xisting shape, or indirectly by a previous (or even subsequent)
exchange, is capital. Suppose that I have laid out all the money I
possess in wages and tools, and that the article I produce is just
completed: in the interval which elapses before I can sell the article,
realize the proceeds, and lay them out again in wages and tools, will it
be said that I have no capital? Certainly not: I have the same capital
as before, perhaps a greater, but it is locked up, as the expression is,
and not disposable.

When we have thus seen accurately what really constitutes capital, it
becomes obvious, that of the capital of a country, there is at all times
a very large proportion lying idle. The annual produce of a country is
never any thing approaching in magnitude to what it might be if all the
resources devoted to reproduction, if all the capital, in short, of the
country, were in full employment.

If every commodity on an average remained unsold for a length of time
equal to that required for its production, it is obvious that, at any
one time, no more than half the productive capital of the country would
be really performing the functions of capital. The two halves would
relieve one another, like the semichori in a Greek tragedy; or rather
the half which was in employment would be a fluctuating portion,
composed of varying parts; but the result would be, that each producer
would be able to produce every year only half as large a supply of
commodities, as he could produce if he were sure of selling them the
moment the production was completed.

This, or something like it, is however the habitual state, at every
instant, of a very large proportion of all the capitalists in the world.

The number of producers, or dealers, who turn over their capital, as the
expression is, in the shortest possible time, is very small. There are
few who have so rapid a sale for their wares, that all the goods which
their own capital, or the capital which they can borrow, enables them to
supply, are carried off as fast as they can be supplied. The majority
have not an _extent of business_, at all adequate to the amount of the
capital they dispose of. It is true that, in the communities in which
industry and commerce are practised with greatest success, the
contrivances of banking enable the possessor of a larger capital than he
can employ in his own business, to employ it productively and derive a
revenue from it notwithstanding. Yet even then, the