Mass production can have no other direct buyer, apart from other industrial capitalists, than the wholesaler. Within certain limits, the process of reproduction may take place on the same or on an increased scale even when the commodities expelled from it did not really enter individual or productive consumption. The consumption of commodities is not included in the circuit of the capital from which they originated. For instance, as soon as the yarn is sold the circuit of the capital value represented by the yarn may begin anew, regardless of what may next become of the sold yarn. So long as the product is sold, everything is taking its regular course from the standpoint of the capitalist producer. The circuit of capital-value he is identified with is not interrupted. And if this process is expanded -- which includes increased productive consumption of the means of production -- this reproduction of capital may be accompanied by increased individual consumption (hence demand) on the part of the labourers, since this process is initiated and effected by productive consumption. Thus the production of surplus-value, and with it the individual consumption of the capitalist, may increase, the entire process of reproduction may be in a flourishing condition, and yet a large part of the commodities may have entered into consumption only apparently, while in reality they may still remain unsold in the hands of dealers, may in fact still be lying in the market. Now one stream of commodities follows another, and finally it is discovered that the previous streams had been absorbed only apparently by consumption.
The commodity-capitals compete with one another for a place in the market.
Late-comers, to sell at all, sell at lower prices. The former streams have not yet been disposed of when payment for them falls due. Their owners must declare their insolvency or sell at any price to meet to meet their obligations. This sale has nothing whatever to do with the actual state of the demand. It only concerns the demand for payment , the pressing necessity of transforming commodities into money. Then a crisis breaks out. It becomes visible not in the direct decrease of consumer demand, the demand for individual consumption, but in the decrease of exchanges of capital for capital, of the reproductive process of capital.
If the commodities MP and L into which M is transformed to perform its function of money-capital, of capital-value destined to be retransformed into productive capital -- if those commodities are to be bought or paid for on different terms, so that M---C represents a series of purchases and payments, then a part of M performs the act M---C, while another part persists in the form of money and does not serve to perform simultaneous or successive acts of M---C until such time as the conditions of this process itself may determine. This part is only temporarily withheld from circulation, in order to go into action, perform its function, in due time. This storing of it is then in its turn a function determined by its circulation and intended for circulation. Its existence as a fund for purchase and payment, the suspension of its movement, the interrupted state of its circulation, will then constitute a state in which money exercises one of its functions as money-capital. As money-capital; for in this case the money temporarily remaining at rest is itself a part of money-capital M (of M' minus m, equal to M), of that portion of the value of commodity-capital which is equal to P, to that value of productive capital from which the circuit starts.
On the other hand all money withdrawn from circulation has the form of a hoard. Money in the form of a hoard therefore becomes here a function of money-capital, just as in M---C the function of money as a means of purchase or payment becomes a function of money-capital. This is so because capital-value exists here in the form of money, because the money state here is a state in which industrial capital finds itself at one of its stages and which is prescribed by the interconnections within the circuit.
At the same time it is here proved true once more that money-capital within the circuit of industrial capital performs no other functions than those of money and that these money-functions assume the significance of capital-functions only by virtue of their interconnections with the other stages of this circuit.
The representation of M' as a relation of m to M, as a capital-relation, is not directly a function of money-capital but of commodity-capital C', which in its turn, as a relation of c and C, expresses but the result of the process of production, of the self-expansion of capital-value which took place in it.
If the continuation of the process of circulation meets with obstacles, so that M must suspend its function M---C on account of external circumstances, such as the conditions of the market, etc., and if it therefore remains for a shorter or longer time in its money-form, then we have once more money in the form of a hoard, which happens also in ****** commodity circulation whenever the transition from C---M to M---C is interrupted by external circumstances. It is an involuntary formation of a hoard. In the case at hand money has the form of fallow, latent money-capital. But we will not discuss this point any further for the present.
In either case however persistence of capital in its money state appears as the result of interrupted movement, no matter whether this is expedient or inexpedient, voluntary or involuntary, in accordance with its functions or contrary to them.
