The Process of Circulation of Capital (Capital Vol. II). Karl Marx
from C—M to M—C is interrupted by external conditions. It is an involuntary formation of a hoard. In the present case, money has the form of fallow, latent, money-capital. But we will not discuss this point any further for the present.
In both cases, the suspension of money-capital in the form of money is the result of an interruption of its movements, no matter whether this is advantageous or harmful, voluntary or involuntary, in accord with its functions or contrary to them.
II. Accumulation and Reproduction On An Enlarged Scale.
Since the proportions of the expansion of the productive process are not arbitrary, but determined by technical conditions, the produced surplus-value, though intended for capitalization, frequently does not attain a size sufficient for its function as additional capital, for its entrance into the cycle of circulating capital-value, until several cycles have been repeated so that it must be accumulated until that time. Surplus-value thus assures the rigid form of a hoard and is, then, latent capital. It is latent, because it cannot function as capital so long as it persists in the money-form.6 The formation of a hoard thus appears as a phenomenon included in the process of capitalist accumulation, accompanying it, but nevertheless essentially different from it. For the process of reproduction is not expanded by latent capital. On the contrary, latent money-capital is here formed, because the capitalist producer cannot at once expand the scale of his production. If he sells his surplus-product to a producer of gold or silver, or, what amounts to the same thing, to a merchant who imports additional gold or silver from foreign countries for a part of the national surplus-product, then his latent money-capital forms an increment of the national gold or silver hoard. In all other cases, the surplus-value, for instance the 78 pounds sterling, which were a circulating medium in the hand of the purchaser, have only assumed the form of a hoard in the hands of the capitalist. In other words, a different repartition of the national gold or silver hoard has taken place, that is all.
If the money serves in the transactions of our capitalist as a means of payment, in such a way that the commodities are to be paid for by the buyer on long or short terms, then the surplus-product intended for capitalization is not transformed into money, but into creditor's claims, into titles of ownership of a certain equivalent, which the buyer may either have in his possession, or which he may expect to possess. It does not enter into the reproductive process of the cycle any more than money which is invested in interest-bearing papers, although it may enter into the cycles of other individual industrial capitals.
The entire character of capitalist production is determined by the utilization of the advanced capital-value, that is to say, in the first instance by the production of as much surplus-value as possible; in the second place, by the production of capital, in other words, by the transformation of surplus-value into capital (see vol. I, chap. XXIV). But, as we have seen in volume I, the further development makes it a necessity for every individual capitalist to accumulate, or to produce on an enlarged scale, in order to produce more and more surplus-value, and this appears as a personal motive of the capitalist for his own enrichment. The preservation of his capital is conditioned on its continuous enlargement. But we do not revert any further to our previous analysis.
We considered first simple reproduction, and we assumed that the entire surplus-value was spent as revenue. But in reality and under normal conditions, only a part of the surplus-value can be spent as revenue, and another part must be capitalized. And it is quite immaterial, whether a certain surplus-value, produced within a certain period, is entirely consumed or entirely capitalized. In the average movement—and the general formula cannot represent any other—both cases occur. But in order not to complicate the formula, it is better to assume that the entire surplus-value is accumulated. The formula P...C'—M'—C'{LPm...P stands for productive capital, which is reproduced on an enlarged scale and with enlarged values, and which begins its second cycle as enlarged productive capital, or, what amounts to the same, which renews its first cycle. As soon as this second cycle is begun, we have once more P as a starting point; only P is a larger productive capital than the first P was. Hence, if the second cycle begins with M' in the formula M—M', this M' functions as M, as an advanced capital of a definite size. It is a larger money-capital than the one with which the first cycle was opened; but all relations to its growth by the capitalization of surplus-value have disappeared, as soon as it appears in the function of advanced money-capital. This origin is extinguished in its form of money-capital which begins its cycle. This also applies to P', as soon as it becomes the starting point of a new cycle.
If we compare P...P' with M...M', or with the first cycle, we find that they have not the same significance. M...M', taken by itself as an individual cycle, expresses only that M, money-capital, or industrial capital in its cycle as money-capital, is money generating more money, value generating more value, in other words, producing surplus-value. But in the cycle of P, the process of utilization is completed as soon as the first stage, the process of production, is over with, and after going through the second stage (the first stage of the circulation), C'—M', the capital-value plus surplus-value exists already as materialized money-capital, as M', which appeared as the last extreme in the first cycle. The fact that surplus-value has been produced is registered in the first considered formula P...P by c—m—c (see expanded formula previously given). This, in its second stage, falls outside of the circulation of capital and represents the circulation of surplus-value as revenue. In this form, where the entire movement is represented by P...P and where there is no difference in value between the two extremes, the utilization of the advanced value, or the production of surplus-value, is represented in the same way as in M...M', only the act C'—M', which appears as the last stage in M—M', and as the second stage of the cycle, appears as the first stage of the circulation P...P.
In P...P', the term P' does not express the fact that surplus-value has been produced, but that the produced surplus-value has been capitalized, that capital has been accumulated, and that P' as distinguished from P consists of the original capital-value plus the value of capital accumulated by its movements.
M', as the closing link of M...M', and C', as it appears within all these cycles, do not express the movement, but its result, if taken by themselves: they represent the result, in the form of money or commodities of the utilization of capital-value, and capital-value therefore appears as M plus m, or C plus c, as a relation of capital-value to its surplus-value, its offspring. But whether this result appears in the form of M' or C', it is not a function of either money-capital or commodity-capital. As special and different forms corresponding to special functions of industrial capital, money-capital can perform only money functions, and commodity-capital only commodity functions. Their difference is merely that of money and commodity. Industrial capital, in its capacity of productive capital, can likewise consist only of the same elements as those of any other process of labor which creates products: on one side objective means of production, on the other labor-power as the productive element. Just as industrial capital can exist within the process of production only in a composition which corresponds to the requirements of all production, even if it is not capitalist production so it can exist in the sphere of circulation only in the two forms corresponding to it, viz., that of a commodity or of money. Now the sum of the elements of production reveals its character of productive capital at the outside by the fact that the labor-power belongs to another from whom the capitalist purchases it, just as he purchases his means of production from others who own them, so that the process of production itself appears as a productive function of industrial capital. In the same way money and commodities appear as forms of circulation of the same industrial capital, hence their functions as those of the circulation of this capital, which either introduce the function of productive capital or originate from it. The money function and the commodity function become at the same time functions of money-capital and commodity-capital for no other reason than that they enter into relationship with the functional forms through which industrial capital passes in the different stages of its process of circulation. It is, therefore, a mistake to attempt to derive the specific characters of money and commodities, and their specific functions as such, from their capital-character, and it is likewise a mistake to derive the qualities of productive capital from its existence in means of