The Circuit of Industrial Capital

Abstract

Volume I of Capital, which we have now covered, is self-contained and gives primarily a general analysis of capitalism and its process of development. The other two volumes of Capital are devoted both to elaborating and extending this general analysis. For this reason it is appropriate that the beginning of Volume II of Capital should analyse the circuit of industrial capital. This is because it can form the basis for understanding a whole series of capitalist phenomena — distribution, commercial, interest-bearing and fixed capital, the turnover of capital, productive and unproductive labour, and crises — as well as providing an economic structure in which the social relations of production analysed in Volume I can be set.