Tag Archives: Marx

Chapter 7 of volume 1 of Capital is called “The Labour Process and the Valorization Process” (Marx 1990: 283), and it discusses the process of labour and surplus value.It is divided into two sections: (1) The Labour-Process or the Production of Use-Values.(2) The Production of Surplus-Value (also called “The Valorization Process” in Marx 1990: 293). A critical summary of these two sections follows.(1) The Labour-Process or the Production of Use-Values Capitalists buy labour-power from...

There is a crucial passage in volume 2 of Capital as follows: “In a slave system, the money-capital invested in the purchase of slaves plays the role of the fixed capital in money-form, which is but gradually replaced after the expiration of the active life period of the slaves. Among the Athenians, therefore, the gain realized by a slave owner through the industrial employment of his slaves, or indirectly by hiring them out to other industrial employers (for instance mine owners), was...

Chapter 6 of volume 1 of Capital is called “Sale and Purchase of Labour-Power,” and it discusses the nature and value of labour-power. This chapter ends section 2 of volume 1 of Capital.Surplus value is not created by the transactions M–C or C–M in the circuit of capital (Marx 1990: 270). Marx argues that it is the special commodity called labour-power that is the source of surplus value (Marx 1990: 270).Marx explains: “In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a...

Chapter 5 of volume 1 of Capital is called “Contradictions in the General Formula for Capital,” and is a brief chapter that describes what Marx sees as problems with the general formula M–C–M′. The primary problem is: where does surplus value come from and how is it created? (Brewer 1984: 35; Harvey 2010: 92). In essence, Marx in this chapter argues that it does not originate within the process of circulation (that is, the sphere of exchange of commodities through money).The circuit of...

Chapter 4 of volume 1 of Capital is called “The General Formula for Capital,” and begins Part 2 of that work (which consists of Chapters 4, 5, and 6). Chapter 4 presents Marx’s theory of the essence of commodity production under capitalism: the desire for money as expressed in the formula money–commodity–money (M–C–M), which is the circuit of capital (Brewer 1984: 34).Capitalism involves the production and circulation of commodities, and these are its “starting-point” and historical...

The labour theory of value as presented in Part 1 of volume 1 of Capital is wrong for the following reasons: (1) the a priori argument for the labour theory of value in volume 1 of Marx’s Capital is a non sequitur and later contradicts itself, as detailed here and here.(2) Marx faces the problem of reducing all heterogeneous human labour to a homogeneous abstract socially necessary labour time unit, but does not properly explain how this happens;(3) even if Marx could overcome (1) and (2),...