This basic relation, and process of reproduction is described by Marx in Chapter 20.
“1) The 500v, representing wages of the labourers, and 500s, representing surplus-value of the capitalists, in department II, must be spent for articles of consumption. But their value exists in articles of consumption worth 1,000, held by the capitalists of department II, which replace the advanced 500v and represent the 500s. Consequently the wages and surplus-value of department II are exchanged within this department for products of this same department. Thereby articles of consumption to the amount of (500v + 500s) II = 1,000, drop out of the total product.
The 1,000v plus 1,000s of department I must likewise be spent for articles of consumption; in other words, for products of department II. Hence they must be exchanged for the remainder of this product equal to the constant capital part, 2,000c. Department II receives in return an equal quantity of means of production, the product of I, in which the value of 1,000v + 1,000s of I is incorporated. Thereby 2,000 IIc and (1,000v +1,000s) I drop out of the calculation.
3) There still remain 4,000 Ic. These consist of means of production which can be used only in department I to replace its consumed constant capital, and are therefore disposed of by mutual exchange between the individual capitalists of I, just as the (500v + 500s) II by an exchange between the labourers and capitalists, or between the individual capitalists of II.” (p 401-2)
The value of 4000 c, in the example above, representing seed, is not created during the year's production, but is pre-existing value, the result of previous year's production, i.e. the production of grain in the previous year. It is merely the case that this value is preserved by the action of concrete labour upon it, and is, thereby, transferred to the value of this year's output, and can, then, equally be withdrawn from it so as to replace the seed for the next year's production. It has no counterpart in revenue.
“This value is equal to the value — appearing anew in the commodity-product I — of the means of production consumed in the creation of this quantity of commodities. This re-appearing value, which was not produced in the process of production of I, but entered into it during the preceding year as constant value, as the given value of its means of production, exists now in the entire part of commodity mass I not absorbed by category II. And the value of this quantity of commodities thus left in the hands of the I capitalists equals two-thirds of the value of their entire annual commodity-product.” (p 426)
This fact is obscured, because of a complex of exchanges for money both within Department I and between I and II. The Department I capitalists, thereby, considered collectively, mutually reproduce the 4000 of constant capital they consume in production, and that leaves 2000 of their total commodity-product, which they exchange with Department II, which replaces their stocks of consumption goods, required for the reproduction of Department I workers and capitalists.
“On the assumption of simple reproduction the total value of the annually produced articles of consumption is therefore equal to the annual value-product, i.e., equal to the total value produced during the year by social labour, and this must be so, because in simple reproduction this entire value is consumed.” (p 429)
And, so, again, the total value of output cannot be equal to revenues, because, in addition to this consumption, there is the question of the demand for and replacement of the 4000 of consumed constant capital in Department I. The value of the consumption goods produced in Department II is 3000, but only 1,000 of that is produced by Department II labour. The other 2000 is the value of Department II constant capital, whose value is preserved and transferred to its output. In the example, it is the 2000 of flour stocks held by Department II. In terms of this year's production, it is replaced by the 2000 of constant capital provided by Department I, in exchange for consumption goods i.e. the intermediate production. But, although, in terms of use value, this has the form of constant capital – which it is for Department II – in value terms, none of it represents constant capital, but represents the new value created by Department I labour, i.e. it consists entirely of Department I (v + s).
“This shows, then, why the value of the product of capitalists II, from the point of view of society, may be resolved into v + s although for these capitalists it is divided into c + v + s. This is so only because IIc is here equal to I(v + s), and because these two components of the social product interchange their bodily forms by exchange, so that after this transformation II exists once more in means of production and I(v + s) in articles of consumption.” (p 429)
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