Circulating capital
The term circulating capital comes from Adam Smith and is with him and in the theory of Karl Marx in contrast to fixed capital the component of capital, the
- in addition to raw materials (raw materials and / or semi-finished goods) and auxiliary materials (lubricants, office supplies , etc., including the non-material auxiliary materials energy and lease), the circulating parts of constant capital ,
- also includes variable capital and added value (as wages withheld).
functionality
The added value is special because it is not created beforehand, but rather arises through the application of living labor in production. First of all, it forms a component of the value of the produced commodity and only takes on the form of money when it is sold, in which it returns to the entrepreneur, who uses it as his income, or partly for accumulation . The types of profit of land rent and interest on capital, which are still understood by classical economics as parts to be deducted from it , have no longer been paid for from surplus value since JB Say's production factor theory at the latest , but added to circulating capital (see rent above). The surplus value does not complete a whole cycle, but is only circulated half a turnover, so to speak.
Circulating capital / circulating capital
This peculiarity of surplus-value distinguishes the circulating capital from the circulating capital, to which exclusively
- the applied circulating part of constant capital (i.e. the raw materials and auxiliary materials actually involved in production in terms of value) and
- the applied variable capital (the wages, whereby in shift work the total wage bill has to be divided by the number of production shifts, because of course only one shift works “at the same time”, ie is “applied”).
This circulating capital is only ever used in one turn of capital and performs a series of turns in the depreciation period of the fixed capital, which limits the one turn of the total capital. Its cycle consists of:
- the investment of its capital components
- their application in terms of value in production, where they become components of productive capital, whose applied parts transfer their value to the commodity produced,
- after production that goes into circulation with the use value of the commodity as part of its exchange value and
- in the sale as part of the exchange value of the commodity, the separation from use value and the circulation of value in the form of money back to the entrepreneur, who puts it into a new cycle.
This complete turnover makes the constant and variable components of this capital equally circulating capital, even if they differ fundamentally in the value creation process as constant and variable capital.
As with fixed capital, with circulating capital it is not the material function, for example the incorporation of a raw material into the end product, that turns it into circulating capital. Even an auxiliary material that does not appear in the finished product at all is part of circulating capital. It just depends on how the respective capital component behaves in the turnover period.