Episode 18

But this is expressed only as a result, without the intervention of the process of which it is the result.

Parts of value as such are not qualitatively different from one another, except in so far as they appear as values of different articles, of concrete things, hence in various use-forms and therefore as values of different commodities -- a difference which does not originate with them themselves as mere parts of value. In money all differences between commodities are extinguished, because it is the equivalent form common to all of them. A sum of money in the amount of £500 consists solely of uniform elements of £1 each. Since the intermediate links of its origin are obliterated in the simple existence of this sum of money and every trace has been lost of the specific difference between the different component parts of capital in the process of production, there exists now only the distinction between the conceptual form of a principal equal to £422, the capital advanced, and an excess value of £78. Let M' be equal to, say, £110, of which £100 may be equal to M, the principal, and 10 equal to s, the surplus-value. There is an absolute homogeneity, an absence of conceptual distinctions, between the two constituent parts of the sum of £110. Any £10 of this sum always constitute 1/11 of the total sum of £1/10, whether they are 1/10 of the advanced principal of £100 or the excess of £10 above it. Principal and excess sum, capital and surplus-sum, may therefore be expressed as fractional parts of the total sum. In our illustration, 10/11 form the principal, or the capital, and 1/11 the surplus sum. In its money-expression realised capital appears therefore at the end of its process as an irrational expression of the capital-relation.

True, this applies also to C' (C plus c). But there is this difference:

that C', of which C and c are only proportional value-parts of the same homogeneous mass of commodities, indicates its origin P, whose immediate product it is, while in M', a form derived directly from circulation, the direct relation to P is obliterated.

The irrational distinction between the principal and the incremental sum, which is contained in M', so far as that expresses the result of the movement M ... M', disappears as soon as it once more functions actively as money-capital and is therefore not fixed as a money-expression of expanded industrial capital. The circuit of capital can never begin with M' (although M' now performs the function of M). It can begin only with M, that is to say it can never begin as an expression of the capital-relation, but only as a form of advance of capital-value. As soon as the £500 are once more advanced as capital, in order again to produce s, they constitute a point of departure, not one of return. Instead of a capital of £422, a capital of £500 is now advanced. It is more money than before, more capital-value, but the relation between its two constituent parts has disappeared. In fact a sum of £500 instead of the £422might originally have served as capital.

It is not an active function of money-capital to appear as M';to appear as M' is rather a function of C'. Even in the simple circulation of commodities, first in C 1 ---M, secondly in M---C 2 , money M does not figure actively until the second act, M---C 2 .

Its appearance in the form of M is only the result of the first act, by virtue of which it only then appears as a converted form of C 1 .

True, the capital-relation contained in M', the relation of one of its parts as the capital-value to the other as its value increment, acquires functional importance in so far as, with the constantly repeated circuit M ... M', M' splits into two circulations, one of them a circulation of capital, the other of surplus-value. Consequently these two parts perform not only quantitatively but also qualitatively different functions, M others than m. But considered by itself, the form M ... M' does not include what the capitalist consumes, but explicitly only the self-expansion and accumulation, so far as the latter expresses itself above all as a periodical augmentation of ever renewed advances of money-capital.

Although M', equal to M plus m, is the irrational form of capital, it is at the same time only money-capital in its realised form, in the form of money which has generated money. But this is different from the function of money-capital in the first stage, M---C