Circulating capital

Circulating capital refers to physical capital and operating expenses, i.e., short-lived items that are used in production and used up in the process of creating other goods or services. This is roughly equal to Intermediate consumption. It includes raw materials, intermediate goods, inventories, ancillary operating expenses and (working capital). It is contrasted with fixed capital. The term was used by classical economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx.

Therefore, circulating capital is a component of the technical capital that participates in and is used up in a single cycle of production. It always needs replacing at every cycle (raw materials, basic and intermediate materials, combustible, energy…). In accounting, the circulating capital comes under the heading of current assets.

According to Karl Marx (second volume of Das Kapital, end of chapter 7) the turnover of capital influences "the processes of production and self-expansion", the two new forms of capital, circulating and fixed, "accrue to capital from the process of circulation and affect the form of its turnover". In the following chapter Marx defines fixed capital and circulating capital. In chapter 9 he claims: "We have here not alone quantitative but also qualitative difference."

Conventionally, (physical) capital assets held by a business for more than one year are regarded in annual accounting statements as "fixed", the rest as "circulating". In modern economies such as the United States, roughly half of the intermediate inputs bought or used by businesses are in fact services, and not goods.

References

• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
• David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
• Karl Marx, Das Kapital