In the second place however these £500 have been transformed, for the capitalist, into labour-power of the same value (or price). Labour-power is consumed by him productively in the labour-process. At the end of 5weeks a product valued at £1,000 has been created. Half of this, £500, is the reproduced value of the variable capital expended in payment of labour-power. The other half, £500, is newly produced surplus-value. But the 5-weekly labour-power, through exchange for which a portion of the capital was converted into variable capital, is likewise expended, consumed, although productively. The labour which was active yesterday is not the same that is active today. Its value plus that of surplus-value created by it exists now as the value of a thing distinct from labour-power, to wit, of a product. But by converting the product into money, that portion of its value which is equal to the value of variable capital advanced can once more be exchanged for labour-power and thus again function as variable capital. The fact that the same workmen, i.e., the same bearers of labour-power, are given employment not only by the reproduced capital-value but also by that which has been reconverted into the form is immaterial. It is possible for the capitalist to hire different workmen for the second period of turnover.
In actual fact therefore a capital of £5,000, and not of £500, is expended successively in wages during the ten periods of turnover of 5 weeks each, and these wages will again be spent by the labourers to buy means of subsistence. The capital of £5,000 so advanced is consumed. It ceases to exist. On the other hand labour-power worth £5,000, not £500, is incorporated successively in the productive process and reproduces not only its own value of £5,000, but produces over and above that a surplus-value of £5,000. The variable capital of £500 advanced during the second period of turnover is not the identical capital of £500 that had been advanced during the first period of turnover. That has been consumed, spent in wages. But it is replaced by new variable capital of £500, which was produced in the first period of turnover in the form of commodities, and reconverted into money.
This new money-capital of £500 is therefore the money-form of the quantity of commodities newly produced in the first period of turnover.
The fact that an identical sum of money, £500, is again in the hands of the capitalist, i.e., apart from the surplus-value, precisely as much money-capital as he had originally advanced, conceals the circumstance that he is operating with newly produced capital. (As for the other constituents of value of the commodity-capital, which replace the constant parts of capital, their value is not newly produced, but only the form is changed in which this value exists.)Let us take the third period of turnover. Here it is evident that the capital of £500, advanced for a third time, is not an old but a newly produced capital, for it is the money-form of the quantity of commodities produced in the second, not the first, period of turnover, i.e., of that portion of this quantity of commodities whose value is equal to that of the advanced variable capital. The quantity of commodities produced in the first period of turnover is sold. A part of its value equal to the variable portion of the value of the advanced capital was transformed into the new labour-power of the second period of turnover; it produced a new quantity of commodities, which were sold in their turn and a portion of whose value constitutes the capital of £500 advanced in the third turnover period.
And so forth during the ten periods of turnover. In the course of these, newly produced quantities of commodities (whose value, inasmuch as it replaces variable capital, is also newly produced, and does not merely re-appear as in the case of the constant circulating part of the capital)are thrown upon the market every 5 weeks, in order to incorporate ever new labour-power in the process of production.
Therefore what is accomplished by the ten-fold turnover of the advanced variable capital of £500 is not that this capital of £500can be productively consumed ten times, or that a variable capital lasting for 5 weeks can be employed for 50 weeks. Rather, ten times £500of variable capital is employed in the 50 weeks, and the capital of £500always lasts only for 5 weeks and must be replaced at the end of the 5weeks by a newly produced capital of £500. This applies equally to capitals A and B. But at this point the difference begins.
At the end of the first period of 5 weeks a variable capital of £500 has been advanced and expended by B as well as A. Both A and B have converted its value into labour-power and replaced it by that portion of the value of the product newly created by this labour-power which is equal to the value of the advanced variable capital of £500. For both B and A the labour-power has not only replaced the value of the expended variable capital of £500 by a new value of the same amount, but also added a surplus-value which, according to our assumption, is of the same magnitude.
But in the case of B the value-product, which replaces the advanced variable capital and adds to it a surplus-value, is not in the form in which it can function anew as productive, or variable, capital. It is in such a form in the case of A. And up to the end of the year B does not possess the variable capital expended in the first 5 and every subsequent 5 weeks (although it has been replaced by newly produced value plus surplus-value)in the form in which it can again function as productive, or variable, capital. True, its value is replaced by new value, hence renewed, but the form of its value (in this case the absolute form of value, its money-form) is not renewed.