This element of the value of commodities must not be confused with
 the costs of repair. If a commodity is sold, this value-element is turned
 into money, the same as all others. But after it has been turned into
 money, its difference from the other elements of value becomes
 apparent. The raw and auxiliary materials consumed in the production of
 commodities must be replaced in kind in order that the reproduction of
 commodities may begin (or that the process of production of
 commodities in general may be continuous). The labour-power spent on
 them must also be renewed by fresh labour-power. Consequently the
 money realised on the commodities must be continually reconverted into
 these elements of the productive capital, from the money-form into the
 commodity-form. It does not alter the matter if raw and auxiliary
 materials for instance are bought at certain intervals in larger
 quantities — so that they constitute productive supplies — and need not be
 bought anew during certain periods; and therefore — as long as they
 last — the money coming in through the sale of commodities, inasmuch
 as it is meant for this purpose, may accumulate and this portion of constant
 capital thus appears temporarily as money-capital whose active
 function has been suspended. It is not a revenue-capital; it is productive
 capital suspended in the form of money. The renewal of the means of
 production must go on all the time, although the form of this renewal — 
 with reference to the circulation — may vary. The new purchases, the
 circulation operation by which they are renewed or replaced, may take
 place at more or at less prolonged intervals: then a large amount may be
 invested at one stroke, compensated by a corresponding productive
 supply. Or the intervals between purchases may be small: then follows a
 rapid succession of money expenditures in small doses, of small
 productive supplies. This does not alter the matter itself. The same
 applies to labour-power. Where production is carried on continuously
 throughout the year on the same scale — continuous replacement of
 consumed labour-power by new. Where work is seasonable, or different
 portions of labour are applied at different periods, as in agriculture — 
 corresponding purchases of labour-power, now in small, now in large
 amounts. But the money proceeds realised from the sale of
 commodities, so far as they turn into money that part of the commodity-value
 which is equal to the wear and tear of fixed capital, are not re-converted
 into that component part of the productive capital whose
 diminution in value they cover. They settle down beside the productive
 capital and persist in the form of money. This precipitation of money is
 repeated, until the period of reproduction consisting of great or small
 numbers of years has elapsed, during which the fixed element of
 constant capital continues to function in the process of production in its
 old bodily form. As soon as the fixed element, such as buildings,
 machinery, etc., has been worn out, and can no longer function in the
 process of production, its value exists alongside it fully replaced by
 money, by the sum of money precipitations, the values which had been
 gradually transferred from the fixed capital to the commodities in whose
 production it participated and which had assumed the form of money as
 a result of the sale of these commodities. This money then serves to
 replace the fixed capital (or its elements, since its various elements have
 different durabilities) in kind and thus really to renew this component
 part of the productive capital. This money is therefore the money-form of
 a part of the constant capital-value, namely of its fixed part. The
 formation of this hoard is thus itself an element of the capitalist process
 of reproduction; it is the reproduction and storing up — in the form of
 money — of the value of fixed capital, or its several elements, until the
 fixed capital has ceased to live and in consequence has given off its full
 value to the commodities produced and must now be replaced in kind.
 But this money loses only its form of a hoard and hence resumes its activity
 in the process of reproduction of capital brought about by the
 circulation as soon as it is reconverted into new elements of fixed capital
 to replace those that died off.