Fixed Capital, part of productive capital. It fully participates in the production process, but transfers its value to the manufactured product in parts, as it wears out. One component of fixed capital is that part which is advanced to purchase the means of labour—production premises, machines, equipment, etc. In the composition of fixed capital there are active elements, which directly act on the objects of labour (machines, equipment, control and measuring instruments, etc.) and passive elements, which create the necessary conditions for the production process and its servicing (buildings, structures, conveyors, means of transport, etc.). Fixed capital goes through a full cycle over a number of production periods, because fixed capital is advanced for the full term of its functioning, while its value is returned to the capitalist in parts: only part of the value of fixed capital, as it wears and tears, is included in the value of the commodity created during a definite production period. Once the commodity mass is realised, this part of the value of fixed capital is returned to the capitalist and is kept in the bank on his account as depreciation, gradually accumulated in order to replace the wornout means of labour. In the production process, the components of fixed capital are subjected to physical wear and tear and obsolescence. Capitalists try to ensure that in the production process, the value of the elements of fixed capital is transferred to ready articles in the shortest time and is quickly realised, before the term of moral wear. With this aim in mind they try to expand the production of products and heighten the exploitation of the workers. In today’s world, at the demand of the capitalists, the bourgeois state has given the monopolies the go-ahead for accelerated depreciation, which allows monopolies to include the cost of fixed capital in the depreciation funds—which are not being taxed—considerably earlier than physical wear sets in. With the development of the scientific and technological revolution, there occurs a mass renovation and expansion of fixed capital. However, given the aggravating problem of realisation this leads to a growing underutilisation of production capacities (see Underloading of Enterprises, Chronic).