ABSTRACT
In the stage of manufacture, accumulation advanced through the concentration of capital, defined as the increase in the size of individual capitals. Thus, the capitalist transformation of backward countries, however incomplete, develops in the period in which accumulation on world scale is fueled by the production of relative surplus value. In effect, surplus value will have been raised relatively, though this must be distinguished from the case of a purely capitalist society in which it is the accumulation of capital itself that reduces the value of labor power. Thus, the emergence of capitalist social relations was the consequence of the contradictions within the old mode of production. The merchant capitalist derives his profit in the sphere of circulation, from a process more complex than that of merely buying cheap and selling dear. The necessity to raise the surplus product led to the disastrous impact of merchant capital upon precapitalist societies.
