011-M-C-or-purchase-The-second-and-concluding-metamorphosis-of-a-commodity

M–C, or purchase. The second and concluding metamorphosis of a commodity

M-C，即买。商品的第二次变形，也是最后一次变形

Because money is the metamorphosed shape of all other commodities, the result of
their general alienation, for this reason it is alienable itself without
restriction or condition. It reads all prices backwards, and thus, so to say,
depicts itself in the bodies of all other commodities, which offer to it the
material for the realisation of its own use-value. At the same time the prices,
wooing glances cast at money by commodities, define the limits of its
convertibility, by pointing to its quantity. Since every commodity, on becoming
money, disappears as a commodity, it is impossible to tell from the money
itself, how it got into the hands of its possessor, or what article has been
changed into it. Non olet, from whatever source it may come. Representing on the
one hand a sold commodity, it represents on the other a commodity to be bought.

生产者让渡了其他一切商品，才得到货币；对货币的让渡就没有限制和条件了。【钱难赚，屎难吃。】货币将一切价格反过来读，从而在各种商品上显露自己的面目。种种商品的肉体就是货币能实现的种种使用价值。同时，商品向货币投去价格的秋波，标示出它需要的货币量。手里的商品变为货币后，无人能从此货币上看出，被让渡的商品是什么。货币代表被卖掉的商品，也代表可以买到的商品。

M–C, a purchase, is, at the same time, C–M, a sale; the concluding metamorphosis
of one commodity is the first metamorphosis of another. With regard to our
weaver, the life of his commodity ends with the Bible, into which he has
reconverted his £2. But suppose the seller of the Bible turns the £2 set free by
the weaver into brandy M–C, the concluding phase of C–M–C (linen–money–Bible),
is also C–M, the first phase of C–M–C (Bible–money–brandy). The producer of a
particular commodity has that one article alone to offer; this he sells very
often in large quantities, but his many and various wants compel him to split up
the price realised, the sum of money set free, into numerous purchases. Hence a
sale leads to many purchases of various articles. The concluding metamorphosis
of a commodity thus constitutes an aggregation of first metamorphoses of various
other commodities.

一个生产者只卖一种商品，却需要买很多种商品。因此，他的一个C-M会分布在很多个小量的M-C上。

If we now consider the completed metamorphosis of a commodity, as a whole, it
appears in the first place, that it is made up of two opposite and complementary
movements, C–M and M–C. These two antithetical transmutations of a commodity are
brought about by two antithetical social acts on the part of the owner, and
these acts in their turn stamp the character of the economic parts played by
him. As the person who makes a sale, he is a seller; as the person who makes a
purchase, he is a buyer. But just as, upon every such transmutation of a
commodity, its two forms, commodity-form and money-form, exist simultaneously
but at opposite poles, so every seller has a buyer opposed to him, and every
buyer a seller. While one particular commodity is going through its two
transmutations in succession, from a commodity into money and from money into
another commodity, the owner of the commodity changes in succession his part
from that of seller to that of buyer. These characters of seller and buyer are
therefore not permanent, but attach themselves in turns to the various persons
engaged in the circulation of commodities.

The complete metamorphosis of a commodity, in its simplest form, implies four
extremes, and three dramatic personae. First, a commodity comes face to face
with money; the latter is the form taken by the value of the former, and exists
in all its hard reality, in the pocket of the buyer. A commodity-owner is thus
brought into contact with a possessor of money. So soon, now, as the commodity
has been changed into money, the money becomes its transient equivalent-form,
the use-value of which equivalent-form is to be found in the bodies of other
commodities. Money, the final term of the first transmutation, is at the same
time the starting-point for the second. The person who is a seller in the first
transaction thus becomes a buyer in the second, in which a third commodity-owner
appears on the scene as a seller.

The two phases, each inverse to the other, that make up the metamorphosis of a
commodity constitute together a circular movement, a circuit: commodity-form,
stripping off of this form, and return to the commodity-form. No doubt, the
commodity appears here under two different aspects. At the starting-point it is
not a use-value to its owner; at the finishing point it is. So, too, the money
appears in the first phase as a solid crystal of value, a crystal into which the
commodity eagerly solidifies, and in the second, dissolves into the mere
transient equivalent-form destined to be replaced by a use-value.

一个生产者手里的商品A变化为货币，货币再变化为商品B。这两个变化阶段构成商品A的闭环。

The two metamorphoses constituting the circuit are at the same time two inverse
partial metamorphoses of two other commodities. One and the same commodity, the
linen, opens the series of its own metamorphoses, and completes the
metamorphosis of another (the wheat). In the first phase or sale, the linen
plays these two parts in its own person. But, then, changed into gold, it
completes its own second and final metamorphosis, and helps at the same time to
accomplish the first metamorphosis of a third commodity. Hence the circuit made
by one commodity in the course of its metamorphoses is inextricably mixed up
with the circuits of other commodities. The total of all the different circuits
constitutes the circulation of commodities.

这个闭环同时也是另外两个生产者的闭环的后一阶段和前一阶段。一个商品，如麻布，开启了织麻布者的闭环，结束了张三的闭环。一个商品A的闭环与其他商品的闭环紧密相连。所有这些闭环，就构成了商品流通。

The circulation of commodities differs from the direct exchange of products
(barter), not only in form, but in substance. Only consider the course of
events. The weaver has, as a matter of fact, exchanged his linen for a Bible,
his own commodity for that of some one else. But this is true only so far as he
himself is concerned. The seller of the Bible, who prefers something to warm his
inside, no more thought of exchanging his Bible for linen than our weaver knew
that wheat had been exchanged for his linen. B’s commodity replaces that of A,
but A and B do not mutually exchange those commodities. It may, of course,
happen that A and B make simultaneous purchases, the one from the other; but
such exceptional transactions are by no means the necessary result of the
general conditions of the circulation of commodities. We see here, on the one
hand, how the exchange of commodities breaks through all local and personal
bounds inseparable from direct barter, and develops the circulation of the
products of social labour; and on the other hand, how it develops a whole
network of social relations spontaneous in their growth and entirely beyond the
control of the actors. It is only because the farmer has sold his wheat that the
weaver is enabled to sell his linen, only because the weaver has sold his linen
that our Hotspur is enabled to sell his Bible, and only because the latter has
sold the water of everlasting life that the distiller is enabled to sell his
eau-de-vie, and so on.

商品流通与以物易物是不一样的，形式上不一样，本质上也不一样。织麻布者让渡了麻布，得到了圣经。织麻布者用麻布换到了圣经，但圣经的生产者并不知道织麻布者卖的是麻布。织麻布者也不知道他的顾客张三卖的是小麦。B的商品到了A手里，但A和B并没有相互交换他们两个的商品。虽然这种偶然是可能的，但也只是偶然。我们看到，一方面，商品流通突破了以物易物的地域限制和个人限制，发展了社会劳动产品的流通；另一方面，商品流通自然而然地发展出了一个不受任何个人控制的社会关系网。张三卖了小麦，然后织麻布者才得以卖掉麻布，然后嗜酒者才得以卖掉圣经，然后酿酒者才得以卖掉酒水。

The process of circulation, therefore, does not, like direct barter of products,
become extinguished upon the use-values changing places and hands. The money
does not vanish on dropping out of the circuit of the metamorphosis of a given
commodity. It is constantly being precipitated into new places in the arena of
circulation vacated by other commodities. In the complete metamorphosis of the
linen, for example, linen – money – Bible, the linen first falls out of
circulation, and money steps into its place. Then the Bible falls out of
circulation, and again money takes its place. When one commodity replaces
another, the money-commodity always sticks to the hands of some third person.
Circulation sweats money from every pore.

因此，流通过程不像以物易物那样，随着使用价值的易手而完结。货币始终都处于流通过程内，始终是某商品的变形，始终占据着其他商品空出来的位置。例如，在麻布-货币-圣经这个流通过程中，麻布先退出流通，货币占据了麻布的位置，然后圣经退出流通，货币占据了圣经的位置。在商品易手的时候，货币始终在某人的手中。流通过程的每一个毛孔都渗出了名为货币的汗滴。

Nothing can be more childish than the dogma, that because every sale is a
purchase, and every purchase a sale, therefore the circulation of commodities
necessarily implies an equilibrium of sales and purchases. If this means that
the number of actual sales is equal to the number of purchases, it is mere
tautology. But its real purport is to prove that every seller brings his buyer
to market with him. Nothing of the kind. The sale and the purchase constitute
one identical act, an exchange between a commodity-owner and an owner of money,
between two persons as opposed to each other as the two poles of a magnet. They
form two distinct acts, of polar and opposite characters, when performed by one
single person. Hence the identity of sale and purchase implies that the
commodity is useless, if, on being thrown into the alchemistical retort of
circulation, it does not come out again in the shape of money; if, in other
words, it cannot be sold by its owner, and therefore be bought by the owner of
the money. That identity further implies that the exchange, if it does take
place, constitutes a period of rest, an interval, long or short, in the life
of the commodity. Since the first metamorphosis of a commodity is at once a
sale and a purchase, it is also an independent process in itself. The purchaser
has the commodity, the seller has the money, i.e., a commodity ready to go
into circulation at any time. No one can sell unless some one else purchases.
But no one is forthwith bound to purchase, because he has just sold. Circulation
bursts through all restrictions as to time, place, and individuals, imposed by
direct barter, and this it effects by splitting up, into the antithesis of a
sale and a purchase, the direct identity that in barter does exist between the
alienation of one’s own and the acquisition of some other man’s product. To say
that these two independent and antithetical acts have an intrinsic unity, are
essentially one, is the same as to say that this intrinsic oneness expresses
itself in an external antithesis. If the interval in time between the two
complementary phases of the complete metamorphosis of a commodity become too
great, if the split between the sale and the purchase become too pronounced, the
intimate connexion between them, their oneness, asserts itself by producing – a
crisis. The antithesis, use-value and value; the contradictions that private
labour is bound to manifest itself as direct social labour, that a
particularised concrete kind of labour has to pass for abstract human labour;
the contradiction between the personification of objects and the representation
of persons by things; all these antitheses and contradictions, which are
immanent in commodities, assert themselves, and develop their modes of motion,
in the antithetical phases of the metamorphosis of a commodity. These modes
therefore imply the possibility, and no more than the possibility, of crises.
The conversion of this mere possibility into a reality is the result of a long
series of relations, that, from our present standpoint of simple circulation,
have as yet no existence.

有一种最幼稚的教条认为：由于每次卖都是买，每次买也都是卖，因此商品流通必然是买和卖的平衡。如果这话的意思是，买的次数和卖的次数总是相等，那这只是毫无意义的同义反复。但这话的真正意思，是想证明，卖者会把他的买者带到市场上来。一个商品所有者和一个货币所有者的交换，卖和买，是同一个事实。但一个人的卖和买，是两个事实。因此，“卖和买，是同一个事实”，这意味着：如果被投入流通的炼金炉中的商品，没有被炼成货币，就没有用；换句话说，如果卖不掉，换不到货币，就没有用。这还意味着：交换过程是商品生命的一个期间，这个期间可能长可能短。商品的第一次变形同时是一次卖和一次买，因而是一个独立的过程。买者得到了商品，卖者得到了货币，得到了一种可以随时进入流通的商品。没人买，就没人能卖。但没有人会因为卖了商品拿到了货币，就必须立刻去买。在以物易物里，一个人的让渡自己的产品（即卖）和获取他人的产品（即买）是同一个事实。流通过程突破了以物易物的时间、地点、个人的限制，它将一个人的卖和买拆分开。【前方高能】说，两个互相独立互相对立的过程具有内在的统一性，即在本质上是一个过程，就等于说，这个内在的统一性是以外部的对立形式表现的。【一个人，不可能只卖不买，不可能只买不卖。他卖了，就必然会“买”，必然有一个“买”的行为与他的“卖”的行为对应、对立。他的“卖”这个独立的过程，他的“买”这个独立的过程，表现出“卖”和“买”是一个过程，是“自己的具体劳动产品与他人的具体劳动产品相交换”的过程。这个思维方法告诉我们，当我们看到发生了一件事A的时候，要想到，与A对立的事B是什么呢？如果B迟迟不发生，那么B就不可能发生了吗？不，B一定会发生的，而且A越积累、越拖延，B的出现就越庞大、越剧烈。因为A和B这两个事，既是互相对立的两个事，又是同一个事。】如果商品的两次变形之间的时间间隔太长，如果买和卖的分离太显著，那么，这两者的紧密关联，这两者的统一性，就会通过爆发危机的方式彰显。【如我所言。】【前方高能】使用价值和Value的对立；个人劳动必须表现为直接社会劳动的矛盾，特殊的具体的劳动必须被视为抽象劳动的矛盾；物的人格化与人格的物化的矛盾；所有这些对立和矛盾，都是商品内在的对立和矛盾，都在商品的2个对立的变形阶段中发展着它们的运动形式。这些运动形式暗示着危机的可能，也仅仅是可能。可能到现实的转变，是一系列关系的结果。从目前我们的简单商品流通的观点上，还看不到这种转变。