THE REPRODUCTION AND CIRCULATION
OF THE AGGREGATE SOCIAL CAPITAL
INTRODUCTION I. THE SUBJECT INVESTIGATEDThe direct process of the production of capital is its labour and self-expansion process, the process whose result is the commodity-product and whose compelling motive is the production of surplus-value.
The process of reproduction of capital comprises this direct process of production as well as the two phases of the circulation process proper, i.e., the entire circuit which, as a periodic process -- a process which constantly repeats itself in definite periods -- constitutes the turnover of capital.
Whether we study the circuit in the form of M ... M' or that of P ... P', the direct process of production P itself always forms but one link in this circuit. In the one form it appears as a promoter of the process of circulation; in the other the process of circulation appears as its promoter. Its continuous renewal, the continuous re-appearance of capital as productive capital, is in either case determined by its transformations in the process of circulation. On the other hand the continuously renewed process of production is the condition of the transformations which the capital undergoes ever anew in the sphere of circulation, of its alternate appearance as money-capital and commodity-capital.
Every individual capital forms, however, but an individualised fraction, a fraction endowed with individual life, as it were, of the aggregate social capital, just as every individual capitalist is but an individual element of the capitalist class. The movement of the social capital consists of the totality of the movements of its individualised fractional parts, the turnovers of the individual capitals. Just as the metamorphosis of the individual commodity is a link in the series of metamorphoses of the commodity-world -- the circulation of commodities -- so the metamorphosis of the individual capital, its turnover, is a link in the circuit described by social capital.
This total process comprises both the productive consumption (the direct process of production) together with the conversions of form (materially considered, exchanges) which bring it about, and the individual consumption together with the conversions of form or exchanges by which it is brought about. It includes on the one hand the conversion of variable capital into labour-power, and therefore the incorporation of labour-power in the process of capitalist production. Here the labourer acts as the seller of his commodity, labour-power, and the capitalist as its buyer. But on the other hand the sale of the commodities embraces also their purchase by the working-class appears as buyer and the capitalists as sellers of commodities to the labourers.
The circulation of the commodity-capital includes the circulation of surplus-value, hence also the purchases and sales by which the capitalist effect their individual consumption, the consumption of surplus-value.
The circuit of the individual capitals in their aggregate as social capital, hence considered in its totality, comprises not only the circulation of capital but also the general circulation of commodities. The latter can originally consist of only two components: 1) The circuit of capital proper and 2) the circuit of the commodities which enter into individual consumption, consequently of the commodities for which the labourer expends his wages and the capitalist his surplus-value (or a part of it). At any rate, the circuit of capital comprises also the circulation of the surplus-value, since the latter is a part of the commodity capital, and likewise the conversion of the variable capital into labour-power, the payment of wages. But the expenditure of this surplus-value and wages for commodities does not form a link in the circulation of capital, although at least the expenditure of wages is essential for this circulation.
In Book I the process of capitalist production was analysed as an individual act as well as a process of reproduction: the production of surplus-value and the production of capital itself. The changes of form and substance experienced by capital in the sphere of circulation were assumed without dwelling upon them. It was presupposed that on the one hand the capitalist sells the product at its value and on the other that he finds within the sphere of circulation the objective means of production for restarting or continuing the process. The only act within the sphere of circulation on which we have dwelt was the purchase and sale of labour-power as the fundamental condition of capitalist production.
In the first part of this Book II, the various forms were considered which capital assumes its circular movement, and the various forms of this movement itself. The circulation time must now be added to the working times discussed in Book I.
In the second Part, the circuit was studied as being periodic, i.e., as a turnover. It was shown on the one hand in what manner the various constituents of capital (fixed and circulating) accomplish the circuit of forms in different periods of time and in different ways' on the other hand the circumstances were examined by which the different lengths of the working period and circulation period are conditioned. The influence was shown which the period of the circuit and the different proportions of its component parts exert upon the dimensions of the production process itself and upon the annual rate of surplus-value. Indeed, while it was the successive forms continually assumed and discarded by capital in its circuit that were studied in Part I, it was shown in Part II how a capital of a given magnitude is simultaneously, though in varying proportions, divided, within this flow and succession of forms, into different forms: