ABSTRACT
One may imagine a society where there would be no capital. In the public opinion, machines are viewed as capital. This chapter shows that the first capital, the “mother-type” of all other forms of capital is simply the time that separates current income from its future expenditure. Even capital in its most “solid” aspect, fixed or instrumental capital, is logically reducible to capital-time. If a “capital” is purely real, it belongs to the category of pianos; instruments do not all have the same purpose; they serve to consume or to produce; nevertheless, any instrument is a value in use, even if it is used in the process of production. The theory of capital examines wages in relation with duration, between the instant of their creation and the chronologically posterior instant of their expenditure. The formation of capital depends on a specific operation easy to discover. Global capital is a bridge that the whole society casts between present and future.
