The People's Marx, Abridged Popular Edition of the the Three Volumes of Capital, Borchardt 1921

Chapter 18


Commercial Activity.

(Extracted from vol. II, ch. 6. German ed.)

(A) Purchase and Sale.

As we have assumed that commodities are bought and sold at their value, it is only question in these transactions of converting the same value from a commodity form into a money form, and vice versa. If commodities should not be sold at their value, the sum total of the values thus converted remains none the less unchanged; for what is plus on. the one side of the balance-sheet is minus on the other side.

The process of conversion requires time and labour power, not, indeed, in order to create value, but in order to render possible the conversion of the value from one form into another. It must be observed, in this connection, that the reciprocal attempt to obtain on this occasion a surplus quantity of value, does not alter matters. This labour, augmented by the reciprocal evil intentions, creates no more value than the labour which takes place in the course of legal proceedings augments the value of the object of litigation. If therefore, the owners of commodities are not capitalists, but independent and direct producers, the time spent on purchase and sale must be deduced from their labour time; for this reason they have always - in ancient times as in the middle ages - sought to relegate such operations to festival days.

The dimensions assumed by the turnover of commodities in the hands of the capitalists cannot, of course, transform such labour, which produces no value, into labour producing value. Such a miracle would be equally impossible if the capitalist were to confine such work to other persons.

Purchase and sale become one of the main functions of the capitalist who employs others to work for him. Seeing that he takes possession on a larger scale of the product of others, he must also sell it on a larger scale, and must, further, subsequently buy the elements of production likewise on a larger scale. Neither before nor after do purchase and sale create any value. Such an illusion is due to the existence of commercial capital, of which we shall speak later. But this much is clear from the beginning: if - means of the division of labour - one single merchant having his own capital undertakes on behalf of many capitalists the sale of their commodities, he can thereby shorten, for them, the time required for purchase and sale. In this case he must be regarded as a machine who reduces useless expenditure of force, or who helps to shorten the time of production. But nothing in the nature of such activity is changed thereby, and this activity does not thereby become creative of value.

We will assume - seeing that we will only later consider the merchant in his capacity as capitalist, and commercial capital - that this agent for purchase and sale is an employe of the manufacturer, who buys Itis labour power. He lives by his activity as buyer and seller, in the same way as others do by spinning or making pills. He fulfils a necessary function. He works as well as anyone else, but the contents of his work create neither value nor a product of any sort. He himself must be reckoned among the costs of production. His usefulness does not consist in transforming unproductive into productive labour, but rather in the fact that through him the amount of labour power and labour time employed in unproductive work is reduced. We will go further. We will assume him to be a mere wage-labourer - nay, if you like a better paid one. Whatever his wages may be, he works a part of the thus for nothing. He receives, perhaps, the equivalent of the produce of eight working-hours daily, and works ten hours. The 2 hours surplus-labour performed by him produce just as little value as the 8 hours of necessary labour. But the costs of circulation, as represented by him, are reduced by one-fifth. The costs of circulation of the capital belonging to the capitalist who employs him, and which must be deducted from that capitalist's income, are reduced by the non-payment of the 2 hours in question.

The time spent on this is, under all circumstances, to be reckoned among the costs of circulation; and it adds nothing to the values turned over. It is the same as if one part of the product were transformed into a machine, which would buy and sell the other part. This machine causes a deduction from the product, although it can diminish the labour power etc. consumed in the process of circulation. It does but form a part of the costs of circulation.

(B) Bookkeeping.

Working-time is not only expended in effectual buying and selling, but also in bookkeeping, which, in turn, requires working instruments, such as pens, ink, paper, desks, office expenses. In this case, the position is similar to what it is in the case of the labour of buying and selling.

As long as the individual producer of commodities merely keeps his accounts, either in his head or else incidentally, outside the working-time needed for production, it is evident that this activity, of his, and also the working instruments consumed by him during the process, such as paper etc., must be deducted alike from the time and from the working instruments which he is able to consume productively. Neither the scope of the functions, nor the fact that the latter are exercised independently by special book-keepers, alter this in any way.

Already in the most ancient Indian communities there existed a bookkeeper for agriculture. Bookkeeping here became the exclusive function of an official of the community. Time, trouble, and expense are saved by this division of labour. But production, and the bookkeeping concerned with such production, remain just as distinct entities as e. g. the cargo on board a ship, and the bill of lading. In the person of the bookkeeper part of the labour power of the community is withdrawn from the process of production; the costs entailed by his functions are not refunded from out of his own work, but are subtracted from the total product of the community. In the long run, the position is identical in the case of the bookkeeper employed by the capitalist and in that of the bookkeeper employed by the Indian community.

There is nervertheless a certain difference between the costs arising out of the process of bookkeeping and those arising out of the process of buying and selling. The latter arise solely from the fact that the product is a commodity, and would consequently disappear as soon as the process of production assumed another social form. Book-keeping, on the contrary, in so far as it controls that process and epitomises it in an ideal manner, becomes all the more necessary in the measure in which the social scale of production develops, and in which the process of production loses its individualist character. Bookkeeping is, therefore, more necessary in the capitalist system of production than in the split-up systems of handicraft and peasant production and still more necessary in a system of production by the community itself, than in the capitalist system. But the costs of bookkeeping diminish simultaneously with the increased concentration of the process of production.

(C) The Cost of Money.

Those commodities which serve as money are not absorbed by the process of consumption. Here we have social labour in a form in which it serves as a mere instrument of circulation. Apart from the fact that a part of the social wealth is assigned this unproductive form, the wear and tear of money necessitates its being continually replaced. The costs of such replacing are, in the case of nations which are highly developed from a capitalist point of view, important; seeing that the amount of wealth that assumes the form of money is very large. Gold and silver as money commodities constitute, for the society, costs of circulation which have their origin solely in the social form of production. They are costs derived from the production of commodities per se and are a part of the social wealth which must be sacrificed to circulation.

(D) Costs of Storage.

If production and reproduction are to continue without interruption, a quantity of commodities (means of production) must always be available on the market, i.e. a provision must always be to hand. The labourer must likewise find the greater part of his means of subsistence available on the market. For this purpose buildings, stores, reservoirs, stocks of commodities are necessary - i. e. constant capital must be advanced; similarly, labour power must be paid for, in order to store the commodities. Commodities deteriorate, into the bargain, and are exposed to the detrimental influence of the weather. In order to protect them, additional capital is required, which must be laid out partly in instruments of labour, partly in labour power.

These costs of circulation differ from those already enumerated, in that they enter, to a certain extent, int/> the value of the commodities. In so far as the costs of circulation due to the storage of commodities have their origin only in the length of time necessary to transform available values from the commodity form into the money form, such costs assume the nature of those enumerated in Sections A - C. On the other hand, the value of the commodities is in this case only maintained - or increased - because the use-value, i. e. the product itself, is subjected to operations which permit of additional labour influencing that use-value. (Whereby it must be born in mind that bookkeeping, buying and selling, etc., do not influence the use-value.) In this case, it is true, the use-value is not increased; on the contrary, it diminishes. But its diminution is limited, and it remains. Neither does the value existing in the commodity increase. But new labour, both incorporated and living labour, is added to it.

(E) Transport.

It is not necessary to enter here into all the details of the costs of circulation, such as packing, sorting, etc. The general law is that none of those costs of circulation which arise merely out of a transformation of the form of a commodity, add any value to the latter. They are merely the costs entailed by changing the form of the commodity, and belong to the category of the incidental costs of production. They must be replaced from out of the surplus-product, and constitute, as regards the capitalist class as a whole, a deduction from the surplus-value or surplus-product; just as, in the case of the labourer, the time needed for the purchase of his means of subsistence, is time lost. But the costs of transport play too important a part, for us not to consider them briefly here.

Commodities can circulate without moving in a physical sense; and the transport of products is likewise possible without the Circulation of commodities. For instance if A sells a house to B, the commodity circulates, but does not move. Moveable commodity-values, such as cotton or iron, can remain in the same place whilst being bought and sold dozens of times by successive speculators. What really moves in this case is the property-title to the commodity, not the commodity itself. On the other hand, for instance, the transport industry played a great part in the empire of the Peruvian Incas.

Aggregates of products do not increase through being transported. Neither is the change sometimes brought about by the fact of transport in their natural qualities - if we allow for certain exceptions - in any way intended to augment their usefulness; on the contrary, it is generally an inevitable drawback. But the use-value of things is realised only in their consumption; and their consumption may render a displacement necessary. Transport thus completes the process of production. The productive capital invested in the transport thus adds value to the commodity transported - partly by transferring value from the means of transport, partly by the addition of value through the medium of the labour required for such transport. This last addition of value is - as is the case with all capitalist production - divided-up into replacing labour-wages, on the one hand, and into surplus-value, on the other.

Within every branch of production, the displacement of the object of labour, and the instruments of labour and the labour power necessitated hereby, play an important part for instance, in the case of cotton, which is removed from the carding-room to the spinning-room; or in that of coal, which is raised from the mine to the surface. The transport of the finished product (as finished commodity) from one place of production to another, distant from it, does but manifest a similar phenomenon on a larger scale. The transport of the product from one place of production to another is succeeded by that of the finished commodity from out of the domain of production into the domain of consumption. The product is only ready for consumption when it has achieved this process.

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