This becomes evident, furthermore, in the specific form of circulation of commercial capital The merchant buys a commodity and then sells it: M — C — M'. In the simple circulation of commodities, or even in the circulation of commodities as it appears in the circulation process of industrial capital, C' — M — C, circulation is effected by each piece of money changing hands twice. The linen manufacturer sells his commodity-linen, converting it into money; the buyer's money passes into his hands. With this same money he buys yarn, coal, labour, etc. — expends the money for reconverting the value of linen into the commodities which make up its production elements. The commodity he buys is not the same commodity, not the same kind of commodity which he sells. He has sold products and bought means of production. But it is different with respect to the movements of merchant's capital. With his £3,000 the linen merchant buys 30,000 yards of linen; he sells the same 30,000 yards of linen in order to retrieve his money-capital (£3,000 and the profit) from circulation. It is not the same pieces of money, but rather the same commodity which here changes places twice; the commodity passes from the seller into the hands of the buyer, and from the hands of the buyer, who now becomes seller, into those of another buyer. It is sold twice, and may be sold repeatedly through the medium of a series of merchants. And it is precisely through this repeated sale, through this two-fold change of place of the same commodity, that the money advanced for its purchase by the first buyer is retrieved, its reflux to him effected. In one case, C' — M — C effects the two-fold change of place of the same money, the sale of a commodity in one form and the purchase of a commodity in another. In the other case, M — C — M' effects the two-fold change of place of the same commodity, the withdrawal of advanced money from circulation. It is evident that the commodity has not been finally sold when it passes from the producer into the hands of the merchant, in that the latter merely carries on the operation of selling — or effects the function of commodity-capital. But at the same time it is evident that what is C — M, a mere function of his capital in its transient form of commodity-capital for the productive capitalist, is M — C — M', a specific increase in the value of his advanced money-capital, for the merchant. One phase of the metamorphosis of commodities appears here in respect to the merchant in the form of M — C — M', hence as evolution of a distinct kind of capital.