The first time "moral depreciation" was discussed in _Capital_, in
terms of the order of enquiry, was in Volume 3, Chapter 6, Section 2
("Revaluation and Devaluation of Capital; Release and Tying-Up of Capital").
Note the beginning of this section:
"The phenomena under investigation in this chapter assume for their full
development the credit system and competition on the world market, the
latter being the very basis and living atmosphere of the capitalist mode
of production. These concrete forms of capitalist production, however,
can be comprehensively depicted only after the general nature of capital
is understood; it is therefore outside the scope of this work to present
them -- they belong to a possible continuation. Yet the phenomena listed
in the title to this section can still be discussed here in broad lines.
They are both inter-related and related to the rate and mass of profit.
And this reason alone justifies a brief account of them, because they
make it appear as if it is not only the rate of profit but also its mass
(which is in fact identical with the mass of surplus-value) that can
increase and decrease independently of movements of surplus-value,
whether of its mass or its rate." (Penguin ed., p. 205)
A footnote on that page directs the reader to a footnote on p. 426 where
it says, in part, "In 1865, when the manuscript of Volume 3 was written,
Marx evidently still intended to devote a special study to the phenomena
of competition ...."
Hmmm, very interesting, wouldn't you say, Mike L.?
In OPE-L Solidarity,
Jerry