Commercial capital is part of industrial capital alongside productive-capital. Commercial capital consists of that capital employed in the sphere of circulation required to realise the exchange value, including the surplus value produced by productive-capital, and to metamorphose this realised value back into productive-capital. For any individual producer, it consists of commodity-capital, and money-capital, but it also consists of the capital required for offices, office equipment, and commercial workers, involved in the functions of buying and selling, and in the payment and receipt of money, and the corresponding keeping of records of these transactions, in other words, constant capital and variable-capital. This constant capital and variable-capital, however, does not produce any additional surplus value, but is a necessary cost, required to realise the produced value and surplus-value. It forms a part, therefore, of the calculation of the average industrial profit.
As Marx sets out in Capital II, Chapter 3, the circuit of commodity capital is C`... M`.M – C... P ...C`. It does not begin with C, the commodities that the producer buys, which forms their productive-capital. These commodities, in respect of means of production, are commodity-capital for some other producer, the result of their own production. As soon as these commodities are bought by another producer, they constitute not commodity-capital, but productive-capital. C, here, is just a transitory moment. The circuit of the commodity capital begins with C`. The producer starts with this commodity-capital, which already contains the surplus value created in production, and which they then realise as M`. However, M` is also only a transitory moment in this circuit, it is not the goal of the producer. They seek to realise the value of C` as M`, only in order to immediately metamorphose M back into productive-capital, so as to physically replace the commodities consumed in production, and, thereby to continue production on the same scale. As Marx says, this simple reproduction is always the foundation of the expanded reproduction that is characteristic of capitalism.
In order to accumulate capital, it is first necessary to at least reproduce the physical capital consumed in production, simple reproduction. In other words C must be replaced with C out of C`, and consequently M, the money equivalent of the value of the commodities comprising C, must be reproduced out of M`. But, the capitalist (and so the capitalist class when looking at the total social capital) must be able to reproduce itself, and so to finance its unproductive consumption, which it also does out of M`. The circuit of the money-capital can never then start with M`, because as soon as it is realised, this M` divides into M, which is metamorphosed into C, which replaces the original C, and m, the surplus value, part of which is is not accumulated as capital at all, but forms only money in the hands of the capitalist, required for their unproductive consumption. The circuit of money-capital always starts with M and ends with M`, even where this M is, in fact, greater than the original M, it is, in reality M2, which expands into M2`, which becomes M3 which expands into M3`, and so on.
The productive-capitalist always seeks to expand the commodity-capital (output), because in doing so, they expand the potential to accumulate additional productive-capital, and so to produce additional surplus value. This becomes even more obvious when commodity-capital takes on an independent existence of its own as merchant capital. The merchant takes the commodity-capital of the producer, and takes on the function of selling the commodities of which it is comprised. In so doing, they take on this commodity-capital, which already comprises the surplus value created in production. Unlike the producer, who must always accumulate additional productive-capital, and so labour, so as to produce additional surplus value, the merchant does not engage in production. Their only means of increasing their capital is to continually increase the size of their commodity-capital. They begin with C`, which includes surplus value, and they metamorphose it into M`. The merchant capitalist too must reproduce themselves, and so this M` divides into M and m, a portion of m being used for their own reproduction, and the other being used for accumulation in the form of additional commodity-capital.
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