Capital Volume 2,
Part 1
Metamorphoses of
Capital
Having completed our course on Volume 1 of “Capital” here on
“SADTU Political Education”, we now begin Part 2. We will proceed in ten parts through
to the end of Part 3 before the end of 2011.
“The Metamorphoses of
Capital and their Circuits” is the title of Part 1 of Karl Marx’s “Capital,
Volume 2. A “metamorphosis” (plural “metamorphoses”) in science is a profound
change in form, such as from a tadpole to a frog or from a caterpillar to a
butterfly. [The illustration above refers to the story “Metamorphosis”, by
Franz Kafka, wherein a man turns into a beetle].
Skimming through the first chapters of Volume 2, even though
they contain some rather obscure formulas, it quickly becomes clear that what
Marx is describing are the changes and movements that take place during the
repeated acting-out of the capitalistic relationship (i.e. sale by the working proletarian
and purchase by the capitalist of commodified labour-power, extraction of
surplus value, and sale of the commodified product of labour). These changes and movements are somewhat invisible to the actors, or else are only
visible to them in an illusory form.
From Chapter 2:
“So long as the
product is sold, everything is taking its regular course from the standpoint of
the capitalist producer. The circuit of capital-value he is identified with is
not interrupted. And if this process is expanded — which includes increased
productive consumption of the means of production — this reproduction of
capital may be accompanied by increased individual consumption (hence demand)
on the part of the labourers, since this process is initiated and effected by
productive consumption. Thus the production of surplus-value, and with it the
individual consumption of the capitalist, may increase, the entire process of
reproduction may be in a flourishing condition, and yet a large part of the
commodities may have entered into consumption only apparently, while in reality
they may still remain unsold in the hands of dealers, may in fact still be
lying in the market. Now one stream of commodities follows another, and finally
it is discovered that the previous streams had been absorbed only apparently by
consumption. The commodity-capitals compete with one another for a place in the
market. Late-comers, to sell at all, sell at lower prices. The former streams
have not yet been disposed of when payment for them falls due. Their owners
must declare their insolvency or sell at any price to meet their obligations.
This sale has nothing whatever to do with the actual state of the demand. It
only concerns the demand for
payment, the pressing necessity of
transforming commodities into money. Then a crisis breaks out. It becomes
visible not in the direct decrease of consumer demand, the demand for
individual consumption, but in the decrease of exchanges of capital for
capital, of the reproductive process of capital.”
Different capitals compete with one another, says Marx. The
fundamental type of capital has been described in Volume 1. Here we see
“capitals”, plural, interacting with each other to produce a secondary phenomenon
– a crisis.
Later in the same Chapter (under Part 3), Marx is very clear
about the difference between “accumulation” and “hoarding”. This is a crucial
point in terms of recent SACP theory, which has at times leant heavily on the
term “accumulation”, or alternatively “accumulation path”. Marx says:
“Hence the
accumulation of money, hoarding, appears here as a process by which real
accumulation, the extension of the scale on which industrial capital operates,
is temporarily accompanied. Temporarily, for so long as the hoard remains in
the condition of a hoard, it does not function as capital, does not take part
in the process of creating surplus-value, remains a sum of money which grows
only because money, come by without its doing anything, is thrown in the same coffer.”
“Accumulation” for Marx is always the assembly of the
prerequisites for the relationship “Capital” to appear, or reappear. Anything
else, whether transitional or permanent, is “hoarding”.
For a reading of part of the original text, we offer Chapter
6, the last chapter in Part 1 of Volume 2 of Capital (see below for a link to
download this chapter). It is clear from this chapter that in this Part 1,
called “Metamorphoses of Capital and their Circuits”, Marx is dealing with the
Reproduction and Accumulation of capital, where “reproduction” is accomplished
by the reassembly (called accumulation) of the elements of production so that
the cycle of extraction of surplus value can be re-enacted.
The following quotation can suffice to show that there is no
question of Marx backsliding on the question of surplus-value being the source
of “the self-increase of capital”, as expounded repeatedly in Volume 1:
“To the capitalist who
has others working for him, buying and selling becomes a primary function.
Since he appropriates the product of many on a large social scale, he must sell
it on the same scale and then reconvert it from money into elements of
production. Now as before neither the time of purchase nor of sale creates any
value. The function of merchant’s capital give rise to an illusion.”
Please download
and read the text via the following link:
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