Capital Volume 2, Part 1
Metamorphoses of Capital
Having completed our course
on Volume 1 of “Capital”, we now begin Part 2. We will proceed in ten parts
through to the end of Part 3.
“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 famous 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 its purchase by the
capitalist, of commodified labour-power; extraction of surplus value; and sale
of the commodified product of labour for money). 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 make
it appear in the first place, or subsequently, to make it repeat, and especially,
to expand in scale. Any other kind of gathering-in, if it is not for consumption,
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 (attached; see also below for a link to download this chapter).
It is clear from Chapter 6 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 by Marx “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 gives rise to an illusion.”
The illusion is that the
self-increase in capital can be found in trading, whereas Marx continues to say
that the self-increase in capital is found in the workplace, by the extraction
of surplus labour.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Chapter
6, The Costs of Circulation, from Capital, Volume 2, Karl Marx.
