Turnover time = production time (which includes working time and fermentation time) + circulation time (comprised of selling time and purchasing time)
Selling time is a bigger deal. This is the time in which the capital is commodity capital (things waiting to be purchased). Some of the costs here include storage costs.
Differences in selling times: Can be caused by distance of the market. Gap is closed by improvements in transportation and communication. However, when transportation improves, it usually improves for everyone, so difference is relative. But things can be shaken up. For instance, a railroad doesn’t go everywhere. If your factory is in a town on the railroad line, transport time for your product might be shortened even more than someone whose factory is closer physically to the market but not on the line.
Better transportation also means that goods can leave the warehouse at different times. When this starts taking hold, total circ time is shortened.
Result: biggering of fewer capitalists, biggering of metropolitan centers. Centralization/accumulation.
Some branches of production need to be near market, like breweries (though that is obviously no longer the case), so they will grow up more in these metropolitan centers.
Other result: world market. Capitalists make things for people across the world. This is a necessity of development. “The mass of commodities in transit grows enormously, and hence so does the part of the social capital that stays for long periods in the stage of commodity capital, in circulation time—both absolutely and relatively” (329). There are more things for sale, more things available. And as a result, we spend more of our social wealth on the upkeep of this commodity capital stock.
Purchasing time: the time it takes for the transformation of money back into the elements of productive capital.
Takes a lot of time with this new world market. The payment for the cargo sent to India takes four months to get back to the seller. Of course, developments in transportation decrease this time.
Capital has to linger for a bit. It remains in the money form for a while until it is used to purchase mp and L and then become productive capital again. This is the $ stock. For some reason, the bourgeois economists tend to ignore this, and that’s a bad thing, though I don’t quite see the ramifications. (I’m referring to last page of chapter.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment