10 - Mercantilism and the Circuit of Industrial Capital in Capital, Vol. II, Part I, Ch. 1–4

Summary

Marx discusses the circulation of merchant's capital in all three volumes of Capital, as follows: in Vol. I, Part II, Chapters 4 and 5, the first two chapters of the part, entitled ‘The Transformation of Money into Capital' (1974a, 145–63 [1976, 247–69]); in Vol. II, Part I, Chapter 1–4, in the section entitled ‘The Metamorphoses of Capital and Their Circuits' (1974b, 25–123 [1978, 109–99]); and in Vol. III, Parts IV and V (1977, 267–613 [1981, 379–748]), but especially Chapter 20, entitled ‘Historical Facts about Merchant's Capital' (1977, 323–37 [1981, 440–55]). However, since Marx's Vol. III discussion of merchant's capital is almost entirely descriptive while his Vol. I discussion is entirely concerned with a highly abstract distinction between the simple circulation of commodity capital (C–M–C), merchant's capital (M–C–M), and money-dealing capital, M–M (where ‘C' stands for commodity capital, and ‘M' stands for money capital), what we will mainly be concerned with here is Marx's detailed discussion of the circulation of what he calls ‘the more highly developed forms of merchant's capital', in Vol. II.