on the self-employment of the producers, or merely on the sale of the surplus product. The production of commodities is first made general and then transformed by degrees into the capitalist mode of commodity production.2
Whatever may be the social form of production, laborers and means of production always remain its main elements. But either of these factors can become effective only when they unite. The special manner in which this union is accomplished distinguishes the different economic epochs from one another. In the present case, the separation of the so-called free laborer from his means of production is the starting point, and we have observed the way and the conditions in which these two elements are united in the hands of the capitalist, as the productive mode of existence of his capital. The actual process which combines the personal and objective materials of commodity production under these conditions, the process of production, thus becomes in its turn a function of capital, a capitalist process of production, the nature of which has been fully analyzed in the first volume of this work. Every process of commodity production at the same time becomes a process of exploiting labor-power. But it is not until the capitalist production of commodities is established that this mode of exploitation becomes universal and typical, and revolutionizes in the course of its historical development, through the organization of the labor process and the enormous improvement of technique, the entire economic structure of society, in a manner eclipsing all former epochs.
The means of production and labor-power in so far as they are forms of existence of advanced capital values, are distinguished by the different roles assumed by them in the production of value, hence also of surplus-value, and known under the names of constant and variable capital. As different parts of productive capital they are further-more distinguished by the fact that the means of production in the possession of the capitalist remain his capital even outside of the process of production, while labor-power exists in the form of individual capital only within this process. While labor-power is a commodity only in the hands of its seller, the wage worker, it becomes capital only in the hands of its buyer, the capitalist who uses it temporarily. And the means of production do not become objective parts of productive capital, until labor-power, the personal form of productive capital, is embodied in them. Human labor-power is originally no more capital than are the means of production. They assume this specific social character only under definite historically developed conditions, and the same character is impregnated upon precious metals, and still more upon money, by the same circumstances.
Productive capital, in performing its functions, consumes its own component parts for the purpose of transforming them into a mass of products of a higher value. Seeing that labor-power acts likewise merely as an organ of productive capital, the surplus-value produced by its surplus-labor over and above the value of its component elements is also gathered by capital. The surplus-labor of labor-power is the inexpensive labor of capital and thus forms surplus-value for the capitalist, a value which costs him no equivalent return. The product is, therefore, not only a commodity, but a commodity pregnant with surplus-value. Its value is equal to P+S, that is to say equal to the value of the productive capital consumed in its manufacture plus the surplus-value S created by it. Assuming that this product were represented by 10,000 pounds of yarn, let us say that means of production valued at 372 pounds sterling and labor-power valued at 50 pounds sterling were consumed in the production of this quantity of yarn. During the process of spinning, the spinners transferred the value of the means of production to the amount of 372 pounds sterling to the yarn, and at the same time they created, by means of their labor-power, new values to the amount of 128 pounds sterling. The 10,000 pounds of yarn therefore represent a value of 500 pounds sterling.
III. Third Stage. C'-M'
Commodities become commodity-capital by springing into existence as a direct result of commodity-production, embodying in a new form the capital values already utilized. If the production of commodities were carried on as capitalist production in all spheres of society, all commodities would be elements of commodity-capital from the outset, whether they would be composed of crude iron, Brussels laces, sulphuric acid, or cigars. The problem as to what class of commodities is destined by its nature to rank as capital and what class to serve as general commodities, is one of the self-prepared ills of the scholastic economists.
In the form of commodities, capital has to perform the functions of commodities. The articles of which commodity capital is composed are produced for sale and must be exchanged for money, must go through the process C-M.
The commodities of the capitalist may consist of 10,000 pounds of yarn. If 372 pounds sterling represent the value of the means of production consumed in the spinning process, and new values to the amount of 128 pounds sterling have been created, the yarn has a value of 500 pounds sterling, which is expressed in its price of the same amount. This price is realized by the sale C-M. What is it that makes of this simple process of all commodity circulation at the same time a capital function? It is not any change that takes place inside of it. Neither the use-value of the product has been changed, for it passes into the hands of the buyer as an object of use, nor has anything been altered in its exchange-value, for this value has not experienced any change of magnitude, but only of form. It first existed as yarn, while now it exists as money. Thus a plain distinction is evident between the first stage C-M, and the last stage C'-M'. There the advanced money serves as money-capital, because it is transformed, by means of the circulation of commodities, into articles of a specific use-value. Here, on the other hand, the commodities can only serve as capital, since they brought this character with them from the process of production before their circulation began. During the spinning process, the spinners created new values to the amount of 128 pounds sterling in the shape of yarn. Of this sum, say 50 pounds sterling are regarded by the capitalist merely as an equivalent for wages advanced for labor-power, while 78 pounds sterling—representing an exploitation of 156 per cent—are his surplus-value.
The value of the 10,000 pounds of yarn therefore embodies first the value of the consumed productive capital P, which consists of a constant capital of 372 pounds sterling and a variable capital of 50 pounds sterling, their sum being 422 pounds sterling, equal to 8,440 pounds of yarn. Now the value of the productive capital P is equal to C, the value of the elements constituting it which the capitalist found to be in the hands of their sellers in the stage M-C. In the second place, the value of the yarn embodies a surplus-value of 78 pounds sterling, equal to 1,560 pounds of yarn. C as an expression of the value of 10,000 pounds of yarn is therefore equal to C plus surplus C, or C plus an increment of C worth 78 pounds sterling, which we shall call c, since it exists in the same commodity form as that now assumed by the original value C. The value of the 10,000 pounds of yarn, equal to 500 pounds sterling, is therefore represented by the formula C+c=C'. What changes C, the value of the 10,000 pounds of yarn, into C' is not its absolute value of 500 pounds sterling, for it is determined, the same as C standing for the expression of the value of any other sum of commodities, by the quantity of labor embodied in it. It is rather its relative value, its value as compared to that of the productive capital P consumed in its production, which is the essential thing. This value is contained in it plus the surplus-value created through the productive capital. Its value exceeds that of the capital by the surplus-value c. The 10,000 pounds of yarn are the bearers of the consumed capital value increased by this surplus-value, and they are so by virtue of the capitalist process of production. C' expresses the relation of the value of the commodities to that of the capital advanced in its production, in other words the composition of the value of the commodities, of capital value and surplus-value. The 10,000 pounds of yarn represent a commodity-capital C' only because they are an altered form of the productive capital P, and this relation exists originally by virtue of the circulation of this individual capital, it applies primarily to the capitalist who produced the yarn by the help of his capital. It is, so to say, an internal, not an external relation which makes a commodity capital of the 10,000 pounds of yarn in their capacity of representatives of value. They are bearing the imprint of capital not in the absolute magnitude of their value, but in its relative magnitude, in the
