to the whole complex of countries with modern large-scale industries, as long as the world market is still expanding.— F.E.jj