Das Kapital Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

The commodity is the star of the Chapter 1 show. Basically, a commodity is a good (an item) or a service that's produced in order to be exchanged (bought and sold). So, if you walk into a music sto...

Use-value is the value a commodity has when considered as a thing that you use. So while the exchange-value is what the commodity is worth when you trade it, the use-value is what you can do with t...

Exchange-value is the value a commodity has in trade. It's the quantitative measurement of trading value. It's not exactly the same thing as price, but the concepts are pretty close, so much so tha...

Okay, we're not gonna lie: this concept is a little confusing.So, Marx has this labor theory of value. He says that the value of a commodity is the socially necessary labor time required to produce...

Let's have a definition from Marx, Shmoopers: "We mean by labour-power, or labour-capacity, the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living persona...

Surplus-value basically refers to the extra money capitalists make when they engage in the capital process.Let's trot out some Karl: "The complete form of this process is therefore M-C-M', where M'...

The working day is a pretty straightforward concept. Today, we just call it the workday. It's the amount of time you have to go to work. Now, think of how, for example, the workweek is usually supp...

Marx looks at three broad categories of production in Das Kapital. At one extreme is handicraft, which is people making things independently by means some skill they possess. Someone with an Etsy s...

Today, when someone says "manufacture," we might picture a heavy-duty factory producing steel beams or something—but that would be large-scale industry, according to Marx. By manufacture, he mean...