In order to
understand what fictitious capital is, it is necessary to look again
at what capital itself is. According to Marx, capital is a social
relation between capital and wage labour, but Marx also describes it
as self-expanding value. In fact, the two statements amount to the
same thing, because the means by which value self-expands, is only
via this social relation.
The social
relation amounts to this. In its pure form, the ownership of the
means of production and the means of consumption resides solely with
capitalists. The corollary of this is that the only thing that the
workers own, is their labour-power. In order for the workers to
produce they require the means of production (constant capital such
as buildings, machines, raw material) which is in the hands of
capital; in order for the workers to live, they require the means of
consumption (food, shelter, clothing and so on) which are also in the
hands of capital. But, for the capitalists to be able to use the
means of production in their possession, and to create a surplus value, they require the labour-power in the hands of the workers. In
order for the capitalists to realise the surplus value contained in
the means of consumption they possess, they must be able to sell
those commodities to workers.
The reason
that it is only via this social relation that the capital value can
self expand, is because it is only labour which can create new value.
Capital can only create new value if it employs wage labour; it can
only produce surplus value if the new value created by that labour is
greater than the value of the labour-power bought by the capitalist.
The means of production in the possession of the capitalist has
value, because it is the product of labour. But, it is labour that
has already been performed. It is not the creation of new value.
The same is true of the means of consumption in the hands of the
capitalists. It has a value equal to the labour-time required for
its production. It contains a surplus value, as part of this value,
only because this value – the labour-time required for its
production – is greater than the value actually advanced by the
capitalist, and the reason for that is that workers provided a
quantity of unpaid labour to capital. The new value they created,
was greater than the value of the commodity they sold –
labour-power. This labour-power in the possession of capital,
represents a variable capital, precisely because what is a constant
value – the value of labour-power – becomes in the production
process a variable value, dependent for its mass on the quantity of
labour provided by that labour-power.
In theory,
it does not matter whether this constant value of labour-power, finds
its equivalent as an exchange directly with the means of consumption
owned by the capitalists, or whether this exchange is mediated by the
intervention of wages paid in money form. In a society where
capitalist production is still restricted to agricultural production,
such as that analysed by the Physiocrats, the wage fund used by
capital to pay the agricultural workers can take the form of actual
commodities, in the ownership of the capitalist farmer. The workers
are paid not with money, but with food etc. Provided the workers
constitute free labour, able to sell their labour-power to the
highest bidder, then competition will ensure that these wages are
equal, on average, to the value of labour-power. That is they will
be adequate to ensure the reproduction of that labour-power. The
wages here constitute revenue, a portion of the consumption fund of
the society.
If, instead
of wages being paid directly in the form of commodities, that
constitute means of consumption, these wages are paid in money form,
then, as Marx sets out in Capital II, the only difference here
is that money mediates this exchange with labour-power. Each
individual capitalist buys labour-power with a sum of money equal in
value to the commodities that constitute the necessary means of
consumption for workers, to ensure the reproduction of their
labour-power. The workers then use these money wages to buy those
necessary commodities, from other capitalists in whose possession
those particular commodities reside.
By means of
this process, the labour-power bought by each capital performs
labour, and thereby creates new value greater than the value of that
labour-power bought by the capitalist. It produces surplus value.
Simultaneously, the workers buy back some of those commodities they
have produced, and which contain a portion of the surplus value they
have produced, and in so doing realise that portion of the surplus
value. The remaining portion of surplus value, created by the workers, is realised by the capitalists themselves, who throw revenue into
circulation to buy the means of consumption they require themselves,
in order to live. Under simple reproduction, this revenue is
continually reproduced for the capitalist, because the surplus value
produced by their own workers is itself continually being realised
for them by this process.
What capital
buys, when it buys labour-power, is a use value – the ability of
labour to produce new value, and thereby surplus value. As with any
other use value that is a commodity, it pays the market price, for
that commodity. Wages are only the phenomenal form of the value of
labour-power. This is important, because the basis of fictitious
capital is similar. The basis of fictitious capital is that capital
itself becomes a commodity, which is bought and sold on the market,
and which thereby has a market price. The use value of capital that
is bought and sold is its ability to self-expand. The market price
that is paid for it, is the market price of being able to provide
this use value, which is the interest rate.
An
examination of this shows the difference between actual capital and
fictitious capital. The circuit of industrial capital comprises the
circuits of money-capital, productive-capital, and commodity-capital.
Each of these represent capital-value in each of its separate forms.
The capital-value advanced is equal to the total of all of this
capital, because the capital-value tied up in the circulation period,
is equal to the capital value of productive-capital that must be
advanced during that period. When the commodity-capital part of this
circuit takes on an independent existence, in the form of merchantcapital, and when the portion of the circulation period required for
transforming commodity-capital into money-capital, and then
money-capital into productive-capital, takes on an independent
existence in the form of money-dealing capital, therefore, the basis
upon which these independent forms of capital share in the surplus
value, is established.
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