Capital

From MarxWiki

Titled 'Das Kapital' in his German native language, Marx's voluminous work described the workings of capitalism as he saw it in nineteenth-century England. Capital was published in three volumes - Marx originally published the first in 1867, and Engels later published Marx's second and third volumes posthumously.

In Capital's first volume, Marx defines capitalism as the accumulation of commodities. Commodities have two types of value, which Marx labels use-value and exchange-value. An object's use-value does not commodify an object; other formations of an object's use-value, for example, an object's social use-value, commodifies an object because it takes its worth from its use and places it in a superficial context, making its worth relative to outside forces and societal tastes (Marx 41). The exchange-value between two commodities, first realized in barter economies, eventually becomes standardized when one form of commodity becomes the medium of exchange (historically, this commodity has been gold - e.g., the gold standard). Eventually, the exchange-value of a good becomes abstracted away from even this standard commodity and takes the form of money.

Money, Marx argues, obscures the basis on which the original exchange of commodities was predicated - invested labor. The fixation on money as an indicator of the value of an object constitutes a phenomenon Marx calls fetishism. It is important to note the relationship between labor and commodification described in this essay. Marx describes that fetishism of commodities obscures the reality of its use and exchange-values; if a commodity's use-value and exchange-value no longer represents the labor represented by the end product, the worker becomes separated from the process, creating an environment that easily oppresses the worker and assumes his/her work is not valuable in and of itself. Marx elaborates on the idea of labor power and how it is used by capitalist systems as an oppressive force in 'Capital' and other essays, explaining that the formation of ideology concerning the free market and free exchange are assumed to be politically based, when actually it is socially constructed to serve a purpose within the capitalist system. He additionally states that ideas about the political economy are determined by the bourgeoisie and are not universal; the ruling ideas are determined by the most recent era's ruling class, but its purpose, to perpetuate upper-class dominance, is always the same.