Marx's Capital Translated For The 21st Century (Volume Book 3) [Kindle Edition]

This is the third volume in this 21st Century Translation of Marx's Capital. Volume I dealt with the basic building blocks of Marx's Capital, including the analysis of the commodity, value, exchange-value, money and capital at the level of "many capitals". Volume II examined the circulation of capital, money and commodities, initially at the level of "many capitals", and then at the level of "capital in general", as it examined the process of social reproduction. This volume starts from an analysis of "capital in general", and its division into productive-capital, merchant capital and money capital, as well as analysing the foundations of fictitious capital, i.e. of interest-bearing capital, and landed property.

In doing so, it demonstrates for the first time, the objective basis of the mass and rate of profit, and on the basis of it, again for the first time explains why an average rate of profit is established, via competition, and why the existence of this average rate of profit, and competition leads to commodities exchanging no longer at their exchange-values, but at prices of production, i.e. their cost of production plus this average profit. On this basis, it also explains the way the rate of turnover of capital creates the foundation of an annual rate of profit, which is itself the basis for the average annual rate of profit, which determines these prices of production, and explains how competition, thereby acts to allocate capital accordingly throughout the economy, moving it away from those spheres where the annual rate of profit is lower than average, and towards those spheres where it is higher than average.

By establishing this price of production, as separate from the exchange value of commodities, Marx is thereby also enabled to show why, wherever competition is unable to affect this movement, so as to eliminate surplus profits, for example where there is some form of monopoly, commodities can be sold at their exchange-value, but above their price of production, and in these cases, a rent arises, equal to this surplus profit. That is the case with landed property, where existing land owners are able to demand a rent for the use of their land, and thereby limit the migration of capital into that sphere. Capital is only then invested in these spheres where the prices it is able to obtain for its output, i.e. their exchange-value, are high enough to be able to pay this rent, and still be able to obtain the average rate of profit. This occurs in agriculture, Marx says because the level of productivity is relatively lower than in industry, it employs relatively more labour to capital, and the consequence is that it produces more surplus value, and a higher than average rate of profit.

The identification of prices of production, enables marx to demonstrate how, under capitalism, therefore, where this competition is able to operate, each capital obtains this average rate of profit, irrespective of how much surplus value it creates. The ability to produce profit, becomes a use value of capital. This use value of being able to produce the average rate of profit, can then be sold in the market by all those who own capital, to those who wish to apply capital productively. The price of this capital, is then the rate of interest, and is itself determined by the interaction of the suppliers of capital with those that demand it. This is at odds with those including today's central banks, who believe that the rate of interest is a price of money rather than capital.

In identifying the source of profits, interest and rent, Marx has also identified the objective basis of the revenues of the different classes, and class fractions in society, and the different forms of property on which they rest. It is the basis upon which to examine the great social interactions, which take place between them.