Friday 17 May 2024

Wage-Labour and Capital - Section IV - Part 1 of 8

Capital is not a thing, but a social relation. It is a social relation in which wage-labour produces surplus value, which is appropriated by capital, and provides the money profits that are the main source of the additional money-capital (money supply as against currency supply/money tokens) required to accumulate additional capital. 

A portion of those profits goes to fund the unproductive/personal consumption of the functioning capitalists, part goes to fund interest/dividend payments to money-lending capitalists (banks, bond holders, share holders), part goes to fund rent payments to landlords, and part goes to fund taxes to the capitalist state required for its administration, so that it can defend the interests and continued power of the ruling class.

A part of these revenue payments to money-capitalists and landlords is required for their own personal consumption, but a further part can also be thrown back into the money market to fund further capital accumulation. Likewise, as seen over the last 40 years, it may, instead, be pumped into demand for property and financial assets, thereby, inflating asset price bubbles. Other sources of new money-capital, as Marx describes, in Capital II, comes from the fact that, in the process of circulation, money reserves are created, which can be mobilised.

Companies set aside amortisation funds, to cover the replacement of worn out fixed capital. A £1,000 machine, with a lifespan of 10 years, transfers £100 a year to output. Each year, this £100, returned to the company from the same of that output, is placed into a fund to replace the machine, but is only needed at the end of ten years, for that purpose. So, the company can, at any point, use this money reserve, instead, to fund capital accumulation, for example, to buy additional fixed capital, and/or materials and labour-power. In Capital II, Marx describes a number of other such reserves, which can be used to provide additional money-capital.

In Capital III, he also describes another such source, which is the money reserves/savings of workers and the middle class. Wages paid to workers, and revenues received by the middle-class, do not get immediately spent for consumption. That might be because of consumption taking place in the week or month following receipt of such revenues, or it may be because a part of the revenues go into insurance funds, in order to cover potential future consumption, such as as social insurance funds for retirement, health and social care, unemployment and so on.

It makes no economic difference whether these social insurance funds are operated by the state, financial institutions, or by individuals themselves, except that the latter will always hold larger sums for protection than is required by the state or large institutions. All of these reserve funds can be mobilised by the financial system to fund capital accumulation, or, again, may be used unproductively and destructively, simply to speculate in the purchase of existing property and financial assets, inflating asset price bubbles, and constraining real capital accumulation and growth.

As well as producing the profits that are the source of this additional money-capital, the workers also produce its physical equivalent, the surplus product, comprising additional machines, and other fixed capital, the additional materials and so on, required to expand production. They also provide the additional labour-power from the natural growth of the working population.


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