Capital: 3 (Penguin Classics) by Marx Karl & Mandel Ernest & Fernbach David

Author:Marx, Karl & Mandel, Ernest & Fernbach, David [Marx, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: ePenguin
Published: 1992-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30: Money Capital and Real Capital: I

The only difficult questions which we are now coming on to in connection with the credit system are as follows.

Firstly, the accumulation of money capital as such. How far is it, and how far is it not, an index of genuine capital accumulation, i.e. of reproduction on an expanded scale? Is the phenomenon of a ‘plethora’ of capital, an expression used only of interest-bearing capital, i.e. money capital, simply a particular expression of industrial overproduction, or does it form a separate phenomenon alongside this? Does such a plethora, an over-supply of money capital, coincide with the presence of stagnant sums of money (bullion, gold coin and banknotes), so that this excess of actual money is an expression and form of appearance of this plethora of loan capital?

And secondly, to what extent does monetary scarcity, i.e. a shortage of loan capital, express a lack of real capital (commodity capital and productive capital)? To what extent, on the other hand, does it coincide with a lack of money as such, a lack of means of circulation?

In as much as we have so far considered the specific form of accumulation of money capital, and of money wealth in general, this reduces itself to the accumulation of proprietary claims to labour. Accumulation of capital in the form of the national debt, as we have shown, means nothing more than the growth of a class of state creditors with a preferential claim to certain sums from the overall proceeds of taxation.6 In the way that even an accumulation of debts can appear as an accumulation of capital, we see the distortion involved in the credit system reach its culmination. These promissory notes which were issued for a capital originally borrowed but long since spent, these paper duplicates of annihilated capital, function for their owners as capital in so far as they are saleable commodities and can therefore be transformed back into capital.

As we have seen, the ownership titles to joint-stock companies, railways, mines, etc. are genuinely titles to real capital. Yet they give no control over this capital. The capital cannot be withdrawn. They give only a legal claim to a share of the surplus-value that this capital is to produce. But these titles similarly become paper duplicates of the real capital, as if a bill of lading simultaneously acquired a value alongside the cargo it refers to. They become nominal representatives of non-existent capitals. For the actual capital exists as well, and in no way changes hands when these duplicates are bought and sold. They become forms of interest-bearing capital because not only do they assure certain revenues but the capital values invested in them can also be repaid by their sale. In so far as the accumulation of these securities expresses an accumulation of railways, mines, steamships, etc., it expresses an expansion of the actual reproduction process, just as the expansion of a tax list on personal property, for example, indicates an expansion of this property itself.

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