Jim.+537-554

Oct 27, 2011 537-554

534: “The product is really finished only when it is on the market”

535: “The //constant continuity// of the process, the unobstructed and fluid transition of value from one form into th eother, or from one phase of the process into the next, appears as a fundamental condition for production baseed on capital...

...its phases are separate in time and space...

...The suspension of this chance element by capital itself is //credit//.”

536: “Capital is thus posited as value-in-process...”

537: Marx cites several political economists that seem to make his argument

537: //Influence of circulation on the determination of value//

distances are reduced to time

turn over time of capital: number of times the cycle can repeat within a given period (year?)

“the velocity of the circulation of capital”

circulation time: time of devaluation

539: “//Circulation time// therefore determines value only in so far as it appears as a //natural barrier// to the realization of labor time.”

“Thus, while capital must on one side strive to tear down every spatial barrier to intercourse, i.e. to exchange, and conquer the whole earth for its market, it strives on the other side to annihilate this space with time, i.e. to reduce to a minimum the time spent in motion form on place to another.”

540: seems to be talking about capitalism evolving into socialism, but at a very abstract level, “new modes of production”, as capital overcomes barriers and the development of the forces of production is generalized

religion, politics as superstructure for the forces of production

different capitals have different circulation times

543: “The circulation of capital realizes value, while living labor creates value.”

544: //Circulation and creation of value (Equalization between different capitals in the conditions of circulation.)//

eliminating circulation time does not eliminate production time. If circulation time were zero there would still be production time.

546: “As long as capital remains frozen in the form of the finished product, it cannot be active as capital, it is negated capital.”

“...time passes it by unseized, time during which it could have been appropriating alien labor...”

equalization of the rate of profit

547: “...the less favorable conditions under which A has produced would be borne in proportional shares by all the capitalist who exchange with it, and in this way an equal average level would come out.”

circulation expenses: faux frais de production

549: pseudo buyer B, credit man B

an intermediary, a merchant who buys finished commodities from producer capitalist so producer capitalist can begin production anew before goods are sold to consumer.

/B takes a share of surplus value in distribution.

549 //Ramsay//

Marx takes on bourgeois economists. I find this section less interesting. “capital as a source of value independent of labor”

Defending his version of the labor theory of value

553: “...Ricardo has rightly been accused of not understanding surplus value, although his opponents understand it even less.”