Whatever the social form of production, labourers and means of production always remain factors of it. But in a state of separation from each other either of these factors can be such only potentially. For production to go on at all they must unite. The specific manner in which this union is accomplished distinguishes the different economic epochs of the structure of society from one another. In the present case, the separation of the free worker from his means of production is the starting-point given, and we have seen how and under what conditions these two elements are united in the hands of the capitalist, namely, as the productive mode of existence of his capital. The actual process which the personal and material creators of commodities enter upon when thus brought together, the process of production, becomes therefore itself a function of capital, the capitalist process of production, the nature of which has been fully analysed in the first book of this work. Every enterprise engaged in commodity production becomes at the same time an enterprise exploiting labour-power. But only the capitalist production of commodities has become an epoch-making mode of exploitation, which, in the course of its historical development, revolutionises, through the organisation of the labour-process and the enormous improvement of technique, the entire structure of society in a manner eclipsing all former epochs.
The means of production and labour-power, in so far as they are forms of existence of advanced capital-value, are distinguished by the different roles assumed by them during the process of production in the creation of value, hence also of surplus-value, into constant and variable capital. Being different components of productive capital they are furthermore distinguished by the fact that the means of production in the possession of the capitalist remain his capital even outside of the process of production, while labour-power becomes the form of existence of an individual capital only within this process. Whereas labour-power is a commodity only in the hands of its seller, the wage-labourer, it becomes capital only in the hands of its buyer, the capitalist who acquires the temporary use of it.
The means of production do not become the material forms of productive capital, or productive capital, until labour-power, the personal form of existence of productive capital, is capable of being embodied in them.
Human labour-power is by nature no more capital than by means of production.
They acquire this specific social character only under definite, historically developed conditions, just as only under such conditions the character of money is stamped upon precious metals, or that of money-capital upon money.
Productive capital, in performing its functions, consumes its own component parts for the purpose of transforming them into a mass of products of a higher value. Since labour-power acts merely as one of its organs, the excess of the product's value engendered by its surplus-labour over and above the value of productive capital's constituent elements is also the fruit of capital. The surplus-labour of labour-power is the gratuitous labour performed for capital and thus forms surplus-value for the capitalist, a value which costs him no equivalent return. The product is therefore not only a commodity, but a commodity pregnant with surplus-value. Its value is equal to P + s, that is to say equal to the value of the productive capital P consumed in the production of the commodity plus the surplus values created by it. Let us assume that this commodity consists of 10,000lbs. of yarn, and that means of production worth £372 and labour power worth £50 were consumed in the fabrication of this quantity of yarn. During the process of spinning, the spinners transmitted to the yarn the value of the means of production consumed by their labour, amounting to £372, and at the same time they created, in proportion with the labour-power expended by them, new value to the amount of, say, £128.
The 10,000 lbs. of yarn therefore represent a value of £500.
III. THIRD STAGE. C'---M'
Commodities become commodity-capital as a functional form of existence -- stemming directly from the process of production itself --of capital-value which has already produced surplus-value. If the production of commodities were carried on capitalistically throughout society, all commodities would be elements of commodity-capital from the outset, whether they were crude iron, Brussels lace, sulphuric acid or cigars. The problem of what kinds of commodities, is one of the self-created lovely ills of scholastic political economy.
Capital in the form of commodities has to perform the function of commodities. The articles of which capital is composed are produced especially for the market and must be sold, transformed into money, hence go through the process C---M.
Suppose the commodity of the capitalist to consist of 10,000 lbs.
of cotton yarn. If £372 represent the value of the means of production consumed in the spinning process, and new value to the amount of £128has been created, the yarn has a value of £500, which is expressed in its price of the same amount. Suppose further that this price is realised by the sale C---M. What is it that makes of this simple act of all commodity circulation at the same time a capital-function? No change that takes place inside of it, neither in the use-character of the commodity -- for it passes into the hands of the buyer as an object of use -- nor in its value, for this value has not experienced any change of magnitude, but only of form.