The Process of Circulation of Capital (Capital Vol. II). Karl Marx

paid by the agents of production. And since capitalists who mutually sell and buy do not create either values or products by these transactions, this state of affairs is not changed, if they are enabled or compelled by the expansion of their business to charge others with those transactions.

      In some business, the buyers and sellers get their wages in the form of percentages on the profits. It does not alter the matter to use the phrase that they are paid by the consumer. The consumers can pay only inasmuch as they are themselves instrumental in producing an equivalent in commodities as agents of production or appropriate it out of the product of other agents in production, whether it be by means of legal titles or of personal services.

      There is difference between C—M and M—C, which has nothing to do with the different forms of commodities and money, but arises from the capitalist character of production. Intrinsically, C—M as well as M—C is merely a conversion of a given value out of one form into another. But C'—M' is at the same time a realization of the surplus-value contained in C'. Not so M—C. For this reason the sale is more important than the purchase. M—C is under normal conditions a necessary act for the creation of more value by means of the value contained in it, but it is not the realization of surplus-value; it is the intimation of its production, not its after-effect.

      The form in which a commodity exists, the form of its use-value, prescribes definite limits for the circulation of commodity-capital C'—M'. Use-values are naturally perishable. Hence, if they are not productively or individually consumed within a certain time, in other words, if they are not sold within a certain period, they spoil and thus lose with their use-value also the faculty of being bearers of surplus-value. The capital-value, or eventually the surplus-value, contained in them is lost. The use-values do not remain the bearers of perennial capital-value increasing by the addition of surplus-value, unless they are continually reproduced and replaced by new use-values of the same or of some other order. The sale of the use-values in the form of finished commodities, their transfer to the productive or individual consumption by means of this sale, is the ever recurring requirement for their reproduction. They must change their old use-form within a certain time, in order to continue their existence in a new form. Exchange-value maintains itself only by means of this constant renewal of its substance. The use-values of certain commodities spoil sooner or later; the time between their production and consumption may therefore be long or short; they may retain the form of commodity-capital in phase C—M of the circulation for a shorter or longer term and endure a shorter or a longer time of circulation. The limit of the time of circulation of a certain commodity-capital imposed by the spoiling of the substance of the commodity is the absolute limit of this part of the time of circulation, or of the time of circulation of commodity-capital as such. To the extent that a commodity is perishable, to the extent that it must be sold and consumed as soon as possible after its production, its capacity for removal from its place of production is restricted, the sphere of its circulation is narrowed, its selling market is localized. For this reason a commodity is so much less suited for capitalist production as it is perishable, as its physical composition limits its time of circulation. It is available for this purpose only in thickly populated districts, or to the extent that the improvement of transportation brings places closer together. But the concentration of the production of such articles into a few hands and in a populous district may create a relatively large market even for them, for instance, such as the product of large beer-breweries, dairies, etc.