Under capitalism, the labourers are no longer independent commodity producers, per se. The only commodity they produce, and are able to sell, is their labour-power, itself. They produce their labour-power by continually reproducing themselves as labourers, via the consumption of other commodities. Unlike the slave, however, they do enter the market themselves, freely, as sellers of their commodity, labour-power, and, also, as buyers of other commodities/wage goods. As sellers of labour-power, they sell it at its value, i.e. the value of the commodities they must consume for its reproduction, which is equal to 8 hours labour. As buyers of commodities, and, increasingly, as the most numerous buyers of commodities, they must, also, value those commodities on the basis of their social cost of production, i.e. the 10 hours labour required for their reproduction. It is that value which, then, forms the basis of the exchange-value/prices of commodities that all consumers must pay.
But, the sellers of all these other commodities, i.e. capitalists, like the slave owners, do not expend 10 hours of labour/value on their production. Like the slave owners (if we set aside the cost of constant capital) the capitalists private cost of production is only equal to 8 hours, i.e. what they pay in wages. The surplus labour, therefore, takes the form of a surplus product, and of a surplus value, in the hands of capital. Capital realises that surplus value not by selling these commodities above their value, but by selling them, in aggregate, at their value/social cost of production, a cost of production, which is greater than their own, private cost of production.
The productive-capitalist, however, as described earlier, does not sell commodities at their value – leaving aside the question of the transformation of values into prices of production. The productive-capitalist sells commodities to the merchant capitalist at prices below their value, because, in doing so, they release themselves – and their capital – from the costs of marketing and selling. The merchants, by specialising in this function reduce the costs of selling, and so increase the mass of realised profits, and, thereby, the rate of profit. They, also, facilitate a faster rate of turnover of capital, which, thereby, raises the annual rate of profit. Once, again, the merchant's do not sell commodities above their value, in aggregate, but at their value, their profit deriving from the difference between that value and the price they pay the productive-capitalists.
Similarly, other forms of commercial capital, such as money-dealers, specialise in undertaking other functions required for the realisation of the value of commodities. They act to pay suppliers, and collect payments from buyers, which becomes more significant in the case of international trade. As Marx and Engels describe, in Capital III, when companies use Bills of Exchange for their transactions one to another, commercial credit, they, can, also, hand over what amounts to a portion of the value of commodities to the bill broker, who provides payment to the seller earlier than would have been the case.
“Put in a rational way, the question is, how is surplus-value transformed into its subforms: profit, interest, merchants' profit, ground-rent, and so forth?” (p 273)
Marx sets that out, in detail, in Volume III, as well as in Theories of Surplus Value. But, Engels says, if Duhring just read Volume I more closely he would see the answer.
“In addition to the passages already quoted, he would see, for example on p. 323, that according to Marx the immanent laws of capitalist production assert themselves in the external movements of masses of capital as coercive laws of competition, and in this form are brought home to the consciousness of the individual capitalist as the directing motives of his operations...” (p 273-4)
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