As production expands, however, separate capitalist enterprises will probably emerge to carry out these functions as commodity or money capitalists. Crucially, these capitalists and the labour they employ are purely concerned with the ‘circulation’ of capital; they do not produce commodities which generate surplus value and therefore they are unproductive.54 However, because they are also capitalist firms, they require the same rate of profit as does production capital. Consequently, some surplus value is diverted to become their income, diminishing the average profit rate in the economy.
