Karl Marx
Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie
The more
production comes to rest on exchange value, hence on exchange, the more
important do the physical conditions of exchange – the means of communication
and transport – become for the costs of circulation. Capital by its nature
drives beyond every spatial barrier. Thus the creation of the physical
conditions of exchange – of the means of communication and transport – the
annihilation of space by time – becomes an extraordinary necessity for it. Only
in so far as the direct product can be realized in distant markets in mass
quantities in proportion to reductions in the transport costs, and only in so
far as at the same time the means of communication and transport themselves can
yield spheres of realization for labour, driven by capital; only in so far as
commercial traffic takes place in massive volume – in which more than necessary
labour is replaced – only to that extent is the production of cheap means of
communication and transport a condition for production based on capital, and
promoted by it for that reason. All labour required in order to throw the
finished product into circulation – it is in economic circulation only when it
is present on the market – is from capital’s viewpoint a barrier to be overcome
– as is all labour required as a condition for the production process (thus
e.g. expenses for the security of exchange etc.).
The sea
route, as the route which moves and is transformed under its own impetus, is
that of trading peoples ϰατ᾽ ἐξοχήν. [24] On the other side, highways originally
fall to the community, later for a long period to the governments, as pure
deductions from production, deducted from the common surplus product of the
country, but do not constitute a source of its wealth, i.e. do not cover their
production costs. In the original, self-sustaining communes of Asia, on one
side no need for roads; on the other side the lack of them locks them into
their closed-off isolation and thus forms an essential moment of their survival
without alteration (as in India). Road construction by means of the corvée, or
through taxes, which is another form, is a forced transformation of a part of a
country’s surplus labour or surplus product into roads. If an individual
capital is to undertake this – i.e. if it is to create the conditions of the
production process which are not included in the production process directly –
then the work must provide a profit.
Translated by: Martin Nicolaus
