If equivalents are exchanged, no surplus-value results, and if non-equivalents are exchanged, still no surplus-value.[1] Circulation, or the exchange of commodities, begets no value.[2]
The reason is now therefore plain why, in analysing the standard form of capital, the form under which it determines the economical organisation of modern society, we entirely left out of consideration its most popular, and, so to say, antediluvian forms, merchants' capital and money-lenders' capital.
The circuit M—C—M', buying in order to sell dearer, is seen most clearly in genuine merchants' capital. But the movement takes place entirely within the sphere of circulation. Since, however, it is impossible, by circulation alone, to account for the conversion of money into capital, for the formation of surplus-value, it would appear, that merchants' capital is an impossibility, so long as equivalents are exchanged;[3] that, therefore, it can only have its origin in the twofold advantage gained, over both the selling and the buying producers, by the merchant who parasitically shoves himself in between them. It is in this sense that Franklin says, "war is robbery, commerce is generally cheating."[4] If the transformation of merchants' money into capital is to be explained otherwise than by the producers being simply cheated, a long series of intermediate steps would be necessary, which, at present, when
- ↑ "L'echange qui se fait de deux valeurs égales n'augmente ni ne diminue la masse des valeurs subsistantes dans la société. L'échange de deux valeurs inégales … ne change rien non plus à la somme des valeurs sociales, bien qu'il ajoute à la fortune de l'un ce pu'il ôte de la fortune de l'autre." (J. B. Say, l. c. t. I., pp., 344, 345.) Say, not in the least troubled as to the consequences of this statement, borrows it, almost word for word, from the Physiocrats. The following example will shew how Monsieur Say turned to account the writings of the Physiocrats, in his day quite forgotten, for the purpose of expanding the "value" of his own. His most celebrated saying, "On n'achète des produits qu'avec des produits" (l. c., t. II., p. 438) runs as follows in the original physiocratic work; "Les productions ne se paient qu'avec des productions." ("Le Trosne," l. c, p. 899.)
- ↑ "Exchange confers no value at all upon products." (F. Wayland: "The Elements of Political Economy." Boston, 1853, p. 168.)
- ↑ Under the rule of invariable equivalents commerce would be impossible. (G. Opdyke: "A Treatise on Polit Economy." New York, 1851, p. 66–69.) "The difference between real value and exchange-value is based upon this fact, namely, that the value of a thing is different from the so called equivalent given for it in trade, i.e., that this equivalent is no equivalent." (F. Engels, l. c. p. 96.)
- ↑ Benjamin Franklin: Works, Vol. II. edit. Sparks in "Positions to be examined concerning National Wealth," p. 376.
