Created Τετάρτη 03 Ιανουαρίου 2024
/Interest /is therefore nothing but a part of the profit (which, in its
turn, is itself nothing but surplus value, unpaid labour), which the
industrial capitalist pays to the owner of the borrowed capital with
which he "works", either exclusively or partially. Interest is a part of
profit—of surplus value—which, established as a special category, is
separated from the total profit under its own name, a separation which
is by no means based on its origin, but only on the manner in which it
is /paid out /or appropriated. Instead of being appropriated by the
industrial capitalist himself—although he is the person who at first
holds the whole surplus value in his hands no matter how it may be
distributed between himself and other people under the names of rent,
industrial profit and interest—this part of the profit is deducted by
the industrial capitalist from his own revenue and paid to the owner of
capital.
If the rate of profit is given, then the relative level of the rate of
interest depends on the ratio in which profit is divided between
interest and industrial profit. If the ratio of this division is given,
then the absolute level of the rate of interest (that is, the ratio of
interest to capital) depends on the rate of profit. It is not intended
to investigate here how this ratio is determined. This belongs to the
analysis of the real movement of capital, i.e. of capitals, while we are
concerned here with the general forms of capital.
The formation of interest-bearing capital, its separation from
industrial capital, is a /necessary /product of the development of
industrial capital, of the capitalist mode of production itself. <nb/>Money
(a sum of value, which is always convertible into the conditions of
production) or the conditions of production into which it can be
converted at any time and of which it is only the converted form—money
employed as capital, commands a definite quantity of other people's
labour, more labour than it itself contains. It not only preserves its
value in exchange with labour, but increases it, posits surplus value.
The value of money or of commodities as /capital /is not determined by
the value they possess as money or as commodities, but by the amount of
surplus value which they "produce" for their owners. The product of
capital is profit. On the basis of capitalist production, whether money is
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spent as money or as capital depends only on the different ways in which
money is /employed. /Money (a commodity) /in itself /is capital on the
basis of capitalist production (just as /labour capacity in itself /is
labour) since, 1) it can be converted into the conditions of production
and is, as it exists, only an abstract expression of them, their
existence as /value/; and 2) the material elements of wealth in
themselves possess the property of being capital because their
opposite—wage labour, which turns them into capital—is present as the
basis for social production. [vol. 32, pp. 469-70] NB