As Marx demonstrated in Capital II, the existence of such productive supplies is not peculiar to capitalism. Because capitalism raises production and consumption to much greater levels, these stocks increase in absolute terms, but decline relative to the total production. In part, this is a function of the greater efficiency in the use of these stocks that capitalist production and distribution brings with it, as an economy of scale, but it is also because merchant capitals are able to speed up the circulation process, and rising productivity increases the rate of turnover of circulating capital.
“The part of capital which consists of instruments and materials of labour is as “commodities already created” always a precondition in each particular branch of production.” (p 278)
Just as it is impossible to build a house today with the very same bricks (use values) that are produced tomorrow, so too,
“It is impossible to spin cotton which has not yet been produced, to operate spindles which have yet to be manufactured, or to burn coal which has not yet been brought up from the mine. These always enter the [production] process as forms of existence of previous labour. Existing labour thus depends on antecedent labour and not only on coexisting labour, although this antecedent labour, whether in the form of means of labour or materials of labour, can only be of any use (productive use) when it is in contact with living labour as a material element of it. Only as an element of industrial consumption, i.e., consumption by labour.” (p 278)
But, all that has been considered here is use value. It is only the use value cotton that must exist for it to be spun into yarn; it is the use value of spindles that enables the cotton to be spun, not the value of the spindles or the cotton. And, as set out in previous chapters, particularly in Part II, it is these use values that must be reproduced and replaced, on a like for like basis, for social reproduction to occur.
“But when considering circulation and the reproduction process, we have seen that it is only possible to reproduce the commodity after it is finished and converted into money, because simultaneously all its elements have been produced and reproduced by means of coexisting labour." (p 278)
As Marx has set out, the purpose is the reproduction of the productive-capital, or for the merchant capitalist, the commodity capital, which is the starting point of the circuit of industrial capital. The conversion of the commodity-capital into money is merely a transitory moment in that circuit, not its termination point.
"A twofold progression takes place in production. Cotton, for example, advances from one phase of production to another. It is produced first of all as raw material, then it is subjected to a number of operations until it is fit to be exported or, if it is further worked up in the same country, it is handed over to a spinner. It then goes on from the spinner to the weaver and from the weaver to the bleacher, dyer, finisher, and thence to various workshops where it is worked up for definite uses, i.e., articles of clothing, bed-linen, etc. Finally it leaves the last producer for the consumer and enters into individual consumption if it does not enter into industrial consumption as means (not material) of labour. But whether it is to be consumed industrially or individually, it has acquired its final form as use-value. What emerges from one sphere of production as a product enters another as a condition of production, and in this way, goes through many successive phases until it receives its last finish as use-value. Here previous labour appears continually as the condition for existing labour.
Simultaneously, however, while the product is advancing in this way from one phase to another, while it is undergoing this real metamorphosis, production is being carried on at every stage. While the weaver spins the yarn, the spinner is simultaneously spinning cotton, and fresh quantities of raw cotton are in the process of production.” (p 278-9)
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