‘Marx’s Das Capital For Beginners’ by Michael Wayne and Sungyoon Choi is a introduction to ‘Das Kapital’ (Capital), the masterpiece in the modern world, by a German philosopher, sociologist, economist and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx.
Digests of each chapters are below.
Introduction – ‘Das Kapital’ is a criticism to capitalism, not only a explain about it. Marx’s economics in the book peculiar. it includes economics, philosophy, politics, sociology, history and literature. The chief aim of his consideration in ‘Das Kapital’ is why and how economic categories such as money, profit, capital and so forth actively repress the social content with determines them.
Chapter 1 – Commodity has a use value and an exchange value. Human beings have always produced use values in order to survive and in order to develop. But in capitalism society, use values are combined with exchange values. Exchange value is the value to exchange for each other and it finds its expression in price. The value is measured by money, means of easily exchange. Money is pure exchange value can exchange different qualities of commodities. On the hand human labor turned abstract, and this abstract labor produces value of commodities, then is equivalent, can be exchanged and measured by money.
Chapter 2 – Basically, our economics and daily life carry on circulation of equivalent exchange money and commodity in market. But, in capitalist or bourgeois society people are motivated by the pursuit of self-interest. Surplus value added commodities and the phenomenon brings imbalance and inequality to capitalist society.
Chapter 3 – Marx thought there are two circuits of exchange one is the simple circulation of commodities, another is the circulation of money as capital. The circulation of money, adds to itself a surplus value, which converts into capital. Workers sold their labor power in labor market. Labor became a commodity to be purchased by capitalists. Also human labor is the source of all social wealth, and produce ‘surplus’ value need not for survival. But capitalists don’t pay wages to ‘surplus labor time’ by Workers, which produces surplus values.
Chapter 4 – Author explains how Marx think about value. Marx divides capital into two types: constant capital and variable capital. Constant capital is the means and materials of production such as building, machine and raw materials. Variable capital is the human labor employed by capitalist. Value doesn’t produced only by constant capital. Making use of variable capital with constant capital adds value to commodities, and produces surplus values.
Chapter 5 – Author argues working condition and problems in modern world. Capitalists exploited surplus value produced by surplus labor work to gain private property. On the other hand, to produce surplus value, capitalist needs surplus labor by workers. Also innovation of technology made manager class labor workers. But excesses of surplus value consequences prices fall. Marx suggested innovation of technology shorten working hours, liberate human being from nature, and increase wealth for everyone. Marx is not only a revolutionist but also he considered social reforms by making use of the merits of capitalism.
Chapter 6 – Capitalist production is the system of reproducing production, and continuously extend the scale of itself. And, by Marx, capitalism expand and crises by overproduction. The causes are conflicts with the social inequalities caused by capitalism itself, and breakdowns in the flow of value caused by market competition. One of the consequences of crisis is the ‘centralization of capital’ which is the process whereby one portion of capital annexes, takes over and absorbs another portion of capital. And the process interacts with the ‘concentration of capital’ which refers to the growing mass of capital as a whole as more and more capital is accumulated.
Chapter 7 – Under capitalism, fetishism took the form of the commodity. The free worker is separated from the mean of production, the goods he produce. The commodity fetishism made by relationships of market, capital, commodities and money dominates our lives. Although the capitalist market made a realm of liberation, freedom, empowerment and individual agency. The general exchange of activities and products appears as to be a wide sphere of subjective and individual freedom. Influences of the material capitalist production dominate the means of mental production, and realized the ruling ideas of the ruling class. Phenomenal forms of the capitalist system (capital, commodities, exchange, markets, competition and so on) construct the idea-system or ideology. The idea system or ideology of bourgeois control social and economic interests, grasp ‘hegemony’ of a society.
Chapter 7 – Capitalism inverted the connection of human needs and their production. Value dominates the life of the human community, and people live in the world of commodity fetishism. Marx showed how capitalism placed the foundations for its own overthrow and its contradiction made the that necessary. The basis of transforming capitalism is capitalism itself.
This is a elementary introduction to ‘Das Capital’, not Marx’s entire life and thought. Author concentrates on comments on useful essences of ‘Das Kapital’ by making use of the fundamental economic key concepts of ‘Marx’s political economy’ such as capital, commodity, surplus value, fetishism and ideology. And he explains the theory of ‘Das Kapital’ by examples of economic cases, social affairs and social problems on contemporary society. Also he quotes statements to Marx and capitalism problems of many thinkers. Author comments a reasonable and neutral view point to Marx, neither criticise nor applause. In each chapters, he mainly states ‘how Marx thought’ in ‘Das Kapital’ and other works, then he applied Marx theory to today’s actual economic scene in modern and contemporary times. the system of capitalism
By this book you can grasp and make out Marx’s economics or political economy. I think today’s significance of Marxist theory is in his consideration on relations among human beings, money, labor (or work), objects (or commodities) and some values (include capitals), not like numerical value on accounts or finance in the contemporary economics. But Marx himself was swayed by and couldn’t overcome the historical ideology and historical limit. I think we need criticise, extent and apply Marx’s economic theory.
This book is only a easy commentary to theories in ‘Das Kapital’, and author states a few his own answer and conclusion. So yet this book is an excellent first-step primer on Karl Marx or his voluminous great work ‘Das Kapital’.
And this book is one book of ‘For Beginners’ series, but it is not cartoon guide book, only attaches Illustrations in text. So it’s very readable to me.
Marx’s Das Capital For Beginners (For Beginners)
Michael Wayne, Illustrations by Sungyoon Choi
For Beginners LLC, Danbury, 29 May 2012
144 pages $16.99
ISBN: 978-1-934389-59-1
Contents:
Introduction
1. The Commodity
2. The Exchange of Commodities
3. Circulation and the Buying of Labor-Power
4. Value
5. Work Under Capitalism
6. Reproduction and Crises
7. Commodity Fetishism and Ideology
8. After Capitalism?