The transformation of a sum of money into means of production and labour-power is the first phase of the movement undergone by the quantum of value which is going to function as capital. It takes place in the market, within the sphere of circulation. The second phase of the movement, the process of production, is complete as soon as the means of production have been converted into commodities whose value exceeds that of their component parts, and therefore contains the capital originally advanced plus a surplus value. The commodities must then be thrown back into the sphere of circulation. They must be sold, their value must be realized in money, this money must be transformed once again into capital, and so on, again and again. This cycle, in which the same phases are continually gone through in succession, forms the circulation of capital. (Location 119)
If, for example, nobody wants, needs or desires a particular commodity then it has no value no matter how much labour time was expended in its production. (Location 275)
Note: Not true? It may be that it doesnt have the value asked for?
Labour may improve its wages and living conditions through class struggles. Conversely, counter-attacks by an organised capitalist class may reduce the value of labour power. But if wage goods (the goods labourers require to survive and reproduce) are getting cheaper (e.g. through cheap imports and technological changes) then a declining value share can be compatible with a rising material standard of living. This has been a key feature of recent capitalist history. (Location 296)
But he tends to dismiss them on the grounds that if everyone invests in land rents or merchant capitalist activities and no one invests in value production, then the rate of return on the latter will soar until capital returns to what Marx considers its rightful vital functions. (Location 396)
Note: Wouldnt the capital stock just degrade
The effect is to exacerbate the long-run stagnation in value production (Location 403)
Note: Yes -see above
But its expansion now encompasses not only the quest for surplus value but the added necessity to redeem the debts that are piling up within the distributive network that is required for capital circulation to function effectively. (Location 407)
The most obvious driving force rests on the fact that no rational money capitalist would undertake all the effort and suffer all the aggravations that attach to organising production of commodities and surplus value in the way they do unless they ended up with more money at the end of the process of valorisation than they had at the beginning. (Location 418)
Through the creation of indebtedness, which includes by the way the creation of money by the banks independent entirely of value production, the field of distribution internalises a tremendous incentive to perpetuate circulation through valorisation. It is not impossible to say that the incentive to redeem debts plays just as important a role in impelling future value production as the search for profit. Debts are claims upon future value production and, as such, foreclose upon the future of valorisation. Failure to redeem debts initiates the mother of all crises to the system of capital flow. (Location 448)
Capitalists pay labourers the value of their labour power and then use them to produce more value than they themselves receive from selling their labour power for a certain block of time. (Location 483)
Speed-up in production at some point requires speed-up in consumption (hence the importance of fashion and planned obsolescence). (Location 577)
At the same time, greater reliance on fixed capital investments to promote rising productivity slows down the turnover time of some investments. (Location 578)
Note: Cloud?
The weakening of the relative power of workers’ effective demand over the past forty years of neoliberalism has contributed to the secular stagnation now being experienced in many parts of the capitalist world. (Location 598)
The redistribution of surplus value favours capital-intensive industries which employ fewer labourers and penalises labour-intensive industries where much surplus value is produced. In the absence of any countervailing tendencies, the basis for surplus value production (the employment of labourers) tends to diminish. (Location 614)
They play a key role in accelerating the equalisation of the rate of profit, extracting funds from those working in low profit sectors of the economy and redirecting them to wherever the rate of profit is higher. (Location 706)
