Credit under Capitalism, a form of spontaneous movement of loan capital. The process of the circuit of capital inevitably leads to the formation of temporarily free monetary capital. At the same time industrial and merchant capitalists periodically need more capital. Thanks to credit the temporarily free capital of some capitalists is provided to others on the condition that it be paid back, usually with interest. Credit encourages the continuity of the process of production, ensures accelerated turnover of capital and boosts capitalist profit. The main forms of credit under capitalism are commercial and bank credits. Commercial credit is that provided by investing capitalists (industrialists and traders) to each other in the form of commodity capital for certain periods of grace, usually several months, under a bill. Banking credit is provided by loan capitalists to investing capitalists in the form of sums of money and is effected by banks. There are also other forms of credit: mortgage, consumer, state, international. A mortgage credit is a loan on the security of a real estate (land, buildings) (see Mortgage). Consumer credit involves the sale of commodities directly to consumers with a grace period. It has developed because of working people’s limited effective demand, and problems with commodity sales. Because interest rates are usually high, consumer credit becomes a burden for consumers while capitalists reap immense profits. Capitalist state credit is the credit received by a bourgeois government through the issuing of state bonds (see Loans, State). The state may also assume the part of creditor, mainly in foreign 76 intergovernmental loans. International credit, that is credit transactions between capitalists and governments of different countries, exists in the form of commercial, bank and state credit. It is a weapon in the competitive struggle for profitable markets, cheap sources of raw materials, and more advantageous investments. Under imperialism international credit became one of the basic forms of the export of capital, a means for economically and politically enslaving the peoples of the developing countries. The principal international creditors of the modern capitalist world are the USA, Great Britain, West Germany and France. All the forms of credit under capitalism further the development of capitalist production, while at the same time heightening the contradictions of capitalism