In Form II, P ... C' — M' — C ... P (P'), the entire circulation
 process follows after the first P and precedes the second P; but it takes
 place in the opposite order from that of Form I. The first P is the productive
 capital, and its function is the productive process, the prerequisite of
 the succeeding circulation process. The concluding P on the other hand
 is not the productive process; it is only the renewed existence of the
 industrial capital in its form of productive capital. And it is such as
 a result of the transformation, during the last phase of circulation, of
 the capital-value into L plus MP, into the subjective and objective factors
 which by combining constitute the form of existence of the productive capital.
 The capital, whether P or P', is at the end once more present in a form
 in which it must function anew as productive capital, must again perform
 the productive process. The general form of the movement P ... P is the
 form of reproduction and, unlike M ... M', does not indicate the self-expansion
 of value as the object of the process. This form makes it therefore so
 much easier for classical Political Economy to ignore the definite capitalistic
 form of the process of production and to depict production as such as the
 purpose of this process; namely that as much as possible must be produced
 and as cheaply as possible, and that the product must be exchanged for
 the greatest variety of other products, partly for the renewal of production
 (M — C), partly for consumption (m — c). It is then possible to overlook
 the peculiarities of money and money-capital, for M and m appear here merely
 as transient media of circulation. The entire process seems simple and
 natural, i.e., possesses the naturalness of a shallow rationalism. In the
 same way profit is occasionally forgotten in commodity-capital and the
 latter figures merely as a commodity when the production circuit as a whole
 is under discussion. But as soon as the constituents of value are debated,
 commodity-capital figures as commodity-capital. Accumulation, of course,
 is seen in the same light as production.