Accumulation and Reproduction
Marx begins this third part of Capital,
Volume 2 as follows:
“The
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.”
Here Marx is confirming, in direct terms, the
order of things as explained in Capital, Volume 1. The motive of capital is the
production of surplus-value and the commodity-product is the consequence. Some would
call this production for profit and not for need; others would say that it is
the creation and maintenance of a relationship between the bourgeois owners and
the working class.
Marx continues to assist. In contrast to the
end of Part 2, where he left us with more questions than answers, at the
beginning of Part 3 he lays out the scheme of Volume 1 (i.e. Book 1) and the
three parts of Volume 2, as follows (shortened; see Chapter 18 for the full
text):
“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 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.
“…Especially
money-capital came forward with distinctive features not shown in Book I.
Certain laws were found according to which diverse large components of a given
capital must be continually advanced and renewed — depending on the conditions
of the turnover — in the form of money-capital in order to keep a productive
capital of a given size constantly functioning.
“But
in both the first and the second Parts it was always only a question of some
individual capital, of the movement of some individualised part of social
capital.
“However
the circuits of the individual capitals intertwine, presuppose and necessitate
one another, and form, precisely in this interlacing, the movement of the total
social capital.
“We
have now to study the process of circulation (which in its entirety is a form
of the process of reproduction) of the individual capitals as components of the
aggregate social capital, that is to say, the process of circulation of this
aggregate social capital.”
There are four chapters in the third part of
Volume 2. Chapter 18 is covered above. Chapter 19 doubles back to the
Physiocrats and Adam Smith. Chapter 20 is very long, covering many kinds of
ordinary and extraordinary circumstances, divided into four parts; but it
begins with a useful schematic summary, as follows:
“The
total product, and therefore the total production, of society may be divided
into two major departments:
“I. Means of Production, commodities
having a form in which they must, or at least may, pass into productive
consumption.
“II. Articles of Consumption,
commodities having a form in which they pass into the individual consumption of
the capitalist and the working-class.
“All
the various branches of production pertaining to each of these two departments
form one single great branch of production, that of the means of production in
the one case, and that of articles of consumption in the other. The aggregate
capital employed in each of these two branches of production constitutes a
separate large department of the social capital.
“In
each department the capital consists of two parts:
“1) Variable Capital. This capital, so
far as its value is concerned, is equal to the value of the social labour-power
employed in this branch of production; in other words, it is equal to the sum
of the wages paid for this labour-power. So far as its substance is concerned,
it consists of the labour-power in action, i.e., of the living labour set in
motion by this capital-value.
“2) Constant Capital. This is the value
of all the means of production employed for productive purposes in this branch.
These, again, are divided into fixed capital, such as machines, instruments of
labour, buildings, labouring animals, etc., and circulating constant capital,
such as materials of production: raw and auxiliary materials, semi-finished
products, etc.
“The
value of the total annual product created with the aid of this capital in each
of the two departments consists of one portion which represents the constant capital
c consumed in the process of
production and only transferred to the product in accordance with its value,
and of another portion added by the entire labour of the year. This latter
portion is divided in turn into the replacement of the advanced variable
capital v and the excess over and
above it, which forms the surplus-value s.
And just as the value of every individual commodity, that of the entire annual
product of each department consists of c
+ v + s.”
Reading
for today
We shall use Part 1 of Chapter 21, the last
chapter in Volume 2, for a reading text, downloadable via the link below.
It is called “Accumulation and Reproduction
on an Extended Scale”, thus confirming what Volume 2 is about, namely these two
words which feature very prominently in 21st century South African
communist literature: Reproduction and Accumulation. At seven thousand words, Part
1 of Chapter 21 is sufficiently short and sufficiently plain in its prose to be
read as a discussion document.
Let it suffice, therefore, for this
introduction, to point out that in Volume 2, Marx is examining the leads and
lags in the full cycle of the accumulation and reproduction of capital, and
discovering features that arise during this circulation (e.g. “…money-capital came forward with
distinctive features not shown in Book I”) which have a material effect on
the entire concrete social phenomenon which is Capital with a capital “C”.
One such feature is the “hoard” of money that
is a necessary phenomenon within the cycle – the indispensible slack or
easement without which the machinery could not move.
In Volume 1, Marx takes considerable pains to
distinguish the miser (who hoards money) from the capitalist (who puts money
into circulation). There is no contradiction, however, in Marx’s thinking. The
hoard that arises in the cycle of capital is a necessary (and crucial)
re-charge, and not, like the miser’s hoard of buried treasure, money that is
permanently withheld from circulation.
Where one must be careful is with the unclear
and conflicted representation of these matters that appears as the vulgar economics of "analysts" in newspapers, and in the mouths of pundits and politicians today, where
“capital” is invariably conceptualised in a limited sense as a hoard (e.g. “I
need capital to start my business” always refers to a hoard, and only to a hoard).
Whereas in Marx, “accumulation” refers to the assembly and constant reassembly
of all of the prerequisites for the extraction of surplus value, and not just
to the pump-priming hoard of money.
These prerequisites for Capital also include
the market, the proletariat, the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state with its
bourgeois constitution and laws, the means of transport and trade, and the
subordination of all other classes to the rapacious needs of the bourgeois
class. In the case of an individual business, the market for its goods or
services is in particular a far more critical prerequisite than the prior
possession of a hoard of money.
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