at.[1] This boundless greed after riches, this passionate chase after exchange-value,[2] is common to the capitalist and the miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser. The never-ending augmentation of exchange-value, which the miser strives after, by seeking to save[3] his money from circulation, is attained by the more acute capitalist, by constantly throwing it afresh into circulation.[4]
The independent form, i. e., the money-form, which the value of commodities assumes in the case of simple circulation, serves only one purpose, namely, their exchange, and vanishes in the final result of the movement. On the other hand, in the circulation M—C—M, both the money and the commodity represent only different modes, of existence of value itself, the money its general mode, and the commodity its particular, or, so to say, disguised mode.[5] It is constantly changing from one form to the other without thereby becoming lost, and thus assumes an automatically active character. If now we take in turn each of the two different forms which self-expanding value successively assumes in the course of its life, we then arrive at these two propositions: Capital is money: Capital is commodities.[6] In truth, however, value is here the active factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off surplus-value from itself; the original value, in other words,
- ↑ "Il mercante non conta quasi per niente il lucro fatto, ma mira sempre al futuro." (A. Genovesi, Lezioni di Economia Civile, 1765), Custodi's edit, of Italian Economists. Parte Moderna t. xiii. p. 139.)
- ↑ "The inextinguishable passion for gain, the auri sacra fames, will always lead capitalists," (MacCulloch: "The principles of Polit. Econ." London, 1830, p. 179.) This view, of course, does not prevent the same MacCulloch and others of his kidney, when in theoretical difficulties, such, for example, as the question of overproduction, from transforming the same capitalist into a moral citizen, whose sole concern is for use-values, and who even developes an insatiable hunger for boots, hats, eggs, calico, and other extremely familiar sorts of use-values.
- ↑ Σώζειν is a characteristic Greek expression for hoarding. So in English to save has the same two meanings: sauver and épargner.
- ↑ "Questo infinito che le cose non hanno in progresso, hanno in giro." (Galiani.)
- ↑ "Ce n'est pas la matière qui fait le capital, mais la valeur de ces matières." (J. B. Say: "Traité de l'Econ. Polit," Sème. ed. Paris, 1817, t. l., p. 428.)
- ↑ "Currency (I) employed in producing articles … is capital," (MacLeod: "The Theory and Practice of Banking." London, 1855, v, 1., ch. i., p. 55.) "Capital is commodities." (James Mill: "Elements of Pol. Econ." Lond., 1821, p. 74.)
