Marx notes that Jones, in his third lecture, refers to the other function performed by capital, or capitalists, by which can only be meant the role of capital in commerce and banking.
“But although Jones comes so close to the correct concept and even expresses it in a certain fashion, nevertheless, being an economist, he is so enmeshed in bourgeois fetishism that not even the devil could be certain that he does not mean that “accumulated stock” as such, can perform different functions.” (p 427)
In other words, stock is equated with capital, and capital is personified by the capitalist, who is thereby the person who advances wages. Of course, as soon as the fetter of the monopoly of private capital is burst asunder, by socialised capital, the fallacy of this identity is exposed. Whether in the form of the cooperative or the joint stock company, capital is no longer personified by the private capitalist. Even within the confines of capitalist production, capitalist private property is abolished, and becomes socialised capital. It is not then the capitalist that advances wages, but this socialised capital, and, in the shape of the cooperative, owned by the workers, it is clear that this amounts to the workers advancing to themselves their wages from their own past labour.
Nevertheless, Marx says, Jones represents a leap forward compared to Ramsay.
“Ramsay regards precisely that function of capital which makes it capital—the advancing of wages—as accidental, due only to the poverty of the people, and irrelevant to the production process as such. In this narrow circumscribed manner, Ramsay denies the necessity for the capitalist mode of production. Jones, on the other hand, [strange that they were both priests of the Established Church. The ministers of the English Church seem to think more than their continental brethren] demonstrates that it is precisely this function that makes capital capital and gives rise to the most characteristic features of the capitalist mode of production. He shows how this form occurs only at a certain level of development of the productive forces and that it then creates an entirely new material basis. Consequently, however, his comprehension of the fact that this form “can be superseded” and of the merely transitory historical necessity for this form, is quite different from that of Ramsay and more profound. He by no means regards capitalist relations as eternal.” (p 428)
Marx cites a passage from Jones, where he states this explicitly. On the one hand, Jones recognises capitalism as a great step forward from the precapitalist conditions, existing elsewhere in the world, and yet recognises the potential for the division between capital and labour to come to an end, as workers themselves become the owners of capital.
““… a state of things may hereafter exist, and parts of the world may be approaching to it, under which the labourers and the owners of accumulated stock, may be identical; but in the progress of nations … this has never yet been the case, and to trace and understand that progress, we must observe the labourers gradually transferred from the hands of a body of customers, who pay them out of their revenues, to those of a body of employers, who pay them by advances of capital out of the returns to which the owners aim at realising a distinct revenue. This may not be as desirable a state of things as that in which labourers and capitalists are identified, but we must still accept it as constituting a stage in the march of industry, which has hitherto marked the progress of advancing nations. At that stage the people of Asia have not yet arrived” (p. 73).” (p 428)
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