The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities

1
"The wealth of those societies in which the
capitalist mode of production prevails presents
itself as an immense accumulation of commodities"
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These commodities have use valuesYou can eat an
apple
Or write with a pen
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But they also exchange say,4 apples one pen

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Almost everything has a number (price tag)
attached to it. We work in return for numbers on
coloured bits of paper, rather than because we
want the products of the work for ourselves or
our community, or because we are forced to.
Weird, or what?
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4 apples 1 pen? But you can't write with 4
apples any more than with 1 apple, and you can't
eat pens
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So what is equal here?It's not something
naturalIt must be something social

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Apples and pens are equal things in society in
both being "congealed" social labour time


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Commodities are values congelations of
labour-time.Value is expressed in exchange-value
or price.
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One particular commodity is separated off from
others and becomes money. Later, commodity-money
is replaced by purecredit-money
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We exchange commodities for money and money for
commodities
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Most of us exchange one particular commodity,
labour-power, for money, and then for food, etc.
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Labour-power is not the same as labour. You own
labour-power when you are not working. When you
sell your labour-power, your boss owns it and
"consumes" it by making you labour.
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Some people exchange money for commodities for
money
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How? Conventional explanationthe capitalist
just adds a percentage to his costs when setting
his selling price
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But how? Why doesn't competition reduce the
mark-up to zero?
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Marx offers a theory of profit because he does
not take it for granted that things have prices,
and then explain one price (selling-price) from
another(cost-price).
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Value of output value of material inputs plus
labour-time added
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Cost of output value of material inputs plus
value of labour-power
"Material inputs" includes wear and tear (a of
value) of machines etc.
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So profits, because value added (labour-time) is
more than value paid out for labour-power
gt
gt
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What is the value of labour-power? It is not a
commodity produced in factories. You produce it
yourself, in your free time, which does not count
as social labour-time. But to produce it, you
need inputs which do embody social labour-time
food, etc.
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Value of labour-power is determined by
labour-time embodied in a "living wage" which
maintains the worker as a worker
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(No Transcript)
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Meanwhile for the capitalist
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Speed is essential for capital
is not as good as doubling your money in quick
time
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rather than wait
So the capitalist may share the surplus value
with a merchant
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Or the capitalist may promise to share the
surplus value with a bank in order to get
started faster
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Or with stock or bond holders
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But the bankers' or financiers' loot also comes
from the workers working longer and harder than
needed to cover their "living wage"
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Battles between workers and capitalists over pay
and conditions are built into this system
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In these battles workers get organised as a class
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In these and other struggles, some people are
stirred up to study how society works
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The combination of socialist self-education and
mass workers organisation will overthrow capital