第147章

That is how the matter looks from the standpoint of the individual capital capitalist. But simultaneously with the development of capitalist production the credit system also develops. The money-capital which the capitalist cannot as yet employ in his own business is employed by others, who pay him interest for its use. It serves him as money-capital in its specific meaning, as a kind of capital distinguished from productive capital.

But it serves as capital in another's hands. It is plain that with the more frequent realisation of surplus-value and the rising scale on which it is produced, there is an increase in the proportion of new money- capital or money as capital thrown upon the money-market and then absorbed -- at least the greater part of it -- by extended production.

The simplest form in which the additional latent money-capital may be represented is that of a hoard. It may be that this hoard is additional gold or silver secured directly or indirectly in exchange with countries producing precious metals. And only in this manner does the hoarded money in a country grow absolutely. On the other hand it may be -- and is so in the majority of cases -- that this hoard is nothing but money which has been withdrawn from circulation at home and has assumed the form of a hoard in the hands of individual capitalists. It is furthermore possibly that this latent money-capital consists only of tokens of value -- we still ignore credit-money at this point -- or of mere claims of capitalists (titles)against third persons conferred by legal documents. In all such cases, whatever may be the form of existence of this additional money-capital, it represents, so far as it is capital in spe , nothing but additional and reserved legal titles of capitalists to future annual additional social production.

"The mass of real accumulated wealth, in point of magnitude. .

. is so utterly insignificant when compared with the powers of production of the same society in whatever state of civilisation, or even compared with the actual consumption for even a few years of that society, that the great attention of legislators and political economists should be directed to `productive powers' and their future free development, and not, as hitherto, to the mere accumulated wealth that strikes the eye. Of what is called accumulated wealth, by far the greater part is only nominal, consisting not of any real things, ships, houses, cottons, improvements on land, but of mere demands on the future annual productive powers of society, engendered and perpetuated by the expedients or institutions of insecurity. . . .

The use of such articles (accumulations of physical things or actual wealth)as a mere means of appropriating to their possessors the wealth to be created by the future productive powers of society, being that alone of which the natural laws of distribution would, without force, gradually deprive them, or, if aided by cooperative labour, would in a very few years deprive them."(William Thompson, An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth , London, 1850, p. 453. This book originally appeared in 1824.)"It is little thought, by most persons not at all suspected, how very small a proportion, either in extent or influence, the actual accumulations of society bear to human productive powers, even to the ordinary consumption of a few years of a single generation. The reason is obvious; but the effect very pernicious. The wealth that is annually consumed, disappearing with its consumption, is seen but for a moment, and makes no impression but during the act of enjoyment or use. But that part of wealth which is of slow consumption, furniture, machinery, buildings, from childhood to old age stand out before the eye, the durable monuments of human exertion.