"The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents

itself as an immense accumulation of commodities"

These commodities have use valuesYou can eat an apple

Or write with

a pen

But they also exchange: say,4 apples = one pen

=

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?

4 apples = 1 pen? But you can't write with 4 apples any more than

with 1 apple, and you can't eat pens

So what is equal here?It's not something natural

It must be something social

=

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

social labour time

==

Commodities are values: congelations of labour-time.

Value is expressed in exchange-value or price.

One particular commodity is separated off from others and

becomes money. Later, commodity-money is replaced by pure

credit-money

We exchange commodities for money and money for commodities

Most of us exchange one particular commodity, labour-power, for money, and then for food, etc.

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.

Some people exchange money for commodities for money

How? Conventional explanation:the capitalist just adds a percentage to his costs when setting his selling price

But how? Why doesn't competition reduce the mark-up to zero?

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).

Value of output = value of material inputs plus labour-time added

Cost of output = value of material inputs plus value of labour-power

"Material inputs" includes wear and tear (a % of value) of machines etc.

So profits, because value added (labour-time) is more than value

paid out for labour-power

>>

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.

Value of labour-power is determined by labour-time embodied in a "living wage" which maintains the worker

as a worker

Meanwhile for the capitalist

Speed is essential for capital

is not as good as doubling your money in quick time

rather than wait

So the capitalist may share the surplus value with a merchant

Or the capitalist may promise to share the surplus value with a bank

in order to get started faster

Or with stock or bond holders

But the bankers' or financiers' loot also comes from the workers

working longer and harder than needed to cover their "living wage"

Battles between workers and

capitalists over pay and

conditions are built into this

system

In these battles workers get organised as a class

In these and other struggles, some people are stirred up to study how

society works

The combination of socialist self-education and mass workers’

organisation will overthrow capital