Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 3 - From Marx to Mao

52
V. I. LENIN
controversies over the theory of markets” (Bulgakov, loc.
cit., p. 27). The question arises as to why such a division
of products according to their natural form is now necessary
to analyse the reproduction of social capital, when the analysis
of the production and reproduction of individual capital
dispensed with such a division and left the question of
the natural form of the product entirely on one side. On what
grounds can we introduce the question of the natural form
of the product into a theoretical investigation of capitalist
economy, which is based entirely on the exchange-value
of the product? The fact is that when the production of
individual capital was analysed, the question of where
and how the product would be sold, and of where and how
articles of consumption would be bought by the workers and
means of production by the capitalists, was set aside as
making no contribution to this analysis and as having no
relation to it. All that had to be examined then was the problem
of the value of the separate elements of production and
of the results of production. Now, however, the question is:
where will the workers and the capitalists obtain their
articles of consumption, where will the capitalists obtain
their means of production, how will the finished product
meet all these demands and enable production to expand?
Here, consequently, we have not only “a replacement of
value, but also a replacement in material” (Stoffersatz.—
Das Kapital, II, 389), 25 and hence it is absolutely essential
to distinguish between products that play entirely
different parts in the process of social economy.
Once these basic propositions are taken into account,
the problem of the realisation of the social product in capitalist
society no longer presents any difficulty. Let us
first assume simple reproduction, i.e., the repetition of
the process of production on its previous scale, the absence
of accumulation. Obviously, the variable capital and the
surplus-value in Department II (which exist in the form of
articles of consumption) are realised by the personal consumption
of the workers and capitalists of this department
(for simple reproduction presumes that the whole of the
surplus-value is consumed, and that no portion of it is converted
into capital). Further, the variable capital and the
surplus-value which exist in the form of means of production