The Laws of Circulation and Conversion Between Commercial and Industrial Capital

This chapter addresses a central problem of China’s present economy: the abnormal circulation between commercial and industrial capital, in which industry remains weak while commerce expands excessively. The aim is to examine the conditions under which commercial capital can be transformed into industrial capital, and thus to clarify the relation between their respective natures. I first explain why the wartime prominence of commercial capital was not the beginning of a new abnormality but the continuation and development of a long-standing structural severity. I then distinguish the “capitalist” relation, in which industry regulates commerce through the equalization of profit, from the pre-capitalist relation, in which commercial profit regulates industrial gain from outside the production process. For a transitional society, surface modern appearances may coexist with unchanged underlying relations; therefore, scientific analysis must look beyond phenomena. Finally, I argue that purely technical or financial measures cannot resolve this circulation problem without altering the socioeconomic base—above all, severing the route by which commercial capital turns into land and usury—so that commercial capital may be redirected toward productive investment.