Matt.+423-459

“Exchange does not change the inner characteristics of realization; but it projects them to the outside; gives them a reciprocally independent form, and thereby lets their unity exist merely as an inner necessity, which must therefore come forcibly to the surface in crises. Both are therefore posited in the essence of capital: the devaluation of capital in the production process, as well as the suspension of devaluation and the creation of the conditions for the realization of capital” (447). What on earth does this mean? Clearly important. Clearly complex.
 * //Capital coming out of the production process becomes money again (447)//**

“After capital, in the production process, (1) has realized itself, i.e. created a new value; (2) become devalued, i.e. made the transition from money to the form of a particular commodity, it (3) realizes itself together with its new value, in that the product is thrown into circulation again, and, as C, is exchanged for M. At the point where we stand now, where capital is being examined only in general, the real difficulties of this third process are present only as possibilities, and are therefore suspended, again as possibilities” (447).

“Capital is thus now posited as money again, and money therefore posited in the new aspect of realized capital, not merely as realized price of the commodity. Or, the commodity realized in the price is now realized as capital” (447).

He then examines the three roles of money after the realization process:

“In accord with the initial nature of money, the only apparent feature by which capital – when transformed into money – may be measured is the new value which it has created; i.e. the first aspect of money as the general measure of commodities repeats itself; now as the measure of surplus value – of the realization of capital” (448).

The second form of money was that of the medium of circulation, as “an exchange in return for those particular use values in which it is able to begin its course as capital anew – raw material and instrument on the one hand, living labour capacity on the other. In this role it is //circulating capital//, about which later” (448). Circulating capital is here distinguished from money as a medium of circulation in general, in which an exchange is made in return for commodities (use values) for final consumption, thus falling out of sphere of circulation.

“…the end-product of money in its role as medium of circulation is the beginning of the act of production with posited capital as the point of departure, and this is the point which we will examine here before we go further” (448).

The third form of money is somewhat unclear to me. “The third form of money, as independent value in a negative relation vis-à-vis circulation, is capital which does not step out of the production process into exchange again to become money. Rather, it is capital which becomes a commodity and enters into circulation in the form of self-sufficient value. This third form presupposes capital in the earlier forms and at the same time forms the transition from capital to the particular capitals, the real capitals; since now, in this last form, capital already in its very concept divides into two capitals with an independent existence. Along with the duality, plurality in general is then given. Such is the march of this development” (449). This is altogether unclear to me.

I am also unsure of what he means in the following paragraph, which he brackets off as a side-note. The essence of the argument is that //capital in general// can be distinguished from particular capitals (ex. fixed and circulating capital). Capital in general is an abstraction with aspect common to every capital as such. Yet it is also a very real phenomenon. But then he says something very strange about capital in general having to “posit itself doubly” and therefore requires a third nation in order to realize itself. This is totally unclear to me. There is also a clear influence of Hegel here: universality, particularity, individuality (449 and footnote on 450).

If we can summarize this subsection, however, the point is that capital must continually throw itself back into circulation in order to realize itself again.


 * //Surplus labour or surplus value becomes surplus capital. All determinants of capitalist production now appear as results of (wage) labour itself. The realization process of labour at the same time its de-realization process (450)//**

This section, as the subtitle suggests, is clearly about labour.

“The new value, then, [is] itself posited as capital again, as objectified labour entering into the process of exchange with living labour, and hence dividing itself into a constant part – the objective conditions of labour, material and instrument – and the condition for the subjective condition of labour, the existence of living labour capacity, the necessaries, subsistence goods for the worker” (450). This later concept is relative surplus value, is it not?

Within the production process, surplus value appeared as surplus labour. Now surplus labour appears as surplus product, “and, in order to realize itself as capital, this surplus product divides into a double form: as objective condition of labour – material and instrument; as subjective-consumption goods for the living labour now to be put to work” (450-51).

Thus the surplus product now appears as surplus capital, which must be realized somehow (451). He then makes three points about this surplus product:

Firstly, surplus value or this surplus product is “nothing but a specific sum of objectified living labour – the sum of surplus labour […] It is itself nothing other than the excess of labour as such above necessary labour – in objective form and hence as value” (451).

Secondly, “the particular forms which this value must adopt in order to realize itself anew, i.e. to posit itself as capital – on one side as raw material and instrument, on the other as subsistence goods for labour during the act of production – are likewise, therefore, only particular forms of surplus labour itself” (451).

Thirdly, the distinction between capital and living labour capacity is fulfilled and reproduced by the labourers themselves. Marx here goes on a rather convoluted tangent about alienation. The essential argument is that labour recreates the conditions of its own subjugation, while alienating themselves from their product.

This division between capital and labour “goes so far that these conditions confront the person of the worker in the person of the capitalist – as personification with its own will and interest – this absolute divorce, separation of property” is conducted to the extent that “they confront him as alien property, as the reality of other juridical persons, as the absolute realm of their will…” (452). This, Marx notes, is the own labourers doing.

Labour capacity only acquires its own means of subsistence for reproducing itself. And this means of subsistence is presented to the labourer as “things, values, which confront it in an alien, commanding personification. The worker emerges not only not richer, but emerges rather poorer from the process than he entered. For not only has he produced the conditions of necessary labour as conditions belonging to capital but also the value-creating possibility, the realization which lies as a possibility within him, now likewise exists as surplus value, surplus product, in a word as capital, as master over living labour capacity, as value endowed with its own might and will, confronting him in his abstract, objectless, purely subjective poverty” (453).

“He has produced not only the alien wealth and his own poverty, but also the relation of this wealth as independent, self-sufficient wealth, relative to himself as the poverty which this wealth consumes, and from which wealth thereby draws new vital spirits into itself, and realizes itself anew” (453). All of this occurred within the act of exchange, in which the labourer exchanged his living labour capacity for an amount of objectified labour, which is really his own product “which rules over him through his own actions” (453).

“The product of labour appears as //alien property//, as a mode of existence confronting living labour as independent, as //value// in its being for itself; the product of labour, objectified labour, has been endowed by living labour with a soul of its own, and establishes itself opposite living labour as an //alien power//: both these situations are themselves the product of labour” (454).

Capital is divided into its constant (raw materials, instruments) and variable (necessary goods for sustaining labour) parts. Labours own product is also divided into two parts: (1) the objective conditions for the new realization of labour; (2) “a labour fund for maintaining the possibility of this living labour, i.e. of living labour capacity as alive” (454-55). Thus labour creates a new fund for employment of new necessary labour capacity.

“It here becomes evident that labour itself progressively extends and gives an ever wider and fuller existence to the objective world of wealth as a power alien to labour, so that, relative to the values created or to the real conditions of value-creation, the penurious subjectivity of living labour capacity forms an ever more glaring contrast. The greater the extent to which labour objectifies itself, the greater becomes the objective world of values, which stands opposite it as alien -- alien property. With the creation of surplus capital, labour places itself under the compulsion to create yet further surplus capital etc. etc.” (455).


 * //Formation of surplus capital I. – Surplus capital II. – Inversion of the law of appropriation. – Chief result of the production and realization process: the reproduction and new production of the relation of capital and labour itself, of capitalist and worker (456)//**

In order for capial to appropriate alien labour, of objectified alien labour, capital should first posses values. This is a condition for the surplus capital I. There must be an exchange of values belonging to the capitalist, thrown into circulation by him, and supplied to living labour capacity by him – of values which do not arise from his exchange with living labour” (456). Thus this surplus capital 1 is really all about primitive accumulation, which he starts to address as “original accumulation of capital” on 459.

But once this surplus capital is thrown into the production process, realizing its value anew in exchange and appearing as new surplus capital “at the beginning of a third production process” it is called surplus capital II (456-57). What are the three production processes? Production, exchange, realization?

Surplus capital II has different characteristics from Surplus capital I. Surplus capital I entailed values that already existed to the capitalist, whereas surplus capital II only requires surplus capital I (ie. “the presupposition that the capitalist has already appropriated alien labour without exchange. This puts him into a position where he is able to begin the process again and again” (457). Put another way, “the previous appropriation of alien labour now appears as the simple precondition for the new appropriation of alien labour” (457).

“Property – previous, or objectified, alien labour – appears as the only condition for further appropriation of present or living alien labour” (457). Thus Marx turns to “original accumulation of capital” and, I would assume, the establishment of property.

There is some confusing stuff about dialectics on 458. I would really appreciate if someone could unpack it for me.