Das Kapital

Marx accuses classical economists of conflating commodities and money with capital. In Marx’s view, capital is not just money, but money used to “generate value” (975), specifically surplus value. Furthermore, commodities have a use value that is immediately apparent. However, under the capitalist mode of production, the value of products is determined by the “material means of production” and the “subjective condition of labour” (980). Marx refers to the entire process where all the elements of production such as raw materials, tools, and labor are used as the “real labour process” (981). To determine the value of a product in terms of capital, all these elements have to be considered.

Next, Marx lists a number of key points about the real labor process. First, the means of production (e.g., machines, tools, the workshop or factory, etc.) belong to the capitalist, not the worker. Second, the commodities used in production, such as coal and spindles, still retain the use values they had as commodities. For Marx, this is important because in the production process, money becomes the “transmuted form” of these commodities used in production (983). That money is used to pay for labor power and in turn is used to pay for the workers’ own subsistence.

The goal of the capitalist is to make sure the commodities used in production, the constant value, is not wasted. This justifies the surveillance that capitalists place over workers. The “capitalist forces the worker where possible to exceed the normal rate of intensity, and he forces him as best he can to extend the process of labour beyond the time necessary to replace the amount laid out in wages” (987).

Likewise, capitalists seek to valorize the production process through extracting more labor from workers to create more surplus value. Since the worker does not receive all the profits from his labor and because the capitalist exercises such control over the workers’ labor, Marx describes this as “the alienation […] of man from his own labour” (990). In fact, Marx argues that “the only real component of capital to enter the process of production is the living factor, labour-power itself” (994). It is what Marx calls “objectified labor” (994-95), which is the sum of all the work put into production, that is turned into capital.

Still, for Marx it is “living labor” (994), the actual work, that gives the real value of a product. The worker is the “most essential factor in the labour process” (997) and the labor of the worker is “appropriated” (1000) by the capitalist. The products made by the worker becomes capital when it is “bought and sold, its price debated and established by a sort of legal convention” (1000). Marx breaks down the overall process of the generation of capital: the “circulation of commodities” on the market and the “process of production” (1002), during which labor power is appropriated and consumed.

For Marx, this means that the worker only has his labor to offer as a commodity. All other “material wealth” (1003), such as raw materials and the means of production, belongs to the capitalist. Marx portrays this as the basis of an antagonistic relationship between the worker and the capitalist.

Marx accuses classical economists of viewing capital as simply the physical process of production, whereas Marx believes it is also a social relationship between the capitalist and the worker, in which the capitalist has the advantage. In Marx’s words, “Capital utilizes the worker, the worker does not utilize capital” (1008). By this, Marx refers to the process in which a worker gives up their labor to the capitalist and their labor is objectified into products, but those products belong entirely to the capitalist.