Concentration of Capital

As a result of accumulation of capital and increase in the productivity of labor, it manifests itself as the corresponding expansion of the scale of the means of production and the corresponding change in the mass of labor-power. The accumulation of capital is examined in terms of the increase in capital-value, while the concentration of capital is examined in terms of the increase in the means of production and the change in the mass of labor-power. Marx pointed out that every individual capital is a larger or smaller concentration of means of production, with a corresponding command over a larger or smaller army of workers.

Along with the accumulation of capital, there will be an increase in the productivity of labor, which affects the change in the ratio between the means of production and the mass of labor-power. “Once given the general basis of the capitalistic system, a point is reached in the course of accumulation at which the development of the productivity of social labor becomes the most powerful lever of accumulation” and “the mass of the means of production which he thus transforms, increases with the productiveness of his labor.” Under circumstances of an increase in the productivity of labor, the mass of labor-power can remain constant, decrease or increase with the scale of accumulation of capital. However, from a society-wide perspective, as the scale of accumulation and concentration of total capital continues to expand, the ratio of labor-power to the mass of the means of production increases in absolute terms, although it decreases in relative terms. The theory of accumulation of capital has provided a theoretical basis for the doctrines of the technical composition, value composition and organic composition of capital. It can be said that the accumulation of capital, the concentration capital and the organic composition of capital are an interlocking processes of theoretical progress.