It was seen in the supplementary equalisation of profit through the
 intervention of merchant's capital that no additional element entered the value
 of commodities with the merchant's advanced money-capital, and that the extra
 charge to the price, whereby the merchant makes his profit, was merely equal to
 that portion of the value of the commodities, which productive capital had not
 calculated in the price of production, i.e., had left out. The case of
 this money-capital is similar to that of the industrial capitalist's fixed
 capital, since it is not consumed and its value, therefore, does not make up an
 element of the value of commodity. It is in the purchase price of
 commodity-capital that the merchant replaces its price of production = M, in
 money. His own selling price, as previously shown, is = M + DM, where DM stands for the
 addition to the price of commodities determined by the general rate of profit.
 Once he sells the commodities, his original money-capital, which he advanced
 for their purchase, returns to him together with this DM. We see once more that his money-capital is nothing but
 the industrial capitalist's commodity-capital transformed into money-capital,
 which affects the magnitude of the value of this commodity-capital no more than
 would a direct sale of the latter to the ultimate consumer, instead of to the
 merchant. It, actually, merely anticipates the payment of the consumer.
 However, this is correct only on the condition hitherto assumed, that the
 merchant has no overhead expenses, or that aside from the money-capital which
 he must advance to buy commodities from the producer he need not advance any
 other capital, circulating or fixed, in the process of commodity
 metamorphosis., the process of buying and selling. But this is not so in
 reality, as we have seen in the analysis of the costs of circulation (Book II,
 Chap. VI). These costs of circulation are partly expenses which the merchant
 has to reclaim from other agents of circulation, and partly expenses arising
 directly from his specific business.