- Capitalism and Alternatives -

merchants' capital

Posted by: Chuck ( Virginia ) on October 13, 1999 at 15:51:49:

In Reply to: Watch the C posted by Stoller on October 11, 1999 at 12:33:39:

: Surplus value is not a capitalist invention. It existed then.

Right. But wasn't this really surplus produce extraction (e.g. rent, taxes, interest, etc.)? I always thought surplus value extraction was peculiar to the predominance of wage labor and generalized commodity production.

: The value is always in the production. It cannot be in the circulation. See Marx's refutation of 'Say's Law.'

Right again. And yet Marx says in Capital (Vol. III, p.329): "Since the movement of merchant's capital is M-C-M', the merchant's profit is made, first, in acts which occur only within the circulation process, hence in the two acts of buying and selling; and, secondly, it is realised in the last act, the sale." Needless to say, old Charlie's got me on the ropes again.



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