But if we assume that the same amount of money is still in the country as before, then the accumulated and accumulating money has accrued from the circulation. Only its function is changed. It has been converted from money in currency into latent money-capital gradually taking shape.
The money which is accumulated in this case is the money-form of sold commodities, and moreover of that part of their value which constitutes surplus-value for their owner. (The credit system is here assumed to be non-existent.) The capitalist who accumulates this money has sold pro tanto without buying.
If we look upon this process merely as an individual phenomenon, there is nothing to explain. A part of the capitalists keeps a portion of the money realised by the sale of its product without withdrawing products from the market in return. Another part of them on the other hand transforms its money wholly into products, with the exception of the constantly recurring money-capital required for running the business. One portion of the products thrown upon the market as vehicles of surplus-value consists of means of production, or of the real elements of variable capital, the necessary means of subsistence. It can therefore serve immediately for the expansion of production. For it has not been premised in the least that one part of the capitalists accumulates money-capital, while the other consumes its surplus-value entirely, but only that one part does its accumulating in the shape of money, forms latent money-capital, while the other part accumulates genuinely, that is to say, enlarges the scale of production, genuinely expands its productive capital. The available quantity of money remains sufficient for the requirements of circulation, even if, alternately, one part of the capitalists accumulates money, while the other enlarges the scale of production, and vice versa. Moreover, the accumulation of money on one side may proceed even without cash money by the mere accumulation of outstanding claims.
But the difficulty arises when we assume not an individual, but a general accumulation of money-capital on the part of the capitalist class.
Apart from this class, according to our assumption -- the general and exclusive domination of capitalist production -- there is no other class at all except the working-class. All that the working-class buys is equal to the sum total of its wages, equal to the sum total of the variable capital advanced by the entire capitalist class. This money flows back to the capitalist class by the sale of its product to the working-class. Its variable capital thus resumes its money-form. Let the sum total of the variable capital be x times £100, i.e., the sum total of the variable capital employed, not advanced, during the year. The question now under consideration is not affected by how much or how little money, depending on the velocity of the turnover, is needed to advance this variable capital-value during the year. The capitalist class buys with these x times £100 of capital a certain amount of labour-power, or pays wages to a certain number of labourers -- first transaction. The labourers buy with this same sum a certain quantity of commodities from the capitalists, whereby the sum of x times £100 flows back into the hands of the capitalists -- second transaction. And this is constantly repeated. This amount of x times £100, therefore, can never enable the working-class to buy the part of the product which represents the constant capital, not to mention the part which represents the surplus-value of the capitalist class. With these x times £100the labourers can never buy more than a part of the value of the social product equal to that part of the value which represents the value of the advanced variable capital.
Apart from the case in which this universal accumulation of money expresses nothing but the distribution of the precious metal additionally introduced, in whatever proportion, among the various individual capitalists, how is the entire capitalist class then supposed to accumulate money?