The capitalist does not get a machine cheaper because he must advance its entire value at one shot, while this value returns to him only gradually and piecemeal from circulation; nor does he pay more for cotton because its value enters entirely into the value of the product into which it is made and is therefore replaced fully and at one time by the sale of the product.
 Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1885). copy citation

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Author Karl Marx
Source Das Kapital
Topic value time
Date 1885
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-...

Context

“from circulation, or realises it, only after a relatively long or short period of time, according to the different periods required for its manufacture or for its circulation. The seller of a commodity does not care a rap what its buyer is going to do with it. The capitalist does not get a machine cheaper because he must advance its entire value at one shot, while this value returns to him only gradually and piecemeal from circulation; nor does he pay more for cotton because its value enters entirely into the value of the product into which it is made and is therefore replaced fully and at one time by the sale of the product. Let us return to Ricardo. 1. The characteristic feature of variable capital is that a definite, given (and as such constant) part of capital, a given sum of values (assumed to be equal in value to the labour-power, although it does not matter here whether the wages are equal, more or less than the value of the labour-power)” source