The Rate of Profit
Capital Volume 3, Part 1: The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit
and of the Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit
Marx begins Volume 3
as follows:
“In Book
I we analysed the phenomena which constitute the process of capitalist production as
such, as the immediate productive process, with no regard for any of the
secondary effects of outside influences.
“But this immediate process of production
does not exhaust the life span of capital. It is supplemented in the actual
world by the process of circulation, which was the object of study in Book II. In the latter, namely in Part
III, which treated the process of circulation as a medium for the process of
social reproduction, it developed that the capitalist process of production
taken as a whole represents a synthesis of the processes of production and
circulation.
“Considering what this third book treats, it cannot confine itself to general reflection
relative to this synthesis. On the contrary, it must locate and describe the
concrete forms which grow out of the movements
of capital as a whole. In their actual movement capitals confront
each other in such concrete shape, for which the form of capital in the
immediate process of production, just as its form in the process of
circulation, appear only as special instances. The various forms of capital, as
evolved in this book, thus approach step by step the form which they assume on
the surface of society, in the action of different capitals upon one another,
in competition, and in the ordinary consciousness of the agents of production
themselves.”
In Chapter 21 of
Volume 2 Marx had written:
“Let us note by the way: Once more we find here,
as we did in the case of simple reproduction, that the exchange of the various
component parts of the annual product, i.e., their circulation …does not by any
means presuppose mere purchase of commodities supplemented by a subsequent
sale, or a sale supplemented by a subsequent purchase, so that there would
actually be a bare exchange of commodity for commodity, as Political Economy
assumes, especially the free-trade school since the physiocrats and Adam Smith.”
Like that of the
physiocrats and Adam Smith, the “ordinary consciousness of the agents of
production themselves” is confined to “the surface of society”. In the journey
through Volume 1 and Volume 2, from Marx’s point of departure in the first line
of the entire work (“The wealth of those
societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself
as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities’") we have submerged among
the deep and hidden workings of the system, so as to comprehend its true nature.
Now, in Volume 3, we are going to emerge again into the visible world, and
examine the phenomena that form the conscious narrative of politics, and which
inform the subjective reactions of men and women from day to day and year to
year.
But we must continue
to hold in mind the revelations of Volumes 1 and 2. Marx is still exploring “the secret of the self-expansion of
capital”.
In the beginning of
Chapter 2, of Volume III, Marx again allows himself to be terse and direct:
“The general formula of capital is M-C-M'. In
other words, a sum of value is thrown into circulation to extract a larger sum
out of it. The process which produces this larger sum is capitalist production.
The process that realises it is circulation of capital. The capitalist does not
produce a commodity for its own sake, nor for the sake of its use-value, or his
personal consumption. The product in which the capitalist is really interested
is not the palpable product itself, but the excess value of the product over
the value of the capital consumed by it.
“…he is a capitalist, and can undertake the
process of exploiting labour only because, being the owner of the conditions of
labour, he confronts the labourer as the owner of only labour-power. As already
shown in the first book, (i.e. Volume 1) it is precisely the fact that non-workers
own the means of production which turns labourers into wage-workers and
non-workers into capitalists.”
Capital is more of a
relationship than a thing. It is permanently a relationship. It may have a
money-form as part of its cycle, but the relationship of labourer to capitalist
is constant throughout the cycle.
Volume III is already
divided into seven parts. We will take one part at a time, and choose one
chapter from each part as a reading text.
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