Taking the social capital as a whole, it must employ labour-power, which produces the total surplus value, which is then allocated proportionately amongst capitals, via the formation of an average rate of profit. But money can act directly as capital simply as money-lending capital. The owner of loanable money-capital only needs to lend it, for it to return to them as an increased amount of money. As Marx set out previously, if someone lends a machine, what they are actually doing is lending the equivalent of a certain amount of money-capital, equivalent to the value of the machine.
But, in reality, this is an illusion, which is why this money-lending capital is really fictitious capital. It is not the act of lending that results in a self-expansion of money-capital but only its productive use, as real capital. It is the borrower of the money-capital who metamorphoses it into productive-capital (machine, material, labour-power) who thereby brings about its self-expansion by the production of surplus value/average profit. It is only because they do so that they can share this profit with the money-lender by paying them an agreed amount of interest.
If we take the actual circuit of the interest-bearing capital it is M – M – C … P … C` - M` - Mi. In other words, the original interest-bearing capital is the same money-capital that the productive-capitalist metamorphoses into productive-capital. It simply appears twice, once in the hands of the money lender and again in the hands of the productive-capitalist. It is actually only at this point that the real circuit of the capital begins, because it is only then that it operates as real capital that produces additional value. It is only as a result of that circuit that the capital self-expands, and a portion of the profit is then separated off to pay interest to the money lender. The circuit of interest bearing capital M – M`, actually lies outside the circuit of capital.
But, it is precisely because capital as capital is self-expanding value, and whose value is the rate of profit, that those who own it can charge a price for its use by those who want to borrow it. That price is the rate of interest.
“Rent is likewise simply a name for a part of the surplus-value which the industrialist has to pay out, in the same way as interest is another part of surplus-value which, although it accrues to him (like rent), has to be handed over to someone else.” (p 472)
The difference is that interest depends upon the use value of capital being that it produces the average rate of profit, whereas rent depends on preventing competition bringing about this average rate of profit. Competition brings about the average rate of profit by capital accumulating faster in high profit areas, so that prices fall until only an average profit is made. Similarly, because supply does not rise so fast in low profit areas, prices rise until the average profit is made. That means that all capital, whether it produces a lot, a little or even no surplus value gets its proportionate share of the total surplus value, by this process. Because all capital, thereby, produces average profit, a price for it, the rate of interest, can be charged.
But, landed property prevents competition from acting in this way to remove surplus profits. Agricultural and mineral production is historically characterised by an average organic composition of capital that is lower than the average for industrial capital. That means that it produces a larger proportion of surplus value and so a higher than average rate of profit. Capital is then led to want to invest in agricultural/mineral production to obtain this higher rate of profit. However, it can only do so if the owners of the land will rent it to them. The larger the surplus profit, and so the larger the demand for land to rent, the higher the rent charged by the landlord. It is then the existence of this surplus profit that makes possible a rent, and it is the fact that landed property exists which means that this rent ends up in the landlord's pocket, so that competition can never drive down agricultural/mineral profits to the average rate, or agricultural/mineral prices to their price of production.
“Monopoly of landed property enables the landowner to do this. It enables him to pocket the difference between value and cost-price. On the other hand—as far as differential rent is concerned—this monopoly enables the landowner to pocket the excess of the market value over the individual value of the product of a particular piece of land; in contrast to the other spheres of production, where this difference in the form of surplus profit flows into the pockets of the capitalists who operate under more favourable conditions than the average conditions which satisfy the greater part of demand, thus determining the bulk of production and consequently regulating the market value of each particular sphere of production.” (p 472)
No comments:
Post a Comment