The Circulation of Capital

Abstract

The total process of circulation involves the course of capital through its different moments. The total process is posited as a flow, as a double movement:

Double movement from the circulation of capital as such itself. In the first phase, it ejects itself out of the movement of capital as use value, as commodity, and exchanges itself for money. The commodity … in its presence as use value, its being for consumption … Capital creates articles of consumption, but ejects them from itself in this form, ejects them from its circulation … The commodity which is ejected as such from the circulation of capital loses its character as value and fulfils the role of use value for consumption, as distinct from fulfilling it for production. But in the second phase of circulation, capital exchanges money for commodity… While it presupposes consumption in the first phase, in the second it presupposes production, production for production; for value in the form of the commodity is here taken into the circulation of capital from the outside … as use value for capital itself, use value for its production process.¹