At this stage, a serious error of Engels has to be mentioned. Marx wanted
to begin his seventh chapter, “Revenues (Income) and their Sources,” with
“1) The Trinity Formula.” Engels believed he had found three independent
fragments concerning this point, two smaller ones which he labelled I and
II, and a longer one, labelled III. This last fragment also had a gap, which
Engels pointed out to the readers. As Larissa Miskewitsch and Witali
Wygodski (1985) managed to show after an exact analysis of the
manuscript even before the MEGA volume was published, these are not
three independent fragments: The fragments labelled I and II by Engels
form a continuous text which exactly fills the gap in fragment III.
Vulgar economics actually does nothing more than interpret, systematize and turn into apologetics
the notions of agents trapped within bourgeois relations of production. So it should not surprise us
that precisely in the estranged form of appearance of economic relations that involves these prima
facie absurd and complete contradictions - and all science would be superfluous if the form of
appearance of things directly coincided with their essence - that precisely here vulgar economics
feels completely at home, these relationships appearing all the more self-evident to it, the more
their inner connections remain hidden, even though they are comprehensible to the popular mind.
Thus it does not have the slightest suspicion that.the trinity from which it proceeds: land rent,
capital-interest, labour-wages or price of labour, consists of a conflation of three things which is
primafacie illegitimate. First we have the use-value land, which has no value, and the exchange
value rent; here, then, a social relation, conceived as a thing, is placed in a relationship of
proportion with nature ; i.e. two incom mensurable magnitudes are supposed to have a
proportionate ratio. Then capital-interest. Ifcapital is conceived as a certain sum ofvalue with its
independent expression in money, it is prima facie nonsense that a value should have more value
than it is worth. This form capital-interest is precisely the form in which any mediation disappears,
and capital is reduced to its most general formula, but for this reason also it is a form that is absurd
and inexplicable in its own terms. This is the very reason why the vulgar economist prefers the
formula capital-interest, with its occult quality of a value that is to be unequal to itself, to the
formula capital-profit, as here we already get somewhat nearer to the actual capital-relation. Then
again, disturbed by the feeling that 4 is not 5 and hence 100 shillings cannot possibly be 110
shillings, he flees from capital as,salue to the material substance of the capital; to its use-value as
one of.labour's conditions of pro duction, i.e. machinery, raw material, etc. It is then possible,
instead of the incomprehensible first relationship in which 4 5,
=
_
to construct this time a completely incommensurable relationship 956
1
between a use-value, a thing, on the one hand, and a specific social relation of production, surplusvalue, on the other; as in the case of landed property. As soon as this incommensurability is
attained, everything becomes clear to the vulgar economist, and he feels no need for any further
reflection. For he has precisely reached what is ' rational ' to the bourgeois mind. Finally, labour
wages, the price of labour, is an expression, as shown in Volume 1 , * which prima facie
contradicts the concept of value and equally therefore that of price, this being in general only a
specific expression of value ; and ' price of labour ' is just as irrational as a yellow logarithm. The
vulgar economist, though, is completely satisfied here, since he has now reached the profound
insight ofthe bourgeois that he pays money for labour, and the very contra diction between this
,
formula and the concept of value relieves him from the obligation of understanding the latter.
*
We have seen how the capitalist process of production is a historically specific form of the social
production process in general. This last is both a production process of the material conditions of
existence for human life, and a process, proceeding i� specific economic and historical relations of
production, that produces and reproduces these relations of production themselves, and with them
the bearers of this process, their material conditions of existence, and their mutual relationships, i.e.
the specific economic form of their society. For the totality of these relation ships which the bearers
of this production have towards nature and one another, the relationships in which they produce, is
precisely society, viewed according to its economic structure. Like all its forerunners, the capitalist
production process proceeds under specific material'conditions, which are however also the bearers
of specific social relations which the individuals enter into in the process of reproducing their life.
Those conditions, like these social relations, are on the one hand the presuppositions ()f the
capitalist production process, on the other its results ' and creations ; they are both produced by it
and reproduced by it. We also saw that capital, in the social production process appropriate 957
to it - and the capitalist is simply personified capital, functioning in the production process simply
as the bearer of capital - pumps out a certain specific quantum of surplus labour from the direct
producers or workerS', surplus labour that it receives without an equivalent and which by its very
nature always remains forced labour, however much it might appear as the result of free contractual
agreement. This surplus labour is expressed in a surplus-value, and this surplus-value exists in a
surplus product. Surplus labour in some form must always remain, as labour beyond the extent of
given needs. It is just that in the capitalist, as in the slave system, etc., it has an antagonistic form
2
and its obverse side is pure idleness on the part of one section of society. A certain quantum of
surplus labour is required as insurance
against accidents and for the progressive extension of the repro duction process that is needed to
keep pace with the development of needs and the progress of population. It is one of the civilizing
aspects of capital that it extorts this surplus labour in a manner and in conditions that are more
advantageous to social relations and to the creation of elements for a new and higher formation
�
than was the case under the earlier forms of slavery; serfdom, etc. A certain quantum of surplus
labour is required as insurance against accidents and for the progressive extension of the repro
duction process that is needed to keep pace with the development of needs and the progress of
population. It is one of the civilizing aspects of capital that it extorts this surplus labour in a manner
and in conditions that are more advantageous to social relations and to the creation of elements
�
for a new and higher formation than was the case under the earlier forms of slavery; serfdom, etc.
Thus on the one hand it leads towards a stage at which compulsion and the monopolization of
social development (with its material and intellectual advantages) by one section of society at the
expense of another disappears ; on the other hand it creates the material means and the nucleus
for relations that permit this surplus labour to be combined, in a higher form of society, with a
greater reduction of the overall time devoted to material labour. For, according to the development
of labour productivity, surplus labour can be great when the total working day is short and relatively
small when the total working day is long. If the necessary labour-time is 3 hours and surplus labour
also 3 hours, the total working day is 6 hours and the rate' of surplus labour 1 00 per cent. If the
necessary labour is 9 hours and the surplus labour 3 hours, the total working day is 12 hours and
the rate of surplus labour only 33-}- per cent. It then depends on the productivity of labour how
much use-value is produced in a given time, and also therefore in a given surplus labour-time. The
real wealth of society and the possibility of a constant expansion of its reproduction process does
not depend on the length of surplus labour but rather on its productivity and on the more or less
plentiful conditions of production in which it is performed. The realm of freedom really 958
begi,ns only where labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends; it lies by its very
nature beyond the sphere of material production proper. Just as the savage must wrestle with
nature to satisfy his needs, to maintain and reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must
do so in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. This realm of natural
necessity expands with his development, because his needs do too ; but the productive forces to
satisfy these expand at the same time. Freedom, in this sphere, can consist only in this, that
socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with
nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it
as a blind power ; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most
worthy and appropriate for their human nature. But this always remains a realm of necessity. The
true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an end in itself, begins beyond it,
though it can only flourish with this realm of necessity as its basis. The reduction of the working day
is the basic prerequisite.
In capitalist society, this surplus-value or surplus product is divided among the capitalists
as dividends in proportion to the quota of social capital that belongs to each. (If we ignore
accidental fluctuations in the distribution and consider simply the law govern ing them, their
regulating limits.) In this form, surplus-value appears as the average profit that accrues to capital, an
3
average profit that is divided again into profit of enterprise and interest and can accrue under these
two categories to different sorts of capitalist. This appropriation and distribution of surplus-value or
surplus product by capital, however, meets with a barrier in landed property. Just as the functioning
capitalist pumps out surplus labour from the worker, and thus surplus-value and surplus product in
the form of profit, so the landowner pumps out a part of this surplus-value or surplus profit in turn
from the capitalist in the form of rent, according to the laws developed earlier.
If we speak here therefore of profit as the share of surplus,.value accruing to capital, what
we mean is an average profit (equalto profit of enterprise plus interest) that is already less than the
total profit by the deduction of rent; the deduction of rent is pre supposed. Capital-profit (profit of
enterprise plus interest) and ground-rent are thus nothing but particular components of the surplusvalue; categories in which this surplus-value is dis tinguished according to whether it accrues to
capital or landed 959
property; designations which in no way affect its essence. Added together, they form the total social
surplus-value. Capital directly pumps from the workers the surplus labour that is expressed in
surplus-value and surplus product. It can be considered in this sense as the producer of surplusvalue. Landed property has nothing to do with the actual production process. Its role is limited to
transferring a part of the surplus-value produced from capital's pocket into its own. Yet the
landowner does play his role
in the capitalist production process, not only by the pressure that he exerts on capital and not
simply by the fact that large landed property is a premise and condition of capitalist production, but
particularly by the way that he appears as the personification of one of the most essential
conditions of production.
The worker, finally, as owner and seller of his personal labour power, receives under the
name of wages a part of the product ; in this there is expressed the portion of his labour that we
call necessary labour, i.e. labour necessary for the maintenance and reproduction of this labourpower, whether the conditions of this maintenance and reproduction are poorer or richer, more
favour able or less.
Disparate as these relations may now appear, they have one thing in common : capital
yields the capitalist profit, year in year out ; land yields the landowner ground-rent ; and labourpower - under normal conditions, and as long as it remains a usable labour-power - yields the
worker wages. These three components of the total value annually produced, and the portions of
the annually produced total product corresponding to them, can be consumed by their respective
owners each year, and the sources of their reproduction will not run dry. (We leave accumulation
aside here at first.) They appear as fruits of a perennial tree for annual consumption, or rather fruits
of three trees ; they constitute the annual incomes of three classes, the capitalist, the landowning
and the working class, revenues distributed by the functioning capitalist, as the person who directly
pumps out surplus labour and makes use oflabour in general. Capital to the capitalist, land to the
landowner and labour-power to the worker, or rather his labour itself --: since he sells labour-power
only in its actual externaliza tion, and the price of labour-power, as already shown, is neces sarily
exprc;ssed on the basis of the capitalist mode of production as the price of labour - these appear as
the three respective sources of their specific revenues : profit, ground-rent and wages. 960
4
And they actually are so in the sense that capital for the capitalist is a perpetual pumping machine
for surplus labour, land for the landowner a permanent magnet for attracting a part of the surplusvalue pumped out by capital and finally labour the constantly self-renewing condition and means
for the worker to obtain a part of the value he has produced and hence a portion of the social
product measured by this portion of value, his necessary means of subsistence, under the heading
of wages. They are also sources of revenue in the sense that capital fixes one portion of the value
of a year's labour and hence of its product in the form of profit, landed property fixes another part
in the form of rent and wage-labour a third portion in the form of wages, and that it is precisely by
this transformation that these portions are converted into the revenues of the capitalist, the
landowner and the worker, without creating the substance itself that is transformed into these
various categories. The distribution rather presupposes this substance as already present, i.e. the
total value of the annual product, which is nothing more than objectified social labour. But it is not
in this form that the matter presents itself to the agents of production, the bearers of the various
functions of the pro duction process, but rather in a distorted form. Why this happens we shall see
in the further course of our analysis. Capital, landed property and labour appear to those agents of
production as three separate and independent sources, and it appears that from these there arise
three different components of the annually produced value (and hence of the product in which this
exists) ; from these sources, therefore, there arise not only the different forms of this value as
revenues which accrue to particular factors of the social production process, but this value itself
arises, and with it the substance of revenues.
Missing bit
I
Capital-profit (profit of enterprise plus interest), land-ground rent, labour-wages, this trinity
form holds in itself all the mysteries· of the social production process.
Since it is interest that appears as the specific and characteristic product of capital, as we
have already seen, * with profit of enter prise appearing in contrast as a wage independent of
capital, this first trinity form can be reduced to a second: capital-interest, land-ground-rent, labourwages, where profit, the form of surplus., value specifically characteristic to the capitalist mode of
pro duction, is fortunately set aside.
If we now look more closely at this economic three-in�one, we find, firstly, that the
ostensible sources of the wealth annually available belong to completely disparate spheres and have
not the slightest analogy with one another. Their mutual relationship is like that of lawyer's fees,
beetroot and music.
Capital, land, labour! But capital is not a thing, it is a definite social relation of production
pertaining to a particular historical social formation, which simply takes the form of a thing and
gives this thing a specific social character. Capital is not the sum of the material and produced
means of production. Capital is the means of production as transformed into capital, these being no
more capital in themselves than gold or silver are money. It is the means of production
monopolized by a particular section of society, .the products and conditions of activity of labourpower, which are rendered autonomous vis-a.-vis this living labour-power and are personified in
capital through this antithesis. It is not only the
954
5
workers' products which are transformed into independent powers, the products as masters and
buyers of their producers, but the social powers and interconnecting form of this labour also
confront them as properties of their product. Here we therefore have one factor of a historically
produced social production process in a definite social form, and at first sight a very mysterious
form.
And now to take land, inorganic nature as such, rudis indi gestaque moles * in its
primeval wilderness. Value is labour. So surplus-value cannot be earth. The land's absolute fertility
does nothing but let a certain quantum of labour give a certain product, conditioned by the natural
fertility of the land. The differences in the land's fertility have the effect that the same amounts of
labour and capital, i.e. the same value, are expressed in differing quanti ties of agricultural products
; so that these products have different individual values. The equalization of these individual values
to give market values means that 'the advantages of fertile over inferior lands are . . . transferred
from the cultivator, or consumer, to the landlord ' (Ricardo, Principles, p. 98 [Pelican edition]).
Lastly, as the third in the league, a mere spectre - labour, which is nothing but an
abstraction and taken by itself cannot exist at all, or, if we take what is actually meant here, the
entire productive activity of man, through which his metabolic interchange with nature is mediated.
But this is not only divested of any social form and specific character ; even in its mere natural
existence, indepen dent of society, it is lifted right out of society altogether and defined as the
externalization and confirmation of life equally for a man who is not yet social and for man as
socialized in some way or other.
II
Capital-interest; landed property, private property in the earth, and indeed modern private property,
corresponding to the capitalist mode of production - rent; wage-labour - wages of labour. This is
the form in which there is supposed to be a con nection between the sources of revenue. Wagelabour and landed property, like capital, are historically specific social forms ; one of labour, and the
other of the monopolized earth, both in fact being forms corresponding to capital and belonging to
the same economic formation of society.
955
The first striking thing about·this formula is that alongside capital, this form of an element
of production belonging to a specific mode of production, to a specific historical shape of the social
production process, alongside an element of production amalgamated with and presented in a
specific social form, we have ranked without further ado : the earth, on the one hand, labour on the
other, two elements of the actual labour process, which are material elements of any process of
production and have nothing to do with its social forms.
Secondly. In the formula capital-interest, earth-ground-rent, labour-wages, capital, earth and labour
appear respectively as sources of interest (instead of profit), ground-rent and wages as their
products or fruits - one the basis, the other the result ; one the· cause, the other the effect - and
moreover in such a way that each individual source is related to its product as something extruded
from it and produced by it. All three forms of income, interest (instead of profit), rent and wages,
6
are so many portions of the product's value, i.e. portions of value in general, or expressed in money,
certain portions of money, of price. The formula capital interest is certainly the most irrational
formula for capital, but it is a formula for it. But how is the earth to have a value, how can it create
a socially specific quantum of labour, and the particular portion of value of its own products that
forms rent at that ? The earth, for example, is active as an agent of production in the production of
a use-value, a material product, say wheat. But it has nothing to do with producing the value ofthe
wheat. In as much as value is expressed in wheat, the wheat is considered simply as a certain
quantum of objectified social labour, this labour being quite indifferent to the particular material in
which it is expressed or to the particular use-value of this material. It does not contra dict this that
(1) if other factors remain constant, whether wheat is cheap or dear depends on the earth's
productivity. The product: ivity of agricultural labour is linked to natural conditions, and according to
their productivity the same quantum of labour .is expressed in more products or fewer, more or
fewer use-vahies.� The magnitude of the quantum of labour expressed in one bushel depends on
the number of bushels that the same quantum of labour supplies. The quantity of product that the
value represents depends here on the earth's productivity; but this value is given, and is
independent of this distribution. Value is expressed in use value, and use-value is a condition for
the creation of value; but it is foolish to counterpose a use-value, the earth, on the one hand, and
value on the other, and a particular portion of value at that. (2) (Here the manuscript breaks off. -
F. E.)
955
back to three
Differential rent is bound up with the relative fertility different land, i.e. with properties that �rise
from the land as such. But in as much as it depends firstly on the differing individual values of the
products of different types of land, it is simplythe characteristic already mentioned; while in as much
as it depends, secondly, on the governing general market price, which is different from these
individual values, this is a social law brought about by competition which has nothing to do either
with the land or with
the various degrees of its fertility.'
It might appear as if at least in 'labour-wages' a rational
961
relationship was expressed. But this is just as little the case as with ' land-ground-rent '. In as much
as labour is value-forming and is expressed in the value of commodities, it has nothing to do with
the distribution of this value among the different categories. And as far as its specific social
character as wage-labour goes, it is not this that is value-forming. We have repeatedly shown how
wages or the price of labour is simply an irrational expression for the value or price oflabour-power
; and the particular social conditions in which this labour-power is sold have no bearing on labour
as a general agent of production. Labour is objectified also in that value component of the
7
commodity that forms the price of labour power, as wages ; it creates this portion just as much as it
does the other portions of the product ; but it is objectified in this portion only in precisely the
same way as in the portions that form rent or profit. When we have labour as value-forming in
mind, we are not considering it in its concrete form as a condition of production, but rather in a
social characteristic that is different from that of
wage-labour.
Even the expression ' capital-profit ' is incorrect here. If capital
is conceived in the only connection in which it produces surplus value, i.e.·in its relationship to
labour, in which it extorts surplus labour by the compulsion it exerts on labour-power, i.e. on the
worker, then this surplus-value comprises not only profit (profit of enterprise plus interesJ), but also
rent, i.e. the entire and undivided surplus-value. Here, on the contrary, as a source of revenue, it is
placed in connection only with that part which accrues to the capitalist. This is not the total surplusvalue it extracts, but simply the part it extracts for the capitalist. The context disappears .even more
once the formula is transformed into 'capital-interest'.
If we start by considering the disparity between the three sources, we find secondly that
their products or derivatives, the revenues, all belong to the same sphere, that of value. However,
this is cancelled ou( this relationship not only between incom
mensurable magnitudes, but also between quite heterogeneous, unconnected and incomparable
things) by the fact that capital, like the earth and labour, is considered simply from the stand point
of its material substance, i.e. simply as produced means of production, in which connection
abstraction is made both from capital as
a
relation to the worker and from capital as value.
Thirdly. In this sense, therefore, the formula capital-interest (profit), earth-rent, labourwages presents a uniform and sym-
962
metrical incongruity. In fact, since it is not that wage-labour appears as a socially specific form of
labour, but rather that all labour appears as wage-labour by nature (presenting itself like this to
those trapped within the capitalist relations of production), the determinate and specific social forms
which the objective conditions of labour - the produced means of production and the earth assume vis-a.-vis wage-labour (as they in turn presuppose wage-labour) coincide directly with the
material existence of these conditions of labour, or with the shape that they generally possess in the
actual labour process, independent of any historically specific social form, even independent of
any
social· form of this whatsoever. The form of conditions of labour that are alienated from labour,
objectified in relation to it and accordingly trans formed, the produced means of production being
transformed into capital and the earth into the monopolized earth, into landed property, this form
pertaining to a particular period of history is thus taken to coincide with the existence and function
of pro duced means of production and the earth in the production process in general. These means
of production are in and for themselves, by nature, capital; capital is nothing but a mere 'economic
name' for those means of production; and similarly the earth is in and for itself, by nature, the earth
as monopolized by a certain number of landed proprietors. Just as the products become an
independent power vis-a.-vis the producers in capital and in the capitalist - who in actual fact is
nothing but personified capital - so land is personified in the landowner, he is the land imilarly
8
standing up on its hind legs and demanding its share, as, an independent power, of the products
produced with its aid ; so that it is not the land that receives the portion of the product needed to
replace and increase its productivity, but instead the landowner who receives a share of this product
to be sold off and frittered away. IT is clear that capital presupposes that labour is wage-labour, so
that coincidence between wage-labour and labour in general appears self-evident, capital and the
monopololized earth must also appear as the natural form of the conditions of labour vis-à-vis
labour in general. It now appears as the natural form of the means of labour that they should be
capital, as a purely material character which arises from their function in the labour process in
general. Capital and produced means of production thus become identical expressions. Likewise
963
and and land monopolized by private property. The means of labour as such, being capital by
nature, thus become the source of profit in the same way as the earth as such becomes the source
of rent.
Labour as such, in its simple characterization as purposive productive activity, is related to
the means of production not in their characteristic social form but rather in their material sub.
stance, as the material and means of labour in which they are distinguished from one another only
materially, as use-values, the earth as non-produced means of labour, the others as produced. If
labour and wage-labour thus coincide, so too do the particular social form in which the conditions
of labour confront labour, and their own material existence. The means of labour are then capital as
such, while the earth as such is landed property. The formal autonomy these conditions of labour
acquire vis-a.-vis labour, the particular form of this autonomy they possess, is then a property
inseparable from them as things, as material conditions of production; an immanently ingrown
character that necessarily falls to them as elements of production. Their social character in the
capitalist production process, determined by a particular historical epoch, is an innate material
character natural to them,
and eternally so, as it were, as elements of the production process. It must then appear that it is the
respective share of the earth as the original field of application of labour, the realm of natural
forces, the ready-given arsenal of all objects of labour, and the other respective share of the
produced means of production (instruments, raw materials, etc.), their shares in the production
process in general, that are expressed in the respective shares that fall to them as capital and
landed property, or rather to their social representatives in the form of profit (interest) and rent, just
as the worker's share appears to him in wages as the share of his labour in the production process
.the
Rent, profit and wages thus appear to grow out of the roles that the earth,
produced means of
production and labour play in the simple labour process, con· sidering this labour process simply as
9
proceeding between man and nature and ignoring any historical specificity. It is only the same thing
again in a different form to say that the product in
which the wage-worker's labour presents itself for him as his proceeds, his revenue, is simply the
wage, the portion of value (and hence of the social product measured by this value) that represents
his wage.
If
wage·labour coincides with labour in
965
general, wages must coincide with the product of labour, and the portion of value that wages
represents must coincide with the value created by labour in general. But in this way the other
portions of value, profit and rent, confront wages just as indepen· dently and must arise from
sources of their own that are specific ally distinct from labour and independent; they must arise
from the collaborating elements of production to whose owners they accrue, i.e. profit from the
means of production, the material elements of capital, and rent from the earth, or nature, as repre·
sented by the landowner. (Roscher.)
Landed property, capital and wage-labour are therefore trans formed from sources of
revenue in the sense that capital attracts to the capitalist a portion of the surplus-value which it
extracts from labour, in the form of profit ; monopoly in the earth attracts another part to the
landowner in the form of rent ; and labour gives the worker the final portion of value that is still
available in the form of the wage - from sources by virtue of which one part of the value is
transformed into the form of profit, a second into the form of rent and a third into the form of
wages - into real sources from which these portions of value themselves arise, together with the
portions of the product related to them, in which they exist or against which they are convertible,
the value of the product therefore itself arising from these as its.ultimate source.50
We have already shown in connection with the most simple categories of the capitalist
mode of production and commodity production in general, in connection with commodities and
money, the mystifying character that transforms the social relations for which the material elements
of wealth serve as bearers in the course of production into properties of these things themselves
(com· modities), still more explicitly transforming the relation of pro·
ductionitselfintoathing(money).Allformsofsocietyaresubject to this distortion, in so far as they involve
commodity production and monetary circulation. In the capitalist mode of production, however,
where capital is the dominant category and forms the
967
specific relation of production, this bewitched and distorted world develops much further. If we view
capital first in the immediate process of production, as a pumper-out of surplus labour, this
relationship is still very simple; the real connection impresses itself on the bearers of this process,
the capitalists, themselves, and is still in their consciousness. The fierce struggle over the limits of
the working day shows this in a striking way. But even within this immediate sphere, the sphere of
the immediate process between labour and capital, the matter does not rest at this simple stage.
With the development of relative surplus-value in the specifically capitalist mode of production,
involving the growth of the pro ductive forces of social labour, these productive forces and the
social context of labour appear in the immediate labour process as shifted from labour to capital.
10
Capital thereby already becomes a very mystical being, since all the productive forces of social
labour appear attributable to it, and not to labour as such, as a power springing forth from its own
womb. Then the circulation process
intervenes, with all sections ofcapital, even agricultural, participat ing in it to the same degree. In
this sphere, the conditions of the original production of value fall completely into the background.
Even in the immediate production process, the capitalist is active also a� commodity producer, as
manager of commodity pro duction. This production process thus presents itself to him in no way
just as the simple production process of surplus-value. What ever the surplus-value capital has
pumped out in the immediate production process and expressed in commodities, the value and
surplus-value contained in these commodities must first be realized in the circulation process. Both
the restoration of the values advanced in production, and particularly the surplus-value contained in
the commodities, seem not just to be realized, only in circulation but actually to arise from it. This
appearance is reinforced by two circumstances in particular: firstly, profit on alienation, which
depends on cheating, cunning, expertise, talent and a thousand and one market conjunctures ; then
the fact that a second determining element intervenes here besides labour-time, i.e. the circulation
time. Even though this functions simply as a negative limit on the formation of value and surplusvalue, it gives the appearance of being just as positive a ground as labour itself and of involving a
determination independent of labour that arises from the nature of capital. In Volume 2, of course,
we had to present this sphere of circulation only in relation to the deter-
968
minations of form it produces, to demonstrate the further develop ment of the form of capital that
takes place in it. In actual fact, however, this sphere is the sphere of competition, which is subject to
accident in each individual case; i.e. where the inner law that prevails through the accidents and
governs them is visible only when these accidents are combined in large numbers, so that it
remains invisible and incomprehensible to the individual agents of production themselves. Further,
however, the actual production process, as the unity of the immediate production process and the
process of circulation, produces new configurations in which the threads of the inner connection get
more and more lost, the relations of production becoming independent of one another and the
components of value ossifying into independent forms.
The transformation of surplus-value into profit is, as we saw, just as much determined by
the circulation process as by the process of production. Surplus-value in the form of profit is no
longer related to the portion of capital laid out on labour, which is where it derives from, but rather
to the total capital. The profit rate is governed by its own laws, which permit it to vary while the
rate of surplus-value remains the same, and even require this variation. All this conceals the true
nature of surplus-value more and more, concealing therefore the real mechanism of capital. This
happens still more with the transformation of profit into average profit and of values into prices . of
production, the govern ing averages of market price. A complex socia1 process intervenes here, the
equalization of capitals, which cuts the relative average prices of commodities loose from their
values, and the average profits in the various spheres of production' from the actual exploitation of
labour by the particular capitals inv01ved (quite apart from the individual capital investments in
each particular sphere of production). The average prices of commodities not only seem to differ
from their value, i.e. from the labour realized in them, but actually do differ, and the average profit
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of
a
particular capital differs from the surplus-value this capital has extracted from the workers
employed by it. The value of commodities appears directly only in the influence of.the changing
productivity of labour on the rise and fall of prices of production; on their movement, not on their
final limits. Profit now appears as deter mined only secondarily by the direct exploitation of labour,
in so far as, given market prices that are seemingly independent ofthis exploitation, it permits the
capitalist to realize a profit departing
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from the average. Normal average profit as such seems immanent in capital independently of
exploitation ; abnormal exploitation or even average exploitation under exceptionally favourable
condi tions seems only to determine divergences from average profit, and not this average profit
itself. The division of profit into profit of enterprise and interest (not to speak of the intervention of
com mercial profit and money-dealing profit, which are founded in the circulation sphere and seem
to derive entirely from this, and not from the production process itself at all) completes the autonomization of the form of surplus-value, the ossification of its form as against its substance, its
�ssence. One portion of profit, in contrast to the other, separates itself completely from the capital
relation as such and presents itself as deriving not from the function of exploiting wage-labour but
rather from the wage labour of the capitalist himself. As against this, interest then seems
independent both of the wage-labour of the worker and of the capitalist's own labour; it seems to
derive from capital as its own independent source. If capital originally appeared on the surface of
circulation as the capital fetish, value-creating value, so it now presents itself once again in the
figure of interest-bearing capital as its most estranged and peculiar form. This is why the form '
capital-interest ', as a third in the series to ' earth-rent ' and ' labour-wages ', is much more ·
consistent than ' capital-profit ', since profit still retains a memory of its origin which in interest is
not simply obliterated but actually placed in a form diametrically opposed to this origin.
Finally, besides capital as an independent source of surplus value, there appears landed
property, as a limit to the average profit which transfers a portion of the surplus-value to a class
that neither works itself nor directly exploits workers, and cannot even like interest-bearing' capital,
launch forth in edifying homilie� about the risk and sacrifice in lending capital. Since in this c�se
one part of the surplus-value seems directly bound - up not with social relations but rather with a
natural element, the earth, the form, of mutual alienation and ossification of the various portions of
surplus-value is complete, the inner connection definitively torn asunder and its source completely '
buried, precisely through the assertion of their autonomy vis-a.-vis each other by the various
relations of production which are bound up ·with the different material elements ofthe production
process.
.
Capital-profit (or better still capital-interest), land-ground-rent,
969
labour-wages, this economic trinity as the connection between the components of value and wealth
in general and its sources, completes the mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the
reification of social relations, and the immediate coalescence of the material relations of production
12
with their historical and social specificity : the bewitched, distorted and upside-down world haunted
by Monsieur Ie Capital and Madame la Terre, who are at the same tiine social characters and mere
things. It is the great merit of classical economics to have dissolved this false appearance and
deception, this autonomization and ossification of the different social elements of wealth vis-a.-vis
one another, this personifica tion of things and reification of the relations of production, this
religion of everyday life, by reducing interest to a part of profit and rent to the surplus above the
average profit, so that they both coincide in surplus-value ; by presenting the circulation process as
simply a metamorphosis of forms, and finally in the immediate process of production reducing the
value and surplus-value of commodities to labour Yet even its best representatives remained more
or less trapped in the world of illusion their criticism had dissolved, and nothing else is possible
from the bourgeois stand poipt ; they all fell therefore more or less into inconsistencies, half-truths
and unresolved contradictions. It is also quite natural, on the other hand, that the actual agents of
production them selves feel completely at home in these estranged and irrational forms of capitalinterest, land-rent, labour-wages, for these are precisely the configurations of appearance in which
they move and which they are daily involved. It is equally natural, therefore, that vulgar economics,
which is nothing more than a didactic and more or less doctritiaire translation of the everyday
notions of the actual agents of production, giving them a certain comprehensible arrangement,
finds the natural basis of its fatuous self-importance established beyond all doubt precisely in this
trinity, in which the entire inner connection is obliterated. This formula also corresponds to the selfinterest of the dominant classes, since it preaches the _ natural necessity and perpetual justification
of their sources of income and erects this into a dogma
n presenting the reification of the relations of production and the autonomy they acquire
vis-a.-vis the agents of production, we shall not go into the form and manner in which these
connections appear to them as overwhelming natural laws, governing them irrespective of their will,
in the form that the world market and its
970
conjunctures, the movement of market prices, the cycles of industry and trade and the alternation
of prosperity and crisis prevails on them as blind necessity. This is because the actual movement of
competition lies outside Qur plan, and we are only out to present the internal organization of the
capitalist mode of production, its ideal average, as it were.
In earlier forms of society, this economic mystification comes in principally in connection
with money and interest-bearing capital. It is excluded by the very nature of the case, firstly, where
pro duction is predominantly for use-value, for the producers' own needs; secondly, where, as in
Antiquity and the Middle Ages, slavery or serfdom forms the broad basis of social production. In the
latter case, the dominance of the conditions of production over the producers is concealed by the
visible relations of domina tion and servitude, which appear as direct mainsprings of the production
process. In the primitive communities where an indigenous communism prevails, and even in the
urban communi ties of Antiquity, it is the actual community and its conditions that presents itself as
the basis of production, the reproduction of this community being production's final purpose. Even
in the guild system of the Middle Ages, neither capital nor labour appear unrestrained; their
connections are determined by the system of corporations and the relationships this involves, as
13
well as by the corresponding ideas of professional obligation, craftsmanship, etc. Only in the
capitalist mode of production…
14