These costs of circulation differ from those mentioned under I by the fact that they enter to a certain extent into the value of the commodities, i.e., they increase the prices of commodities. At all events the capital and labour-power which serve the need of preserving and storing the commodity-supply are withdrawn from the direct process of production. On the other hand the capitals thus employed, including labour-power as a constituent of capital, must be replaced out of the social product. Their expenditure has therefore the effect of diminishing the productive power of labour, so that a greater amount of capital and labour is required to obtain a particular useful effect. They are unproductive costs .
As the costs of circulation necessitated by the formation of a commodity-supply are due merely to the time required for the conversion of existing values from the commodity-form into the money-form, hence merely to the particular social form of the production process (i.e., are due only to the fact that the product is brought forth as a commodity and must therefore undergo the transformation into money), these costs completely share the character of the circulation costs enumerated under I. On the other hand the value of the commodities is here preserved or increased only because the use-value, the product itself, is placed in definite material conditions which cost capital outlay and is subjected to operations which bring additional labour to bear on the use-values. However the computation of the values of commodities, the book-keeping incidental to this process, the transactions of purchase and sale, do not affect the use-value in which the commodity-value exists. They have to do only with the form of the commodity-value.
Although in the case submitted [i.e., Corbet's calculations given in Footnote 14. -- Ed. ] the costs of forming a supply (which is here done involuntarily)arise only from a delay in the change of form and from its necessity, still these costs differ from those mentioned under I, in that their purpose is not a change in the form of the value, but the preservation of the value existing in the commodity as a product, a utility, and which cannot be preserved in any other way than by preserving the product, the use-value, itself. The use-value is neither raised nor increased here; on the contrary, it diminishes. But its diminution is restricted and it is preserved. Neither is the advanced value contained in the commodity increased here; but new labour, materialised and living, is added.
We have now to investigate furthermore to what extent these costs arise from the peculiar nature of commodity production in general and from commodity production in its general, absolute form, i.e., capitalist commodity production; and to what extent on the other hand they are common to all social production and merely assume a special shape, a special form of appearance, in capitalist production.
Adam Smith entertained the splendid notion that the formation of a supply was a phenomenon peculiar to capitalist production. [15] More recent economists, for instance Lalor, insist on the contrary that it declines with the development of capitalist production. [See: J. Lalor, Money and Morals: A Book for the Times, London, 1852, pp. 43-44. -- Ed .]
Sismondi even regards it as one of the drawbacks of the latter. [See: J.C.L.
Sismonde de Sismondi, Etudes sur l`èconomie politique, Tome I. Bruxelles, 1837, p. 49, etc. -- Ed .]
As a matter of fact, supplies exist in three forms: in the form of productive capital, in the form a fund for individual consumption, and in the form of a commodity-supply or commodity-capital. The supply in one form decreases relatively when it increases in another, although its quantity may increase absolutely in all three forms simultaneously.
It is plain from the outset that wherever production is carried on for the direct satisfaction of the needs of the producer and only to a minor extent for exchange or sale, hence where the social product does not assume the form of commodities at all or only to a rather small degree, the supply in the form of commodities, or commodity-supply, forms only a small and insignificant part of wealth. But here the consumption-fund is relatively large, especially that of the means of subsistence proper.
One need but take a look at old-fashioned peasant economy. There the overwhelming part of the product is transformed directly into supplies of means of production or means of subsistence, without becoming supplies of commodities, for the very reason that it remains in the hands of its owner. It does not assume the form of a commodity-supply and for this reason Adam Smith declares that there is no supply in societies based on this mode of production.
He confuses the form of the supply with the supply itself and believes that society hitherto lived from hand to mouth or trusted to the hap of the morrow. [16] This is a naive misunderstanding.
A supply in the form of productive capital exists in the shape of means of production, which already are in the process of production or at least in the hands of the producer, hence latently already in the process of production. It was seen previously that with the development of the productivity of labour and therefore also with the development of the capitalist mode of production -- there is a steady increase in the mass of means of production (buildings, machinery, etc.) which are embodied once and for all in the process in the form of instruments of labour, and perform with steady repetition their function in it for a longer or shorter time. It was also observed that this increase is at the same time the premise and consequence of the development of the social productive power of labour.
The growth, not only absolute but relative, of wealth in this form (cf.
