Exchange Relationships in Feudal and Capitalist Society

Money has in fact only been turned into capital at the end of the first production process which results in its reproduction and the new production of surplus capital I. But surplus capital I is itself only established as surplus capital, and realised as such, once it has produced surplus capital II; once, in fact, the prerequisites of the transition of money into capital, which are still external to the movement of real capital, have disappeared, and capital has in fact established the conditions, in line with its inherent nature, for entering production. Once we assume this production is founded on capital, the condition that the capitalist must introduce into circulation values that he has created — whether through his own labour or otherwise, since he does not yet have available wage-labour, either present or past — in order to set himself up as a capitalist, now belongs to the antediluvian conditions of capital; it belongs to its historical prerequisites, which already as such are past, and thus belong to the history of its development and not in any way to its contemporary history, i.e. not to the real system of the mode of production that it controls. If, for example, the flight of the serfs to the towns was one of the historical conditions and prerequisites of the urban system, it ceases to be a condition, and a factor in its reality, once the towns have developed.