Joint-Stock Capital and the Capital Market

The credit system mobilises idle money capital and enables circulating capital to expand and acquire elasticity. Social organisations constructed on joint-stock capital, on the other hand, mobilise idle money capital and facilitate the creation of large enterprises and the construction of enormous industrial fixed capital far exceeding the limited powers of individual capitals. For Marx (1894, p. 567), formation of joint-stock companies involves a ‘tremendous expansion of production, and enterprises which would be impossible for individual capitals’. Shares of joint-stock capitals are traded in the capital market.