56 SOCIAL SCIENTIST exceeding the initial value laid out in its production. This is step 3,, G5—M9. It is the constant and successive repetition of these three phases (M—C, C—P—C9 and C5—M') that constitutes the circulation of capital. We shall assume, in our subsequent analysis that the phases of circulation, M—C and C'—M9, are effected in an uninterrupted fashion, and we shall focus on the production phase, G—P—C', alone. This means that we retain the assumption that commodities exchange at their values; and that the problems arising in the conversion of money into the constituent (constant and variable) elements of productive capital., and the reconversion of the produced commodity into money, have to be considered later. It needs to be kept in mind of course that these problems do exist and periodically lead to ^crises' of certain kinds. Secondly, capitalist society does not consist only of capitalists and workers who produce surplus value for the capitalists. The capitalist who extracts surplus value from his workers must share it with other capitalists, and also with landlords and all other unproductive strata who fulfil various functions in society as a whole. In the analysis that follows, we shall for the time being not go into the division of social surplus value into rent, interest, profit on merchant capital, profit on industrial capital, and so on. These issues are taken up later on. To begin with, therefore, we shall consider capitalist accumulation "from an abstract point of view, that is, as a mere phase in the actual pioccss of production."21 The procedure we are adopting is necessary for a correct analysis for two reasons. The production phase of the circuit of capital C—P—C' is absolutely essential to the expansion of value which is the defining characteristic of capital: surplus value can be realized in society as a whole (and distributed among the exploiting classes and unproductive strata) only when it has first been produced. Secondly ^'the simple fundamental form of the process of accumulation is obscured by the incident of circulation that brings it about.and by the splitting up of surplus value. An exact analysis of the process, therefore, demands that we should, for a time, disregard all phenomena that hide the play of its inner mechanism".aa So we must first study the essence of the problem, and then develop the more complex e determinations'. With these qualifying remarks in mind, we shall proceed next time to an analysis of capitalist accumulation. A V BALU (To be continued) 1 Capital, vol I, Moscow 1967, p 509. a Ibid., p 523. • See, for instance, Joan Robinson, An Essay on Marxian Economics, London 1942 or almost any bourgeois economics textbook that refers to Marx. 4 Capital, vol 1, p 523. The deviation of prices of commodities from their values, while seemingly ^contradicting^ the law of value, in fact is the means through which the law of value expresses itself. Marx develops this point, both in the chapter on money