Marx does not deal with these points, here, just as he does not deal with the fact that commodities sell at prices of production rather than at their exchange-values. These are further elaborations of Marx's theory not required to explain his point against Weston that value is not a function of wages, price rises are not caused by rising wages, and inflation is a monetary phenomenon.
“The surplus value, or that part of the total value of the commodity in which the surplus labour or unpaid labour of the working man is realized, I call profit. The whole of that profit is not pocketed by the employing capitalist. The monopoly of land enables the landlord to take one part of that surplus value, under the name of rent, whether the land is used for agricultural buildings or railways, or for any other productive purpose. On the other hand, the very fact that the possession of the instruments of labour enables the employing capitalist to produce a surplus value, or, what comes to the same, to appropriate to himself a certain amount of unpaid labour, enables the owner of the means of labour, which he lends wholly or partly to the employing capitalist — enables, in one word, the money-lending capitalist to claim for himself under the name of interest another part of that surplus value, so that there remains to the employing capitalist as such only what is called industrial or commercial profit.” (p 66-67)
In fact, in Capital III, Marx calls this “industrial or commercial profit” profit of enterprise. Again, in Capital III, the term “industrial profit” is used to describe the profit produced in the circuit of industrial capital. In that analysis, Marx describes the formation of this average industrial rate of profit, first by examining the sharing out of total surplus value amongst the advanced productive-capital, but he, then, brings in the role of commercial capital, which also operates within the circuit of industrial capital, and so, also, shares in that surplus value, as capital, on a proportional basis.
This separates out this “industrial capital” - productive and commercial capital – from the interest-bearing capital that operates outside the circuit of industrial capital, and so does not share, proportionally, in the total surplus value. It obtains, not profit, but interest. Similarly, landed property exists outside the circuit of industrial capital, and obtains, not profit, but rent. So, rent, interest and profit of enterprise (we could also add tax) all share in the surplus value, produced by productive-capital, and which, first, assumes the form of industrial profit.
Rent, interest, profit of enterprise and taxes are all revenues derived from surplus value, just as wages are a revenue derived from the other part of the new value created by labour. Revenue is the basis of personal consumption by its recipients. The worker requires wages to consume and reproduce themselves, and their labour-power. But the capitalists, landlords, and state functionaries, also, must continue to live, and their consumption (both of necessaries and luxuries) is financed from these revenues.
The largest, and growing, part of consumption, however, is not this personal consumption, and is not financed from revenues. The largest part of consumption is the productive consumption of capital itself, i.e. the reproduction of the constant capital, whose value is transferred to, and reproduced out of the value of the end product. This value creates a revenue for no one, and, as I have set out, elsewhere, does not, therefore, appear in the figures for National Income or GDP. It is bought, not from revenues, but from capital, as Marx describes in Capital II and III.
However, as Marx describes, in Capital III, not all the demand for constant capital, comes from capital, just as not all the revenues go to fund personal consumption. A portion of profit of enterprise – retained profits – goes to directly fund the accumulation of additional capital – both constant and variable-capital. Even where the individual industrial capital (firm) does not retain profit for this purpose, that part of the profit of enterprise, not required for the personal consumption of the functioning capitalists, is thrown into the money market for use by other industrial capitals, which require more funds to finance capital accumulation than available from their own retained profits.
Moreover, other money funds exist for this purpose. Money funds for wear and tear of fixed capital can be used, instead, to buy additional capital; money funds of capitalists, not currently required for personal consumption, can be used for additional productive-consumption; with a more developed banking system, a huge number of small deposits, by workers and the middle-class, can be pooled into sizeable amounts of loanable money-capital to fund capital accumulation. The latter becomes more significant with the development of large pension funds etc.
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