of producer goods [here I(1,000v + 1,000s)] must equal the constant capital in the production of provisions [here II(2,000c)].
An important proviso remains to be added to the above scheme. The constant capital which has been spent by the two departments is in reality only part of the constant capital used by society. This constant capital is divided into two parts; the first is fixed capital—premises, tools, labouring cattle—which functions in a number of periods of production, in every one of which, however, only part of its value is absorbed by the product, according to the amount of its wear and tear. The second is circulating capital such as raw materials, auxiliary semi-finished products, fuel and lighting—its whole value is completely absorbed by the new product in every period of production. Yet only that part of the means of production is relevant for reproduction which is actually absorbed by the production of value; without becoming less correct, an exact exposition of social circulation may disregard the remaining part of the fixed capital which has not been absorbed by the product, though it should not completely forget it. This is easy to prove.
Let us assume that the constant capital, 6,000c, in the two departments, which is in fact absorbed by the annual product of these departments, consists of 1,500c fixed and 4,500c circulating capital, the 1,500c of fixed capital representing here the annual wear and tear of the premises, machinery and labouring cattle. This annual wear and tear equals, say, 10 per cent of the total value of the fixed capital employed. Then the total social capital would really consist of 19,500c + 1,500v, the constant capital in both departments being 1,500c of fixed and 4,500c of circulating capital. Since the term of life of the aggregate fixed capital, with a 10 per cent wear and tear, is ten years ex hypothesi, the fixed capital needs renewal only after the lapse of ten years. Meanwhile one-tenth of its value enters into social production in every year. If all the fixed capital of a society, with the same rate of wear and tear, were of equal durability, it would, on our assumption, need complete renewal once within ten years. This, however, is not the case. Some of the various use-forms which are part of the fixed capital may last longer and others shorter, wear and tear and duration of life are quite different in the different kinds and individual representations of fixed capital. In consequence, fixed capital need not be renewed—reproduced in its concrete use-form—all at once, but parts of it are continually renewed at various stages of social production, while other parts still function in their older form. Our assumption of a fixed capital of 15,000c with a 10 per cent rate of wear and tear does not mean that this must be renewed all at once every ten years, but that an annual average renewal and replacement must be effected of a part of the total fixed social capital corresponding to one-tenth of its value; that is to say, Department I which has to satisfy the needs of society for means of production must reproduce, year by year not only all its raw and partly finished materials, etc., its circulating capital to the value of 4,500, but must also reproduce the use-forms of its fixed capital—premises, machinery, and the like—to the extent of 1,500, corresponding with the annual wear and tear of fixed capital. If Department I continues in this manner to renew one-tenth of the fixed capital in its use-form every year, the result will be that every ten years the total fixed capital of society will have been replaced throughout by new items; thus it follows that the reproduction of those parts disregarded so far is also completely accounted for in the above scheme.
In practice, the procedure is that every capitalist sets aside from his annual production, from the realisation of his commodities, a certain amount for the redemption of his fixed capital. These individual annual deductions must amount to a certain quantity of capital, therefore the capitalist has in fact renewed his fixed capital, that is, he has replaced it by new and more efficient items. This alternating procedure of building up annual reserves of money for the renewal of fixed capital and of the periodical employment of the accumulated amounts for the actual renewal of fixed capital varies with the individual capitalist, so that some are accumulating reserves, while others have already started their renewals. Thus every year part of the fixed capital is actually renewed. The monetary procedure here only disguises the real process which characterises the reproduction of fixed capital.
On closer observation we see that this is as it should be. The whole of the fixed capital takes part in the process of production, for physically the mass of usable objects, premises, machinery, labouring cattle, are completely employed. It is their peculiarity as fixed capital, on the other hand, that only part of the value is absorbed in the production of value, since in the process of reproduction (again postulating simple reproduction), all that matters is to replace in their natural form the values which have been actually used up as means of subsistence and production during a year’s production. Therefore, fixed capital need only be reproduced to the extent that it has in fact been used up in the production of commodities. The remaining portion of value, embodied in the total use-form of fixed capital, is of decisive importance for production as a labour process, but does not exist for the annual reproduction of society as a process of value-formation.
Besides, this process which is here expressed by relations of value applies equally to every society, even to a community which does not produce commodities. If once upon a time, for instance, say ten years’ labour of 1,000 fellaheen was required for the construction of the famous Lake Moeris and the related Nile canals—that miraculous lake, which Herodotus tells us was made by hand—and if for the maintenance of this, the most magnificent drainage system of the world, the labour of a further 100 fellaheen was annually required (the figures, of course, are chosen at random), we might say that after every hundred years the Moeris dam and the canals were reproduced anew, although in fact the entire system was not constructed as a whole in every century. This is manifestly true. When, amid the stormy incidents of political history and alien conquests, the usual crude neglect of old monuments of culture set in—as displayed, e.g. by the English in India when the reproductional needs of ancient civilisations were understood no longer—then in the course of time the whole Lake Moeris, its water, dikes and canals, the two pyramids in its midst, the colossus upon it and other marvellous erections, disappeared without a trace, as though they had never been built. Only ten lines in Herodotus, a dot on Ptolemy’s map of the world, traces of old cultures, and of villages and cities bear witness that at one time rich life sprang from this magnificent irrigation system, where to-day there are only stretches of arid desert in inner Lybia, and desolate swamps along the coast. There is only one point where Marx’s scheme of simple reproduction may appear unsatisfactory or incomplete in relation to constant capital, and that is when we go back to that period of production, when the total fixed capital was first created. Indeed, society possesses transformed labour amounting to more than those parts of fixed capital which are absorbed into the value of the annual product and are in turn replaced by it. In the figures of our example the total social capital does not consist of 6,000c + 1,500v, as in the diagram, but of 19,500c + 1,500v. Though 1,500 of the fixed capital (which, on our assumption, amounts to 15,000) are annually reproduced in the form of appropriate means of production, an equal amount is also consumed by the same production each year, though the whole of the fixed capital as a use-form, an aggregate of objects, has been renewed. After ten years, society possesses in the eleventh, just as in any other year, a fixed capital of 15,000, whereas it has annually achieved only 1,500c; and its constant capital as a whole is 19,500, whereas it has created only 6,000. Obviously, since it must have created this surplus of 13,500 fixed capital by its labour, it possesses more accumulated past labour than our scheme of reproduction warrants. Even at this stage, the annual labour of society must be based on some previous annual labour that has been hoarded. This question of past labour, however, as the foundation of all present labour, brings us to the very first beginning which is as meaningless with regard to the economic development of mankind as it is for the natural development of matter. The scheme of reproduction grasps the social process as perpetually in motion, as a link in the endless chain of events, it neither wants to demonstrate its initial origin, nor should it do so. The social reproductive process is always based on past labour, we may trace it back as far as we like. Social labour has no beginning, just as it has no end. Like the historical origin of Herodotus’ Lake Moeris, the beginnings of the reproductive process in the history of civilisation are lost in the twilight of legend. With the progress of techniques and with cultural
