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

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V. I. LENIN
gross income. But even this is an abstraction to the extent
that the entire society, on the basis of capitalist production,
bases itself on the capitalist standpoint and thereby considers
only the income resolved into profit and rent as net
income” (III, 2, 375-376. Russ. trans., pp. 695-696). 37
“. . .Viewing the income of the whole society, national
income consists of wages plus profit plus rent, thus, of the
Thus, the explanation of the process of realisation also
made clear the question of income and removed the main
difficulty that had prevented the achievement of clarity
on this question, namely: how does “income for one become
capital for another”?, how can the product which consists
of articles of personal consumption and resolves itself totally
into wages, profit and rent, also include the constant part
of capital, which can never be income? The analysis of
realisation given in Capital, Volume II, Part III, gave a full
answer to these questions, and in the concluding part of
Volume III of Capital, which deals with “revenues,” Marx
had only to give names to the separate parts of the social
product and refer the reader to the analysis given in
Volume II.*
VIII. WHY DOES THE CAPITALIST NATION NEED
A FOREIGN MARKET?
Regarding the above-stated theory of the realisation of
the product in capitalist society, the question may arise:
Does not this theory contradict the proposition that the
capitalist nation cannot dispense with foreign markets?
It must be remembered that the analysis given of the realisation
of the product in capitalist society proceeded from
the assumption that there is no foreign trade: this assumption
has already been mentioned above and it has been shown
to be essential in such an analysis. Obviously, imports and
exports would only have confused the issue, without in the
* See Das Kapital, III, 2, VII. Abschnitt: “Die Revenuen,” Chapter
49: “Zur Analyse des Produktionsprozesses” (Russ. trans., pp.
688-706). Here Marx also points to the circumstances that prevented
the earlier economists from understanding this process (pp. 379-382.
Russ. trans., 698-700). 38