Capital Volume III [download pdf]

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Ebook Title : Capital Volume III

Ebook Thickness	: 823 Page
Language	: English

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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.

The value of every commodity produced in the capitalist way is represented in the formula: C = c + v + s. If we subtract surplus-values from this value of the product there remains a bare equivalent or a substitute value in goods, for the capital-value c + v expended in the elements of production.

For example, if the production of a certain article requires a capital outlay of £500, of which £20 are for the wear and tear of instruments of production, £380 for the materials of production, and £100 for labour-power, and if the rate of surplus-value is 100%, then the value of the product = 400c + 100v + 100s = £600.

After deducting the surplus-value of £100, there remains a commodity-value of £500 which only replaces the expended capital of £500. This portion of the value of the commodity, which replaces the price of the consumed means of production and labour-power, only replaces what the commodity costs the capitalist himself. For him it, therefore, represents the cost-price of the commodity.