Skip to main content

Karl Marx was right: Workers are systematically exploited under capitalism

Even among Marx-friendly economists, the labor theory of value has fallen out of favor. But its technical validity is less important than the core message: workers are exploited because the value they create is undemocratically taken by capitalists.

by Ben Burgis  

Part 2 - Marx’s Analysis of Labor and Capital

Marx spends the first five chapters of Capital analyzing several economic concepts, starting with commodities, money, and value. He then considers them in relation to capital, using his famous three-letter diagrams.

For instance, even a subsistence farmer might sell some of the goods he and his family don’t need to buy products they can’t make — a chain of transactions that Marx renders as C-M-C (commodities-money-commodities). The capitalist does the opposite: M-C-M (money-commodities-money). While a miser simply keeps his money, perhaps filling a swimming pool with gold coins like Scrooge McDuck, the capitalist turns his cash into commodities and turns those commodities into more money (representing an underlying increase in value) — whether by selling them (in the case of the merchant capitalist) or using them to manufacture new goods and selling those (in the case of the industrial capitalist).

Crucially, the capitalist drive to accumulate money isn’t primarily about individual capitalists being bad, greedy people but rather the relentless pressures of the system itself. A capitalist who doesn’t ruthlessly pursue profits will be outcompeted by those who do — as Marx says, the capitalist is a kind of “rational miser” (while the miser is a “capitalist gone mad”).

But, Marx asks, how does the store of value held by the capitalists increase?

To be sure, some people are better at business than others and can buy cheap and sell dear, but how does the supply of value in society as a whole increase over time? Where does the new value come from? Marx’s answer is that a worker’s capacity to work — her “labor power” — is a “c” that has the capacity to turn “m” into more “m.”

At this point in the discussion, any good defender of capitalism will counter that the capitalist provides the physical means of production — the factories, equipment, and so on. Isn’t the capitalist the source of that value? But Marx points out both that the physical means of production are a source of value insofar as they are used by workers and that these are themselves the result of the activity of previous workers — in Marx’s phrase, “dead labor” used by “living labor” to produce more value.

And yet, despite being the source of value, labor is dominated. In a striking passage at the end of chapter six, Marx portrays a stylized exchange between the “owner of money” and the “owner of this peculiar commodity, labor-power,” who meet in a marketplace to exchange their property. They meet as equals to make this exchange, but then:
 
                          When we leave this sphere of . . . the exchange of commodities, which provides the “free trader vulgaris” with his views, his concepts, and the standard by which he judges the society of capital and wage-labor, a certain change takes place, or so it appears, in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He who was previously a money-owner strides out in front as a capitalist; the possessor of labor-power follows as his worker. The one smirks self-importantly and is intent on business; the other is timid and holds back — like someone who has brought his own hide to market and now has nothing to expect but — a tanning.

As the book continues, turning at last to the key concept of class struggle, Marx writes at length about what the “tanning” looks like and how it works. He describes “half-starved widows” giving up their children to toil in the match-making industry — working all day every day and facing very early death because of the industrial process. He writes about groups of desperate workers and their families petitioning local governments to reduce their worktime to eighteen hours a day.

But Marx’s key analytic point is that mainstream economists who ignore the class antagonism at the heart of capitalism are obscuring a central element. Under feudalism, the direct producers (peasants) are clearly forced into giving up some of their “surplus labor” (the time they spend working but not to meet their own needs) to the ruling class. The coerced transfer is out in the open. Under capitalism, the immediate producers (workers) are legally free to make contracts with anyone or — if they’re willing to simply go hungry — no one. The coercion is disguised.

Yet the underlying reality, Marx insists, is a crude relationship of domination and extraction.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"Kidnapped in Int'l Waters": Israel Intercepts Gaza-Bound Aid Ship, Detains Greta Thunberg & Others

Democracy Now!   Eleven peace activists and one journalist on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship, the "Madleen," were detained by Israeli soldiers as their ship carrying vital humanitarian aid for starving Palestinians approached Gaza.    The ship was intercepted by Israeli forces in the middle of the night in international waters. Its supplies were seized and communications jammed. The unarmed activists will likely be transported to Israeli detention or "immediately deported," says Ann Wright, a U.S. military veteran who has participated in four Freedom Flotilla journeys and now serves on the steering committee of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. She calls on citizens of countries around the world to push for the activists' release and an end to Israel's war on Gaza. 

How Israel’s Supporters Play Victim to Justify Genocide & Silence Critics

BreakThrough News   As Israel commits a live-streamed genocide in Gaza, Western media and political elites continue to center one narrative: Jewish fear. But what about the actual victims of this genocide—Palestinians? Journalist Nora Barrows-Friedman joins Rania Khalek on Dispatches for a fearless conversation on Zionist indoctrination in the Jewish diaspora, how antisemitism is being weaponized to silence critics of Israel, and how Jewish identity politics has been manipulated to cover for unspeakable crimes. From the media blackout on Israeli war crimes to the erasure of anti-Palestinian hate crimes—even in the diaspora—Nora lays bare the contradictions and power structures behind it all. 

Trump in SHOCK: Putin & China FLIP His Grave Mistake into STUNNING Victory

Danny Haiphong   Putin & China just gave Trump a rude BRICS awakening, and this bombshell will change everything for generations to come. Geopolitical analyst Ben Norton details the truth about Trump's biggest failure against the rising power of BRICS led by Russia and China, and why the US's role as super power is now in serious question.     Related: Trump's tariffs: A unique opportunity for BRICS and the Global South to fully escape from dollar tyranny

How the EU is using anti-Russia sanctions to criminalise journalism

The EU sanctioned me and my media outlet for covering Palestine protests in Germany. It’s part of Europe’s growing authoritarianism and militarism, cloaked in language of fighting disinformation and defending democracy.   by Hüseyin Dogru   Part 2 - How the EU uses anti-Russian hysteria to smear Palestine solidarity journalism   The official rationale for sanctioning me hinges on red .’s alleged links to Russian influence. The EU sanctions listing cited just two pieces of “evidence”: that some red. staff had previously worked for Russian-funded media, and that we covered “politically controversial subjects” – specifically: Palestine. That’s it. The listing accuses me, through my work with red ., of “facilitating violent demonstrations”, amplifying “radical Islamic terrorist narratives” and claims our staff “coordinated with occupiers”. Not a single piece of evidence is cited, apart from the fact that we published footage of a pro-Palestine student occupation in Berlin. I...

UN report confirms: Israel is a terrorist state and its goal is to exterminate all Palestinians

Israeli attacks on educational, religious and cultural sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination, UN Commission says.     globinfo freexchange Israel has obliterated Gaza’s education system and destroyed over half of all religious and cultural sites in the Gaza Strip, part of a widespread and relentless assault against the Palestinian people in which Israeli forces have committed war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, said in a new report [yesterday]. While the Commission paid special attention to the situation in Gaza, the report focuses on attacks in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a whole, and in Israel. “We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza,” said Navi Pi...

Israeli propagandists nervous about Iran war

The Grayzone   The Grayzone 's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate on undeniable signs of anxiety by Israel's top propagandists as they pressured the US to strike Iran. 

Keir Starmer admits Ukraine a proxy war

The Grayzone   The Grayzone 's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate on the British PM's unintentional acknowledgement of an inconvenient truth. 

[LIVE] War in the Middle East after Iran's retaliation against Israel

globinfo freexchange      Explosions in Tel Aviv as sirens sound across Israel amid Iranian missile attacks in response to Israeli strikes.      The Israeli military continues to launch waves of strikes against Iranian military and nuclear sites, as well as major cities.   Updates:  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/6/13/live-explosions-reported-in-iran-amid-israel-tensions  

UNHINGED CNN, FOX War Propaganda After Iran Strikes

Breaking Points   Krystal and Saagar discuss unhinged war propaganda on mainstream media. 

War criminal Netanyahu is pushing the Orange Clown and the US into the abyss

globinfo freexchange   It seems that the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, is rushing to accelerate the decline of the US empire by forcing Donald Trump into an utterly devastating war with Iran.   Trump shot himself in the foot during his first term by killing the Iran nuclear deal just because he wanted to erase everything from the Obama legacy. His insane narcissism pushed him into crazy acts and made him believe that he could make another deal with Iran credited solely on him.   But now he is in big trouble because he has to deal with a corrupted psychopath who won't hesitate to burn the entire planet just to save himself.  As if the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza was not enough, the out-of-control psychopath Netanyahu, is doing whatever he can to drag the US into a war with Iran. As he realized that the Iranians are approaching the negotiating table again, (rather surprisingly with the man that killed the first deal and assassinated Qasem Soleimani), he decide...