Capitalist Expanded Reproduction

The production process in which the capitalist transforms a part of the surplus-value into new capital, which is used to buy additional means of production and labor-power, and which is repeated on the basis of the extension of production.

Expanded reproduction is a feature of capitalist reproduction. This is because, in order to pursue more surplus-value and strengthen the competitiveness, the capitalist transforms a part of the surplus-value into new capital, which is used to buy new means of production and labor-power, so that the amount of capital invested in the production process increases and the scale of production is expanded, forming a movement ascending in spirals: a part of the surplus-value is transformed into additional capital, which in turn brings new surplus-value with the original capital, and the new surplus-value is transformed into the new additional capital, so that the amount of capital keeps increasing, the scale of production is expanded, and the surplus-value keeps increasing. This shows that surplus-value is an important source of accumulation of capital and that accumulation of capital is the only source of capitalist expanded reproduction.

Capitalist expanded reproduction revealed the essence of the relationship of sale and purchase of labor-power. On the surface, capitalists and workers seem to be equal: workers are the owners of the commodity labor-power and capitalists are the owners of money; workers sell the commodity labor-power to capitalists and capitalists pay wages to workers, which is in accordance with the law of commodity exchange and the principle of exchange of equal values. However, it is clear from the analysis of capitalist expanded reproduction that the “exchange of equal values”, “equal relationship of sale and purchase” here is nothing but a form, an illusion. Because the capitalist’s capital used to buy labor-power this time is a part of the surplus-value he extracted from the worker the last time. This formally equal exchange is, actually, a forced occupation, appropriation without compensation, and fundamentally unequal. In fact, the capitalist not only appropriates the surplus-value created by the worker in the past without compensation, but also keeps using this surplus-value to extract more and more new surplus-value from the worker.

Capitalist expanded reproduction is also the reproduction of capitalist relations of production on an expanded scale. Through the transformation of surplus-value into capital, on the one hand, more and more means of production and capital wealth are concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, while on the other hand, more and more of the social population is transformed into wage-laborers, whose conditions of life become increasingly impoverished. As a result, the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie deepens day by day with the extension of capitalist reproduction. The reproduction or accumulation on an expanded scale gives rise to capital relations on expanded scale: with more capitalists, or bigger capitalists, at one pole, and more wage-laborers at the other. As capitalist expanded reproduction continues to be repeated, the fundamental contradictions of capitalism will deepen and eventually lead to cyclical economic crises.